Day 1,027

Every time the theatre runs Giselle they find themselves dreading Act II and the arrival of the Wilis with Queen Myrtha leading them on in droves that only grow with every showing. It began with just one extra dancer who threw off the human ballerinas - the ones who had spent months training for this show only to find the actual actress playing Queen Myrtha dead and something phantom in her place.

Though the original show ran under a different name back in the early 1830's, the story behind it is centuries older still and the women whose souls were wracked with the agony their lover's betrayal go back even further than can be measured.

Giselle has always been their story and every theatre their reenactment.

Day 1,026

It washed ashore and we called it dead, tentatively called it a whale and waited for it to decompose some more before we could properly dissect it. Nobody thought about the thirty-or-so meters of it that floated in the sea, constantly being washed to pieces and torn at by scavengers. Nobody thought about the consequences of something unknown gradually dissolving into their food supply.

It was almost eight months before we began to see the effects of this and well over two years before we connected the all the dots, all the strange deaths and unusual symptoms back to what we assumed was a rotting whale. The fact that it was an unidentified species wasn't released until almost three hundred and fifty people had died from the exact same condition.

Officially they called it Bream Fever, from the alleged origins in the Black Bream of the Essex coastlines. Unofficially, the bodies of everyone who had died from Bream Fever were being kept away from the public, their stomach lining and blood tested for any material matching the unknown dead leviathanic corpse.

Unofficially matches were found in the form of polyps that almost seemed to resemble eggs.

Day 1,025

It was a city for everyone, built by everyone and filled with people from all walks of life. There were no districts or boroughs, just an amalgamation of people living and working for the betterment of the city and those inside it.

It was a city for everyone, though the native population was less than a thousand. All the rest were travellers of some kind or another just looking around or waiting out whatever bad weather made it past the Köppen Shield (allegedly 98% atmospheric moisture proof, more like mostly-snow-proof-sometimes).

In spite of all the cracks in the infrastructure, the constant let-down in the tech that was meant to make life perfect, or as close to as possible, it was still considered one of the great Safe Havens against the dramatic weather shifts and the mass exodus of all nearby life that followed such patterns.

Meg was one of hundreds of bio-engineers that the city employed to hunt the lower levels and shield limits for nesting animals, with orders to kill whatever they found and bring the bodies back to be recycled into fuel for the city. It made her think of her home as some gigantic slumbering leviathan, sustained by its own parasites feeding their weak to the behemoth they thrived on.

After eight years on the job she still took no pride in it, despite the latest campaign to make them all feel better about being glorified mice catchers, among many other, friendlier creatures. Fatima down in Sub-Sector 84.6 claimed she'd found a crocodile living in one of the thermal pools last week. Turned out to be a rather large water monitor but still, it had been a hard kill and Meg was just glad it hadn't been her.

In spite of all her complaints she still did her job as best as she could, unlike the rumoured few who smuggled these animals deep into the city instead, selling them in pet shops and creating burdens, resource wastage and countless bio-hazards where fuel should be instead.

Though the penalty was three weeks exile to the camps outside the city walls, a harsh sentence that unsurprisingly few could survive, the rules were still broken and humans remained empathetic to the point where they'd rather risk the collapse of a Haven than shoot a few birds down.

Lately Meg's job seemed to be more about persuading her colleagues to do their damned job rather than doing it herself. Still there were some who were just too stubborn to see the greater picture, the shortage of food and medicine that plagued any settlement outside of a Haven, a reduction in the population, the decay of the multi-tiered travel rails all ending in the collapse of global travel and the isolation of all Safe Havens.

Millions would be stranded and left to rot while others would be trapped in their dwindling supplies, gradually outnumbered by predator species bred to survive the harsh outer world. All for a sense of empathy that some people held too strongly to in the face of everything around them.

Meg fixed what she could, talked people into the greater picture wherever she could.

The rest were good as bio-fuel, as far as she was concerned at least.

So long as the city ran, nobody asked about missing persons.

Day 1,024

I was never supposed to talk to Mrs McGlynnis next door because she kept garden snakes in a bin and never washed her hands - at least that's what my parents told me. As a bored child often does, I ignored what they said and used the ivy to climb over into her garden to see if anything they'd said about her was true.

Before I could get a single finger on the metal cover I'd been caught by an old woman who looked a lot cleaner than my parents had led me to believe. In fact at first she was nothing like they'd said she'd be. I'd spend whatever time I could in her garden, whenever the weather was agreeable and my parents weren't paying attention.

Most of my fondest childhood memories are of her garden which only makes it worse that she named me as the sole benefactor in her will all these years later. Not once had I set foot in her house until I found her half collapsed by her open back door. She was stone-cold dead, blood congealing in a pool around a large cut on her head where she must have hit it on her way down.

Every time I've had to go into her house it's just been one bad thing after another and not just from the sheer amount of garbage she'd accumulated over the years but for all the animal corpses that had steadily been unearthed as volunteers from the neighbourhood helped me clear out Mrs McGlynnis' home.

We found thirty-eight cats, nineteen dogs and far too many kittens and puppies to begin counting or even differentiating - when they're that small and deformed they all look alike. After all those poor creatures we thought we'd seen the worst and last of it.

Then we found her nursery.

Day 1,023

Ever since they got the old church bell repaired, folks ain't been quite the same. It's been almost three hundred and fifty years since it last rang and they only got 'round to repairing it last month. They were using some old drawing as their basis, pulling in inspiration from the older churches of the region and not straying an inch past the county borders.

We should have suspected something from the suddenness of it all but we all got so swept up in the thrill of finally hearing our dear old church sing like it hadn't in over three hundred years that none of us cared for explanations. I can't even name one person who wasn't involved in some part of resurrecting the bell somewhere along the line- even I did my fair share by helping weave the rope that would cast out its call.

Now when it strikes noon every Sunday we are all helpless against it, all pulled to the church to stand among the graves and in the fields just swaying with the wind. None of us will talk about it afterwards, all rushing away fast as we can to our homes, to our doors we swore we locked and to the chains we broke through in our haste to get to the church once more.

Day 1,022

You order at the bar, you sit down and you slowly sip through your drink until you've passed a reasonable enough amount of time and then you order again. Those are the rules and that's how it goes every other night at the Rusted Wren.

The only other thing you have to remember, which becomes increasingly harder to remember as the night progresses, is to never look out through the windows. No matter the sounds you might hear or however many fists pummel at the glass you mustn't turn around.

Of course this rule is regularly broken, around once a month or so, by someone who partakes in just enough that their grasp on the rules loosens and they forget about the stories of the things on the other side of the glass.

Nobody seems to be able to make up their minds as to what is actually outside the Wren at night. Some reckon it's the lingering dead from all the nights prior, just waiting to grab someone else to join them while others have allegedly caught glimpses of fingers gnarled as oak branches and thrice the length of a normal man's arm.

No matter what everyone reckons there's always one certainty - the things outside are perfectly capable of getting inside.

The fact that they wait outside is their personal preference.

Day 1,021

Grandma always told me to never look directly at the Good Neighbours, never eat their food and most importantly never make a deal with them that you wouldn't make with a human. Now that I've broken all three of these I can say with certainty that she'd done the same.

I may not know what bargain she made but I know we dealt with the same Gentleman. The one with eyes as lumpy and misshapen as blackcurrants and a gap in his front teeth that makes his every breath a flute-like whistle that signals his approach. He remembered Grandma fondly, said she drove a hard bargain and he expected as much from me some day.

Ever since I was a child he'd pay the odd visit when nobody else was around, offering me cherries from his coat pockets which I used to refuse before I made a deal with him. The more he visited, the more I began to see other Good Neighbours, mostly lurking around the edges of the woods and occasionally gathering at certain gravestones in the church cemetery.

Old Blackcurrant Eyes casually mentioned that he remembered everyone he'd ever made a deal with, which apparently included thirty-six from my family dating back hundreds of years. He sounded so fond that I never even suspected that this was all an elaborate way for him to ensure the tradition continued.

By the time I made my bargain I'd spent over three years researching every single detail, going over and over and over it in case anything in the wording could lead to some unfortunate consequence. I barely gave half a thought as to who or what Old Blackcurrant Eyes would want in return.

Day 1,020

Moths blended in with the crumbling wallpaper, fluttering their wings anxiously in the breeze that swept through the broken windows. The faint light coming from under the study door was new to them. Their generation had been born in the house that they had thought to be empty, just as the countless generations before them.

Now there was an unnatural light in their darkness and iron in the air that made them cease their usual nightly activities and wait, scarcely moving, hardly daring to breathe, waiting as the unrelenting vibrations coming from the study increased, the creature inside coming closer to the door.

They didn't know what the vibrations meant, if there was something inside making noise or moving about - it all felt the same to them. All they could do was remain silent and still in the hopes that whatever had found its way inside their home would either grow tired and leave or perish inside that room so they would never have to face it.

As the handle to the study jerked violently, most of them scattered in a light storm of fluttering whispers as they fled to much darker rooms, much better hiding places. Very few remained - either too curious or too scared to make a move as the creature inside stopped trying to open the door nicely, choosing instead to hold the handle down and ram its full body into the door again and again and again until the wood began to splinter and give way, age having rotted it to the core.

The moths that stayed behind met the wooden debris in a short but violent impact that left them as little more than yellowish stains and crumpled wing fragments that the creature, now free, ignored as it set about exploring the rest of its new home, intent on making itself the sole occupant.

Day 1,019

The sixth century texts called it Séipéal an Nádúir, claiming it to be the birthplace of no less than three Saints whose miracles all related to plant growth and causing all manner of trees to bear fruit in winter. Though it was officially just another Irish legend, it did in fact exist and all three saints were at rest deep beneath it.

A team of hikers found it accidentally while waiting out a storm at a cave that turned out to be its entrance. They discovered the writing first, following the lines of text to the remains of an old wooden door and beyond it the very tips of a grand cathedral's spires, the rest sitting far below them in a pit that was later confirmed to have been man-made.

Every inch of the building was covered in thick moss, all being fed from a single underground waterfall that gently misted it at all times. There was a great deal of confusion about why the texts had only hinted at the existence of Séipéal an Nádúir until the three alleged Saints were found inside.

The moss was an aggressive sort, the only one of its kind and confined within the cave by its need for constant dampness, the rest of the cave system being mostly basalt with drainage holes drilled in several key locations to maintain its dryness.

When in its preferred conditions the moss will quickly cling to anything  - organic or otherwise - in order to spread. It absorbed whatever it could take as moisture, be it water, sweat or blood, as the hiking group soon found out.

The human remains inside were almost frozen in the moss, contorted and in the process of running away. Their arms were outstretched for help that either never came or chose to abandon them in favour of their own survival, choosing to remember the three in legend and pretend they caused the moss to grow upon themselves as an act of faith rather than nature doing its best to survive.

The hikers were lucky enough to only lose one person to the moss - a fool who decided to pat the moss and test how springy it was, only to find their hand stuck fast and utterly numb. As the numbness spread, so too did a faint green tinge to their skin and a series of bumps beneath their skin that writhed and burst through as the moss travelled throughout the poor bastard's body.

His companions fled, taking photos as they went and praying there was no moss on their skin but not checking the soles of their boots until they were a mile or so away, glancing back to see their footprints clearly outlined in the muddy ground, in the same lush moss that had by that point totally consumed their friend and was now working its was across the countryside.

Day 1,018

Working nights shifts in a laundromat can be... interesting. The owner, Wanda, hired me because I had "a face that won't cause trouble and hands that know how to beat an unruly machine" which is as close to a compliment as she'll ever give you. She's one of the many oddities you get around this part of town and the only one I'd want to meet in a dark alley.

I get the regulars in just fine, rarely any hassle from them and they mostly keep to themselves once they've got their washing set to spin. Mostly we just get students who've spent too much time studying and left their washing for a couple of months. Coincidentally the current record holder for "most machines used at once" is in med school.

Then there's the irregulars, as I call them, the people who flit in and out of society like moths to a lightbulb. They're never quite with it and never quite human, at least as far as I can tell. They don't mean any harm, generally they're just here to wash their belongings same as anyone else but that doesn't stop them from causing little nuisances when they think they can get away with it.

Just last night I had somebody try to pay me in teeth, like actual human teeth with the gums still on the ends. It's certainly a challenge sometimes, to look somebody in roughly the area where eyes normally go and say "I'm sorry but we only accept human money in the accepted currency of this country" and remembering to use those specific words to try and avoid being given more teeth or worse.

But that's just what Mr Jayless does. He says he forgets how money works, offers teeth and then pays when you formally refuse around three to five times. Whatever he is, he's a right annoyance when he wants to be and he bloody well knows we don't accept teeth! He's been around for hundreds of years and I reckon there was never a time when anyone traded in teeth!

But he's honestly a lesser nuisance when compared to the great big fluttery voidish shapes that go by the collective name of Caroline. They bring a basket of bloodstained hankies in, set them on a delicate cycle and then linger around outside hunting smaller critters. Lord only knows how many little carcasses I've had to sweep into binbags the moment they're out of sight. The pavement all around the laundromat is permanently pock-marked with little brown mice-shaped stains thanks to Caroline but they pay in gold so they're welcome any day.

There's only one being that Wanda's explicitly told me to never let in and that's a slug-like fellow by the name of Morgan. I like to think of him as a part time businessman, full time slug-mermaid. He literally has the lower half of a slug the personality to match. Likes to push his luck by holding the front door open and tell me how he ate the last counter girl who worked here (Wanda has yet to confirm this though).

For a laugh I put salt on the threshold my last shift and apparently it has him pretty pissed off. Wanda left me a rather long text saying as much (with some colourful language thrown in for good measure), finishing with the touching remark of "Sweep it up or buy a bodybag and climb in it."

Day 1,017

There's a toy shop on the outskirts of town run by an elderly couple out of their front room. I suppose that having a five storey bakery-turned-house has its perks, what with two underground floors, built in ovens the size of a small car and a rumoured road running down to the river. If asked, the couple will say they make and sell children's toys for fun, both living quite comfortably from a tidy retirement fund and both seemingly normal enough.

Playground stories say that there's a dollhouse for every child around on the lowest floor, the one that leads out to the riverside. It's commonly agreed that there are several key phrases you need to say before the couple give you your dollhouse, the one they made just for you that contains something vital to your life. In some stories the children say that whatever is inside will let you live forever, never ageing and never getting sick while others say that opening any of the doors will show you a possible future.

I remember when my cousin was given my dollhouse. I knew it was mine - I could feel that somehow every inch of it knew me too. It was five weeks before my cousin admitted that she knew it was meant to be mine too but she'd wanted to know if she could see my future through the doors.

There aren't words for the anger that coursed through my body, it was beyond my seven years, beyond anything I've ever felt since. How dare she try to look at my future, how dare she! I did what any child would have done, being so full of emotions too strong for me to know what else to do with.

I lashed out.

And then I hid my mistake where nobody would think to look for quite some time.

It was almost five days before they found her broken body, curled up tightly inside the dollhouse - my dollhouse.

Day 1,016

Excerpts from "Trio and Trio" - a series on the power of three


There were three things she knew for certain at that exact moment:

1. Trevor had died, not when the police claimed he had but he had died.
2. He hadn't died alone - his sister Mary had died with him.
3. They were both sitting on her car bonnet looking rather bored.

As they noticed her (or rather, Mary noticed her and elbowed Trevor so he'd look too) she felt her blood run cold. Dishevelled as they both were, the line of bullet holes matched across their chests perfectly. 

Before they began to walk over, a fourth certainty occurred to her - they wanted her help finding their killer, not knowing she was right in front of them.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

"So you're telling me that these two kids just came running at your car, right out of nowhere, and flung themselves at your vehicle in a such a way that their bodies just flew off in separate directions?"

"Yep."

"And then they not only lived, not only got up but also dragged you out of your vehicle and asked if you were okay?"

"S'bout right, yeah."

"Bloody undead, that's the third case this week!"

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

She knew it wasn't her child. She knew it wasn't a human child. She knew it would be difficult to explain this to the police but it still didn't stop her from putting the infant in a cat carrier full of rocks and tossing it off the pier.

Teething happens quickly, she'd heard, and sure her little Charlie had grown his first two teeth within seven months of him being born but to just grow three new ones overnight? And for them to be so... jagged and translucent just didn't seem right. They looked like glass jammed into his little gums.

After that he grew a new translucent tooth every night until his mouth looked like a broken beer bottle, every inch of gum taken up by these new teeth that shone so worryingly. There was no way he was the same child she'd brought home from the hospital and she didn't want to think about what he was growing into.

It was kinder this way, she would say to the police, kinder that he just drift off.

Day 1,015

When I was ten, for three months in a row I dreamt that I was with my family, walking down a sunny dust road. The grass one side was lush, dense and vibrant while the other side was consumed by a dark forest of trees that I couldn't name. I remember how unconcerned I felt as everything was swept about by a breeze I couldn't feel, too busy focusing on where we were going.

The nearest beach to me is all pebble-strewn sand and thick clumps of bladderwrack that my sibling and I used to pop at each other. In my dream we never set foot on the beach, we were always above it. All along the coast were old stone cottages, seeming far too big for any human to live in but somehow full of movement from the inside.

The dust road changed abruptly to glass panels, the beach far below us. We knew we had to watch our step carefully and keep a close eye on the time. The panels would flip every few hours or so to allow for cleaning, leaving anyone still standing on them to be tossed down to the beach below.

It didn't matter how high the tide was or what was swimming beneath the grey waves - they all went down and each had their chance to get to a stone staircase that led back up to the shore. We'd seen people fall down before, I remember their faces pressed against the glass, begging for us to help them.

Every night my dream ended with someone from my family being caught underneath the panels, screaming silently as the water around them grew bloodied. They were always dragged out of sight by long seaweed-green arms. Hundreds of them, all thin with sharp spines poking out.

These dreams stopped when my family took a trip to the beach over in Ireland. It was meant to be closed off that day but my parents insisted that it was fine, the sun was bright and the tide was on its way out. Everything seemed fine until I saw the same arms from my dreams creeping back into the water, carrying seagulls with them.

Day 1,014

A year in sensations:

The opening and closing of a freshly refurbished building, alone with only security cameras for company and the only assurance that should you somehow die, someone might witness it.


The crunch of frost underfoot as you stand in front of a winter-soaked forest whose trees only seem to get taller the longer you look at them.
Something deep inside of you knows that if you stare too long, the woods will stare back.


The smell of freshly cut grass mingling with dying leaves.
The sad sighs of the mowermen as they chain their machines up until the trees bloom again.
A small part of you wondering if spring will ever come again as the cold seeps into your bones already.


Someone singing carols at your door.
It is mid afternoon and you see no outline of a person outside, still they sing.
Soon more will come.


Waking in the early hours of the morning, drenched in sweat, head still fuzzy from sleep and watching long grey arms slither back into your closet.


The sickly stench of rotting meat coming from somewhere in a field of flowers.
Somewhere nearby.
Somewhere drawing so close by that you gag, unwillingly giving away your position.

Day 1,013

We thought there was a marathon at first, some Halloween themed special that we'd not heard about. I mean, from the cable car they looked like costumes and those running for their lives were all heading in the same direction. How could we have known until we landed the other side of the Thames?

It was all so surreal. None of us had gotten any calls or texts from our family or had any breaking news appear on their timelines - there hadn't been the time for everyone in the ground. When we landed we were met by bloodstained walls, the floor slick-red with the tattered remains of tourists and staff alike scattered about like leftover dog food.

Our first thought was to head back into the cable car, it was a vulnerable position but it still seemed safer than the rest of London. We never even considered how long we could survive, only planning how we could stop the car just far out enough that it would be impossible to reach us, how we could conceal ourselves in case there was anything left alive and how we could break the controls on both sides to keep us away from it all until help could come.

It's been eight days.

Eight long days of hiding under our coats, sipping away at the last dregs in our water bottles and flinching when the car sways in the wind. At night we pick someone to peer out and check for signs of survivors, the police - anything that could save us but we've not seen or heard anything human.

I was the last to check and I told the others there was nothing as usual. How do I tell them that the river was full of bobbing heads all staring up at us and the wires all around us were writhing with countless creatures heading right for us? The next check is a few ours away and I hope they know how to get us out of here.

It's only a matter of time before they realise that it isn't the wind.

It's whatever's left testing for weaknesses, figuring out how to open the doors.

The only upside I can see is that my phone is waterproof so some record of this might survive somewhere.

The door just creaked and opened a fraction so I guess time's up.

Day 1,012

Pa always used to tell me that if I wanted to get the family anywhere on time I'd have to tell Grandad Dave a month in advance. This time, even though the town had been officially informed every day for five months,we were still running three hours behind because Grandad Dave had accidentally locked himself in the hen-house and couldn't remember where he'd left his keys.

By the time we made it out to the fields, there were almost eighty folk armed with the brightest kerosene lanterns they could get their hands on and as many spare parts as their clothes could hold. Nobody wanted to find out what was coming to town but according to the mayor, from a distance our lights could pass for fireflies and we'd all be spared.

That was the plan at least.

Survivors from the neighbouring towns had sent their warnings as far and wide as they could - there's out there in the night, fears the light and doesn't give you the chance to fight before it's snatched your breath clean away and left you to fall cold-dead to the floor.

So out the the fields we went, hoping that it wouldn't know, spreading rumours of our town's vibrant fireflies and hoping we could last until it moved on. If it moved on. With the death toll it had been gathering over the region it never had much reason to stay, not when it culled in one night.

We hoped to be different, hoped that somehow by some dumb cosmic chance we could be the exception. Still, hours after the sunset and after several harsh shrieks from the village's direction had been violently cut off, I began to see the lanterns around me snuff out one by one.

I heard my ma's faint cries among the dwindling lights, "You mustn't fall asleep, Johnny-boy. Y'hear me? Keep awake now!" but I knew it wasn't really her. All my life she's been the first to fall asleep anywhere and everywhere at the drop of a hat (something about her being ex-army, used to sleeping out rough and all that) so to hear her awake at this time of night just weren't right.

The dark draws in.

Ma calls for me but she doesn't seem to remember which light is mine.

Oh, how my eyes ache and beg for sleep.