Day 2,482

I used to be big into urbex - the creepier and more isolated the place was, the better it was as far as I was concerned. I've been just about everywhere you can go to in this country - schoolhouses, asylums, prisons and even an abandoned village on a remote island out in the Hebrides.

I could have kept going for the rest of my days but the last place we went, we saw something we shouldn't have and I barely made it out alive. You'd think an old shop in the middle of town couldn't possibly be even vaguely dangerous and you'd be wrong.

There were five of us that day - me, Nazim, Taine, Jeannie and Esmae who found the entry point about a few days earlier and begged us to go in there with her. She'd never led us wrong before, we didn't have a single reason not to trust her or suspect the place was dodgy.

It only made their deaths that little bit more tragic.

They climbed in through the damaged corner of a loading bay door round the back, stepping into a smallish storage area that felt ten degrees colder than the outside. It hadn't been five minutes but they already felt ill at ease, eyes trying to peer into every darkened corner for the source of their anxiety.

All they saw at first was a few empty shelving racks roughly pushed to one side and the occasional dead mouse. Nothing that would explain why the air smelled like death and sweat, nothing that would explain why they all felt like they were being watched.

When they found the entrance to the shop floor they assumed the feeling would go away but in the brief moment between opening the door and stepping into the next room, they caught a glimpse of the broken ducts on the ceiling moving. They caught the briefest glimpse of its face.

It was enough to send them sprinting for the loading bay and the presumed safety of the outside without any of them looking up and noticing that the ducts spanned the entirety of the building. It already knew where they were heading and was already waiting to cut them off.

I was the only one who made it out and only because it had its arms and mouth full of my friends.