Black Mirror III: Final Fear – A Game Guide

Chapter III …

… opens with Victoria’s funeral service at the Warmhill church. The priest invites Darren to return if he needs help, Dr. Winterbottom sets up an appointment and Darren must endure a minor war of words with Inspector Spooner at the churchyard exit. For the moment, you can travel only back to the church, to Ralph’s shack and to the castle. (You won’t be able to venture south under your own power until after an accident at the castle.)  

Odds & ends: Father Frederick, still at the altar, can discuss the limits of Darren’s inheritance and establish that he doesn’t know anything about Miss Antolini (who, you will soon discover, has stepped off-stage). 

– You can try to combine Phil’s keys and your new set of castle keys in inventory. 

Head for the castle. Outside the gate, you’ll meet workers Greg and Steve — the same gents you decoyed out of the castle hall at the end of Chapter II. Apparently Victoria’s nurse, who was overseeing the restoration, has taken off without leaving instructions for them. They seem a little uncertain where their next paycheck is coming from. Darren assures them he’ll look into it. That’s your first task as new owner of Black Mirror.

Newly equipped with a castle key ring, you have pretty much the run of the place now and can visit most locations. The core is much as you found it in BM2 with several notable additions: the “tea room” (reached via the lower right corner of the main hall), the storage room at the top of the cellar stairs and the greenhouse out back. (The cellar itself will have to wait until Chapter VI.) 

However, as noted earlier, the upstairs is wholly different. You have free access to Victoria’s bedroom and her late son Robert’s former study — now a storage room for items rescued from the fire. (However, you won’t be able to get into the nurse’s bedroom — formerly father Samuel’s bedroom — until Chapter V.)  

And a couple of locations from the earlier games are missing. The stables area is pictured on the slip of paper that has been overlaid on the castle section of the walking map, but has no role in BM3. And access to the “old wing” from BM2 is now impassably blocked by renovation debris.

Odds & ends: The game offers confusing accounts on this part of the castle. In the lower left corner of the main hall, click on the “Rubble-filled passage” to learn that “The left wing of the castle has really collapsed now.” But in the full-frontal view of the castle, a click on the upper half of the left tower elicits the comment that, “You can hardly see any signs of the fire on the west wing.”

Show Greg the Money

Money-wise, things don’t look good on the surface. Jones isn’t up on UK estate law — though he does now know, two chapters late, who paid your bail — but Darren now has a business card from the notary, Dukes, who read Victoria’s will. You can call him using the phone at the right side of the castle library to learn (among other things) that there’s just 100 pounds in the family accounts. You can’t operate a castle, much less renovate a damaged one, on a shoestring. Something’s clearly missing.

Odds & ends: You can get the same basic financial info by asking Greg about “Miss Antolini.” To do so, you’ll have to first check out either the mess in the library (clicking either the pulled-out drawer or the piled-up books to the left) or try your new keyring on the locked upstairs bedroom, then ask Greg either about “Books” (for the library) or “Locked room” (for the bedroom) and finally about the sister. 

This route includes some speculation by Darren  how a purportedly silent Victoria could have authorized the castle renovation — and also permits you to ask Greg about “Treasure vault,” which topic you can then bounce off the notary. Dukes lightheartedly suggests cutting open mattresses. (There are indeed mattresses against the back wall of the upstairs storage room, but, alas, no mattress-cutting materials.) It’s actually the right idea — just the wrong location.

However, you can establish that large sums of money  have been floating around. The financial records are in the tea room. Search the desk and you’ll come up with bank statements and an empty envelope from the Vatican.  (More on this later.) The former reveals cash payments of 6,000 pounds every three months and that the account was virtually emptied recently by the nurse with Victoria’s agreement.
 
So where is it? The ruined castle seems rife with possibilities. Blocked wing. Locked room. Dark cellar. But in fact, the money is right under your nose in the tea room. (Note that the horse sculpture and the marble plinth below do not lose their interactivity.) However, it requires an ornate key to access and the trailhead for the path to the key is reasonably well hidden.

Odds & ends: A few things you can do while you explore the castle:

– After you’ve read the bank statements, you can check in with the notary again on that same topic. (He doesn’t tell you much.) 

– And don’t forget Madame Fortuna. She now urges Darren to “clear the way for the bear.” 

– The moldy stain on the wall above the desk remains interactive because it’s not addressed until Chapter VI. Two other mold issues will crop up before the end of this chapter. I’ll take up their meaning at that time.   
 
– In the upstairs storage room, click on the weapons high on the right wall to bring on a “Mordred moment.”

– In Victoria’s bedroom, Darren can open the jewelry box on the table at the right. He won’t detect anything unusual about it, and you won’t be able to take the box until Chapter VI.

– Click on the armchairs at the left side of the library and Darren will settle into the right one and briefly nod off.

– In the close-up view of the portico, click on the lamp where you set off the makeshift firecracker in Chapter II and Greg ventures it was broken by “those damn long-haired hippies from the next village.” 

– Look into the mailbox to the left of the small gate. You’ll extract a newspaper with a story about Darren’s inheritance — this vanishes after you’ve read it — and an envelope containing a third note. 

This note mentions “Guardian” for the first time (more on this in Chapter V), stresses the third virtue of mercifulness (the first two were apparently innocence and charity) and, unlike the first two, more mission-oriented notes, seems too nebulous to be useful. Mercy to whom? Phil? (Hasn’t that train already left the station?) The workmen? Madame Fortuna’s bears? This won’t become clear until the very end of the chapter.

Read the note a second time to unlock picture #18 — a promotional shot of Darren, Spooner and and Constable Zak.

– Darren says the grandfather clock in the tea room has stopped — but it’s visibly (and audibly) operating. (Once you’ve visited the tea room, you’ll be able to hear the tick-tock even out in the greenhouse!)

The Greenhouse

Nothing points you to the greenhouse at the rear of the castle, but once you’re there, it’s hard to ignore the incongruity of the Persian carpet in the middle. Peel it back to reveal a section of loose tiles. Remove the tiles to reveal a trapdoor. Open the trapdoor and Darren automatically looks down into what appears to be an old well. On a ledge, you’ll see a briefcase.

The ladder leaning against the “garden” side of the castle may seem the perfect instrument, but it isn’t appropriate to the task. (It comes into play in Chapter IV.) You’ll need to lower some kind of grapple. 

Odds & ends: The greenhouse has been moved from its location in TBM. There, it was down an alley on lower ground at the right side of the castle. Here, it’s just around back. In the castle garden — reached via the kitchen door or the right side of the frontal view — you’ll find the exit to the greenhouse exterior just right of the “strange tree.”

– You’ll find uses for the hose and bucket beside the greenhouse exit and the statue at the rear later in the chapter.

– Scare off the raven in the strange tree outside the kitchen door to unlock picture #2 and the one in the tree to the right of the greenhouse (close to the trunk about two-thirds of the way up) to unlock picture #1: an artist’s conception of a remodeled main hall. (Note the big-screen TV in the place of the central globe.) 

The wooden shaft leaning against the greenhouse’s left interior wall is long enough, but lacks a hook to snag the case. The “M” from the “Morgue” sign seems to be suitable for this purpose, but you haven’t a connector to fasten it to the shaft. The ideal item for this purpose — hose clips — can be found on the shelves at the top of the cellar stairs. Just use your new keys on the scorched door at the left side of the kitchen and enter. Use the clips on the wooden shaft and then the “M” on the shaft + clips. Back at the well, use your grapple on the case and it’s yours. 

Open it in inventory with a right-click. Within, a notebook kept by Henry Stanton — castle gardener and murder victim in the original TBM. Folks who played that game may recall that Henry had a penchant for creeping around the castle. This was explained at the time by thefts of wine from the cellar. (Hence, the wine bottle and presumably the 10-pound note in the briefcase.) 

But the notebook suggests a different motive. Apparently Henry was monitoring family activity in the tea room where you found the financial records. On this particular day, he notes that “Victoria forgets to close the horse again” and, later, “The key is hidden at old Dergham Gordon.”

Pay another visit to the tea room. There is indeed a horse over by the windows in the pose pictured in Stanton’s notebook. You’ll now be able to zoom in on the base by clicking on the marble plinth below. 

Interesting. Note the apparent L-shaped button at the near corner, the scuff marks to the left (which seem to suggest the statue has been moved) and the seven small holes along the right side. Evidently the statue slides to the left when the appropriate key is inserted in the holes and the button pushed.  

Now to the key. Who’s this Dergham fellow Henry mentions? Graduates of TBM will recall that Dergham was buried in a trapped tomb at the Wales estate of Eleanor and Richard Gordon. However, a return visit to that TBM/BM2 location is not in the offing. You’ll have to locate a reference to Dergham at Black Mirror.

A suitable starting point is the Gordon family tree at the right side of the library. Here you’ll establish that Dergham was married to Lillian. 

Darren doesn’t offer any suggestions for possible uses of this info. But check out Robert Gordon’s old study at the top of the stairs and click on the assembled paintings and you’ll find a portrait of Lillian dated 1662 and one from 1659 that Darren supposes might be Dergham. (The game is more conclusive. The front picture is now labeled “Dergham Gordon.”) 

Inspect this portrait for a closeup of the right side of the frame.  Left-click on the middle portion (“part of the frame”) to remove a loose piece with two metal pins sticking out. Then click on the cavity. Darren then establishes this piece wasn’t broken off, but deliberately sawed off, and that the cavity has seven small holes just like the base of the horse statue. 

In other words, the frame piece is the key.

Alas, an incomplete key. You can fit frame piece to statue base right now, but with only two pins for the seven holes, don’t expect much. 

You need additional pins. They’re all in one spot: the lunchbox beneath the scaffold at the front-right exterior corner of the castle. Click on it to take a package of toothpicks. 

And here’s a tricky part. You don’t use them on the frame piece or the statue holes, but on the seven holes in the frame cavity. Darren then notes that they can be inserted to different depths. Now use the frame piece on the toothpick-filled holes and Darren comes away with a copy of this odd key. 

Back at the close-up view of the statue, use “home-made key” on the seven holes, press the button (“suspicious spot”)  and the statue slides back to reveal a pantload of money … and, at the back, a letter. Take both. 

The money is enough to satisfy Greg. The letter is the Vatican connection suggested by the empty envelope found earlier. Drafted by Pope Innocent III in 1213, it’s a set of instructions for dealing with  five small and one large “shade” portals.  There’s also a reference to a menhir (standing stone) in the castle hall being hidden. Darren here mentally connects the portals with the menhir and proposes to map their locations. We’ll get to them in a moment.  

You can pay off the workmen now. Just head for the closeup of the portico and either talk to Greg about “money” or drag and drop the wad on him to turn over the cash. 

Odds & ends: Greg is lazy, but he’s a font of information about the state of the castle. 

For instance, if Darren has tried to descend the cellar stairs, Greg can explain (but not remedy) the lack of light therein. (You’ll deal with that issue yourself in Chapter VI.) 

If you’ve unsuccessfully used the castle keys on the passage at the rear of the upstairs hall, Greg will  reveal that was the nurse’s room. He has no idea where she’s gotten to and suggests you check with Father Frederick. (The priest has no real info about the missing lady — but he can speak to the Vatican letter. However, this is going to be a topic of interest in the near future, so no need for a special trip now.) 

In the library, if you click on either the pulled-out drawer or the books on the table, Greg can lay the mess at the nurse’s door. 

And if you click on the left-behind medical gear beside Victoria’s bed, he’ll venture (via “Medical equipment”) that the diocese will eventually turn up to claim it. 

More to come below.

– You can talk to Steve as well. He’ll explain his work and allude in the process to two items you’ll need to use later in the chapter. 

Putting Greg to Work …

Inevitably, you’ll notice Greg’s not working. Can you find something for him to do? Pull back to the full view of the front of the castle and left-click on the “Facade” hotspot around the two second-story windows to the right of the portico. Once you’ve paid off Greg, you can put this task forward in conversation (via “Renovate the facade”) and he won’t be able to nay-say it …

Odds & ends: … as he will the three other potential work sites. These include renovations to the kitchen (“Collapsed ceiling”), main hall (the “construction site” at the missing second-floor balustrade) and the tea room (the“Black stain” above the desk). You just have to have clicked on these (parenthetical) locations before taking them up with Greg. 

Once you’ve made the assignment, pull back to the full view of the castle and you’ll find Greg working near the portico’s right pillar. 

And now the phone should ring — Dr. Winterbottom summoning Darren to his hypnotherapy appointment — or the game will hit one of those odd lulls. 

If the latter, it’s waiting on you to interact with one particular location: the portrait of the White Lady above Victoria’s bed.  In a cut-scene, Darren touches it, a specter emerges from the canvas, a bloody patch blossoms above the lady’s left breast and Darren notes that there’s a black stain where his finger touched the portrait. (This event doesn’t have to wait for the lull. You can do this at any earlier point in the chapter.) 

Odds & ends: If you first touch the “White Lady” painting and then pay off Greg, Darren hears the phone ring in the library from outside the castle — despite the roar of Steve’s drill!

The therapy session elicits the previous memory of Angelina falling down a hole — but this time Darren peers in after her and seems to see a constellation in the darkness. He’ll draw it for the doctor — she doesn’t recognize it — and then take the paper with him. 

Odds & ends: Note that, though he’s running late, Darren nevertheless takes the time to change out of his funeral suit and back into his traditional jacket and boots before keeping his appointment.

… Apparently Means Putting Greg to Death

Leaving the office, you’ll run into Constable Zak, who reports a death on castle grounds. You’ll remove directly to the portico. Evidently the big stone skull fell off and killed Greg. A superstitious Steve quits, Darren heads into the main hall to answer Spooner’s questions, the inspector tries to pull his usual sarcastic number and this time Mordred emerges and scares him off.  

Odds & ends: At the end of Mordred’s second rant, the doorbell rings out at the gate. You’ve got still more mail: a letter from Murray. 

Despite his earlier offer of free lodging in perpetuity, Murray reminds Darren that he hasn’t turned in his hotel key and will be charged 100 pounds a day until he does. In other words, Murray has either had an attack of mercenary practicality — why offer anything for free to someone who can now pay for it? — or he’s discovered the hole in the wall of Darren’s hotel room. 

This sets up an optional return visit to the hotel — worth it only for Murray’s revelation that it was actually Phil who rescued Darren at Ralph’s shack, an extended rant from Mordred that ends with him debating whether to terrorize Tom, Matt Newcastle or poor Dorothy and the unlocking of picture #23. (Darren also surrenders his room key.) 

– Examine the fallen skull and Darren finds black mildew — i.e. the same stain from the “White Lady” painting and the tea-room wall. 

The game provides an official explanation for the stain deep in Chapter VI. I’ll speak to it at that time. For now, suffice to say I don’t find the answer particularly logical and prefer the one in Steve’s exit interview. (You can either voluntarily talk to Steve about “Accident” or he’ll speak to Darren automatically when he tries to enter the main hall.) 

He says the castle has a life of its own — that holes drilled one day would reappear the next. Admittedly, there’s been little independent support for this idea so far — then again, there’s been little opportunity — but this is the only one that covers all three mold-related incidents. The mold here would represent the “fingerprints” of a cursed house.

– You can take the cleaning supplies at the base of the right lamp as soon as you arrive at the portico — you’ll need them in the next segment — and the gas can  beside the drill after Steve leaves. (This comes into play toward the end of the chapter.)  

Mapping the Menhir

Your key task now is mapping the six standing stones around the Black Mirror property. In fact, you can start this task as soon as Darren returns to the castle following Victoria’s service, but you can’t map the fifth until Darren finds the pope’s letter and the sixth until after Greg has been killed. If you’ve waited until now to get started, you can map them in any order.

For starters, simply use the walking map on the four visible stones: the two in the garden at the right side of the castle; the one at the far left in the full view of the front; the one to the left of the front gate. 

Odds & ends: If you want to see what you’re doing,  use the pencil on the map.

You also know from the back of the Pope’s letter that a stone is hidden in the main hall. That can only be the foundation stone beneath the globe. Use the map there (on the the stone itself or the globe) as well.

And the sixth? Provided you’ve already mapped the first five sites, you can right-click on the “constellation” map from the hypnotherapy session and be pointed to the greenhouse as the likely site. The statue there is the only thing like a stone that remains. You just have to strip away its faux-marble disguise. 

In the close-up view of the portico, you’ll find the cleaner and brush that Greg was using on the castle facade before the falling skull bashed in his own. (It’s at the base of the same right-hand lamp you blew up earlier to get the workers’ attention.) Use the cleanser and then the walking map on the statue. 

If you’re playing with “Additional game help” enabled, the game now will give you a leg-up. If not, you may feel a bit stymied. 

Look at the diary. On the last page of the “The Menhirs” entry, Darren suggests the foundation stone is just the starting location. Use the pencil on the walking map to call up the non-travel version — i.e. the one with Darren’s annotations — and, with the foundation stone (the big cross mark) as the point of origin, draw five radiating lines, each passing through one of the other five menhir locations and typically extending to (or close to) the edge of the map.

Going clockwise around the compass, you’ll wind up with prospective portal sites in the swamp east-southeast of the castle, at the Academy, near the hotel, deep in the southwest woods and at the Warmhill church. 

Odds & ends: The mechanics of the line-drawing seem to elude some folks, so here are the details.

The game gives you on-screen targets for the first three sites — the black diamond inside a yellow square at the Academy and the pink icons for the Gordon’s Palace Hotel and the Warmhill church. End the lines on these locations.   

The other two — eastern swamp and southwestern woods — have no such targets and so are a bit trickier. End the swamp line on the tape at the right corner of the castle overlay and the woods line just above the words “White Woods” in the map’s southwest corner. 

– You can also connect the five menhir sites around the castle — omitting the foundation stone — and Darren will note that the shape matches that of the “constellation.” 

Portal, Portal … 

Initially, you can visit only three of the sites: at the Academy ruins, the Warmhill church and the hotel. These can be handled in any order.

Academy: From the castle, head south to “Crossing in the wood” and then head right onto the gravel path. Follow this to the lighthouse and then exit to the Academy via the icon near the top of the tree. (You can see the ruins in the distance.) 

Yikes. I wouldn’t have thought there was enough of the above-ground Academy still intact to collapse into a rubble pile this large. In any case, there is clearly no direct route to the portal Darren used in the BM2 endgame, but the visit to the surface site is nevertheless necessary — unless you already visited it earlier in the game, in which case you’ll automatically get credit after Darren draws the line to the Academy. On the map-with-pencil version of the walking map, Darren will mark it with a  “+.”

Odds & ends: At the lighthouse, shoo away the raven beneath the tree to unlock picture #22 (a conceptual drawing of a location we won’t visit until Chapter IV). And at the Academy, scare away the hard-to-spot one atop the broken pillar nearest the rubble heap at the right to unlock picture #20 — an artist’s rendering of the Dr. Winterbottom side of the village. (In this version, the cafe replaces the museum.)

– Since you’re down this way, you may feel inspired to look in on Phil. You can. (If you enter the morgue, you won’t have a choice.) 

Nasty surprise. That’s two deaths in just this chapter. What happened here? Darren can’t tell how Phil died. You only know from the open door (and possibly the intercom — now sabotaged if you didn’t do so yourself earlier) that someone  has been here.

Warmhill:  Enter the church, talk to Father Frederick about “Letter from the Vatican” and then ask about portals. He suspects there is one below the church. (This is what caused the collapse of Marcus Gordon’s tomb in TBM.) But that’s as far as you can take the issue. Presumably access to the portal was sealed off by the same collapse.

Odds & ends: If you’ve already visited the morgue, you can stop by Ralph’s shack in the woods en route to report Phil’s death — and learn that Phil had an as-yet unidentified accomplice. 

Hotel: Darren made clear when you plotted this line that the hotel itself wasn’t a serious candidate, but the path down to the river to the right proves more availing. You’ll find four menhir arranged in a rough square … in the middle of the river. Darren apparently doesn’t want to get his fatigues wet for he won’t get any closer.

Bobby has no such inhibitions. Then again, he appears to be wearing waders. Talk to him (or cut to the chase and just use Phil’s necklace on him). Seems he’s searching for pearls to make a necklace for Denise’s birthday. And you happen to have the nice necklace from the morgue. Offer it to him and he’ll take it and split — slipping back briefly to leave his waders on the bench.

Odds & ends: Or don’t offer the necklace, initially. Quit the conversation instead and you’ll get some unique (and funny) dialog.

– Try to use Murray’s camera on Bobby. Darren won’t take the shot, but the attempt does unlock mini-game #4: the Big Head Mode from BM2. Call it up in the “Extras” menus, click on “Start Mini-Game” and you’ll learn it’s been added to the game options. You can now turn the characters into giant-headed cartoon-like characters or pinheads.

Take the waders. Alas, they are no longer quite suitable as river wear, having a large rip at the crotch. You’ll have to close the hole before you can check out the stones.

Zap back to Willow Creek. The constable’s bicycle is right along the river where he left it when he escorted Darren back to the castle following Greg’s death. Activate it to swipe his repair kit — you can do this before you visit the river, too — and use the kit on the waders. Back at the river, right-click on the waders in inventory to put them on — other locations won’t work — and you’re ready for the water.

Click on the menhir. Approaching the stones, Darren spots something dark beneath the water, but can’t make it out clearly. Is there a diving mask around?

No, but you can cobble together its equivalent. (However, the components are at the far ends of the map and you’ll have to exit to the front of the hotel before you can activate the walking map.) 

Just left of the exit from the castle greenhouse is a ruined bucket with a rusted-out bottom. And just left of the right exit from the Warmhill vicarage garden is a pile of firewood — covered against the rain  by a door with a glass window. Remove the glass — it looks like the metal ball from the mirror puzzle in BM2 — and use it on the bucket to create a glass-bottomed bucket. Return to the riverside, install your waders and use the bucket on the “Dark place” just short of the menhirs. Darren sees steps leading down into the riverbed — blocked steps, as it happens, as the river’s natural turbulence has swept gravel into the hole.

Head back toward the hotel and Darren automatically leaves the waders and bucket behind.

Odds & ends: The “flotsam?” out in the river is the body of former cellmate Matt Newcastle. Click on it  to unlock video #21. 

Initially, you may be a little confused by this scene. Is it real or not? Initially, Darren reacts to the body with revulsion, but on a subsequent click it doesn’t seem to register at all. Then it’s just “flotsam!”

Note that this is called “Vision 4” in the “Extras” menu — an indication that what Darren is seeing isn’t in the here-and-now. 

– Then again, the game does give you reason to wonder about Matt’s fate. If you pass through the village square en route, Darren notices that Matt has made himself scarce. (You can ask the constable about him and learn he was in the pub the previous night.) That would presumably put him in close proximity to pub-owner Tom, whose dispute with Matt over living arrangements was revealed in Chapter II.

The grocery store remains closed. At the cafe, you’ll find Edward and Denise in unusual locations — the former behind the counter, the latter cleaning a table. And Dr. Winterbottom has a range of new topics in which she manages to contradict herself in the space of a few seconds. Darren’s medicine is working (“Vision”). No, it isn’t (“Portals”). 

Finally, you’ll notice that the museum to the right of the doctor’s office has finally reopened. 

This was a key location in BM2. Here, you don’t have to visit it at all. It’s just a monument to Murray’s tastelessness. You’ll note that: 

1) The Gordon Chronicle so instrumental in BM2 is now missing from its display case.

2) The broken display case at the left that once housed the black ball that Angelina used to open a portal in the BM2 endgame has been repaired. The ball has been replaced by a “diary of a murderer.” (Presumably, this is Samuel’s diary from The Black Mirror.) 

3) The “Black Museum” portion at the rear has been walled off — presumably to channel access through the front door after Darren’s rear-window escape in BM2 — and the vaguely animatronic displays moved into the main body of the museum. 

The console permits a minimal level of interactivity with the display. The rightmost button produces a geyser of blood from the Dr. Hermann figure, the second from the right makes Hermann struggle ineffectually as a saw descends on his neck, the third makes the Vic Valley figure fidget and the leftmost makes the flames flicker in the Black Mirror Castle display.

4) If you click on the donation box to the left of the door, Darren waves to an unseen camera.

5) And the security guard (replacing Bobby) is a clone of Constable Zak. You won’t know this until you see Zak’s face — he’s the Wilson of BM3 — and that won’t happen until Spooner suggests in Chapter IV that Zak take a little walk.

… Where’s the Portal?

The failure to find portals at the first three sites now opens up the last two locations: woods and swamp. This is where those two previously off-limits paths come into play.     

Swamp: From the “Crossing in the wood” east of Willow Creek, follow the right path toward the lighthouse and then the “beaten track” just beyond the barred entrance to the morgue road. You’ll find yourself in a low-lying marshy area. Any portal here would have been swallowed up long ago. But do take the metal detector just upscreen from Darren. You’ll need it soon enough and this will save you a trip.

Odds & ends: And do scare the raven out of the tree at the upper left to unlock picture #16 — an unusual double shot of Darren. 

– The animal bones at the right and the marsh at the upper left remain interactive after examination because you’re not done with them: These are clues for a sequence in Chapter IV, when clicking on these locations elicits different descriptions. 

Woods: This is the place.

From that same “crossing,” follow the left path. I know, it doesn’t seem like a logical location for this particular turn off — one along the road to the hotel would have been a more logical fit — but it is.  

You’ll quickly run into signs of trouble: The area’s posted for hunting, a bear trap is visible right in the middle of the path (you’ll recall Madame Fortuna’s admonition to “clear the way for the bears”) and, if you try to advance left to the next screen, Darren gives you a chance to change your mind. 

Odds & ends: Good idea: Darren will die if you persevere. Note that this unique death cut-scene does not appear among the “Extras” videos.

Constable Zak can offer some commentary on the bear trap. And you’ll notice that the darts have been temporarily taken out of Samuel’s picture on the side of the evidence cabinet — a (brief) harbinger of a newly respectful Spooner. 

Are these the boar traps to which gravedigger Mark alluded earlier in the game? (There’s just one letter difference between boar and bear.)

The aforementioned metal detector would be ideal. If you haven’t already collected it from the swamp, return to the crossing, follow the right path toward the lighthouse and, on the next screen, the “beaten track” that begins just above and to the right of the gate. Right in the middle of the depression is a metal detector. 

A broken metal detector, naturally. It needs a fresh battery and “something that you can use to receive electrical signals.”

You haven’t seen a battery, either. But remember Phil’s car back at the morgue? The hood has remained red under the cursor ever since it was used to bonk Darren on the head. Use his keys on the car to pop the hood (collecting in the process a third happy-face sticker), activate the “car bonnet” to take the battery and use the battery on the metal detector.

The electronics sounds as though it could be a dicier business, but you’ll recall that the morgue’s ground floor is kind of a one-stop-shop for electronic gear. Click on the “electrical junk” in front of the TV and Darren comes up with a transistor radio. Use this on the detector..

Naturally, returning to the morgue interior raises an additional issue: Phil has been locked in the cellar for awhile now. Try to leave and Darren proposes to check in on him. Head downstairs.

The cellar door is open and Phil lies dead on the dissecting table. You can’t do anything else for now — you don’t even have to confirm he’s dead — so make your way back to the woods. (The Phil issue will come up again in Chapter IV.) 

Odds & ends: Even if you didn’t sabotage the exterior intercom before you left the morgue in Chapter II, you’ll find it’s been sabotaged now — presumably by whoever did in Phil.

Use the refurbished detector on the left exit from the bear-trap screen and Darren tests the gadget on the visible trap (unless you’ve already done so on your own) and then automatically makes his way to the end of the path — marking traps with the three luminous stickers, which now vanish from inventory. (Was this a mini-game at some point in development? There’s not much purpose to an inventory item that you’re not permitted to use yourself!) 

Here you’ll find  a large central stone and more menhirs. This is where Darren’s father Samuel killed Vic Valley in the original TBM. 

You need to get through that rock. And where you seen a rock drill? Back at the castle: Steve was using one on the Black Mirror foundations to get at the water used to extinguish the fire. You’ll find it just left of the portico in the close-up view of the castle entrance. Out of gas, (of course), so take the empty gas can beside it.

If you inspected Phil’s car earlier, you know it still has some gas. You just need a suitable siphon. And, again, you’ve probably seen one: Right next to the busted bucket you found in the castle greenhouse is a hose. Take it and, returning to the old morgue, use either the can or hose on the “tank cap” at the rear of the car. You’ll be rewarded with a half-full container of gas. Return to the Black Mirror portico, use the tank on the drill, grab the drill and make for “stone circle in woods.” Use the drill on the stone and, over the next three hours, Darren will drill a row of holes across the center of the great stone — running out of gas three hours later with no clear progress to breaking down the rock. 

Odds & ends: Actually, you can fuel up and then take the rock driller almost as soon as Steve abandons it. Alas, there seems to be nowhere else you can use it — not even the rubble pile at the Academy.  

– Up until the drilling, Darren can insert the branch found at the base of the tree on the bear-trap screen into the hole beneath the left side of the rock. Your reward: a torrent of bats! This unlocks video #20. (The branch can also be used to test the left exit from the bear-trap screen and the trap itself.) 

A new diary entry appeals to Darren’s physics training. It’s not difficult to translate. It’s already cold — notice Darren’s frosty breath on this screen? — and water poured into the holes would freeze and, expanding, fracture the rock. You’ll need a vessel, the water itself and, looking ahead, something to plug the holes to channel the expansion in the most useful directions.

– Vessel: If you cleared out the old morgue earlier, you may already have this item: one of the clear plastic bottles to the left of the computer. (No, the pot on the stove in Black Mirror’s ruined kitchen won’t work. That’s drinkable water, and the game has other plans for the lingering interactivity of this item.) 

– Water: This can come from three locations. It’s night right now, so you can get it only from the fountain in front of the hotel and the “River” hotspot just right of the old pretzel stand in the village square. (However, if you collected the bottle earlier in the game, you can also fill it up during Chapter III’s daylight hours at the river landing below the hotel.) 

– Plug: A couple of things will work here: the aforementioned branch or the can of construction foam on the top shelf of the supply closet at the top of the castle’s cellar stairs. Use the water bottle and then the branch or can on the holes. You’ll have to wait for morning to see the results, so return to the castle.

Darren stops automatically at the gates. Bobby is resting here. He’s been beaten and kicked out by Tom — presumably (as it will develop) over the necklace Darren so charitably bestowed on him. You’ll have to offer him shelter in the castle and the hotel — the “mercy” in the Guardian note — to get a “Give Tom some straight talking” topic. Mordred then takes over and the scene shifts to the exterior of the Three Kegs Inn, with a drunk Tom talking to Denise and Spooner about the necklace.  (He claims he “lent it to a friend as a deposit.”) Tom accuses Darren of having killed Phil, Darren threatens Tom, Tom throws a punch and chapter ends.

Odds & ends: Is it possible that Tom is telling the truth? Was the necklace a deposit against Phil’s surveillance of  “the foreign woman”? Not likely. There’s no demonstrated link between the two. We’ll come back to this issue in Chapter VI.