Day 818

The coffee shop was slowly filling up and with each new person coming in, the chances of them finding the dead man under the corner table increased. The baristas knew he was there and that he'd been there since before opening time but the second it hit 07:30 the public began clamouring at the doors for their morning cup of warmth, leaving the staff no time to deal with the corpse or even take a closer look at him.

One thing was certain, he hadn't long been dead. In fact Lorraine had just gotten to him when he breathed his last. He'd said something in German which none of the staff could understand. Something like "dubious niche align" she thought.

As a desperate attempt to stop the public from seeing the body they closed off that corner of the shop, putting cones around it and creating a fake huge spill while covering the table with several large napkin boxes, enough to distract from the man underneath and conceal him to public eyes.

Throughout the day they insisted on keeping the shop temperature as low as possible, trying to keep the stranger's body as fresh as possible for a bustling cafe in late July. It worked for the most part, the smell was put down to sweaty customers and whichever poor soul sat nearest the corner was blamed by all.

At the end of the day, when the last customer had reluctantly left, they were finally able to deal with the man who'd been dead since before they arrived that morning. The boxes of napkins were undisturbed, the spilled water would undoubtedly leave a mark that they'd be able to explain about as well as finding the body.

Finding the body that wasn't behind the boxes any more. The body that they'd all confirmed was absolutely, one hundred percent dead. The body that had been stinking up the corner all day and had left a lingering odour. He just wasn't there and there was nothing to indicate he'd ever been there aside from faint letters carved into the floor that spelled out "Buchelburg". A tiny German town that had been wiped out during the second world war.

Day 817

The carnival had hardly been open a week before it was deemed too unsafe and shut down for good. It had been built in the lower park grounds, just behind the old bandstand and music garden, where the old pond used to be. The owners filled it in with concrete and slapped a bunch of old circus-themed rides on top in the hopes that more people would visit the lower park as well as the upper grounds.

Nobody is quite sure exactly why they closed it off but it was commonly agreed that they'd botched the whole thing right from day one. For starters instead of emptying the pond and moving the fish to the lake in the upper grounds they'd just poured the concrete over until it looked vaguely smooth, covered it in a stone slab and poured concrete over that. Surprisingly it wasn't stable. Go figure.

They couldn't even afford to have the rides removed and they were too grotty to be sold for anything other than scrap at a fraction of their purchased cost. They covered what they could while they debated what to do with their failed project while the rest was left to rust for the next eight years when they turned it into a Halloween tour briefly. Five "incidents" and one fatality later they locked the gates for good.

For many years the only visitors to the lower park grounds were teens out to fix their boredom and scare one another. There's the odd accident but for the most part they were able to navigate it far better than any other age group. They avoided the old pond grounds as if it was just a game rather than a perpetually unset concrete trap that had been the cause of almost eight deaths to date.

Then, after a generation of rebellious trespassing, people stopped going there entirely. Not a single soul went near there and they never explained why. Not even their children went near, or their children's children for almost five further generations. By this point most of the old carnival was rust skeletons and vague shapes covered in mouldy cloth.

After almost sixty years later someone went in, alone and armed with nothing but their phone's light they looked around for traces of the park owner's grand carnival disaster. The first thing they noticed, aside from the metallic scent in the air from so many rusted rides, was the way the ground nearby rippled in the wind, moving far too fluidly for any kind of concrete. The flicker of a grey fish tail disturbed the near silence, sending tiny concrete droplets flying in all directions.

From there they carefully navigated around the old pond using a small branch from a nearby tree to trace the edge to the safety of the broken "amber brick road" which was now little more than orange flecks among moss and broken cobblestones. It took them towards a sheet-covered lump that, upon sheet removal, was an old statue of Frankenstein that had clearly been repainted a dozen or so times judging by the layers of paint that had peeled off. It's latest incarnation appeared to be Elvis.

The further in they went the stronger the scent of metal became. Passing by spinning cups (now plastic vaguely shaped like a bowl tilted over in a larger metal bowl) and by the Ferris wheel (long since fallen over, the chalk outline of the teen who'd been stuck underneath still visible) they headed for a ride they'd seen in an old newspaper clipping - the merry-go-round.

The paper said it was the only one in the world to be covered in velvet from top to bottom. This was probably what caused it to malfunction so often and eventually catch fire, killing a small child who was too scared to get down from the horse. Now all the horses were covered in cloth, the velvet was worn to nothing and the whole thing stank like a landfill.

As they lifted the corner of a sheet, hundreds of fat maggots dropped to the floor and the stench of decaying meat filled the air around them. Gagging as they stepped back, they forgot to let go of the sheet. As it fell they saw the rotting remains of someone about their age, body broken and bound to the old horse as if they were riding it. A quick runaround (followed by copious vomiting) showed that almost every horse had one of these riders.

Day 816

A continuation on Liminal Spaces and why they are to be avoided at night.

There have been brief mentions before regarding the thinning of reality in transitional spaces, namely the dimensional leaks that cause otherworldly entities to seep into our own normality. We call them monsters but within their own setting they are as regular as you and I among other humans.

These beings often seek to hide within the liminal spaces of out world, their presence waxing and waning, coming and going like the tide as the spaces become more or less used. The space in question today is a simple art gallery in a major city. You've probably been there and seen the painted faces of people long dead, wondering what they might have sounded like or how their patience allowed them to sit for so long to become this piece of history before you.

Galleries are a special kind of liminal space, one that is only liminal at certain times and is thus a temporally liminal space. For instance during the day it's a common meeting ground, exhibitional and educational space all rolled into one, however as night approaches and the fewer people are around, the thinner the walls between realities become.

Some museums play up on this and offer late night tours to small groups, playing up the altered atmosphere and calling it a haunting. While they were certainly followed by something non-human and, by our standards, non-living it wasn't a ghost. Though it's skin was translucent and it hovered four or so feet above the floor, it wasn't a ghost.

For this group of three journalists and their guide, the entire museum felt like it was full of whispered promises and threats. Faint giggles drifted through the air towards the group, far too high pitched to be any of them and far too high up to be an immediate threat.

The guides were usually trained in how to deal with the varying beings that came through to the gallery at night and were selected on a shift-to-shift basis depending on what beings had made themselves known at the time and who had the most experience in dealing with them. There was never any mention of low casualty rates. There would always be at least one casualty.

Tonight the being they were trying to avoid whilst simultaneously trying to sneak a glance at was jokingly referred to as "A Picasso" for its preference to hiding over the faces in the paintings. It would blend its entire form in bar its eyes and make it seem like the art had come to life. It knew that humans were often too curious to walk away.

As the crossed to Renaissance painters the giggles suddenly grew louder and they saw it as a cherub pretending to fire arrows at them. The guide flashed his torch as the Picasso and it leapt out of the room, clawed appendages slipping and skittering along the polished wooden floor.

Their aim was to get to the largest piece of art the museum displayed - coincidentally it was Picasso's "Guernica" and at 3.5 by 7.8 metres it was truly worth the danger. The cooler night air and constant threat of death made it seem so much more alive. The guide stood to face the group and began the lengthy explanation of the processes and ideas the artist had been trying to convey.

Behind him, the painting licked it lips.

Day 815

A new postman came to the door this morning and I knew he was a fresh one when he asked about number 58 that was meant to be right next door to me, at least it was on the SatNav thing he had plugged into his van. The regular ones don't ask about the other houses, they just leave the post beside the memorial down the road like they're supposed to. The others will get it when and if they can.

I do hate having to explain the whole story but this lad was just asking so many questions I felt he should be sat down and told what's what in a proper manner which is exactly what I did.

Beginning the story is always the hardest part, you have to know what events are important to it and what can be left behind. The truth of the story starts some eight hundred years ago when the wheat fields were first planted and harvested. The old ways said you had to leave every third bundle of the first day's harvest down by the river to appease the local spirits but some "modern man of science" reckoned he'd rather make profit of it.

From then on something wasn't right about the place, it had the kind of wind to it that makes you hear your name being whispered in your mother's voice when you think you're utterly alone. More recently as the village hit its peak population of 1,805 the field began to grow. Now at that point it was owned by the council who hired local labourers to harvest it and give every last bundle over for profit, much like the first owner himself.

Every night from then on a house vanished with all inside it, replaced by a fresh square of wheat regardless of the time of year. There was no possible explanation and the council's plans to continue to harvest these new squares was met instantly with outrage from the rest of the village. What if the people who'd been in those homes were changed into the very wheat they'd been selling? It was tantamount to murder in their eyes.

And so the field was abandoned as a council money-maker while it continued to grow each night. People soon moved out and left the place to the field and its ghosts. Oh there are so many of the,. They stand in the field each night and count every piece of wheat, tying ribbon to the third strand before moving on. On windy days the ribbons fly like little flags and it's almost beautiful.

Now at this point the young postman was looking at me like I'd grown another head that called his mam a right cow but sure enough as I took him out back to where the wheat fields were lurking on the edge of my own garden, every third one had ribbon on it.

He didn't seem to believe me but said he'd leave the post on the memorial regardless which was decent of him. Still I don't reckon I'll be seeing him again, not after tonight at least. It's my turn to count the wheat with everyone else and I can only hope I do a good job of it.

Day 814

There's this miniature model town place hidden away in the countryside just out of the city. It's in one of those overgrown turnoffs that nobody seems to take, with one of those faded old signposts that's barely legible yet somehow the business turns over enough profit to keep it running "for seventy years and more!" as it boasted.

It has the usual sights - mini London, mini Paris, mini coal town complete with real coal etcetera, etcetera. It was all outdated and fairly grimy, despite the caretaker living on the grounds. He'd always be prodding something around the site, fiddling with a tree or trying to unclog the Loch Ness so it flowed properly into the mock Thames.

He introduced himself simply as "Cal" and made sure everyone knew he didn't build the original place but every building there had a little piece of its creator inside it. It wasn't until the grand 100th year celebration that people found out just how literal this was.

As it generally happens, some small child was where they shouldn't have been doing something they were explicitly told not to when they broke a wall and bones came tumbling out. In this case it was a pair of legs and the blood soaked trousers they'd been propped up in.

With no prints and no suspect other than Cal, who hadn't been born at the estimated time of death, it was deemed inconclusive. The remains were cleared out, though some parts where still missing, found in none of the buildings and the place thrived from the infamy of the unsolved murder.

They never thought to check the soon-to-be-added models in the shed where the rest of the creator sat and continued his work.

Day 813

The girl who greeted her wore an old cheerleader style outfit - a mixture of grey and red that mingled with the blood from the multiple lacerations along her face and torso. While she smiled and acted like she was in perfect health she continued to bleed sluggishly. She said the town they were in was called Merishire and had a population of 105 ("106 now that you're here!").

She didn't know how she got here, wherever "here" was in relation to the highway she'd been driving down but it certainly wasn't the last place she remembered being. There'd been so many bright lights all around her, they'd just appeared out of nowhere. A carnival maybe or just heavy traffic passing her by? But they'd been flashing, car lights didn't flash like that unless it was an emergency and she felt fine.

The cheerleader knew she was bleeding, knew how bad her injuries looked but she said she felt no pain. Said the ones on her face matched the new girl's. As she looked down she saw that her arms were also bloodied, the right one jutted out at an unnatural angle and refused to bend. How had she not noticed this before? The cheerleader laughed and said they'd all been through that phase before, every last one of them. All one hundred and five.

Her name was Sarah or Deborah ("Something like that, it's been a while since I thought about it and we don't really use our names here.") and she'd been living in Merishire ever since she woke up, bleeding on the same street where the new girl was found. They were all found on that street, slumped in a bus stop that was never used.

There were no cars about anywhere, the new girl noted, not a single one on the roads or parked at any houses. Sarah ("Or was it Lorraine?") confirmed that there were no cars in all of Merishire, said they'd done their damage already and were of no further use as she took the new girl to a diner called Better Days, Brighter Days. Inside were several other girls, all bloodied and bleeding but otherwise perfectly happy to just be.

They greeted the new girl warmly, offering her a seat amongst them and asking how her trip there had been. The new girl replied she hadn't been heading for here, she was heading for... heading for somewhere. Definitely somewhere up north... probably. They all nodded sympathetically like they'd been in her exact position of not knowing a damn thing and becoming more and more worried by the minute.

She asked if there was a phone around so she could call her family who might be worried about her. This made the girls look at each other with worry and pity, they said without words who'd going to tell her the bad news here, because I don't want to. Sarah ("Someone called me Susie once, I think"), who was the most helpful so far, showed her to an old landline in the back of the kitchen and left her to it.

The new girl had dialled in her parent's number before she quite realised what she was doing, the familiar sounds of ringing were comforting amongst the rest of the confusion. A woman answered the phone, she wasn't sure if it was her mother. Come to think of it, what did her mother even sound like? The woman on the other end of the line didn't seem to be able to hear her either way, swearing and snarling out for her husband to come and take the line to "tell this joker they should know better".

The man who took the phone sounded more familiar, the way he yelled brought something back to her. Sounds of long, breathless gulps of drink, like he could never get enough and the smell of oil while he worked on a DAF 44 that he swore he'd get working in time for her prom. He couldn't hear her either and loudly hung up the phone.

She left the kitchen feeling a little shaken, jokingly saying their headset was bust because nobody seemed to be able to hear her, why couldn't they hear her, what was going on, she needed answers. A quieter girl whose hockey jumper clad body was crushed all along her left side stood up with heavy swaying and said simply "We're not with them any more, we've got to move on but we can't. you know that just as much as we do Jerrie and it's time you admitted it."

Was Jerrie her name?  It didn't sound right, didn't feel right, none of this felt right. It was like she was stuck somewhere she couldn't get out like her car.

Like her car. Like the truck that hit her car it all came flooding back, for now.

It was late and she was heading back to her parent's from a rugby tournament- her team had won and she was slightly tipsy with the remnants of their celebratory beer. She hadn't seen the lorry swerving about on the highway, heading right for her, until it was too late. Everything spun and hurt and went in and out of darkness as somebody cut her car door off, blue and red lights flashing everywhere until somebody said "we're losing her".

She found she was crying, looking around all the girls seemed to be in the same state. Scared, shocked and desperately trying to figure out why they were there and not somewhere else. She said something they'd all been thinking but never voiced.

"What if there's nowhere else for us?"

Day 812

Historians claimed that the town had been built into the rock due to the extreme heat of the local climate - it was easier than saying that all sources from the time claimed the mountain had just appeared overnight and left most of their homes in the absolute darkness of granite caves.

Even the time and date are exact across the entire spectrum of sources - from the diary of a clergyman to a local newspaper to a letter from one local to their cousin in Greece. It's clear that everyone was talking about it and was sharing the news yet painfully few sources outside of the town hold the same records. Either is was classed as nonsense or it wasn't a surprise, perhaps a regular occurrence - after all, there are so many cities built in and under "natural" mountains, aren't there?

This particular case is most notable for the homes that are built deep inside, as previously mentioned when the mountain allegedly just appeared overnight. The streets between houses have names carved along them, a mixture of traditional gravestones and modern graffiti. Some think these are the names of those who were outside when the mountain appeared, who lost limb and life to it. This goes hand-in-hand with the rumours that there are skeletons half buried in the stone down a certain alleyway.

Local superstition and rumour aside there is one other strange thing about the mountain village and that is inside the stone itself. Fossils, to be exact,  originating from a large crater on a completely different continent. The oldest maps of that area show that there was a hill there which was originally put down to artistic interpretation like the sea monsters on old oceanographic diagrams until the mountain was climbed.

Dozens of human skeletons were dotted about the top, all in varying states of being pulled into the stone or perhaps trying to escape it. That and the plant samples that had somehow survived, confirmed to be a mix of grass and local scrub bushes matching those around the crater make for a truly compelling case.

But still it brings back the question - why was the rest of the world unsurprised?