A strange incident occurred at Greenwood during the last week of the month.
The school had a janitor named Perkins. He was responsible for waking up early every day to clean the underground passage.
His daily task was to take a bucket and mop down the east stairway and mop all the way to the west exit.
He’d been doing this job for years; he could do it with his eyes closed.
But on Tuesday morning, when the other janitors arrived for their shifts, they found Perkins curled up on the steps at the top of the stairway.
His mop lay three steps away. The bucket was overturned, dirty water streaming down the stairs.
Perkins was trembling all over, his shirt soaked through with a cold sweat and clinging to his back.
Someone helped him up and had him drink some hot tea.
He just kept repeating the same sentence: "There’s something breathing down there."
When asked what it was, he couldn’t say.
When asked what he saw, he shook his head and said he hadn’t seen anything.
The school doctor’s diagnosis was a stress reaction caused by extreme anxiety, and he was advised to go home and rest for two weeks.
Perkins was helped home, his body still shaking even as he left the school gates.
Some students saw this, and by lunchtime, half the cafeteria was discussing the Perkins incident.
Richard had just finished his oxtail soup when Warren leaned over from the table across from him.
He was clutching a yellowed piece of paper, folded several times, its corners already frayed.
"Hey... do you guys know what’s buried under the Greenwood athletic field?"
He slapped the paper down on the table.
"Here we go again," Mason said, chewing on his bread. He seemed accustomed to Warren’s rumors.
"No, this is the real deal." Warren tapped the paper with his fingertip.
"My cousin dug this up from the old archives at the city library. It’s a photocopy of the original newspaper."
Grey put down her knife and fork, her blue eyes glancing at the paper.
Hugh looked up from his plate. A few other students eating nearby heard the commotion and shifted closer.
Mason said he wasn’t interested, but he didn’t budge from his seat.
Warren smoothed out the photocopy.
The lead-type print on it was quite blurry from being copied, but the main headline was still legible:
The Brighton Evening Post, dated November of the New Calendar, 1862.
"About fifty years ago." He pointed to some text circled in red pen.
"The area east of Greenwood, where the athletic field and the new gymnasium are now, used to be a textile factory."
"One day, during the night shift, a female worker named Beth suddenly stopped breathing in the silk reeling workshop."
"Her death was very strange. There were two holes in her neck."
Warren picked up his fork and gestured twice at the side of his own neck.
"Like a nail had been hammered in and then pulled out. They were round and deep, but there was no blood."
He put the fork down. "Have you ever seen meat left to dry out for a whole summer?"
"It was like that. A living, healthy female worker had turned into a desiccated corpse weighing less than half her normal weight."
Grey’s brow furrowed slightly.
Mason forgot to chew the bread in his mouth.
"At the time, the police ruled it a ’death by unknown causes.’" Warren pointed to the middle of the clipping.
"The body was sent home for burial. In those days, poor families didn’t use funeral homes; the coffin would be kept in the main room of their house."
"But on the third night..." He rapped his fork sharply on the tabletop. "Beth’s corpse climbed out of its coffin."
The area around them fell silent. Everyone was listening intently.
"The coffin lid was pushed open from the inside. The sound of creaking and scraping against the wall woke up the people sleeping in the next room."
"Beth’s mother heard the noise and came out to see her daughter standing next to the coffin."
Warren stopped his mimed scratching on the table. "But that was no longer her daughter."
"First, she killed her own mother."
Someone at the table sucked in a breath.
"The method of killing was the same as how she had died: two holes in the neck, the person drained dry."
"After draining her family, she walked out of the house and all the way back to the textile factory, where the night shift was still at work."
"That night, the female workers tried to fight back."
"Someone hit her head with an iron shuttle, someone else stabbed her in the back with large fabric shears... but it was no use."
"Sharp weapons hitting her were like striking a block of iron. There was no blood, and her skin didn’t break."
The background noise of the cafeteria suddenly seemed particularly harsh.
A sharp CLANG from a serving lady’s ladle hitting a metal bin made a younger girl nearby flinch.
"What happened then?" someone asked.
"Then, the authorities sent people." Warren flipped the clipping to the back.
"The paper calls them the ’Special Health Inspection Team’—a strange name like that. After they arrived, they sealed off the factory, but two inspectors died in the process."
"So how did they finally kill it?" Mason finally swallowed the bread in his mouth.
"They didn’t."
Warren turned the photocopy around so everyone could see the smaller text on the back.
"The newspaper’s conclusion was just a single sentence: ’Handled appropriately.’"
"But the factory was demolished, the foundation was sealed, and the official story was a ’health hazard.’"
He pointed his fingertip to a line of messy, handwritten notes at the very bottom of the photocopy:
"Local legend has it that the thing was never destroyed. It was sealed deep within the foundation, along with the..."
He let the words "vengeful spirits" hang on his tongue for a moment before letting them out.
"Afterward, the land changed hands several times before Greenwood finally bought it to expand the school. The athletic field and gymnasium were built right on the original site."
"So that field where we run during P.E. class..." Warren pointed his fork toward the floor. "That thing might be sealed right underneath it."
The table was quiet for several seconds.
The younger girl who had been startled earlier quickly stood up, holding her tray and muttering, "I’m not listening, not listening," as she hurried away.
Warren wanted to laugh but held it back, quite satisfied with the effect of his storytelling.
"Believe it or not, but with what’s been happening in the basement recently..."
He jutted his chin out. "Old Perkins getting scared like that, and I heard some equipment lined itself up in the middle of the night... You think that’s a coincidence?"
Richard picked up his teacup and drained the last of his tea.
He mentally plucked out several keywords from Warren’s story:
’Two holes in the neck, body drained dry, corpse reanimated, immense strength, sharp weapons cause no bleeding and don’t break the skin.’
Appendix C of that book, in addition to a general overview of what lay behind the Curtain, also mentioned some common Evil Beings.
Among them was an entry about the "Vampire Species."
’Vampire Strain, the Vampire Species.’
’They are not native species from behind the Curtain, but rather mutants created by deep Ether contamination.’
’The Vampire Species feeds on life force. Their method of feeding usually involves piercing with their teeth to simultaneously extract the Ether and blood from their prey.’
’A person killed by a member of the Vampire Species will have residual Ether contaminants left in their body from the feeding.’
’In most cases, these residuals dissipate along with the life force after the host’s death.’
’However, in the extremely rare case that the host possesses a latent Ether Affinity, the residual contaminants will react with the corpse.’
’It cannot be considered a resurrection; the corpse does not regain life.’
’The Ether contaminants occupy the now-empty shell, driving it to move, feed, and hunt.’
’The term used in the text for this product is Ghoul.’

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