The School of the Undead

by Michael Woods

  Amanda said nothing in reply at first, but the deputy did not push her for an answer. Instead, he calmly waited so long that he even let his mind drift off to consider the vague possibility that he should tidy up his office.

  “Okay, what’s the boy’s name?”

  “Ah, good,” said the deputy. “His name is Brenden Wilson. That’s Brenden with an ‘e’. I tell you what, though I think one of your first tasks should be to pay a visit to some of our friends in Radcliff, I highly recommend that you first come and visit Brenden at the school. You never know, you might get a bit more out of him than I was able to when I saw the chap. How about today? 4 pm okay?”

  ***

  “Now Brenden,” said Ms Halford, “Do take a seat. No, not that one, it might not look like it, but it’s already occupied.”

  Brenden moved away from the seat indicated by Ms Halford and slowly pulled back a different, but equally worn, wooden chair – slowly, as he was unsure as to whether there could also be someone else occupying this new seat. He glanced up at Ms Halford and after she had given him a slight nod to show that it was fine to continue, he sat down.

  “Now all, this is Brenden,” continued Ms Halford. “He is sitting in with us today as he has only just arrived and has not yet been given a class of his own. As we’ve other things to attend to, I think that will do for introductions for now. We may as well get on with the lesson.”

  Brenden was exhausted after spending the previous night and the early morning awake thinking about his new life. Consequently, as soon as Ms Halford had finished talking about him, his mind started to drift away from the classroom and on to other things. After almost no time at all, his thoughts came to settle on the room which Dmitry, the deputy’s helpful ghost, had taken him to in the East wing of the school. Despite his tired and confused state, Brenden had still managed to notice that room was rather small. Indeed, the space it afforded provided just enough room for a person to walk beside the metal frame bed – which was covered with a thin, faded, red blanket - to reach a shallow, plywood cupboard on the wall opposite the door. For no real reason, as he sat in his classroom chair, Brenden conjured up the image of himself lying on the bed, before managing to do what he had failed to achieve in his real bed the night before, he fell asleep.

  As he drifted further into his slumber, Brenden felt a tight grip closing around his upper arm, leading him to gently try and shake it off. But as he did, the grip just grew tighter until the grey eyes of his attacker flashed into his thoughts, causing him to lash out, throwing his chair and the poor zombie who had been trying to rouse him from his sleep to the floor.

  “Brenden!” exclaimed Ms Halford. “What do you think you are doing?”

  For a second, Brenden believed he was back in a classroom of his old school and that all his notions of being a vampire were just a silly fantasy that had crept into mind as he slept. But, as soon as he came to his senses again, he saw that it was Ms Halford who was standing before the light grey blackboard and that the person he had thrown back was no schoolboy. He mumbled out an apology and turned to help the zombie who had tried to wake him, but stopped when he saw the traumatised look in the man’s eyes. The man - though a zombie like Freddie and with a similar pallid skin – had been relatively untouched by his transition into an undead state, and so the terrified look on the man’s face made the situation even more incongruous for the boy. He had never seen an adult so scared, least of all scared of him: what on earth could he have done.

  “I’m sorry,” mumbled the boy.

  The man did not take his gaze off Brenden and even shuffled back a little further away. Before Brenden could do anything else to attempt to rectify the situation, Ms Halford appeared at his side.

  “Toby, let’s get you off the floor. Johnathan, please give our man a helping hand.” She then turned around to face Brenden and motioned for him to leave the classroom. Brenden hung his head and was filled with so much dread of what he could have done that he just meekly followed her command.

  “I’m sorry, Ms Halford,” said Brenden as soon as she came out to join him in the corridor. “I don’t know what I did. I fell asleep; then there was something holding on to my arm; then I saw the man who attacked me; I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. I just wanted it to stop.”

  “Calm down, young fellow. You do not need to be concerned about what you did, though I would rather that you did not make a habit of falling asleep in my classroom or that of any of the instructors here at the school. No,” said Ms Halford, lowering her voice, “I just wanted to inform you that there is someone waiting for you at the deputy’s office.”

  “Someone is waiting for me?”

  “Yes, a Miss Blake, I believe. One of our former attendees; finished about a year ago. She is going to have a look into the incident that led you here.”

  “Oh, I see,” added Brenden, more than a little confused. “Thanks, Miss.”

  Brenden started to walk away from Ms Halford and then turned back abruptly to find that she was still standing there, waiting for him to ask his question.

  “Miss, why was he so afraid? If I didn’t really do anything, I mean. He looked really terrified.”

  “Brenden, you need to understand something about the people that have ended up here. Like yourself, almost every single person at this school did not make a choice to join our community. Indeed, many have been through severely traumatic experiences prior to entering the school. Some, for instance, have even been forced to spend months - if not years - alone with themselves underground, or trapped elsewhere, with little else to do but contemplate the events that led them into such a lonely and painful form of existence. Unfortunately, this just happens to be the case with the poor fellow that you accidently knocked to the floor.”

  ***

  The sight of Amanda Blake gave Brenden quite a surprise. When he had been told that this someone was going to have a look into his attack, he expected to see a member of the police - or whatever constituted the equivalent in the world of the undead - and that they would be dressed in the formal attire that went with such a profession. However, when he first saw Amanda waiting for him in the corridor outside the deputy’s office, she did not fit into this picture at all - dressed, as she was in a pair of old jeans, Doc Martens and a black ‘Flight of the Conchords’ t-shirt, and with her tied back, blonde hair. She was also a few inches shorter than his 5’8’’ and, despite how pale she was, attractive enough to make him feel far too embarrassed to be able to look at her directly in the eye for anything longer than a fleeting moment.

  “You must be Brenden,” said Amanda.

  “Yes,” replied Brenden, glancing up at Amanda’s face for a second and then dropping his gaze to the floor.

  “Did they tell you why I’m here?”

  “Ms Halford said you were going to have a look into the attack.”

  “Yes, that’s right. Think I should tell you, though, straight up, that I’m no detective or anything. I’m just going to see if I can find anything that the living have missed. They sometimes miss a few things as they don’t really have all the pieces of the puzzle: you know, like the fact that we even exist.”

  Amanda smiled as she said this and, in doing so, got Brenden to smile a little too.

  “Is this your first day?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, as long as you’ve still got most of your brain left, you’ll be fine. In fact, I’m sure you’ll be fine whatever happens. Though some of the teachers don’t look it, they’re generally good at what they do. Some of them have had enough time to practise, so they should be. Anyway, I think we should get started. The deputy’s using his office at the moment, so he said we should use one of the empty classrooms to have our chat.”

  Amanda pushed open the door of a classroom to reveal a cluttered mess of a space which had clearly seen better days.

  “There’s not as many newcomers as there used to be,” said Amanda “especially compared to when the place first opened about three h
undred years ago. That’s why there are all these empty rooms. Place is a bit spooky if you ask me.”

  Again, Amanda drew a shy smile out of Brenden. She gestured for him to sit down at one of the tired, wooden chairs that had been left in an unordered pattern across the floor. She drew another towards the seat Brenden selected and took out her smart phone to record the interview.

  “The deputy told me that he’d already had a talk with you about what happened, but that at the time you couldn’t really remember much. Has anything else come back to you?”

  Brenden glanced up at Amanda and froze.

  “It’s okay Brenden, take your time. Anything you can tell me might help, no matter how small it might seem.”

  “I’m not sure. I already told the deputy.”

  “I know it’s difficult Brenden, but just take a moment. I remember that the deputy said that you came across your attacker while walking home.”

  Brenden closed his eyes for a moment and for the first time since he had left the cold earth of his grave, he consciously tried his best to picture what he could remember about the attack. He sat still and said nothing to Amanda for a little while; she did nothing to disturb him.

  “Yeah, he was just standing in the middle of the field,” said Brenden. “It was dark, so I might be wrong, but he looked pretty pale and his clothes were dead old. He looked a bit wrong, but I still assumed that he needed help; I didn’t really think about what I was doing. I mean, I’ve heard about people, you know, but nothing ever happened, so I didn’t think about it. But it was a bit weird, I guess I forgot about that.”

  “What do you mean? How was it weird? Go on.”

  “He didn’t say anything. That’s right. He just stood there a while, keeping his eyes fixed on me. He was pretty fat; I think I already said that. Well, he was chubby anyway and, I don’t know, I think he was pretty much bald. Oh yeah, I forgot that I don’t think he was wearing any shoes, just socks. It almost made me think of my dad.” Brenden noticed that Amanda appeared truly intrigued by what he was saying; it made him want to continue on, so he just said the first thing that came to mind. “He was always going out to the garden in just his socks and my mum, before he left anyway, would always get dead annoyed at him, saying he should put his shoes on. Anyway, he kept on doing it. I think he sometimes did it to annoy her a bit.”

  Before trying to steer the conversation back to the attack, Amanda gave the boy a sad smile. She did not know what Brenden had been through in his old life, nor how much attention he had already received to start to help him adjust to his new one, and for a few moments she wondered if she should attempt to reach out to him. However, she could not think of how to broach the subject and, fearing she may lose her chance to gain more information, she returned to the only topic she could think of before the moment was lost.

  “Can you remember anything else? For instance, can you remember in any detail what was he wearing?”

  Brenden paused for a moment before answering.

  “No, I don’t think I can remember.”

  “What about the man, is there anything else about him that you can picture?”

  With the repeat of a reference to his attacker, Brenden’s mind returned to the thought of those grey eyes that had been the last thing that he had seen alive. He did not reply to Amanda’s question and, even though she gave him a while to reply, this time Brenden said nothing further. Eventually, it became clear to Amanda that the interview was over and that it would be pointless to push Brenden any further.

  “Brenden.”

  He did not reply but just kept his eyes fixed on an empty space on the floor.

  “Brenden,” said Amanda gently, but with a little more volume than her previous attempt to get the boy’s attention. “Brenden, thank you for all your help, but I think you can go back to class now.”

  “Oh sorry. Yeah, sure I guess.”

  Slowly, Brenden got up from his seat and, without saying anything more to Amanda, he left the abandoned classroom.

  ***

  Amanda carefully placed her newly acquired bags of blood in the portable fridge she kept in the boot of her Renault Clio. She hoped that she could save up a few pints while helping out at the school, but she knew that even they would not last long, meaning that soon enough she would be looking desperately for any work she could get to avoid the fate dreaded by almost every vampire residing in the living world. Yes, there were options if someone ran out of blood, but she would not even contemplate them until all other possible avenues had been taken. Indeed, there were two main options and both of them seemed like a fate worse than the death she had already gone through. The first was to just give up on the principles of the school and go out and attack the next living being that happened to cross one’s path. The other, and to Amanda an option that seemed almost as bad as the first, was to voluntarily admit oneself to what the vampires and zombies had called ‘the Tunnels.’

  She and the rest of her class had been informed of this place just a couple of weeks after their arrival at the school. They were told that not too far away from the school, there was a network of subterranean tunnels that had been purposely built over the years to house all of those who would, in some way, pray on the living if they were not able to maintain their blood or other supplies. In time, the inevitable happened, and the place became home to not only those who killed but also those who just did not want to take the chance that they would eventually succumb to the temptation of attacking people if they remained in the living world. The class had also been warned that anyone who went down there would not die and that although some would be able to learn to tolerate their hunger, many would never be able to overcome the demands of their bodies, leaving them with a sort of half-life filled with nothing but a constant search for blood or whatever their particular affliction drove them to crave. Very few of those who left for the Tunnels returned and, due to the state of many of those who had chosen to trap themselves underground, there was very little news about what happened down there.

  Needless to say, though it was most certainly not an opinion shared by all the teachers at the Tithonus School, it was quite clear to Amanda and her fellow pupils that their own tutor saw the Tunnels as an abomination.

  Amanda’s teacher had grudgingly accepted that minor improvements had occurred since the invention of the light bulb; something which allowed those down in the Tunnels the ability to live in something other than perpetual darkness. However, the concessions were few and this opinion left its mark on Amanda to the extent that even the idea of the place filled her with dread. Consequently, Amanda was left in a state of stark incomprehension on the day when her class was given the choice of whether they would like to enter the Tunnels as, to her horror, three of her classmates said that they would go. Worst of all was the development that one of the three had been Mary, a zombie that Amanda had befriended over the course of the two years in the school. Amanda had remonstrated with her friend over the decision, but Mary was adamant that she would depart with the other two and never return to the world of the living. The final time they were together, Mary had informed her friend that she just did not understand that they were in completely different positions.

  “As a zombie,” Mary had said, “I’m lucky to have kept as much of my mind intact as I have, but my skin is grey. Not only that, I look like nothing more than the walking corpse that I am. You don’t understand what I see when I look in the mirror; you don’t know the fear I live with every day, how I might not only spread this curse among those I loved but be seen by them and rightly feared as a monster. You are just as beautiful in death as you were in life and so have no fear of what the living will think of you when they see you. I can already hear what they will say and I have made the decision that I never want to really hear it spoken. You are my friend, and I am sorry that we will not see each other anymore, but I know I am right.”

  Amanda had tried to convince Mary that others just like her had succeeded in the living world, but h
er friend would not listen. On the day that she went down to the Tunnels, Amanda was not able to bring herself to say goodbye to her friend and she regretted her inaction more every day. She slammed the boot of her Clio and admired the sight of the orange, red sky that she could see to the West through the mass of leafless trees. She did not know what she would do if she ran out of money, but the idea of going down the Tunnels was not an option. She would just have to find another way.

  “Amanda.”

  Amanda turned around to see the corduroyed figure of the deputy approaching from the main entrance of the school.

  “Amanda, I’m glad that I caught you before you left,” said the deputy as he hurriedly paced the last few steps between the school and Amanda’s car with a cardboard folder under his arms. “There’s one more thing that might give you a little help down in Radcliff. I have here a copy of the profiles of some of our former students who live in the area. I am sure that it will turn out that none of our alumni will appear to be involved in this case; indeed, I’ve already had a look at the profile pictures in the files and none of them matches the description of the man Brenden gave us. Still, it might be useful to see whether any of our friends down there might have some information on whoever we’re looking for.”

  “Err… Thanks,” said Amanda while retrieving one of the files from the folder, revealing a black and white image of a young looking, dark haired women from the 1960s.

  “Just to make sure we can keep in contact; you’ll find my direct number at the bottom of the page there. But, ah yes, I would be most grateful if you could keep the contents of the files to yourself during your investigation. Some of our former students can be rather private people and might be a little distressed if they were to discover the contents of their files. One more thing, you’ll need a place to stay while your down in Radcliff. Of course, the school will pay; just please keep the receipt. We’d also be grateful if you could avoid the Ritz, not that Radcliff has one of course: just a joke.”