Hello, gentle listener, and welcome to nocturnal transmissions, the fortnightly podcast that brings you twisted tales of the uncanny and awful,

performed by voice artist, Kristen Holland.

So, how are you, gentle listener?

In a good mood, feeling chipper?

You are?

Oh dear. Well, we can fix that. Nocturnal transmissions is proud to present.

Heaven unearthed by Rory say.

The head was coarse and misshapen.

Benjamin's knees were planted in the dirt as he held it, thinking it looked like one of the potatoes his mother would rip from the ground before she'd peel its skin.

They were different shapes, the potatoes, and the head looked like the longer, thinner kind, not like the ones that were scrunched and lumpy.

It was about the size of one, too.

But the weight of it, or weightlessness, made it feel as though he held nothing at all.

Benjamin had been digging in the back garden early in the morning when he came across the head. His mother had sectioned off part of the garden just for him and given him his own spade.

He never knew what he was digging for, had never thought about it, but he liked to do it.

Sometimes he found tiny white bones or bits of colourful gravel that he collected in glass jars.

But he had never found anything like the head.

He now held in his hands.

He didn't know it was a head at first. When his spade hit the solid rock, the impact startled him.

He looked into the hole he was making and saw the greyness exposed in the black dirt. Throwing his

spade aside, he sank to his knees and poured away the surrounding earth, then wrenched the stone free.

It was only when he began to scrape away the encrusted dirt with his fingers, that he saw

the face. The features were crude, but unmistakable, no more than slits in the grey stone.

...