Even an island as small as the United Kingdom can still hide ghost towns, ghost kingdoms too.
Their rulers never adhering to current legislation, almost stuck in a distortion of the past.
One such place is called Cairnlochan and lies somewhere between Orkney and the Shetland isles.
Rarely visited by their neighbouring islands, they remained self-sufficient and almost unmodernised.
Sure they had a few modernish advancements but those are mostly medically based.
Their homes are sturdy stone carved from the cliffs and thatched by straw coated from the tar pit.
Even the wildlife seems frozen with horses almost twice the height of an average man.
The streets are dirt coated in a mixture of straw and horse manure.
Nobody lives there now, as was recently discovered by a boat that spotted them by pure chance.
All five villages were utterly abandoned, the farms left to turn back to nature and the crops to rot.
It was hard to say exactly what happened to them until someone thought to test the water.
Few had noticed how many Datura flowers there were about the island, much less by the rivers.
Strange behaviour had been noted in the livestock but it was put down to skittishness.
You see Datura, more commonly known as Angel's Trumpet, is a potent hallucinogen.
Every well tested held toxic amounts of the plant's chemicals, enough to drive an island mad.
With this revelation the United Kingdom's largest manhunt was organised.
The first three months were spent looking for survivors, the next five looking for remains.
Nothing was found, no traces that humans had inhabited the villages, not even hair or skin cells.
Even the surrounding sea held no clues, no remnants of ships or people.
It was almost like the whole island was a museum dedicated to the Celts and in some ways it was.
The search teams that voluntarily camped overnight reported hearing strange splashing sounds.
Some even said they heard laughter on the beaches in voices that sounded like lungs full of water.
Photos emerged of footprints that looked like a duck's, with a human foot for scale beside them.
The prints were almost five times bigger and their source somewhere in the depths of the North Sea.
20151208
20151207
Day 581
There's always a patch of haze in the conservatory.
It's been there since Grandma was a child, back when her grandfather was Lord of the estate.
Not once has it moved from the conservatory though it sometimes follows the servants around.
I'd say it's almost playful sometimes, jerking forwards to make them jump and scream.
We'd all laugh at our ghostie, our misty friend who watches over us.
Ever since Grandma passed away it's been getting less hazy.
Where a patch of mist-like aether used to float, now we can see something human.
It seems to be dangling from a rope.
The clearer it becomes, the less it moves from one spot.
It's like it freezes when it knows someone can see it, just sways in one spot until you turn around.
Of course as soon as you face away it moves right behind you and stares.
It will lower or raise itself to make eye contact with whoever is there.
We've since bolted the conservatory doors and begun constructing a new conservatory.
It's not the same of course, some of those plants were almost two hundred years old.
From time to time we peer into the old conservatory to see if our ghostie it still there.
Every time all we see is its large black eyes, far larger than any human's could ever be.
It's been there since Grandma was a child, back when her grandfather was Lord of the estate.
Not once has it moved from the conservatory though it sometimes follows the servants around.
I'd say it's almost playful sometimes, jerking forwards to make them jump and scream.
We'd all laugh at our ghostie, our misty friend who watches over us.
Ever since Grandma passed away it's been getting less hazy.
Where a patch of mist-like aether used to float, now we can see something human.
It seems to be dangling from a rope.
The clearer it becomes, the less it moves from one spot.
It's like it freezes when it knows someone can see it, just sways in one spot until you turn around.
Of course as soon as you face away it moves right behind you and stares.
It will lower or raise itself to make eye contact with whoever is there.
We've since bolted the conservatory doors and begun constructing a new conservatory.
It's not the same of course, some of those plants were almost two hundred years old.
From time to time we peer into the old conservatory to see if our ghostie it still there.
Every time all we see is its large black eyes, far larger than any human's could ever be.
20151206
Day 580
The rear alley wall doesn't lead to anything, it's just a dead end most days.
About twice a year or so it grows a tunnel.
Everyone in the street goes down it at some point but we don't really talk about it.
The things you find down there aren't meant for decent conversation.
All manner of strange folk wait down there for us.
They have orders for us to collect and deliver on the grounds that we never ask about the contents.
No matter what the size is or how it leaks oil so profusely.
No matter what writhing thing in a bird cage calls our names in our mother's voices.
Our payment is in years and in luck - you'd never know that most of us are over a hundred by now!
The oldest is Mrs O'Murray who's almost four hundred and eighty though she still looks thirty three.
She's been delivering for so long she knows all the alley dwellers by first name.
She's the only one who knows any of them by first name, the sounds incomprehensible to us others.
About twice a year or so it grows a tunnel.
Everyone in the street goes down it at some point but we don't really talk about it.
The things you find down there aren't meant for decent conversation.
All manner of strange folk wait down there for us.
They have orders for us to collect and deliver on the grounds that we never ask about the contents.
No matter what the size is or how it leaks oil so profusely.
No matter what writhing thing in a bird cage calls our names in our mother's voices.
Our payment is in years and in luck - you'd never know that most of us are over a hundred by now!
The oldest is Mrs O'Murray who's almost four hundred and eighty though she still looks thirty three.
She's been delivering for so long she knows all the alley dwellers by first name.
She's the only one who knows any of them by first name, the sounds incomprehensible to us others.
20151204
Day 579
They keep washing up, sometimes in their tens and sometimes in the hundreds.
No family claims the bodies we find and no government claims the boats.
There are never traces of these people's identities, the boats are shoddily built and almost empty.
Void of food, beds and even engines they drift around our shores and settle in the mud.
The bodies themselves are interesting- none of them are complete.
Sometimes we only find their hands resting as if in prayer, caught in fishing nets.
Out of all the ships that washed up in the past thirty years, only one person was found whole.
Twenty six years down the line and they haven't been identified.
They haven't decomposed yet either, their corpse remains as fresh as a living person.
No sign of cellular deterioration or growth, just some kind of stasis.
The media are calling him "The Living Ghost" and "Mr Nobody".
Last week the lab that keeps him reported finding a pulse.
No family claims the bodies we find and no government claims the boats.
There are never traces of these people's identities, the boats are shoddily built and almost empty.
Void of food, beds and even engines they drift around our shores and settle in the mud.
The bodies themselves are interesting- none of them are complete.
Sometimes we only find their hands resting as if in prayer, caught in fishing nets.
Out of all the ships that washed up in the past thirty years, only one person was found whole.
Twenty six years down the line and they haven't been identified.
They haven't decomposed yet either, their corpse remains as fresh as a living person.
No sign of cellular deterioration or growth, just some kind of stasis.
The media are calling him "The Living Ghost" and "Mr Nobody".
Last week the lab that keeps him reported finding a pulse.
Day 578
Pill boxes had once been scattered about the english coastline, lying in wait for invasion.
They were the last resort, manned by whatever men were left behind when the useful went to war.
After all was said and won these concrete rooms were left to rot with all inside.
Of course it had to be this way, couldn't have everyone know where these little outposts were.
Just in case.
Their entrances were sealed, left exactly as they had been manned the day the war was declared over.
Of course people lamented the loss of their loved ones in some kind of top secret war project.
Their names went on the memorials while they hammered at concrete with bloodied fists for weeks.
They stopped once concrete was poured into the windows.
Some still tried to claw their way out but their hands stuck within the slurry.
The terror of being trapped was only outweighed by the agony of losing their hands.
There couldn't be any outward signs of life after all.
What few had sense to stay away from the panicking ones managed get to the centres of the boxes.
In those hollow spaces they waited, breathing shallow as their friends died slowly around them.
It gave them a food source for a while and by carving away at the trapped limbs they had air holes.
Some lasted for months in those concrete tombs, others didn't last the night.
Eventually people forgot about pill boxes and lost relatives and the faint screams along the shoreline.
And then the cliffs began to erode, bringing the boxes down with them.
With the first bodies came a wave of questions and hastily smothered investigations.
Skeletons trapped with concrete? Scratches on the walls spelling names and the truth?
Covered up with pranks, false truths and comedy.
With the masses appeased a government division was created to take care of the rest.
The boxes were destroyed at first until reports of living people came back.
Seventy years trapped with only their friends to survive on left them utterly inhuman.
Eyes a yellowish white, pupils rotted to nothing, skin and teeth much the same.
Speech reduced to incoherent sobbed apologies while their hands scratched and tore at the air.
They were silenced soon enough, bodies burnt and ashes left in landfills.
They were the last resort, manned by whatever men were left behind when the useful went to war.
After all was said and won these concrete rooms were left to rot with all inside.
Of course it had to be this way, couldn't have everyone know where these little outposts were.
Just in case.
Their entrances were sealed, left exactly as they had been manned the day the war was declared over.
Of course people lamented the loss of their loved ones in some kind of top secret war project.
Their names went on the memorials while they hammered at concrete with bloodied fists for weeks.
They stopped once concrete was poured into the windows.
Some still tried to claw their way out but their hands stuck within the slurry.
The terror of being trapped was only outweighed by the agony of losing their hands.
There couldn't be any outward signs of life after all.
What few had sense to stay away from the panicking ones managed get to the centres of the boxes.
In those hollow spaces they waited, breathing shallow as their friends died slowly around them.
It gave them a food source for a while and by carving away at the trapped limbs they had air holes.
Some lasted for months in those concrete tombs, others didn't last the night.
Eventually people forgot about pill boxes and lost relatives and the faint screams along the shoreline.
And then the cliffs began to erode, bringing the boxes down with them.
With the first bodies came a wave of questions and hastily smothered investigations.
Skeletons trapped with concrete? Scratches on the walls spelling names and the truth?
Covered up with pranks, false truths and comedy.
With the masses appeased a government division was created to take care of the rest.
The boxes were destroyed at first until reports of living people came back.
Seventy years trapped with only their friends to survive on left them utterly inhuman.
Eyes a yellowish white, pupils rotted to nothing, skin and teeth much the same.
Speech reduced to incoherent sobbed apologies while their hands scratched and tore at the air.
They were silenced soon enough, bodies burnt and ashes left in landfills.
20151202
Day 577
The City of Sunshine was closed to all but a few select outsiders. Its walls made of the thickest iron and blackened with tar on a daily basis to ensnare and immolate intruders before they could set foot anywhere near the sanctum that was Sunshine City.
Reports and rumours floated about the rest of the continent, all speculations and sensationalisms. The sort of writing that was lapped up by the public and gave hope to the thousands of unwanted, unclean and undesirable that were forced to lurk at societies' outermost points.
They said Sunshine City was so well protected so that the rest of the world wouldn't corrupt its purity and ruin the utopia within those impenetrable walls. The streets were spotless and everyone had a huge house to live in with a garden and everything. Even the gutters had the most beautiful fish swimming in them.
The few who came in and out of Sunshine City did so by a large steel elevator, heavily guarded and moving too fast for anyone to just hop onto without getting themselves hurt or worse. It didn't stop people from trying of course, especially when their heads were filled with thoughts of paradise.
Nobody who'd been to the city ever spoke about it beyond the usual "It's such a unique culture" or "The people are so reserved and polite". They said what they could without putting themselves in danger.
If the truth ever got out they knew they would all suffer for it, disregarding any culprit in favour of sending a message to the rest of the world...or so they'd been told as the elevator ascended past countless bones and fresher corpses.
The City itself is far larger than the walls make it out to be as the denizens have dug down to make skyscrapers that barely reach past ground level. The criss-crossing pathways make the place look like some kind of spider's web with countless ants running along its strands.
Everyone wore the same uniform in neon red with that cartoonish Sunshine mascot emblazoned on both the back and the front pocket. What so few people realised was that the name wasn't a reference to any kind of warm joyish feeling but to enormous floodlights that provided the deep-dwellers with their much needed Ultraviolet light.
Every other part of the City was just as you'd expect for a subterranean "paradise". The food was a combination of nutritious fungal sludge and some pinkish meat that they called beef but tasted more akin to pork.
Strange cuisine aside the City was still utterly spectacular, combining a rustic mountainous kind of architecture with modern furnishings. Somehow the duality of stone-carved towers with lichen-based terraces scattered like frogspawn against the monochrome interiors meshed together to make Sunshine a truly unique place.
Newcomers that were trusted enough to be invited to stay weren't told the full extent of Sunshine's laws until they'd signed their allegiance away to the council. There was no freedom inside of the walls, only fast paced labour.
The slow were taken to the processing plants and their families were sent a notice congratulating them on knowing such a successful business person who was now in the safe hands of a team of food production workers and would serve their City well.
It was sick if you think about it. They never made any attempts to hide what they were doing to their people, they just worded it in a plausibly deniable way as they sent the "unproductive" to be slaughtered.
From time to time there were especially difficult people who were sent to the Department of Concerns instead of processing plants. Their deaths happened in secrecy with their families only being notified when they received three parcels - two dripping with blood and one that rattled.
Reports and rumours floated about the rest of the continent, all speculations and sensationalisms. The sort of writing that was lapped up by the public and gave hope to the thousands of unwanted, unclean and undesirable that were forced to lurk at societies' outermost points.
They said Sunshine City was so well protected so that the rest of the world wouldn't corrupt its purity and ruin the utopia within those impenetrable walls. The streets were spotless and everyone had a huge house to live in with a garden and everything. Even the gutters had the most beautiful fish swimming in them.
The few who came in and out of Sunshine City did so by a large steel elevator, heavily guarded and moving too fast for anyone to just hop onto without getting themselves hurt or worse. It didn't stop people from trying of course, especially when their heads were filled with thoughts of paradise.
Nobody who'd been to the city ever spoke about it beyond the usual "It's such a unique culture" or "The people are so reserved and polite". They said what they could without putting themselves in danger.
If the truth ever got out they knew they would all suffer for it, disregarding any culprit in favour of sending a message to the rest of the world...or so they'd been told as the elevator ascended past countless bones and fresher corpses.
The City itself is far larger than the walls make it out to be as the denizens have dug down to make skyscrapers that barely reach past ground level. The criss-crossing pathways make the place look like some kind of spider's web with countless ants running along its strands.
Everyone wore the same uniform in neon red with that cartoonish Sunshine mascot emblazoned on both the back and the front pocket. What so few people realised was that the name wasn't a reference to any kind of warm joyish feeling but to enormous floodlights that provided the deep-dwellers with their much needed Ultraviolet light.
Every other part of the City was just as you'd expect for a subterranean "paradise". The food was a combination of nutritious fungal sludge and some pinkish meat that they called beef but tasted more akin to pork.
Strange cuisine aside the City was still utterly spectacular, combining a rustic mountainous kind of architecture with modern furnishings. Somehow the duality of stone-carved towers with lichen-based terraces scattered like frogspawn against the monochrome interiors meshed together to make Sunshine a truly unique place.
Newcomers that were trusted enough to be invited to stay weren't told the full extent of Sunshine's laws until they'd signed their allegiance away to the council. There was no freedom inside of the walls, only fast paced labour.
The slow were taken to the processing plants and their families were sent a notice congratulating them on knowing such a successful business person who was now in the safe hands of a team of food production workers and would serve their City well.
It was sick if you think about it. They never made any attempts to hide what they were doing to their people, they just worded it in a plausibly deniable way as they sent the "unproductive" to be slaughtered.
From time to time there were especially difficult people who were sent to the Department of Concerns instead of processing plants. Their deaths happened in secrecy with their families only being notified when they received three parcels - two dripping with blood and one that rattled.
Day 576
For as long as humans have been alive, we have been watched. Not from above as we all fear to be, but from below. Right from the very thing that sustains us. From what we have worked so hard to tame and what has thwarted us at every turn.
We've always been within its gaze - especially so when we began to create machines. The ground watched what we were doing, what we were becoming and found itself wanting. It had never wanted before and wasn't sure what exactly it wanted but it knew that it needed something from us.
It began to learn from us.Watching what we did with its precious stones and heavy materials. It saw us build weapons, crudely at first but then refining them over hundreds of years. It found itself giving us more and more materials to work with just so that it had more to see, more to explore and learn. It needed more from us and we gave it everything without even knowing.
No matter how much it gave or how much we did it still wanted more, it wanted to become more. A test was done in a small, fresh settlement in America. with the ground barely rinsed of the spilled blood it began to observe the railways we made to move across it faster.
It took the first thing we had taught it - how to hurt - and used that to create its first attempts at becoming. In an open area where we had yet to venture the dirt opened and bled, scabbing over in iron lines, cross crossed with rough wooden planks. Overnight it continued to cut and make, cut and make until it joined itself crudely to the partially build railroad, forming a curved line that gradually straightened to form fresh tracks leading deep into its woodlands.
The settlers were both amazed at how much work had been done and enraged at how shoddy it was compared to their polished metal and sanded wood. These new planks had flowers sprouting in places and the metal was full of lumps. A few men gathered to follow where the tracks led, hoping to find whatever group was responsible for this new mess that would take hours to clear and set their schedule back by weeks.
With their hand cranked cart they set off, not knowing how far in the tracks went and too full of anger to care. Meanwhile deep within the forest the earth had torn itself wide open, magma-warm pus bubbled up and solidified, slowly forming itself into one of the many things it had seen the humans build that it found to be perfect for itself - a station. It even named itself. the humans would surely be pleased that it wanted to become more like them, that it wanted to learn more from them.
In recent years there had been so much bloodshed that its learning had grown in leaps and bounds from remembering fire and recreating it within the thicker parts of the forests to reading and writing and even a few words. Now its voice was still a work in progress but with the railroad tracks and the station it called "First Stop" it could learn so much faster.
The men found the station and froze. they'd never see anything like it, with timber framing made from living trees and benches covered in crystals and moss. It looked like something out of a fairy tale yet the stench of musty air and damp earth made them think of graves and trenches and other deep pits they worked hard to avoid. Still they were curious and slowly walked up the stone stairs to the platform, leaving the cart behind on the tracks, their end clearly in sight.
Inside of the station, past the somehow-dirt-platform and the strange benches, they found a set of stairs, wide and deep as any hellish tunnel they could ever imagine complete with faint reddish glow at the bottom. The smallest man (with the most to prove) walked briskly down the stairs, halting at the bottom to scream at the others to join him. They found themselves standing before a lake of lava that swirled around like a lazy tornado. The walls around them were covered with diamonds, reflecting the lava's light and brightening the entire chamber.
None of them had noticed that the light behind them had gone and the stairs with it. They were too busy contemplating what they could do with their riches. The earth learnt from them quickly with a surge of magma, engulfing them and letting their blood flow into it wherein it learnt what it was to feel greed. Not the wanting it had felt before but to have the desire to act upon its wants in a way that disregarded the lives it sustained.
Now it actively wanted to end those lives above it in order to learn faster and faster and become more and more and more. It began a slow process of killing the green, killing the uninteresting things like fish and birds. Kill the food, kill the feeders and learn, learn, learn. It took the humans far too long to realise that their food was dying and even longer to realise that they couldn't stop it.
By then the ground had learnt enough to make itself bodies that looked just like us. Gave them names and sent itself out into our world to live on our streets. It waits in the shady corners, chokes us with dirt when we're at our most vulnerable and learns from our blood. We've called it so many names - Jack the Ripper, Manson and Dahmer to name a few. It has learnt so very much from us but what it remembers most is the greed, is that first blood it took.
We've always been within its gaze - especially so when we began to create machines. The ground watched what we were doing, what we were becoming and found itself wanting. It had never wanted before and wasn't sure what exactly it wanted but it knew that it needed something from us.
It began to learn from us.Watching what we did with its precious stones and heavy materials. It saw us build weapons, crudely at first but then refining them over hundreds of years. It found itself giving us more and more materials to work with just so that it had more to see, more to explore and learn. It needed more from us and we gave it everything without even knowing.
No matter how much it gave or how much we did it still wanted more, it wanted to become more. A test was done in a small, fresh settlement in America. with the ground barely rinsed of the spilled blood it began to observe the railways we made to move across it faster.
It took the first thing we had taught it - how to hurt - and used that to create its first attempts at becoming. In an open area where we had yet to venture the dirt opened and bled, scabbing over in iron lines, cross crossed with rough wooden planks. Overnight it continued to cut and make, cut and make until it joined itself crudely to the partially build railroad, forming a curved line that gradually straightened to form fresh tracks leading deep into its woodlands.
The settlers were both amazed at how much work had been done and enraged at how shoddy it was compared to their polished metal and sanded wood. These new planks had flowers sprouting in places and the metal was full of lumps. A few men gathered to follow where the tracks led, hoping to find whatever group was responsible for this new mess that would take hours to clear and set their schedule back by weeks.
With their hand cranked cart they set off, not knowing how far in the tracks went and too full of anger to care. Meanwhile deep within the forest the earth had torn itself wide open, magma-warm pus bubbled up and solidified, slowly forming itself into one of the many things it had seen the humans build that it found to be perfect for itself - a station. It even named itself. the humans would surely be pleased that it wanted to become more like them, that it wanted to learn more from them.
In recent years there had been so much bloodshed that its learning had grown in leaps and bounds from remembering fire and recreating it within the thicker parts of the forests to reading and writing and even a few words. Now its voice was still a work in progress but with the railroad tracks and the station it called "First Stop" it could learn so much faster.
The men found the station and froze. they'd never see anything like it, with timber framing made from living trees and benches covered in crystals and moss. It looked like something out of a fairy tale yet the stench of musty air and damp earth made them think of graves and trenches and other deep pits they worked hard to avoid. Still they were curious and slowly walked up the stone stairs to the platform, leaving the cart behind on the tracks, their end clearly in sight.
Inside of the station, past the somehow-dirt-platform and the strange benches, they found a set of stairs, wide and deep as any hellish tunnel they could ever imagine complete with faint reddish glow at the bottom. The smallest man (with the most to prove) walked briskly down the stairs, halting at the bottom to scream at the others to join him. They found themselves standing before a lake of lava that swirled around like a lazy tornado. The walls around them were covered with diamonds, reflecting the lava's light and brightening the entire chamber.
None of them had noticed that the light behind them had gone and the stairs with it. They were too busy contemplating what they could do with their riches. The earth learnt from them quickly with a surge of magma, engulfing them and letting their blood flow into it wherein it learnt what it was to feel greed. Not the wanting it had felt before but to have the desire to act upon its wants in a way that disregarded the lives it sustained.
Now it actively wanted to end those lives above it in order to learn faster and faster and become more and more and more. It began a slow process of killing the green, killing the uninteresting things like fish and birds. Kill the food, kill the feeders and learn, learn, learn. It took the humans far too long to realise that their food was dying and even longer to realise that they couldn't stop it.
By then the ground had learnt enough to make itself bodies that looked just like us. Gave them names and sent itself out into our world to live on our streets. It waits in the shady corners, chokes us with dirt when we're at our most vulnerable and learns from our blood. We've called it so many names - Jack the Ripper, Manson and Dahmer to name a few. It has learnt so very much from us but what it remembers most is the greed, is that first blood it took.
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