Day 2,396

The lid of the coffin was still warm, though the Larchstride mausoleum hadn't been disturbed for over two hundred years. We were only there to settle the reports that had been flurrying in over the past three days - all claiming to have heard the sound of children crying from inside the Larchstride's final resting place.

Now reports like this have been coming in sporadically ever since the last Larchstrides were entombed there back in 1805 - a pair of young lads only one or two years of age taken by the same fever that had taken their parents a few days earlier according to the church records.

If the old stories are to be believed they were stacked in one coffin instead of two smaller, singular ones as would have been proper. I guess back in those days taking whatever box was going spare was cheaper than commissioning a couple of tiny coffins, especially for the tail end of an upper class family whose money was likely being bickered over by dozens of distant relatives.

As always, the station sends a pair of us to bother the caretakers into giving us the keys to the mausoleum so we can check that everyone's still boxed and parked same as they have been for a great many years now. When we arrived though, the doors were already unlocked and the coffins were warm to the touch.

Neither of us had the guts to look any further so we just radioed in that the doors were unlocked but no trespassers were sighted which was correct as far as we were concerned. Didn't stop the calls coming on claiming that a couple of young children could be heard running about inside. 

Day 2,395

It unfurled itself from the black mold that had taken over one corner of the bathroom ceiling, clusters of eyes staring down at us as we all stood speechless. Pete was the first to act, unsurprising as we'd hired him to remove the mold in the first place. If we'd known what was living in the mold we would have barricaded the bathroom door and moved out pronto instead of risking all our lives by disturbing it.

Whatever it was - this little greyish winged creature - it did not like the industrial strength spray that Pete had doused the ceiling with. For a moment we actually felt sorry for the little wheezing thing. Then is lunged at Pete and tore through his neck, crawling down his bleeding throat while he gently collapsed in a pool of blood and cleaning agent.

I was furthest from the bathroom at the time, first and only one to reach the front door while it attacked my roommates and killed them all. I turned around just as I crossed the threshold and out into the sun to see Sadie fall, hand outstretched and throat a mess of shredded meat oozing with the blood from everyone else it had already killed.

Yes, it was cowardly of me to just leg it and leave them all to die but if I hadn't then nobody else would know about that bloodthirsty little monster. If I was any slower then we'd all just be bodies waiting to be bagged, tagged and buried while it crept back into the mold to wait for the next unsuspecting tenants to arrive.

Day 2,394

The old cinema vanished overnight leaving nothing but rusted iron poking out from broken concrete foundations and an outline on the wall of the buildings either side. It wasn't the first building to vanish but it was the most noticeable, the ones before it being broken shells far outside the city's limits and interests but the old cinema was in the heart of the lower district.

I know the old place had been haunted, as did everyone in the lower district and nobody moreso than my parents whose flat was right above their shop and directly opposite. They hadn't heard a thing that night which was odd given how they used to complain to me about hearing laughter and seeing flickering lights from between the boards covering the broken windows as if it was back in its heyday.

But the night it vanished all the heard was the sounds of the city, normal and full of life. No disembodied laughter or sudden flashes of light to wake them up and make them glare out their windows at a place that hadn't seen life inside it for nearly twenty years.

Now they look out at its leftover skeleton, the half-buried remains of the basement and foundations. Now they wonder if their shop and home might be next and I keep telling them that only dead or abandoned buildings get taken like I have the faintest idea what's going on. Like I know where these places are being taken to and why.

For all I do know my parents could vanish overnight without so much as a peep.

For all I do know I could vanish overnight and leave nothing but an outline.

For all I do know we could all vanish tonight.

Day 2,393

It squatted on the ceiling, seemingly transfixed on the faint flickering glow of the chandelier. The rest of the ballroom stood in silence, as transfixed on the creature as it was on the light and praying that either it would leave or they would be able to creep out and seal it inside until someone made a plan to deal with it.

One-by-one the guests crept towards the exits, every one staring up and none of them checking their blind spots. They simply assumed such a hideous thing must be alone in the world and must have come from a hole in the ceiling rather than consider that a pack of them had moved into the mansion mere minutes after the ball had begun.

First they ate the gatekeepers, then the groundsmen, then the doormen, stablehands and kitchen staff before slowly working their way to the top of the proverbial food chain. This would be the first mansion they had consumed as they had finally decided to leave their home caverns where they caught stray hibernating beasts and miners.

Now they fed on rich blood - dripping with precious gems and precious proteins that would keep them young for years to come. The guests knew none of this, they didn't even realise they'd willingly walked into a slaughterhouse until the first one found the main doors locked and guarded by blood-drenched jaws.

The surrounding hills would echo with their screams for weeks.

The floors and walls would never scrub clean.

The bodies would never be found.

Day 2,392

There's more to the old church on the outskirts of Abbots Brakewater than first meets the eye. It might look like your typical 17th century squares and ramparts on the outside but head to bell tower and you'll find a smallish oak door and worn stone steps leading down into the graveyard.

Now, somehow you won't stumble over any fallen coffins or old bones in the chambers beneath the church. You will, however, come across aforementioned vaulted chambers overgrown with roots and vines and a faint blue-tinged light shining from somewhere above you.

In a chamber nearby you'll hear running water - a river or waterfall - but it's always nearby and never actually seen. Touring all seven chambers takes maybe two hours and it only leads you in a large circle beneath the unassuming church. Still it feels like if you go round it one more time you'll find something more.

You won't - they never do. The pastor doesn't even admit that there's faces that peer out from the hollow cavity where the virgin Mary's own dear face is supposed to be, let alone the existence of seven vaulted chambers beneath his own little church. 

You'll want to take him down there, to make him see it with his own eyes and believe that there is something more to be seen but when you show him the door by the bell tower it won't be there. It never is when he's around - something about that place below only calls to true believers.

Anyone can wear a collar and call themself holy.

Anything can walk into a church if the ground's not actually consecrated.

Day 2,391

The silhouettes only appeared to people who were already as good as dead, or so everyone with something to sell claimed. They used the silhouetted figures to fleece anything and everything to protect, attack and otherwise evade what we would soon learn to be the inevitable.

It used to be that you'd see the silhouettes and wind up in a bodybag one way or another, generally within a week. When people started seeing them move, started hearing them speak and began to communicate with them, things began to change and not for the better.

Entire cities were being wiped out overnight and all anyone could talk about was that the silhouettes were saying and how meaningful their conversations were without actually saying what was said in the first place. It was all garbled words as far as I was concerned.

I hadn't even seen one of the silhouettes until last night and now I'm seeing them everywhere. They walk so slowly towards me but veer away at the last second, circling me once and walking back into obscurity. If I try to meet them halfway or make any movement back, they scatter.

Something about me scares them and at this point I'm too relieved to ask what or why.

Day 2,390

Splashing water echoed against mold-smothered tiles as yet another teen went missing, dragged under the deep green fungus covering every pool, slide and shower head in the abandoned waterpark. No amount of signage, security guards or town-wide messages stopped people from trespassing, if anything it compelled more people to see exactly what was being hidden from them.

As the latest missing teen was in the process of discovering - it was mostly corpses. Their struggles against the unseen thing that had a sharp hold of their shin moved enough of the algae to reveal dozens of bloated, sightless faces all contorted in varying shades of suffocation and pain.

Adrenaline surged through them as they desperately kicked at the sharp grip and flailed their arms towards the side of the pool, desperately hoping that one of their friends would hear them and come back to help. The grip bore down and they realised it was a mouth, teeth breaking through skin and sinking into bone as agony seared through them, shocking them for just long enough that they could be dragged down.

By the time their absence was noted, the algae had settled once more and everything was still and silent.

Day 2,389

They took away the road signs to the old church to stop people from looking for it. The parishioners were possessive and cruel, seeing outsiders as fuel for Sunday's pyre. Something to keep the greater beasts busy for another few days while a long-term plan was allegedly being put into place.

Dealing with creatures taller than deep-wood trees keeps the parish busy enough that the county council was able to construct a barricade and seal everything inside before anyone could escape. They foolishly thought that one parish would be able to sustain itself and countless carnivorous beasts indefinitely or at least until a new council came in and it became their problem instead.

This did not work.

The parish was down to a handful of people in a matter of weeks when the council predicted it would take years. They never took local wildlife into account, blocking the creatures from several herds of deer and cattle as if a hundred people were the equivalent.

By the time they realised this, the barricade had been reduced to rubble and the parish reduced to bloodstains and a cold pyre. Without a group to centre them, the creatures lost their main territory and began to roam. For miles and miles around the parish, the ground was covered in paw prints the size of small cars and carcasses strung up high in the trees for the slower beasts to feast upon.

They took away the road signs to the old church to stop people from looking for it and finding their mistake.

Day 2,388

That woman is back outside again, clutching at her face and weeping like her whole world's ended. I'd call the priest again but after last time he just said 'salt your thresholds and keep an eye on her' without telling us what we're meant to watch for. Priests are helpful like that.

If we don't salt the thresholds she ends up floating into the kitchen and causing the fuse in the fridge to rupture. I'm not driving out in this godawful weather to go buy another set of fuses because she's perpetually stuck in the midst of a breakdown.

Salting doesn't work like the priest said it should, doesn't keep her strictly outside the property. It does stop her from interfering with everything but without being able to interfere she starts lifting her hands from her face. She gets curious about the environment and seems to come back to herself again.

We thought it might offer us a chance to talk to her and convince her to move on, to rejoin her lost loved ones on the other side. When she spoke back for the first time is when we found out that she is neither dead nor human nor capable of dying in the first place.

I wonder if our priest knows this and that's why he refuses to come out again.

I suppose he only really deals in the spiritual and damned if this one has a spirit.

I'd ask her but something in her eyes makes me think I'm better off letting her break the fuses instead.

Day 2,387

It felt like they'd been at sea for years, though they'd only been off course for a few days. The captain had seen something on the horizon and ordered everyone below deck - everyone but him and the quartermaster who promised that this wouldn't last. He said they'd be at the closest port as soon as humanly possible.

That was three weeks ago. Someone said they hadn't seen the stars change position even though they'd been sailing long enough to have almost reached the next hemisphere. They went missing the next day, like dozens of other passengers who weren't in their cabins come morning.

Nobody had the energy to look for them or even move more than a few feet from their cabins. Vast as the ship was, all the locked doors and bolted windows made the temperature gradually rise until they all felt like they were slowly cooking alive with every exhale.

The crew were nowhere to be seen and nobody had seen them for little over a week. People started wondering if they'd found a way to escape, to reach the lifeboats on the upper deck and sail for land. Maybe they went and got help and they'd be saved any day. That thought kept the air feeling lighter for a good couple of days.

Then another week passed, more went missing and something foul began filtering through the air. Something fetid was waiting for them on the lower decks and they all knew that if they went down there, they wouldn't be coming back. Just like all the others and all the while the captain carried on chasing that thing on the horizon.

Before long he'd be sailing nothing more than a morgue, if him and the quartermaster still lived.

All the while, the stars never changed their place in the heavens.

All the while, the horizon seemed to rise to meet them in an embrace full of teeth.

Day 2,386

They were known as Dazzlers when they became infected enough to show. When the larvae crawled up behind the eye and began filled them with a hefty dose of their saliva-based dissolving agent. They'd leave the outermost layer gelatinous and thin enough for them to peer through. Unfortunately this meant you'd be able to see them just as well and nobody wants to suddenly come face-to-face with those bulbous clusters of eyeballs and mandibles.

It's worse when it's someone you know. One minute their voice is cracking and giving way and the next they're trying to scream through the pain while becoming more and more dazzling by the second. You know, they're only called Dazzlers because the larvae change colours in such rapid and neon pulses that it tends to trigger muscle spasms and freeze you in place. All the easier for them to infect.

We don't yet know how to stop them other than burning the infected on sight but until they hit the eyes they're pretty much impossible to spot among the rest of us. Everyone's armed with a some kind of flamethrower and we travel in groups of five but not even that is enough to protect us.

All it takes is one missed moment and then a week later you're all dead and dazzling.

Day 2,385

The forest was silent and full of eyes peering through false leaves. It wasn't safe to walk there alone, even when the sun was at its peak. It simply wasn't the kind of place you should be without a second, third or fourth set of eyes and a few guard dogs to guard every potential blind spot.

It was protected by the government and several metres of barbed-wire fencing yet people continued to see it as a challenge and make it their life's goal to slip inside and take photographs of the elusive, well-guarded species therein. People had been attempting this simple feat for almost two hundred years and yet not a single ground level photo exists to this day.

The phrase "carnivorous tree" might bring to mind old calcium studies where fresh t-bone steaks were buried beneath saplings and were found to have been completely consumed. It might even bring to mind stories of people being buried holding seeds and imprints of their bodies found when the full-fledged trees are dug up.

It wouldn't be an entirely inaccurate assumption to think that trees in need of an iron-dense and protein-dense diet might be considered carnivorous and have delicate roots. It doesn't quite meet the full picture of something that was once possibly an insect, possibly a mammal, and is now quite possibly the greatest camouflage predator the world has ever not seen.

The eyes are the first thing that people notice. Trees generally don't have several pairs of eyes deeply set into surprisingly soft looking bark. Next they notice how the leaves are tipped with claw-like protrusions that have already become slightly entangled in the trespasser's hair and clothing.

It draws them in slowly, cautiously and deceptively gently until they begin to notice how the shadows around the lower half of the tree are now much, much darker. Few will notice the pitch black teeth plates inside the mouth that opens like a flower greeting the morning sun.

There's never enough time to react when its jaws have opened wide enough to fit a sizable portion of them inside. Before they can fully draw the breath to scream, it crams as much of them down as possible, snapping the two plates closed and crushing them to a pulpy mess in a matter of minutes.

It lets the liquid viscera slide down its gullet and onto the roots, to be drawn back up into leaves that are much thicker than they were a few minutes ago. The only movements now are the lower half of the victim slowly twitching in the throes of a sudden, violent death and the eyes of the tree darting about as if to dare the rest of the forest to come and claim its prey.

Day 2,384

I grew up with the walls singing to me, with inhuman hands reaching through broken floorboards and air vents, with a tooth fairy who left monstrous fangs in place of my own milk teeth. This was my normal and until I went to school and met other children, I thought this was just how the world was and that every home had walls full of chattering darkness.

It didn't take long before a teacher spotted the jagged teeth that always found their way into my schoolbag and thought they were knives. Social services were just as confused as I was at the accusation and the evidence they were presented with. There was no harm in a child carrying "fake monster teeth" about but they still scheduled a home visit.

I told the walls what was happening - I always told the walls when something interesting or upsetting had occurred. Usually the hands would stroke my hair while the walls made soft, comforting noises but when the social workers came they were not welcomed.

The same hands that held me close now reached down their throats, pulling something soft and shadowy out, carving out a space in all the meat so that they could slip inside and puppet the former humans. Everything they left behind was tucked into the walls to join all the other voices but they were too upset to sing.

Some time during the night they were killed, the little left of them thrown into the bathtub to slowly wash away down the drain while their bodies walked into the old industrial site to break down and free the beings wearing their hollowed-out meat.

I never had any trouble from school or social services after that and even when I moved house, all the hands and voices followed me. They'll always be there for me, reaching through holes in the plaster and singing me to sleep at night. They're there for me because they know that one day I'll be there with them, singing to a new child from the warmth and safety of the space between walls.

Day 2,383

The blood didn't flow so much as it reached from beneath the freshly made corpse, heading straight for the living ones desperately trying to break the doors down. They, much like the many corpses behind them, would fail and their blood would join the collective in its perpetual search for its source.

It had only been free for five hours.

Before that it had been buried deep in the icy heart of Antarctica where it had remained undisturbed since winter's first descent. They discovered it entirely by accident - one core sample taken a few inches from its intended position and just enough of it was removed to awaken it.

From there it was tirelessly studied and gradually moved further and further away from the source until it felt completely untethered and utterly alone. Naturally it sought company from the closest similar beings which was, unfortunately, the humans studying it.

Specifically it wanted their blood. In order to rejoin the source and return to hibernation til the end of the great frost, it needed enough sustenance and substance to be able to cross the continent and ocean that lay between it and its home. It needed more bodies than the entire facility contained but that wasn't an issue.

Not when it figured out how to puppet the bodies, using them as vehicles to carry it towards more blood and bigger bodies to hold them all. After the last few humans it knew it would have to find a bigger vehicle, perhaps a horse or more preferably some kind of oceanic creature.

As the blood formed a hand outside of the broken wrist it was departing from, the survivors screamed.

Day 2,382

The subway platform was too crowded to get a proper look at the worm-like creature that had writhed its way along the tracks and stopped in place of the train. All I could see from my position at the slightly emptier far end was a little of its face and the ridged top that rose and collapsed with each heaving breath. Poor thing must have been trying to run from all the other trains.

I didn't think of it as a poor, lost little thing for long though.

A deep hiss filled the room and silenced everyone on the platform til all we could hear was the hissing, the jagged breathing of the creature and our own fearful gasps as we quietly began to retreat. It noticed. It noticed and it began to turn towards us, giving me a clearer look at its piercingly sharp front-facing eyes and leech-like mouth full of serrated fangs.

Several tongues lashed out before we had time to react, spearing dozens at once and leaving their bodies wherever they fell. A few people died near me and, remembering old shooting drills in school, I hid under their bleeding bodies. Most people tried to run, clogging the stairs, trampling over each other and slipping in all the spilled blood while the creature continued to heave itself over the ledge and follow them up the stairs.

I must have waited there for a good half hour after it left, trying to breathe as quietly as possible in case it came back and praying a train would come. Nearly two hours later my prayers were answered and an especially battered looking train pulled up. I sprinted for the doors,slamming the open button and desperately checking behind me in case the creature was close enough to hear.

The other passengers looked at me like I was the monster and I suppose I must have looked the part all blood-drenched and frantic. The ride to the surface was utterly silent apart from the sound of someone sobbing. After a few minutes I realised it was me.

There's been no news about the creature from the tunnels, the massacre it left behind or where it went.

I've never taken the subway since - I don't think 'd survive a second meeting.

But for all I know it's somewhere on the streets right now.

Day 2,381

The sun was blazing, his friends were all around him and the air was filled with the tantilising scent of cooked meats coming from the grill nearby. This event happened almost eight years ago and yet he was back there. He didn't want to question how he'd gone from driving with his wife to suddenly being there. He didn't want to question why he was so cold or why he was sitting in a car seat when everyone else was on plastic chairs.

He felt his mind screaming at him but everyone looked so happy and relaxed that he let himself join their happy lull. He'd almost fallen asleep when his wife walked into his line of sight, soaked to the bone and silently mouthing his name. He remembered he hadn't met her until a few months after this and as he began to notice more odd details about the place, he began to wake up.

He was holding a cold beer in one hand - he was holding her hand and she was so cold, so still.

None of his friend's seemed to have faces - his eyes started to open, bruised and meeting an inhuman gaze.

Everyone started some kind of chant - it was screaming at him to wake up before it was too late.

He lurched forward, gasping through broken ribs as the creature's grip began to slip and the car started to slide into the lake. A quick glance to his right confirmed his wife was already dead, her neck resting at an unnatural angle and he knew if he stayed to mourn he'd be back at the barbecue for good.

It took him several attempts before his bruised and numb hands managed to unlatch the seat belt, force the door open and roll out onto the riverbank. As soon as it saw him safely out of the car, it let go and swam for deeper water. The car slid into the murky waters after it, coming to a rest with the rear lights barely below the surface.

Every breath was agony and relief and grief all at once. He wondered what would happen if he closed his eyes for a few moments. As soon as he began to relax the creature's head was back above the water,screaming his name in his wife's voice - begging him to wake up.

She must have been crying out those very same words before she died.

He felt a chill run down his spine as the amphibious being begged him to go.

Every step felt like fire running through his body as he headed for the road, hoping to flag down help.

Day 2,380

There's a carnival at the bottom of the lake - a remnant of the town they flooded when they put the new dam in place, hoping to generate more work with it to replace all the livelihoods lost in the flood. Anyone gutless enough to go back there rarely lasted more than a week and none of them lasted past early summer.

Although the official reports and broadcasts say that everybody was evacuated months before the flooding, they're all covering up what's down there. The real reason for effectively destroying and sealing the town up for good. The reason they 'accidentally' collapsed half the old silver mine and let the toxic waste fill the waters til all that remained were the remains of dead fish and whatever birds were dumb enough to eat them.

You can still see the ferris wheel when the summer's been adequately dry - just one little carriage poking a couple of feet above the water. Some say if you sit there for a good while, til nature forgets you're there and goes about her own business, you'll see someone climb out of the water and sit in that lone carriage. 

They'll sway it back and forth like a child... like the child who went missing a few days after the flooding, though his parents say he ran past the barricades and right into town right as the waters hit. Not that anyone official has anything more to say than "there was a successful evacuation of all human life five weeks before the dam's completion" which only tells us that the kid wasn't human.

Never says what he was or how he's still alive but if you wait for him to finish playing and dive back into the waters you can see him come swimming right for you. If you aren't scared off by the time he surfaces he's real pleasant to talk to, or so say the ones who managed to stay. I legged it out of there soon as he surfaced by the ferris wheel.

Whatever manages to survive and thrive down there seems like it'd be real hard to kill and I don't want to find out if I'm right. I'm much happier warning tourists away from that hellsite and hoping they stick to the nature trails up north instead. Less monsters up there and the ones that are about are easy enough to kill if they get too close.

The kid in the lake - not so much.

Day 2,379

He blinked and the spores smiled back at him. So they'd finally made it to his eyes after all these years of lying dormant in his throat. It was the beginning of the end and his two hundred years of life would culminate in a cloud of pollen-sized death just as all his loved ones before him. The same loved ones whose faces now smiled among the spores.

He hadn't been able to speak since they settled in his throat - a mercy and a half if you asked his late husband who grew tired of the same old jokes that made him fall in love in the first place. Two hundred years without that dear man gave him plenty of time to mourn and plenty more to consider what he'd say when they met again among the spores on their way to the next host cluster.

He once thought he saw another human driving a car nearby but as he drove closer he saw only the work of cheap brakes and gravity. They would have run for the hills if they'd seen him anyway, especially now that he was on his last years and his skin was a mottled patchwork of mycelium and decaying flesh. Hosts never usually lasted this long but the spores seemed to be aware that there would soon be no more hosts at all.

He wondered what would happen to then all then. All their minds interconnected in the spore-cloud, perhaps adrift in the wind forever, perhaps to grow and change into something better suited for another kind of host like a rabbit or a wolf. Something common and short-lived enough to allow them to spread and allow the spore-mind to grow.

Perhaps they would settle into the earth and become a part of the largest mind - the world itself.

Perhaps he would find another host and it wouldn't be his problem any more.

He liked the sound of the latter the most, setting off south with a whistle on his lips and spores in his eyes.

Day 2,378

They told us there were miracles beneath our skin and begged us to set them free. Those flowery words basically meant 'open your veins and feed us your blood til you're nothing less than a withered husk' which most folks, understandably, did not take kindly to hearing.

Of course there were plenty who took the message to heart with knives in hands and hearts carved out to be used like visceral juice boxes. Though they were few and far between, there were enough that the damned things kept coming back for the rest of us, hoping that we'd all eventually cave.

I know at least a dozen people who tried to compromise and ended up skinbags surrounded by hearty and well-fed creatures who at least had the courtesy to wipe the blood off their faces before moving onto the next house - Lord knows they've been at my door nine times now.

I swear they're getting bigger each time too. Somewhere out there they're getting plenty of blood but the news claims there hasn't been a new death in weeks. That's when I reckoned that the footage wasn't real, that it was well-edited but fake and they were trying a whole new set of tactics to get to the last of us.

For all I know, for all I can trust the rest of the world, I might as well be the last right now.

My plan is to wait as long as possible and then make sure they won't get a single drop from me.

The top options at the moment are a house fire, blood poisoning or the easiest - exsanguination in the tub.

Day 2,377

The phrase "red sky at night, shepherd's delight" doesn't make sense to the younger generations any more. For them, the sky is always red and pulsating with hints of the Great One's gaze if it's a particularly clear day. They don't even know what proper sunlight looks like - they only know the mouth of the Great One.

I remember when the sky was blue and the ground didn't shoot up all around us as its jaws sealed shut, leaving gaps between teeth where the sun desperately tries to reach for us. A lot of people died in those first few years. Suicides at first, then starvation until we got the hang of farming the plaque-like fungus that grew at the base of every tooth.

I suppose in a way we are its tongue, sending down anything we can't eat in the hope that the Great One will accept it and not swallow us down instead. The younger generations don't even feel this fear - this is their normal and I hate it. I hate it but there's nothing else we can do.

Plenty of people have tried climbing up the teeth, thinking that the rest of the body must still be underground and there hasn't been any other movement since the mouth closed. The flying things that live on its upper palate usually get to them before they make it more than thirty feet up. Messy little monsters shred the poor buggers and shower our whole town in viscera.

For now, things are stable and nobody's come up with anything other than useless protective gear for climbing the teeth so we're all still stuck. We're stuck together though, and while we may be in the mouth of a vast and ancient being we're alive.

Some days even I forget that there's a world outside of here and I'm slowly forgetting to care.

It's probably for the best though.

Best to forget it all and rest.

Day 2,376

I caught glimpses of it in the dark, something with clusters of limbs that looked like it had rolled straight out of a taxidermist's reject bin. In one paw-like hand it held the severed head of my date who was used to a more sedate kind of life, one that leaves you ill-suited to spontaneously running for your life.

As it got closer to my hiding place at the far end of the parking lot I heard it sniffling and quietly crying under its breath. The kind of crying you do under your blanket at night so all the others don't hear you, so you don't disturb the grownups who always seem to be one slight sound away from thrashing you to pieces.

I wondered if it was looking for me because it wanted to wipe out any witnesses to its existence, to make sure it remained on the edges of our knowing and not at the forefront. Some childish part of me wondered if it recognised someone else who'd spent most of their life quietly suffering while the rest of the world smiled and laughed without a single care.

In less than a blink it had found me, lowered its head to meet my frightened stare with countless death-glazed eyes and clenched the hand holding my date so hard his head split like a water balloon. I tried to get the words out to say something - acknowledge its pain and offer it kindness, beg for my life, beg for a quick death - anything.

But nothing came out in time and the last thing I saw was a group of mangled hands rushing towards me.

Day 2,375

In all nine centuries of their recorded existence they've never crossed the threshold before. They simply pick the unpickable locks, unbolt the welded-on bars, effectively open any door they feel like and just sit there. They may not have eyes but all accounts from afflicted persons say that they felt watched by these featureless deer-like creatures.

I say deer-like only to reflect the bulky, stilt-legged nature they possess whilst simultaneously being utterly devoid of eyes, ears, mouth or any kind of orifice whatsoever. Yet without all this, without fingers or hands or hooves they are able to violate the sanctity of the home and for what purpose?

To sit and stare in the hope that the hapless victim flees their home, falling right into their trap?

To force us to confront our fear of death whilst accepting our fragile mortality?

To distract us from the faint scraping sound of an upstairs window opening?

Day 2,374

They were never there to help, only to hide the chaos and bodies so the rest of the world wouldn't panic when they heard that something deep in the ocean was using human remains to try and reach the shore. There'd been three incidents so far and the last one proved that whatever was down there was learning more and more each time.

The first attempt took place on a deep sea fishing boat that radioed in about a strange haul of toxic looking seaweed. Within about ten minutes it had the crew overrun and developing external gills. By the time anyone got to them there wasn't enough of them left to call human so they burnt it and left it to sink back to where it belonged.

The second attempt happened on an oil rig and resulted in twelve casualties, three fatalities and one possessed corpse that managed to beg for its life before it was shot to pieces. Just in case any of those pieces made it into another living being, they torched the entire site with everyone inside. God rest them and whatever went down with them.

The third and latest attempt was on a military ship that had been dragged way off course and right out into the depths. All outbound messages reported that everything was fine, everyone was changed and for the better and they were coming home soon so please don't be afraid. The ship was sighted about a week later - a sighting that nobody could have been prepared for.

Somewhere along the line all the crew had merged into one semi-aquatic being that sprawled itself across the entire length of the ship, lazily using its half-formed tail to propel itself to land. We lost count of how many missiles it took to sink the damned thing but when nameless higher-ups told us to bring in the big guns and make sure it wouldn't live to see another day well... we did.

We're still waiting for its next attempt, knowing that it's become fluent enough to pass for a human.

Knowing that it's determined to make it to land, to bring its gift to us all.

And not knowing where the source is...

Day 2,373

Her hand gripped the moist bones of the sodden skeletal child that continued to lead her deeper into the corn fields. She trusted that it was leading her to safety - there was no other option at this point. Not with the townsfolk all rotting meat and garbled cries for either help that she couldn't provide or a death she was too cowardly to give.

It felt like they'd been pushing through mouldy corn stalks for days but the ache in her legs said an hour or so at most. Every now and then the child would pull at her hand, encourage her to crouch down as something much larger than a human snarled its way through the same fields. She wondered if it was hunting them.

For the most part they just walked hand-in-hand in a way that only served to remind her of her own child who was still lost somewhere out here. Somewhere the skeletal child indicated that it knew though she didn't dare to ask why, especially in the face of every other horrifying creature in the area. The child was the least threatening thing around and, so far, the only helpful one.

In the back of her mind she found its clothing familiar... its bone structure familiar... its mannerisms familiar all in a way that made her heart ache and her mind switch to literally anything else. Anything to keep her from realising what would break her. Even if his - no, it's rotten cheeks tried to pull into the cheeky smile of the child she was looking for she couldn't focus on that. Not until they were safe.

She tightened her grip on the dead child's hand as they crouched down yet again for the unseen behemoth.

Day 2,372

The children wake up as they always do - sprinting through the house, down the stairs to the shop front to try and catch a glimpse of the ever elusive sun that my husband told them about after one too many drinks. Ever since that fool told them, our eldest has started remembering what it was like before all of this occurred and the world was taken into the mouth of something impossible.

I don't know how much more of this I can take. The endless night sky sometimes swirls with stars and we tell our children they are smiling down at us because they love us but their mouths are full of jagged teeth and bones. Some day our bones will join all the others up therein the false sky and our children will have to carry on like we have, raising their own in this wretched stomach.

Ours is the only light we've ever seen aside from the cars that pull up out front to refuel at the pumps that never seem to run dry, just as our pantry never seems to grow empty. We try not to question where any of it comes from - especially the meat... especially when it has a tattoo that resonates with familiarity and ever dish we make from it tastes like the memory of a dear friend.

We don't know why we're being spared from so much but, again, we do not question. We try to help where we can though, putting up signs in the windows offering travelers food and shelter for a while but none of them come close. I'm starting to think we've been changed somehow, made anew to better fit this new life.

I'm starting to forget what the surrounding land ever looked like under the sun.

Did it ever matter?

Am I even real any more?

Day 2,371

His goal was simple - be the first to trap a human soul in such a way that it can be seen and thus prove its own existence. His methodology had varied over the years til he'd come to the conclusion that if a violent or memorable death produces enough magnetic residue to form a ghost, he could use it to free and trap a soul.

The latest 'volunteer' to meet his isolated soul extraction chamber might have been a schoolchild once. Now the poor thing was scarcely recognisable as human among the viscera and wires that wove throughout its meat like tapestry of cruelty.

It hadn't worked again. The soul was gone but he hadn't a clue where. Not until something caught his eye in the reflection of a glass cabinet - a child standing right behind him. He spun around and saw nothing but as he checked the reflection they were still there.

He knew the uniform from the table in the soul extraction chamber. Somehow, instead of trapping the soul within those walls he'd trapped it within himself and the damned child wouldn't be able to leave unless he found a way to release it. To make matters worse he couldn't even use it as proof of a soul - the body wasn't recogisable enough to link to the ghost that still glared at him.

Hoping it wouldn't become a poltergeist, he began the preparations for disposing of the tiny corpse.

With any luck the ghost might feel more attached to its own meat rather than his and leave.

But if luck had ever played a part before, he'd have a soul trapped in that room already.

Day 2,370

Our preacher used to say that tide and tempest brought every ship to rest in the ocean's greatest depths and they'd bring us all to rest there in its loving embrace as well. We might not have believed him and he might have stopped speaking to the god we knew a long time ago but we still stayed, mostly to hear what nonsense would come out next. Hell, we even helped move the church to a cliff near the sea for him.

The old sailors appreciated his words far more than the rest of our coastal town, something about the way he praised and feared the sea resonated with them in ways we didn't understand until the last storm. As always we gathered everyone by the church to take a headcount before taking communal buses further inland but the preacher insisted we come in for a quick prayer first.

It all happened so fast. One moment we were sitting in silence with the world raging outside, barely being kept out by old wooden planks and older stone walls. Next thing we knew there was an almighty crash and we were falling into the churning waves.

For a few seconds were back in the clifftop church and the preacher was telling us that god was pleased with us, wanted us to join it in the depths where dead ships and dead sailors go. We all woke up washed ashore, lungs feeling stiff and skin crusted with dry salt but alive and unharmed.

There was no sign of the preacher and a few of the older sailors swore he led us all back to land one-by-one. They said he held our hands, helped us breathe the sea until we'd reached the surface and on his final trip he just never came back.

We rebuilt the church but never called for a new preacher - how could anyone replace him after this?

Instead we all sit by the shore every Sunday, listening to his sermons coming from below the waves.

Another storm is approaching and when it arrives our congregation will be united again.

Day 2,369

He first spotted it last night, that strange silhouetted figure in the apartment opposite that hadn't had tenants in all he nine years he'd been there. He told the police he'd seen a squatter in the hope that they'd check it out and boot whoever had broken in, putting his mind to rest. Something about that figure was deeply unsettling but he couldn't make out enough of their body to understand why.

A couple of uniforms arrived that morning and he cheerfully waved at them as they knocked on the empty apartment's door and waited in the hallway for a reply. They must have heard something worrying, kicking and shouldering at the door while he saw the silhouetted figure stagger towards the noise.

It all happened so fast - they met in a short but violent shower of blood and the shadowed figure lifted one of them up in a hand that seemed to shift and warp into a dozen other hands, claws and mouths like it couldn't decide which suited it best. It seemed to ask the officer something and she pointed right at him.

He didn't stick around to see her death, too busy grabbing a bag and stuffing a few essentials in before taking the apartment's elevator to the underground car park. There wasn't a single soul in sight and he'd never been more grateful to be alone, barely noticing how his was the only car in the entire place.

As the engine purred into life he heaved a sigh of relief and began to head for the exit, for the street and probably for his cousin's place further in the city. When things get bad, there's no better place to live than with someone who's already paranoid and ready to lash out at a second's notice.

He barely made it past his apartment building before something - someone - crashed into the side of his car and sent him careening into the apartments next door. He woke up smelling and tasting blood, his eyes gradually coming into focus and meeting the lifeless stares of the officers he'd sent to their deaths.

In the corner of his eyes, the shadows moved.

Day 2,368

The glistening intestines that trailed behind the young girl were not hers. The smile on her face and skip in her step didn't sit right with her pinprick-sharp pupils and bend in her neck where the poor child had been hung, likely in an attempt to stave off the possession.

People never listen - especially when their loved ones are involved. Every government broadcast and newspaper for miles around clearly states that in order to minimise casualties the possessed person should be taken to hallowed grounds and be buried up to their necks.

Hanging her only puts her at a mild disadvantage when she could have been incapacitated before she'd fully succumb and begun gathering whatever viscera the demon tells her to. For all she knows, for all it lets her know, everything is fine and she has a handful of ribbons that she's taking to her granny's house.

I watch her pass by, hoping the sheep's blood on my clothes hides me well enough to see tomorrow.

Day 2,367

When they say "there'll be days like this" they never say what's coming or why, not for lack of knowing but rather not wanting you to leave so soon. Not before you get to experience it and decide for yourself that sticking around is what's best for everyone. Not before you're too far gone to notice them quietly running away and closing the door behind them.

The phenomena is called the Threshold though it looks more like someone spilled pea soup and forgot to turn the gravity on first. Great clouds of floating green sludge meander about the otherwise featureless plain, not doing much to hide the multitude of feet, hooves and limbs you're better off not thinking too hard about, that meander within.

We're meant to watch it and contain it, Lord knows they've only managed it so far because the damned things get to feast on whichever newcomer slips up and it's enough to amuse everything into settling roughly where it is. We're told to blast music and cause a scene if we think it's starting to move on but one of the senior staff told me to mentally pick the weakest in our group and be prepared to push.

I never got the chance to before they left it all to us, expecting everything and nothing in the same breath. We managed maybe three days before someone got a little too drunk trying to forget what we've been seeing and walked straight in there - beer in one hand and the other raised up high.

We've been seeing his feet among all the creatures but who knows how much of him is left alive, if anything at all. The likeliest scenario is that something is wearing him like a cheap suit, waiting for curiosity or bravado to get the better of us and send us down to meet our end as well.

It didn't have to wait too long - we left to rescue him within the week.

 As we passed the Threshold and the world around us began to scream.

We don't know how long we've been here but all we see if smoke and shadows.

If he's in here then he's either as lost as us or waiting for us on the other side.