Chapter Two | The Red-Scarf Boy
The name Leo Merrin followed Emery into her sleep.
She dreamed of apples turning to ash. Of fog so thick it whispered. Of a boy with a red scarf standing beneath the clocktower, eyes wide, not with fear—but with recognition.
She woke before dawn, tangled in her quilt, the sky outside barely blue. Her kettle screeched as if startled. She made tea anyway. Something with cinnamon. Something that felt like autumn trying to calm itself down.
On the table: the newspaper.
The photo of Leo Merrin didn’t change overnight. But it felt different now. Closer.
She flipped the paper over and found an obituary for her great-aunt—Mothwick’s last official clocktower keeper. A woman she’d never met, whose name she only remembered because it came up in the interview.
Iris Merrin.
The surname made her stomach drop.
She picked up her phone and called the archive.
Mrs. Thistle answered on the sixth ring. “If this is about the cider doughnuts, I already told you I didn’t steal them.”
“It’s not,” Emery whispered. “Do we have any records on Leo Merrin?”
There was a long pause. Then: “You ought to stop poking around, dear. Mothwick’s full of stories, but they’re not all meant to be read.”
Emery hung up without another word.
That afternoon, she skipped the archive.
Instead, she walked to the town’s little museum—a brick building with crooked shutters and a sign that had once said MOTHWICK HISTORY CENTER but now read OTHWICK STORY CEN thanks to a storm last year.
Inside, the docent barely looked up. She wandered past old portraits and farming tools, past a crooked broom labeled Authentic Witch Relic (Unverified), until she found it:
The Bell’s Last Toll – a display behind glass.
There was the clocktower, painted in oils, cloaked in mist.
And beneath it, a red scarf. Faded. Frayed at the edges. Hung like a memory.
The plaque read:
Belonging to Leo Merrin, last seen October 23, 1992. Donated anonymously one week later.
She leaned closer, forehead nearly touching the glass.
A breeze stirred behind her.
“You heard it too, didn’t you?” came a voice. Young. Male. British, maybe.
She turned, startled.
A boy—no, a young man—stood at the end of the corridor. Lean frame, tousled dark hair, and a gaze like he’d been watching her long before she noticed.
“Excuse me?” she asked, trying to sound braver than she felt.
“The bell,” he said, nodding toward the painting. “Three chimes. Always three.”
She narrowed her eyes. “How do you know that?”
He smiled, but not kindly. More like sadly. Like someone remembering something that never stopped hurting.
“Because,” he said, backing away toward the exit, “that’s how many times it rings… when it wants you to listen.”
And then he was gone.
She rushed after him, but the street was empty.
Only the wind remained.
And somewhere, faintly…
Dong.
Dong.
Dong.