Fiction · Strange Tales. A complete fictional horror story adapted from The Blackwood Institute's first audio case. Contains confinement, injury and vampire violence.
Stan Vickery was nearly on his feet when the man at the bottom of the cellar stairs reached for Eddie.
Eddie had the electrician's arm around his neck, most of his weight against his chest. One more step and they could start up. He had been explaining this to Stan, making the journey sound smaller than it was, when Roxie said, “Stay back. This man's hurt.”
The stranger caught Eddie's right wrist. Bare feet, a hanging mouth, fingers that closed without any visible effort. Eddie tried to pull away and discovered there was no pulling away. His arm straightened. Stan slipped, and Eddie clamped his free arm around him before his head could strike the floor.
“Take Stan. I can't hold him!”
Roxie got between them and lowered Stan against the wall. Then she seized Eddie's left hand and braced a foot against the doorframe. For a moment he had her on one side and the stranger on the other, and the part of him stretched between them was his shoulder.
His heels left the stone.
“Conrad!”
Conrad Blackwood was bending for the wooden spike they had taken from Stan's fist. The stranger turned towards him, still holding Eddie up. Its mouth opened wider. Two teeth pressed against its lower lip.
“Please,” Eddie said. “Just hit him.”
Conrad drove the point through its hand. The grip opened so abruptly that Eddie fell backwards onto Roxie. She shoved him clear of the doorway. Conrad slammed the door, dropped its bolt and stayed there with both hands against the wood.
Bare feet moved once on the other side. Eddie waited for another step. The silence was worse: he couldn't tell where the man had stopped.
Roxie knelt beside him. “Can you move your fingers?”
He tried. Pain travelled up his arm, but they moved.
“Yes. It hurts. I'll take that as a good sign.”
Across the cellar, delivery steps led to a metal garden hatch. They could get Stan out that way. Eddie collected his work bag and the electrician's lunchbox in his left hand, climbed ahead and pushed the lid with his shoulder. Cold air reached his face. Behind him, wood split around the stairway bolt.
Conrad and Roxie carried Stan up the steps. Eddie waited until their feet were clear, then lowered the hatch. Something hit the underside before it reached the frame. Metal sprang against his palm.
“Away from it!” Roxie shouted.
He let go. By the time it slammed down, he was running.
They reached the car and settled Stan against a tyre. Conrad stood facing the house, the spike held out in front of him. Eddie wanted him to put it down and open the car. Stan's sister had asked them to find her brother. Here he was. They could take him somewhere with lights, people, doors that worked.
A hand appeared above the low wall beside the basement steps.
The stranger hauled itself up. Black skin surrounded the hole in its hand. It had only to come over the bricks. Eddie backed into the car, unable to stop looking at the fingers that had held him.
Instead, the creature turned its face towards the brightening sky and dropped out of sight.
“Why did he stop?”
“I don't know,” Conrad said. “Stay by the car.”
Eddie stayed.
The two empty compartments
Stan's lunchbox lay open on his lap. Two compartments were empty; the third held a sandwich wrapped in blue checked paper. While Roxie spoke to the ambulance service, Stan tapped the empty spaces, pointed at the house and lifted two fingers.
“Two people?” Eddie asked.
Stan nodded. Roxie steadied the cardboard lid while he wrote. Nell Gant. Hugh Weller. Beneath the names he pressed so hard the card tore.
Alive.
Eddie looked towards the shuttered windows. His wrist hurt more now that nothing was pulling it. He tucked it against his chest, under his coat, and got up.
At the garden gate, while Roxie handed Stan to the ambulance crew, he asked Conrad what they had found.
“I think he's a vampire.”
“Right. I was hoping for something less upsetting.”
Conrad studied the spike. Ash, he said. There were accounts of a pin driven through the chest to hold a vampire still. He'd thought they described a burial practice. Now he couldn't get the cloth wrapped around its point. His fingers kept shaking it loose.
Eddie had been watching those hands for instructions ever since the cellar. Seeing them shake made it easier to ask the next question.
“Have you ever dealt with one before?”
“No. I've dealt with people who said they had. I should have asked better questions.”
“Then don't pretend you know what it'll do. If you're guessing, tell us.”
Conrad stopped struggling with the cloth. “I will.”
He offered Eddie the chance to stay with Stan. Eddie watched the crew lift the electrician onto a stretcher. Even now, Stan was looking back at the house.
“He gave us two names,” Eddie said. “You need help finding them.”
Roxie returned with photographs of the message and Stan's work order. She had reported an assault and two people still missing. Police and another ambulance had been requested. Before they went farther, she wanted to check the nearest rooms and establish a route out.
The side entrance led to a corridor and a glass-roofed extension. A sign called it the morning room. Steel shutters covered the glass, leaving Eddie's torch to pick out a long table beneath a black cloth and a stone planter full of dead stems.
A draught came through the planter. Behind the stems he found a hatch in the garden wall, opening onto a paved recess outside. He tested a ledge with his boot, put his shoulders through and withdrew them.
“We can get someone out here. Help on both sides.”
His trouser leg snagged as he stepped down. A broken corner left a narrow gap between the planter and the wall. He pulled the fabric free and pointed his torch into it.
“Mind that.”
In the adjoining service lobby, a chain hung beside a roof-control cabinet. Eddie pulled. Daylight opened in a thin strip across the morning-room floor.
At the double doors opposite, a bare foot drew back from the light.
He let go of the chain. The creature stood in the corridor shadow, looking through the service doorway at him. Above it, a camera turned.
The motor started. The strip of light narrowed. Conrad caught Eddie by the coat and dragged him into the lobby, shutting the service door before the blow came from the other side.
Eddie stood with his good hand on the latch. He had pulled a chain; someone watching had closed the roof. That was a choice. There was a person somewhere in this house who had watched them arrive with Stan.
“Someone shut it for him,” he said.
They went back to Roxie at the gate.
The case
Together, they turned away from the morning room and entered the dining hall. A metal transport case stood open in the centre. Eddie could have lain full length inside it. Restraint bars folded against the padding, leaving room for shoulders, arms, legs.
Conrad fitted the spike's brass handle into a guide above the chest position. It slid home neatly. Eddie rubbed newer paint from a plate on the side of the case and uncovered a name.
Conrad Blackwood.
He kept his glove on the plate. It would have been easier to ask if Conrad had looked surprised in quite the right way. Eddie couldn't decide what the right way was.
“Why is your name on it?”
“I authenticated the pin. At a private sale. They showed me the wood and some papers. I never saw this case.”
“Did you check who bought it?”
“No.”
Roxie's torch moved from the name to the bars. Somewhere beyond the hall, a door scraped over the floor.
“We'll ask about that later,” she said. “Nell and Hugh first.”
They found a bedroom with a bolt fixed to the outside. Nell lay on a wheeled bed; Hugh was strapped into a chair beside her. A drainage contractor's badge hung from his dirty shirt. On the bed between them were two blue checked wrappers.
Stan had brought lunch for a job. Whatever had happened after he arrived, he had divided it between the people he found here.
Roxie crouched where Nell could see her. “Stan got out. He's with an ambulance crew. We're getting you out too.”
Nell's eyes moved towards her. Hugh tried to raise his head. A chart hung above them, recording dates and quantities beside their names. Brotherhood. Special custody. Eddie followed the columns down to an empty third bed, its straps already open.
Conrad photographed the chart, then folded it into his coat. Roxie sent the captives' names and a photograph outside. When she loosened Hugh's belt, his next breath came deeper. Nell took her hand. They moved both of them into the adjoining linen room, which had a second door to the back passage.
Eddie went for his work bag beside the case. Beneath its frame lay a mallet with a brass face. Dents on the spike's handle matched it.
“I could try a reading.”
Conrad looked at Eddie's wrist. “Put it down.”
“I'd use my left hand. I want to know how they put that thing in the box. We might need to do it ourselves.”
Touching an object bare-handed sometimes brought its past close enough to occupy him. Letting go was supposed to bring him back. It didn't always happen as neatly as that, which was why he had brought the mallet to them instead of taking off his glove alone.
Roxie asked what he was looking for.
“The pin going in. The pin coming out. Just that.”
“And if I ask you to stop?”
“I let go. If I stop answering, take it away.”
Conrad still watched the injured hand. Eddie rested it on his knee.
“I'm frightened too, Conrad. I can still decide whether I want to try.”
For a moment Conrad said nothing. Then he knelt in front of him, where Eddie could keep him in sight, and turned towards the hall. Roxie held the mallet above Eddie's open left palm. Only his fingertips touched the wood.
The linen room receded. The dining hall took its place, on another night, with the case open and two workers beside it. A keeper closed the bars across the vampire's shoulders. He drove the pin down until the red line on its brass handle disappeared into the guide. The creature's hands stopped moving. Its eyes stayed on the keeper's throat.
“Has it stopped fighting?” Conrad asked, from somewhere beyond the hall.
“Yes. But it's watching him.”
Eddie's fingers curled. The mallet shifted away from his palm.
“Where are you sitting?” Roxie asked.
A question he had agreed to answer. He found it by holding on to the sound of her voice.
“Linen room. On a towel. You're holding the mallet.”
The keeper rang a little bell twice. The creature's eyes turned. He stepped back, taking care to keep the open end of the case between himself and its mouth. Then he knelt beside a handwheel mounted in the floor. As he turned it, a cable pulled the pin upwards. The red line appeared. The fingers closed.
“The wheel pulls the pin out,” Eddie said. “Don't let anyone turn it.”
Roxie told him to open his hand. He lifted his fingers, and Hugh's chair was beside him again. Conrad knelt close enough to touch. Eddie pressed his empty palm against his coat, needing the plain feel of the fabric before he could put his glove back on.
“The man in there wasn't frightened enough,” he said. “He kept turning his back on it.”
“You don't have to look at him again,” Roxie said.
“Good. I don't want to.”
They checked the case. There was the red line. There was the wheel, fixed to a plate by four fresh bolts. Eddie worked a steel chair leg through it and tested the brace with his gloved left hand. It held.
They turned the case towards the corridor. Conrad would stand behind it in the linen-room doorway. When the vampire came for him, Roxie would close the bars from one side and Eddie would strike from the other. All three could retreat into the room.
“You step back before I pull,” Roxie told Conrad. “Even if you think you've got another second.”
Conrad agreed. Eddie watched her close and open the empty restraints, trying to place the creature inside them without putting any of their hands near its mouth.
While Conrad waited, he and Roxie cleared the route to the garden hatch. Responders outside were ready to lift Nell and Hugh through. The chair wouldn't fit. Nell would have to sit on its footboard for the passage, with help to keep her upright.
The black cloth trailed in their way. Roxie gathered it, but a corner was caught beneath the table's heavy foot. She couldn't pull it loose. Eddie photographed the planter's broken corner for the crew. In the lobby, a diagram on the cabinet showed a stop button and a manual disengagement lever. Lifting it would separate the motor from the chain. He photographed that too.
The bell rang before they reached Conrad.
It came from beneath the floor.
Conrad stood behind the case, his own bell untouched. Roxie took the lever. Eddie raised the mallet in his left hand. Under his feet, something knocked against the boards.
The vampire entered from the main corridor. Its injured hand was folded inside its waistcoat. With the other it moved a chair out of its way. Eddie followed the chair, the casual ease with which it shifted, and nearly missed Conrad stepping backwards.
“Here,” Conrad said.
The creature leapt. Conrad threw himself into the linen room, but a hand caught his sleeve. Roxie hauled the lever down. The bars closed over the vampire's shoulders and trapped the coat against the rim.
Eddie struck. The mallet jolted in his left hand. The red line was still there.
“It's not down!”
Conrad twisted. Cloth tore. His arm came free as Roxie bore down on the lever with both hands. Eddie struck again, harder, and the line disappeared. The fingers stopped around a strip of Conrad's coat.
For several seconds Eddie kept the mallet raised. Through the inspection window, the vampire's eyes followed Conrad as he sank against the wall.
It was held. They could move the chair. They could get out.
Beneath the case, the wheel shifted against its brace and stopped.
“They tried it,” Eddie said. “It held.”
Roxie was checking Conrad's forearm. Swelling had begun above his wrist. He wanted to stay standing until Nell and Hugh were through the hatch; she folded his coat under his arm and told him she wasn't carrying him as well.
Eddie put the mallet down.
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Discover Darkness and LightThe register
Before they moved Nell, she held out a hand towards Conrad's coat. He took out the feeding chart and gave it to her. She tore it through the heading, then tore it again. Eddie waited beside the bed while the pieces collected in her lap.
“We have a photograph,” Conrad said. “You can keep those if you want.”
She reached for one of the empty sandwich wrappers instead.
Eddie supported her while Roxie settled her onto the broad footboard in front of Hugh. Nell leaned back against his knees. They could move together now. Eddie was checking her balance when Roxie's phone lit up.
The message came from the property contact on Stan's work order. It contained a camera photograph of Conrad beside the case and instructions: leave the register, keep the principal intact, take the occupants if they wished. The signature was Rudd.
Eddie glanced at the camera. Someone was offering them the people in exchange for leaving the thing that had fed on them.
“I'm saving it,” Roxie said. “The photograph too.”
A scraping sound came from under the case. Eddie bent to look. One of the four bolts was turning upwards out of the floor.
The brace was still good. He had jammed the wheel against its mounting plate. Whoever was underneath had found a way to remove the plate itself.
“How long have we got?” Roxie asked.
“I don't know.” He couldn't see the other side or reach it. “One bolt's moving.”
They started the chair towards the back door while Conrad watched the pin. Nell's shoulders rested against Eddie's left arm; he couldn't spare that hand to help Roxie with the turn. The chair caught. He called for Conrad.
In the hall, a dispatch box stood open beside the case. Conrad had taken a register from it. His voice came through the doorway.
“They've put my report in here.”
“Photograph it,” Roxie said. “Then come and help us.”
Conrad turned a page. His warning was missing, he told them. They had kept the signature and removed the page that said the old account wasn't a tested procedure. Eddie shifted his grip under Nell's shoulders. She was sliding, and Conrad was still reading.
“Can anything in there stop the pin?”
There were drawings. The release was mechanical, Conrad said; cutting power wouldn't help. The roof could be disconnected from its motor, as they had seen on the cabinet. Photographs arrived on Roxie's phone. Conrad put the book in Eddie's bag.
“Now, please,” Eddie said.
The plate lifted. The cable snapped taut, and Conrad shouted for them to get back inside.
Through the doorway, Eddie watched the vampire bend a restraint bar. The lid struck the wall. Conrad ran with the bag on his left shoulder, almost reached them, then stopped so abruptly that Eddie reached for him before understanding why.
A pale hand held the back of his coat.
Eddie caught Conrad's left wrist with his own good hand. “Push off the frame!”
Conrad kicked. The coat tore and he fell across the threshold. Roxie pushed the door against the creature's fingers. From the chair's footboard, Nell braced herself and kicked the wood. The hand vanished. The bolt dropped.
“Good kick,” Eddie told her, still holding Conrad. “Thank you.”
Two pieces of ash slid under the door. One retained the brass fitting.
Eddie had watched the pin hold it still. He had put everything he could into the mallet. Now the broken wood lay at his feet, sent back to them through the gap.
“Back passage,” Conrad said. “Now.”
They reached the service lobby without entering the main corridor. Through the little window, the morning room lay between them and the garden crew. The vampire crouched among the planter's dead stems, facing the hatch. A responder's torch approached outside.
“Don't open it.” Eddie caught Roxie's arm before she touched the latch. “It's waiting for them.”
She photographed the figure through the glass and sent the warning. The torch stopped, then withdrew. Confirmation arrived on her phone: the crew would wait.
Nell slipped sideways. The chair began rolling towards the door. Hugh pressed the brake with his thumb while Eddie tried to hold Nell upright. Conrad was checking the photographs on his phone.
“Under her shoulders,” Roxie said. “Help me turn them.”
He asked whether the pictures had gone through.
“Yes. The crew have them. Help me.”
Conrad left the bag on a shelf and put his left arm beneath Nell. With her weight supported, Eddie could adjust her seat. He kept his hand on her until she was steady.
“I stayed too long,” Conrad said. “I wanted to see what they'd done with my name.”
“I know,” Roxie said. “Keep holding her now.”
Eddie looked through the window again. A patch of morning light lay inside the open hatch. The vampire put one foot across it, then jerked back. The skin had darkened. Its mouth opened in pain.
This time they had all seen it.
The morning room
The roof motor started before Roxie reached the cabinet. She hit the red stop button, cutting off its attempt to close the shutters. Then she raised the disengagement lever. Eddie watched the gear move clear of the chain wheel. One pull opened a few inches of roof. When she let go, it stayed open.
The camera remained turned towards her. No motor answered.
Footsteps ran beneath the hall. Through the passage window, Eddie caught the rear registration of a departing vehicle and photographed it. There was no face, nothing that would let him say who had been down there. They were leaving the vampire behind.
It could still retreat through the double doors when the sunlight came in. Someone had to cross the morning room and close them. Someone had to keep the creature occupied while they did it.
Eddie studied the table, then the planter and the hatch beyond. His wrist throbbed under the cuff. He could remember the pressure of those fingers too easily; looking at the creature brought it back as though his arm were still stretched overhead.
“I'll go in.”
“It's faster than you,” Conrad said.
“Then help me. I'll keep the table between us. You shut the double doors.”
Roxie could work the chain from the lobby. With the doors bolted, they could make for the hatch. If Eddie could reach the cloth, he'd take it off the table. If he couldn't, he'd keep moving. He needed them to hear that part. He wasn't offering to wrestle anything away from the creature.
They settled Nell and Hugh behind the passage wall, out of sight of the service window. Hugh held the brake. Roxie sent the plan outside. Conrad retrieved the bag.
At the latch, Eddie tried to fill his lungs and couldn't quite do it. Conrad waited.
“If I freeze, talk to me,” Eddie said.
“I will.”
“And if I say stop, we stop. Even if it seemed like a good plan a second ago.”
“No argument.”
Roxie showed him the planter photograph once more: the safe ledge, the broken corner. Then she put the phone away and took the chain.
The planter was empty.
Eddie searched the shadows beneath the table. Above the double doors, pale fingers closed over a beam. The vampire pulled itself under the covered glass and folded there, its face turned down towards them. The table wouldn't keep it away if it could come from above.
“Go,” Conrad said. “Before it gets above this door.”
Roxie lifted the latch. Eddie went towards the planter; Conrad followed the opposite wall. Behind them, she shut the service door. Through its glass he could see her hands waiting on the chain.
“Here,” Eddie said to the face above him. “You remember me. Come down.”
Conrad reached the double doors and brought them together. The bolt scraped home. The vampire's head turned at the sound, and Eddie took another step, trying to give it a reason to keep looking at him.
It dropped onto the table.
The legs bowed. Eddie flinched backwards into the planter. His right wrist hit stone and pain folded him onto a knee, below the rim, with the creature above him.
“Open it! Roxie, now!”
The first shutter moved. Daylight widened across the room. Eddie pushed himself up with his left hand and searched for the ledge among the stems.
“Answer me!” Roxie called.
“I'm up. Keep going!”
A responder's hand appeared at the hatch. Eddie put his foot on the ledge and turned his shoulder towards it. He was close enough to see the hand open for him when something caught the hem of his coat.
He came off the ledge sideways. The waiting fingers closed on air. Stone struck his ribs.
“Your coat!” Roxie shouted. “Undo it!”
Eddie tore the front open with his left hand, pulled that arm clear and dragged the other sleeve over his injured wrist. The vampire pulled again. The empty coat left him, and he fell against the planter, free.
Another shutter rose. Under the table, the creature seized the black cloth and dragged it over its head. A corner remained caught beneath the heavy foot. Sheltered by the fabric, it began crawling towards him through the sunlight.
Eddie turned for the hatch. Left foot on the ledge, left hand on the frame. His right hand slipped. His boot dropped into the broken corner.
He tried to climb. His shin stayed where it was.
“My leg! Conrad!”
Conrad reached him and took his left wrist. Outside, the responder gripped his shirt. They pulled together, jamming his leg harder against the stone.
“Lift my knee,” Eddie said. It came out too high, almost a cry. “Please. Don't pull me like that.”
Conrad stopped pulling. The responder held Eddie's weight. Over Conrad's shoulder, the covered shape pushed the table out of its path. Fabric scraped the floor. It was close enough now that Eddie couldn't bear to look at it, but when he looked at Conrad instead, the bag was in the way. The strap crossed Conrad's left shoulder; the book lay against the arm he needed to get beneath Eddie's knee.
“Put it down. You need both hands.”
“The other addresses are in it.”
“You've got Eddie in your hand!” Roxie shouted.
The strap came off Conrad's shoulder. The bag dropped between him and the creature. He pushed his injured forearm beneath Eddie's knee, his breath catching as he took the weight.
“One. Two. Up.”
The boot cleared. The responder pulled Eddie through. Shoulders, hips, both legs: he landed on the paving and rolled back towards the hatch.
Conrad was still inside. Beyond him, the cloth stretched from the crawling shape to the table foot. Eddie had seen Roxie fail to pull that corner loose. It was still caught.
“The table!” he shouted. “Roxie, pull it back!”
The last shutter reached the top. Through the open hatch, he watched Roxie secure the chain, enter from the service lobby and seize the table with both hands. She dragged it towards her door. The trapped corner pulled backwards while the creature kept coming forwards. Cloth slid from its head and shoulders.
Smoke rose from its exposed back.
Conrad climbed into the planter. His right arm gave way against the frame and he dropped to his knees inside. Eddie reached through with his left hand, offering the same wrist Conrad had just held.
“Your left arm. Here.”
Conrad caught him. The responder took the coat, and together they hauled him through until both legs were clear.
Eddie turned back. The vampire was moving towards Roxie's doorway, the last patch of darkness. She retreated into the lobby and slammed the door. Its body struck the wood. Through the hatch, Eddie could see the shadow fill the frosted window and begin sliding down it.
“Are you both out?” she called.
“Both out. Conrad's with me.”
The creature fell beside the dropped bag. Its waistcoat smouldered. Flame caught the register's exposed pages and curled them against the cloth. Eddie waited for it to move again. Its fingers broke into grey pieces. The chest sank, leaving flattened fabric where the body had been.
He kept his hand on the sill. Inside, Roxie waited at the service window. Neither of them hurried to call it safe.
At last her voice came through the closed door.
“It's clear. I'm bringing them through.”
Three sandwiches
Eddie moved aside for the crew. His leg hurt now that there was time for it, a deep bruise where the stone had held him. He sat on the paving until Nell appeared, supported on the planter's ledge by responders inside. She kept her face towards Roxie as the crew outside took her weight.
“Over here,” Eddie called. “Remember me? Idiot with the torch. Slightly less coat.”
Before they settled her on the stretcher, Nell held something out to him. Crumpled blue checked paper. He took it in his gloved left palm, carefully, as though it might tear.
“Stan's sandwich. Yes. We'll tell him you got it.”
Conrad looked at the wrapper. “Keep it with her. It belongs to them.”
Hugh followed through the hatch. On the waiting stretcher, he reached for the badge on his shirt and turned it until his own name faced upwards. His hand rested there while they carried him towards the gate.
Stan was awake in the ambulance, watching for them. When Nell came through, he tried to stand. A responder steadied him. Eddie limped beside Hugh's stretcher and raised three fingers.
“Three, Stan. We've got all three of you.”
Stan looked from Nell to Hugh. His shoulders settled against the seat. Roxie put the lunchbox beside him, its last sandwich still wrapped. Nell raised the empty paper from beneath her blanket, and Stan laid his hand over the lid before lifting it towards her.
The crews let them look at each other before closing the doors.
“His sister said he always packed three sandwiches,” Roxie said. “Enough lunch to feed the whole job.”
Eddie lowered himself onto the wall. “Next time, I'm bringing lunch for everyone.”
“I'll pay,” Conrad said.
They waited there to be examined. The chain had scraped Roxie's palm. Conrad held his swollen arm against him. Eddie stretched out the bruised leg, grateful to have room to straighten it. Across the garden, the open roof showed the blackened bag and the remains of the tablecloth.
“There were other addresses in that book,” Conrad said.
“We have the photographs,” Roxie told him. “And three people who can tell us what happened.”
Police arrived. She had the messages, Eddie's vehicle photograph and the dispatch cover naming Calder Recovery. Copies of the register pages had already reached a responder's phone. Conrad reminded her that Rudd's signature didn't establish who had been underneath the house. They hadn't seen the keeper's face or the driver's.
“Your report's in the pictures too,” Eddie said.
Conrad looked towards the morning room. “Send the whole page. They'll need to ask me about it.”
Roxie asked if he was all right with that.
“No. Send it anyway.”
A final message arrived in the property-contact conversation. Roxie held the screen where they could both read it. Someone wanted to know who had authorised termination of the principal.
Beyond the phone, Nell's ambulance pulled away.
“Do you want to answer?” Roxie asked.
“No. Save it with the others.”
Conrad tried to rise from the wall and stopped halfway. Eddie got his own feet beneath him, then offered his left arm. Conrad took it. They went slowly towards the waiting crew, Roxie following with the phone. Behind them, daylight lay across the empty morning room.
Hear The Rookery performed
This written adaptation comes from our original Strange Tales episode The Rookery | Blackwood Case 01. Hear Conrad, Eddie and Roxie in the full-cast audio drama, including the cellar rescue, Eddie's reading of the mallet and the fight to open the roof. The episode player on this page plays that case. You can also open the episode on Spreaker or browse Strange Tales.
