Day 681

They called him "The sleeper". He looked like any old man fast asleep in his bed, only carved from marble with an elaborate "dream" scene made from some kind of metal behind the headboard, edges fading into brickwork near seamlessly. You don't often get graves that looked like this, much less ones carved into the side of the old town hall.

If he had a name it had long since been worn away to nothing but faint lines that blended in with the creases in the marble bedsheets. The urban legends around him said that he was the fonder of the town and his surname had gone on to become the basis for its name though with a name like Marsh Grittlestead it seemed unlikely.

Another story was that if you stared long enough at him he'd blink or twitch and if you were really lucky you'd see him sit upright. It was even claimed that if you whispered into his ear he;d whisper right back but could only answer yes or no.Hundreds of people claimed he'd said more than that to them, that he'd told them their future or passed messages to their deceased loved ones but of course none of this has been proven just yet.

All we can truly prove is that the cream scene behind him is gradually rotating on some unseen mechanism. Nobody knows what the original scene was but it's become more surreal as time passes. Early photos show a farm with a dozen or so people gathering crops from the fields (suspected to be barley but the image isn't detailed enough to be certain).

Now the dream behind the Sleeper looks something like the town but the people that are carved there have gradually changed from human to something more apelike to elongated, hunchback creatures who dwarf the town hall (carved in enough perfect detail to show the Sleeper on its side). With every passing day they change a little, bigger teeth and eyes, claws curving, straightening and sometimes vanishing.

Nobody noticed the tiny clock, carefully hidden between the marble pillow and headboard that read 2018.