Day 2,719

They encouraged the other children to put something over their head and follow them to the fields behind the old allotments, claiming there was a monster they needed to defeat. We joined them, like all the other children of our time we were expected to stay out of sight and out of the house til dinner so we grabbed old buckets, rubbish bags, pots and pans and headed out for the old allotments.

It was the kind of area I'd never let my own children go near, not just for the broken glass and used needles lying around but for the way the world around there, and especially around the fields behind it, just felt so... other. 'Other' is the only way I can think to describe the feeling that you aren't where you were a few footsteps ago - you're elsewhere.

The older children who'd invited us along were quick to cover their own faces and grabbed a large stick from a pile of cut firewood, blocking the gap in the fence until we'd all done the same. Crouching through the gap and crossing into the field beyond felt like stepping through a god made of cold soup but even that wasn't enough to distract me from what was lying on the ground beyond.

I remembered him from before he became the thing slumped under a blanket made of hastily tied together rubbish sacks. He was my brother, thrown out of our house after one too many arguments with our parents. We hadn't seen head nor hair of him for months and in that moment I knew he'd been spending all that time out in the other, becoming less human by the hour til he was in the state we found him in.

I couldn't tell the older children who he was, not without risking my life. Children are always somewhat deranged but these ones were worse than the usual feral and somewhat neglected crowd - they'd seen enough violence in their homes to have some idea of what they were about to do when they gathered a crowd and armed them.

The rubbish bags were slick with his blood by the time they were done. I remember getting a slap about the head for staining my clothes with berry juice. I didn't have the heard to confess that it was blood and whose blood it was. Mother never asked but I reckon she knew.

I recognised her hanky in his hand, clutched tightly as we beat to death the thing he'd become.