The School of the Undead

by Michael Woods

  Mary stepped back from the lectern and attempted to lean on a nearby chair, causing it to scrape across the wooden boards. Peter made to go to Mary, but the deputy held him back before attending to the woman himself. He calmly asked her if she was alright to go on. Though clearly still distressed, Mary asserted that she was fine and said she just wanted to get on with it. She took a further moment to compose herself - surprising even the deputy with her apparent ability to regain her control - adopted a resolute expression and returning to the podium.

  “We were fortunate, I suppose, to be in the position we were in,” started Mary. “Well, I thought so anyway. You see, we’d only moved to Radcliff a few weeks before Christmas. Peter was without work so he had no connections in the town; he’d also long been estranged from his parents and his older brother. This all meant that no-one really noticed that he was no longer around. If anyone had been aware of him, then I don’t think we could have done what we did.

  “This did not occur to me at first, of course. It took me some time, quite some time just to realise what I’d done. I must have remained with him for hours. He was so still, so peaceful; I wasn’t even sure then if he would ever wake up again. I don’t know what I would’ve done if he hadn’t. Eventually, I realised I had to do something, so I moved his body from the hall to the living room; for such a long time I’d just remained next to him on the hall floor. I closed the curtains and made the place look, as best I could, as if no one were in. I returned to Peter and waited. Then, at some time in the night, he stirred a little. My first thought was that perhaps he had survived, but when I listened to his chest there was no heartbeat.

  “I imagine I stayed with him in that room for several days. I checked to see if life had returned to him so many times, but it never came back. Eventually, I came to accept that if I were to really see Peter again, he would be afflicted just like me. But even this was in doubt; hours would go by when nothing would happen. However, every time I was just on the edge of giving up, of contacting the school to confess what I’d done and to see what I should do, he would stir once more. After the second or third day, he even muttered a word: my name. I was so deprived of sleep and still so all at sea that I almost convinced myself that I’d just imagined it, but after a few further hours, he said it again.

  “I knew of course from the beginning what it all meant. As I’d killed him, I’d have to be banished to one of the terrible hidden underground lairs that had been dug out to store the unwanted; either that or something worse that I had not heard about during my short stay here. So I started to think about what I could do, what we could do so that we could stay together. As it was obvious that no one could ever find out about what I’d done, this also meant that they could not find out about Peter: we had to find a way to hide Peter.

  “Luckily for us, there was an old coal cellar under the house. So that’s what we’d use, I thought. Back then, the thing wasn’t hidden; but we could change that over time. The only problem was how to get blood. It was clear to me then, obviously, how important it was to get the stuff to ensure that neither of us would ever attack anyone again. We tried our best. I worked as hard as I could to get the money we needed to buy the blood for the both of us. But, as I’m sure many of you know, that’s not always enough. Whenever we were short, it had to be Peter who went hungry.

  “The deputy asked me not to discuss the other attacks as he said that we should hear about them first from Peter. Because of this, I suppose I only have one more thing to say: I understand what I did was wrong and that I accept that I deserve, in your eyes, to go down to those tunnels. Nevertheless, in many ways I’m glad that I did what I did back then; I’m happy with how I acted after the attack. Indeed, if I were presented with the same situation again tomorrow, I’d probably do it all the same way.”

  A few members of the gathered crowd gasped at this last statement, shocked that Mary could be so unrepentant of her actions, particularly in the face of being sentenced. Mary responded to the surprise of the audience by just turning away and returning to her chair. In many ways, she felt that she had nothing to lose and no reason to have any real interest in the people before her: she had never integrated herself into the undead community and she knew almost no one else in the hall. Now that she was sure she would be banished to the Tunnels, it seemed likely to her that she would never really have to deal with them again, meaning their opinions of her were of no consequence.

  With a little push from the deputy on his arm, Peter was urged to leave his seat to give his own confession. It felt so odd for him to be in such a place, in a room where there were more people than he had seen in the forty or so years that had passed between Mary’s attack and the discovery of his hiding place by Amanda. Furthermore, apart from Mary, he had barely talked to anyone in the whole of this time – barely, as he had answered the phone on a number occasions when Mary, who was fervently against Peter speaking to anyone, was not in – and now he was expected to address a couple of hundred people in one go.

  Unlike Mary, Peter was glad that they would never again return to their house in Radcliff, a place he regarded as much a prison as a home. Indeed, while he did not know what would result from whatever sentence was given to him, he was fairly convinced that it would be something better than his life hidden away on Balfour Lane; a life during which his only forays into the outside world had led to the deaths of two innocent people. So while it was odd for him to walk up to the lectern, it was not in his opinion a bad thing. Rather, it was an exciting new experience the likes of which, with the multitude of undead and the strange environment of the school, he had only ever seen on television.

  Nevertheless, all of this was something he knew he could not admit to Mary. She had made her feelings clear that their situation was one of great tragedy for her; a terrible event in which, as far as she was concerned, all they had both strived to maintain over so many decades had been destroyed. Whenever the subject came up – and it seemed to him to have cropped up in almost every conversation they had had since they had left the house – Mary would wind herself up to such an extent that she would eventually end up in tears. Peter would always respond by consoling her, thinking this much more important than making his own feelings known. In a way, he hoped that he would never have to say what he really thought about Amanda finally finding his hiding place at the back of the house as he just did not know if Mary would be able to accept what he would say.

  These considerations continued to pass through Peter’s mind as he stood at the lectern. Indeed, it was only when he heard his name being hissed by Mary to his side that he realised what he was doing.

  “Hello,” Peter heard himself say in his hoarse – and to his ears, too high pitched – voice. Ideas of what to talk about swirled around in front of him, crushing his previous excitement and obscuring the gathered crowd before him. The horrifying images of his attacks on Milch and Brenden began to dominate, but then by chance, he caught sight of the terrified face of a boy sitting at the back of the hall. The thin film of those pictures fell away from his vision, leaving his mind to be dominated by his senses and to recognise the silence of the hall as well as the fact that the boy he now found himself staring at was no other than the one he had so recently killed.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered after closing his eyes, after which he was prompted by the deputy to use the microphone. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said again.

  “Hello,” he said, feeling impatient to talk so that he could move on from thinking about how terrible it must be for Brenden to see him, his attacker standing there. “My name is Peter O’Hare,” he continued, not really knowing what to say or where to begin. “You will have to excuse me if I struggle a little here. I’m not sure if I’ve ever spoken to so many people. I certainly cannot remember such a thing. Perhaps in my statements here I ought to just get to the confession.

  “I lost track of time so long ago that I find it difficult to place just exactly when it was that I attacked poor Johann Milch. N
eedless to say, a good while has passed since then. I find the event itself quite difficult to recall, but I’ll try my best. Though I don’t want to take any responsibility away from myself, the attack emerged from our difficulty in getting enough blood. As Mary made clear, if we didn’t have enough, then it was me who had to go without. This was the only way as it was plainly too dangerous for Mary to go hungry; she was the only one, by then, with a past record that would enable her to get a job to bring in the funds we needed and who could get in contact with the school so that she could get the documents so she could keep on working.

  “A couple of people have asked me since I arrived here why I didn’t just come to the school without saying that it had been Mary who had attacked me. But to that, I would reply that there were too many questions that would need to be answered. What would I say to those in charge here? Where would I say that I’d come from? How would I explain the circumstances of my attack? It all just seemed so risky. My poor wife was always also convinced that if I went to the school, at some time or another the truth would come out and she would have to go to the Tunnels. What’s more, we had devised our plan so that we could stay together. If I had gone to the school, we would have been parted and it might have been tricky for me to return to Mary as that would have required us to formulate an explanation for our coming together. But I digress.

  “Whatever the circumstances, it happened to be the case that we occasionally ran short on our supplies and that we had decided it would be me who would do without in such circumstances. As we were well aware of what the hunger could do, I did my best to build a set of restraints in our basement to ensure that I would not escape and seek out some poor unfortunate. But that turned out to create a flaw; as I’d put in the set of chains that were supposed to keep me locked up, I was also aware of its weaknesses.

  “I tried my best, but I am truly sorry that it just wasn’t good enough, and not just once, but twice. As far as I can recall, before the attack on Johann, I had been without any blood for at least three months, maybe more. As I suppose most of you would know, there were good days and bad. Mary would come and talk to me on the good days when she could spare the time. She would also come to check on me on the truly bad days - even though it was incredibly painful for her to see the state I was in and to hear the terrible things I would say - to make sure that I was not attempting to escape. However, our system was not foolproof as Mary still needed to find work so we could get ourselves out of the jam we were in. This meant that sometimes, Mary would have to leave me alone even when I was, well, out of sorts.

  “It was during one of these times when I managed to damage the fastenings that held the chain onto the wall. I still don’t know exactly how, but I still had sufficient power of thought to remove the chains from my limbs once I’d freed myself from the cellar. After leaving the house behind, I headed off across the field that lies next to our home. I hadn’t really thought about what direction I should take, I’m quite certain of that. However, if you look at my decision from our position at the time, this was rather lucky; it meant that I didn’t just go and invade our next-door neighbour’s, something which could have created a much trickier situation to resolve. It’s true that if I’d have headed directly for where the next warm body was most likely sitting, I could have given away everything – potentially notifying not only the school here but even the local community to my presence - and brought everything to an end.

  “After crossing the field, I happened to chance upon Johann. He was unfortunate in many ways that day: not only did I escape when my hunger had peaked, meaning I was totally within its grasp, he was also alone and did not even see me coming. If there had been someone else there - or if he had even managed to see me crossing over the flat ground between my home and where the attack took place - perhaps he would have escaped. But this did not turn out to be to be the case. As far as I can remember, I stumbled across him near the old farm buildings just on the other side of the field. He was walking towards a car when I saw him, and I – who had no control at all over what I was doing – flew over to the poor man, before knocking him down to the ground to kill him, to relieve myself of the terrible hunger that consumed me entirely.

  “The hunger subsided as I drank his blood - blood that was mostly spilt on the ground - and I started to become conscious of what I was doing. This process seemed to take some time, though it must have only been a few moments, and I still have a vivid memory of becoming aware of the taste of the blood in my mouth, followed by the terrible realization that I’d torn the throat out of the man who was slowly dying on the floor before me.

  “What I did next still haunts me; will haunt me forever. Instead of trying to save the poor man in any way that I could, I quickly became a slave to my fears. I think I said something to try to disassociate myself from what I had done – I could still scarcely believe it – and then I ran. With blood still dripping down my face and onto my clothes, I ran as quickly as I could back home. After getting back inside, I stared at the telephone for some time, trying to push past my fears so as to call someone to help the poor man I had just attacked; there might have been a chance he would survive. When Mary arrived home, she found the receiver in my hand, but I hadn’t made the call.

  “I know that Johann still remembers his suffering as I overheard him discussing the attack several times when he visited our home. In fact, it was me who convinced Mary to invite Johann over. I felt responsible - I was responsible for what happened to him - so I also believed that I had a duty to ensure the man was cared for in some way. It wasn’t much, but it was always a relief to hear his curt and muffled conversations with Mary filtering through the floor. After a time, though, he stopped accepting the invitations: Mary said he just didn’t want to come anymore.”

  Peter briefly glanced over to his wife, who was then sitting next to the deputy with her eyes focused on the ceiling of the hall: was she even listening to him?

  “Though of course there is always more to say about such a thing, I suppose I should move on to the second attack. There must have been over a decade between what I did to Johann and that poor young man. You would have thought that we would have learned from the first incident – we truly believed we had – but in many ways, the two attacks were very similar to one another. You see, once again we had run low on funds. The cleaning firm where Mary had worked for more than ten years closed down two years ago. Slowly, bit by bit, our savings slowly melted away leaving us with almost nothing. Mary was able to find bits of work every now and again, but it was never enough. We didn’t even have any reserves; it’s so long ago that we lost the ownership of our house to the school, I can’t even remember when it happened. We’d been unlucky with this as well; if we’d only been able to hang on to the place a few extra years, then we would have received so much more for the place that I’m sure that the attack on the young man would never have occurred. But that’s all by the by now.

  “We were so short of money this time that there was even a week when Mary had to drastically ration her supply. This obviously only made things worse as it meant she was sometimes too distracted by the concerns created by having to look after her own body to think about what was going on in the cellar. I suppose I’d been down there for two months. I was so ravenous that it was just too risky for me to be free to roam the house. Indeed, during the hours when my hunger was at its peak, I would ceaselessly use all my strength to pull and push against the restraints I had installed in an effort to escape. I doubt even Mary would’ve been safe if I’d escaped when she was around. If she’d tried to stop me leaving, I dread to think what would have occurred.

  “I would also scream out will all the force I could for Mary to release me from the hellish hole of our cellar, meaning my wife would often stay away. This, of course, was not just because she found it difficult to deal with the terrible things I would shout up at her, it was also because she feared that she would be swayed by my obvious suffering and free me.

  “My
memory of how I actually managed to escape – even though the event only occurred not so long ago – is rather hazy. I recall waking from a nightmare, in which I was terrorised by my hunger into drawing blood from my, in the dream, still living wife, and finding that some of my bonds had been released. Perhaps I had struggled to free myself from the straps as I slept, I don’t know. Whatever it was, it meant I knew that during the next wave of hunger, there was a chance I would be able to get out. I tried to call up to Mary to inform her about what had happened, but even if she heard me, she probably just assumed that I was once again shouting some awful things due to the pain of the hunger.

  “Soon enough, I could feel its influence, my drowsiness being replaced by that all-consuming thing. In desperation, I cried out again and again for Mary to come, but it was no use. In truth, I did not even know if she was in the house. As I felt myself lose control, I even attempted to free myself in the hope that I could escape while I was still conscious of what I was doing in the hope that I could prevent myself from repeating what I had done to Johann. Of course, this was useless. While my mind was still my own, I could not command the full strength of my body. If anything, all I did was loosen the straps further, making it easier for my future possessed self to break free.

  “Once again, I found myself at the kitchen door at the back of the house. It seems so odd to remember what I did, even though I wasn’t in control. I left the house and, just like the time before, instead of heading for a neighbour’s home, I stumbled off towards the field. This time, I took a different path, heading towards one of the country lanes that leads away from Radcliff. The poor boy just happened to be the first person I came across.”