Day 216

We couldn't have done anything - there just wasn't the time.
It's not like we expected her to die, I mean she wasn't that old.
Or ill, or unhealthy in any way, shape or form!

It just... happened.

You see, we'd broken down.
Had been for nearly two hours.
She'd been sleeping in the back of the bus while me and my brother sat in the middle.

It was fairly crowded, very hot and tempers were running short.
We collectively decided to wander about the woods nearby, have some space.
My brother went to wake her up, she wasn't moving so I thought she was just fast asleep.

I'll never forget the look on his face when he came over to tell me "Nan's dead, Jo".
I told him to keep it quiet, didn't want anyone thinking anything bad about us.
We smiled and spread that our Nan was having a nap in the bus, aww bless etcetera.

And we walked away, trying to remain calm and not suspicious.
We didn't kill her or anything, so we had no real reason to worry.
Just, had to pretend it was all fine until someone else figured it out.

We should have buried her right away or at least said a prayer.
By the time we'd gotten tired and returned to the bus she was moving.
She was talking to the driver and smiling.

As she turned towards us and waved we saw her face distort.
Whatever she was, she wasn't our nan anymore.
She was something else.

But what could we say?
"Sorry guys, our Nan passed away so we went for a walk and now she's possibly possessed"?
My brother shot me a terrified look, told him to keep quiet, maybe he'd been wrong.

I started heading closer towards the rest of the group when he pulled me back and hissed,
"I wasn't wrong okay! She was dead, she had blood running out her damn ears, she was DEAD!"
What the hell killed her, more importantly, was it planned?

We didn't have long to think as our "Nan" approached us.
She was smiling just like she used to.
She leant in close and said, in a voice that was definitely not human:

W̧h͍̼̻͔͖̤a̻̫̗̘͙̹ͅt̶ ͉͇͕̺̹̖̖à̦̠̪͎̩r͎͉̟̻͠e̢̖ y̺͡o̞̜̤̞u̧̺̞̺̳̬̣̘ b҉͖̰̹͕͙̝͇o̯̘̦͈͞y̤͕͓̟͜s͟ ͇͇̜̣̻u̥͙̠p̶͕̖̮ ͔̱̘̖͙͚ͅt҉̰͍͔̞̣͖̥o̪̳͖?̫̜͎͔


We were terrified, okay?
So we pretended everything was fine, told her we were just annoyed at the breakdown.
We acted like everything was fine as best we could.

She smiled too widely, her teeth all yellow and sharp and too big for her mouth.
I quickly made excuses to go talk to the driver, just to see how long it'd be.
Her neck snapped to one side with a sickening crack as we walked past her.

How could nobody else see that she was clearly a monster?!
From then onwards we avoided her, just about managing to keep well away.
We should have kept an eye on her, it's all our fault.

Another hour or so after all this the repair van finally came and everything was fixed.
Unfortunately we got stuck sitting next to "Nan" on the way back.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to pretend you aren't sitting next to a corpse-turned-monster?

I know that's not a nice way to speak about a former relative but you weren't there.
You don't know what it was like to see what she'd done to everyone else.
How quickly it spread.

They all began screaming, blood pouring from their faces.
The bus swerved off the road and crashed into a signpost.

When I came too I was in hospital.

They'd found me in the bus, surrounded by blood and missing one of my hands.

They never found anyone else, just a load of bloody footprints leading towards the forest.

I'd like to have forgotten this but I got a parcel yesterday.
It was a snapshot of the bus group.
And my hand.

They want me back.