Day 2,061

I lost count of the heads it had in general but there was one main humanish one with a dozen or so smaller heads clustered around where the neck usually is and dozens more clusters dotted its hulking body. It looked like it had been attacked recently - deep gashes bisected the clusters of heads all along its arms, blood and brains leaking out in equal measure.

 And it was stood outside our motel door, talking loud enough to wake the dead.

They didn't seem to understand that we could hear what they were saying, animatedly egging the main head on and begging it to tell us they meant no harm so we'd relax and open the door for them. We shared a glance between us and started to slowly walk backwards while the smaller heads grew angrier at the main head who hadn't stopped staring at the door or blinked this entire time.

Honestly if we'd known that this would be in the motel we wouldn't have left the main road. The receptionist had seemed so normal and nonplussed and friendly and yet this was here the whole time just waiting for us to somehow forget to lock the door. Like anyone forgets to lock a motel door when it's the only thing between them and countless strangers in the middle of nowhere.

I wish we'd closed the curtains, one of the smallest heads on the left arm is staring at us and trying to get the attention of the other heads. It's not working so far and if it keeps not working we might just be able to sneak out through the bathroom window and make a break for the car. I'd say we're all too awake to fall asleep at the wheel and we sure as hell won't sleep here.

Day 2,060

Behind the usual cramped rows of Victorian houses, modern skyscrapers loomed through dense fog. Their lights barely grazed through, their outlines more of a suggestion than a physical presence. Several people had left the small houses and were standing in the street staring up at the towering buildings that hadn't been there during the day.

As the fog lifted slightly they could see the outlines of people moving in the windows, running frantically like startled ants from a danger only they could see. Mrs Pryce from number thirty-seven was the first to notice what they were running from as she pointed out how the lights kept flicking on and off - or something large enough to take up the entire hallway was momentarily blocking the light.

Soon enough the whole street was out and staring as countless worm-like things chased and devoured the people in the skyscrapers that hadn't existed before sunset. They were so enraptured with the sight that by the time they realised the fog was gone, all the people inside were gone.

By the time realisation settled on them with a wave of ice-cold nausea, all the lights in their homes had been switched on and their doors were all wide open. A dense fog began to drift through the street, trying to drive them inside as the skyscrapers faded away, their purpose fulfilled.

Day 2,059

They've closed Mossbridge Road again, barely an hour after someone posted a photo of that large definitely-not-a-dog thing walking down there with something awfully people-shaped in its maw. It's the kind of creature you'd never describe as having a mouth, the kind you hope to never have to describe and it keeps coming back to Mossbridge.

There's three police vans on either end of the road and even more flashing blue lights down the way, probably one outside each house like they did last during month's visit - really minimised civilian casualties for once. Normally there's at least three or four body bags by morning but last time there was just the one, sadly it was a little one but at least it was only one.

Sometime during the night they'll find the not-a-dog or it'll find them and we'll never hear them scream but we'll all feel uneasy for a good while and during that while they'll be killed. There've been plenty of theories tossed around as to how and why we feel their deaths but who could ever come up with a solid explanation?

We'd sooner see the creature in broad daylight than have a rational answer for it all.

At least this means we'll be in the clear for the rest of the month.

Day 2,058

There's a certain major train station, a well-known hub of human traffic that appears to be normal as far as anyone is concerned. Around 600 trains arrive and depart every day and none of the passengers are aware of what they drive past on the way in.

Sure there's the short row of graves among the viaduct-esque structures that are swamped with cheap houses in every available inch of space but the city is already famous for its graveyards, why would anyone take the time to try and read yet more tombstones? Even if they happened to catch a glimpse of their own name carved onto stone older than their grandparents, they'd never acknowledge it.

Such is modern life.

They'd never take the time to walk to the far end of the platforms and look into the metal doors that are dotted all along there and all labelled as Staff Only whilst being so enticingly open. Even if they did they'd only see themselves across the tracks staring into an identical door which they would slam shut as their reflection began to turn around.

Nobody wants to meet their reflections eyes anymore and that's a damned shame.

The one thing they would do - will do at some point during their travels there and back - is pet the various statues of wartime children. The bronze is worn down to a perfect shine on their little hands and nametags and their eyes. Nobody touches their eyes but they shine like the sun anyway, the kind of unnerving brightness that finds it way into unsuspecting dreams.

Every touch gives a little of their bronze away, they hope it'll take them home.

Day 2,057

It collapsed into a heap of flesh that perfectly mimicked a pile of autumnal leaves. It should have blended in seamlessly with its surroundings were it not for the fact that autumn was several months away and it was in the middle of a football field. A sudden cold front had woken it up early and it was already starving.

Dozens of little blue eyes peered out from the false leaves as it began to realise how precarious a situation it was in. Eight stumpy legs rose from beneath the heap as it sprinted towards the shipping containers that had been repurposed as sports sheds for the nearby school.

The doors were easy enough to pry open - the last student had forgotten to lock them and had just placed the open lock in place instead. It had never been in a place like this before, when it was last awake the field had been part of the forest and now it was entirely out of its element.

Like any good predator it began to adapt. First it tried to elongate and mimic a stack of cricket bats but found their shape too rigid to maintain, as were the tennis rackets and rounders bats. It made a half-hearted attempt to be a pile of rugby balls but couldn't get the writing right.

Then it found a box full of jerseys, more colourful than it was used to but chaotic enough that it could easily adapt its textures and folds before settling just beneath the first few shirts to wait for a meal to arrive. It wouldn't have too long to wait either - a custodian had spotted the open container and was already on their way to investigate.

In the morning nothing would be out of place save for the custodian's uniform buried at the bottom of a surprisingly heavy box of jerseys. Nobody would notice for quite a while, not until the box had been loaded into the back of a crowded school bus bound for a cross-county competition.

The team won't arrive and the bus will be found several miles off-road and empty save for the box.

Day 2,056

The ship is submerged, the hull has been breached and over two hundred crew members are dead but for now we are safe. Everything trembles once in a while as they continue to ram into the ship, hoping to reach us in the emergency bunker.

We have maybe five hours of oxygen left before we have to strap into the dive suits and from there we've got another two hours. It feels a bit surreal to know that we'll all be dead in seven hours at most and if they haven't broken through before then. Nobody's thought about food or water, we doubt we'll have the luxury of starving to death.

We're sitting around 4 kilometers below sea level, balancing on the edge of a coastal shelf. I caught sight of the drop when we were running from the flooding - it's like looking up at the sky on a cloudy moonless night - pure voidlike darkness and we're poised to head straight down if they manage to nudge us off the ledge.

At least the pressure that will crush the ship will kill us faster than slowly asphyxiating. That's how thin our silver lining is but it's better than being torn between several sets of jaws. Suffocating is a relatively peaceful way to go from what the others are saying - we'd all just drift off if we let the room fill with enough carbon dioxide.

Something nearby has broken and we can hear water rushing further in. It's so loud it might as well be a plane taking off right by our heads. The trembling is now a full on earthquake and they seem to have the bunker surrounded. If I put my hand to the wall I can feel it starting to buckle.

Seems we won't be lucky enough to suffocate after all.

Day 2,055

The last thing my sister said was follow the crows. Never managed to say why or to where or for how long before blood finished filling her lungs and her eyes went all glassy and cold. We were all we had since our parents took our younger brother into the ocean with everyone else and left us locked in the basement.

I'm surprised they held off long enough to save us before they succumbed to the thing in the sky that had rotted the minds of every adult hours before them. Don't know why it made them all go to the ocean to drown themselves, don't know why it's left but I'm glad I don't have to look up and see it looking back down. It didn't really have a face but it still seemed smug, satisfied with all the bodies washing ashore.

That's where the crows started gathering, where me and my sister combed through all the bodies. For supplies, she said, but I knew we were looking for our parents and our brother. We never found them but we did find the keys to several well-stocked houses which kept us going for a fair while.

Eventually we found the keys to a car and figured out how to drive well enough to start heading inland. We followed the cows back then, not that I knew why and not that I know any more now. I'm sure I'll know what we were meant to be looking for when I see it.

This can't be for nothing.

Day 2,054

Mum always told us to wave and say hello to the old arm pillbox we passed on our way from the farmhouse to school. It was half sunken into the ground and covered with moss in a way that made it look straight from a fairytale. I never really questioned why we waved and said hello, it was just one of mum's little eccentricities.

Years after moved away, years after she and dad died and the farm was left to rot away on unsellable land, years after I'd put all my memories of the place in the back of my mind something reminded me of it all. A patch of moss growing on my windowsill of all things.

And so I went back. Never told anyone - didn't really have anyone to tell or any reason to until now. Now that I've been and barely made it back alive. Now that I understand why mum always waved and said hello and what she was making us greet every single day.

I should have picked a day with better weather but I ended up arriving in between a couple of storms. The rain had gone but the wind was sharp enough to make up for it and the clouds still clustered in the sky. I went to the farmhouse first, trying not to remember it as a place of warm childhood days.

It'd only been fourteen years since I locked the gates and the place had gone to absolute rot. The sheds were crushed and the main house was thoroughly graffitied. If I'd left anything there in my grief-muddled haze it would be long gone by now unlike all the empty bottles and broken furniture which fit the new landscape perfectly.

Not sure how long I spent wandering about my old home but by the time I'd begun to wander along the old school route the sun was starting to set. I should have turned back and gone the next day but I think seeing that monster in daylight would have done me in for good.

It looked like one of those old bearskin rugs from a distance, badly taxidermied and rotting in the mud. I never expected it to turn towards me and speak. It sounded like the words were coming from miles away in a tunnel but also right next to my ear.

"You've grown old, Johnny boy. I still missed you though."

It raised one hand, arm thick as my thigh with bare bone peering through matted fur, and it waved once before retreating back into the pillbox and closing the metal door. I turned around pretty sharpish, glancing back every so often to see its milky-white eyes peering through concrete slits.

Day 2,053

When I worked in a call centre we kept a list of dead phone numbers. Every day we'd find at least four or five new ones where that robotic woman's voice tells you the number is no longer in service. It'd be nice if the cell companies would let us know when they kill a number but it's hoping for too much.

The dead numbers didn't used to bother me until I started getting calls from them. It'd vary from dial tone sounds to faint crying to the feeling of someone breathing on my face and every time I cross-checked to see who'd called I'd always find them on the dead list.

It wasn't too bad when they only happened once a month or so but now it happens as soon as I've registered the number as not-in-service. To make matters worse I'm starting to hear voices on the line who swear they're right behind me.

They keep asking me to put them to rest but I don't even know who or where they are. All I have to go on is a number that's no longer connected to anything and disembodied voices in my ears begging me to help them find peace.

Day 2,052

It's one thing to be lost in an unfamiliar city, it's another thing entirely to be lost in the middle of the worst storm they've had in well over a decade. It was raining hard enough to soak you in a second, hard enough to leave you all but blind, hard enough to bruise and everywhere he turned was dead end after dead end.

The map he purchased at the airport was either drastically out of date or he was more turned around than a sailor with one oar. For all he knew his hotel could be right beside him but all he saw was a sky bleeding rain faster than a broken tap and everyone seemed to have turned their lights off.

He wasn't in the kind of place that had regular streetlights and he soon found himself cursing this as he fumbled his way round another corner, praying there'd be a covering or doorway he could duck into and regain his bearings. Five corners later and he started to wonder if he'd be better off knocking on the next door and begging for shelter til morning.

Fortunately he found an open doorway, or rather he slipped and fell into an open doorway covered in more dust than a building site. As he caught his breath from the shock of the sudden drop and lack of rain he started taking a look at where he now was.

The cemetary was supposed to be almost a mile away from the city outskirts but he swore he'd been right on the main street barely a moment ago. Now he was in someone's mausoleum, soaked to the bone and shivering from more than just the chill of the rain. 

Staggering to his feet he debated heading back out into the storm, staying felt both disrespectful and dangerous but the downpour outside looked like someone was throwing buckets from the heavens. With a great deal of worry he took a few paces towards the back of the mausoleum and sat on a set of steps.

Whether it was the weather or the jetlag, it took him a good while to realise that the stairs were going up...

Day 2,051

I don't know what they're growing in the greenhouses near the junkyard but I know plants don't need to eat as much blood and offal as they bring in there every other week. Whatever's in there must go through twelve farm's worth of scraps a year.

They keep building more greenhouses, claiming it's a community project thing for old people or kids or disadvantaged teens but nobody other than their workers have been anywhere near it. We've tried before, holding up our papers to prove we're part of the community this is apparently for but they turn us all away.

I know there's photos somewhere online in a closed group for the especially paranoid that someone got from one of the workers. I'm not saying I've seen it myself because that's the kind of talk that leads to you going missing and winding up in a ditch somewhere.

But if I had seen it I'd say it looked like they were growing weird translucent people. Like a cross between those glowly sea slugs and caterpillars and they made badly proportioned people from it. If I had seen the photo I'd say they were all huddled together in planters and must be about two feet long.

If I'd seen the video that was apparently taken yesterday I'd say there must be hundreds of them and when they eat you see it moving through them, making them all pink and red. Hypothetically speaking, they've got claws and speed like nothing I've ever seen before.

If I'd seen it, of course.

But I haven't and the photos and videos don't exist and there are plants in the greenhouses.

I'm sure they'll open them to the public when they're ready - hopefully a long time from now.

Day 2,050

I never seem to have any luck when it comes to dating. They're either assholes, no-shows or worse - they straight up die somewhere along the date and I'm left explaining to yet more cops that I had nothing to do with this death.

My last date really sealed the deal for me - I'm staying single for life and carrying industrial strength bug spray with me at all times. I mean he was a nice guy and all, probably one of the nicest I've dated thus far but the way he died was just too much.

So we're at this restaurant, something mid-bar level fancy and everything's going well. Except that something pale and... odd was poking out from his lips. At first I thought he had something stuck in his teeth but before I could mention it I heard a wet snap come from the back of his throat and he slowly slumped forwards.

I start freaking out, a waiter comes over and everyone's staring at us while several more pale strand-like things start coming out of his mouth and they're legs. They are several legs and his jaw starts making this weird creaking sound and it starts to crack and tear.

More and more of the legs come out followed by a flatish head and it's a fucking spider the side of my hand.

It eventually comes out properly and falls out of his mouth and onto the plate with a wet thud. Nobody says anything but the waiter grabs the champagne bucket and throws it over the spider before it has a chance to move.

Damned thing's slamming itself against the bucket whiled we're all just trying to process what just happened. I was the first to notice the next set of legs starting to emerge and that's when people started calling 911 like they could do anything about the already dead man who seemed to be full of spiders.

There wasn't any blood though.

That was the oddest thing for me.

Day 2,049

There's a city somewhere by the coast, formerly overcrowded and now only ever occupied by one resident at a time. They wake up in the city square and spend their life wandering empty streets, working in an empty office for a nameless, faceless employer who communicates via post-it notes left of the communal fridge.

This instils a sense of vague paranoia in the resident who will spend most of their free time searching for their employer in every conceivable and inconceivable location until their either exhaust all possibilities or themselves. Usually the latter occurs before the former.

Sometimes they will hear footsteps or a lone car echo through otherwise blank streets and they will feel compelled to chase this sound, to chase the possibility that they are not alone. They will both anticipate and dread meeting another living being - the city doesn't even have birds flying overhead or insects flickering in the corners of rooms.

Sometimes the pure silence will drive them to the tallest roof before isolation does. They never find the answers they've sought like how they came to be there and by whom and why their job consists of nothing but noting down faulty streetlights and traffic lights when there isn't even any traffic to control.

Sometimes they catch glimpses of their ever-illusive employer reaching through a crackling rip in the air, hands as hairy as they are multi-jointed and constantly twitching as if they are scenting their air. They place the latest post-it note down with surprisingly delicate motions before retreating as silently as they arrived.

The residents rarely last a day after seeing the employer and none have lasted a year. Their blood feeds the city, feeds the things beyond the crackling rips in the air that gently pick their body up and take them to the other side to join all the former residents at the timeless feast where they are always served fresh.

Day 2,048

"It's looking with its sight." she hissed as all their heads turned towards me and I knew there wouldn't be an excuse to get me out of this one. I'd used too many already and blamed good fortune so often I can scarcely stand to say the word anymore. I didn't think they'd give me a chance to.

I'd been hiding right in front of them for almost five months, barely one step in front of their suspicions at any given moment but it was enough to keep me alive. I did everything they did, at least I had them convinced I was.

When they went hunting I made sure to be near last, to appear somewhat capable without actually having to murder another human in cold blood. Turns out you can rub enough human blood onto deer meat and they think it's all the same. Scent was the easiest thing to fool.

When they gathered in their swarm of several hundred I was close to the outskirts of our little group with the excuse of wanting to protect their backs. I was always thinking of mine first and foremost but they didn't need to know that. To them I was a weakling trying to prove myself and that suited me just fine. Loyalty was the easiest thing to turn to.

When they stopped referring to me as a person I should have been more suspicious, raised more of a right but I just laughed and rolled with it - anything to keep the mask up for one more day. If only one of the other humans hadn't spotted me and tried to rescue me.

If only I hadn't pointed out that there were humans on the nearby roof poised to attack. They might have killed enough of the pack that I could have escaped and found my way into one of the coveted sanctuaries instead of sprinting away to crawl into the meat pile and wait for them to carry the hunt forwards.

Day 2,047

The entrance to the mine was deliberately concealed behind a thick patch of nettles while the faux one was left invitingly wide open further down near the lake. Lord knows how many "explorers" had walked through and found it disappointingly mediocre, complaining to their cameras as they walked right by unassuming nettles.

Nobody's supposed to know about the real entrance but we found the old miner's map when the library burnt down and all they could save was left unattended for just long enough that a dozen or so precious documents slipped away. We meant to bring it back but after the mine ate Jake we buried it instead - none of us wanted to get the police involved.

We only went in there because we reckoned there might still be a cart of silver in there and with the map we thought there'd be no way we could get lost. We even brought dust masks with us in case the air was bad. There was no way we could have prepared for what we found, or rather what found us.

The walls were wet. That was the first thing we noticed and we blamed it on the recent rains as we headed from the mouth of the tunnel and deep into the belly of the mine. Everything on the map was named after a body part which we thought was miner humour or technical terms.

We were in over our heads before we'd gotten halfway down the main tunnel. That was when Jake slipped and cut his arm up on a broken cart rail, the blood vanished as soon as it hit the ground and the floor below us began to tilt like it was guiding us deeper down.

None of us wanted to go but Jake just walked away like he was being pulled. We all tried to get him back but even with all of us pulling at him he didn't budge an inch and just kept on walking and walking until we all ended up by a dead end.

I don't remember much of what happened next - one minute he was there then the wall opened up and he was gone and the wall was moving closer and closer to us. Next thing I know we're covered in scratches and stings from the nettles, we're by the lake and gasping for air and Jake is gone.

His parents think he was kidnapped on his way home because we all told them that was when we last saw him. Seemed better than trying to explain that the mine is a living thing that drinks blood and doesn't leave anything behind when it eats you.

I just hope he died quick, the thought of him still being alive down there is somehow worse.

Day 2,046

I never trusted the spliced abominations they called "the future of farming" and after my last mission I can safely say I was right. They're supposed to be "lightly biomechanically enhanced" to prevent diseases etcetera - imagine never having to vaccinate your livestock because you can download the structure of vaccinated cells and download them right into the beasts.

Sounds genius - isn't anything like they advertised of course. The reality is that the download units are only partially developed in utero and currently they aren't able to be naturally born. They share eight to one long tube-shaped chamber that acts as a cross between a womb and a robotics lab where the embryos are fused with the biomechanical parts as soon as they're big enough to survive the procedure.

After that they get "born" and grow up to be mostly normal looking aside from the metallic sheen to their meat and the multitude of ports and odd squarish shapes that sit just beneath their skin. Apparently it's completely painless as the implanting happens before their pain receptors develop but I've seen the aftermath and they couldn't be further from the truth.

I'm part of a team that generally works with the company's computing units but recently we've been trained to debug the livestock. Those poor creatures can get stuck in endless loops of the same action until their muscles literally tear themselves apart. Once we were sent to a sheep farm experiencing a virus through their stock.

It was beyond us - beyond anything but a bullet to the head in all honesty. We heard their broken bleating as soon as we pulled up at the farm, they sounded barely organic and kept glitching and shrieking and playing some popular tune we'd been hearing on the radio.

When we were let into the pens the owner collapsed. In the half hour since he called, nearly all of the stock had crashed and were twitching in pools of their own blood. All but one poor lamb who's systems must have been using the latest software, just strong enough to block the virus.

It was covered in blood from the older lambs around it who'd ruptured almost all at once by the look of it. Thanks to their tech they hadn't died yet - something the ads won't tell you is that the livestock can't die until you perform a final diagnostics check and upload the cause of death to the system.

There must have been a good hundred sheep in that one set of pens, waiting for us to sign off their deaths.

Day 2,045

The mist was thick enough to serve in a bowl with a thick slab of homemade bread and colder than a robin's feet at Christmas. April was not shaping up to be a good month and it looked like spring was going to last forever, barely discernible from the winter that throttled last year's autumn.

Seasons around here do not go gentle into that good night and neither do the folk. The night air so often carries shrieking winds and human voices alike that help is hardly called for and every other business is a funeral home of some sort.

Here's the kind of place you see on a postcard and think "Halloween's a good few months away" while repressing a shudder and hoping its just an advert for some movie you'll probably never see. Here's the kind of place you visit for a dare though your winnings feel less than worth the risk.

Here's the kind of place where reality's a little... lax. People are only assumed to be human until they prove otherwise and they very frequently do. They'll smile with a mouth that doesn't bend right, laugh like an entire audience or carry things with unseen arms.

The buildings are as much a lottery as the people - assume it's a post office because it looks like one and is labelled like one until you open the door and find yourself midway over the bridge leading back to the highway. Makes it pretty clear when you aren't wanted.

If you're fortunate enough you'll leave the way you came, all in one piece and scarcely remembering where those five hours went. If your fortune goes the same way spring has you'll find yourself staying in the local B&B, always waiting for someone to come and repair your car.

They'll be here in the morning.

With any luck.

Day 2,044

It wore the old warehouse like a child wears a blanket to ward off monsters. Before the warehouse was several shipping containers - emptied out and held together by its mass - and before that a caravan and before that a burnt out car and o on for god only knows how long a thing like it has lived or will live.

It didn't take up the entire warehouse though, it had enough space to grow, enough space to feed and it had a regular supply. Every month new workers would come in under the guise of prison labour and rehabilitation and they never came back out.

The disguise was as fragile as the rust-eaten walls that had all but crumbled away in the corners, revealing a surprisingly delicate carapace still too young to be left uncovered. If anyone were to peer into the upper windows they'd see countless eyes peering back among the fragmented bones it used to reinforce itself.

Soon it would need another shell.

Day 2,043

Our church was out on Weresig Island, a good hour's drive with clear weather and when the road wasn't flooded by tides that never matched the forecast. The Strood was the only way in and out - nobody in their right mind sailed in the area, not with the strange shapes that never stopped prowling where the sands dropped away into the pitch black sea.

I didn't know why we went to that church in particular, especially when we passed three others on the way up and all of them looked decent enough. I only ever asked my parents about this once and received a lecture that lasted the entire drive and summed up to "we go where our folk are".

When you're a child everything in your life seems normal, everything is just how it is and everyone else is a bit weird but you - you are just as you should be. At least, that's how I saw things back in my younger days and now I know we were as far from normal as anyone can possibly get.

We weren't human for starters.

We were human-shaped but that's where all similarities ended. We had more in common with the prowling shapes in the black water than any Tom or Jane we shared a cup of tea with. For me, our differences came to a head when I told a friend that our church was under the water and we all had gills.

He was understandably annoyed at first and then scared when he realised I was being serious. Nothing about us looks unusual when we're dry and on land but as soon as I splashed a little water on my neck it opened up almost as wide as his mouth when he screamed with all the intense fear only a child can muster.

My parents never forgave me for that. His parents left the area shortly after and we followed them to a quiet stretch of the highway. Their tiny cheap car didn't stand a chance against dad's off-road beast. Even now I can still feel the jolt of the impact and hear that metallic scraping crunch we collided and they span out and into a ditch.

It now takes us two and a half hours to reach church.

Day 2,042

I remember the day we lost him, my younger brother Noah.

We were trying to get a video of the old riverman because we were at the age where monsters and urban legends were as real as our friends. The riverman was either a demon or something undead, depending who you asked. He slept at the bottom of the river unless he sensed children nearby - those he would skin and eat alive.

Our parents didn't care what we did as long as we didn't cause any trouble and didn't come home late or messy. So we got it into our heads that the riverman was real and if we got footage of him coming out of the water we'd become rich and famous which was all any kid of our generation wanted.

We borrowed dad's camera and figured we'd record over one of our baby videos. We must have spent a good three hours before we woke up from a brief nap in the summer sun to see large green eyes staring at us from just below the surface of the water, the rest of his body too far down for us to properly see.

I was the one who wanted to get a closer look.

I was the one who dared Noah to dangle the camera over the edge of the jetty.

I was the one who watched the riverman peel his skin in delicate little strips and ran home crying.

They never believed me - not my friends or parents or the police. They thought Noah had fallen in and I was making all of this up because I was only seven and traumatised but I know what I saw. I know he's still down there, sleeping until his next meal.

Day 2,041

We didn't know our house had a cellar until the floor in the kitchen started to collapse. The official verdict was the sink leaking over the course of the building's fifty-odd years slowly eating away at everything around it. If that was true then we would have noticed it far sooner but it was clear that nobody but us felt comfortable in that place.

Whether it was the oppressive air or the curtains that always twitched in the corners of your eyes or the way you'd catch glimpses of hands retreating around the edges of doors - there was always something else nearby and we'd grown numb to it all.

The same can't be said for the countless repairmen we tried to get to help us seal the cellar again. Everything was so much worse when it had a direct route to our living space. What was formerly just light hauntings and scares from a distance soon became physical.

It wasn't unusual to wake up next to some unnameable lump sharing the bed, chittering and snarling in its sleep. We learnt to move like ghosts - silent and aware of every inch we occupied. Even a single centimeter felt like miles to much.

Sooner or later it'll come out of the cellar entirely and we'll end up like the shadows and many-clawed creatures it send to terrify us. I wonder where it will go first when it's freed - to the next house, the next town, the next city or country.

Wherever it goes it will take us with it.

Day 2,040

It had the face of my neighbour's kid, the one I used to babysit back before she went missing last year. It also had the faces of total strangers, limbs partially fused and rotting around the edges like they'd only just died when the records would show they'd been gone for fifty plus years.

They lurched and staggered on mismatched limbs, gasping with lungs too damaged to properly sustain them. Creatures like this never lasted more than a few months but by the size of this one it could be the oldest to date.

It's hard to say what made them form but we know where they are formed. Sometimes it's mass graves and sometimes its just a common dumping ground but either way all it takes is one person who isn't quite dead enough to pass to the other side. One person who has enough left of themself to want to live.

And it brings them all back with it into these amalgamations, these poor Frankensteined creatures who don't want to die but can't possibly survive and I hoped I'd never see one in person but Lizzy is right there. She's right there and she looks so afraid and angry.

I hope it'll all die when they find who killed her.

Day 2,039

The translucent figures are back and the abandoned school's lights are on.

Both happened around the same time last week and both have the town a little on edge. One or the other would be bearable, an issue bite-sized enough for us to handle or investigate. That's what's happened all the times before, always one or the other and never both.

Something must have changed.

When the translucent figures arrive we know to not bother locking our doors at night and to leave a plate of warm offal outside for them to take in our place. We don't know what they do with it but if it means we live another day we don't really mind too much.

The council even have a deal with local butchers to provide every house in the town with enough offal to cover our little fee to whatever these beings are. I'm sure we'd know more about them if we were able to look directly at them without hearing their thoughts screaming into our own.

As far as we know, the school lights are just a warning for the remainder of the year and if we keep our children indoors while they're on then they don't go missing. We know that every missing child for the last hundred years is in the abandoned school - we can see their faces pressed against the windows.

But only when the lights are on.

For the rest of the year it's just an empty shell where teens sneak out to go get drunk with their friends and pretend to be edgy and authoritative. That all changes the second the lights come on and all those poor souls come back with them.


So for both the figure and the lights to appear can only mean we're in for something much, much worse.

Day 2,038

It came from somewhere deep in the woods, or so we think. It had that mossy, lichen texture to its fur though that could just be foliage tangled up in all the blood-encrusted clumps that covered it from head to hoof. Assuming it has hooves... never been close enough to tell myself but it makes a sound like old-fashioned horseshoes when it patrols outside.

I've only seen it outside the greenhouse where it spends its time stalking me as I do my rounds checking in on the plants, making sure the windows are sealed and the vents wide open. I remember one time when I was removing the mangled remains of a squirrel from a vent on the eastern side (it had a fondness for making our jobs that little bit worse in any way could- the petty bastard) I heard a voice coming from the other side.

Now it was the only thing on the other side and it didn't really seem capable of human speech, much less softly spoken and fully coherent speech. A very persuasive speech that made me forget to check all the windows so when my next shift came I heard those hoof-ish steps heading for the door at the same pace as me.

I panicked and ran the rest of the way, bolted the door and jammed a nearby chair under the handle before heading to management as fast as I possibly could because the worst had happened- it was inside with us. Of course when they finally got security over there they found nothing but an empty greenhouse and all the windows wide open.

They say they checked everywhere. They say there wasn't any sign it had even come in but I can't stay in there for long without feeling its breath down the back of my neck and hearing it walking behind me  - now footsteps, not hoofbeats... when did it even get feet?

Day 2,037

Television light flickered across the old man's face as the volume blasted just below the legal limit. It still wasn't enough to drown out the multitude of ghosts all clamouring for his attention but it made it a little easier to ignore them.

They did not like this.

Once there were thousands of them surrounding him on all sides, never giving him a moment's peace and driving him to the absolute edge of his sanity. They drove away his friends and family, they made him lose his job and house and still they wanted more.

They wanted peace, vengeance, life, messages delivered and so on and so on and so on.

He might have killed himself already but they'd threatened to destroy his soul the second it left the protective shell of his body and they still might if he died of age. His years were catching up to him fast and the ghosts were faster still.

They hadn't let or given up, they formed a line instead.

He could always see it somewhere in his line of sight. All those translucent bodies coiled around his life like a snake, all ready to strike him down for doing too much or not enough or god only knows what. He gave up trying to appease them years ago.

Maybe he could distract them long enough to join the back of the queue and just wait with them for eternity.

Day 2,036

The bus route by the burnt down factory is still in use.

I don't know why this surprised me or why I felt the need to take the bus there but I had to go back once more.

Just in case someone was waiting as the bus stop like they all used to.

A part of me hoped I'd somehow get there and see the old workers lined up and ready to go home. A part of me hoped I'd see my dad waiting with his friends, joking around and discussing what to do for dinner while I waved out the window as the bus drew close enough for him to spot me and wave back.

They never did find out what caused that fire or why none of the workers managed to escape when the front doors were wide open. When the flames finally died down their bodies were still at their work stations, arms and legs poised like they'd still been working even as they burnt to death.

I once overheard my dad talking to his friends on one of their poker nights when I was assumed to be asleep. They spoke about The Foreman in such a fearful way that you could hear the capitalisation in their hushed tones and almost picture the barely concealed terror on their faces when they described his latest floor route.

They soon corrected themselves from He to It and It had eyes like molten iron with lungs that belched out thick smog with every breath, stinging and burning with every lecture he hurled at whoever was unlucky enough to be in his path.

Somehow The Foreman was behind this, I knew it like I knew going back would solve everything.

Like going back would bring them all back one more time.

Like the bus will round that last corner and they'll all be there, waiting to come home.

Day 2,035

Her breath came in staggered gasps desperately muffled against the bloodied fabric of her scarf as the sound of hooves grew ever closer. If she was still enough and buried herself under enough corpses she might survive the night hunt and live to see another day.

It was a very weak if.

Their mares could smell a beating heart ten miles away and she was only beneath seven or eight bodies that were fresh enough to not make her gag. Or maybe she was getting used to the smell of rotting meat. It was hard to say which seemed more grim to her.

Regardless, if if kept her alive and gave her enough time to make it to the mountains where the night hunt didn't dare go then it was worth it. Even if she turned up to the last refuge reeking like something that died in a pile of its own faeces.

Anything but the night hunt.

That mantra had carried her through massacre after massacre, though the burnings and the drownings and the live burials and to her current half-burial. And the hunt was close enough to smell over the corpses but just far enough away that she had the time to wriggle beneath a ninth corpse.

Hoofbeats came to a slow, deliberate stop beside the mass grave.

Day 2,034

It slept in the deep end of the pool down the far end of the caravan site where the sunlight couldn't penetrate the murky brown water. Stray traffic cones and a lone shopping cart stuck out of the rippling surface from previous sacrifices.

Nobody wanted to think about those.

The caravan site's long-term residents would tell newcomers that there was no pool but the brochures still had photos of it in its heyday, long before the divine monster moved in there and polluted the area with its miracles. If they could really be called that.

There was always too much of a price and too many fools willing to pay.

By the time I was old enough to find myself part of a wandering pack of bored teenagers it had a bodycount higher than the zodiac killer. We all knew someone who'd paid it with something unspeakable and gotten their very own blasphemous miracle.

My own parents had gone to see it when they couldn't conceive.

Long story short and many missing cats later I was born, mostly alive and probably human. Not that any of my friends knew, they just knew someone had done it and pointed their fingers all over the place. I escaped their blame everytime, no thanks to whatever slept in the pool.

I'll be the one to wake it up soon and together we'll collect every debt in full.

Day 2,033

Bright blue eyes peered out from behind the burning wreck of my uncle's car and I knew this was far from over. She was supposed to have died, not them. We'd planned and planned and planned this for months yet she was there, crouched in the flames and the rest of my family were trapped in the inferno.

Still crouching, she came towards me covered in ash and someone else's blood while the air around us began to stink of overcooked meat. Some sick part of my mind remembered summer barbeques while the rest of me wanted to cry, vomit and scream all at once.

Shock is one hell of a thing though.

I just stood there while she headed straight for me, bright blue eyes locked onto mine and every time I glanced at the charred corpses in the car she seemed to have leapt closer. It was only going to be a matter of minutes before she reached me but it felt like years.

I wouldn't have blamed her for dragging me back to the car to sit in the empty front passenger seat.

I wouldn't have blamed her for slitting my throat like she did to those kids who yelled at her.

I wouldn't have been remotely upset if she'd brought me to join them all in death but she didn't.


She took my hand and led me back to the house.

Day 2,032

The house sat in the silhouette of the mountains, windows bordered and denizens hovering in the grey space between sleep and wakefulness. With every passing car they stirred a little, edging closer and closer to consciousness as the weeks flew by and autumn approached.

It was when the first leaves began to fall that the first few denizens woke up. They didn't rouse the others - they would come to in their own time. The plank nailed over the windows, both inside and out, were taken down overnight revealing countless blanketed bodies covered in dust.

Most of them were alive but, as always, several had passed during their sleep between the last hunt and the oncoming one. They would make good enough sustenance to stir up their hunger before they set out their traps along the road and nearby nature trails.

With any luck they might catch enough meat to feed themselves in the grey space and so not lose anyone else before the hunt after this. They hadn't managed to any time before but this time things were different, this time more years had passed.

This time they'd been asleep long enough to fade into myth.