KB 81, Locations 17, Objects 179, Tasks 533, Events 6, Characters 4.

Introduction

It was as you were approaching the outskirts of Morrow that the man emerged from the fog and collapsed at your feet.

The phone had awoken you in the early hours of the morning, at a time when no one called you. Ever. You didn't even recognise the person on the phone to begin with as your old friend Edwin Carter - several months had gone by since you last spoke to him and you were only half awake at the time - but as he spoke (in a frenzied voice, often giving way to bursts of manic hysteria and paranoia), you began to realise something was wrong with him. Very wrong.

"You don't understand!" he cries at one point. "We killed him! We buried him in the graveyard but he wasn't dead! He's turned everyone against each other!"

Despite your best efforts to calm him down, Edwin remained fraught and distressed throughout the whole conversation. He rambled at length about an 'evil' that had overtaken the village where he lived, of a man who had brought death with him, of the dead walking the streets…

It sounded like nothing more than the ramblings of a disturbed mind; but for the sheer terror in Edwin's voice you might have slammed the phone down and gone back to sleep.

"You have to help me, Duffy," he pleaded with you at one point. "If you don't they'll kill me. They've tried once but I… I got away. I won't be lucky again…"

And then, right in the midst of a plea for you to come to the village of Morrow and get him out, the phone went dead.

And without warning, with no indication that anything is even wrong, the car just… stops. Actually 'stops' probably isn't quite the right word. One minute you're driving along at a fair rate, the radio blaring out - and then, the next, the car engine switches itself off, the radio goes dead, and the car grinds to a screeching halt at the side of the road.

You sit there, hardly able to understand what has happened. Certainly you've had car problems before but never anything like this. A quick check under the bonnet reveals nothing wrong as far as you can see. Of course, you're no mechanic and the inner workings of a car engine have always been something you've preferred to leave to the experts.

"Of all the goddamn luck…" you mutter, wishing you'd just let Edwin deal with matters on his own. If you get to him and find out this has all been some elaborate practical joke, you'll… "Kill him."

The road leading into Morrow, Old Mill Road, appears to have changed little in the years since you were last here. You grew up in Morrow but, as with most people, found it to be too enclosed for your liking. A few times over the years you've been back to see old friends but, with the passing of the years, most of these have left Morrow and so your reasons for returning here have dwindled to the extent that you seldom even think about the place these days.

But walking along the Old Mill Road brings back memories. You played here as a kid, you and Edwin and several others. They were happy times. Today, a thick fog hangs over the place, obscuring most of what you would otherwise be able to see: the park, the lake where you went fishing on summer days, the…

And then your thoughts return abruptly to the present with a jolt as a man comes staggering from out of the mist.

"…get… away…" he gasps. "They're… they're…"

He grunts, clutches at his chest, and collapses at your feet.