Much terrified speculation here about the provenance of huge footprints spotted in the recent snowfall in fields near the village. This, allied to a disembodied groaning sound at night and the disappearance of two popular local yorkshire terriers, has led to rumours that a supernatural beast is stalking the area. People have adopted extreme precautionary measures, roping schoolchildren together and only travelling by those sheep tracks well lit at night. Also local yeomen armed with garlic bread and staves patrol the woods till dawn.
I can now reveal to the anxious population that the phantom is, however, none other than one-legged thistlemilk entrepreneur Theosyphilis Neill, brought back to life in an unnatural ceremony by his lodger Terry. Popularly supposed to be slow and cumbersome, the one legged Theosyphillis can actually cover huge amounts of ground very quickly using an experimental prosthetic salvaged from ex-territorial army cyborg killing machine MacDuff of Clatteringshaws. Sensing that a wallet is about to be opened Theosyphillis can lope across vast amounts of territory and materialise at the scene within seconds, the sentence "do you think you could just lend me a fiver till Monday?" or "it's my big cheque a week on Saturday..." or "just a pint then, I've hopped all this way" already half formed on his peculiar countenance.
