“The Undead,” my grandfather corrected. “And no, it isn’t. Not exclusively, at least. Though at one point it was.”
I waited for my grandfather to continue. He cleared his throat. “It was originally founded to educate the Undead about who they were. As you probably know, Bertrand Gottfried was a doctor who built the school as an infirmary for children. What many do not know is that it was an infirmary for dead children.
“He had learned about the existence of the Undead years before founding the infirmary. His idea was to create a hospital that housed Undead children, so he could study them. He was trying to figure out how the bodies of children differed from adults, for only children can reanimate. The seclusion of Attica Falls was one reason why the location was ideal, as was the altitude and climate. At the age of twenty-one ‘Undead years,’ as some call them, the children begin to rapidly decay. Cool temperatures help prevent that process, much like the effect of a refrigerator. The last reason was the lake. Salt is a preservative; each patient was required to take a bath in the lake every morning.
“Now, as you may know, soon after the infirmary was founded there was a reported outbreak of the measles and mumps, which killed over a hundred children. Of course, disease wasn’t the real cause of death. Many of Bertrand’s patients were due to expire around the same two-year period. Although Bertrand had devised many ways to help prolong the ‘life’ of the Undead, he had not discovered a way to stop their decay. They all perished. Most of the children didn’t have parents or families, so there were no further inquiries.” My grandfather held out his coffee cup, and Dustin stepped up to the table and spooned sugar into it.
“When all the children died, Bertrand didn’t know what to do with the bodies. Instead of burying them in plots, he dug a vast underground tomb. Yet these catacombs also served another purpose: if Bertrand encountered an Undead that he wished to put to rest, he could bury them there.
“Unfortunately, Bertrand died not long after the infirmary opened. He was found in the lake. Of course, it wasn’t a natural death. One of his patients took his soul.
“After he died, the three founding nurses shut down the infirmary, keeping only the current patients inside. During that time, they went through his office and discovered hundreds of pages of notes and a journal, in which he had documented his findings. His notes have been integral in shaping our understanding of the Undead and how they function. He had also developed plans to turn the infirmary into a school for the Undead. The nurses carried out his wishes and reopened the school as Gottfried Academy. The purpose of the school was to teach the Undead how to live out their ‘lives’ without searching for their soul or taking the souls of others.
“At first it was only a school for the Undead. The nurses sought to educate them not only in worldly matters, but in matters concerning their situation. Many Undead children were unaware that they were dead. As a result, they suffered from existential crises.”
“What do you mean existential crises?”
“Imagine waking up one morning and everything is the same, except different. You don’t like food anymore. You never sleep. You can’t hear or see or smell things the way you used to. You feel a constant emptiness within you.”
“That’s the way I felt when my parents died,” I said softly.
My grandfather nodded. “Existential crises happen to everyone. With humans it’s emotional rather than biological. This is the real Gottfried curse—the fate the Undead are faced with—and when they are unaware of what is happening to them, they can be very dangerous. Imagine an Undead girl trying to kiss a boy. She would accidentally take his soul and kill him.”
Which was why Dante wouldn’t kiss me, I thought.
“With the medical and technological advances over time, the Undead became rare, as fewer children died and more of those who did were buried. Slowly, the school began to integrate living children into its student body. Gottfried needed money, and accepting normal students, or what we refer to as ‘Plebeians,’ was a secure way to keep the school running.”
Plebeians. I had seen that word before, in Benjamin Gallow’s file. “But wasn’t it unsafe for them?”
“At first, yes. There were a slew of ‘accidents,’ all caused by the Undead. The school opened and closed, and was soiled by scandals that were artfully covered up by the faculty as natural disasters or epidemics. They only stopped when a new headmaster took over and revolutionized the school, training faculty in defense and burial rituals, designing more proactive course work, and instituting a stricter code of rules and regulations, which has now become the Gottfried Academy Code of Discipline. All of the rules have practical safety applications. For example, the banning of romantic relationships was designed to prevent accidental Basium Mortis.”
“But it’s still unsafe.”
“Although the Undead are rather rare these days, there’s still a chance of encountering the Undead at any school in the country. Plebeians are far better off encountering them at Gottfried, where there are trained professors and rules. Moreover, the only way to truly teach the Undead not to kill is to expose them to the living, so that they learn to value others not only in theory, but through their friendships. An Undead is far less likely to take the life of a friend than a stranger.”
I stared at the food growing cold on my plate and considered Dante. I still couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea that he was dead.
“One of the last safety precautions the school took was to dig tunnels that ran through Bertrand Gottfried’s original catacombs. As you recall, the Undead cannot go underground. In the chance of an attack, professors could direct the Plebeians to the tunnels, where they could seek refuge.”
“So all of the professors know about the … the … Undead?” I still had trouble saying the word, as if speaking it out loud made it more real.
“Yes.”
“And the... Pleb—”
“Plebeians.”
“Right, the Plebeians know about the Undead?”
“No. It has long been Gottfried’s policy not to explicitly tell Plebeian students about the existence of the Undead. It was feared that teaching living students about the Undead would create natural segregation and discrimination. The classes at Gottfried address issues that are pertinent to all students, not just the Undead.”