Day 2,707

I stopped letting my daughter stay with my parents over the summer when she told me about her new imaginary friend, the Bare Bones Man. I told my daughter to tell her new friend that we'd come back in a few years so we could spend some summers by the seaside instead, which placated them both, or so I thought.

I never expected her to tell him where we lived.

I never expected to wake up and see the Bare Bones Man walking out of my room and down the hallway, holding my daughter's tiny hand as he tried to lead her outside. Of course the bastard vanished as soon as I called out to them, as he did when my older sister called out some twenty years ago.

Who'd have imagined I'd be in her shoes, desperately trying to figure out how to move homes without the Bare Bones Man finding out and without putting another family's lives in danger should they move in. For her it was easier as he kept his focus on me, allowing her to house hunt and eventually take me with her while he ignored our parents entirely.

She told me he was only imaginary.

Now I'm left adding more and more locks to the doors and debating how to burn it all down without anybody knowing it was me, without losing my daughter, in the process. It's the only thing I can think of to get him out of our lives and keep my child safe.

I just need to burn my home down with him and only him inside.

Day 2,706

It was the kind of town that looked unfinished - dozens of dead end roads, unpainted signposts and shops that were fully furnished yet always closed. It was the kind of place that managed to make even the most oblivious tourist feel unwelcome within a matter of minutes.

It was home, but not to humans.

Occasionally someone would manage to lose their way badly enough to find themselves there, without phone signal or anyone around to here them scream. They always panic and try the closest payphone first, soon finding that it's just an empty shell rather than a functioning phone.

They they knock on empty houses and peer through empty shop windows until a human-enough hidden resident asks them if they are lost. They offer them a room that's technically inhabitable, albeit the proportions of every window, door and piece of furniture are all wrong.

They are offered a can of unlabelled soda and a sandwich with some kind of paste-filling and given a map to help them find their way back to the nearest highway. They will describe the experience to their friends and loved ones as "unsettling" and only start to wonder if they made it all up when they go to check the map again, finding it blank on both sides.

They will not manage to find their way back there again but the more they think about that town, the more worried they'll become, the more inconsistencies and subtle signs that the person they spoke to was anything but human, the more they'll wonder if it was all a bad dream instead.

They'll hope it was a bad dream.

Day 2,705

It had been silent outside for so long that when she heard birdsong again she nearly locked herself back in the shelter. She crept to the window, peering through the wooden planks and cracked glass to see a single starling strangely perched on a pile of debris that certainly hadn't been there yesterday.

With well-practiced movements she slipped up the stairs, along the hallway, up the ropes and into the attic to get a better vantage point over the still-singing curiosity. There hadn't been birds since the beginning of it all, when the world was made to fall silent and the all the lands flooded.

And now, fifteen years of noiseless existence, not a single non-threatening lifeform to be found for miles around until today. Before she began adjusting her rifle scope, she prayed that this was a sign that things were turning for the better, that the world was somehow healing.

As her eyes refocused on the bird, she noticed, with great disappointment, that the debris was breathing and the bird was rotting. Holding back a sigh, she retreated to the far side of the attic to wait for the creature to grow bored and seek easier prey elsewhere.

The world was silent again by sundown.

Day 2,704

It pressed its hands against her window, impossibly long arms stretching out into the darkness, no body in sight yet she knew that just out of her sight it was still smiling with a mouth full of her stolen baby teeth. It wasn't the first time this had happened but it was the first time she'd come prepared.

Nineteen bullets within arms reach and several boxes stored around the apartment, a water gun filled with lighter fluid and her trusty lighter stashed under the bed as a last resort. As its fingers began rhythmically tapping against the glass, she began to load the bullets in, checking that everything else was in place and ready to start firing the moment it broke the glass and lunged.

Cracks were already forming.

She tensed and prepared for the worst.

Day 2,703

 The house, though half-swallowed by the grass, was just visible enough to tempt them inside. A flickering light in the corner of the window reflecting the faint glimmer of gold only sealed their fate as they pushed past each other to reach the presumed treasure and lay claim to it first.

As they dropped down through the window they both choked on the thick layer of dust they'd disturbed, distracted enough that neither notice the golden light move just outside of the room. One they'd regained their breath they began to search, happily forgetting where they first saw the light, only remembering that it was somewhere nearby.

Such is the effect of certain spores, they fog the memory and set one goal in mind - onwards. And onwards they went, down staircase after staircase after staircase until all the could think about was the golden light nearby. Always nearby and just out of sight.

They never even felt the walls closing around them, pulverising their meat to allow the spores to further feed.

Day 2,702

The candles never seemed to last long enough and with them being firmly within the depths of winter, the scant few hours of sunlight they had were spent desperately scouring the ruins all around for anything that would burn. They'd long since cleared their immediate surroundings right down to the bones of their long-dead neighbours so their brief trips were now far more dangerous treks deep into the wider community.

They were alone at least, the only ones who'd taken the early warnings seriously and made it to the town's panic bunker before they were sealed in. They didn't even hear the frantic banging or feel the anguished last attempts to break the doors down before the world outside fell into silence and decay.

Now, thirty years later the doors had declared the air clean and the world safe, the doors self-opened and they were turned away to a pile of broken corpses at the doorway and welcomed into a desolate landscape by howling winds and whatever mangled remains hadn't quite managed to die.

Day 2,701

There have been stories about the canals for as long as they have been canals, varying from unwanted babies being thrown away to jilted lovers leaping/being pushed to their deaths to whole families being forced into the waters and crushed by weighted barges.

Regardless of how true any of those were, it was clear as day that the canal through the city was haunted at every step and enough human bones had been found downstream at low tide to put all sorts of stories in people's heads. But all these years that was as clear as it got - stories and pub talk and nothing more concrete than old bones too worn and too scrambled to see a cause of death.

Then some fresh-faced councillor decided that the entire canal system needed to be drained, cleaned and repaired for the first time in its five hundred years of service. Honestly it was doomed from the start as workmen got into accident after accident, half formed figures wandered the worksites and tools flew out of their user's hands in plain daylight.

In the end the plans were abandoned before the first lock was done... the more water drained away, the louder and clearer the screams became until all the workers collapsed. They awoke after vividly dreaming the same dream of being tied to stones and thrown in as their loved ones and half the city called them a witch.

Unsurprisingly nobody wanted to pick up their tools and finish the job - better to let sleeping ghosts lie.