Day 2,426

The church was rotting from the inside and every last parishioner was host to their own cluster of sanctified spores. The body of Christ was bile green when it should have been pale as his own shroud and his blood didn't pour so much as it oozed sluggishly from the cloudy bottle. It was hard to tell what was an air bubble and was was a developing eyeball. The general consensus was that it was best not to think about it.

Rot seeped through the stonework, muffling the cheerful tones of the bell with a thick layer of dried pus, the same dried pus that caused the carpets to crunch underfoot. For the heavier parishioners, wet feet were expected as they broke straight through the crust, releasing a sickeningly sweet burst of warmth into the air and leaving puddles in their wake.

The bell tower was beginning to sag, listing to one side as the roof folded in on itself like a child with a stomach ache as something vaguely grey dribbled over the edge,staining the brickwork and singing the grass beneath it. From the ruined grass sprouted the same mother plant that infested the whole congregation, encouraging them to lay down for just a moment, just to embrace His perfect creation.

Rot was coming towards the village, carried by upbeat hymns and a truly putrid communion.

Day 2,425

It blends in so well with the snow that the only way to tell it's even there is that your footsteps stop making any sound but by then it's too late to do much more than scream and hope it warns the rest of your group. It doesn't even leave a trail of blood behind, just folds up and flips over - nobody even knows where its damned mouth is, if it has one, or if it prefers to smother its prey and absorb them through its skin.

People have tried to avoid walking on the ground altogether with moderate success. That's when we found out it had a tongue, or tongue-like appendage that shot out and sliced clean through the wooden beams and metal ladders we placed between buildings.

Me and my family have been trapped in the apartment above a furniture shop for almost a week after they broke through the wardrobe we'd wedged between us and the next shop over. Now our only options are to risk replacing it or step outside-either way we have to hope they've moved on.

Day 2,424

The house crouched above the stagnant lake on warped stilts, tilted as though it was peering at its own reflection in the murky water. There are plenty of stories about that house  - from the old folklore that it was built by witches who cast spells onto the lake that caused hundreds of shipwrecks to the more modern and much kinder assumption that it was simply an abandoned fishing hut.

To tell the truth, the house was as much of a predator as the aquatic terrors that patrolled the lake though the house was far more patient. It knew that people would always choose to explore something that looked familiar and vaguely safe over diving through murky waters any day. The sand beneath those stilts can't be seen for all the bones piled around it.

Though the shoreline reeds were full of the clicking and twittering of all the vibrant life that a lake is meant to have, their nests are long abandoned. Nothing moved into the old nests and nothing made new ones for fear of disturbing the otherwise unnatural placidity of the lake.

Occasionally the perfect stillness of the water was interrupted by a lone jagged fin that circled anything unfortunate enough to have decided to land there and dragging it below in the blink of an eye. The only visible life aside from that fin is the incessant buzzing of flies that tend to swarm around moving, living things as though they know death will strike them down soon.

They never have to wait for long. While the shores may smell like death from time to time, the bodies rarely last longer than a day and human bodies generally wind up somewhere in the depths before even the flies can get to them. They rest where the current takes them, some four hundred feet below where even the fin doesn't dare to venture.

Where the bodies don't rot and the dead whisper among themselves about better days and kinder shores.

Day 2,423

When a hand touched yours in the darkness of the basement stairwell, time seemed to stop.

You were supposed to be alone.

You were supposed to be alone and someone was gently running their nails over the back of your hand.

You were supposed to be alone and someone was gently breathing slightly out of sync with you.

The lights down there rarely worked but you'd never cursed them so much as you did that moment.

That moment when the nails stopped stroking your hand and instead held your hand.

They began to pull you down and,much as you resisted, they were far stronger.

As soon as you reached the basement itself,the hand pulled you towards an old sofa in the corner.

It was still too dark to see them but they sure as hell weren't human.

When you were seated it threw a blanket over you, crouched beside you and continued to hold your hand.

You felt a thousand questions burning in your mind but before you could ask - the stairs creaked.

The stairs groaned under the weight of something immensely heavy, whispering your name into the dark.

Again, you were supposed to be alone and now you were in the company of two creatures.

One had yet to harm you and the other seemed intent on finding you.

The hand holding yours tightened comfortingly as you both held your breath.

Heavy steps methodically worked their way around the basement, passing you by several times.

After what felt like hours it headed back up the stairs.

You faintly heard it walk out the back door, slamming it shut as it left and the hand holding yours went lax.

Both of you heaved sighs of relief as the blanket was lifted.

A light bulb was gently placed in your pocket and you were led back the the stairs.

You turned around as soon as it let go, barely catching a glimpse of matted fur slinking back into the dark.

After closing the door to the basement you chose to not lock it, though you did lock the windows and doors.

Neither creature ever returned but you felt that they were both very much present.

You simply made sure to never be alone in the house again.

Just in case.

Day 2,422

The doors quietly locked one by one until the trio were left huddled in the middle of the hallway, knowing they were not alone and knowing they were unlikely to see another sunrise. With silent eye contact they chose to head for the stairs and try the front door, willing to break the large ornate windows if all else failed.

As they crept down the hall they heard quiet snickering and tapping from behind every locked door - a staunch reminder that they were being toyed with as a cat does to a mouse moments before the final bite. As if they needed a reminder of their dire circumstances; the multitude of glaring signs and countless tiny mistakes that led them up to this very moment.

It was supposed to be a break from college - a spooky looking mansion where they could rent a room for the week and relax after breaking their backs and sleeping schedules for the end of semester exams. It was highly rated and cheap enough to gloss over all the little details in the gallery that made their hindbrain scream run oh god just run and never look back!

They were at the top of the stairs when they heard one single door unlock from somewhere on the floor above and footsteps sweep their way towards the staircase. The hunt was on and panic forced them to make yet more mistakes. Instead of sticking to their plan and heading to the front door they instead chose to duck under the stairs and hide behind a pile of old clothing, presumably left by the last ones.

A deep chuckle worked its way closer as the figure glided down - feet seeming to touch only air now that he knew they hadn't gone for the obvious option. The trio muffled their breath in dusty fur coats, praying he'd think they moved into one of the dining rooms or the servant's quarters and while he did head away from them, he kept turning his head back towards their hiding place, muffling his laughter as they did their breathing and neither working very well.

This would be a short hunt afterall.

Day 2,421

They stayed together not for love but for not wanting to argue ownership of their tancho koi fish. They couldn't remember who purchased it but the damned thing was worth thousands and though that amount varied from expert to expert it was enough to cause a headache if they ever set their minds to divorce. And so they stayed, side by side in the back garden glaring at the fish as if it was the cause of their problems and not years of gradual resent that the lively presence of children could no longer cover.

They both tried to kill it several times before, viewing it as an extension of their problems and the sole barrier between them and their happiness. The damned thing continued to eat poison after poison after poison and thrive. Neither of them would ever admit it but it was starting to scare them.

When the orange circle on its head began to darken they quietly rejoyced, both praying that the end was in sight. When they found similar red circles on their hip and chest respectively their joy came to an abrupt halt and the stream of doctors visits began.

They were the only ones who could see the marks, neither telling the other of course as communications between them rarely went further than asking about dinner. Every day though, their respective marks would grow and darken until both them and their fish bore the same blood red circles.

Things stagnated after that. Five years passed and the marks and the fish remained as permanent as ever. Ten years later and his red mark faded the day before he had a heart attack. Ten days later her red mark faded the hour before she fell and broke her hip, passing away before she could call an ambulance.

The fish went missing before greedy relatives could swoop down and sell it though there are now rumours of a large dark shape that likes to circle small fishing boats down on the river. These may be as unconnected as the deceased couple were to each other or the fish developed a taste for revenge alongside its poison. 

Day 2,420

There have always been soldiers in the woods, translucent and armed with outdated rifles. Their uniforms are unmarked - nothing to tie them to a particular country or regime, only blood to tie them to a brutal death. For all our searching we've never found any bodies, aside from the unfortunate few who stray into their line of sight.

There's always more casualties in the summer when the dappled sunlight through the trees makes it almost impossible to spot them until they're practically beside you. The lucky few who've survived being shot by the spectral bullets are never quite the same, always cold and pale, always bleeding from their soul.

There are nineteen recorded attempts at exorcising the soldiers and cleansing the woods of their presence. Several different denominations came forward and most of them came back hanging their heads and bibles as all their words fell on the silent ears of the dead.

There have always been soldiers in the woods and it seems there always will me.

Day 2,419

The headstones at St Agatha's keep moving by themselves. At first everyone thought it was vandals and within a day the little 14th century church was covered in security cameras that caught the stones moving but the frame rate was just low enough that people were still the main suspect.

Then the parishioners managed to organise an overnight patrol, hoping to catch whoever was desecrating such a peaceful place. Instead they all came home the following morning pale as the dead that had plagued them the entire night, whispering in their ears that they'd been buried all wrong.

Dozens of displaced voices begged them to put everything right and sure enough they found themselves helping unseen spectral hands move the headstones to their 'correct' place. The parish was outraged, claiming heresy and hysteria in the same breath - anything to discredit the volunteer patrol instead of the Vicar.

Unfortunately for him, every patrol that came by found themselves battered on all sides by unseen hands and pleaded to by unseen voices - some of them achingly familiar. Every group that swore to preserve the headstones proper placement ended up helping the dead set everything right until the Vicar abandoned them all.

His was the last voice heard by the final patrol before the cemetery gates were shut for good.

He begged them to give him a headstone or even a small wooden cross.

Anything to be remembered by amidst the hundreds of bodies below.

Day 2,418

"Look, only one of us is gonna leave this place alive and in case you hadn't noticed - I'm already dead." she hissed, as if I'd somehow missed that she was currently carrying her own head as she drifted beside me. I don't think I'd ever seen her so close to the ground before, not even when she pretended to sleep.

Whatever had been chasing us down was now close enough to frighten her and I should have been more afraid but I was just tired of it all at that point. It's hard to say what annoyed her more - my sleep-deprived apathy or well-rested optimism. Honestly sometimes I think she just despised me for outliving her.

As we peered around the corner of the old stone hut we'd been hiding inside for the past few days, I noticed the horizon shifting. Breathing. It was so damned close I could practically count every eyelash and stray scrap of flesh caught between its jagged teeth as it rose from its crouched position and began to survey the area.

We retreated back behind the hut, silently praying to every deity we knew that it wouldn't catch my scent on the wind or hear her angrily muttering to herself. It's not like she had anything to fear - she'd already died once. She just wanted me alive long enough to tell everyone else how bravely and heroically she'd been in her final moments.

Given that she'd died to save my own skin I'd say I had good reason to lie and call her a hero when the reality was that she gave up and sat in the middle of a clearing waiting for the end. The creature hunting us wasn't her killer but from the way she reacted, it would be worse than spidery-things that hid in the canopy and spun the thinnest strands of silk to decapitate their prey.

This was far larger, its head was probably the size of my torso, if not bigger. Damned thing was too well camouflaged most of the time and what little time it spent moving was coincidentally the time we spent running and trying to out-hide it. Having a ghost on my side definitely helped... would have helped more if she wasn't such a coward most of the time but she made a good enough spy that I couldn't complain too much.

If only she'd stop whispering to herself, that's probably been helping it track us down.

Still, she's on my side and has adequate reason to see me live through this.

I only hope we reach the next town before it reaches us.

Day 2,417

The tree continued to circle the house, filling the air with the sound of shifting dirt as its roots churned the ground beneath it again and again and again. It was like this every night without fails and had been like this for five months so far. It prowled around the house, never entering the slightly ajar back door and never digressing from its well worn path.

Nobody lived there anymore, not since the children of the last family had tried to run away from their cruel parents and run straight into the tree as it made its way up to the house for its seventeenth night. Neither children nor parents were seen or heard from again, just a door left slightly ajar and all their worldly belongings within arm's reach.

Occasionally someone will claim that the tree has visited their house but such claims are disproved within minutes - it leaves an unmistakable trail of fresh dirt and tiny animal bones in its wake. It's such a predictable creature that it can even be found during the day simply by tracing the path back to the source to a lone tree beside the waterfall.

Some reckon it likes the view, likes to watch over them all and plan which family it will haunt after its vigil at the abandoned home is done. Some even say the tree is possessed by the spirit of a young man who was thrown from the top of the waterfall by a spurned lover and now spends his restless nights trying to find them and exact revenge.

For all that we do and do not know about the creature, we know that hidden behind those leaves is a face that everyone calls familiar. We know it has remained on its current path for five months and there is no record of its existence before the missing family moved into that house.

We don't know what happened to the owner before them but it's been said that he was a keen gardener.

Day 2,416

There's a church below the abandoned megacity, eight storeys down the main car park. It must have made sense at the time - to commune while you commute - but when funds were stolen and the whole site was seized back by the government, it all fell into a red tape limbo.

You can easily get in nowadays, the project managers ran out of money to pay the onsite security five years back and it's been a free-for-all for squatters and artists ever since. Bland concrete is slowly blossoming into colourful murals and a half-built roof is always better than no roof at all.

Even though it was made to house several hundred thousand, the only place left untouched by visitors and residents alike is the church. If you're willing to believe the rumours, it's become home to a congregation that practices human sacrifice and if you head down a few more storeys you'l find whatever's left of their victims.

Again, if you're willing to believe the rumours there's worse than that deeper inside the abandoned city. There's a plethora of places that nobody's willing to go to like the hotel surrounded by a dried out riverbed where there's always something writhing through the soaking wet plants. The entrance always seems to have some kind of fresh bone arrangement outside.

There's also the tallest building - the dreamer's sky tower as it was originally called. Dozens of photos will show you exactly why all those urbex free running types never come back by the stairs. Every window from about the fifty-eighth floor up has someone standing on the ledge and at sunset they all leap to their deaths. Every single night.

Still, none of this is enough to keep people out and it'll never be enough to drive them away for good. It has stopped the government and project managers from sending anyone official inside. At this point they're just waiting for it all to collapse so they can bulldoze over it and start from scratch with something simpler, safer and far more profitable.

Day 2,415

I was about 550 feet below sea level in a river that the locals reported to have a great man-eating serpent in it. I was the lead diver of a team that was sent in to investigate these claims, to see if we might discover a new species or if the alleged Big Foot was just another bear with mange.

I hung around the 550 feet mark, clinging onto the chain tethering me to the boat above and waiting to see if anything would swim by aside from the usual local fauna. I must have been hanging there for about thirty minutes before I began to notice the water in front of me darkening as something began its approach.

As the murky shape before me drew closer I began to grasp the sheer scale of it, the absolute vastness that had probably lived here for hundreds of not thousands of years already. The eyes were the first thing I noticed and how unsettlingly human they were - front facing and such a piercing blue that I almost had to shield my eyes.

The rest of its reminded me of a moray eel, complete with glass-like teeth that glistened in the dim light as it began to turn and circle me. The locals never mentioned it eating people but with a mouth like that I couldn't rule it out. I couldn't make any sudden movements either, spooking something of that size would no doubt be my last act.

The further along it went, the more awed I felt. Just the head alone was around 30 feet high and I couldn't even see its long serpentine body tapering off to an end even after a further half hour of waiting and watching it slowly pass me by as if it only chose to appear to show me that it was real.

When its gills came into view is when I felt my heart jolt and my breath start to stagger. Anyone who's ever been on a dive before knows how important it is to control your breathing and not exhaust all your oxygen before you can surface but I couldn't stop myself.

There between its filaments, what I originally mistook to be parasitical fish at first, were hands. Stark white human hands waving frantically at me and using diver's sign language to signal for help. I didn't move - I couldn't. Not with the head slowly turning so it could look back at me, to check if I was falling for its trap.

Instead I waited for it to face forwards again and I sent my own signal back to the boat so they'd pull me back up. What I didn't expect was for the serpent to rise with me, slowly circling and rising until all I could see was its gargantuan scaled body a few dozen feet from me and those damned white hands shooting out from its gills, trying to grab me.

It stopped at about 100 feet from the surface and began to sink again, body dropping like a coiled rope while the head stared resolutely at me. Its expression was unreadable for the most part but something in those human-like eyes seemed sad.

If it hadn't been for my headcam the others wouldn't have believed me. They might have called me mad and sent someone 'saner' down there to check it out. They might not have been to calm and still - they might not have come back and instead joined the legions trapped within those damned gills.

I quit as soon as I could and picked up an office job deep inland but I know it's still down there in the dark.

I wonder if it'sever started to surface again to look for me.

I wonder if they ever sent anyone else down to meet it.

Day 2,414

Dead whales don't float for too long out at sea - too many creatures tear away at them until there's not enough left to float and they begin to descend for the last time. Some call their final resting places whale falls, others call them graveyards as if the rest of their pod laid them down with kind words and sad songs to ease the passing of their souls.

What we found circling the rig this morning was exactly like and nothing like a dead whale.

At a glance, sure it's a 20 metre long mass of blue-grey meat with dozens of fish swarming it and digging in like they're at a half price buffet. You get caught up in the grotesque majesty of nature and the circle of life crap and you start to notice that those aren't fish.

They're lures- little squirming tendrils mimicking a non-existent feeding.

You see dozens of eyes hiding where it looks like huge chunks of flesh have already been torn away, where the sunlight doesn't quite hit but still manages to glint off the reflective surface of all those deep red eyes. It keeps looking up at us, checking our numbers and noting our positions.

It'll strike sooner or later.

I mean, as big as the rig is and for all the storms its stood against so far I just have this godawful feeling that whatever's down there playing at being roadkill is hiding a lot more of itself where we can't see. I've been staring back at it for so long now I can see exactly how big its mouth is.

We won't stand a chance.

Day 2,413

The shadows reach out towards you with familiar hands - a childhood friend's friendship bracelet twinkling in the moonlight, your grandmother's wedding ring, your brother's favourite nail polish. They reach out for you with trembling hands begging you to accept and to move on.

You are little more than a drowned mouse. You are an exhausted, dazed and drenched little thing surrounded by hands that keep flickering between the achingly familiar and jagged talons oozing something metallic and viscous. You are done with it all but too far from home to stop walking.

The memory of the last living person you saw wormed its way back into your mind from somewhere deep inside where you tried to keep all the unpleasant memories. Their name was Io, after the celestial body rather than the Greek myth as they liked to remind you.

You're almost certain you've seen their tattoo drifting among the un/familiar hands just like it does across the sky. Just like they're asking you to follow them onwards to safety. Just like they did when they were alive enough to be a caring human being and not another shadow wearing a skinglove.

The shadows reach out towards you with familiar hands and you are so tired you start to reach back.

Day 2,412

We sat there in our car at the top of Lovers Overlook watching the town burning below and wondering why we didn't set it alight sooner. There was no sound other than the roaring flames, I supposed that everything might already be dead but he guided me to the telescopic viewer where we saw hundreds of figures running around. I almost thought they were dancing.

Perhaps we were too sentimental to have burnt it all down sooner, he thought. Perhaps we were too afraid that we were wrong and that our loved ones were still alive somewhere beneath the countless layers of mucus they'd been secreting ever since they rerouted the town's water supply for "health and safety concerns".

Of course this happened on the hottest day of the year when everyone was downing water like it was going out of style and of course we'd been out of town at the time. I'm still not sure if I'm grateful that we missed the initial infection and came back late enough that we weren't fooled into thinking everyone was just as human as they'd been when we left.

Still, seeing them desperately trying to extinguish themselves, seeing them trying to escape past the barricades and pits - vaguely recognizing those silhouettes, or projecting familiar faces where none were... I knew I wouldn't be walking away with him.

I think he knew that as well.

Day 2,411

She - the house - was starving. He knew this from the way the floorboards creaked out words like feed, visitors and Jacob we need this. She showed no signs of going back to sleep like she used to after a week of him delaying, placating and doing just about everything he could to avoid firing up the Vacancy sign out front.

She was far more cunning than he realised though and her reach went beyond her walls, through her pipes and out onto the highway that spanned the horizon before them. It cost her to bring them in but she hungered and he would rather hear her beg for scraps than help her - help them both - thrive like the good old days.

He barely noticed the low water pressure, he'd been in an exhausted haze for weeks since she started speaking to him through the pipes in the walls. The same pipes she'd been rearranging and strategically severing, forcing through the tarmac to leave jagged metal shards for unsuspecting tyres.

It took two hours before the first victim drove straight over them and skidded to a halt several inches away from the front door. He ran outside to help them, not even thinking before he brought them inside and tried to call an ambulance but she had thought ahead again. She'd disconnected the landline and the power supply to his room overnight so he had no way to summon help.

All it took from there was one carpet slowly unfurling to drag the injured man down to the manager's office where her open mouth awaited. The wallpaper was grey and even her tongue looked a tad shriveled compared to its normal self.

Guilt overwhelmed him - from neglecting her to dragging an innocent man to his death to a lifetime more of this if he was lucky... but he'd never been too lucky. He'd never been more than the lure to her angler fish, the worm to her hook, the siren song to her shallow waters and now he was tired.

Just as she'd started to chew on her food, he closed his eyes and fell forward into her maw. Screaming with your mouth full is hard enough to do as a human with a front-facing head but with hers being a hold in the floor, she had no way to spit him back out.

She could either choke and die or chew and live a little longer, hoping the next manager would be as kind to her as he'd been for over forty years. Forty years of late night laughter shared between them, of repairing her aching floorboards and treating her to fresh paint twice a year and using her name like she was still a person.

She gasped for breath between each sob, the meat in her mouth broken and slowly suffocating her.

Every curtain closed at once as her sobbing turned to muffled gagging turned to silence.

The motel collapsed within minutes of her death and two people were seen walking away hand-in-hand.

Day 2,410

There were several alarms blaring from somewhere deeper inside the site which only confirmed her suspicions that they were too late to do much more than dispose of any remains. She'd felt this way since they'd silently drove through an absolute mess of a car park with vehicles and broken suitcases strewn about like one hell of a tornado had just passed.

No bodies though... how odd.

A chill seemed to go through the whole team as they passed under the slightly work sign declaring Creech Lamlock to be the "sunniest holiday park in Kirport County". The dark grey skies they'd been driving through since entering the county suggested otherwise but the weather was the leas of their concerns.

According to their Intel they were looking for a Styrman - human remains reanimated by a lightening strike, usually seeks out its old life and often becomes violent upon realising what it is and that its former life is now impossible to return to. Though they hadn't seen any scorch marks at that point, they couldn't rule anything out til they'd seen the whole site.

The moment they stepped out of the van, the scent of ozone and singed hair drifted on the wind. Either a fresh storm was coming or the Styrman was close by. They split into three teams-one to tackle the caravan area, one for the entertainment centre and one to secure the car park.

She was among the caravan group and dreading every second of having to check inside, outside and underneath each and every mobile home they passed. The constant trilling, beeping and whining of multiple alarms only set them further on edge, made them careless about checking before entering.

Roof, underside, ceiling, left, right and confirm a clear site to proceed.

In an ideal scenario it would be quiet enough for them to hear crackling flesh and the static purr of lungs slowly burning but today was far from ideal. Today they rushed into every caravan to shut the alarms off and focus on the sounds outside without even considering that they were making their positions far too clear.

She only heard the Styrman's hiccuped, choking gasps mere moments after snoozing her ninth alarm which barely gave her time to hide beneath the folded out sofa bed before a pair of burning feet stepped over the threshold, letting go of her coworker - Jerry or Jeremy, she tried not to learn any new names -  with a disinterested thump before turning slowly around to search for the silenced phone.

It had planned this.

They weren't supposed to be capable of planning at such a late stage in decomposition but they way it deliberately grabbed her coworker's body and walked towards the table where the phone innocently lay. It used his hand to swipe open the phone and set a new alarm before dropping the dead man and walking away again.

She heard it stop outside and realised that it was waiting for her to make a move.

Day 2,409

It was the kind of game you only ever heard of at sleepovers or around the fading embers of a late night campfire. In fact I was nine when I heard it, attending an overnight for the church's youth group and already wanting it to all be over before our dinner prayers.

As with all church groups of its time, we were split by genders and sent to our sleeping bags on opposite sides of the church. By the time we got settled on our side the older girls were several ghost stories deep and eagerly soaking up a sea of frightened faces all around them.

If it had stayed so innocent we wouldn't have spent the rest of the night in the freezing cold while police and ambulance crews tore the place apart for tiny bodies they would never find. But instead we listened when one girl told us we could send someone into the future by chanting and dancing.

It just seemed so silly at the time, seemed just like the skipping rope songs we all knew off by heart but the more of us copied her chanting, the more times the volunteered girl span and crouched... the deeper into the rhythm we were drawn and she was drawn far, far away.

The group leaders came rushing in when we regained enough breath to scream in fear at the hands that had grabbed her and pulled her through the worn carpet. None of them believed our half-garbled, half-wept out explanations and assumed someone had taken her.

It was only supposed to be a game but some of us may have said the words wrong. I may have said a few words wrong and to this day, some thirty years later, none of us have seen her. The girl who originally suggested it is still trying to figure out where it went wrong and where she was sent.

I don't reckon she'll ever be found - I don't reckon she went backwards or forwards in time.

I know what I saw though, and I saw clawed hands dragging her down.

I know she's waiting for us down there.

Day 2,408

It belonged to the tarmac, to long-forgotten roads and empty petrol stations where the person behind the counter stares at something past your shoulder and says nothing. You'll spend just enough time there to feel on the verge of writhing in your own skin, the urge to simply unzip your body and run away into thin air.

It belonged to vast swathes of nothing but a thin grey road and freshly ploughed fields with no farm in sight and not a single cloud in the sky to shield you from the harsh glare of the stars above. They won't change no matter how far you drive but if you stare long enough they begin to form a face you wish you'd never seen. Do not make eye contact.

It belonged to a road made of truck tracks and lined with broken hubcaps. This will not appear on any map or app but if you welcome the hitchhiker several miles away, he will show you how to drive down there and reach your mutual destination three hours early. You will never see him or the road again if you are lucky.

Day 2,407

It fell from the roof and lay there all night just wheezing and coughing up fluids. Lord only knows how the damned thing got up there to begin with but if we don't finish it off before it dies it'll start to attract others and we'll have a swarm of them before you can say "poor little thing".

I hear they travel in packs further up north, something in the colder air agrees with them and those long dark nights make it easier for them to cover entire villages in one fell swoop. Happened to Lesser Shepsett just the other week you know - all three hundred gone and eighteen well-fed nests strewn about in their place.

I've been trying to persuade the other half to go out there but he isn't having any of it, says that it'll die soon enough but he's got the telly on so bloody loud I can't hear how close the rest of them are. There will be more of them further out, waiting for this scout to come home and they will come looking sooner or later.

Honestly I wouldn't mind them so much if they lived off other beings like caterpillars or fish or something. Fact is they need blood, specifically their nests do and so they wire humans directly into the nest's roots until we're drained dry. There's something different in our blood, some specific tiny components that they need in order for the nest to flourish and nothing else will do.

So one of them slowly dying, probably crying out for help in between the wheezing and coughing up fluids, right outside our front door will not end well for us unless it dies before the rest can pinpoint its location. And as his lordship refuses to lift a single finger while his shows are on, it'll be up to me to grab the shovel and shut it up for good.

I've always hated this part, where they peer up at you with those big childlike eyes and they start to form words. Best thing to do is check for others and if the coast is clear just bring the shovel down as hard and fast as possible, preferably beheading it but I can never quite manage that.

Still, once it's good and dead I'll probably shove it in a rubbish bag and toss it into the river like the last few. There's a few villages downstream that we haven't heard from in a while but that could be for any number of reasons like the weather or they're all busy.

I keep telling myself that one more body won't hurt... maybe one day I'll start to believe it.

Day 2,406

The match burnt my already scarred fingertips as I led us down a path I'd been praying was right since we stopped finding signposts and worn letters addressed to my missing sister that looked centuries old but were dated to last week. You barely glanced at me as you handed me the last match, both of us knowing that when this one went out, we'd end up losing each other in the dark.

I'd suggested many burnt matches before this that we should tie ourselves together so we don't end up wandering this purgatory alone but you were too worried about one of us falling and dragging the other into a pitch black death to even remotely consider so much as holding hands. You'd always been the cautious type so I hardly thought anything of it but alarm bells had been sounding in my head ever since we went looking for my sister.

My first thoughts were to blame the way my mind screeched that Everything Is Wrong Must Leave was due to our location - some sub-basement that only seemed to extend itself downwards - rather than attribute any fear to my companion. To you. To how odd your behaviour was becoming the further away from the surface we got. To how you tried to keep yourself half tucked in the shadows when I know you're scared of the dark.

Your eyes have a strange glint to them that I'm only just starting to realise you've had ever since the gap between me burning myself on the first match and you fumbling in the dark for a new one. Did you really drop the matchbox or was the real you dragged into the shadows and replaced by this new one who can hardly wait the sixty-something seconds this match will last before we're both thrown into the darkness again?

Day 2,405

My great uncle passed away when I was seven, I don't remember too much about him but I do know that the floating figure on my stairs is definitely him. Or at least something disguised as him, it's hard to say when he's been dead for well over thirty years and the only photos of him are from his old army days rather than his decrepit final days when I was dragged along to visit by my grandparents.

They always said it was important that I meet older relatives and learn from them but all I remember my great uncle talking about was the damned buttons on his shirt being too fiddly for his arthritic hands and how much he hated modern music. Hardly anything to inspire a new generation.

By all accounts his death was welcome and quiet - his heart failed in his sleep and he just slipped away overnight after many painful years of everything else failing first. He didn't leave any unfinished business that we knew of and never mentioned any lasting regrets and yet he's been floating about a foot high on the seventh stair for almost a week now.

He's only there between the hours of 11PM to 4AM and then he just fades out as quickly as he faded in. I tried talking to him once and he just raised one hand to his face, silently motioning for me to shut up and as soon as I do he lowers his hand and goes straight back to staring at nothing.

Well I thought it was nothing til last night when I tried talking again, heard an odd noise behind me and turned to meet a gaping mouth full of jagged teeth. I instantly stopped speaking, moving and breathing - just watching as it slowly closed and began to retreat.

Me and the ghost of my great uncle stood in silence, staring at the closed mouth of a monstrous behemoth whose full form we couldn't see for all the twisting shadows that writhed across its body. Then, without any sound or fanfare, at 4AM both it and my great uncle faded away. Waiting in nothingness until 11PM the following night.

Day 2,404

Someone's been putting up signal towers in the forest, broadcasting god knows what to god knows who and all we get for it are strange sounds and stranger sights. Ever since the towers went live the whole area's become infested with flickering, twisting shapes trying to be animals - trying to be us at times.

The more fragile among us, the ones prone to sickness and seeing beyond our vision, have started claiming to hear the most beautiful music coming from the top of the towers. It brought our Morag to tears the other week, she said it was the sweetest and saddest sound she's ever been blessed enough to hear.

I wonder if that's why Jeannie down the road climbed up one and threw herself off. She'd always been a bit on the sensitive side just like our Morag. I do hope the poor dear's in peace and not one of those walking shadows that have been following her family ever since.

Sometimes if the wind blows just right I swear I hear singing coming from the forest and I wonder if it's what our Morag's been hearing. That reminds me, the shadows started following me this morning so I reckon we'd best lock Morag in, just in case.

I'll not be waking up to the feckless police asking me to identify her broken little body.

Day 2,403

Something strange happened today that reminded me of when I was relocating across the country a few years ago and managed to stumble upon a town that doesn't exist. To set the scene, I'd been driving for about seven hours and hadn't seen another living thing out the windows for a good while. It was almost pitch black outside and there hadn't been another car since the main highway.

It was just me and the missus back then, both tired and debating the pros and cons of sleeping in the car versus driving a little longer and hoping we found a motel somewhere along the line. While we'd been talking it had started to rain and not a gentle easing into a storm kind of rain either. It was like turning on a showerhead - just this spontaneous flood of rain, absolutely violent downpour without a single cloud in sight, just stars as far as the eye could see above us.

And if that wasn't weird enough as we drove further those stars turned out to be windows and we found ourselves entering a town whose batter sign declared "Davelmagne  Population: 185". Thankfully there was a small B&B that opened their doors to us even thought the weather was apocalyptic and it was late enough into the night that the sun would soon be up.

The woman who answered was dressed like she'd stepped right out of an old western - spoke like it too but we figured it was just the local dialect. She took our names and said she'd happily take our money first thing in the morning as we'd hardly be able to go anywhere else in the storm. Everything about her seemed slightly... off. Like she was reading from a script and we were meant to know our lines already.

The room itself was quaint, one of those old floral and doily kind of places where all the paintings are either flowers, cats or meadows. At some point in the night I thought I heard somebody coming up the stairs, walking down the hallway til they got to our door and then stopping. I was tempted to get up and look but then I felt a drop of water hit my cheek.

It was like a cloud had been lifted off our heads - we woke up slouched against a sign that said the nearest city was a few dozen miles away, soaked to the bone and shivering like crazy. The car doors were wide open and it was still running but none of our things had been taken and the fuel gauge looked fulled than when we'd set off.

The town itself was nowhere in sight, just fields and nothing far as our eyes could see and we haven't been able to find it on any maps or websites ever since. We made it to our new home, a little shaken and damp but otherwise fine - definitely glad we hadn't paid for the night in advance.

Day 2,402

They tried telling me I lost the fingers on my right hand in a car accident five years ago but I know I had them yesterday. But last night I dreamt that something pulled my hand over the edge of my bed and ate those fingers - I remember the unbearable agony and not being able to scream.

I remember it telling me that everything would be different in the morning, everything would be better.

This is just different, not better.

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

It came back last night and pulled half my arm under the bed. I was dangling at such an awkward angle I could barely breathe let alone turn around and see the damned thing but God did I feel every mouthful it took from me. Either I passed out before it had finished or just woke up from a bad dream.

My missing arm indicates the former but everyone else is saying it went in a car accident six years ago.

I wonder if I've woken up at all or if this is all just an elaborate nightmare.

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

---- ---- ---- 

---- ----

One arm with just my thumb. My last remaining limb after that damned car accident took it all eleven years ago. It'll be night soon enough and I don't know how I'll continue to document this after it takes my thumb as well - if it stops there. Some nights it takes a lone finger and others a whole leg!

Everyone around me pities me, I can see it in the way they avoid looking at me.

I almost wish that thing would just forget about me and take all their eyes instead.

Maybe I'll be able to speak to it tonight and convince it to try fresher meats.

Day 2,401

It had been following their little car for five weeks now.  They found that if they ever stopped for too long they'd find it waiting inside, patting the empty passenger seat beside it like an old friend inviting you to join them for one last drink. Wherever they drove it was usually not too far behind, no matter the distance or waters and mountains they put between them and it.

At one point they sold their car, hoping that was what it was attracted to only to see it sitting in their new car at the dealership. Having to explain why they couldn't take the new car was the hardest part of their troubles and in the end they found enough minor issues to be given another car on the spot. They drove away safely knowing they'd bought themselves a little more time.

Eventually it seemed to grow tired of waiting for them to sit beside it and it took to following them at a much shorter distance. They began to notice a thousand little things about it that they never wanted to know and couldn't seem to forget. Like how cracked its grey-blue mouth were and how rigid its tongue was whenever it licked its lips...which it did uncomfortably often.

Everything about it seemed both far too dead and alive to make sense - even its clothing looked like it had been taken straight out of a guide to Victorian mourning. For all they knew it might have lived in that time but something about its listless gaze suggested that this was the latest in a long line of appearances it had taken on.

Perhaps if they kept this up, it would be wearing their face next and staring at another terrified stranger through their own listless eyes, licking their cracked gray-blue mouth and hoping that this new human would sit beside them. Perhaps they'd wake up one day with its face instead of their own - perhaps that was their real face and the one they thought was theirs belongs to someone else.

The more they spiralled and became lost in a haze of panicked thoughts, the closer it got.

Day 2,400

I know exactly when she turned by the way her screams slowly changed from pleas for me to free her to guttural, hollow roaring the likes of which a human shouldn't be able to make. Of course by that point she was human in the past tense, now another creature ready to join the hoards that blocked all roads in and out of the city. The ones who attacked her when she broke out last night and got herself bitten.

No, I shouldn't blame her for wanting a bit of freedom, for wanting to see the hoards with her own two eyes and not rely on the radio feeding us nothing but half-garbled disasters and cries for help that we have no way of answering without risking our own lives. Now that all seems so meaningless.

Keeping her here is a death sentence to the entire apartment block which could lead to the end of our city as we know it. Still, I don't have it in me to kill her while she looks so much like herself. I'll wait until she rots enough that she doesn't look like my Lisa anymore and then I'll do it.

I promise us both - I will fix this.

Day 2,399

We only saw them after we made it to the hill at top of the hiking trail and could see clear over the forest to the lake about 12 miles away. I went to take a photo of it and as I lined up the shot I saw dozens of the trees turn around to stare at us. My friends noticed around the same time, all taking a step back from the hill's edge before realising there were more trees behind us - now all watching us watching them watch us.

Their eyes were like nothing I'd ever seen before, they were bulbous and rough and with every slow blink I noticed how they looked just like ordinary burls that we'd seen on countless trees countless times before. I wondered if they'd all been eyes and every one of those trees had looked at me when I wasn't paying attention.

I was broken out of my thoughts by the rest of our group deciding that we couldn't spend the night and couldn't call out an air ambulance for something this unbelievable. They chose to try and walk back and as much as I argued against it - we were utterly defenseless and had no idea what these things were capable of - I was told to shut up and walk or get left behind.

After what we went through I've never been so glad to be this short. Arms came down at us from the canopy, claws the size of thighs sliced clean through Javid and Erina before pulling them back up out of sight. Their blood seemed to follow us all the way back to the car park... or maybe their killers did.

Saf and Maya were killed not long after. We didn't see them die but we heard their screams rise and fall and I know they still haven't been found. They aren't looking in the right places- they need to check the trees, I know they'll be tangled up in branches or crushed under roots.

In the end it was just me and Mo gasping for breath and desperately trying to unlock the car with hands that were too scared to work but we managed. We survived and our friends were murdered and we had to say we were attacked by random people because who would ever believe that there are monsters hiding among the trees?

Day 2,398

It wasn't the landslide that took them out, it was what the landslide had unearthed. Thirty three dead and the body count rose every day and every day the blood and bones left behind all led back to the gaping chasm in the cliffside. The stench of rotting meat that wafted out served as a ward against anyone entering alive.

Nobody saw what was coming and going and slaughtering anyone who drove past there at dawn or dusk until someone managed to hit one of the wretched things with their truck. What little of it wasn't splattered against the grill, pressed into the tarmac or leaking over the edge of the road looked disturbingly human.

I swear if it weren't for the claws and eyes the size of your fist they could be mistaken for a passing cousin. For all we know they're out in the street wearing those ridiculous over-sized sunglasses that are somehow fashionable. It would certainly explain how they've been killing so many when the road's been shut down.

Day 2,397

We call them Hléoðor - the sound without form. The unseen arms that wrap around your throat and take your voice, your dying breath and all your memories too. It becomes you for five days and within those 5 days it tracks down people you knew, hoping to take their voice, their life and continue its own.

It can't live without a voice, without that dying breath to keep it wandering the world like the cursed beast that it is. A small family of them moved into the area some thirty-odd years ago and we've not known any peace since nor will we til the last blasted thing is dead as all their victims.

The youngest isn't much trouble, gives you a bad case of asthma-like symptoms and bad memory for five days you always recover. Lazy little bugger tends to stick to the old folk's home where they dcan't tell who it's attacked and who's just senile.

The elder is deadly - a true, cold-hearted Hléoðor who sees us as food and knows just what to say to trick you into walking towards those unseen arms then crunch goes your neck and you're gone. Nasty brute prefers the downtown area where people have always gone missing.

The third though, the third has what the others lack - cunning. It's adapted to modern humanity far quicker and far better than either of the others. It's figured out phones and uses them to call victims all over the city. We've had to set up secret codewords and pray the bloody demon doesn't figure them out.

Sooner or later they'll move on, as is their way. We know the elder will for sure, he's a traditional beast who's been set in his ways for thousands of years but the younger ones worry me. They're too comfortable where they are and they've carved better niches than the old fellow.

Time'll tell if we outlive their comforts or if we join their repertoire of voices.