The young couple ran. They continued running until the dying screams of the rest of the caravan faded into the distance. They would have made it past the toll station to sweet freedom and peaceful sleep at night, they really would. If only…
They continued running until they came to an abandoned mine. They stood at the threshold, unwilling to go in, mindful of the history surrounding the place. The stories of collapses and faults that, despite their adherence to facts and lack of legendary ghosts, still managed to do their part to keep away inquisitive minds.
The couple shivered in the freezing fog of morning until a noise from behind them caused them to start.
They ran into the mine without looking back.
The scruffy couple, dressed in rags and shawls and wool, became even scruffier and similar looking as they plunged deeper into the dusty, coal-blackened mine. Deeper and deeper they went, pausing less and less frequently to consider turning back. Always, such stops were interrupted by the noise, the noise of pursuit.
The couple became more and more frantic as time passed and the noise grew closer, ever closer. The woman, really more of a girl, was dragging behind, her hand clutched tight in his. She spoke to him, between gasps of air as they ran.
"I don't think it's the soldiers."
She was met with silence.
"If it had been soldiers that attacked us, there would have been gunshots, not just screams that woke us."
Her husband remained silent.
"It's him again. It's our broth–"
"Be quiet, Greta!" snapped Hana, the husband.
He stopped and sat her down gently against a wall.
She was pregnant.
He really didn't think she should be running in her condition, but it wasn't as if they had a choice. The noise came again, but they did not rise. They were both too tired. They both sat there and caught their breath. Greta spoke again.
"Then it is true. It is Gregor."
Hana stared numbly at his shoes. Finally, he spoke.
"For the longest time, I did not wish to believe it was true. I preferred to delude myself, to believe that it was mere misfortune that followed us, and not that thing."
She took his hand in hers and rested them on her stomach.
"You know, I was going to name this one after him," she said softly, attempting to comfort her husband, to ease the tension of the situation.
Their eyes met, and that small comfort did seem to help them. The brown tresses that framed her green eyes and freckly face took him back to their home, a home free of worry and death, and fear. And he, once a mere boy, had come into his own on the fearful journey they had taken together. His mussed-up black hair hung over deep blue eyes and a strong chin.
"WERE YOU NOW?"
Their heads snapped around and took in the figure blocking the path back to the entrance. They hadn't even heard him approach, not that that mattered now.
His voice perfectly matched his physical form. Like him, it was cold, and persistent, like a drill. And like a drill, it would occasionally snag on certain words and come out jarring and unpleasant.
His skin was a slug-grey and mottled in places by fire and flesh wounds. No blood came from him. No fluid of any kind. Every wound he sustained was a flesh wound because that was all his body was, a cheap suit that barely contained him. A bottle for the icky, six legged thing that was his spirit.
He had once been Greta's brother, and thus Hana's brother-in-law. But Gregor had died. Gregor had been gunned down in 1922 by Russian death squads. Yet here he was.
His eyes were black and empty pits in his face, and his teeth had become sharp, tested as they were on an almost constant basis by the red fruits of his labors.
"I MEAN I MEAN, WHAT IF IF, IT IT WAS A GIRL? THAT WOULDWOULD BE A PREEEEEEETTY SORE DEAL. HA HA. HA."
He, it, shambled toward them. Gregor, the brother. Gregor, the ghoul. Gregor the friend. Gregor, the monster.
Hana and Greta got slowly to their feet and began to back away. He wouldn't charge them until they turned and actually began to run, but if he got too close, the farce would end, and he would stop pretending to see them as anything other than a meal.
They ran. His footsteps pounded behind them. He couldn't push himself very fast, but he was relentless, and they would tire long before he did. They turned many sharp corners and overturned mining carts and destabilized piles of spoil as they passed, so as to slow him down. Or perhaps bury him again.
Their short rest hadn't done them enough good, and it was beginning to show in Greta's labored movements. Hana pushed on, picking her up and carrying her in his arms when she could no longer move on her own.
They turned another corner and nearly tumbled into the abyss before them. A line of carts waited on tracks that bridged the bottomless valley. Without a word, Hana helped Greta into the cart and began to push.
Gregor skidded around the bend behind them and pedaled at the ground, the boots he had been buried in slipping at the soft earth covering the slick stone. He came up behind Hana and made as if to grab him, but missed as the cart got underway.
As they sailed away into the darkness, Gregor howled with rage and clutched at his head, stamping his feet and gnashing his teeth.
He stopped and turned, eyeing the remaining mine carts. The idea came slowly, knotted as it was in traffic with the worms and the ants and the hungry madness of undeath.
      
Hana consoled Greta. She relived her brother's death a little bit every time she saw him again.
Hana kissed her. It seemed like they had never gotten a chance to do so while their lives were still normal, manageable; containing no more stress than it took to stoke a fire or help prepare dinner. She opened her eyes and hugged him. They remained this way for a few seconds, before her grip tightened and her breath caught in her throat.
She tried to make-believe she wasn't hearing it, but the noise was unmistakable. The clattering of a second cart was drawing nearer.
"Oh god," she murmured under her breath, beginning to cry at the hopelessness of it all.
Soon enough, the mine-cart carrying Gregor pulled into view. He was shrieking with horrid laughter, jerking his cart about to go faster and sending tremors throughout the track-rail structure. All Hana and Greta could do was watch in horror as he drew right alongside them.
Hana remained with his back to him, holding Greta tight.
Hana's eyes darted from side to side and took in the tracks ahead. He waited a moment, counting under his breath as Gregor leered and rubbed his hands with a noise like sandpaper. Then he stood up. He beckoned to Gregor mockingly.
Gregor snarled and reached out to strangle Hana.
Gregor's outstretched hands collided with a lever set in the tracks, and with a creak and a moan, his prey sped away from him.
Gregor's roar was drowned out by the squeal of breaks as Hana and Greta's cart came to a halt in a new tunnel, set in the cliff face of the subterranean valley.
They scrambled out and hurried down the length of it. They knew enough not to think themselves safe. They hadn't been safe in a caravan surrounded by soldiers from Ukraine and Russia, and they wouldn't be safe here. All they could do was run.
"GRETA."
The voice echoed evilly. They could hear stones loosening and tumbling into the darkness as it chased them, no doubt spidering over sheer surfaces. They quickened their pace as much as they were able.
"GRETA. WHERE ARE YOU GRETA? I'M COMING TO FIND YOU GRETA."
The tunnel ended abruptly in a heavy cast-iron door. The door was circular and had a crank in the middle for opening it. Hana set to work.
"WHY ARE YOU MAKING ME HURT YOU I LOVE YOU."
There was a crunch as two booted feet landed in gravel at the mouth of their tunnel.
Greta joined her husband, as tears streamed down their cheeks and they wrenched at the rusty iron.
The uneven steps quickened. The ghoul stepped in and out of the pools of lamplight as it pounded closer. The only tiny grain of hope left was that the presence of lanterns suggested the iron door was another exit, tended perhaps by an entrepreneur who wanted to reclaim the mine. That was it as far as hope went.
"DON'T RUN FROM ME!"
It leapt.
Hana turned in slow motion and shielded Greta with his body, screaming silent defiance at death through his clenched teeth and wide eyes.
And then-

Blessedly, there was peace. But as their vision cleared and the light-blindness subsided, Hana and Greta found themselves both alive and unharmed. In front of them, mere inches away, lay the somewhat diminished and completely lifeless corpse of Gregor.
The light of day had burned away the obscuring fog and the open door behind them let in a powerful beam of sunlight. Strong hands reached in and hauled Hana and Greta to their feet and out the door, while a few other figures stepped past them to examine the body.
After so much excitement, the young couple had become numb.  They were asked questions and they answered them as best they could. Why were they in the mine? They had been running? Why were they running? They were being chased. By whom? The dead man over there? Why was he chasing them? They did not know, he must have been some kind of murderer, or madman. How did he die? They didn't know, they were just glad he had.
With no more information forthcoming, the foreman overseeing the restoration of the mine had no choice but to let them go. He pointed them to a nearby river where several great barges were loading and unloading passengers and goods. The area around this entrance to the mine had the makings of a newly founded village, but neither Hana nor Greta wished to stay.
They boarded one of the departing barges and watched as the corpse of their brother was wrapped in a tarp and stacked with the few other dead on a separate barge. They hugged each other tightly until they had sailed completely out of sight.
The day continued more or less as planned. Surveyors accompanied laborers into the mine to see if there was anything worth salvaging. One of the dockworkers swore when he stepped on a nail. Families arrived seeking money and a new place to live and were directed where they could stay by the foreman. Morning turned to midday, and midday turned to evening.
It was just as the sun slipped below the horizon that the trouble began anew. A stirring was sighted among the corpse pile on barge #3 and a deckhand was sent over with a stevedore hook on a pole to chase away whatever vermin thought to defile the dead before they could be properly buried in a churchyard.
He leaned over the rustling shape with his lantern held aloft, and beheld the last face he would ever see. The powerful grey hand had already shot out and crushed his skull by the time the deckhand realized what was going on. The lantern dropped from his hand and spilled its burning oil. The dry moldering corpses quickly caught fire and then the whole barge was alight. The alarm was quickly raised and the line tying the boat to the dock was cut, and the burning hulk drifted out into the wide river and sunk.
Miles away, Gregor freed himself of the ropes, tarps, driftwood and corpses of the wrecked barge and managed to leave the strong current that had carried him so far. He clambered onto the shore and vomited the freezing water out of his lungs and stomach.
He looked skyward and his empty sockets perceived what no living human without a telescope would be able to see, the Star Wormwood. It was the thing that had shone down on the day of his death and bathed his grave in burning light, a burning light that filled his brain with hunger and his muscles with vigor.
Even now he could feel its pull, feel it restoring his ravaged body to a sort of life just as the rays of the morning sun had robbed him of it. He looked toward the darkened horizon and smelled them. He smelled his family. The last faces he had beheld before dying. The faces he had to consume to become whole again. They too had been blessed by Wormwood, but they had not been able to feel or even notice its gifts without dying as he had.
Nevertheless, it was that same burning light that suffused them, that called to him even at this distance. He would share his gift with them, oh yes.
And then they could share their gift with the whole world. It was only a matter of time.