Fiction · Strange Tales. A complete fictional horror story from the Blackwood Institute cases. Contains burial alive, bereavement, coercion and possession.
This is the written adaptation of The Last Service, Blackwood Case 02. Read the complete case below, or use the episode player to hear the performed version.
The second catch made a small, tidy sound over the phone.
Roxie stopped at the edge of the garden. Beyond the trees, someone was reciting the words of a service. She could see the open grave, the shape of the coffin below its rim, a woman standing beside it with a brass bell. Nessa's breathing filled her ear.
“They've shut it.”
“I've got you. Where's the phone?”
“By my ear. My knees are touching the lid.”
Roxie moved towards her. Gravel shifted under her shoes, loud enough that she nearly missed the next words.
“Don't hang up.”
Something struck the wood. A scatter of smaller impacts followed it.
Soil.
Before the call
That morning, Dot Berridge had met them in her coat. She had meant to go to work. Her bag stood beside the front door, and her husband sat in the next room looking at the space above an unlit fire.
“Thirty-four years,” Dot said. “Last night he asked what I was doing in his house.”
Roxie put her own bag down. There would be time for the photographs on the mantel and the retreat leaflet Dot had sent them. First she needed to know whether Dot could safely stay in the room.
Len Berridge watched them come in. He seemed embarrassed by the attention. His brother Arthur had died the previous winter, he explained, and there had been an argument before that. Their mother's house. Things said with the confidence that there would be another chance to put them right.
The Merefield Fellowship had offered him that chance.
“I heard him,” Len said. “He used the name he called me when we were boys.”
Eddie Szabo lowered himself into a chair, careful of his leg. Three weeks had passed since the Rookery, and all three investigators were still finding movements they couldn't comfortably make. Roxie's palm had closed along a tender line. Conrad Blackwood kept his right forearm close to his body.
“Tell us what happened,” Eddie said. “We can leave the deciding until afterwards.”
There had been a service. A voice. Instructions to bring a bell home and keep it near him while he slept. Len had followed them because the voice had known things he hadn't told anyone at the retreat.
The bell stood beside the wedding photograph. Its brass rim was cracked. Beneath the iron clapper, Roxie could make out a shallow cup of black wax with a thumbprint pressed into it.
Len turned towards the stairs.
“Wait here. I haven't finished.”
Nobody had spoken to him.
He got up and went upstairs. Dot followed, calling his name. A lock clicked, then his voice came through the bedroom door, lower and strained. He wanted room. He wanted them to take away the woman who fed him.
Dot stayed on the landing. Roxie stood beside her, close enough to catch the small movement of her hand towards the handle and its withdrawal. Downstairs, Conrad lifted the bell with a cloth.
It rang once.
Len struck the inside of the door. Dot flinched. His plea came out in a rush, his own voice again, begging them to stop.
“Put it down,” Roxie called.
Conrad did. When they returned to the sitting room, he stood well back from the mantel.
“I'm sorry,” he said. “We won't do that again.”
Dot watched the bell. During a power cut she had put a candle beneath it. The heat had softened the edge of the wax, and for a little while Len had said the pressure in his head was easier. The retreat's instructions forbade heating or cleaning it. In the kitchen, she took the leaflet and struck through that instruction with a pen.
“Then do we melt it?”
“We find out what we're melting first,” Conrad said.
Roxie left Dot her direct number. Len had his phone within reach; Dot's sister and a neighbour would help her stay with him. The Fellowship's old address was Stave Chapel on the quarry road. It had moved to Merefield House the previous month.
Before they left, Dot gave Roxie another name.
Nessa Pike. Her husband had died eight months ago. She was at the new retreat that day.
Roxie called from the car. No answer. She left a message asking Nessa to ring before taking part in a ceremony, then kept the phone where she could see it.
The impression in the wax
Stave Chapel was unlocked. Chairs had been stacked away from the platform, leaving pale shapes on the floor where their legs had stood. Roxie checked the little rear window while Conrad looked into the vestry. It opened. She let it down again without fastening it.
In the abandoned rooms they found boxes of bells, sticks of black wax and a pad for taking thumbprints. A notebook lay among them.
Len's name appeared with his address.
Host waking at night. Wife obstructive. Maintain bell in sleeping room.
Roxie read the entry twice. Dot, standing outside her own bedroom, reduced to an obstruction in somebody's records.
On the floor lay a dented bell. Its wax was smooth. Beside the corresponding entry someone had written: Rejected. Impression lost. Ringer responsive again.
Eddie asked for a chair. He set both feet on the floor and kept the notebook clear of the object. Roxie stayed beside him while he rested two fingertips on the brass.
His breath caught. She watched his shoulders rather than the bell.
“Eddie?”
He took his hand away.
“Red coat,” she said. “Tell me what colour.”
He looked up at her. “Red.”
He had seen a man in a coffin, struggling to get out. A woman had heated the bell over a dish. When the wax softened, the man had begun asking for his coat. He had known where he was again, and that had made him unsuitable.
“She said they'd need a fresh impression before they tried again.”
Roxie moved the bell beyond his reach. He had given them enough. Conrad turned the notebook towards the window and followed the instructions down the page.
The wax held a seat. The bell began the process; the impression kept the place open for whatever answered. Cracking the shell wouldn't release it. They had to heat the entire thumbprint until every ridge was gone, with the living person attended throughout.
The Fellowship called the arrivals servants of the Adversary. Devils. Its own records used those words while the leaflets offered reunion with the dead.
Another page showed a larger bell with more than one print. A warning prohibited combining seats without the sponsor's permission. There were letters about suspending services and collecting equipment, with a name at the foot: the Brotherhood.
Conrad brought out a copy of an auction record. The Fellowship had bought an ash pin he had authenticated. It had received his report, including the warning page. Somewhere afterwards that page had been removed.
“Can you tell who took it out?” Roxie asked.
“No.” He put his copy beside the notebook. “But they had it.”
A vehicle stopped outside.
Roxie took photographs while Conrad went towards the door. Then came the smell of fuel.
He backed into the room. “Rear exit. Now.”
The vestry door held against them. Through its gap Roxie could see the chain pulled tight on the other side. Eddie shifted his weight off his bad leg. Behind them, the fire caught.
The window. She had left it unfastened.
Roxie drove a chair leg through the remaining glass and cleared the frame with her sleeve. Conrad braced the chair with his left hand while Eddie climbed. She took his coat, guided his heel over the sill and felt the lining snag.
“Hold still.”
He held. The cloth pulled free. She helped him lower himself outside, then went through after him with the notebook. Conrad followed.
In the open air she counted them before she called the fire service. Three people clear of the building. A door chained from outside. Fuel at the front entrance.
She sent the photographs to the Institute while the chapel burned. The rejected bell was still inside. They would have to work with what they had already learned.
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Discover Darkness and LightThe woman at the gate
Back at the Berridges', Len agreed to let them heat the wax. Dot brought a metal dish. Conrad held the inverted bell above the hob, a cloth protecting his hand, while Eddie watched the impression.
Roxie sat where Len could see her. Dot stayed beside him.
At first he only looked tired. Then his head jerked towards the stairs.
“I don't want to go up there.”
“Stay with us,” Roxie said.
The thumbprint softened at the edges. Eddie leaned closer, gloved hands kept clear of the heat. A ridge remained near the centre. Len's fingers tightened on the chair.
“Keep it there,” Eddie told Conrad.
When the last ridge disappeared, Len looked at Dot. His mouth worked before he could speak.
“Will you sit down?”
She was already sitting beside him. She moved her chair nearer anyway.
Roxie's phone rang while Dot's sister was arranging a doctor's appointment.
Nessa spoke quietly. She had heard her husband through a curtain the day before. Jamie had said the first line of their wedding vows. How could somebody there have known it?
Roxie looked across the kitchen at Len, holding his wife's hand.
“I believe you heard a voice,” she said. “We don't know that it was Jamie.”
“I want to go home.”
The gate code had changed. A man had been there since breakfast. Nessa said nobody would take her out.
“Go to reception,” Roxie said. “Keep me on the phone.”
She heard Nessa ask. A woman's answer came faintly, then more clearly as she approached: of course she could leave, but after the medication it wouldn't be safe to drive.
“I didn't take it,” Nessa said. “It's still in the cup.”
A door closed. A key turned.
Roxie was on her feet.
Nessa said something about her battery, too loudly, and the call ended.
Roxie requested a police welfare check. By the time the team reached Merefield House, officers were leaving. They had spoken to Nessa alone. She had said she wanted to stay. There was no immediate allegation on which to remove her.
Then Nessa came through the gate to the public road.
Roxie opened the car door. Nessa stood beside it, looking from her to the house. She was close enough to get in. Roxie kept her hands away from her and showed her the photograph of Len's entry.
“That's his wife,” she said. “The woman they called obstructive. He's back with her now. We had to destroy the impression in his bell.”
Nessa read the words. Her gaze stopped at the address.
“He knew our vows.”
“I know that's what you heard.”
“You weren't there.”
“No.”
Roxie wanted to fill the silence. The car was open, the road was clear, and everything they had found lay on the screen in Nessa's hand. She could make the warning louder. She couldn't make it cost Nessa less to believe it.
Nessa gave the phone back.
“They say the service is tonight.”
“You can change your mind,” Roxie told her. “At any point. You don't owe them the rest of the weekend.”
Nessa looked towards the gate again.
“Keep my number,” Roxie said. “I'll answer. We'll stay near.”
She watched Nessa walk back to the house. Conrad stood beside the open car until Roxie closed it.
“Knowing doesn't always take away what you want,” he said.
After dark
They waited on the public lane beyond the iron fence. From there Roxie could see the route from the service room, across the gravel and into a garden with three shallow pits. A side gate opened near it. She sent the route to the police and put the first-aid bag, torch and bolt cutters where they could reach them.
They took turns watching. Eddie sat when his leg needed it. Conrad tested the cutters once with his left hand and put them down. Roxie checked her phone.
At six, a coffin arrived. Straps were laid across the first pit.
Later, when the guests had gone inside, the house seemed to hold all its light behind the service-room windows. Roxie could see movement without making out faces. Then the door opened.
Nessa came out with a man holding her elbow. He pulled her towards the coffin. Her body resisted in an awkward, stiff-legged way that didn't slow him enough.
Roxie called the police again. She gave the location and described what she could see: a woman being restrained, taken towards an open grave.
Conrad had the cutters at the gate. Their jaws wouldn't fit over the lock's shackle. The chain ran through twice.
“Here,” Eddie said.
He held the loose length with his left hand. Conrad cut the first link. On the second attempt his right arm failed him; the handles separated without cutting through.
Roxie braced the gate. Eddie set a handle against the post and put his left shoulder into the other. The second link gave. She caught the gate before it swung into him.
Her phone rang as they went through.
Nessa. The first catch had already closed.
Conrad and Eddie headed for the service room, where the bell should have been. Roxie kept going across the gravel. The second catch made its neat sound beside her ear. At the garden's edge, a shovel tipped soil onto the lid.
“Nessa, I'm here.”
She put the phone on speaker and slid it into her pocket. The woman with the bell stood near the grave, her hand turning awkwardly around its handle. Roxie knew her voice from the call to reception.
“Mother,” the woman said. “Stop pulling.”
Another man reached for the bell. The woman lowered it away from him.
“Both impressions,” he said. “They're both taking.”
Conrad and Eddie came out of the house. The stand inside had been empty; the bell was here, in the woman's hand. Conrad looked from her to the grave.
“We have to heat the wax.”
She wouldn't give it to him. She said she had heard her mother. The man beside her took the bell and went back towards the service room. Conrad followed, Eddie behind him.
Roxie dropped to her knees at the pit. The man who had brought Nessa outside stood over it.
“You're interrupting the service.”
“Listen to her.”
Nessa's voice came out of the phone in Roxie's pocket. She couldn't sit up. Her knees were against the wood. There was soil falling near her feet.
“Get me something to stand on,” Roxie told him. “A ladder. Stay where I can see you.”
He brought the short ladder used for the straps. She went down into the grave and found the catches. Above her, the woman with the twisted hand moved away towards the house.
The first catch opened. The second resisted under the weight on the lid. Roxie cleared soil from the far edge with both palms. Each push drove grit against the tender line in her hand.
The man crouched at the rim. “I can help.”
“Lift when I tell you.”
She worked the catch loose. Together they raised the lid.
Nessa lay with one arm wrapped around the other wrist. She tried to sit. Roxie got behind her shoulders and helped, careful of the coffin edge. Nessa's right hand opened.
“I didn't do that.”
“Can you move your arm?”
She tried. Her left hand tightened around the right wrist.
Roxie called Eddie. The lid was open, she told him. Nessa was alive. Something still had hold of her arm.
He was inside. The man with the bell wanted to take it away in a padded case. Conrad was trying to stop him. Six other guests were being sent to wait together on the drive.
“The wax has to go,” Roxie said.
“We know. Stay with her.”
The man at the grave knelt beside the ladder. Roxie kept him in sight while Nessa drew a breath that seemed to scrape all the way up her throat.
“I told her I didn't want to.”
“You can tell me when we're out.”
Her right arm began to lift.
The last ridge
Roxie supported Nessa's elbow. The arm pressed upwards against her hand, slowly enough that she could feel the effort in her own shoulder. Nessa pulled down on her wrist with her left hand. Her right fingers continued opening.
From the yard came a hard metallic crack.
Nessa's arm kept rising.
Roxie's phone sounded in her pocket. She answered without releasing the elbow. Eddie said the bell had broken. The clapper and the two wax seats were intact. He had them in a cloth and was taking them to the burner in the service room.
“Tell me when,” she said.
Nessa's arm was close to the coffin rim. Roxie shifted beside her and took more of its weight.
“Look at me. You don't have to fight it alone.”
Nessa looked. The man above them said nothing. Roxie could hear Eddie moving the phone, then Conrad's voice further away, speaking to the woman who had held the bell. Sibyl. He was asking her to stay in the chair.
She said that if they took it away she might never hear her mother again.
“You may not,” Conrad said. “I'm sorry. We still have to get this thing out of you.”
Nessa's elbow pushed harder into Roxie's palm. Her coat had twisted underneath her. Roxie wanted to straighten it, wanted to get her onto the ladder and out of the ground, but couldn't safely let the arm go.
“How much?” Conrad asked.
“First one's smooth,” Eddie said over the phone. “The second has a ridge across the middle. I'm turning it.”
Roxie held on. Nessa's face was close to hers, eyes fixed on the place she had been told to look. She was trying to speak. Roxie shook her head.
“Save it. I've got your elbow.”
The weight changed.
It dropped into her hands so suddenly that she nearly lost her grip. Nessa's right fingers curled, loosened, then curled again.
“That's me,” she said. “Look. That's me doing it.”
She took Roxie's hand.
Roxie stayed still while she did it, letting her choose the pressure. Through the phone, Eddie said both impressions were gone. She could hear Sibyl crying.
They got Nessa onto the ladder. Roxie climbed immediately below her; the man at the rim steadied the top. At ground level Nessa moved away from him.
“Don't come near me. Stand over there.”
He obeyed. When Roxie climbed out and returned Nessa's phone, he spoke again.
“I lit the fire at the chapel. She told me to destroy the papers. I saw your car. I did it anyway.”
Roxie looked at him. Then she looked back at Nessa, who was standing with both arms held close to her body.
“Tell the police exactly that. Stay where they can find you.”
Emergency lights turned through the gate. Conrad brought the first-aid bag. Eddie met the crews and showed them the way in. The other guests waited together on the drive.
The man at the grave was Garrick Venn. The man who had tried to take the bell was Piers Mott, a sponsor of the Fellowship. He had left before the police arrived. Venn and Sibyl Rusk remained; Conrad gave an officer their names and the photographs from the chapel.
Nessa sat beside Roxie near the car. She had asked three times to stop, she said. Sibyl had told her she was frightened of being happy.
“You asked to leave,” Roxie said. “They should have let you.”
“I wanted Jamie back. That's all.”
“I know.” She waited until Nessa looked up. “Who would you like me to call?”
“Dot. I don't want to explain it to someone who thinks I've been stupid.”
At Nessa's request, Roxie put the call on speaker. Nessa gave her name and asked if she could come round after the hospital.
Dot told her there was a bed ready.
The people who came home
The following afternoon Len brought toast to the kitchen table. Dot set down the jam. Nessa moved her plate to make room for the butter.
Both had been examined. Len had slept through the night. Roxie watched Nessa reach for her cup with her right hand, put it down, then reach for it again when Dot offered more tea.
“It's the first meal nobody's called part of my recovery programme,” Nessa said.
“Give it time,” Eddie said. “Dot's very organised. There'll be a form for the toast.”
“Only if you want a second slice.”
The bell was gone from the mantel. Dot had moved the wedding photograph into its place. In the hall Len stopped Conrad and asked whether they had found Arthur in any of it.
Roxie paused with her bag. Conrad took a moment before he answered.
“No. We found people using your grief. And something willing to use your body.”
Len looked towards the kitchen. He kept thinking about the argument, he said. About what he should have said to his brother.
Conrad suggested writing it down, or telling someone who had known Arthur. He couldn't promise Arthur would hear it. Len could still say it.
When Len went back to the table, he asked Dot whether she remembered the argument about the house. She put down the teapot and made room for him. The investigators left them talking.
At the Institute, Roxie laid the photographs from Merefield beside the auction records. Eddie had photographed the service-room notebook before leaving it for the investigation. Its payment schedule showed the same sending account as the buyer's payment advice for the ash pin. Both carried the sale reference on Conrad's retained report.
She checked the numbers again, then turned the pages so the others could see.
“Same account. Same sale reference. We can show how the money reached both places.”
“Can we show who cut your report?” Eddie asked.
“Not yet. Mott knew it was cut. He didn't give us a name.”
Mott's description and vehicle were in the police report. Sibyl and Venn were under investigation. The two seats in the large bell had been destroyed. Len could sit beside his wife, and Nessa had somewhere to sleep where she could leave whenever she wanted.
Eddie closed the folder.
“Before we chase another account number, can we get something to eat that isn't evidence-adjacent?”
Roxie picked up her bag. “If you put that notebook down first.”
He left it on the desk. Conrad switched off the lamp, and they went out together.
Hear the performed case
The phone call, the bell and the struggle to get Nessa out are part of The Last Service, Blackwood Case 02, a full-cast Strange Tales audio drama narrated by Flynn Davidson. This written version includes the ending. Press play for the cast's performance of the case, or listen on Spreaker.
Adapted from The Unexplained Company's original fictional audio-drama script. The Fellowship, its ritual and this investigation are fiction. Find more performed stories in Strange Tales of the Unexplained.
