The Final Broadcast

The first time I heard it, I was sitting in the last pew of the old Hillcrest Chapel, a cramped, wooden building that smelled of damp hymnals and candle wax. My Aunt Eleanor, my mother’s sister, had passed after a long illness, and the family had gathered to lay her to rest. I’d brought my digital recorder, a habit from my years of paranormal investigation, though I knew better than to use it in a place like this. But as the minister began his sermon, his voice droning on about resurrection and peace, I couldn’t resist. I clicked the red button and slipped the recorder into my breast pocket, next to my heart.

The service was unremarkable, a blur of familiar hymns and murmured condolences. The minister, a man with a gray beard and a voice like gravel, spoke for twenty minutes about the joys of the afterlife. No one else made a sound. The congregation was still, save for the occasional rustle of a handkerchief or a stifled sob. I kept my eyes forward, but my mind wandered to the stories Aunt Eleanor used to tell me about the old town, about the fire that had consumed the theater in 1953, and the children who still played in the ashes.

Afterward, I helped load the casket into the hearse. As I eased it into the back, my hand brushed the cold aluminum, and I felt a static tingle run up my arm. I dismissed it as nerves. We drove to the cemetery in a slow, silent procession, the sky a dull gray, the trees bare and skeletal. At the graveside, the minister said a few final words, and we lowered the casket into the earth. I clutched the recorder in my pocket, feeling its weight, feeling the urge to press play.

That night, alone in my motel room, I plugged in my headphones and listened to the raw recording. The sermon echoed in my ears, the minister’s voice clear and resonant. Then, at the 12-minute mark, during a pause in his speech, a new voice spoke. It was soft, almost a murmur, but unmistakably female. It said, ‘Don’t let them bury me.’ I thought I’d imagined it, so I played it again, and then again. The same words, the same whisper, like wind through a crack in a window. I felt a cold knot tighten in my stomach.

I ran the file through my audio software, amplifying and filtering out the minister’s voice. There it was, clearer now, a young woman’s voice, desperate and pleading: ‘Don’t let them bury me. I’m still alive.’ I slowed it down, and the pitch deepened, the voice becoming distorted, but the words remained the same. I knew Aunt Eleanor’s voice. I’d heard it a thousand times. This was not her. It was someone else, someone who had been silent for a long time.

My mind raced. Hillcrest Chapel had been built on the site of an old sanitarium, which had burned down in the 1940s. The story went that some of the patients were still in their beds when the fire broke out. No one believed it, of course, but the town had always avoided that plot of land. I started digging, poring over old newspapers online, and found a brief mention: ‘Burned in her bed, young woman from the asylum, identified as Mary Haddon, 23, of no known relations.’

The next day, I went back to the chapel. The cemetery was empty, the grass damp with morning dew. I stood at Aunt Eleanor’s grave, the fresh earth still mounded. I pulled out my recorder and pressed play. The voice came through again, but this time, it was stronger, and clearer, and it was saying, ‘Help me. Please. I’m underground.’ I looked at the grave, at the mound of dirt, and felt a shift beneath my feet. A hollow sound, like a single knock from below. I stepped back, my heart pounding.

I called the police, but they dismissed me as a crank. The funeral home refused to re-open the casket, citing health regulations. But that night, in my motel, I couldn’t sleep. The voice was stuck in my head, whispering, ‘Don’t let them bury me.’ I must have played it a hundred times, trying to discern any other words. In the background, beyond the sermon, I started to hear other sounds, faint but distinct: a rhythmic thumping, like fists against wood, and a muffled, mechanical hum, like machinery that should have been turned off.

I went back to the cemetery at midnight, carrying a shovel. The ground was cold and hard, but I dug frantically, dirt flecking my face, my hands burning. When I finally exposed the casket, I saw that it was sealed shut with a brand-new lock. I forced it open with a crowbar, and there, in the flashlight’s beam, lay my Aunt Eleanor. Her face was peaceful, but her hands were raised, the fingers clawed, and her fingernails were broken and bloody. I screamed, stumbling back, but then I heard it again, not from the recorder, but from inside the casket. The voice, filled with despair, said, ‘Too late.’

I didn’t know what to do. I closed the casket, covered the grave, and drove away, leaving my recorder on the dirt, still running. The next day, the funeral home called. They had noticed the disturbance, and they demanded an explanation. I gave none; I packed my things and left town, but the voice followed me. It’s in my dreams, in the hum of my refrigerator, in the static of my TV. And every night, I hear it: ‘Don’t let them bury me.’ I know now that it wasn’t Aunt Eleanor. It was Mary Haddon, the woman from the asylum, whose body had been buried under the altar of the chapel, her spirit trapped in the ground, waiting for someone to set her free. And I, in my foolishness, had released her. Now she is free, but so is something else, something that crawled out of that grave with her, and it’s coming for me.