Day 698

The only way you'd know that the narrow, overgrown alley was the only path to the oldest part of the city was by the small signpost at the edge of the street.

OLD HEATH

It declares and nothing more. Plenty of people seem to use it, all ages and types. The only time I've ever seen people come out in anything out of the ordinary is for the mediaeval festival and oyster fayre every year. Their costumes are period perfect according to the online searches I've done.

They even talk to each other in 10th Century English from the snippets I recorded when walking behind them last year. Had them analysed by the local linguist department at the university who assure me that they're speaking what seems to be an unknown variant of the broadly known English, a local dialect perhaps.

I've never been down that alley myself but I've been browsing through a forum for and by people who've accidentally or purposefully gone down there and what they've found. After passing through the nettles, tall grass, bramble and other assorted difficult plants they often find themselves in one of five places, each quite different and not always possible.

The first is a wide open field, the kind with sparse trees on the distant horizon and not a cloud in sight out on the painfully blue sky. The temperature never changes compared to the other end of the alley. If it's hot outside then it's hot in the field, if it rains there then it rains on the field (somehow without clouds) and if it's painfully cold outside then it's painfully cold on the field.

One user called "WalksForDays" claimed to have walked to the horizon and found himself facing a small cluster of trees with the same alley he'd talked down now right in front of him. He said that when he turned around he was back to facing the same view he'd first seen.

The second place is a beach with a grey ocean that blends seamlessly with the grey sky and rolling mist that smothers the entire beach in a matter of seconds. Thick black limbs seem to contort and move about bloated bodies, always inches away from whoever finds themself there. Sometimes the mist rolls back before the wanderer backs frantically through the alley and onto the street at the other end.

They may find themselves looking at twelve sand-worn and dilapidated beach huts, according to username "IFishForFishingRods". She even went so far as to peer into a couple (after finding them all locked tightly with rusted chains). There were people inside who looked more like grey sheets draped over skeletons. Only one responded to her when she asked who they were and even then all they said was "Looks like t'mist is a'comin' o'er agin. Better run along now Missy." in a thick Northern accent. Sure enough it was, only this time it was screaming and the bloated bodies were running before the fog.

The third place is a town, specifically it's the local town centre but not at the current date. Horses and carriages romp along the cobbled roads while folks in top hats and bustled dresses walk sedately along the paths, unaware of the alley and whoever walks out of it.

Username "PloughboyGrant231" claims that the people aren't real and you can literally go straight through them but you can't with the buildings. He went into the town hall, now somehow opposite the alley, and marched right into the Mayor's chambers where they were holding a meeting of some sort. While he didn't hear much of what they said he recognised a photo on the table of the alley he'd just gone through, taken from the modern side he was from. He was standing in the corner of the photo, utterly unaware of the photographer.

The fourth place is an abandoned farmstead, an old one at that. The alley somehow leads to the inside of one of the stalls in the barn. Horse bones are all that remain in the others and by searching through the rest of the buildings they are the only remains about. The air carries a faint scent of burning wood though the source is undetectable.

All this according to the user "MyOtherAccountIsAPuddle" who brought their bike with them, thinking it was a nature trail and finding themself far from home. From the farm to the church nearby and even to a lake with a castle partially submerged castle with nothing living to be found anywhere. Not even birds or insects, just a faint breeze and the sound of the lake gently rippling. When they returned to the barn they found the horse skeletons gone and all the stable doors broken off with hoofprints leading through the door they'd come from.

The fifth and final place recorded so far is said to somehow exist in our current time and in our current country, deep beneath the murky waters of Loch Ness. It's some kind of research base but none of the writing is in English and while it's been shared on the website (user-to-user with strict promises that it never be shown to anyone outside of the site and especially not to anyone with an academic background) no translation exist yet.

"DueDue8" is one of the few people who has only encountered this place when going through the alley and claims She's seen some kind of eight-finned whale swimming around the small structure that's frankly more of a pod than a research base but with very complicated scientific equipment  and computers. She claims the whale's calls sound like human speech. Like it keeps saying to her "I can hear you" in its distorted, languidly drawn out moans. She hasn't been active since she posted that she'd record it on her next visit, almost three years ago.