Day 1,119

Ghosts only exist because they don't realise they've died and when they do realise they... change. There's no proper term for it just yet, we're still busy trying to figure out exactly how the metamorphosis occurs, how we can stop it or even if we can stop it.

Think if a poltergeist was somehow possessing the nearest inanimate object, warping that object into some semblance of their former appearance and using that object to propel themselves towards you with the sole intent of using your body next. The results of this are usually rooms full of half-flesh half-furniture with the same snarling face, leaving a trail that usually leads to the outside.

We don't always find the victims, sometimes all we find are people who look eerily similar to them but just different enough to make you say "Oops, sorry. I thought you were someone else!"and think nothing more of it until the realisation hits you but by then they are long gone and you're left with nothing more than guilt.

It happens to us all, you'll have your turn one day, same as the rest of us.

Mine was a young girl called Jeannie. She'd been using a ouija board with her friends when they made contact with a spirit who kept telling them to get out of their house. It's common enough behaviour for a ghost, the best thing to tell them is that you're only visiting and to move on ASAP.

Jeannie did not do that. She used the board to tell the spirit that they died, even using their name to find the matching obituary which drove the ghost to come crawling out of the board and into the nearest person which happened to be Jeannie's younger sister.

From there the ghost fled and from what Jeannie told us her sister died the moment it made contact with her. She might even be the new ghost of the house for all we know, the family burned it down before we could get any kind of reading on it.

Funny thing was, I'd bumped into Jeannie's sister the day before she contacted us. Didn't even realise it until she showed me a photo that looked a lot like the young woman who I gave bus money to so she could see her family across the country.

We'll never find her, these creatures aren't exactly alive, despite their new hosts. They can just flip in and out of sight at will, move through walls like they were never there and for the dead they aren't. Death puts you in a strange space between time and space with little left to do but relive your fondest routine.

Perhaps that's why they try to escape as soon as they're aware.

I know I will.

Day 1,118

Even in the virtual world there were opportunities to be had, albeit far riskier since the introduction of the Servic virus. Nobody knew if their online home had the virus but they all hoped they'd be selected for it, temperamental as it may be it protected its chosen roost fiercely. Cybers, paranoid as they were, treated it like some kind of trickster god - feared, admired and given offerings of Bitcoins in the hopes that it wouldn't turn against you.

The stories of the Servic virus left a bitter taste in Moe's mouth, far more than any vape ever had. Still, if it was a choice between committing theft in person or controlling his avatar to do so online, he'd take a trip through the V-Rift every time. There were just so many people who had little to no protection on their assets and so many more who would pay millions for those assets, no questions asked.

Just how Moe liked it.

His current client sent their own head of security into the V-Rift with him rather than say exactly what assets they were looking for. Not the first time that had happened but this guy had never been on a recovery job before, had no idea how to pick the back locks of virtual homes, let alone the signs that Servic was active in the area.

Moe generally cancelled if there was even the slightest hint that the Servic virus was anywhere in the region he was operating in - no matter the job. This time though, the client specified that it had to happen at this time, date and place or would never happen and Moe would find himself in prison before you could say Gigabyte.

So even though the colour palette was practically greyscale (a sign that Servic wasn't just in the region, it was close enough to alter his V-Rifts perceptors) and even though the houses were warping all along the slightly-too-perfect street, the client's security dog gave him no other option but to begin the break-in.

He prayed that their avatar-covers wouldn't trigger any kind of Servic response as he ran his password worm through the back door's locks, praying harder that the owner was as un-savvy as the client had claimed. Sure enough, with a soft click, the door unlocked revealing a 60's styled interior, all in blue-tinged greyscale.

Servic was closer than he thought.

He'd run the rules of virtual-interaction by the security dog several dozen times, made him repeat them until the man threatened to punch him. It didn't mean he wouldn't break the rules but Moe had covered them so many times there was no way he could claim ignorance.

Even as they were trespassing Moe found himself whispering the rules under his breath almost like a chant, toneless and desperately hoping that it would keep him safe from Servic. Anything was better than meeting it when you're so clearly in the wrong.

1. Don't open the windows, interaction between the interior and exterior causes glitches and draws attention.
2. If the colour fades, you run away. Servic's main side affect is colour loss, followed by life loss for threats.
3. It always uses the front door so you never do. If the front door is open then you're already dead.
4. Delete your history after every visit, touch nothing unnecessarily and leave no trace.

So the moment they entered the living room, security dog opened a window. Moe ran into the other room and hid under a desk as security dog called back that he could see someone flying down the road. This was the closest Moe would get to a description of Servic, just before it tore through security dog's avatar, sending the usual deathly high voltage straight through from the V-Rift to the headset he was strapped into.

He'd be fried before he could even consider logging off.

Now a simple asset-hunt had turned into a game of man-hunt. In reality Moe's hands were frantically tapping at his keys, trying to log out and do a wipe before it was too late. He didn't realise the pad was unplugged until Servic had opened the door and was crouched in front of him.

Day 1,117

In between the pulsating lights of the club, in the spaces between each thumping beat that shook everyone to their intoxicated core, nobody paid attention to the figures that only seemed to exist in the gaps that stuttered in each deep bass beat.

Their bodies were human and a mesh of jagged impossibilities all in a single blink, their faces startlingly similar to your own one moment and blank labs of flesh the next, their dancing consisted of the same three movements repeated in a cycle that only ended when the club's iron doors closed at five AM sharp.

When the lights were powered down, the floor vaguely clean and the bar emptied of all forms of life, the staff would scurry out the back doors, dodging limbs that were as jagged as they were fluid as they were human. They only stopped existing when there was nobody to look at them, though the staff will claim that the creatures do far more than dance when there is nobody else around.

The club is less a form of entertainment for the unsober masses and more of a prison for things that we still don't understand. Things who are fixated on numbers to the extent that tapping any surface forces them into their cyclical movements, seemingly without end.

None of the staff are willing to admit if anybody has ever been caught by one of these creatures and even less willing to talk about any that may have escaped or tried to. All we can say for certain is that slowly but surely, there are more of them on the dance floor and the club goes through staff faster than vodka on an empty stomach.

Day 1,116

This city is a weapon and though the citizens have forgotten, the city has not.

Every inch of it was originally designed as a final resort against the wandering moss that had all but consumed the western regions of the continent at that time. The remaining architects and biologists combined their research to create three cities that were both a haven and a bio-weapon, utilising the wandering moss' own hyper-absorbency and the bodily toxins of every living citizen as a means of mutual destruction.

 There was a time when the founding researchers deployed three thousand ignorant families into the cities while the wandering moss was at its zenith. Trembling fingers hovered over the trigger point (a single decorative glass bead in a mosaic halfway up their respective mayoral halls) and trembling hearts watched from a safe distance as the enemy drew closer and closer.

In what could only be described as one of mankind's greatest mistakes, a trigger was accidentally pressed before the wandering moss was in position. While every living being inside its walls shrivelled to calcium dust and urea, the moss froze its progress and in that one single moment the tides turned. Or so we still hope.

It retreated back to the northernmost western regions, back to the muggy heat and fetid swamplands that had somehow spawned it, leaving behind hundreds of thousands of miles of mud that was so utterly uninhabitable that the cities became legitimate havens.

Now the researchers have been sworn to secrecy, too afraid that should someone figure out the city's original purpose they may detonate one of the last sanctuaries on the continent and too busy studying the no-longer-wandering moss for the slightest hints that it may move again. Thus far it lies dormant, though strangely enough several sectors have formed craters and now seem to be cradling the remains of the ruined city.

In our attempts to destroy it, we gave it guilt instead.

Day 1,115

As terrifying as it was to face an unknown creature, finding out that it had been human all along was somehow so much worse. Every life it had taken, every rattled screech torn from whatever miserable wretch it had captured, every mutilated corpse strung up like a visceral garland offered to demented gods all done by someone we could have known.

We didn't realise we were dealing with a person until they'd fallen into one of our traps - a multitude we'd spent months setting up around their lair as a desperate attempt to end their killing spree. They were long dead by the time we'd gone over to check, the birds had eaten most of their face except their eyes.

They always go for the eyes first but they left these in perfect condition. It made us wonder what this person could have seen in their final hours to make even the hungriest of scavengers avoid such an obvious food source, especially mid-winter.

Honestly if it hadn't been for the black rope tied tightly around their hands, I dare say we would have mistaken them for someone innocent and even buried them in our own church! Instead we called the town around the pit and agreed to bury it there, leave it unmarked and hope that would be the last of it.

Perhaps we hoped too much, judged too soon, didn't look closely enough or missed something completely obvious but the killings have come back. The grave is an open pit once more and those of us who are more superstitious have reason to believe that whatever it was killing for has brought it back to carry on.

That or there was always more than one.

Day 1,114

You used to play on the old army pillboxes as a child, pretending that you and your siblings were up against hoards of monsters. You could never figure out a way inside the concrete blocks, most of the entrances were blocked by iron grates or graffiti-smothered boards.

Still, it never stopped you from hunting around the area in the hopes that one day, you'd find an open pillbox and live your childhood dream of exploring inside of one. Last week you had this dream come true and the regret still lingers.

It was the third to last one you'd found over the years, hidden by a lake and overrun with vegetation to the point where it must have been missed by the council and their explicit need to barricade every last pillbox in the country. This one, though, they hadn't gotten to, the entrance wide open and beckoning you in.

What you found inside the old pillbox was a shivering mass of grey flesh with no discernible beginning or end and about the size of your torso. Somewhere between you arriving, staring with mixed horror/fascination and you gradually edging back to the entrance, it noticed you and a broken voice came whimpering from among the many folds in its sagging body.

C-c-cove-r-r m-m-eee

P-plea-s-s-s-e

It jerked itself towards a tattered bundle of blankets on the far side of the room.

Looking back you wish you'd just covered it and called the police or ambulance or whoever could deal with whatever it had been. Instead you piled every scrap of fabric on it, carefully covering every inch until its voice was a muffled plea for less covering, that it couldn't breathe.

You didn't want it to breathe.

You kept applying pressure all over it until the voice became rasping gasps became a steady exhale.

You left it there along with your childhood dreams of exploring the old pillboxes.

Day 1,113

A haunting isn't always caused by a sudden death and the potent mix of rage and sadness it creates, sometimes a haunting is a cry for help, one that was never answered yet still hopes to be. It can be heard in asylums mostly, in the whimpers between creaking floorboards and the faint crying barely hushed by the wind through broken windows.

What most people seem to forget is that asylums are built around a church and as such they are hallowed ground (at least until the church's sacred relic is removed and with it the consecrative properties of the area). The souls that linger there want to remain just as much as the living would want to live there and they make that as vocal as they are able.

The mournful dead aren't fully realised beings they are more like concepts, an imprint of tragedy rather than an entire person crammed into a fleeting shadow. As such they aren't strictly to be considered ghosts, they aren't people after all, they are the strongest emotions of the dead that keep their souls tethered to whatever remains of their body.

Eventually as the body rots to nothing, the hauntings become more abstract as the dead lose all sense of reality while their souls drift away in spectral breezes to float about the world as a vague haze of emotion. What's left of their tethered selves often becomes little more than doors that refuse to close, cold spots in an otherwise warm home and plates that just keep slipping from your suddenly numb hands.

Don't blame the dead who can't rest, blame the ones who rest, utterly at peace with what they've done.

Day 1,112

The fog began at the station's exit and didn't seem to have an end. The next hundred or so miles would seem like a dream to the passengers as their view became limited to the few bushes that grew too close to the tracks for the fog to fully obscure them. All else was little more than a cotton-drenched blur.

It was during those few hours prior to this particular train hurtling up a mountain path that a landslide had occurred. The thick mist sunk itself deep into the earth and dragged it down the valley, taking the train tracks and half a small village with it.

By the time the train received the warnings they were too late. Instead of a reply, only the final screams of the conductor were heard, abruptly cut off as the engine hit the ledge below, crushed by the weight of the passenger carriers.

The sole survivors were three complete strangers who'd been dozing in the final carriage. Bruised as they were, they all managed to crawl through a broken window and out into a world that seemingly consisted of little more than dirt, broken metal and scattered corpses.

Day 1,111

Five years ago the sound of someone knocking from inside your closet would have frightened you. Five years ago you would have screamed and fled from the roaming stacks of limbs that never stopped begging for death. Five years ago you would have kept your night terrors to yourself, not wanting to burden anyone else with your visions of an incoming apocalypse.

Five years is a long time for a world on the brink of collapse.

Now you know not to answer the knocking, it'll only be the Children of The Midnight Lanterns asking if you want to join their unsuffering ranks in the void between dimensions. Tempting as it may be to abandon your humanity, not even that can save you, at least according to your nightly scream-inducing Visions of What Is To Be.

Now you know not to try placating the roaming stacks of limbs, they don't actually want death, they aren't able to feel pain any more. Mostly they just want you to stop and listen to their spiel on why you joining them is the only way for them to feel at peace. You don't do that any more either but there's always some poor bastard who will and thus they continue to grow.

Now you know your night terrors are the only thing you should really listen to in order to survive until the very end (and whatever is giving you these visions really wants you to survive). Something even bigger than the original catastrophic event is coming and with it, a change so great you can't fully comprehend what you see every night.

There are just some things you can only react to by screeching to the ever-listening night.

Day 1,110

I used to think that 1AM was the perfect time to do my grocery shopping, purely for the perfect silence and stillness of the supermarkets. I'd never gone any later than 1AM, every Wednesday for the past five five years but, as they say, sixth time's the charm.

I'd been delayed by a herd of deer who, as usual, were heading from the woods into the open doors of the school auditorium across the road. It must have taken around an hour for them to all pass me as every one just had to look me dead in the eyes before they carried on over the road.

Usually I manage to miss the crossing and catch them passing in my rear view mirror but they came early that night. To be honest that should have been the first sign that everything was just a little bit too off, just wrong enough to make the trip edge from liminally creepy to potentially dangerous.

Still, the promise of that deathly stillness lured me onward.

The car park usually had the same three cars in it, always had for the past five years but tonight there was a fourth. Again, another sign that should have told me things weren't going to be safe but again, it was almost 3AM and I wasn't thinking past my routine.

There were never any greeters at 1AM but there were three milling about the entrance, their uniforms so much more crumpled and stained than their day shift counterparts (and counterpart is certainly the right term here, they get comparatively far less human as the night carries into the morning).

They moved and spoke in perfect unison, asking me if I needed any help, if I was interested in doing a "blood run for charity" but refusing to specify what that charity was. Luckily I had some sense about me and said I'd consider it and get back to them next week.

From there I shopped as normal, catching the greeters smiling faces in the corners of my eyes as I turned aisles, seeing the lights flicker in some as they passed by. Now I can safely say they were prowling but at that time I was more concerned with the other customer.

I can't remember a single detail of their appearance, only that they wore a torn sundress and carried half a straw hat in their hand that left a trail behind them. It helped me avoid them for the most part but somehow they ended up right behind me at the checkout.

There was only a sole cashier, the three greeters muttering to themselves (or was it chanting?) by the exit and the feeling of sheer existential terror that seemed to flow from whoever was behind me. Every part of me screamed to not turn around, no matter how much they tapped on my shoulder or how many times the cashier said "He wants to talk to you."

I ran out of the doors, practically mowing the greeters down with the cart as I fled to my car, still never looking back. From then on I ordered all my groceries online and I thought it was all fine. And it was all fine and it should still be all fine and I avoided the danger.

But last night I found half a straw hat on my doorstep and all my food gone.

Something wants me to make a trip to the supermarket again.

Day 1,109

Monsters are getting clever, getting into our heads and making us question what it means to be human.

They make us blur the lines between creature and person until all that's left is us.

And that's how this all began, that's how you ended up hiding under the coffee table in the waiting room of a doctor you don't even go to, praying that the receptionist either can't smell your fear or is human enough to not tell anyone that you're here.

The shadows outside the window snarl and wrap themselves around the iron bars, testing their strength. They'll eventually work their way round to the doors, the wide open doors that lead straight to the waiting room you are hiding in. Shadows may be blind but they're still tactile enough to feel a heartbeat once they've spread out enough to consume an entire room.

This particular set of shadows go by the collective name Sarah and they are technically your coworker, only Sarah caught a sample of your blood when you got a paper-cut and now they want the whole bottle, so to speak. At least your somewhat-human manager was understanding of your need to flee until HR could find a matching blood-type donor for Sarah to consume.

HR is sadly and woefully slow to act, what with their hive-mind-majority-brain-holder at present being a semi-sentient moss ball that can only answer yes or no questions. There were far fewer incidents when Sheila was the brain-holder, she may have been the soul of a four hundred and ninety two year old woman trapped in the body of an eight year old but she knew how to solve a crisis on the spot.

The moss prefers to bask in temperate sunlight, floating in its mostly-water-with-just-a-pinch-of-blood mixture rather than prevent the loss of employees, such as yourself.

The faint scent of sulphur begins to seep into the waiting area which can only mean that Sarah found the door.

With no word from HR and the words "Hope it's quick and painless" sent by your boss, you brace for impact.

Day 1,108

They knew he was dead from the first three second clip of his feet running from whoever was holding his phone. The next couple of clips he posted were filmed through cracked glass, in one he was cowering in a corner screaming to be left alone, in another he was digging frantically through a pile of what appeared to be dead pigeons in a pile of rotting fabric.

When he didn't show up at home for two weeks, the police were called and the video was traced back to the old cinema at the arse-end of town. The only people who knew the way in were a few local bloggers who called themselves an Urbex Crew. The owners had lost the keys twenty-something years ago and with the property being so hard to sell they just left it to rot. With a generous mix of bribery and legal threats, Officer Patel and Officer Smythe were led to a staircase behind the cinema, half hidden behind dense foliage and a couple of rusting cars.

Underneath some sort of overhang was a hole in the wall with a couple of old vats and from there they made their descent. The stench of mould and urine filled the air as the pair reluctantly ducked inside, hoping they'd find a body soon. Their equally reluctant guides moved confidently in front of them, ducking under leaking pipes and squeezing between the broken remains of a door, leading them from the basement to the lower screen.

They took the first set of stairs they came too, immediately recognising a room to their left by the cracked glass, the door's faded sign reading Staff Only, and they carefully stepped past its broken hinges. Aside from the brown splatters all along the wall they declared suspected remains, they found nothing to show the missing boy had been there.

The further up they went, the more scenery they were able to match to the videos. Patel and Smythe got so caught up in establishing a timeline they failed to notice that their guides had left them. In fact, they never went any further than the basement stairs, fleeing the second the officer's backs were turned.

Three hours later the first clip was uploaded from Officer Smythe's phone to his entire social media network. It was a Gif of his terrified face ducking to hide underneath a broken seat. He was on the balcony of screen two but somehow his phone was several feet away from the ledge.

Eight hours later the second clip was uploaded in exactly the same way from Officer Patel's phone. The Gif showed that he was still inside the cinema with Smythe, cradling what was left of the man's head in his lap and sobbing hysterically.

In the far right of the video, the missing boy's face can be seen, eyes rolling rapidly as he convulses.

He is dragged away just before the Gif loops back.

No further investigations are being carried out.

Day 1,107

By the time we discovered life on another planet, it was too late... for them. The disaster we'd barely scraped through - a space-born virus that nearly turned all our oceans to a pus-like primordial ooze, the first world with intelligent life hadn't survived.

All we found were rotting buildings, rotting bodies and countless videos of their final moments. With enough time we'll be able to translate what they're saying, though the look of desperation and agony on their faces as they die on screen gives us a pretty good idea of what they're saying.

The video that stood out the most earned the nickname of Bone Man, for the way the rot had eaten away at their face and upper torso to the point where we could see their internal organs pulsing frantically as they spoke with an absolute lack of emotion.

In the background three aliens collapse and you don't see them get back up again, all the while the Bone Man continues to talk. Maybe they're describing the how the virus devastated their world as it nearly did ours, perhaps they know its origins, perhaps their people are its creators.

Until we can decipher their language, we know as much as we did before we found them.

The second world we found held no records, it had long since been overrun by the virus to the point that all our scans showed was the primordial ooze with a few metal skeletons of presumed buildings poking out. Each one of these fragile spires held dozens of rotting bodies, most of the remaining flesh was covered in bite marks.

When the footage went public people swore continually that the bodies were still moving, all reaching up towards the probes and they were right. They had been asking for help without words but with the virus so far-gone in their systems and their bodies so utterly foreign to our medical knowledge there was nothing we could do.

At least, we all tell ourselves that in the hope that we will sleep easier tonight and not dream of their warped, rotting bodies with jaws dangling by a pus-drenched thread of muscle as their sightless eyes stare into ours, begging for help they know they won't receive.

Day 1,106

Over the years I've stopped questioning a lot of things. I know now that I'll only get the answers on my death bed so I can take them to my grave but it doesn't stop the deep Want for an understanding, for even the slightest nod to all the theories I have about the innermost workings of this city.

Take, for instance, the sky. Sometimes it doesn't darken when it should so we spend our nights with the sun stuck at midday and nobody questions it - not even the local or national news. The only theory I can come up with for this is that whatever we think the sun is - it isn't and we've been living under the scorching gaze of some unknown Thing all our lives.

It would certainly explain why the sun doesn't move as it should and why I've seen arms reaching down from it to the outer reaches of the city. I feel that staying in the basement level of an apartment block is the safest I can get but every time the sun stays still I wonder if it's taking away anyone I know.

Speaking of people I know, each week the paper picks a person at random from the city registry office and does a two page article on the highlights of their life. Allegedly this promotes community bonding and unsponsored public recognition but when it came to my turn (not that they told me or even consulted me, yet they did for everyone else) I found my article to be a little... threatening.

They used phrases like "is so dedicated to local research they're practically conspiring to undermine the town" and "lives in the library, if you ever want to find them" combined with photos of me smiling with people I've never seen before, all smiling with too many teeth  and a few taken inside my home while I was writing out my theories.

My latest theory is about our local wildlife, specifically our pets and the way they appearance physically changes to have some of their owners characteristics. I had a dog for three months before I noticed the way it stared at my screen over my shoulder when it sat beside me, those once-brown-now-matching-grey eyes were reading everything I was witting.

I gave it away to a friend when its barks sounded like the way I yelled "Hey" to my friends. I still ask myself if there were any other changes it went through, anything else it copied from me and how much it had become me before I unleashed it on someone else who'd only joke in that slightly scared tone of voice that all pets resemble their owners.

Combine all this with the deep growling coming from the sewer drains and it seems like a whole lot of Somethings are about to start coming out of hiding to meet us all.

Perhaps I'll be the only one who's prepared.

Day 1,105

There are realisations that few people get to experience in their lifetime.

For instance, the realisation that the numbness in your foot you've been ignoring desperately as you wade through the murky shallows deep within the amazon, is in fact necrosis and your foot is mostly black mush. Then there's the following realisation that this will impede your escape and you will gradually lose the hard earned distance from your pursuers.

Another realisation that few people will have is that the odd assortment of items that continue to gather in their back yard, all linked to a theme of some sort, are a shrine. To them. And their newly discovered followers are expecting repayment in the form of promised impossibilities sold to them by a jilted ex-spouse.

One final realisation, and sadly the last realisation for some, is that there is always something breathing in the room with you. It's nowhere you'll look but you can hear it, ever so slightly out of time to your own rapidly increasing, shortening, fluttering gasping as you feverishly search for the source. You won't think to look up until you notice the little flakes of plaster scattered all around your preferred seat and realise that it is in your ceiling.

Day 1,104

It's weird to tell people that fairies exist when you're an adult but all the tiny corpses I keep finding make it hard to not believe. The first time, I thought I'd found a spider. None of the stories say that, they're all about these little cutesy humany winged people that are somehow magical and full of whimsy.

It's bullshit.

The ones I've found are all winged like insects and birds, with the eyes to match. Nothing quite prepares you for finding a hamster-sized, rotting body in your sink. Makes your inner child both happy that they're real and horrified that they seem to be coming to my apartment to commit mass suicide.

I have yet to find any of them alive, the closest I got was one that looked like a cross between a walnut, a sparrow and a spider writhing about in my soup. I'd only turned my back for a minute to grab a spoon and then - plop - I had a bowl full of bleeding fairy.

I fished it out pretty quickly, I'm sad to say that handling their dead/dying bodies is no longer shocking to me. It was mouthing out something that I couldn't quite make out so I put it next to a leaking pen and some paper, hoping it could write.

And now I have the last will and testament of a fairy.

For what it's worth, its death was quicker than most of them.

Day 1,103

"The trick to crossing Larklow Lake," he said in a quiet, conspiratorial tone, "is to never look down."

He looked so certain, so worried that all we could do was now and hope he elaborated. All we knew from the other locals was that you don't cross Larklow, you go any other way than boat. Anything to avoid the water for reasons they refuse to say, most wouldn't stop glancing over their shoulders the moment we approached them as if they expected the lake itself to be standing behind them.

So far this old man was the first to give us actual, honest to God answers. When persuaded by a few bottles of low-brand rum he even told us where we could find an unclaimed boat (not that anybody around there would admit to owning a boat, that would be admitting they crossed the lake by water and nobody would ever admit that).

The boat wasn't exactly like the old man said, it was barely above the water when the three of us in and the oars looked to be handmade. We didn't even hear the singing until we'd already lost sight of the shore.

I don't remember too much from there on but I do remember someone yelling to not look down, maybe it was me, maybe it was the old man, maybe it was those things in the lake mocking us but someone was screeching and begging us to look up.

I guess as the only one who did.

I only really recall their fins, those severed limbs, those echoes of broken hymns echoing all around the red waves.

Day 1,102

Imagine ploughing through the hoards of the undead only to run out of gas. They surround you and one asks you to step out of your vehicle with your hands up. It is wearing the tattered remnants of an officer's uniform and is managing to told a gun in its steadily decaying hands.

Though their faces are little more than a rotten ball with a mouth, they all seem angry. A few are clutching others, wailing out lists of names. Soon they all join in, each crying out for someone they lost... to you and your mindless slaughter.

Not once did you stop to consider that they might still be conscious beings, the same beings you grew up with, fell in love with and you turned on them when they became inhuman to you. Perhaps you aren't the first to do this, you certainly aren't the last but here, in your home town you are the sole human survivor.

However justice is always in the hands of the majority and you, Sir, are not one of them.

They debate for days, maybe weeks. Time is hard to keep track of when you find yourself slowly starving in a starch-white hospital room. The first sterile place you've seen in months. For all you know it's the only sterile place left.

Maybe you'll die before they can kill you, if they plan to. Maybe they don't want you to live the afterlife as they are, letting you die naturally in this particular room means the chances of you coming back are slim to none. There's not a trace of anything potentially contagious in here, you've checked everywhere - even the small ceiling vent.

They left your parents guarding you. The only undead you couldn't bring yourself to kill on sight. They refuse to talk to you but you know they can still talk, its just that you're as dead to them as they are in person. Somehow that hurts more than seeing them slowly rot outside the door.

The glass between you feels like miles.

You wonder who will drop first.

Day 1,101

When the world began to die, humanity continued to adapt. Hair became more akin to mud and branches that blended in seamlessly with the decaying trees, skin hardened and cracked like dirt in a draught so that they could catch water easier when it rained, eyes became Eyes and multiplied to fill whatever space was left over and they remained apex predators in their new world.

Society was mostly the same, schools taught children how their parents had survived in the hopes that they too might survive (though their methods were often abysmally outdated as the world went through drastic climate shifts on a semi-regular basis). Hospitals treated the worst injuries and illnesses, doctors travelled to those who couldn't reach them and humanity persisted.

Nobody knows when a rival species evolved or if they'd been hiding in plain sight all these years. When everyone has to cover themselves from tip to toe against the harsh world, it becomes impossible to tell human from Other.

And Other they were.

Humanoid in shape, yes, but distinctly inhuman in every other way. From their exaggerated gait caused by three extra leg joints to the way their heads tilted farther than an owl's, they were the very model of uncanniness and they were taking over, slowly but surely out-surviving humanity.

The world will always be fine, it will recover regardless of whatever creatures live on it. The world doesn't care, it isn't quite a conscious being and that's what makes it so deadly. When one thing dies, the world produces something else to fill the void, purposefully or not it maintains every ecosystem and humans were becoming obsolete.

The world was making the next best thing, whether humanity liked it or not.

Day 1,100

We strung up whatever was left Jamie so those things might think we were all dead. For a while we thought the rest of us might survive this. They didn't come any further than Jamie's corpse for almost a week, they just sniffed at it and wandered off.

I guess we never thought that they would have been able to smell us too once the rain dulled the smell of rotting meat. Still, Jamie did his part and kept us safe for long enough that we were able to pull together an escape plan.

The barn we'd been hiding out in gave us a great vantage point over the rest of the farm so when we spotted the old jeep by the pig pens we just knew what we had to do. If we'd had more time we could have gone to the house further out and found the keys instead of mashing wires about until something worked but those things were impatient.

We never even came up with a name for them, never had the time to. If you pictured a fox the size of a horse with a face that looks halfway between a spider and a shitload of teeth you'd roughly get what we encountered. They're smart too, smarter than we expected...smart enough to use ladders with those rope-like hands they have.

If it hadn't been for Lou getting one of those I'm-being-watched feelings we'd probably all be dead. While we were still plotting he turned back and started screaming and there was one of them just peeping their head up over the ledge, staring at us with one its bulging yellow eyes.

We all climbed out of the window and just jumped. Me and Jay managed to roll ourselves out of it but Lou landed bad. We heard something snap when he hit the floor and he just lay there twitching. I Jay wanted to go back for him but those things came 'round the building before we could do anything.

They didn't chase us when we got the jeep going. They just stood there, about nine of them, all bloodstained and tilting their heads like they couldn't understand why we were leaving. Jay floored it and  never looked back. I couldn't stop looking back just in case they tried to chase us, they probably could have caught us too.

I just don't understand what made them stop.

Day 1,099

Tomorrow is a Great Day.

Tomorrow the Piper comes to town and he shall rid us of our children once more.

Tomorrow he shall lead them through the tunnel under the bridge to be gone forever.

Five hundred and fifty eight years he's been coming to our aid, un-ageing and perfectly merciless.

Our little angels are taken away so swiftly, so professionally, never to return.


This may all sound rather barbaric but they aren't children, you see, not even human. They just appear in our homes overnight wearing the still-bloodied skins of children and calling us their parents so we may be less likely to kill them. It's why the Piper does it for us.

We aren't actually sure quite what they are, they never remove their skins and anyone who glimpses too much is always bound to wake up with no eyes at all. Dreadfully unfortunate but sadly unavoidable for those who see too well, whose children take a disliking to them for whatever reason - and believe me, they will find a reason if you don't manage to convince them that you love them unconditionally.

As any good mother I try to provide for my newly acquired offspring, strange as they may be and deadlier than they want you to know. I've done everything I possibly can to ensure they don't suspect a thing from me. They'd never suspect their dear old mother, not when she's adopted so many of them from cruel and unworthy parents.

If it means another is spared I'd take in a thousand of these strange children, this town has to survive somehow and I'm sure the Piper will have an easier time of it with so many children under one roof. All I have to do until dawn is keep them placated and send them off to bed as gently as I can.

I'd hate to wake up as blind as my fool of a spouse.

They should know better than to try and kill a child themself.

They got what they deserved.

Day 1,098

The stench of rotting meat's been hanging around the estate for longer than usual, especially given the post-football outcome of last week's Big Game. It  usually takes two to three days for the lads to go around and clean up their mess, mop up whatever they spilled and carefully dispose of any remains.

They're good lads, a little bloodthirsty at times, but generally good. Not one of them has even so much as mentioned cleaning up, they aren't even acknowledging that there's any kind of smell at all, let alone one that their booze-fuelled blackouts might have caused.

It doesn't bode well I'll tell you that much.

Aggie down the road's been harping on about it all week, claiming that while it has nothing to do with her Gaz or her Jamie, it must be something Very Big. She keeps talking about sending our Charlie down to the woods to see if she can spot whatever it is (probably a deer, maybe an escaped bear again, but probably a deer) but nobody's brought it up to her as of yet.

Nobody wants to be responsible for a missing person but for all we know that stench could be every missing person unburied by all the rainfall we've been having.

Still, nobody wants to be the first out there.

Day 1,097

There had never been any unusual sounds, sudden temperature changes, not even the slightest whiff of the paranormal before the renovation. They had no idea a murder had ever taken place there at all until they removed all the carpets.

What seemed like mahogany flooring in the dining room, hallway and kitchen soon changed to splattered patterns that closely resembled hand and foot prints leading upstairs. From there the splatters lead to what could only be described as bodyprints. Outlines from people who'd clearly bled out before their corpses were disposed of.

Of course they'd researched the house beforehand, having purchased it for a very low price from an elderly man who'c claimed to have built it himself. He would have been the prime suspect too, if he hadn't died the day he moved out for good.

They say if you're in a home for too long, if you spill enough of your blood you'll become a part of it and in a way you'll live forever. Most of the blood wasn't his though, most of it belonged to relations of his, according to what little DNA forensics could scrape from the wooden floors.

Ever since they uncovered the floorboards the family started to experience... disturbances. Little oddities at first like doors being left open and closed when they shouldn't have been, the occasional strange sound or shifted object and such.

Even after they replaced the floorboards, even after they re-carpeted with thicker, heavier materials, even after they'd hired a priest to cleanse their entire home, the oddities grew worse. It was as if by uncovering their death sites, the poor murdered souls had suddenly been woken up and decided that they were angry now.

The family left soon after dead animals were left in their rooms, large ones. Whole deer, stray cats and dogs just slashed to ribbons and dumped on the pale carpets to silently bleed to death. It was only made worse by the faces they saw in the windows as they took one final glance back.

Every single glass panel was crammed with pallid, furious faces staring at the retreating family with a burning hatred.

At least they were mostly human.

Day 1,096

If the dearly departed decide they don't want to leave, there's very little you can do to make them go. The afterlife isn't so much the next step as it is an optional exploration of other post-life possibilities. For every soul in the world there are at least a dozen or so potential ways they can go when they eventually shuffle off their mortal coil.

There's the religious way - the most common way. Be it Hell, Purgatory or Nirvana there are practically limitless celestial sections for the deceased to linger in for all eternity. Most choose to believe they were good enough in their lives to go straight for the top tiers only to find themselves mingling aimlessly with a crowd of mediocre people who believed the exact same thing about their own pious selves.

Religion aside, or lack thereof, the atheist's post-life possibilities are always more constricted. For those who believe in nothing, to nothing they go. A lightless void that is somehow both crammed full and utterly empty of the equally departed. Not a pleasant place but a potential place.

It's either the Great Nothing or they become wandering, flittering fractions of their former selves who drift from post-life A to B seeking somewhere they can settle. The thing that the living never know, that they're never made aware of is that if they don't believe their soul will go somewhere to rest for all eternity, they can't rest. Not a single post-life will accept them for long before they are forced to move onwards.

For those who refuse to die, the stubborn few who cling onto people, objects or even circumstances, there will never be anything for them but the fear of the living. We aren't meant to be around forever, the mind just isn't made for it and the soul certainly isn't either. When you get an individual who is so stubborn to live that their soul remains stuck to their death bed, then you start having problems.

Poltergeist are the best known form of this, when the dearly departed stop being so dear to everyone and start taking out their frustrations instead. As if it's everyone else's fault they died (though sometimes it may be), and as if it will make them any less dead than they already were.

The stubborn dead will hold onto anything close to them if they think it'll give them a shot at living just that little bit longer. Some even go so far as to force another's soul out of their body and when that happens, honestly, there's nothing to be done.

A soul removed before they can fully comprehend what's happening is a soul lost to itself.

Day 1,095

When the Autumn rain comes we are never prepared enough. Summer dulls our senses and leaves us forgetful of the next season's unforgiving wet chill. Too quickly our bodies all learn to sleep through the midday heatwaves, to ignore the melting mailboxes and to spritz ourselves with sunscreen ever five minutes on the dot.

When the Autumn rain comes our drains are always clogged with dust and overflow beyond salvaging. Roads are closed, firetrucks desperately try to pump the water into the rivers and lowland apartment towers are evacuated in favour of the highland community centres who have been stockpiling supplies all year just in case.

When the Autumn rain goes we are thankful that we may see the sky again instead of black clouds. Some of us claim we have already forgotten what the sun looks like while certain burned others are just grateful for the chance to recover. Summer has no mercy, nor does Autumn in its own way.

When the Autumn rain goes we are left with the bitter winds of winter. Those few hellish weeks where the two seasons merge leave us to be pelted with sharp shards of ice that clog the drains further but do not melt away. Pathways become ice-rinks that only allow pedestrians to slide into oncoming traffic, roads become slaloms of broken down cars, emergency vehicles and police tape.

Day 1,094

They rarely knew what their cargo was, it was never a part of the job description. It was always a matter of take from Point A and make sure it gets to Point B, anything else is an obstacle and should be removed immediately. Their clients were not the understanding and sympathetic kind, in fact most of them hadn't been considered human for centuries.

As long as they provided the documents that allowed their ship to bypass the majority of security checks and as long as the pay remained good, no questions were asked. Not that they ever expected their clients to answer any, language is tricky when you don't technically have a mouth or vocal chords and aren't exactly on this plane of existence.

Communications were always... interesting. Some of their employers could be contacted over the phone, though they mostly answered in the hushed whispers that only the undead were capable of producing. As for their more esoteric clientele, anything involving blood-based invocations is sure to draw them out of whatever dimension they remain in.

No matter how the shipping containers shake, growl or distort to the point where shape ceases to have any meaning in their presence, they will still be delivered. Be it to Shanghai, Singapore or an unmapped island deep within the Bermuda Triangle, the cargo will be delivered.

What happens to it afterwards isn't their business.

Day 1,093

I don't know how I hadn't spotted it here before. It says it's been here for years, always in this apartment and always within arms reach of the occupants - its arms, not human ones. I suppose with its ape-like stature that very few things aren't within its grasp, a fact that it decided to prove to me last week.

I went for a midnight snack, only leaving the kitchen light on to save on the power bill. It had been one of those days where I'd forgotten that it even existed until I went to reach for a glass and its shrivelled hand grabbed it for me. The rest of its body was stood in the dark doorway, barely illuminated by the kitchen lights.

You get used to these appearances after a while, and sometimes I honestly appreciate the company, strange as it may be. Still doesn't stop it from surprising me by appearing in dark doorways where I least expect it, just like last week.

Now it seems to be following me outside of the apartment. A few work colleagues have been muttering worriedly about an escaped zoo creature, a snake or ape or crocodile - it depends who you ask. I thought they were just talking to kill time until I was on the closing shift and it followed me from the staff room out to the car park.

I don't know how long its been in the warehouse but it told me it likes to be there among all the people. The feeling is certainly not mutual, not from the way everyone now checks the ceilings whenever they enter the warehouse and how loathe they are to switch off any light.

The manager even pulled me aside yesterday to show the footage of it following me out.

It looks so much bigger on camera.

Day 1,092

They thought they'd caught the only monsters in the marshlands, not realising that those bright lights they saw flickering around at night were the others hunting by the light of the fireflies. It was an old tradition of their people, a way to conceal them from humans that had worked until two children mistook a lantern for a friendly light.

Unfortunately for them, they paid the price for their mistake and their heads were soon stuffed and mounted in the town's history museum/curiosity shoppe for everyone to see and feel safer from the sight. Though the marshfolk were still considered to be a myth and the two heads declared forgeries, regular hunting parties went out in search of more creatures under the guise of protecting a town that had never been in danger.

It was less than a week before all the fireflies vanished, in spite of the hunter's utter failure to so much as catch a glimpse of any creature other than their companions. The myths remained on both sides still, reinforced by those two small heads that sit in jars of formaldehyde mixed with marshwater.

For both sides there are monsters just out of reach of their homes, eager for the blood of the innocent and always waiting to catch any unsuspecting fool by the marsh's edge. Each side has scores of alleged deaths to blame upon the other, however only one has proof and only one is willing to act on stories of murder.

Only one side moved themselves to safety though, taking the fireflies with them deeper into the wilds while the other declared all they saw to be theirs.

Day 1,091

There were no words strong enough to fully describe the collective fear that went through humanity when the moon began to pulse. Though NASA remained quiet about this discovery, it was felt as a light tremble through every living thing on Earth.

At first the only information released was that the moon was undergoing a gravitational anomaly due to solar radiation (a blatant impossibility yet the world accepted this, praying it would end before the tides grew any worse). They had a much harder time explaining why the moon visibly grew and shrank between each pulse.

Eventually they were forced to reveal all that they had learned in the form of a single sentence that shook the world to its core.


It isn't pulsing, it is breathing.


When confronted with the reality that the moon is (and has always been) a living organism people began to do what they did best - plot to kill it and in doing so preserve the planet. Each heavy inhale sent minor tsunamis, each exhale left hundreds of miles of ocean floor exposed and the death toll was well into the millions before a final plan was decided upon.

Though it might be the only living specimen of its kind - the moon had to die.

Day 1,090

It was raining again, hard to remember a day that it hasn't rained this week. That night the rain felt different, heavier somehow, like a school backpack full of bricks. It was the kind of rain that brought all the strays into my office rather than my regulars.

See, normally I get the same thirty or so people a week wanting me for this-and-that, odd jobs and missing husbands etcetera, but the rain brings me a whole 'nother type. The desperate for some kind of help, he'll kill me if I stay help, or (in the case of last night), I think I'm being hunted and everyone I know is already dead help.

She must have been about seven feet tall,striding into my office like the hounds of hell were at her heels and eyes glistening with unshed tears.

"You've got to help me."

A statement, not a plea.

I didn't even get the chance to ask for her name before she started begging, taking my lack of speech to be refusal rather than allowing me the time to say as much. I don't remember too much of what she said, too mesmerised by the way her eyes darted about the room like emerald dragonflies.

By the time she'd grown tired of begging, I'd grown tired of her eyes and she fled as quickly as she'd come in, promising me that if she died I would be the one to blame.

I've looked back over that night countless times and I still can't figure out what killed her, only that her bloodied remains were strewn round the alley outside my office, still steaming fresh. I only recognised her by her eyes. She hadn't made a sound.

I still don't know what killed her, she won't tell me. All she does is glare at me from whatever corner she's managed to prop her shredded ghostly form against and all I can do is say I'm sorry for something I could never have prevented.