Day 708

On the outskirts of the wood, far past the church's fence stands a mausoleum surrounded by tall, thin trees. They leave no room for anyone to possibly squeeze past and onto the iron grate that loosely covers the staircase that leads down to the unknown families' final place of rest.

Stories have gone about that it used to belong to a rich family that fell into poverty and disgrace, using their final ekes of wealth to have themselves buried in an unmarked grave stubbornly outside of, and painfully close to, the church's consecrated grounds. It's uncertain as to whether the family died of natural causes over the course of time or whether they died all at once (by their own hands or fate).

A slight twist on the story says there was one rich man who lost his mind and ended up having his fortune gradually "donated" to the church by the Vicar. The old man even wrote the Vicar into his will on the conditions that he be buried in a mausoleum of his own design or the remains of his fortune would be spread out among the town. Of course the townsfolk weren't explicitly told this and so the Vicar built the old man's tomb and made sure it was outside of the church grounds, burying the old man's will with his corpse and planting trees around it to prevent anyone from discovering that they could have all been rich.

A completely different rumour says the mausoleum belonged to the last members of a local coven of witches whose last spells caused the trees to grow around their graves to protect their bodies from the superstitious locals who would have dug them up and burned their remains to remove whatever natural misfortunes had happened just in case they were cursed.

Some people go so far as to say that the tomb is a cover for a secret smuggling operation who stash their bounty inside of the coffins. As for what's being smuggled, well it varies from story to story. It's been drugs, exotic animals, Nazi gold and even human corpses from deals gone wrong.

Whichever one of these turns out to be true, two things remain certain. Firstly that there is a concrete staircase leading to the mausoleum of an unknown person (or persons) covered by a thick iron grate and surrounded by tall trees that make it impossible for anyone to enter. Secondly that there is the constant odour of decay coming from the stairs, carried up the stairs by gusts of stale air.