All the Bells that Ever Were

The Funeral and the Voicemail

The bells had been ringing all morning, a slow metallic heartbeat drifting over Ljubljana. Mira Kralj stood beside the open grave, coat collar turned up against the drizzle, and wondered if the sound would ever stop. The priest’s voice blurred with the rain; words fell like small stones into the mud. Her mother’s name — Marija Kralj, 1954–2025 — shone briefly on the wet marble before the first shovelful of earth dulled it.

Someone touched her arm; she nodded without seeing who. The scent of candle wax and damp wool clung to her as she walked downhill through the cemetery gates, the bells still tolling. Her phone vibrated in her pocket — a jolt of electricity in the solemn air — but she ignored it. People’s devices did strange things near churches, she told herself. Static, crossed signals, metal fatigue. Nothing mystical.

On the bus home, she finally looked—one new voicemail. No number, no caller ID.

Time-stamp: 15 April 2030 – 09:14.

A system glitch. Still, her thumb hovered.

“Mira,” said the voice.

Low, roughened by age — but her own.

“Don’t do it again. You’ll know when you hear the bells.”

Then silence. No background, no click of disconnection. Just the faint hiss of air, as if the speaker were still there, waiting.

She replayed it twice, closer each time. The third time, she heard something beneath the words — a soft chiming, distant yet precise, like the cemetery bells slowed to half-speed. Her pulse answered them.

She deleted the message, switched off the phone, and stared out at the grey river sliding past the windows. For an instant, she thought she saw another face behind hers in the reflection — older, mouth half-open as if about to speak.

When she reached her flat, she left the phone on the counter and made tea she didn’t drink. The apartment was too quiet; every appliance hummed in a different key. She turned on the radio for company. The announcer’s voice wavered in and out through static — the same hiss that had filled the voicemail.

The phone chimed again.

1 new voicemail.

The message title was identical, down to the second.

Mira closed her eyes and listened as the bells began to ring once more, somewhere very far away — or very close.

The Archivist

The next morning, the city sounded hollow. The trams squealed along wet rails, pigeons shuffled across the roof of the broadcasting building as if testing the sky’s weight. Mira let herself in through the side door of the Slovenian Broadcasting Archive, her key card beep echoing down the corridor.

Her workspace was a narrow room lined with acoustic foam, humming servers, and stacks of unlabelled tapes. She liked its silence — the kind that had texture. Today, though, it felt expectant.

She set her phone beside the workstation and opened her first file of the day: a recording of a 1970s radio play. Familiar static. Worn tape hiss. Comforting, almost. Still, she couldn’t help glancing at the phone every few minutes, half-dreading, half-hoping for another message. Nothing came.

By noon, the unease had settled like dust. She decided to face it. If the voicemail was an anomaly, she could prove it.

She plugged the phone into her computer, extracted the file, and ran it through analysis software. The waveform appeared clean — too clean. No distortions, no sign of tampering. The timestamp remained: 2030-04-15 09:14:00.

She frowned. The system didn’t allow future dates without manual override.

A knock on the door. Tina, the new intern, leaned in. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Just a data ghost,” Mira said. “A misfiled timestamp.”

Tina grinned. “The past calling from the future, huh? Maybe your future self is begging you to take a holiday.”

When Tina left, the room tightened. The file had begun to replay itself — silently. The progress bar advanced, though no sound came.

Mira removed her earbuds. Beneath the whir of the hard drives came that same tonal hum — low, even, nearly imperceptible.

Her mother’s voice surfaced: Sound remembers everything.

Mira isolated the background frequencies. There it was again — a chime, distant but exact, the resonance of bronze struck by air—the same pitch as the cemetery bells.

The computer froze. The waveform blinked twice, then changed shape — two words forming in the amplitude peaks like handwriting:

LISTEN CLOSELY.

The lights flickered. When power returned, the file was gone.

On her desk, her phone screen glowed.

1 new voicemail.

The Bells

Ljubljana looked almost ordinary that afternoon, washed clean by rain and haloed with late-day light. Mira left the archive early, telling herself she only needed air — movement, noise, anything but silence.

Prešeren Square was busy: tourists by the pink church, students under umbrellas, buskers playing dented horns. The city was all sound. She felt steadied by it, as if the world had turned its volume up to drown her thoughts.

Then the bells began.

Four o’clock. Clear, heavy notes rolling across the square, the same tone she’d heard in the message. She froze beside the statue of Prešeren. Each strike of bronze seemed to vibrate inside her.

Coincidence, she told herself. All bells sound alike if you want them to.

Still, she lifted her phone and pressed record. When she replayed the clip, something else moved through the sound — a whisper shaped like her name.

Mira.

She lowered the phone. The echo lingered in her ears, faint as tinnitus. It seemed to come from the hill, from the hospital where her mother had died.

She walked home along the river. The flicker of a shop sign buzzed in the same rhythm as the bells. By the time she reached her building, someone’s glass windchimes were answering each other above the courtyard — clear, irregular, musical.

When she finally went inside, the phone vibrated once.

Audio file “bells-2030.wav” successfully backed up.

She hadn’t saved it under that name.

The file size changed as she watched, pulsing slightly — like breath caught in code.

Luka Returns

Her inbox was full of condolences. Mira deleted most until one stopped her.

Subject: Heard about your mum. I’m sorry.

From: Luka Kovač.

Five years since she’d left him, five since she’d decided she wouldn’t repeat her parents’ quiet tragedy. Now, after a funeral and a message from the future, his name felt like a door left ajar.

She replied before she could think: Coffee sometime?

They met two days later at a café by the river. He was waiting by the window, the same easy posture, the same smile. Only a few silver strands at his temples marked the years.

“Mira,” he said softly, as if checking that the name still belonged to her.

They talked carefully — weather, work, loss — and the air between them slowly thawed.

When the door opened behind her, a bell chimed. The same tone. Her stomach tightened. Luka didn’t notice.

She forced a laugh. “Still playing guitar?”

“Still cataloguing ghosts?” he asked.

“Always.”

Another chime. Her tea trembled in its cup. She pressed her fingers to the porcelain, grounding herself.

Luka reached across the table, covering her hand with his. “It’s good to see you.”

The prophecy wanted her to run; she could feel it. But she wouldn’t. Her mother’s voice whispered: You always leave too soon.

So she smiled instead. “Come to dinner tomorrow. My place.”

When they stood to leave, the bell chimed again — warm, harmless — and she felt a rush of triumph. Fate was only sound, and sound could be rewritten.

Outside, the city glittered. For the first time in weeks, Mira thought the future might still belong to her.

The Dinner

The rain had lifted by the time Luka arrived. Mira’s apartment smelled of lemon oil and dust. She’d set the table with her mother’s old plates, blue flowers circling their rims like charms.

He held up a bottle of wine. “Still hate white?”

“Still true,” she said, smiling.

Dinner was simple: risotto, salad, laughter cautious at first, then easier. The room grew warm, and for a while the silence between them felt like peace, not distance.

Through the open window came the hum of bicycles, the river’s hush, the faint sound of a radio somewhere far away. Then the bells began.

Nine slow chimes rolled across the water. Mira set her glass down.

Luka looked up. “What is it?”

“Just the bells.”

“You always did listen too closely.”

She tried to laugh, but her throat was tight. You’ll know when you hear the bells.

When the ringing stopped, silence pressed in. Luka reached for her hand. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” she whispered. “It’s just… hard to let some things go.”

He smiled. “Then don’t.”

They left together after ten. Rain returned, soft and metallic. Across the road, an ambulance idled near the bridge.

Luka stepped forward first. Mira followed, turning toward him mid-laugh.

The siren burst alive — high, oscillating, halfway between alarm and church bell.

For one heartbeat, she thought she saw herself on the opposite curb, older, mouth open in warning.

Then everything became sound.

The Accident

Light.

Then sound.

The siren opens like a scream too bright to see. Luka’s shout cuts through it — her name, stretched thin: Mi—ra!

The world fractures into beats and pulses: tyres on wet stone, metal on air, a bell tone beneath the siren’s pitch.

Her shoulder hits the pavement. Cold. Then nothing but sound.

The siren slows, becomes almost melodic. She can hear her own breath rattling in time with it. Voices multiply, replayed in echo.

Mira, don’t do it again.

Her own voice — older.

She tries to answer. Only a whisper escapes: “I tried.”

Her phone vibrates in her pocket, screen cracked, rain pooling in the glass. Through the speaker, the voicemail plays itself:

“Mira. Don’t do it again. You’ll know when you hear the bells.”

The sound loops, warped by feedback. The world around her matches it note for note.

Luka’s voice breaks nearby, pleading. Her eyelids flutter. The sky above her is pale and moving.

“Please, listen this time.”

The words vibrate through the air, not the phone. She tries to press record, but her fingers barely move.

Static swells — soft, patient, like breath between words.

The ambulance doors slam. The siren rises again, one last perfect chime.

Then everything fades.

Not silence exactly — just a smooth, endless hum.

Almost peaceful.

Almost finished.

Playback

The archive smelled of dust and ozone when Tina unlocked it Monday morning. The storm had tripped the systems; she’d drawn recovery duty.

The office felt wrong without Mira — desk cleared, headphones hanging neatly on their hook like something waiting to be claimed.

Out of habit, Tina opened Mira’s backup folder. Most files were corrupted, but one stood out.

voicemail_2030_0415.wav

She clicked play.

“Mira. Don’t do it again. You’ll know when you hear the bells.”

It startled her enough to remove her headphones. She checked the metadata.

Created: 15 April 2030

Modified: 15 April 2025

Status: Active

The system didn’t allow “active” tags on completed files. She tried to duplicate it; the copy failed. When she reopened the folder, three new versions had appeared:

listen.wav

listenclosely.wav

please.wav

She turned off the monitor. The speakers, muted, still emitted a low hum. The air pressure shifted.

“Mira?” she whispered, half amused, half afraid.

The hum rose into a clear tone, high and pure, like a distant bell. Then a voice, soft and rough with static:

“Almost finished.”

On the dark screen, the waveform flickered once, recording itself without input. Tina’s reflection trembled in the glass — and beside it, faintly, another outline turned away.

Silence returned, except for the slow ticking of the clock — and outside, the midday bells began to ring, merging with the hum of the servers until it was impossible to tell which was real.

Epilogue

A year later, the archive’s new system administrator ran a full database update. One orphan file refused deletion.

Name: voicemail_2035_0415.wav

Author: T. Novak

Status: Active.

He sighed, clicked it open, and frowned at the playback.

“Don’t do it again,” said a voice that wasn’t his.

“You’ll know when you hear the bells.”

The lights in the room flickered once, then steadied.

Outside, somewhere beyond the city’s static, a single bell began to ring.