Day 2,093

The tent was little more than two concrete slabs propped against each other with a tattered sheet of tarpaulin nailed into it but it was better than facing them under the bare sky. As people came and went they left little pieces of themselves inside until it gradually became a shrine to those who headed out to the coast.

Someone had brought in a mattress, bloodstained and lumpy but preferable to the cold, hard dirt. Someone else left torn up rags, barely used but good enough for bandages in a pinch. When I was there I left a few sample bottles of perfume - they may have been a luxury once but now they were scent bombs.

It's funny how we develop new rituals like always leaving something behind, never taking the last of anything and sleeping with your shoelaces glued in place to they can't be tied together by the strangers around you. There's always one person willing to let you die in their place.

Day 2,092

We don't talk about the Ash Fields out loud, nobody does. Stories are whispered in playgrounds and staff rooms alike - always with the same fear and reverence, always with furtive glances over our shoulders in case an Ash Child is somehow nearby.

They don't tend to leave the Fields but I swear I've seen them running down the street late at night and I know for a fact that they knock on our doors at Halloween, trying to trick us into letting them in. I know somebody did once, someone new to the area who thought it was just kids in costumes.

Never saw them again but the bloodstains remained until their pavement was smothered in tarmac.

I'm sure that they're running with the other Ash Children out in the Fields, that's where all the taken kids go so it only stands to reason that taken adults would go there too. Unless their bodies are buried somewhere instead but who'd ever try to check?

If the police enter a house after a commotion and see ash smeared all over the walls, see small fires and bloodied animal skins, they just seal the house and declare all of the occupants dead. It's safer for everyone to not go looking out in the Fields.

We don't want to disturb the Children.

Day 2,091

So few people used the oceanic highway that they never questioned how so many people could enter the remote islands on the other side and so few return. Most of the country had already forgotten its existence before the construction had even finished.

For all the people coming in, the island sent nothing in return. Not so much as a single boat left for the mainland nor were there any radio stations, news stations or government bodies to be contacted. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, the island was a name and a highway and nothing more.

The ones who are drawn to it are never seen again and are soon just as forgotten as the island itself. They take junction forty and head towards the coast til the trees thin out into sparse sand grass and they hear the sound of seagulls fighting each other in the sea breeze.

They don't see the birds at first and soon realise that there were never any birds to begin with, just the ocean trying to push them off the surprisingly low road and into its depths. They will struggle to control their car against the brutal waves, barely keeping on the road let alone staying in their lane.

At least nobody uses the other lane. This offers them the barest modicum of comfort as they swerve and clutch the steering wheel like holding it any harder will somehow keep them on the road. If they make it past the worst of the waves they'll see the island's lighthouse shining brightly against the midnight sky.

It doesn't matter when they leave, they always land at night and they are always welcomed.

Day 2,090

For all she knew the rest of the world had fallen and she was the last human left alive. The fact that she hadn't received any replies to her emails or broadcasts didn't help but at least not knowing meant she could pretend they were all still alive and they were just about to hit reply or tune into her signal.

Of course she wasn't expecting visitors - she was in a well-hidden radio station high up in a mountain somewhere in Bhutan. She wasn't sure exactly where, since she had to throw her SatNav away when it showed signs of sentience. It would only have become a beacon and then she'd be dead like all the rest.

No, they weren't all dead. There would be other survivors who were also using outdated technology to outsmart the code and they'd all meet up and survive together. If they remembered to stay purely analogue and never reveal where they were going in any way that a computer could understand.

She'd taken to blasting music and hoping a living person with ears might hear her, preferably one whose mind wasn't mush being piloted by infected hearing aids or ocular implants. It didn't matter how inhuman they'd become - it still felt wrong to kill a frail little pensioner, even if they were coming at you with circuits and broken glass.

Day 2,089

It should have been the alley connecting Stirchward Street and Mawsclere Way. It should have the woods on one side and a row of garages on the other. It should have been really narrow but in a comforting naturesque kind of way, where birdsong and the faint sounds of traffic blended together perfectly.

Today it was none of those.

Today it has been found by something new, something parasitic and hungry, with sharp eyes and sharper teeth. Whatever comfort had been there before was now only a thin illusion separating predator from prey, luring them in with familiarity and chasing them down into its gullet without so much as a whisper escaping back out to the streets.

As soon as a person sets both feet past the boundary line they see the alley dissolve away in front of them and they feel its mouth close behind with a faint, wet click. Both forest and garages are now dark grey stones walls that sit beneath a velvet-red sky.

Unnatural shapes soar through the air, long dead things that live on only inside this place and feed on whatever scraps are left behind. Sometimes they don't even wait for both feet to cross the boundary, choosing instead to dart outside the mouth and drag strangers in.

This hasn't all happened yet, but it will and when the authorities come to search for all the missing all they'll find is a simple alley that feels comforting, yet cold. Countless ghosts will wander there, half-digested, half-mad and unable to rest.

Day 2,088

I don't know when the black mould in the bathroom started to become lesions, I don't know how a house can be a physical living thing and I sure as hell don't know how to fix it but the damned thing won't let me out until it's better.

The bathroom door sealed itself about a week ago, trying to prevent the infection from spreading but I reckon it's too late now. I can feel its laboured breathing in the bitter air, feel the carpets thrum with a staggered heartbeat, watch pus pour from festering wounds in the walls and I can't do a damned thing about it.

I've tried everything I can possibly think of but it just makes it worse which makes the house angry, the rooms smaller and the temperature higher and the air more stale. Soon enough the place will become unlivable - it'll die and take me with it.

Day 2,087

I was always the last to go to bed, the one who turned out the lights and made the definitely-not-worried-but-faster-than-just-walking pace to my bedroom alone in the dark. I used to think that it was only my imagination that made the darkness of the house seem to scary until I caught sight of it slinking around a corner, not following me but trying to find me.

At first I assumed it was blind, though I couldn't really make out much of a face in the dark and was too afraid of what it might look like if I turned on a light. A small part of my mind wondered if it would vanish entirely, if it was a creature that only existed when there was no light at all.

I would find myself crouched on the stairs just watching it move from room to room, making soft disappointed hisses when it found itself alone and clicking with delight when it spotted me on the steps. That was when I'd find myself racing towards my room and locking the door before it could reach me.

It never occurred to me that it could see, that it knew where I was and was playing with me. Not the way a cat plays with a mouse but like you play hide-and-seek with a child. Found that out when I wasn't fast enough and it cornered me on the landing inches away from my room.

My eyes were closed tight and I was fully expecting to die when I felt it.

A light tap on my shoulder and a single word hissed out.

Tag.

Ever since that night I try to go to bed before everyone else, claiming I'm tired or my head hurts or I'm going to read for a while - anything to not be there when all the lights are turned off and the creature comes back to play. I don't think I have the stomach to hunt it back.

Day 2,086

His skin was stained in rusty red as the rich iron deposits that ran throughout the county. Red as the blood that still ran down his chest where shards of a broken bottle jutted like teeth out of the gaping maw of that fatal wound. He wore them like a church wears stained glass windows - with an indifferent reverence that almost made it seem like it was everything and nothing all at once.

The shirt was soaked to a deep red and the trousers weren't much better off. Even his worn leather shoes were dotted with blood that flowed like a small stream, like it would never end. I think I was the first to notice how it turned to mist where it would have hit the ground, like he was only corporeal in himself while the rest of the world struggled to catch up.

And there he stood in the middle of the pub like he was about to order a drink and he might well have been in his final moments. Now he served as a bitter reminder to the rest of the patrons to know their limits and stick to them lest they make company for our silent friend, our little ghost.

Day 2,085

He woke up coughing dust and spitting out small pebbles. The tunnel behind was sealed shut with the same debris that was scattered over him and partially covered the man he'd been running from. A quick once-over confirmed he hadn't broken anything major, maybe bruised a couple of ribs from the impact.

The same couldn't be said for his pursuer and the pool of congealed blood around his head.

As always, curiosity got the better of him and he staggered to his feet to see if the other was actually dead or just unconscious- a decision he regretted as soon as he caught sight of the large chunk missing from the man's head.

Luckily the pain from his ribs outweighed his need to vomit and a few painful minutes of dry-heaving later he straightened up as best he could. The wooden beams along the tunnel showed he was still somewhere within the old mine, possibly close to a ventilation shaft if the faint breeze was anything to go by - and it was all he had to go by, having been chased so far from the mapped out areas.

He limped onwards, trying to follow the breeze as he scanned the walls for miner's marks or any signs of life that could lead him back to the surface. The walls were so bare they almost looked new, in fact the timberstill carried the faint scent of pine unlike the rest of the old beams holding up the mine.

The further he went, the stronger he felt that he was being watched. No matter how many times he checked behind him he still saw nothing, cursing his weak head torch and hoping he was just being paranoid or concussed or anything other than right.

He never once thought to move the dead man to see if he still lived in spite of his wounds.

He never thought to bury him or do anything that might make it harder for him to move.

He never made it all the way out of the ventilation shaft.

Day 2,084

She shut the locker as softly as possible, desperately trying to not alert the rest of her team. They were all out braving the beginnings of a truly violent arctic storm and were at their most vulnerable, just like she promised they'd be.

They wouldn't all die, only the slowest ones would. It didn't like to chase its prey which had been her only saving grace when she found it fully thawed in the main laboratory. That morning it had been little more than a vague shape buried deep in block of ice yet somehow it had freed itself and given her an offer she couldn't refuse.

Them for her - enough meat to satisfy it for a good few days, allowing her to study it (and hopefully dissect it before it felt hungry again). She didn't even consider negotiating, too busy staring into its open mouth and the countless rows of heavily serrated teeth.

A scream filled the air before cutting off with a sickeningly wet crunch.

Day 2,083

From the top of the hill we could see a single row of lights moving around the town like a colossal snake, zig-zagging between the streets as it slowly gathered more lights. Tomorrow they'd announce all the deaths but we'd already know the numbers.

We were supposed to stay inside and wait for the lights to pass us by but we figured out that the lights didn't go anywhere near the hills and thus if we kept ourselves up there, nice and quiet, they'd pass us by every six months or so. Nine years down and we're all still here while twenty-seven have joined the lights since.

This year we counted one more than the official death count. It wasn't that we'd overcounted or the council had undercounted - there's a new light. Normally they come in with seven gatherers, the line has started with seven for as long as the light has existed but this year there was an eighth.

Coincidentally they took more than ever before as well. Who or whatever is leading the lights is voracious, ambitious and makes us question the safety of our little hideout on the hill. The others don't think we've been discovered yet, they think we'll last another year at least.

I don't have the heart to tell them that I found a lit candle up there last night.

The lights will be back tomorrow.

I don't fancy our chances.

Day 2,082

We call them the Railroad Kids, poor flattened misshapen things that live somewhere by the docks where the miners used to offload their carts to the canal boats. We know a few of them from an old photo discovered in the library archives, they're child workers who died together in a collapsed tunnel.

The others only look like children, mimicking those poor deceased souls in order to get close to the living. Personally I've not seen what they do when they catch someone but everyone knows someone who's been taken down to the old mine entrance and never come back.

There's plenty of photos and videos of them being led by the Railroad Kids, holding their hands and smiling like they haven't a care in the world. There's been rumblings around the hills too, like the mine is back up and running again.

Maybe they're trying to dig their old bodies out and the pretenders are something else entirely that is slowly being freed. Maybe they're all pretenders and the people they're taking are about to unleash an army of the little monsters on us all.

I hope to be long gone by then but the ground stirs more and more with every passing day.

Day 2,081

When I was younger I refused to use the upstairs bathroom, from the moment I knew how to dislike something I absolutely hated it. My parents gave up and eventually installed a tiny shower downstairs and that was the end of that as far as they were concerned.

I didn't know what I was seeing but I knew that nobody would believe me and even to this day I know I was better off not telling anyone in my family what I was seeing. It only became an issue when I saw it peering around the bathroom door, bloated fingers clutching the fram so hard it creaked while water endlessly ran from their mouth.

Even after I'd gone away for uni I couldn't stop thinking about those bloodshot green eyes and that gaping mouth looking directly at me. It's always known that I can see it but it never did anything more than playfully try to grab my clothing, mostly it just lay in the bathtub staring at whoever was in the room.

I had no idea it could leave and I was too much of a coward to do or say anything more than suggest that they get rid of a tub that nobody uses. When I got the news last week that my parents had died I knew it was all my fault, I knew it overheard and decided to act before they could.

A water pipe broke, short-circuited the mains and the whole place went up in smoke.

Day 2,080

Nobody lives on Weeping Way anymore. The final homeowners moved out last week and now there's nothing but an empty estate with a memorial garden where the old maternity home used to be. Not even vandals go near the place, too scared of what's been left behind still looking for answers.

Me and my friends used to hang out there when we were kids, before we knew any better and shortly before the left-behind was woken up. I reckon it was somewhere where the newer houses were built, where the furthest end of the maternity home was before the fire took it out.

Apparently it was arson, at least the news clippings stored in the library say so. An upset parent wanting to regain their family's lost honour by killing their unwed daughter after she'd given birth. They took her kid and left the rest to burn alive, as the papers say thirty-two women and forty-eight infants died.

Sometimes we'd hear crying babies when we were heading up there, but we already knew about them. The council may have renamed it Asterby Road but it would always be Weeping Way to the rest of us, out of respect if not fact.

When the left-behind made its first appearance the kids who saw it said it looked like a half-melted doll, similar size to a doll too but it talked like they did. Asked them all sorts of questions about what happened, where the home was and where everybody had gone.

They told it about the fire but couldn't answer everything else - how could they possibly know where the bodies went to or where the survivors are, if any were still alive? The left-behind got upset, started wailing loud enough to wake the dead and soon all the air around them was filled with the sounds of screaming babies and roaring flames.

All but one made it back to town and when they went back with their parents to look for the missing one they found him already dead. His body was burning hot even though his pulse was long gone. The autopsy showed asphyxiation by carbon monoxide and they suspected a leaking pipe somewhere in the area.

They never found it - still haven't to this day even though people are still found dead there, still dying from a long gone fire. The left-behind can still be seen wandering about the place, though officially it's a cat with mange and damaged front legs or whatever helps people sleep better at night.

Sooner or later it'll decide to leave Weeping Way.

Day 2,079

She woke up to a house full of silence and a hastily-made barricade of bedroom furniture that had come slightly lose during the night. The last thing her parents told her was to stay put until they gave the all-clear. That was three days ago and all the snacks she'd hidden were now gone and the water in the sink had gone grey.

Checking her phone one last time (no texts, battery fifteen percent and powerbank...somewhere downstairs) she made up her mind to sneak out and get whatever she could from the kitchen before heading back to her room. Her parents wouldn't ever know she'd left - it sounded perfect.

And it was perfect as she managed to squeeze through the gap between her dresser and the open door frame only to find that there was a thick fog settled halfway up the stairs. Wondering if downstairs was still safe, she threw a sock over the edge of the bannister and watched as the fog seemed to shrink right down, gathering around it like piranhas to fresh blood.

She saw her new strategy - throw things one way and creep the other way until she could reach her destination. Luckily her younger sister's box of marbles had been knocked over and left in the hallway so she had plenty of ammo.

It was a slow method, one that required her to be quieter than whatever she was throwing, one that required her to throw far enough away that she'd be able to see where she was going and one that required her to keep an eye on every inch of her surroundings so the mist wouldn't creep back up on her.

Something about it just didn't seem right. Her dad told her once that all mist is made of is clouds that are low to the ground instead of up in the sky where they should be but this didn't seem like clouds. This seemed more alive, it moved with purpose and moved towards sound, swarming it and hovering like it expected there to be a living thing.

She didn't know what it did to living things until she gently trod on her sister's cold little leg, eyes slowly tracing the scene and finding the rest of her family torn to shreds. Suddenly everything elt unreal and distant like she was looking at herself through someone else's eyes.

Most of the blood was on the floor, soaking her mum's precious beige carpet to a rusty brown. She kept throwing marbles away from her, trying to get a closer look at her family to see if any of them were alive but all she found was a message her mum had scrawled in her dad's blood.

The mist has eyes.

Don't let it know you know.

She began to tremble as a marble rolled towards her.

Day 2,078

I thought it was a fallen tree at first, we'd seen a lot of them on our way up the mountain pass. The river could barely flow in places for all the debris thrown about by last night's storm so I didn't think much of it and didn't realise that it was following us until we reached the bridge to the next mountain and saw something impossibly long crawling upstream.

It looked like a wooden turtle in all honesty, like one of those alligator snapping turtles you see online only its head must have been bigger than our car. The rest of its body was obscured but serpentine and the wake it left behind seemed to go beyond the riverbend.

We thought we'd be safe to drive by it, given how high up we were and how slowly it was moving but as soon as we made to turn left back onto the road it jerked its head towards us and began to ascend. We turned right instead, damn near turning right off the edge of the road in our haste to just get away and sped off, hoping to find a more inland road even though the map showed none.

I kept my eyes glued to the right and the rear view mirrors, watching it follow us, still ascending and still remaining at a safeish distance from us. Worst case scenario we debated making a break for the trees and trying to outclimb it - something of that size couldn't possibly hold its weight up out of the water for much longer.

She spotted it first, the small road leading further inland. I didn't want to trust a road that wasn't on any map but our options were too limited to argue so we turned left and prayed we'd find a village we could hide in. The trees smothering us on either side suggested that nobody had come this way for quite some time.

Perhaps the creature got to them too and we were just the next in a long line of unfortunates who'd dared to go near its river. Perhaps we'd find people who knew how to deal with it and could help us get out safely. Perhaps it wouldn't follow us any more and we'd end up halfway down a highway, still on track to get home.

The sight if its head peering over the ledge and crawling onto the road behind us dashed all our hope.

Day 2,077

Her skull opened up like a flower revealing countless glistening fangs, thin tendrilesque tongues and right at the heart of it all her beautiful brain, gently pulsing to a heartbeat far too irregular to be human. A part of me always suspected she was too good to be human anyway and the glorious sight before me only made me love her more.

Later that night I helped her prepare dinner - Steak Esterházy. Formerly named after a 19th-century Hungarian prince but to us she was our neighbour Esther, a sharp and easily outraged old woman who'd seen more than she should have when doing her routine 'neighbourhood patrols'. She wouldn't be missed.

Once my dearest had her fill of Esther she was still intact enough for us to make it seem like she'd had a tad too much brandy and taken a nasty fall down the stairs, cracking her head open and dying within arms reach of her phone. Unlike my dearest (whose head is filled with eldritch beauty), old Esther was full of bitter blood and slimy grey matter - hardly a fitting feast but my dearest isn't one to complain about her food.

I think for our honeymoon I'll see about taking us to somewhere more remote, where the people are more free-range and youthful. The body is a temple after all and nobody would dare offer their goddess expired or mouldy food.

She deserves the best and I'll make sure she gets it.

Day 2,076

We couldn't really bury our dead when winter came - the ground was somewhere beneath the snow but no matter how much we dug out we never hit dirt. It was easier to to just lower their open caskets into the gaping chasm out by the mountains that led to the fast-flowing river of the Ockrow Caves, letting the current take them somewhere deep down into the earth.

It was kinder to not think about their poor bodies being dashed against sharp flint rocks, shredding them to fish food. We didn't eat the fish downstream for that very reason, you never knew who or what they'd been eating and we were all better off just pretending the bodies went into a nameless afterlife that didn't involve so many teeth.

We lied to ourselves forwell over a century that this was the best thing to do for our dead. I'd be hard pressed to name anyone who protested or came up with a better solution that didn't involve a mortician or two risking their lives trying to drive the bodies to somewhere with grounds we could bury our dead. Not that we wanted to have them resting so far from home.

Nobody believed the first few kids who said they saw the dead beneath the iced-over lake, nor were they believed when they said they saw more in the fishing pond or the town gutters. Not until they came back with photos showing several dozen people who'd died well over a year ago, peacefully floating just beneath the water's surface.

Day 2,075

They shuffle through the forest tending to the trees, unable to stand upright thanks to the clusters of tumours that almost look like horns from a safe distance. They tend to walk with these growths barely scraping the floor, resting heavily on them whenever they can. The forest would be silent as the rest of the county were it not for their staggered breathing and barely concealed groans of pain.

When the bunkers told us the air was safe to breathe they were the first ones out, most of us choosing to remain hidden for just a little longer. The growths developed in mere hours and out of the thousand to flee into the sunlight, scarcely a hundred are still alive and tending to the trees.

The air is far more settled now, softer and easier to breathe through the eight required filters. When there are enough trees we'll be able to breathe clean air again, unfiltered without the slightest trace of iron which tells us that the corrosion has reached our lungs again.

I haven't told the rest of my bunker that I've given away all but five of my "lifetime supply" of filters that were stored in my chamber. Better to let them have a little longer while I hide my dissolving teeth and nose and enjoy each breeze that blows through my patchy hair, temporarily forgetting the danger it carries with it.

Day 2,074

"With all the accidents that happen on the A12 it's a wonder that there's not any ghosts like you hear about everywhere else." she wondered aloud to me like she always seemed to around this date. It was the same similar remark just thrown into the otherwise tranquil quiet of the car.

As always, I smiled and shrugged. If she hasn't realised I'm dead after seven years I doubt she'd realise it this time. Even when we drive past the spot where she ploughed into me didn't so much as rustle the memory of her bonnet pinning me to the now-broken tree.

Nice to see they still put flowers out for me. Little cards too. I've never been able to read them or even know who they're from, what with my soul being stuck in her car, but I like to think my family's still remembering me. She sure as hell hasn't - thinks I'm a dear friend.

I've given up trying to get her to crash, I'm not quite solid enough to yank the steering wheel and she's given up on alcohol since that night. All I've got to rely on is her early morning tiredness and maybe distracting another driver enough that they'll hit her like she hit me.

See how she likes being the eternal passenger in her murderer's car.

Day 2,073

Somewhere during the night all the roads leading out of the cemetery had been closed off with great iron fences topped with nasty looking barbed wire. Pieces of bloodied skin waved in the sharp spring breeze as mementoes to the lucky few who'd managed to escape before the mausoleums released their charges.

He'd only gone in there as a dare - the alternative involved the school flag and a lot more athleticism than he possessed. Staying overnight on a bench in the largest cemetery in the whole county almost felt like a cop-out in comparison but he would have gone for anything that was less likely to land him in jail for a week or two.

Now he was stumbling about, covered in dirt and blood - possibly his, probably not - desperately trying to convince the other shambling semi-sentient undead that he was just fresh and definitely not alive in the slightest. He'd already seen what they did to the living and he didn't want to end up like them, he just wanted to live long enough to find a quiet enough place to jump the fence.

It was harder than he thought it would be, given that he was stuck in the middle of a mob of undead whose main purpose in the unlife seemed to be circling the innermost and oldest graves. They'd read the names on each tombstone again and again and again to the point where he found himself reciting them without even realising it.

He'd spent most of his energy persuading the undead around him that his stomach wasn't growling, it was just all those freshly decomposed gases escaping his rotting intestines. He wasn't even falling asleep on his feet because that's what a living person would do - he was just super focused on remembering the names and saying them right.

They'd only buy his act for so long so he took the biggest risk since he first ran into one of the undead breaking the legs of someone who'd only come there to mourn. He asked the person behind him if they wanted his place as they seemed so much more eager and deserving and he felt bad that they were all the way behind the heart of the group.

He got three places back before someone refused.

Before someone got suspicious.

Before he discovered just how fast they could all run.

Day 2,072

By the time he realised that the screaming child wasn't being crushed under the creature's foot it was too late. Where her shirt ended and her legs should have been was instead the same greyish flesh of the beast - she wasn't human at all, she was something more akin to a toe and an anglerfish's lure combined.

And it had worked perfectly.

He'd fallen right into its trap, following her as she was dragged around corner after corner, down countless stairs and through broken door after broken door to the point where he wouldn't be able to find his way back out if his life depended on it. And unfortunately it did.

All that time it had been just him and the creature yet his paternal feelings for a wounded child he'd never known, one that didn't even exist, still made his heart clench as the creature retracted the child-shaped lure and a serrated talon fell into place. It was a few shades paler than the others, clearly its technique rarely worked.

He'd just been the right fool in the right place at the right time.

Day 2,071

The tunnel connecting Bury St Gapshaw and Newton Munforest has been closed for over fifty years. The tunnel doesn't seem to recognise this and manages to lure at least one driver a month who is will only ever be seen standing inside the barely-lit entrance, beckoning other drivers with frantic, desperate gestures in the hope that they can switch places with the next unfortunate soul.

It is unknown as to whether or not this works but all the people presently trapped within the tunnel swear it will work someday and they'll all go free. They can only be spoken to from the safe distance of eight metres away from the entrance and only in daylight. The tunnel uses the cover of night to expand itself and engulf unsuspecting drivers who think it's further away than it really is.

Whatever the tunnel may really be, it doesn't seem to be able to eat people. At least not in the conventional sense. It has a digestive tract and is perfectly capable of ripping a human to shreds with the flytrap-like appendages that disguise themselves as ceiling lights swaying in an imaginary breeze.

All the two towns say when questioned is that the tunnel is closed and will remain so.

The tunnel will continue to have other ideas.

Drive safely.

Day 2,070

The official story is that the island was just a pumice raft that had all but dissipated by the time we arrived, something that would go down in the books as odd but not unusual enough to make people want to look into it. If they did they'd find that the island very much does exist and is even inhabited.

We were shocked by the latter. The old nautical records stated that it was nothing but trees and birdsong with a smallish beach and nothing interesting enough to keep a bunch of 18th century sailors hanging around. Probably best that they didn't meet the locals, especially now that they've developed a taste for human meat... not our finest moment.

It was supposed to be a simple "have a look around, try and find new birds or whatever, head back with photos and samples" but within half and hour we'd met the saltwater amphibious creatures and barely a few minutes later we were scrambling towards the boat as fast as humanly possible.

They didn't like us arriving and they sure as hell didn't like us trying to leave, if the multitude of claw-marks along the hull as anything to go by. Things got worse when night came, even though we were hours away from the island but I guess we'd managed topiss them off enough that the were in fact willing to chase us down until they got their blood.

Eight of us left and only three came back. One by one they picked us off, hunting us down around the ship while we tried to hide and figure out if landing near civilisation would be our best option or the worst option. I mean, they clearly hadn't met humans before and they already seemed to hate us, exposing them to a heavily populated area might have caused them to expand their territory and begin hunting us all.

Five deaths was a small sacrifice to make to prevent that, the skipper who spent the entire voyage back tucked away in a locker full of dirty washing said. He hadn't seen them die, he turned tail and fled as soon as the first one leapt onto the deck and grabbed one of the research assistants, dragging them towards a mouth crammed with teeth.

After they killed five of our group they slowly made their way towards the rear of the boat where they could slide back into the water. They did one final lap of the whole ship first, using their pelvic fins and almost hand-like pectoral fins to walk themselves around and eventually slide back into the pitch black ocean.

So as far as anyone else knows, the island doesn't exist and as far as we know, they didn't follow us back.

Day 2,069

They appeared overnight, the straw dolls. Life-sized and eerily reminiscent of people we knew and lived with and nobody admitted to making them or placing them around the village. They were set up like they were doing their counterparts jobs and each wore a small sign warning us to not destroy them.

Of course this lasted for all of a week before Mr George Sr decided to use his as the Guy Fawke's doll on bonfire night. We all saw him burst into flames right before our eyes and nothing put him out until the bonfire itself had died down to embers, his doll contorted into the same position as the real man himself.

From then on we made sure to find our respective straw dolls and guard them with our lives. If they were harmed - even accidentally - the police were immediately involved and it was treated as a serious assault. It was only a matter of months before village life slowed down even further to most of us sitting beside our doll-selves, glaring at anyone who came too close.

I got luck with mine - he's in the back garden up in my favourite tree. I visit him once a day to make sure he's still safe and then I try to get on with my life, try to not spend all my time at work just staring at the feed from all the cameras I put up in my garden to make sure nobody goes near him.

I even have the garden fence rigged with a nasty electric jolt that isn't quite enough to kill a healthy adult. I mean, they aren't usually the ones who'll go about trying to mess with other people's straw-selves but if they end up in the hospital then its their own fault.

None of them take this seriously - they give their straw-selves piercings, dye their hair and make god-only knows what modifications to them until the damned things barely look human. The changes happen slower in humans, for whatever reason.

Sooner or later they'll look more like the dolls than the dolls themselves do.

Day 2,068

I buried my axe in its head yesterday and today I saw it smile at me. I know it takes them a little longer to die than humans but I watched its brain leak out onto the pavement. It made a hissing sound when it came into contact with the tarmac.

I know that if it's still able to smile or move it's eyes tomorrow I'll have to break out the petrol and matches but I'd rather not make things any worse. Its bad enough that the road around it is collapsing into a half-dissolved pile of mush.

Burning is always supposed to be a last resort as it sets their spores free and much as I'm loathe to admit it, I'm probably going to have to bite the bullet and burn us both. Better to go up in flames than slowly choke to death and errupt into ten thousand tiny copies of the damned things. 

Day 2,067

Whatever they'd done down at the Brinkstone Corp. had messed up time itself for our entire region in a cataclysmic event that our town managed to sleep through. The rest of the area calls it by the date it other towns weren't so lucky.

We had the time to uncover where was affected, seal it off and study what life was doing there while Knoxward further south vanished entirely and Hither Henbeth is only here as a town occasionally but its mostly a few simple iron age cottages for most of the week. We can't even get close enough to see if our neighbours are there as the iron age folk think we're demons of some sort.

I can't say I blame them, poor lads don't know what's going on and we only know a scant more ourselves. We know enough to keep ourselves safe but not nearly enough to slow all this down or bring everyone back from whichever time they're now trapped in - if they're still alive at all.

The events are starting to spread throughout our town now. It may have started off with a few sheds and cars here and there but now the swimming pool is full or trees and the road where my auntie's car was is a large circle of strange looking plants and tall grass with something living there that don't like us and snatches birds from the sky too fast for the eye to see what it actually is.

Sooner or later 05/05 will spread to the entire region and then I guess it'll slowly (or quickly) make its way around the world until past, present and future are all happening at once and humanity is dead and alive and so torn apart we'll never be able to fix it.

Might even reach the stars at this rate.

Day 2,066

They were cocoons, that much was certain. Last night they were perfectly normal human infants delivered by perfectly normal human mothers and now they were hacking up great globules of a glue-like substance that hardened within minutes to form the wispy shells they were now writhing within.

A few were cut open in our attempts to free the babies but all we found was a meaty sludge that bore no resemblance to anything remotely human. Whatever they were, they were quickly becoming something else and they were vulnerable in our midst.

We were able to remove them from the incubators without harming them, originally to transport them to somewhere better equipped to see what the hell was going on inside the cocoons but their mothers had other ideas and demanded we hand them over.

Legally we could have said no, morally we should have said yes. We met in the middle and moved the families we could to a more remote facility with everything a growing family could possibly need and enough security to protect us against whatever would eventually emerge.

Our scans showed nothing but gently moving meat slurry right until the hour before they hatched when everything suddenly snapped into shape and they emerged as toddlers. They were only about four months old but they looked maybe two or three years old.

We're watching them from their own homes now, getting samples and running diagnostics on a weekly basis to try and determine what they actually are. They look and act like children but their biology, their blood is unlike anything we've ever seen before and for all we know they may yet change again.

Day 2,065

The university has hallways and classrooms that have never seen sunlight, built underground to confuse what lived in the hills long before anything was built by people who refused to listen to our folklore. They called us superstitious and blamed clumsy workmen, bad tools and bad weather on all the casualties that painted the foundations in blood before the end of the first month.

We kept our distance, kept our heads down and kept our mouths shut. They didn't believe they needed helping and we weren't keen on sticking our necks out for people who just sent more men into what was fast becoming a slaughterhouse.

By the time they'd finished, no builder would set foot within ten miles of the place just to be on the safe side. How they managed to keep on building more lecture halls and accomodation towers is beyond us but someone is helping them grow and bring more fresh blood in.

It's such a scenic place that a few people are bound to go missing whilst hiking but they can't ever explain away all those poor teenagers who just vanished into thin air. I'm sure they'll be found in the basement, in the labyrinths they made to keep the hills satisfied and contained.

We see them from time-to-time, the missing ones. They wander about at night soaked to the bone and covered in dirt like they've just dug their way out of their own graves which isn't entirely unbelievable. They always want us to help them find their lost friends as if we didn't recognise them for what they really are- the same things that have always come for us at night only now they wear the faces of people we don't know.

It's easier to ignore someone you don't know but we pretend to care all the same- better them than us.

Day 2,064

There's not much known about the factories on the outskirts of Chilhaven other than their biowaste bins are always overflowing and you never see the same worker twice. Nobody knows what they make, how they make it or who even owns the site - all our online research brings up the same puppet company used by several dozen "goods manufacturing plants" that still don't say what the goods are.

A couple of die-hard investigators I know actually spent five days following one of the lorries they transport their goods in only to somehow lose it on a tiny country road way up north. Now they're convinced that there's some kind of secret underground base or the lorry somehow flew or turned invisible or the local farmers are in on some big government secret.

All I know is I somehow managed to secure an interview there even though I never applied for it. This was meant to be my big chance to uncover what it is that they're doing and why they have such massive amounts of biowaste that reeks to high heavens yet never attracts flies or rodents.

I definitely went in for that interview and I probably spoke to their manager or foreman and maybe even toured the factory floor but all I remember is driving in and driving out. Whatever happened in the five hours I was in there left me feeling weak and dizzy for several days.

When I eventually went to my doctor about it they found I was about a pint of blood lower than normal and a few scans later told them I was missing one kidney and a significant portion of my liver. Half of me wonders if I'm just more biowaste left outside for collection, half of me wonders if I'm part of their product.

Either way they sent me a parcel this morning.

I hope I get the courage to open it before my next interview.

Apparently I show great potential.

Day 2,063

All that stood between us and the forest was a thin metal fence and weed-choked field of wheat that did nothing to conceal the all bones from last week's visit. Honestly it's more the idea of the fence that makes us feel safe rather than it actually doing anything against the vaguely humanoid beasts that wear several deerskins roughly stitched into something enough to cover most of their bodies.

We've never lost as many as we did last week. Not since the first time the deerskins came out of the forest and ransacked the town that was where our village now stands. The few survivors either left or hunkered down, cutting the population down to a few hundred who take it as our moral duty to act as a barrier between the forest and the rest of the island.

Just when we thought we'd fall into the same old routine we found ourselves fighting for our lives like never before. The deerskins hadn't used their regular paths that had been worn into the ground from years of the same chases, the ones we knew to avoid and managed to dart between to outrun them and live another week. Seems they'd grown too tired or hungry to bother with tradition and decided to go straight for the meat instead.

On the bright side - we don't need to bury our dead. Aside from bone fragments there's very little left of them and nobody dares to go out any further than a foot or two from the fence to gather up any remnants the deerskins might have left. It's just not worth risking a second incursion so soon after the last and with so few of us left.

Day 2,062

They only worshipped it because they'd forgotten how its bones came to be in the midst of the putrefying cathedral. Its skull and left arm jutted out of a mass of broken stone and collapsed wooden beams where it had seemingly burst from the earth to greet the sky and died on the spot.

They called it Báncoðan but didn't know that it came from the ancient tongue for "diseased bones". They showered it in chalk and rubbed a limestone paste across its surface, coating every part they could safely reach and not knowing why, only knowing their ancestors did it before them. They washed every inch of the cathedral once a week and made sure to burn the clothes they wore inside as their ancestors taught them to.


The texts describing the Báncoðan's arrival called it a catastrophe, a cataclysmic event that altered the very foundations of the island nation and killed more people than anyone dared to count. The author said how it didn't come from beneath the church, it had been lured there in the hopes that it would fall into the underground caverns and slowly starve.

They didn't anticipate it climbing back up just as they didn't anticipate its blood turning the rivers into undrinkable sludge that trapped everything it touched like semi-sentient amber. Still, it died within a year of being trapped, still clawing at the surrounding cathedral and showering itself in more and more debris until its strength left it entirely.

When the flesh had gone, when the flies came to feast and died and left, when all that was left was bones vaguely held together by sinew, the rot began to spread. It came from within the bones themselves and was held in check by preventing them from touching the air - limestone thick enough to build a wall and chalk to help it set.

That only delayed the spread which turned the formerly hallowed ground to the same ashen texture of the god-sized corpse. Washing the church and burning their clothes did little to stop the spread but it made them feel better and with time it became another nameless ritual for their offspring.


All the while the bones of the god killed and corrupted the land that was its grave.