NORA

Everybody in Valentine knows how Nora Bell died. Everybody is wrong.For nearly eighty years, the people of Valentine, Nebraska, have told the same story. Nora Bell was fifteen years old when she died inside Centennial Hall. There was a clarinet. A poisoned reed. A terrible accident. And if you believe the stories, Nora never really left. That's the version people tell.Cora Dillard knows there are other versions. As curator of Centennial Hall, she has spent years living by the rules her grandmother taught her: don't look too long at the bell, don't open certain doors, and when the building does something impossible, keep walking. Then the children begin to hear it.Eleven-year-old Tyler Pruitt hears the bell call his name. Fifteen-year-old Junie Delgrave begins drawing rooms she has never entered and people she has never met. Seventeen-year-old Eli Bexley records something inside Centennial Hall that should have been impossible to record, and once the sound escapes the building, it begins to spread.Soon the old ghost story starts coming apart. Because Nora Bell did not simply die in Centennial Hall. Something was done to her. Something was started. And something was left unfinished.Now, after nearly eight decades of silence, the old building is waking again. The bell is calling. The children are listening. And beneath the floors of Centennial Hall, a song that should have died with Nora is searching for the voices it needs to finish.Some of the children have already begun to sing. And Nora Bell has been waiting a very long time to hear the last note.