Vampire Strain

In the final week of the month, a strange incident occurred at Greenwood.

There was a janitor at the school named Perkins, who was responsible for waking up early every day to clean the underground passage.

His daily task was to carry a bucket and a mop down the east staircase and mop all the way to the west exit.

He had been doing this job for several years and could walk the path 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 entrance of the staircase.

His mop had fallen three steps away, his bucket was overturned, and dirty water was trickling down the stairs.

Perkins was shivering all over, his shirt soaked through with cold sweat, clinging to his back.

Someone helped him up and forced a mouthful of hot tea down his throat.

He only repeated the same sentence over and over: "There is something breathing down there."

When asked what it was, he couldn't explain.

When asked what he had seen, he shook his head and said he hadn't seen anything at all.

The school doctor diagnosed it as a stress reaction caused by nervous tension and recommended he go home to rest for two weeks.

Perkins was helped home by others, and he was still trembling even after he had left the school gates.

The students witnessed this, and by lunchtime, half the cafeteria was discussing the matter of Perkins.

Richard had just finished his oxtail soup when Warren leaned in from across the table.

He was clutching a yellowed piece of paper, folded several times, its edges frayed.

"Tell me... do you guys know what is buried under the playground at Greenwood?"

He slapped the paper onto the table.

"Here we go again." Mason chewed his bread, seemingly accustomed to Warren's gossip.

"No, this is the real deal." Warren tapped the paper with his fingertip:

"My cousin dug this out of the old archives at the city library; it's a photocopy of the original newspaper."

Gray set down her knife and fork, her blue eyes sweeping over the paper.

Hugh looked up from his tray, and several students eating nearby heard the commotion and shifted closer.

Though Mason claimed he wasn't interested, he didn't move an inch from his seat.

Warren flattened the photocopy.

The lead type was quite blurry from the reproduction, but the headline was still legible:

Briston Evening News, dated November, New Calendar 1862.

"About fifty years ago." He pointed to the text circled in red ink:

"The land to the east of Greenwood, which is now the playground and the new gymnasium, used to be a textile mill.

One night shift, a female worker named Beth suddenly stopped breathing in the silk-reeling workshop."

"Her cause of death was very strange; there were actually two holes in her neck."

Warren picked up a fork from his plate and gestured at the side of his own neck:

"Just like a nail had been driven in and pulled out, round and deep, but there was no blood."

He set the fork down: "Have you ever seen dried meat that has been left out in the sun all summer?

That was the effect; a healthy, robust female worker had turned into a dried corpse less than half her normal weight."

Gray's brow furrowed slightly.

Mason forgot to chew the bread in his mouth.

"The police at the time ruled it an 'unexplained death'." Warren flipped to the middle of the clipping:

"The body was sent home to prepare for burial. In those days, poor families didn't use funeral homes, so the coffin was kept in the main room of their own house."

"But on the third night..." He tapped the table hard with his fork: "Beth's corpse crawled out of the coffin."

The surrounding area went quiet, and everyone listened intently.

"The coffin lid was pushed open from the inside, and the creaking sound of scratching against the wall woke up the people sleeping in the next room.

Beth's mother heard the noise and walked out, only to see her daughter standing next to the coffin."

Warren stopped his imitation of scratching the table: "But that was no longer her daughter."

"She killed her own mother first."

Someone at the table gasped.

"The method of killing was the same as her own death; two holes in the neck, and the person was drained dry.

After she drained her family, she walked out of the house and made her way back to the textile mill, where the factory was still running the night shift."

"That night, the female workers tried to fight back.

Someone hit her head with an iron shuttle, someone stabbed her back with large fabric-cutting shears... but none of it worked."

Sharp weapons struck her just as they would a block of iron; she neither bled nor broke skin."

The background noise of the cafeteria suddenly seemed piercingly loud.

The clanging of the lunch lady's ladle against the metal bucket made a nearby underclassman shrink back in fright.

"What happened next?" someone asked.

"After that, the authorities sent people in." Warren flipped to the back of the clipping:

"The newspaper called them the 'Special Health Inspection Team'—a strange name like that. Once they arrived, they sealed off the factory, but two inspectors died during the disposal process."

"How did they finally kill her?" 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 end of the article only had one sentence: 'Properly disposed of'."

"But the factory was demolished, the foundation was sealed, and the official explanation was 'health hazards'."

He tapped his fingertip on a line of scrawled, handwritten notes at the very bottom of the photocopy:

"There have always been rumors that the thing wasn't destroyed; it was sealed deep beneath the foundation, along with the... of those it killed."

He held the word "vengeful spirits" on his tongue for a moment before letting it out.

"Later, this land changed hands several times before Greenwood finally bought it to expand the school. The playground and gymnasium were built right on the original site."

"So, the playground where we run during gym class..." Warren pointed his fork toward the floor, "might have that thing sealed underneath it."

The table went silent for several seconds.

The underclassman who had been startled earlier quickly stood up, clutching her tray and muttering, "I don't want to hear it, I don't want to hear it," before hurrying away with quick steps.

Warren wanted to laugh but couldn't quite manage it, feeling quite satisfied with the effect of his storytelling.

"Believe it or not, but the things happening in the basement lately..."

He tilted his chin toward the outside: "Old Perkins was scared out of his wits, and I heard equipment was lining up by itself in the middle of the night... do you think that's a coincidence?"

Richard held his teacup and finished the last drop of tea.

He plucked several keywords from Warren's story one by one:

Two holes in the neck, body drained dry, corpse reanimated, immense strength, sharp weapons striking without drawing blood or breaking through defenses.

In Appendix C of that book, besides a general overview of what lay behind The Veil, some common malevolent entities were also mentioned.

Among them was a passage regarding the Vampire Strain.

Vampire Strain, the blood-sucking species.

They were not native species from behind The Veil, but rather mutants created after being deeply contaminated by Aether.

The Vampire Strain fed on life force, typically using their teeth to pierce and simultaneously drain the Aether and blood from their prey.

Those killed by the Vampire Strain would have residual Aether contaminants left in their bodies from the feeding process.

In the vast majority of cases, these residues would dissipate along with the life force after the host died.

But in extremely rare cases, if the host possessed an unactivated Aether affinity, the residual contaminants would react with the corpse.

It couldn't be called resurrection; the body would not regain life.

The Aether contaminants would occupy the hollowed-out shell, driving it to move, feed, and hunt.

The term used in the text for this product was Ghoul.