“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
