You are an enumerator

The county of Hallowshire has 1,847,201 people in it and the Vestry expects every one of them written down. You have a pen, a ledger, and a penny an entry.

The book keeps its own count

Beside the entries you have made sits a second figure: the strokes the room has heard. It is always a little higher. The difference is yours to answer for, and it grows whether you work or rest.

Hire hands you cannot watch

Widow Reed's boy can hold a pen. So can a gravedigger, a clerk, a bell-ringer, and a doctor whose list runs ahead of the deaths on it. They count while you sleep. They do not always count what you would have counted.

The returns of twelve parishes

Slips arrive from the Hundred to be filed or sent back. An infant with a trade. A death written down for a day that has not come. A house already in your book. A return is false when it disagrees with itself: file what agrees, send back what does not. A false one filed comes back with the name struck out, and its people leave the book.

And a reading, at the bell

When the returns are read aloud the room is to be quiet. A hand comes in from the far side of the desk and rests on your page, and the Vestry reads names out of your own book. You answer for each: keep it, or strike it. If you ever filed a false return by your own hand, that is the first name it reads back to you. Take up the pen while the hand lies there and the fingers spread.