Day 1,974

I thought the mannequins in the skip round the back of the art department were just covered in paint or something - art students are strange and we've all learnt not to question them. I thought they were being moved about in there by people chucking more rubbish in or some art student had turned it into a project.

I thought this until one of the mannequins spoke.

"Please," it said through unmoving plastic lips, "Please don't leave us here. We'll die."

If I was smarter than I was kind, I would have left them to die and not lost a wink of sleep. Instead I found myself grabbing their trembling limbs and piling them into the back of my truck after everyone else had left. By the end of it we were all covered in blood and too exhausted to speak.

I took them to the old storage room I kept my late mother's old furniture in and, with much muffled swearing and far more blood than I thought any living thing could hold, I assembled them all and bandaged them with torn-up cushions and decorative blankets.

They were gone by morning, leaving little more than bloodied footprints and the desiccated corpses of staff who were unlucky enough to have gotten in their way. I called the police and never said a word about the mannequins - they wouldn't have believed me at that point.

They had to see it for themselves and they did... when those monsters went back to the art department.

Day 1,973

The initial blast tore us all apart and would have killed us if the med-droids hadn't been sent in. They tried to put us all back together again but we weren't much more than melted flesh and stray neurons begging for a death they weren't programmed to give.

So they fulfilled their purpose - they made whole humans out of whatever they could and now we're alive but we aren't ourselves. We're bits and pieces of everyone else and maybe there's enough of us in some of the bodies to seem like the reconstructed face is that same someone but we all know that's not true.

My face and a fair bit of my body look like Eve Walker but my mind is fragmented by Lillian and Morgan and Saif and Orla and their bodies and minds are just like mine. We all know we should have died and we all want to just be one person again.

So we're going to fix this. We're going to set off another blast - somewhere remote enough that we'll be long gone by the time any med-droid is even vaguely nearby and somewhere where nobody else could possibly get hurt. We just need to get everyone to agree.

There are a couple of bodies who claim they're feeling fine and that their minds aren't even slightly fragmented but the rest of us know that they are lying. We know because we can hear them in our heads just like they can hear us.

They aren't whole and they will be torn apart with us.

We'll be whole in death.

They'll see.

Day 1,972

The thing about new houses around here is that they're often built on top of older ones. It's not entirely uncommon to find loose floorboards leading to the remnants of an old attic and the three storey house beneath. Usually the builders leave this feature to give the occupants additional storage but sometime they just don't get the chance to seal everything below away.

Ever since they built the new estate out by Old Nursery Road, we've lost more builders than ever - almost one a week and there's still three years to go before they're expected to be finished. A cousin of mine toured one of the completed houses, posing as a potential buyer rather than a concerned relative wondering where her uncle had gone.

She told us everything seemed perfectly normal but, as we predicted, there was a small trapdoor in the corner of the kitchen that she knew would lead to another house. She managed to sneak onto the site a few hours after the last shift had gone, heading straight to that house once more.

The front door was unlocked, which should have tipped her off but she just wanted to check out the lower house and see if our uncle was there or if there was any trace of him at all. She came to the kitchen just in time to see the trapdoor slowly opening and something with enormous amber eyes on glistening black stalks peering out.

As she frantically tiptoed her way back outside she heard our uncle's voice calling to her from the direction of the kitchen. He asked her to come back with more relatives so that we could all go down to "The Old Town" and "come home for good".

She went missing a few days after she told us all this, leaving us a note asking us to follow her home.

Day 1,971

She may have been only five but she knew that clouds shouldn't be able to move like that. Like the octopus she saw in the aquarium last week, all wriggly and boneless with strange eyes that seemed to follow her around the room, no matter who she hid behind.

Now the cloud's eyes were following her as she ran inside to tell her mum who, of course, said she had a very active imagination. Only she didn't say it like she usually did. She was using the weird voice she used at Granpa's funeral when her eyes went all red and her face went all pale.

Dad wasn't saying anything, he was busy hammering nails into the windows to keep them shut while her older sister bolted the door behind her. Nobody was smiling like they were that morning. Mum didn't even try to hide her tears, she just let them fall.

In the background the TV mentioned the end of the world - the devouring sky had come for them.

Day 1,970

They say if you drop a pebble into the sea the ripples will reach every corner of the world, given enough time. I'd remember this saying every time we fed another dozen hogs to the horde of husks we'd trapped in the old quarry near our farm.

That's what my family's done for centuries, you know. When the first hordes were rounded up we were the first to offer our farm and our livestock to satiate their eternal hunger. Took us all of a month before we realised that there weren't enough hogs in the world to keep them happy but there were enough opiods to slow them down.

So that's how we operated. Drug the hogs and lower them down enough that the drop to the bottom wouldn't fully kill them (the husks don't eat unless their prey is terrified and running, or at least trying to run) and wait for the droning wails of the somewhat-satisfied-mostly-reanimated.

Nobody's seen a husk up close since some dumbass "explorer" decided to take a trip down one of the abandoned mines and found an open tunnel leading straight to them. Luckily for the rest of the county his lifetracker sent out an alert and the investigative authorities sealed off the tunnel before anything could escape.

Three weeks later his phone uploads a video of him sitting in a circle with about fifty husks. There's no sound but their mouths are all moving like they're talking. Nobody's been able to make any words out so we reckon they're just mimicking whatever the dumbass is doing and pretending they're still human.

Sometimes I get out my binoculars and try to spot him among all the husks but I ain't seen him yet.

Doesn't mean he's not down there somewhere - Lord knows those things love hiding in the dark.

Day 1,969

Our town is technically two villages separated by a river but ever since the put a bridge down and hyphenated the names we were officially merged, much to our dismay. They only made things worse when they added new infrastructure right along the river's edge - a place we'd deliberately and successfully avoided building by for a multitude of damned good reasons.

Of course every excuse we thought of was overruled by logic or profit or just plain ignorance until we had houses, shops and schools all along its banks. They even put a damned hospital right by the cascades like it wasn't ever going to be an issue.

It's been almost three years to the day since the hospital opened and it already has the highest mortality rate in the county. Nobody but us locals has put two-and-two together and realised that the river is taking its dues at an unprecedented rate.

The cascades used to be a site for sacrifice back in the old days (and far more recently than we'd care to admit). Those little stone steps have seen more blood than half the battlegrounds in the country and now the deaths may be bloodless but their souls are heading downstream regardless.

Places like this have a pull - spill enough blood anywhere and sooner or later you'll get the same effect. Death draws death and what better place for it than a hospital with a thriving terminal ward. If I didn't know any better I'd say it was deliberately done.

It would certainly explain how the town is flourishing when everywhere around us is falling apart.

Day 1,968

No matter where she went to sleep or how many padlocks and chains she used, she always woke up in front of the elevator just as its doors opened and her poor father came hurtling down the empty shaft. Their eyes would meet and she would hurl herself forwards to grab his hand and there was always someone just behind her who would pull her back to safety and let him die again.


The first time it happened she'd been yanked back by something wearing the uniform for the hotel they'd been staying in. It could have been human once but now it was something else that wore about eight humanish skins on top of each other, all sagging in different directions and as tattered as ten year old socks.

At least he was kind enough to apologise for grabbing her.


The next time it happened she was gently pulled away by what she could only describe as five gigantic sets of jaws with something long and skinny behind them. They were like a gulper eel made of cheap rubbish sacks and filled with a multitude of unmentionable squirmy things.

They gave her a blanket for her trembling shoulders and sat with her til the police came.


The twenty-fifth and final time it happened she almost made it - her fingers brushed against her father's and she was almost falling down herself but a white mist shot out of his mouth and pushed her back into the hallway. It smelled just like his favourite tobacco and the kedgeree he made every Burn's Night.

The mist seemed to smile at her as it gradually sank down to meet its body.


The next day she woke up back home - alone and knowing she had to back to the hotel.

Day 1,967

Something opened a window and peered into our world. It was a chaotic mess of eyes, teeth and fingers that seemed to be stuck in a never ending cycle of forming and dissolving. There were colours we could barely comprehend and yet the sun still shone through countless tiny gaps between the aberrations that dominated the sky.

As suddenly as it had appeared, it pulled back with such a force that the earth was knocked from its axis and sent spiralling towards Mars. We should have all died the second we left orbit but the aberration was still there in the distance, using its unfathomable mass to steer us until the two planets met with less force than it takes to move a feather.

Our oceans spilled onto the new world, our atmospheres merged and we're somehow still alive. The aberration is alive too and lingering somewhere around our former orbit like a cat that's pushed a vase off the windowsill to get to that perfect patch of sunlight.

It's grown too, much to our dismay, and now we're left wondering when it will need more space.

Day 1,966

I can't remember the last time I was warm.

I can't remember the last time I spoke to a living person.

I can't even remember how I died but I can't leave this damned pier until I do.


All I've heard for the past twelve years is the inane mundane chatter of thousands of tourists and the group of loyal friends who come here to drink to my death once a year. I kept screaming at them that I'm still here and begging them to talk about how I died but they never did.

In hindsight it should have been more obvious but death makes your mind slip away more and more each year and I'd do anything to stop myself from becoming like others I see floating around with fishing gear wrapped around their necks and cinder blocks tied to their feet.

So I did it. I waited until my friends were good and drunk late at night - they always snuck back after everything had closed so they could sit right on the fishing planks and throw empty bottles to the sea like it might bring me back.

Instead it brought them to me.

Well, one of them "fell" in after he saw a familiar figure running towards him.

Now he's with me and when he remembers how I died I'll tell him how I killed him and we'll both be free.

Day 1,965

There've been rumours of a secret room in the aquarium for as long as I can remember and if I hadn't seen them moving the creature into its new home, I wouldn't have known that everyone needed to evacuate. Me and my friends saved the lives of an entire town and none of them will ever know.

They probably won't find my body either. I had to use it to distract the creature long enough for my friends to trigger the flood sirens and mess with the phone lines so everyone wouldn't know what else to do but leave for the closest point of safety.

It would have learnt to walk sooner or later and we crippled it before it had the chance. Seemed a safer thing to do than let it rampage through the town, eating anything that moved right. By the time we'd broken into the aquarium most of the staff were already dead and its fins were starting to look like fingers.

Thank fuck it still had gills and thank fuck I managed to crack the glass when I jumped into the tank so that when it swung around to bite me, its tail collided with enough force to smash straight through it. I don't remember much from the next few minutes, aside from the pain and the screams of my friends who were crushed by the falling glass.

Doesn't matter that they'll never know what we did or that we'll never be found.

Doesn't matter that our souls are all stuck in the same room as the creature for all eternity.

The aquarium will get shut down sooner or later and when it all falls to ruin we'll all leave.

Until then we're left waiting in a locked room full of rotting meat, broken glass and stagnant water.

Day 1,964

Kill the vermin and plug the holes.

The job should have been that simple but somewhere between basic pest control and heading back home he went wrong and was facing a swarm of undead, partially-crushed rodents instead of sitting down with a microwaveable bowl of pasta.

It wouldn't have been so bad if the damned things learnt how to die and stay dead instead of how to use their very-alive-heavily-bleeding corpses to clog all the traps. They even got to the power sockets and short-circuited the lights, forcing him to use his feeble head-torch and throwing him into a maelstrom of wet bundles of fur that seemed to be covered in claws and teeth.

By the time he was found, five hours into his next shift, all that was left of him were heavily gnawed bones.

Day 1,963

"They've forgotten about you, ya know." the little voice chimed in from just behind her left ear. It fed better when she was on the verge of crying so these past few weeks had been an absolute feast for it as she struggled to understand why she'd been left behind and where everyone else had gone.

She'd already tried their former meet-up points and all the nooks and crannies where they hid their messages but all she found was dust and scraps of cloth she hoped were covered in rust. At one point she found a small tin box full of nail clippings which gave her as much hope as it did disgust.

Still the little voice continued to chip away at her like so many ex-boyfriends had tried and failed to do. Most of the time she was too busy avoiding the carrion collectors to notice that it kept telling her to jump in front of the blades and join all the others in death.

But then it picked up on her fear of being the last human standing and it had been digging into that like it was its last meal. And maybe it was. Maybe she'd finally find where everyone had gone to and she'd be rid of the nasty little voice for good.

Until then she spent her days fighting back tears and trying to breathe like a dog so the carrion collectors would think she was there to join in their feeding and not escape from it instead. They all seemed to have fresh blood running through their drains so at least there'd been other humans recently.

It wasn't much but it was all she had to go on.

Day 1,962

The river was gone when we woke up. A few miles upstream we found that something had dug up from deep below and now all the water drains into the chasm it left behind. All our wells are empty because of it and we have to trek all the way out to the hole whenever we need water.

To make matters worse, not everyone comes back alive or even as they left. We've got a fair few amputees now and they all say the same thing - a voice came out of the pit and said they could have al the water the needed in exchange for a small sacrifice. For those who said no a mouth leapt out and took their limb back down. We assume that the ones who don't return are the ones who said yes.

A couple of days ago we noticed how the the town centre seemed to rise and fall like it was breathing.

Yesterday another pit appeared there - freshly dug and surrounded by earth.

Today we expect it to ask us for small sacrifices and we've already drawn straws to pick an unlucky few.

Day 1,961

My old apartment was on the 103rd floor in a building that should have been torn down a good thirty odd years ago. Unfortunately the architect was a bit famous in our country so the city felt obliged to keep it up for as long as possible.

Now I didn't used to mind it, not with the dirt cheap rent and fairly decent living conditions. There was one thing that bothered me though - a rule they had for all tenants and, if broken, meant instant eviction.

All 133 floors were forbidden from looking out of the windows after 10pm for no given reason. Of course being the curious young idiot I was, I had to look and see what they were trying to hide from us.

I wish I hadn't. I really wish I had done anything else but look but I did. In fact I spent weeks preparing for it - buying blackout sheets and checking for hidden cameras and waiting for a night with a full moon. 

Yesterday was that time. Yesterday I hung the sheets up and waited for 10pm and I stared down at the city as every single light switched from white to green. Every building but ours. 

Then the shadows started to fall off the walls and pool all over the ground until there was nothing but an inky ocean as far as the eyes could see. And if that wasn't bad enough - it started to whisper. 

It knows I saw it and it told me it'd be back again tonight.

It knows everything about me and my family. 

It knows where to find them and it probably has by now. 

Day 1,960

Most people would see the gigantic empty egg and wonder what has hatched and where it had gone. She was not most people and this was far from the first empty egg she'd found during her stay in the vaguely house-shaped entity that had all but given up any pretense of being anything less than a monster.

A part of her had idly wondered if the eggs were parasites or if they, like herself, were just something else that the house has eaten. At least she was trying to escape and avoid the regular cycles of acid that would have melted her down in an instant, just like they did to Jess.

She wasn't too upset by that in all honesty - not when Jess was the one who'd tricked her into entering the damned thing in the first place. She should have expected to be pulled in too but judging by the way she screamed the whole way down, she'd assumed she'd get away with it.

The rule of survival for humans hinges on the number 3 - 3 minutes without air, 3 days without water and 3 weeks without food. Anything longer is fatal and she'd resorted to sipping whatever was flowing through the pipes/veins of the house.

So far she hadn't seen another human or anything else that was even remotely alive. Just empty eggs and piles of rusty green sludge that was probably a person once. Lucky for her, she'd become quite adept at using her keys to slice into the walls and carve a little meat cave when the acid rained down.

When she was nearing what must have been the front of the house, the walls began to bulge and form enormous red eyes that oozed and sputtered something that smelled worse than the piles of sludge formerly known as people. They watched her as she tried to peer out of windows that were more like eyelids for the rooms that stared at her.

She saw nothing outside and wondered if she was still alive

Day 1,959

He coughed, tasting iron and feeling the iron bar dig in a little deeper. "They'll be able to smell the blood by now." he thought, "I wonder if Margie's somewhere down here too. Maybe she's up there with the rest of them but hopefully she found that damn camp she was always going on about. If I'd listened to her then maybe we'd both be there."

Being there or dead somewhere far away sounded like a better fate than slowly bleeding to death being skewered by rusty rebar that he'd managed to fall onto. Just his luck as always. He'd been trying to jump to the other half of a bombed-out restaurant and ended up missing spectacularly.

Now he was starting to feel a numb coldness spreading through his body, starting at his fingers and toes and slowly taking over. In the distance he heard the all-too-familiar hoarse screeches that meant his time was almost up.

With any luck he'd pass out or bleed out before they got to him.

With any luck he'd be too dead to come back and join their ranks.

Knowing his luck though, he'd be back up again in no time.

Day 1,958

The mud chills your bare feet but the inhuman gaze of the thing wearing the farmer's skin chills you more. It's been staring at you from uppermost floor, one lone light staring out as you as you tread just beyond the borders of ts territory.

This was supposed to be a safe place. The farmer was supposed to be human and you were supposed to give him the final component for the targeted bioweapon that would wipe out the skinstealers but you were as late to saving the world as you were to work every day.

Now you were left skulking around, wondering where the little one that stole your shoes and your bag - The Bag Containing The Key To Saving The World - had scampered off to. With any luck it had just buried everything underneath a tree like they usually do.

Knowing your luck though, the thing wearing the farmer now had it and you'd have to traipse about its lair while it was asleep and hope you could figure out how to finish the weapon and use it before the damned thing woke up.

And that's if it was going to sleep at all now that it knew you were so close by and not leaving any time soon.

Day 1,957

It was the storm that people blamed for all the whales we found yesterday morning. Newscasters said those lies with all the fervour of a zealot on the brink of losing their faith. We could see it in their eyes - so desperate to believe something so utterly impossible.

Our town is over 200 miles from the nearest coast and, though the storm was strong enough to knock down trees and send roof tiles soaring away, it couldn't possibly have lifted eighteen full grown humpback whales and spread them out so neatly apart and all facing towards the old Evercliffe estate.

When things don't make sense people revert back to superstition and it took less than a day for people to look to the estate and wonder what they did to bring the whales to us and, more importantly, why. Everyone's been so busy planning to storm the estate that they've stopped keeping an eye on the whales.

Their mouths were closed when we found them.

Now they're open.

Day 1,956

They kept telling me it was a human child but I know that's not what I killed. Nothing can call itself human and have that many teeth - row upon row like a shark's mouth and a few hundred strung around its neck like tiny trophies from all the missing children in the area.

I only shot at it when I recognised one from my daughter who was spending the week with her dad up north. She'd always had this thing about putting glittery nail polish on her teeth so the tooth fairy would pay her more because they were so sparkly.

And now this creature was wearing her tooth on its necklace and I realised that I hadn't spoken to her for nearly three days. Her dad made excuses like she'd just gone to bed, she was out with her grandparents or she was too busy playing in the garden.

But I knew she'd gone missing like all those other kids and it was all his fault but I'd get the blame for being stupid enough to let him have her for a week. So I thought that if I killed the creature I'd have proof that he was the negligent one and that it had taken her too.

Instead I was surrounded by cops in less than an hour and told I was a murderer.

Worse still, no more kids are going missing and they're trying to blame me for that too.

I already killed the monster - I am a good person!

Day 1,955

Luckmore Railways would like to apologize for the continued delay.
The red signal at Lesser Skelway is still ongoing.
Thank you for your patience.

The conductor sounded as tired and exasperated as we all felt as we resigned ourselves to our third hour of being stuck in a stiflingly hot carriage on a train that was being held up by god only knew what. There's only so many times you can try to pry open a window before you realise the latch is glued on.

It took about half an hour for the metallic scent of blood to reach us but by then the train started moving and we were just relieved to be going at long last. We barely paid attention as the conductor thanked us for our patience yet again and declared Lesser Skelway to be our next stop trough barely concealed crying.

When we got to the station we were greeted with an army of official looking people and more ambulances than we'd ever seen before. Much to our dismay we were evicted from the train and questioned about what we'd seen or heard.

As we were at the rearmost carriage, we'd been spared from the utter carnage that had swarmed through the train and bathed every surface in a thick layer of blood and viscera. They weren't even using body bags - they just filled deep set trays with as much as they could and carted them off.

Day 1,954

The coal mine out by Abbotts Mosswood was one of the most profitable ones in the whole country and at its peak it ran almost 24/7, save for Sundays of course. There was always a constant flow of workers going in and an unsteady trickle of wounded coming out but that was expected for the era.

The miners were down there for such long periods of time that they eventually built a church in one of the more central chambers so they could work Sundays too. Call it cave sickness or practicality - either way the flow of workers slowed years before the coal did.

Seems that somewhere deeper than the church, deeper than they were meant to go, they found something and it followed them back up. Now any sane person in those days would have captured it or killed it but instead, the miners kept it in the church they'd made.

Eventually they just stopped coming out at all.

Day 1,953

The air around the wriggling bundle was colder than any winter morning she'd ever felt before. It almost felt like she was becoming colder just by being close to it. Whatever it was, it was heavily obscured by several filthy blankets tied together with something that might have been patterned ribbon once upon a time but was now covered in something brown and slimy.

She really didn't want to get any closer than her current position, crouched in her open doorway mere inches from the bundle that was starting to rock itself. She reckoned that if it built up enough momentum it would tip itself over and they'd come face-to-face. The idea was not appealing.

As it lay there, swaying from side to side she started to back away slowly. Without so much as a joint creaking she started to stand up, her gaze naturally scanning the path in front of her house where her eyes met with what she could only describe as mother to the bundle on her doorstep.

Mother moved faster than she could react.

Day 1,952

For as long as history's been written down, my family have studied the husks masquerading as humans. They used to be crude mud-forms that called out to us from darkened forests and now they make small talk in the break room, asking us how our weekend was.

We were never meant to interfere, our ancestors always told us to observe and note down any changes we found. Like the decade they developed the ability to wink or how they've recently learnt to convincingly laugh as if they were actual people and not hollow things.

If they have a purpose aside from becoming perfectly human, we haven't found it yet. All we know for certain is that blood sustains them better than the warm, wet earth they like to bury themselves in every night. Give them dirt and they're relatively harmless, give them human blood and they lose all pretense they'd crafted over the centuries.

Day 1,951

We called them pyre angels, it was nicer than telling tourists that there were people inside the effigies... well, they were people at one point but over time we all become a little bit Other. Soon as the change starts you might as well turn yourself in to the church and sign up to join the pyre angels before you're too far gone and blood-drunk to say goodbye.

It starts off so slow that most people don't even realise that they're not entirely human anymore, especially as we all still eat meat. The church disapproves but they can't stop us and in all honesty I'd rather eat meat and pretend I'm still human than wait for the cravings to let me know.

It's just easier to say you like your steak blue and avoid eye contact with the waiter who definitely knows you're changing and so does everyone around you and they'll all be keeping a closer eye on you over the next few weeks and gently suggest you go to church more even though it'll be your last time and...

You'll make your excuses.

You'll delay the inevitable.

You'll wake up covered in someone else's blood and walk to church as slow as you can.


Tomorrow there'll be a funeral and another pyre angel.

Day 1,950

When I was about six or seven, my friends and I would go down to the old lake and swim away the summer days. We'd spend hours floating about, eyes closed against the harsh sunlight, mocking our parents who kept telling us the water was dangerous. Graham's nanna even said the lake was cursed so naturally we turned it into a joke.

And it remained a joke right up until we dared each other to swim as far down as possible and bring back whatever we could grab. I won. My lungs felt like they were on fire for the rest of the day but I went down the deepest and grabbed a handful of white pebbles which we all shared.

When I showed them to my parents they yelled at me for disobeying. That was fair enough but then they called the police and made me hand the stones over. I was asked so many questions that I started to cry, thinking I'd done something unspeakably wrong.

Turns out I stumbled upon a mass grave which was marginally less terrifying than the thought of going to jail, at least to my seven year old self it was. They found nearly fifty bodies down there, all tied together in one big human raft.

I overheard the teachers saying it would have taken them hours to die, slowly sinking and floating as people drowned and bloated and decayed until they all went under for good. And I'd come up with a handful of teeth, well worn down from frantic attempts to chew through the coarse ropes that held them all down.

Day 1,949

The lower levels hadn't had natural rain for several decades now, too crowded in by countless upper layers - improvements authorised by a suit who'd never set foot in the city. They eagerly added level upon level upon level and pretended like the lower floors were only occupied because nobody could be bothered to move.

They didn't know who or what was in their precious city, only that money flowed in and out and not even the tax collector dared to set foot in there. It had a reputation for being in the pockets of dangerous men but, of course, no names were ever mentioned.

It was seventy three years before anyone realised the residents had all left or died long ago and that the money was all automated beyond the point of needing people to give it purpose. Wages were distributed, direct debits were paid once a month and the world assumed there were beings of flesh behind it all.

Washing once left out to dry was now little more than mould-ridden rags drenched in something that leaked from the upper levels which in turn had lines full of sunbleached scraps that might have been clothing or bedding. The same went for curtains, posters stuck to windows and countless shades of paint meant to make the place less like a slum and more like a home.

The same went for the bodies the found - waterlogged and covered in a thick layer of unnameable slime that trickled down to the lower layers while the upper ones were stripped bare and scattered by whatever winds managed to make their way through the labyrinth of passages and staircases.

There was no mention anywhere of the cause for evacuation or the cause of death for the hundreds of remains they found. All anyone knew for sure was that the uppermost layers were still occupied and the residents were not human in the slightest.

Day 1,948

There's plenty of stories about Grimpborough Manor out by Marston Shincroft, all lies of course. All but two. Two solitary creatures that refused to leave like all the others did. Whether they're trapped or whether they choose to stay remains a mystery, all we know for certain is that they like meat.

You're most likely to encounter the man in the walls, peering at you through the torn out eyes of long dead lords and ladies in paintings as old as the house itself. Nobody's ever seen him whole and lived to tell the tale. All I've ever seen are those deep dark eyes and the leathery, bloated corpse-blue skin around them.

If you make it past his little traps and his taunts and the seemingly endless and identical hallways you might reach the central courtyard where she sleeps in the pond, beneath the drowning willow tree. They say the last lord had it uprooted from the nearby lake thrown into the pond to keep her trapped.

If you stared at the sunken roots long enough you'd see her start to float towards the surface. She doesn't like being stared at, you see, and she's quick enough to have you by the neck before you can even blink. It's why we try to avoid the old courtyard to begin with.

Between her in the courtyard and him in the walls the whole place is a deathtrap. But it's also a tourist trap and makes its weight in coin every autumn. All it takes is a quick sign along the dotted line of a standard waiver and just enough evidence to say they were bankrupt and fled to another country and we're scott free.

Day 1,947

I'll never forget the day Grandad died because I helped.

I was barely seven at the time and I didn't even understand what happened that day until I was much older. If I'd have known I would never have told Grandad that there was someone waiting for him outside, I would have just locked the backdoor and begged to go to the shops with him instead.

For all I know death would have followed us there and taken a different form but I would at least have tried to delay it. I know we all have our intended time and we'll all go eventually but I just wish I could have saved him a few more minutes.

What actually happened was the arrival of a strange-looking narrowboat in the river that ran behind my grandparent's house. There was usually one or two of them a day, retired folk touring the canals or family holidays, but this one was different.

It had no name on the side and was painted a dark, rich blue that reminded me of the deepest parts of the ocean you see in documentaries. The captain wore a black fleece jacket, regular worn jeans and no shoes. That's what stood out the most - his pale bony feet.

I thought he must have been so cold and miserable but he slowed the boat to a stop and smiled at me. He asked if my Grandad was home and told me to go grab him. "He's been expecting me for a while so be a good lad and fetch him out, would ya?"

And I did just that, not realising who I'd been speaking to. Just like I didn't realise Grandad's coughing, tiredness and long hospital visits were because he had cancer. Just like I didn't realise that Grandad never really got better, he just started easing his way into a slow death and I helped him to the end point.

He wasn't surprised to see the man on the boat, he just went aboard without a peep. The captain helped him up, smiling all the while like he was reuniting with an old friend. Grandad turned and looked back at me when he'd gotten comfortable standing beside the strange man.

He told me that everything was fine, he was only going downriver to visit Granny. He said I needed to call the police, tell them he was in the livingroom and that he was gone, and wait outside. Then the unnamed narrowboat pulled away, sailing downriver until it seemed to vanish into a mist I never noticed rolling in.

Day 1,946

Crawl spaces aren't common in England, we know exactly what's underground and how much iron a house needs to keep a family safe. From the foundations to the nails holding the roof tiles in place, every inch of our homes is touched by iron and nobody would dare to do otherwise.

Still, there are places deep in the urban sprawls that forget and cut costs and crawl spaces spring up in every other building to save money and add a little extra storage or whatever excuse they come up with that inevitably culminates in unwanted guests and early deaths.

We tell stories of the fair folk being beautiful and graceful and ethereal because making them seem like they exist far away from us is easier than the truth. Easier to lie than tell our children that deep beneath their feet is a whole society of chaos, carnage and cannibalism that's inches away from consuming us too.

Every fairy circle is loosely closed door, one that only opens when there's someone behind it but opens nevertheless. I've been unfortunate enough to see it happen before - lost a good friend and an all-right teacher to a horde of multi-jointed arms that looked and smelled like fresh bone marrow.

They didn't even get the chance to scream.

Since then we put mini gyms in the playgrounds - all iron - and encourage the children to stomp on fairy rings before they have a chance to fully form. Now if only we could do something similar for all the open crawl spaces in those big city offices.

Who would bother to go and check for stray creatures when they can just clock out and call it a night? Why respond to the thing that knocks from under the floor when you can pretend you have a meeting in another room or, better yet, another building entirely?

They've made themselves quite the nest in our midst and, with technology as advanced as it is, we have more than enough ways to distract and distance ourselves from all the little inconsistencies and missing staff members that seem to plague most offices.

And we don't talk to the night staff - especially not the ones we see walking in broad daylight.

Day 1,945

Before you leave for work you make sure the radio is left on, lulling it to sleep so that you can forget it exists for a few brief moments. During your breaks you check your cameras to make sure it hasn't woken up and if it has you brace yourself for the ear-splitting screams it leaves in its wake as it hunts you down yet again.

In all your years under its watchful eyes you've never been hurt. Everyone else around your is fair game and it makes sure you know that. Makes sure you don't get too close or stray too far or start digging for information you don't need and shouldn't have.

It reminds you how lucky you are to have its protection by catching other monsters, ones that look far worse than it but were probably quite harmless. The corrugated iron roof of your shed was its preferred butcher's block, red with as much blood as rust and always swarmed by freshly hatched maggots.

Sometimes it seems like the world holds its breath and in those moments your freedom is so tantalisingly close you could practically taste it. In those moments you see your hands reaching for its neck, you see its body crumple to the ground and you see yourself running far, far away.

But the world sighs before you gather the courage to strike and you're left exactly where you were.

Day 1,944

Sometimes the sky has teeth and that's okay.

Well, not okay but something that's easier to hide from when you recognise the signs that it's coming.

Nobody wants to be outside when the sky opens its mouth and nobody wants to get close enough to figure out what it even is. Apparently it can be seen from space but none of the photos have been made public and nobody who's seen it from up there wants to tell us anything.

It only takes one person at a time which is better than it could be I guess. Doesn't make it any easier to watch, especially when they don't go quietly. Takes them a fair while to reach the teeth too, screaming, cussing and begging all the while. There's nothing the rest of us can do but watch them go.

You never see them get eaten as such, the mouth just closes, they vanish and the sky looks the same as it did before it opened up. Our graveyard is full of empty coffins and fresh headstones and we're no closer to understanding what it is than we were when it first appeared.

Day 1,943

Poor dear's been dead nearly forty now, doesn't bother us much but she still likes to be included.

He said those words so cheerfully, like he was talking about a visiting grandchild and not the semi-aware ghost of the woman who was murdered in his apartment by her own children. Apparently everyone in the building knew Henrietta and had either seen or spoken to her at some point.

I'd only been living there for three days when she decided to pay me a visit. Nothing can prepare you for the sight of a full-body apparition floating towards you and hurling insults that were far too modern for her otherwise Victorianesque attire. Now I know it was because I didn't spot her soon enough to say hello- she hates being ignored.

She'd be easier to spot if she didn't have such a penchant for hiding in the walls with only her eyes and nose poking out. She's just so easy to miss sometimes and it infuriates everyone who has the misfortune of accidentally stirring her into a rage. The long-term residents always manage to greet her before she blows a fuse but us newer lot aren't so lucky.

From what everyone else has said, most ghosts are always a hair's breadth away from going full poltergeist and Henrietta was getting awfully fond of breaking plates. I planned to move out as soon as I could, to one of those newer places where nobody's killed or been killed, but fate had other plans for me.

And when I say 'fate' mean Henrietta likes my company and has threatened to skin me if I try to move out or if I ignore her for too long or if I'm showering and I don't speak to her the second she asks me something. Honestly I'm starting to see why her children killed her.