The Odstock Curse

A story from the collection Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose. It’s Halloween and thunder cracks overhead in the village of Odstock. Dr Tom Staniforth is giving a lecture on the legend of Tom Scamp who was wrongly hung for a crime he didn’t commit and the gypsy curse that has haunted the village ever since. But when a member of the audience presents the rusted key which hasn’t opened the cursed church in over 200 years will all of Tom’s scientific and verifiable evidence rendering the curse a myth be cast into doubt?