Day 1,834

It remembered the air raids as a haze of Loudness - loud sirens screeching across the night sky, louder explosions rocking the world and showering it with dust. Loudest of all were the people piling into the underground and filling its home with far more noise than any train ever could.

When this happened, it would crouch beneath the platform and swipe at the children who got too close to the edge. They'd run off to tell their parents but they were always brushed off - who cares for a child's imagination gone wild when the threat of being buried alive looms over them so heavily?

Once or twice it managed to snag a couple of younger children and snap their necks before they had too much of a chance to cry for help. The parents would think they'd been caught in a bomb's path, mourn and unconsciously move that little bit further from the platform next time.


After the air raids had ended and infrastructure slowly began to increase, it found itself missing all the meat it gathered over those troublesome and noisy months. It soon found another source - the workers who came to expand the lines.

They were good at following its orders over the radio, a little trick it picked up from the bag of a particularly delicious older man whose neck made such a clean, satisfactory snap. It would ask them for help in a random sector, wait for them to wander away a bit and drag them down one of its burrows in a split-second.

Once the works were completed, maintenance was sparse and its hunger grew once more. For the first time in its life it stepped onto the platform, all gangly limbs and tattered scraps of fabric torn from its victims barely-warm bodies.

Day 1,833

The boss said they were motorised taxidermy and told me to ignore their blinking, the way their chests moved like they were breathing and the soft hiss of air leaving their barely open mouths. It was easier said than done though, especially after all the visitors had gone, leaving them and me alone together.

I used to get as much of the cleaning done as possible towards the end of my shift, when there were still visitors around to help distract me from all the little movements I caught in the corners of my eyes. Last week I tried to ask him how the animals were able to move to naturally and he looked at me like I'd grown a second head.

I stopped asking him about all the little oddities after that, I just figured I was nervous and seeing things that weren't real. At least, I thought that up until the wall-mounted stag's head turned to look at me and unhinged its jaw to let out a truly blood-curdling bellow.

The next morning I was pulled into a staff meeting with my boss and the head of HR. They accused me of breaking the stag and sacked me on the spot for vandalism. I knew they'd seen the CCTV footage that showed it freely moving and the audio definitely would have picked up the scream.

Still, I was happier to be sacked than become another workplace accidents statistic.

Day 1,832

Officially everyone was evacuated long before they flooded the old town.

Officially it had been empty for almost a year before the dam was even finished.

Officially the former townsfolk were happily settled down in the next town over.


Yet somehow everyone knew someone who'd been left behind the night they drowned it all. Ask anyone over the age of forty and they'll all list the same twenty-odd names of their former friends, family and neighbors whose bodies were never recovered because they didn't "officially" die there.

If you look for their death records in the nearby church they all died of natural causes like stroke or pneumonia... in the same hospital... in the same month... of the same year. Coincidentally around the time the town was declared empty.

Once a year the older folks will go to the newly formed lake and throw flowers into it, hoping to appease their lost loved ones and stop bloated bodies from washing ashore. It didn't really work. Flowers were nothing compared to watching everyone you ever knew either running, swimming or drowning all around you.

It took all of a week for people to start and stop sailing over the lake. There's too many whispers out there, too many waterlogged fingers grasping at their oars and asking them to for help they can't give. The lake has a body count that grows by the year and a perfectly preserved town waiting to welcome them all back home.

Day 1,831

The estate was a concrete labyrinth that even the oldest tenant could barely navigate. The councillors roamed the streets, scurrying between disused shop fronts and filthy alleys in their search for more space to increase their territory. They were the driving force behind the constant alterations to the estate, destroying and creating and generally running wild as they expanded and fortified their nest.

The humans unlucky enough to live there learnt to work around this, sending homemade drones up every morning to map out the changes and warn other residents of the councillors current location. They may be harmless in general but anything that even vaguely resembles a councillor they don't recognise send the whole pack into a flurry of teeth, claws and broken bottles.

Their latest fixation was three former shops whose owners had managed to escape to less prison-like estates a few months ago. They left behind as much as they could, staging the shops to look like they'd be back in just a moment. It fooled the councillors for long enough that they forgot about chasing after their tenants.

Now they wanted to dig the floor out of the shops and make a more direct entrypoint to their main feeding chamber. It's easier to feed their grubs when they don't have to walk single-file into a closet in Shazza's Nail & Beauty Parlour, down crooked hand-made steps and through a waterfall they accidentally made when they dug through a water pipe.

One-by-one the tenants will all escape through forgotten tunnels and disused office blocks.

One-by-one the councillors will be picked off by stronger packs.

One-by-one the estates will consume each other until only one is left.

Day 1,830

Nobody wanted to take the job.

Nobody wanted to go anywhere remotely near the Critchley place.

Nobody wanted to answer their emails or calls so they asked a newcomer.


It's easier for an outsider to believe that the haunted looks that cross people's faces when they hear the word 'Critchley' are the result of local superstition. Let them scoff and be full of disbelief, scorn and whatever other logic floats into their heads. Better they learn the truth on their own.


I'd feel bad for sending them up there without giving them a warning but they never pay much attention to our stories. They just think there's a few funny old people in their funny old house that need some broken antique furniture taken to the dump.


The strongest ones come back all quiet, tails tucked between their legs and hesitatingly asking us to remind them just how they ward their homes at this time of year. We don't hear back from the weaker ones, the ones whose minds can't accept what they see. We hope they went quickly but the Critchley folk aren't kind enough for that.


We're lucky that the most we see of them is their distorted shadows when the river sends a mist up to smother us all. There used to only be three of them but Ireckon a few of the missing newcomers may have joined their ranks. At this rate they'll have an army and it'll be our fault.

Day 1,829

I always hated sleeping in Nanna's old room because she never left.

They took her body away eight years ago but her spirit didn't want to leave.

I used to ask why we had to move in with Grampa and why an auntie couldn't have gone instead.

Mum would just shush me and say 'we take care of our parents when they're old'.


She hated me talking about Nanna like she was still there, even though she was.

Every time I did I'd get sent up to my room - her old room - and locked in there for the day.

But I was never alone though, Nanna was always right beside me.

Sometimes I could even see her, she seemed to get more gaunt by the day like she was rotting with her body.


Hearing her was the worst part, after she got a tracheotomy her every breath sounded like her last.

Mum said it was just the wind and promised to get dad to fix the window seals some time.

I think we both knew that wind doesn't hiss when you're being too loud.

The wind doesn't laugh when something funny happens on TV.


When Grampa decided he'd rather be in a nursing home we all felt relieved.

None of the adults would say it but we were all a little scared of how active Nanna was becoming.

We'd come home to her visibly wandering the house like she used to.

The last time we were there she followed us out to the car.


Needless to say we sold the house and left the county - she's someone else's problem now.

Day 1,828

We all have our little rituals - clapping twice when someone sneezes, swearing at a single magpie or crossing yourself when a black cat crosses your path. Tonight we look at the ritual of a man who hasn't seen anyone other than the postman and the midnight cashier for nearly twenty years.

He lives in a small brick house eight miles into the woods, a ten minute walk from the nearest road and over thirty miles from the closest town. He isn't alone though, despite what other folk say about him and his near-hermit lifestyle.

It's something more than a fox but less than a wolf, somewhere closer to a man than a beast and the only thing that stops it from trying to break into his house every night is the old song "A Change Is Going To Come" he sets up on the same record player his dad got him for Christmas.

As soon as the sun starts to set he hobbles out to his porch, opens the lid and gently places the needle at the start of the track. As it plays he heads back in, locks the door, closes the windows, barricades the fireplace and waits for that telltale clicking of claws against wood as it settles down to listen.

It always feels like the longest nine minutes of his life, those tense moments where it shuffles about to get comfortable and he wonders if the day has come when the song stops soothing it and it decides to finally end him. A deep, guttural sigh shakes the air around him and he finds himself mirroring that sigh.

When the final note has ended and the air is filled with the gentle crackle of the needle winding down he knows he's made it another night. The creature won't leave his porch but it won't try to attack him if he moves from his crouched position behind the sofa and heads to bed.

One day the record player will break beyond repair and the song won't play.

One day the song won't work any more and those claws will shred him apart like wet paper.

One day his luck will end, but not tonight.