Day 689

The gate had been left open for as long as anyone could remember but nobody had ever been seen coming or going. Most people didn't really know where it went, they figured it was the underground delivery access for the Hight Street shops or it was some old bunker or subway system that got shut down because not enough people used it (which is surprisingly common for London, but not on this occasion).

It was this iron wrought gate, partially boarded up and set into the overgrown concrete and plant disorder down some alley or other. One of those liminal spaces where people come and go but never stick around. A space that exists only as an in-between point for more important areas.

What people don't know is that London has a vast citadel underground. Accessible from only a handful of places such as three specific tube stations at 11:35, 17:00 and 22:53 exactly as well as a dozen or so gates, like the aforementioned. In the Underground, at the set times a secondary set of stairs will appear leading up and straight into the vast brick chambers that once held a reservoir that kept Northern London watered.

From the iron wrought gate you would head along a tunnel, popping out at the other end seemingly at night, no matter the time of day when you entered. After your eyes adjusted you'd find yourself somehow in a cave surrounded by plastic sheets draped over rock to mimic London's mundane yet familiar streets. Heading further in you find the path suddenly drops by three feet, causing you to fall straight over and onto a pile of sharp things that crunch and snap as you move.

Whatever light you brought with you is in a corner now, facing yet another fake building whose windows show your reflection, muted through the thick cloth. What little light it gives off is enough for you to vaguely make out what you landed on and enough to make you wish you hadn't seen anything.

The bones are too small to be human yet there are countless tiny skulls dotted about, some still attached to their spines by the thinnest of decomposed muscle. Half crawling, half scuttling you make your way over to your little light, shining it all about the floor and confirming that the bones coat every inch of this new street as far as your eyes can tell.

Would morbid curiosity drive you further forward, deeper into the parts of London that haven't seen daylight since before the Great Fire of 1666? Would you follow the paths where the bones grow larger or head towards the sounds of distant conversation?

Or would you try to turn back, working your way through the old paths to the gate and back out onto the surface of London like this had never happened? Would you barricade the gate or return with company? Would anyone believe any of this or would it all just blend into London's past once more?