The Smiling Watchers

I jolted awake to the sound of my mobile alarm blaring beside my head. Fumbling in the darkness, I managed to silence it and squinted at the screen. The brightness made me wince as my eyes adjusted.

08:47. 25 October 2026.

That could not be right. My bedroom was pitch-black, the kind of darkness that belonged in the middle of the night. I reached for the lamp on the bedside table and switched it on, blinking as sudden light revealed the clutter around me. Something felt wrong.

"Lucy?" I called, momentarily forgetting that she had not stayed over the previous night.

We had spoken on the phone before bed and made plans for dinner later in the week. The silence that answered made the flat feel emptier than usual. I swung my legs out of bed and shuffled to the window. When I pulled back the curtains, I expected morning light over the Manchester skyline.

Instead, there was darkness.

Complete, absolute darkness. The cold white LED street lamps were still on, casting harsh pools of light across the pavement below. A few cars moved along the road, their headlamps cutting through the blackness.

"What the hell?" I muttered, pressing my face close to the glass.

My mind cycled through logical explanations. Perhaps my phone was wrong. Perhaps a power cut had somehow reset the time. But the lamp worked, and my phone displayed both the correct time and the correct date.

Perhaps a vast storm system had moved in overnight. Manchester weather was unpredictable, especially in autumn. I picked up my phone again and opened the weather app.

Current conditions: 17 degrees Celsius. Calm winds. No precipitation.

Nothing explained why the sky looked like midnight at nearly nine in the morning. My stomach tightened. I tried to calm the anxious thoughts beginning to bubble up by concentrating on practical matters. I needed to call work.

Whatever was happening, I would not be going in that day.

"Hello, Caroline," I said when my boss's administrative assistant answered. "It's Daniel Mercer. I'm not feeling well today. I think I'm coming down with something, so I'll be working from home."

"Daniel, have you seen what it's like outside? It's the strangest thing." Caroline's voice was higher than usual. "Everyone's talking about it. Martin said he nearly drove off the road because he thought the clock in his car was wrong and he was still travelling in the middle of the night."

"Yes, it's weird," I said, unable to think of a better description. "Any idea what's causing it?"

"None. The news is as confused as we are. Anyway, feel better. Let us know if you work out what's happening before we do."

After hanging up, I made coffee. I went through the motions of my morning routine while trying to ignore the darkness beyond the windows. The familiar smell of coffee brewing grounded me as I switched on the television and found a Manchester regional news service.

"An unprecedented phenomenon is affecting the whole of Greater Manchester," a presenter was saying, her expression caught between confusion and forced calm.

A caption identified her as Helen Ward.

"We go now to our meteorologist, Graham Sykes. Graham, can you explain what we are seeing, or rather what we are not seeing, this morning?"

The picture changed to a middle-aged man standing before a weather map that showed nothing unusual.

"Frankly, Helen, we are all baffled," Graham said, gesturing towards it. "There is no cloud cover that could explain darkness on this scale. No storm system, no fog and nothing abnormal on our radar. By every meteorological indication, we should have seen a clear sunrise. But, as you can see from our skyline cameras..."

The screen divided to show a live view of Manchester city centre, where street lamps and illuminated buildings glittered as if it were the middle of the night.

"The sun simply has not risen," Graham continued. "We are checking with weather services throughout the region to establish whether this is confined to Manchester or whether other areas are experiencing the same phenomenon."

I poured my coffee with unsteady hands and took a sip, burning my tongue. When I put the mug down too hard, hot coffee slopped over the rim and onto my hand. I swore under my breath.

I needed to talk to Lucy. She always kept me grounded when my anxiety began to spiral. I tapped her contact and listened as the call went directly to voicemail.

"Hello, this is Lucy. Leave a message and I'll call you back."

"Lucy, it's me. Are you seeing this? The whole city is dark even though it's morning. Call me when you get this, all right? I just want to know you're safe."

I hesitated.

"Love you."

I ended the call and stared at the screen. Lucy worked at a marketing firm in the city centre. She was probably already at her desk, dealing with the same confusion as everyone else. Her phone might have run out of charge or been set to silent.

There were plenty of ordinary reasons why she had not answered.

Even so, I sent her a message.

Morning. World's gone strange. Are you all right?

There was no immediate reply. I finished my coffee, made another cup and began pacing around the flat. The news had moved on to interviews with bewildered people in the street, all offering variations on "I've never seen anything like it" and "Is this the end of the world?"

I checked social media. My feeds were flooded with photographs of the black sky and theories ranging from atmospheric anomalies to religious proclamations about the end times. Hashtags including #ManchesterDarkness and #WhereIsTheSun were trending.

By 10:30, I had checked every weather and news site I could think of. None offered an explanation. They merely confirmed that the phenomenon was not confined to Manchester.

Reports arrived first from elsewhere in Britain, then from mainland Europe, and then from every part of the world. Either the darkness was spreading or it had happened everywhere at once and the reports were only now catching up.

I tried Lucy again.

Still voicemail.

At 11:15, Helen Ward's professional composure had visibly begun to slip.

"We are receiving reports that this darkness is not limited to the United Kingdom," she said, touching one hand to her earpiece. "Our international partners have confirmed that Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas are all experiencing the same phenomenon. The sun has not risen anywhere on Earth."

A cold wave passed through me.

This was not a storm. It was not a local weather anomaly. It was something else entirely. Something impossible.

I turned away from the television and looked through the window again.

Despite the news that the entire world was undergoing an unprecedented astronomical event, people below appeared to be carrying on with their lives. A woman walked her dog. A delivery driver carried an armful of parcels. Two people waited at a bus stop.

It was surreal to watch them moving through what looked like night when every clock insisted that it was the middle of the day. The temperature had not fallen. There was no howling wind, no rain and no snow. There was only darkness where daylight ought to have been.

I checked the weather app again. Still 17 degrees Celsius.

Whatever was happening, it was preventing sunlight from reaching us without causing the immediate fall in temperature that should have followed. My scientific mind struggled for an explanation.

A solar eclipse? No. It would have been predicted, it would not have covered the entire planet and it would have lasted only minutes. A vast dust cloud or volcanic eruption blocking the sun? There had been no reports of a sufficiently large eruption, and the sky was not hazy. It was simply dark, with stars visible as though it were truly night.

By midday, I had bitten my fingernails down to the quick, reviving a nervous habit I thought I had broken years before.

The news had become increasingly frantic. Experts from the UK Space Agency, the Met Office and the Royal Observatory appeared one after another, all equally bewildered. The words "unprecedented" and "inexplicable" were repeated until they began to lose all meaning.

A sudden knock at the front door made me jump. For a moment I merely stared at it, as if I might see through the wood to whoever stood outside.

The knock came again, more insistent.

"Daniel? Are you in there? It's Imran, from down the corridor."

I recognised the voice of Imran Shah, my neighbour in flat 4C. We were not close, but we made small talk whenever we met by the post boxes or in the lift. Mrs Pritchard, an elderly woman who lived alone, occupied the flat between ours.

I unlocked the door. Imran stood in the corridor wearing clothes that looked as if they had been thrown on in a hurry, his dark hair uncombed.

"Hello," I said, stepping aside to let him enter.

"You're seeing this too, aren't you? I'm not hallucinating?"

Imran gave a humourless laugh.

"I wish I could say you were, but no. The whole world's gone mad." He dragged a hand through his hair. "Do you know what's happening? You work with computers, don't you? You're a clever bloke."

"I'm a software developer, not an astronomer," I said, closing the door behind him. "The news knows nothing. Nobody seems to know anything."

Imran walked to the window and looked out.

"I tried driving to my sister's in Stockport, but the traffic is insane. People are panicking even though everything else seems normal. It's just dark."

"Have you heard from anyone farther away?" I asked, joining him.

"My cousin in Cornwall sent me a message. Same thing there. It's as if the sun simply decided not to turn up anywhere today."

Imran turned towards me, and I saw genuine fear in his eyes.

"What does that even mean? How can it be possible?"

I shook my head. I had no answer to give him.

We stood looking out at the unnatural night, at street lamps shining where the sun should have been and at people moving below like shadows in a world that had broken its most fundamental promise: that night would always give way to day.

"I don't know," I said at last. The words felt inadequate, but they were honest. "I really don't know."

We remained silently at the window for what felt like an age. Neither of us had answers, and the absence of any explanation made the darkness outside feel even more oppressive.

"I should go and check on Mrs Pritchard," Imran said at last. "She lives alone. She might be terrified."

"Yes, good idea."

I nodded, grateful for his practicality while my own thoughts spiralled.

"Let me know if you hear anything new."

After Imran left, I sank onto the sofa. The television continued to glare updates that contained no real information. I picked up my laptop and opened my work email, hoping to distract myself with a coding problem.

My inbox was flooded with messages from colleagues asking whether anyone knew what was happening. In the space of an hour, the company-wide thread had descended from professional concern into outright panic.

I tried calling my parents in Liverpool, but the call would not connect. It did not even reach voicemail. I tried three more times with the same result. The failed-call tone tightened my stomach.

How many millions of people were trying to contact loved ones at that moment?

On the television, Helen Ward's voice had risen in pitch as she read updates from a tablet instead of the autocue.

"We are receiving reports of severe traffic congestion in major cities as people attempt to leave urban centres," she said. "The authorities are asking everyone to remain where they are until further information becomes available."

The picture changed to aerial footage of motorways and major arterial roads packed with traffic, headlamps forming rivers of light through the darkness. Then it showed crowded supermarkets where people fought over bottled water and tins of food.

My stomach growled, reminding me that I had consumed nothing but coffee. I opened a delivery app on my phone and scrolled through the restaurants still marked as open. I selected my usual curry order from a nearby Indian takeaway, but a message appeared when I attempted to place it.

No riders available in your area.

I tried two other delivery services and received the same result. Everyone was either staying at home or too overwhelmed to deliver food.

I inspected the kitchen. I had some crumpets, peanut butter, dried pasta and several tins of soup. Enough for a couple of days, at least.

I made myself a crumpet with peanut butter and sat down in front of the television again. The news was interviewing a scientist from the UK Space Agency by video call. His home office was dimly lit, and he looked as though he had not slept.

"There is no astronomical explanation for this phenomenon," he said, removing his glasses and rubbing his eyes. "It is not an eclipse. It is not a planetary alignment. We have checked for unusual solar activity, but our instruments indicate that the sun itself is behaving normally. Something is preventing its light from reaching the Earth's surface, yet we cannot detect what that might be. Nor can we explain why temperatures have not begun falling as physics tells us they should."

"Could it be some kind of immense cloud or dust formation?" Helen asked.

"No known atmospheric phenomenon could produce darkness this complete across the entire planet. Our satellites should also detect anything in orbit large enough to block the sun."

"Then what is your best theory at present?"

The scientist looked directly into the camera. Behind his professional composure, I could see fear.

"I don't have one," he admitted. "None of us does."

I changed channels. On one, a religious leader called the darkness a sign of the end times. Another showed crowds gathering in Piccadilly Gardens, some kneeling in prayer while others held placards demanding repentance.

I kept changing channels, searching for anything that might make sense of what was happening.

At about 14:00, I checked social media again. My feeds were moving faster than I could read, filled with frightened posts from friends and strangers.

Oliver Hughes, a secondary-school friend, had written:

Anyone else unable to reach family in Glasgow? Networks all jammed.

Priya Banerjee, my former university flatmate, had posted:

Power's gone out in our area. Using the last of my phone battery to say we're all right for now. Stay safe.

Marcus Okafor, a colleague, had written:

This is happening everywhere. My cousin in Singapore says the sun failed to rise there earlier in their local day too.

I scrolled through dozens of similar messages. People on every continent were reporting the same unbroken night. Theories ranged from secret government experiments and alien invasion to divine judgement. Videos showed crowds gathering in streets around the world. Some were holding peaceful vigils. Others had descended into looting and violence.

I tried Lucy's number again.

Still voicemail.

I sent another message.

Please call when you get this. I just want to know you're safe.

The Wi-Fi indicator on my phone flickered, then stabilised. When I refreshed my feeds, pages loaded more slowly. Some would not load at all. The mobile signal was becoming unreliable too. The bars dropped from four to two, then returned to three.

At 15:00, civil-emergency alerts began sounding on mobile phones throughout the building, their harsh tones echoing from flat to flat. Outside, the ordinary cries of police cars and ambulances became almost continuous. There was no single citywide warning siren, only the layered wail of emergency vehicles moving through Manchester and urgent local warning broadcasts repeating over television and radio.

I returned to the window. The streets were busier now, with people hurrying in every direction. Some carried bags. Others pushed trolleys loaded with supplies.

Several streets away, an orange glow stained the darkness. A fire. Then I noticed another, farther off. Flames climbed into the blackness, forming islands of light in the artificial night.

A helicopter swept overhead, its searchlight carving a path through the dark. The beam seemed feeble against the overwhelming blackness, as though it were being swallowed only a few feet from its source.

On television, a visibly shaken male presenter was reading from his phone rather than the autocue.

"We are receiving reports of power cuts across parts of south Manchester," he said. "Electricity North West is asking residents to reduce their electricity use to lessen the risk of a wider failure. Emergency services are overwhelmed with calls. Greater Manchester Police, North West Ambulance Service and the fire and rescue service are asking people to call 999 only when there is an immediate threat to life."

Behind him, people moved rapidly through the newsroom. A woman bent to whisper in his ear, and his face fell.

"I am being told that our sister stations in London and Glasgow have gone off air," he said, his professional composure cracking. "We... we will continue broadcasting for as long as possible and bring you updates as we receive them."

The internet failed completely for about ten minutes. When it returned, it was painfully slow. Websites took an age to load, if they loaded at all.

The flat suddenly felt very small. The walls seemed to close around me. I was cut off from the world except for the increasingly chaotic news coverage and my unreliable internet connection.

I tried Lucy once more. The call connected, but went directly to voicemail.

"Lucy, it's me again. Things are getting bad out there. Please call me as soon as you get this. I'm really worried about you."

I paused and swallowed hard.

"I love you."

I ended the call and stared at the phone, willing it to ring. Silence pressed against my ears, broken only by the television and the distant sirens outside.

On the screen, the news had switched to a reporter in the city centre, not far from Lucy's office. He stood before a crowd struggling to board buses.

"People are being moved out of parts of the city centre," he shouted above the noise. "Officials are concerned about power supplies to high-rise buildings if the grid becomes overloaded. Buses are taking people to rest centres set up in schools and community centres, but there are not enough vehicles for everyone."

The camera panned across the crowd. People pushed and shoved in their efforts to board. I searched every visible face for Lucy, but the image was too wide and chaotic for me to distinguish individuals.

"Police are asking people to remain calm, but as you can see behind me..."

Someone shoved past the reporter, knocking the microphone out of his hand. The camera lurched wildly before the broadcast returned to the studio.

"We appear to be having technical problems with our reporter," the presenter said, his voice tight. "We will try to re-establish that connection."

He looked off-camera and then back at the lens, fresh tension tightening his face.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I have just been told that we must evacuate this building. We will continue broadcasting from another location if that proves possible."

He straightened his tie with trembling hands.

"In the meantime, please remain in your homes if it is safe to do so. Conserve food, water and battery power. Check on vulnerable neighbours if you can. We will return as soon as..."

The picture vanished, replaced by an emergency information screen and a flat recorded voice.

"This is an emergency warning broadcast. Please remain calm and await further information."

I changed channels and found the same message on most of them. Only one regional station was still live. A young woman who looked as though she might have been an intern sat rigidly behind the desk.

"For those just joining us, the situation remains unchanged," she said, her voice wavering. "No part of the Earth that should have experienced sunrise today has received daylight. Scientists have no explanation for the phenomenon."

She lowered her eyes to her notes. When she looked up again, there were tears in them.

"I have been told that I should go home to my family now. If... if you are watching this, please be kind to one another. Help one another. We don't know what is happening, but we are all in this together."

She stood and walked away from the desk. The empty chair remained on screen for several seconds before someone replaced the feed with the same emergency message.

I sat in the growing silence of the flat as the gravity of the situation finally settled over me. This was not strange weather or a temporary anomaly. Something fundamental had changed in the world, and nobody knew what it was or how to correct it.

My mobile sounded with another civil-emergency alert.

SHELTER IN PLACE. CONSERVE RESOURCES. AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.

I went into the kitchen and counted my supplies more carefully. Two tins of soup. Half a jar of peanut butter. Four packets of instant noodles. A packet of dried pasta and a jar of sauce.

The water still ran, so I filled every suitable container I could find: saucepans, bottles and the water jug from the fridge.

All the while, I kept glancing at my phone, hoping to see Lucy's name. Each disappointment seemed to break another small piece of hope inside me.

I wondered where she was. Was she still at work? Was she trapped in a queue for a bus? Was she safe?

The thought of her alone in the chaos made my chest ache. I called again.

Voicemail.

I tried Lucy's number once more and listened to the now-familiar greeting with mounting dread. The quiet of the flat pressed in around me. Sirens wailed in the distance.

A sharp knock on the front door made me jump. I froze with the phone still in my hand.

The knock came again, harder and more urgent.

"Daniel, are you there? It's me."

Lucy's voice.

I nearly tripped in my rush to reach the door. I fumbled with the lock and pulled it open.

She stood in the corridor with her dark hair windblown, her face pale and a rucksack hanging from one shoulder. Her hands were visibly trembling.

"Thank God," I said.

I pulled her inside and wrapped my arms around her. She held me just as tightly, her body shaking against mine. I could feel her heart racing. For a long moment we stood together in the entrance hall without speaking.

"I called you so many times," I said at last, drawing back to look at her. "What happened? Are you all right?"

Lucy let the rucksack fall to the floor and pushed her hair away from her face.

"My phone died hours ago. The office lost power around midday, and I couldn't charge it."

She moved past me into the sitting room and looked towards the television, which still displayed the emergency warning screen.

"I tried using my manager's phone to call you, but the networks were jammed. Nothing would go through."

"How did you get here? The news said people were being moved out of the city centre."

She sank onto the sofa, exhaustion plain on her face.

"I walked. It must be nearly two miles. The buses stopped and the Metrolink shut down completely because of some kind of power failure." She looked up at me. "It's complete chaos out there, Daniel."

I sat beside her and took her cold hands in mine. Up close, I could see the fear she was trying to conceal behind a composed expression.

"Tell me what you saw," I said quietly.

Lucy drew a deep breath.

"At first it was only confusion. Everyone thought it was some strange weather event and that it would pass. Then the power began failing across parts of the city centre, and people panicked."

She paused, staring into the distance.

"I saw a group of men break into a corner shop. They smashed the window and began taking things. Nobody stopped them."

"Are you hurt?" I asked, searching her for injuries.

She shook her head.

"No. I stayed on the main roads and kept moving. Most people were only trying to get home, the same as I was."

Her voice cracked.

"There was a crash on Deansgate. Nobody came to help. No ambulance, no police. People simply walked around it."

I went to the kitchen and returned with a glass of water. She accepted it gratefully.

"It's going to be all right," she said after a sip, attempting a smile. "We'll work something out."

But I heard the uncertainty in her voice and saw it in the way she would not quite meet my eyes. She was trying to be strong, but she was as frightened as I was.

On the television, the recorded message continued its monotonous loop.

"Remain in your home. Conserve resources. Await further instructions."

"Have you heard anything new?" Lucy asked, nodding towards the screen.

"Most stations went off air a couple of hours ago. This one has shown the same message for the past hour."

I picked up the remote and changed channels. One regional station was still broadcasting from what appeared to be somebody's sitting room. A weary reporter spoke into a camera beside a standard lamp.

"Power cuts continue across the region. Officials are asking residents to minimise electricity use. If your water supply is still functioning, fill baths and available containers in case the service is interrupted."

Lucy watched without speaking, her fingers tightening around the glass.

"I need to check on my parents," she said suddenly.

I turned towards her.

"What?"

"My parents. They're alone, Daniel. They don't have anyone else to help them."

Urgency rose in her voice.

"Dad has a heart condition. What if he runs out of medication? What if they can't get food, or their electricity fails?"

"Lucy, you've only just arrived. You saw how bad it is outside."

"That is exactly why I need to go."

She put the glass down and faced me.

"They're alone in that house. You know Mum can barely use a mobile in ordinary circumstances. They need me."

Fear crawled up my spine.

"It isn't safe. You said yourself that there's chaos out there."

"They're my parents," she said simply.

In a way, that explained everything.

I ran a hand through my hair and tried to think rationally. Lucy's parents lived about five miles away in south Manchester. In normal circumstances, it would have been a short drive or bus journey. Now, it might as well have been another country.

"Let me come with you," I said.

She shook her head.

"Someone should remain here in case things improve. In case there are further instructions on the warning broadcast."

Her eyes met mine, determined.

"I'll be quick. I'll check on them, make sure they have what they need and come straight back."

"What if you can't get back?"

The question remained between us, the thought we both shared but neither wanted spoken aloud.

Lucy reached for my hand.

"I will. I promise."

We sat in silence for several minutes, each lost in private thoughts. I knew I could not stop her. Her mind was made up. All I could do was help her prepare as well as possible.

"We should pack some supplies for you to take," I said at last.

Relief crossed her face as she nodded.

We moved around the flat gathering what she might need: a high-powered torch with fresh batteries, a bottle of water, several cereal bars and a small first-aid kit. Lucy clipped a legal personal alarm to her coat.

I added several tins of soup and the remaining peanut butter, thinking of her parents.

"Take this as well," I said, offering her the small folding penknife I carried for opening parcels and other practical jobs.

She accepted it without comment and slipped it into an inner pocket of her rucksack.

"Keep your phone switched off to save the battery," I said, trying to think of anything else that might help. "Only turn it on if you need to call or message me."

"What about you? Will you be all right here alone?"

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. The thought of her leaving, of being separated again, made my chest constrict.

We packed everything into her rucksack until it bulged with supplies. I rolled a blanket tightly, secured it with elastic bands and fastened it to the outside.

"It's getting late," I said, looking at my watch.

18:00.

With the darkness outside, time had begun to feel meaningless.

"Perhaps you should wait until morning."

"What is morning now?" Lucy asked softly as she zipped up the rucksack. "It will only be more of this. The longer I wait, the more worried I'll become."

I could not argue with that.

We stood awkwardly for a moment, neither of us wanting to say goodbye. Lucy broke the silence.

"I'll be back before you know it. We'll get through this."

She touched my face gently.

"We always work things out, don't we?"

"We do," I said, trying to believe it.

She kissed me, her lips warm against mine and her arms encircling my neck. I held her close, memorising the feel of her and not wanting to let go.

"I love you," she whispered beside my ear.

"I love you too. Please be careful."

She drew away and shouldered the rucksack.

"I will. Lock the door behind me."

I walked her to the front door. In the corridor, she checked the torch once more, its bright beam cutting through the dim communal lighting. She gave me a final smile and tried to look confident.

"See you soon," she said.

Then she was gone, her footsteps receding towards the lift and stairwell.

I closed and locked the door as promised, then went directly to the window. A minute later, I saw her emerge from the converted warehouse block below, the torch beam swinging as she strode purposefully along the road.

I watched until she turned a corner. Her light grew smaller and smaller before vanishing, swallowed by the darkness.

Once she was gone, silence pressed down upon the flat. I remained at the window for a long time, staring at the point where I had last seen her torch, as if watching might somehow guarantee her safe return.

Eventually I moved away and tried to distract myself. I opened a book, but could not concentrate on the words. I played music, but it felt wrong, too ordinary for what was happening.

I kept checking my phone for messages from Lucy, although I knew she would leave hers switched off to preserve the battery, as we had discussed. Even so, I looked every few minutes, just in case.

At 20:00, I switched the television back on and searched through the channels. All but one displayed the emergency warning screen. The last functioning station showed a solitary reporter sitting behind a desk and reading from a sheet of paper by lamplight.

"If you are still receiving this broadcast, please continue to shelter in place. Conserve food, water and electricity. Help your neighbours if you can do so safely. We do not know when regular broadcasting will..."

The picture went black, then flickered back to the recorded emergency message.

The final station had fallen silent.

I turned off the television and sat in the darkness, listening to the remote sirens and occasional shouts from the street below, waiting for Lucy to return from the endless night outside.

26 October 2026

I jerked awake on the sofa, momentarily confused by the darkness. My phone showed 02:00.

I must have fallen asleep while waiting for Lucy. The television was still on, silently displaying the emergency warning screen and casting blue shadows across the sitting room. My neck ached from the position in which I had slept. I rubbed it and checked my phone again.

No messages. No missed calls. Nothing from Lucy.

I went to the window and pulled back the curtain.

Cold white street lamps cast hard pools of light across the empty pavement.

Except it was not empty.

I froze, my fingers tightening around the curtain. People were standing in the street. They were not walking. They were not moving at all. They simply stood in the darkness.

One figure waited directly opposite the building beneath a street lamp. Even from the fourth floor, I recognised her as Dorothy Bell, an elderly resident from the second floor. She wore a dressing gown, and her fine white hair was unmistakable in the stark light.

Her face was tilted upwards towards the building.

She was smiling.

It was not a normal smile. Her lips had been drawn far too wide, stretched across her face in a way that looked painful.

I leaned closer to the glass and narrowed my eyes, trying to convince myself that I had misunderstood what I was seeing. Dorothy did not move. Not even slightly. Her arms hung beside her body. The hem of her dressing gown stirred faintly in the breeze, but Dorothy herself remained perfectly still.

I searched the rest of the street.

There were others. At least five more figures stood at various points along the road. A man in a business suit waited near the corner. A woman stood beside a parked car. Two people were positioned near the entrance to the rear service alley.

All were motionless.

All wore the same distended smile.

None looked towards passing cars or reacted when an emergency vehicle sped by with its siren wailing. They stood fixed in place, like mannequins arranged throughout the neighbourhood.

I checked the time again.

02:17.

I decided to watch Dorothy and see whether she moved. Minutes passed. Five. Ten. Fifteen.

She remained completely stationary, her unnatural smile fixed in place. As far as I could tell, she did not blink.

"Dorothy," I called after opening the window a fraction.

My voice sounded small and powerless against the vast darkness.

"Dorothy, are you all right?"

There was no response. Not even a twitch to show that she had heard me.

I shut the window and stepped back, suddenly afraid that she might look directly at me if I called again. There was something profoundly wrong about the way she stood there. Something wrong with all of them.

I picked up my phone and dialled 999. The call would not connect. I tried three more times, with the same result.

Then I called Lucy again, my fingers clumsy with mounting dread.

"You've reached Lucy Alvarez. I can't take your call at the moment, but leave a message and I'll get back to you as soon as I can."

The normality of her recorded voice made my chest hurt. I ended the call without leaving another message. What could I say that I had not said already?

I returned to the window, drawn back despite my unease.

Dorothy had not moved. Neither had any of the others.

I found myself counting them. There were seven now.

Had there been more before? I could not remember.

For the next few hours, I alternated between pacing the flat, trying Lucy's number and returning to the window to check on the motionless figures outside.

They never moved. They never blinked. They did not acknowledge the occasional car that passed or the distant sound of glass breaking elsewhere in the neighbourhood.

At about 05:00, I needed the lavatory. I hesitated, strangely reluctant to look away from the window, as if something might happen the instant I turned my back. Eventually, the pressure in my bladder forced me to leave.

When I returned less than two minutes later, I knew at once that something had changed.

Dorothy was no longer on the opposite side of the road.

She now stood directly outside my building, beneath the street lamp nearest the entrance. Her head remained tilted back. Her gaze was still directed upwards. The smile remained stretched across her face.

She had moved while I was not watching.

My heart pounded as I scanned the street. The other figures had changed position as well. Not dramatically, but unmistakably.

Every one of them was closer to the building.

Every one of them faced it.

Every one of them wore the same fixed smile.

I stumbled away from the window, struck the coffee table and nearly fell. Cold sweat broke across my forehead.

They had moved without walking, or they had moved so swiftly and silently that I had missed it.

Either possibility was impossible.

Either possibility was terrifying.

I approached the window once more, remaining far enough back that I hoped I could not be seen from below.

There were more of them now. At least nine, all facing my building, all smiling.

And somehow, with absolute certainty, I knew that every one of them was watching me.

I pulled the curtains closed with shaking hands, feeling their invisible gazes penetrate the fabric, the glass and the very walls of my flat. I sank onto the sofa and grabbed my mobile like a lifeline, trying Lucy's number again even though I knew she would not answer. The darkness pressed against my windows, and somewhere beyond it Dorothy Bell and the others stood motionless, waiting for something I could not understand. Their eyes remained turned towards my home.

Their smiles stretched too widely across their still, silent faces.

The night dragged on without mercy. I sat on the sofa in the darkness, my mobile clenched in my hand, checking for messages from Lucy every few minutes although I knew none would come. By 06:00, exhaustion finally overcame me.

I dozed fitfully, waking with a start at every distant siren or shout from the streets. Each time I checked my mobile, there was nothing. At 08:00 on 26 October, though the darkness outside remained as deep as midnight, I finally gave up trying to sleep. My flat felt too quiet and too empty.

Lucy should have been back by then. She should at least have called. I made myself a coffee, going through the motions mechanically while my thoughts circled back to her with every breath. Had she reached her parents?

Was she safe? Was she trying to ring me through a dead mobile network? The possibilities crowded my mind, each one worse than the last. The coffee tasted bitter and wrong.

I poured it down the sink after two sips, then forced myself to approach the window again. My hand trembled as I parted the curtains by a few inches, just enough to peer outside.

The street below had changed.

What had been nine figures during the night had grown to at least twelve. Dorothy remained closest to my building, still wearing her dressing gown, her white hair ghostly beneath the cold white LED street lamps. Others had joined her. A man in a business suit. A teenage girl with a rucksack. An elderly man holding a walking stick limply at his side, though he made no use of it.

All of them stood perfectly still. All of their faces were tilted towards my building. All of them were smiling.

I moved to the kitchen window overlooking the side street.

Within seconds, the figures below slowly turned their heads, redirecting their gaze towards my new position. Their bodies remained facing forwards, but their heads swivelled with mechanical precision to track my movement.

"What the hell?" I whispered, backing away from the window.

I went to my bedroom, to the window overlooking the rear of the converted warehouse block and the service alley below. The building was old enough to have an external metal fire escape, which descended from beside my bedroom window. I waited a full minute before looking out.

When I did, I saw that four of the figures had repositioned themselves so they could watch this side of the building. The moment I appeared, their heads turned upwards towards my window.

They were following me. Tracking my movements through the flat.

I returned to the living-room window, my heart hammering. As soon as I appeared, the original figures returned their attention to it. On a sudden impulse, I raised my hand and waved.

There was no response. Not one of them waved back or showed the slightest change in expression.

But their smiles... did they look wider now?

The corners of their mouths seemed to stretch a little farther across their faces. I dropped the curtain and backed away, my stomach churning.

The fridge hummed in the kitchen, reminding me that I ought to eat. I opened it and stared blankly at its contents. Nothing appealed to me. The thought of food made my stomach tighten.

I took an apple more from obligation than hunger, bit it once and left it forgotten on the worktop.

I tried Lucy's number again. Voicemail, as expected. Then I rang Imran Shah in flat 4C, wondering whether my neighbour had seen what was happening outside. There was no answer from him either.

The silence in my flat pressed against my ears.

I switched on the telly for noise, but the continuous warning broadcast remained the only programme on every channel. The same instructions scrolled beneath the presenter: remain indoors, conserve food and power, avoid unnecessary travel, wait for further civil-emergency mobile alerts. I switched it off again, preferring silence to the monotonous repetition of advice that no longer seemed relevant to what was happening.

By 12:00, I had worn a path into the carpet with my pacing. My worry for Lucy had hardened into something sharper than anxiety.

It was fear now, raw and unfiltered.

If she had reached her parents, she would have found some way to contact me. The only explanation for her silence was that something had happened to her.

I returned to the window, driven by a need to know what was happening outside even as I dreaded what I might see.

The number of figures had grown again. I counted seventeen spread along the street, all standing perfectly still, all smiling up at the building.

As I watched, a young man came along the pavement with his head lowered and his hands in his pockets. He walked quickly and purposefully, one of the people still functioning, still trying to reach somewhere in this broken world.

He did not seem to notice the smiling figures until he was almost among them. Then he slowed and stopped, staring at Dorothy with visible confusion. His mouth moved. He was speaking to her.

Dorothy did not answer. She did not move or blink. She merely continued to wear that dreadful smile, her eyes fixed upon my window.

The young man waved a hand in front of her face. There was no response. He turned and seemed to notice the others for the first time. Alarm showed in every line of his body.

He took one step backwards, then another.

Then he froze halfway through the movement.

I pressed closer to the glass, scarcely breathing. The young man stood unnaturally still, one foot raised slightly as though he had been caught between steps.

For nearly a minute, he did not move at all.

Then his head slowly turned upwards.

His face, which had been tense with confusion, relaxed into a blank expression. The corners of his mouth began to rise. They stretched outwards until his lips formed the same appalling smile as all the others.

"No," I whispered, pressing both hands against the glass. "No, no, no."

I hammered on the window and shouted, though I knew he could not hear me.

"Run! Get away from them!"

It was too late. The young man now stood like the others, perfectly still, his face tilted upwards and that unnatural smile fixed in place.

Another person had been taken by whatever this was.

I stumbled away from the window, my breath coming in short gasps. I had watched it happen. I had watched somebody change and become one of them.

The implications struck me like a physical blow.

If this was happening across Manchester, then Lucy...

I snatched up my mobile, my fingers clumsy with panic. I did not have her parents' number saved under their names, but months earlier she had given me access to her contacts in case of an emergency. This qualified.

I found the entry marked Mum and Dad and called with shaking hands.

The phone rang and rang. Nobody answered. There was no voicemail.

I tried three more times, with the same result. Each unanswered ring drove the blade of fear deeper. What if Lucy had reached her parents but was now standing somewhere in their neighbourhood, smiling that empty smile and staring at nothing? What if she had already been lost to whatever was happening?

My legs gave way. I sank to the floor with my back against the wall, still clutching the mobile.

The thought of Lucy - vibrant, determined Lucy - becoming like those hollow figures outside was more than I could bear. The darkness beyond the window seemed to deepen and grow more threatening. I sat in my silent flat, surrounded by the remains of a normal life that no longer existed, while outside the smiling figures waited.

For what?

I did not know. Somehow, though, I was certain they would wait for ever if necessary. Their eyes never closed and their smiles never faded. They were as constant and unchanging as the darkness that had swallowed the sun.

I remained on the floor for what felt like hours, my back against the wall and the mobile useless in my hand. The weight of Lucy's absence bore down upon me like a physical thing. My thoughts spiralled between worry and terror, each imagined outcome worse than the last.

At last, I forced myself to stand on unsteady legs.

Sitting there paralysed by fear would not help Lucy. I had to do something.

By the afternoon of 26 October, though the darkness outside remained absolute, I had made up my mind. I could not stay in the flat waiting for news that might never come.

I had to find her.

The thought of going outside among those unblinking, smiling watchers made my stomach clench. But the alternative - remaining there and imagining Lucy in danger - was worse.

I moved with a new sense of purpose, gathering whatever I might need.

High-powered torch. Fresh batteries. My mobile, now charged but still useless for calls.

I wanted something I could use to defend myself if I had to. In the bedroom wardrobe, behind my winter coats and boxes of shoes, I found an old cricket bat I had kept from casual university matches. I pulled it out and tested its weight in my hands. Its familiar heft felt reassuring in a world where nothing made sense.

I put a bottle of water and a cereal bar into my jacket pockets. There was no way of knowing how long I would be outside.

At the window, I checked the street again. The smiling figures remained in place, their faces still turned towards my building. More had joined them since morning. There were at least twenty now.

Dorothy still stood nearest the entrance. Her dressing gown stirred slightly in the breeze, and that fixed smile remained stretched across her face.

The front door was not an option. I would have to pass directly through them. After what I had seen happen to the young man, I was not prepared to risk it.

The fire escape was my only way out.

I went to my bedroom window, unlocked it and pushed up the sash. Cold air rushed inside as I leaned out and looked down the old metal structure zigzagging towards the rear service alley.

There were no smiling figures on this side. Not yet.

I tucked the cricket bat beneath one arm, gripped the torch and climbed through the window. The metal grating felt cold and solid under my feet. I pulled the window almost shut behind me but left it unlocked so that I could get back inside.

The fire escape creaked softly as I descended, trying to make as little noise as possible. From there, I could see around the corner of the building to several of the watchers. They did not react to my presence. Their attention remained fixed on the front of the block, as though they had not noticed me at all.

When I reached the bottom, I jumped the last few feet and landed in the service alley. I paused and listened.

Nothing but distant sirens and the sound of my own breathing.

I switched on the torch, keeping its beam aimed at the ground so I would be less conspicuous. With the bat in my right hand and the torch in my left, I moved towards the mouth of the alley.

I peered around the corner. From there, I could see Dorothy and several of the others still standing motionless, still staring up at my flat. None of them appeared to know I had left it.

Taking advantage of their fixed attention, I slipped out of the alley in the opposite direction. I kept close to the buildings and moved as quickly and quietly as I could.

The streets were empty of normal activity. No cars moved along the road. No pedestrians hurried past with destinations in mind.

There was only darkness and silence, broken by distant traces of chaos. A car alarm sounded several streets away. Sirens wailed without ever seeming to draw closer. Once, I heard breaking glass.

I knew the route to Lucy's parents' house. They lived about five miles away in south Manchester. Under normal circumstances, the walk would take roughly an hour and a half.

These were not normal circumstances.

The familiar streets had become alien and threatening. Abandoned cars stood at odd angles, some with their doors hanging open. Shop windows had been smashed and their contents looted. A supermarket I passed had been completely ransacked, its shelves stripped bare and discarded products scattered across the floor behind the broken windows.

I walked three streets, alert and constantly scanning for those unnatural smiling figures. None had yet appeared in my path.

The only illumination came from my torch and the occasional cold white LED street lamp that was still working. The darkness between those harsh pools of light felt absolute and alive, as though it might reach out and seize me.

I turned on to a broader street and stopped abruptly.

A man stood in the middle of the pavement about thirty feet ahead. He faced away from me and was completely motionless.

I froze, praying that he had not heard me. Perhaps I could retreat slowly and find another route.

Before I could move, the man's head turned.

Only his head moved. His body remained facing away.

It rotated farther than any human neck should allow, until he was looking directly at me over his shoulder.

His face bore the same hideous smile I had seen on all the others. Too wide. Too fixed. Too unnatural.

I stepped back.

The man's body jerked around to face me. The movement was not fluid like ordinary human motion. It came in separate, abrupt segments, as though his joints were mechanical.

He stepped towards me.

I raised the bat.

"Stay back," I warned.

My voice sounded thin and powerless in the empty street. The man kept coming. His smile never wavered and his eyes never blinked.

I moved to the right, trying to circle around him.

He mirrored my movement perfectly and blocked my path.

"I said stay back!" I shouted, swinging the bat through a threatening arc in front of me.

There was no reaction. He did not flinch or pause. His pace remained steady, his smile fixed and his eyes unblinking.

I feinted left, then dodged right.

Somehow, he anticipated me and shifted to block the way again.

"What do you want?" I yelled, my voice cracking with fear.

There was no answer. Only the smile and those steady, jerking steps.

He was close enough now for me to see the unnatural stillness of his eyes and the way his chest did not seem to rise or fall with breath.

I swung the bat.

It was a perfect blow, aimed directly at his head. I felt the momentum of the swing and the instant when it should have connected.

It did not.

Somehow, I missed. The bat passed through the space occupied by his head. The unexpected lack of impact threw me off balance. I stumbled, caught myself and looked up in bewilderment.

The man stood exactly where he had been, unmarked and unaffected, as though the bat had passed straight through him.

Cold terror flooded me.

It was impossible.

I backed away with the bat held between us. The man followed, matching my pace precisely. When I stepped backwards, he stepped forwards. When I moved faster, so did he.

I turned and ran.

His footsteps followed, keeping perfect time with mine. They were neither faster nor slower. Their rhythm was exactly the same, as if he and I were joined by an invisible tether.

My lungs burned as I sprinted back the way I had come, haunted by the sound of his footsteps. I did not dare look behind me. I did not dare slow down.

I rounded the corner into my street and saw the converted warehouse block ahead. The smiling watchers still surrounded the front entrance.

I veered towards the service alley and the fire escape.

Reaching the bottom of the metal steps, I scrambled upwards, the bat clanging against the railings as I climbed.

Only when I reached the fourth floor did I risk looking down.

The man stood at the foot of the fire escape, his head tilted back and his eyes fixed upon me. The smile still stretched across his face. He made no attempt to climb after me.

He did not need to.

He had driven me home.

I climbed through my bedroom window and slammed it shut, locking it with trembling hands. I dropped the bat and stumbled into the living room, needing to see what had happened.

The man had moved.

He now stood among the others in front of my building, his face turned upwards towards my window. He had joined their silent vigil.

Unlike the others, however, his smile seemed to widen by a fraction when I appeared.

As though he recognised me.

As though he knew me now.

I backed away from the glass as the reality of my situation descended upon me.

I could not leave. I could not find Lucy. I was trapped in the flat while those things waited below.

And now one of them was hunting me.

I sank on to the sofa, still trembling from the encounter with the smiling man who had chased me home. My chest hurt from running and my hands would not stop shaking. The cricket bat lay where I had dropped it, useless against whatever those things were.

I drew the curtains tightly, unwilling to see the man's face turned towards my window.

The air inside the flat felt different. Colder. Heavier. As if something fundamental had changed while I was outside.

I grabbed my mobile, desperately hoping for a signal and some means of calling for help. The no-service symbol stared back at me. I tried Lucy's number anyway.

Nothing.

For almost an hour, I sat in silence and listened to the distant sounds of a city in chaos. There were occasional sirens, a car alarm that continued for at least twenty minutes and, once, several sharp cracks that might have been gunshots a few streets away.

I was gathering the courage to try the fire escape again and search for another route to Lucy's parents' house when I heard it.

The unmistakable sound of my flat's front door opening into the hall.

My heart leapt.

Lucy? Had she made it back?

"Lucy?" I called, already moving towards the hall.

There was no answer.

I stopped beside the living-room doorway, suddenly uneasy. If it was Lucy, why had she not answered?

Then I heard footsteps.

Slow, deliberate, heavy footsteps.

Not Lucy's quick, light tread.

Wrong.

Everything about them was wrong.

I crouched and peered from the living room towards the kitchen at the end of the hall. Two figures stood there, completely still. One was a woman of perhaps forty-five or fifty, dressed in a creased blouse and skirt. The other was a teenage boy wearing jeans and a hooded top.

Both stood with their backs to the kitchen worktop. Both had turned their faces towards the hall and were looking directly at the place where I hid.

Both wore those dreadful, stretched smiles.

I pulled back at once, my heart beating so hard I was certain they could hear it.

How had they entered? I had locked the front door after Lucy left. I was sure of it. I always locked it, and I had been even more careful since the world fell into perpetual night.

The footsteps did not resume.

No sound came from the kitchen at all.

Were they still standing there? Were they moving towards me? The silence was almost worse than any noise could have been.

I retreated as quietly as possible towards my bedroom.

The cricket bat. I needed the cricket bat. It had been useless against the man outside, but it was all I had.

I retrieved it from the living-room floor, gripping it until my knuckles whitened. Then I returned to my bedroom, shut the door and locked it.

It was a barrier between them and me, however flimsy it might prove. My hands shook so badly that I nearly dropped the bat.

They were inside my flat. Inside my home. Inside the last place I had thought safe.

How had they got in?

I fumbled for my mobile again, desperate to call anyone and reach any kind of help. I tried 999.

Nothing.

I tried the numbers for the police, the ambulance service and the fire and rescue service. Nothing. I rang random numbers in the hope that another human being might answer.

Nothing.

The mobile signal had vanished completely.

I pressed my ear against the bedroom door and strained to hear anything beyond it.

There was only silence.

Were they still in the kitchen? Had they gone? Were they standing directly outside my door?

I dropped to my knees and peered through the keyhole, holding my breath. At first, I saw nothing but the dark corridor.

Then a shadow crossed my narrow field of view.

Something passed the door from left to right.

Another shadow followed, moving more slowly.

They were exploring my flat. Moving through my rooms. Touching my belongings.

I scrambled backwards as though they might reach through the keyhole and seize me.

My chest of drawers. I needed something to block the door.

I put down the bat and pushed against the heavy wooden chest. It scraped loudly across the floor as I manoeuvred it into place. I winced at the noise, certain they could hear it and now knew precisely where I was hiding.

What choice did I have?

The chest settled against the door with a final thud.

I picked up the bat again and retreated until the backs of my legs struck the bed. I sat down, laying the bat across my knees, and listened to the absolute, terrible silence beyond the door.

I strained for footsteps, breathing or any hint of movement.

Nothing.

But I knew they were there. I could feel them.

Their presence was a pressure in the air, a weight against my skin. Those smiling, empty-eyed things were moving through my flat. They looked human, but they were not.

Not any more.

I thought of the man outside and the way my bat had passed through him. I remembered how he had matched my pace exactly, step for step, never gaining and never falling behind, as though we were somehow connected.

What were they?

What did they want?

I tightened my grip on the bat and stared at the barricaded door. The silence stretched on until it became unbearable and suffocating.

My flat had been my refuge in this newly darkened world.

Now nowhere was safe.

Not the streets. Not my home. Nowhere.

If they could enter this place, they could enter anywhere.

At about 00:00 on 27 October, the flat remained eerily silent. I sat on the edge of the bed, the cricket bat still clenched in my white-knuckled hands, listening for movement on the far side of the barricaded door.

The chest of drawers looked solid against it, but I could not stop wondering whether it would be enough.

Then I heard something.

A heavy scraping sound came from the living room. Something large was being dragged across the wooden floor.

The noise was slow and deliberate. A prolonged scrape was followed by silence, then another scrape.

My mouth went dry.

I stood, raised the bat and moved closer to the bedroom door.

The dragging continued.

Scrape. Pause. Scrape.

There was a rhythm to it, but not a mechanical one. The intervals between the sounds were uneven. Sometimes a scrape continued for longer, as though whatever was being moved had caught against something.

I pressed my ear to the door and tried to understand what I was hearing.

It had to be furniture. They were moving the sofa or the coffee table.

But why? What possible purpose could it serve?

The noise stopped abruptly.

I held my breath and listened.

Nothing.

I retreated from the door and sat on the bed again with the bat across my knees. My mobile showed 00:20. I stared at the chest of drawers blocking the door and tried to think rationally.

Those smiling, empty-eyed things were in my flat, shifting my furniture. I should have been trying to escape instead of waiting for them to find a way inside the bedroom.

But the only other exit was through the window and down the fire escape. After my earlier attempt, I knew they were waiting there as well.

I was trapped.

For almost an hour, the flat remained silent. I did not move from the bed and scarcely dared to breathe. The silence felt like a physical weight bearing down upon me.

Then the dragging began again.

This time it sounded different. Heavier. More laboured. It travelled from the living room into the hall and towards the kitchen. Other noises accompanied it now: the scrape of a chair, the thud of something striking the worktop.

They were rearranging my furniture.

Yet the rhythm of the dragging disturbed me. It was not the consistent sound of somebody methodically shifting an object. It was jerky and irregular, almost organic.

Horrible possibilities flashed through my mind.

What if they were not dragging furniture? What if it was something else? Something...

I shook my head, refusing to complete the thought.

The image formed anyway. Smiling figures hauling something heavy and lifeless across my floor, something that had once been a person.

I clamped a hand over my mouth and tried to control my breathing.

No. It was furniture.

It had to be furniture.

The dragging stopped again, but this time something worse replaced it.

Footsteps.

Slow and deliberate, coming along the corridor towards my bedroom.

I stood, my heart hammering against my ribs.

The footsteps continued. One step. A pause. Another step. Another pause.

Whoever or whatever was out there was taking its time, placing each footfall with deliberate precision.

The footsteps stopped outside my bedroom door.

I raised the bat, although I remembered how useless it had been against the man in the street. My arms shook with the effort of holding it ready, but I could not make myself lower it.

For a long moment, nothing happened.

Then I heard the softest sound of the door handle turning, testing the lock.

The handle moved again, more insistently.

Then pressure came against the door itself.

The chest of drawers creaked as something pushed from the corridor. It was slow, steady pressure that made the wood of the door and the chest groan in protest.

I backed into the corner of the bedroom, still holding the bat aloft.

Would the barricade hold?

It had to.

The pressure increased.

The chest moved a fraction of an inch, its feet squeaking across the wooden floor. It was heavy and solid, its drawers filled with clothes. I had chosen it because it was the heaviest piece of furniture in the bedroom.

The groaning continued, a dreadful counterpoint to my ragged breathing. I could almost see the door beginning to bow inwards.

Then, without warning, it stopped.

The pressure vanished. The handle was released.

The bedroom fell silent again.

I waited with the bat raised, my muscles screaming from the strain of keeping it poised to swing. Sweat ran into my eyes, but I did not dare lower the bat to wipe it away.

Minutes passed.

Five. Ten.

Nothing happened.

Had they given up? Had they left? Or were they simply waiting?

I lowered the bat slowly, my arms trembling with exhaustion. I did not dare cross the room to sit on the bed. Instead, I slid down the wall until I was seated on the floor with the bat across my knees.

From there, I could see both the door and the window.

Neither offered an escape. Both might conceal horrors on the other side.

I listened for any noise beyond the bedroom door. My own breathing sounded thunderous in the silence. I tried to control it, taking shallow breaths through my mouth.

What did they want? Why had they entered my flat? Why were they trying to reach my bedroom?

I pictured Dorothy Bell standing in the street, her dressing gown stirring in the breeze. I remembered the man who had chased me back to the building while matching my pace exactly. I thought of the woman and the teenage boy I had glimpsed in my kitchen.

None of them had tried to communicate. None had spoken a word.

They only smiled those terrible smiles and stared through unblinking eyes.

Now they were inside my home, dragging heavy things across the floor and trying to enter my bedroom.

The silence continued, broken only by an occasional distant siren or car alarm from somewhere outside. Within the flat, nothing moved. Nothing made a sound.

I checked my mobile again.

01:30.

How long could I remain awake? How long would it be before exhaustion overcame fear and I fell asleep, defenceless?

I tightened my grip on the bat and stared at the barricaded door, waiting for the next noise and the next attempt. Every muscle in my body remained tense, ready to react if the pressure returned.

The darkness pressed against the window.

Silence filled my ears.

Somewhere beyond my bedroom door, the smiling things waited. Their purpose was unknown. Their patience appeared endless.

The darkness outside had not changed, but at 06:00 on 27 October my mobile insisted another morning had arrived. Dawn should have broken, yet the world remained imprisoned in perpetual night.

I had not slept. I was still sitting against the bedroom wall with the bat across my knees. My back ached and my eyes burned with exhaustion.

The flat had been silent for hours. There had not been a footstep, a scrape or a single sound beyond my barricaded door.

That did not mean they had gone.

Those smiling things could remain motionless for hours. I had seen it myself.

I checked the mobile again. The battery symbol glowed red at nine per cent. Soon it would die, and I would lose my last connection to the normal world. It had become useless anyway. There was no signal, no way to summon help and no way to reach Lucy.

Lucy.

I closed my eyes and saw her face.

Where was she? Had she reached her parents? Was she safe?

Or had she become one of them?

The thought made my chest ache.

I pushed myself to my feet, my muscles protesting after so many hours in the same position. I had to do something - anything - rather than remain there waiting for whatever came next.

My desk drawer contained several notebooks and pens from the days when I worked from home. I took out a spiral-bound notebook and a ballpoint pen. If I could not call for help, perhaps I could at least leave a record of what had happened.

Somebody should know. Somebody should understand what we had experienced, even if I could not understand it myself.

I sat on the edge of the bed and opened the notebook at the first blank page. The pen hovered above the paper for a moment before I began.

To whoever finds this...

I stopped and crossed it out. It sounded too dramatic, too much like the opening of a horror film.

This was not fiction.

This was happening.

I began again, keeping it simple.

My name is Daniel Mercer. I live at 48 Alder Street, flat 4B, Manchester. Today is...

I stopped.

What day was it? The darkness had begun on 25 October 2026. I knew that. My mobile had shown me the date when I woke and discovered that the sun had not risen. Yet the hours since then had blurred together inside the endless night, and the ordinary meaning of a day already seemed to be slipping away.

I wrote the date carefully.

27 October 2026.

Then I continued.

The sun has not risen since the morning of 25 October. The world went dark and everything changed.

After that, the words came more easily.

I wrote about waking to darkness, the confusion and panic that followed and the reports that sunlight had failed across the world. I described the experts from the UK Space Agency, the Met Office and the Royal Observatory admitting that the darkness made no sense. The sun had not simply vanished. Temperatures had not collapsed as they should have done, and instruments could offer no credible explanation for the absence of daylight.

I wrote about Lucy leaving at 18:00 on 25 October to make the separate five-mile journey to her parents in south Manchester, and about her failure to return or contact me.

I described the figures in the street, Dorothy Bell in her dressing gown and the others joining her one by one, all wearing the same dreadful, fixed smiles. I recorded the young man's transformation and my failed attempt to leave. I wrote about the man who had driven me back home and how my cricket bat had passed straight through his head without touching him.

Then I described how the watchers had somehow entered my single-level fourth-floor flat. I wrote about the woman and the teenage boy I had seen in the kitchen, the furniture or whatever else being dragged through my rooms, and the pressure against my bedroom door.

As I wrote, I recognised something I had been trying not to consider.

I could not remain in the bedroom for ever.

I had no food or water with me. I was trapped in a box that was slowly closing around me. I could die quickly by facing whatever waited outside or die slowly from dehydration.

Some choice.

I looked at the chest of drawers barricading the door. It had held when they tried to enter, but how long would it protect me? Even if they never broke through, what then?

I would wait until hunger and thirst left me too weak to defend myself.

I turned back to the notebook and wrote more quickly.

I don't know what these things are. They look human, but they're not. Not any more. They don't blink. They don't speak. They only smile those terrible smiles and watch and wait.

I don't know what happened to Lucy. I pray she's safe somewhere. I don't know what's happened to the world, why the sun won't rise or why people are changing. If anyone finds this, please try to understand.

We didn't know what we were facing. We weren't prepared.

I paused with the pen above the paper.

What else could I say? What useful warning could I possibly leave?

If you're reading this and the world is still dark, be careful. Don't approach them. Don't meet their gaze at close range and don't respond to their smiles. I don't know what causes the change or whether watching them is enough.

Whatever you do, don't smile back.

I closed the notebook and placed it on the bedside table, where anyone entering the room would see it. It was a small and pathetic legacy, but it was better than nothing.

My mobile battery had fallen to seven per cent. It would not last much longer.

I stood and gripped the cricket bat tightly. The dragging noises from the previous night replayed in my memory.

What had they been moving?

Furniture? Or something worse?

I could not rid myself of the image of something heavy and lifeless being pulled across my floor. The noise had not returned, but that proved nothing.

They might be standing directly outside the bedroom door, as still as statues, waiting.

But I could not stay there.

I had to find food and water. I had to discover whether they were still inside my flat.

I had to try to find Lucy.

I went to the chest of drawers and put down the bat. Bracing myself against the heavy piece of furniture, I drew a deep breath and pushed. It shifted inch by inch away from the door, making a terrible scraping noise across the wooden floor.

I no longer cared about the sound.

If they were outside, they already knew where I was.

At last, the chest cleared the door. I picked up the bat again and stood facing it, my heart pounding.

I pressed my ear against the wood and listened.

Nothing.

Complete silence on the other side.

I reached for the door handle. My hand shook so violently that I could scarcely grasp it.

Then I froze.

What if they were waiting immediately outside? What if opening the door meant joining them and becoming another unblinking, smiling figure in the darkness?

The alternative was to remain there until I wasted away.

No one was coming to help.

No one even knew I was here. I had to try. My fingers closed around the bedroom door handle. I slowly turned the lock, wincing at the loud click it made in the silence.

I took a deep breath, tightened my grip on the old cricket bat and prepared to open the door and face whatever waited in the corridor beyond. Whether I would walk out of this flat alive or join the ranks of those smiling figures in the street, my time hiding was over.