The Blood on Satan’s Claw, starring Reece Shearsmith and Mark Gatiss, is now available on Audible.

Seventeenth-century England, and a plough uncovers a grisly skull in the furrows of a farmer’s field. The skull disappears, but its malefic influence begins to work in insidious ways upon the nearby village of Hexbridge. First, the cows stop milking and the fruit turns rotten on the trees. Then, an insolent ungodliness takes hold of the local children, mysterious fur patches appear on limbs and people start disappearing….

Something evil is stirring in the woods. Something that is corrupting the village youth, who retreat to the woodland deeps to play their pernicious games. Hysteria spreads as it becomes clear that the devil has come to Hexbridge, to incarnate himself on earth. Can the villagers, led by the Squire Middleton (Mark Gatiss) and Reverend Fallowfield (Reece Shearsmith), prevent the devil gaining human form?

The new audio drama, written by Mark Morris and produced by Bafflegab Productions, is an adaptation of classic 1971 horror film The Blood on Satan’s Claw. As well as Reece Shearsmith and Mark Gatiss, the cast also includes Alice Lowe, John Heffernan, Ralph Ineson, Thomas Turgoose, Rebecca Ryan and Philip Hill-Pearson, plus Angel Blake and Linda Hayden from the original film.

Mark Gatiss said: “I first saw The Blood on Satan’s Claw in the Friday night horror slot on Tyne Tees television, when I was a kid. I remember it vividly because it scared the life out of me. It’s so distinctly different. The pitch for the film is so strange, and it’s very much in that folk horror tradition: dark, bucolic, earthy and genuinely disquieting. It’s a fabulous tale.”

Buy The Blood on Satan’s Claw (or start a 30-day free trial) on Audible now.