The School of the Undead
Michael Woods
Copyright © 2017 Michael Woods
All rights reserved.
ISBN-13: 978-1979563499
To my family.
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Pg 1
Chapter 2
Pg 17
Chapter 3
Pg 41
Chapter 4
Pg 83
Chapter 5
Pg 125
Chapter 6
Pg 171
Chapter 7
Pg 201
Chapter 8
Pg 216
chapter 1
When he woke up, the first thing Brenden felt was the terrible weight that was pressing down on his body. He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound escaped as the still unsettled earth immediately rushed in to fill the newly open space to silence him. In the total darkness that seemed to have enveloped everything, Brenden tried to free himself but found he was unable to move his limbs more than a couple of inches.
The discomfort of the soil in his mouth and nose - as well as the constant pressure on his body - made it impossible for Brenden to think clearly about anything. However, after growing tired of his pointless struggle, he started to wonder, as best he could, how it was possible that he was alive and in the situation he was in. He felt that his chest was still trying to expand to inhale, but how could he be taking in air under all this dirt. His first thoughts of explanation revolved around the idea that he was suffering a terrible nightmare and that all he had to do was wait, but hours passed - seeming like days to Brenden – and nothing changed. Every now and again, a darker idea occurred to him; his senses had just deserted him and all he was experiencing was just some sort of illusion. Though he could not completely dismiss this idea, he could also not wholly accept it as it was all too achingly real.
After finally giving into the notion that what he was experiencing was not just a phantasy, Brenden fought with himself to try to recall the last moments he could remember prior to waking up buried under the mountain of earth that imprisoned him. Hazy though his memories were, he could remember leaving school and walking home through some of the empty streets of his town.
Onto the black canvas of the darkness of his grave, Brenden’s mind eventually conjured up the image of the artificial orange light which illuminated the streets near his school. The high brick wall of one of the town’s Victorian graveyards, which Brenden passed almost every day, appeared at his side and he could almost hear the crunching sound beneath his feet of the drying leaves that had started to fall about a month or more before. He recalled that as he reached the corner of a familiar wall, which marked the end of the town and the beginning of the unlit lane that led on to his home, he had noticed an unusual shape some distance away in the field beside the road. The light of the late autumn, early evening sky had been sufficient for the boy to determine that someone was there, but little else. He had removed the torch his mum insisted he use to light his way home - something he hardly ever did as he prided himself on being able to find his way in the dark - and cast its beam in the direction of whatever was there. In doing so, he revealed the odd sight of a man standing, quite still.
Despite the stories he had heard and the advice on strangers he had been fed for as long as he could remember by TV, his school and his mum, he had made no effort to get away. The oddity of the man, who had continued to just stand there, had infected him with curiosity. But it was not just that, he had also been concerned about the man’s well-being. He remembered that the idea had struck him that perhaps the man had driven his car into the field and was in need of help. There had been a story about such a thing happening in the local paper.
Brenden had then noticed the stranger’s staring eyes and desperately pale features; but this did not scare the boy off as the man looked to be in shock, further convincing him that he had stumbled across the poor victim of some accident. He called out to ask if the stranger needed help, whether there was any problem, but he received no reply. Instead, the man responded with a barely perceptible shudder of his fleshy white face and by starting to mutter a string of inaudible sentences under his breath. Once this image had been brought back to Brenden’s mind, he discovered that he could no longer remove the sight of the steady gaze of the man’s small grey eyes from his thoughts. For a time, this image, which became ever sharper in the boy’s imagination, was all that Brenden could perceive.
As Brenden continued to meditate on those eyes he just could not forget, he experienced an instant of abject terror brought on by a glimpse of a memory. But whatever it was, the boy’s mind cast it away almost as soon as it had appeared, and Brenden was returned to the darkness and the force of the earth upon his body. He was aware that it was not just his mind, but something else that had broken the spell of the cold fear he had experienced a few moments before, a fear whose cause he had already forgotten. Then, for the first time since he had woken up, he thought he heard something. He focused his attention to try and home in on the noise, but initially, Brenden was just not able to tell whether he was just imagining the sound or whether it was real.
He waited, what else could he do? And, eventually, it became clear to Brenden that there was indeed a noise, one
