Diary of a Man with Visions

Entry #1

My name is Edward Lampton-Ovechkin. I am forty-seven years of age, and I am beginning a journal, for life has stressed me beyond repair; the bickering and the demands—I hate it. I regret joining this glorified commune. I work for them, and all I get is a fancy capelet and mediocre food of half-assed wine and pork of a scrawny swine.

My chamber lacks windows, and I write with the light of a candle. I do not wish to engage with the others; they are eccentric and lack redeeming qualities. I have only cared to speak with this girl named Marion, for she is normal compared to the others.

Entry #2

It has been two weeks since I have touched or even written in these pages. The masons never cared to bother with windows here; there are few, if any, built around them. I rely on lanterns, candles, and damned torches. This place is like a prison, with a strict schedule and strict rules. I hate it here. I want to go back to the estate in Northumbria. The others don't seem to see care; however, I assume I will get used to it like they have.

I was not allowed to leave my chamber last night; the guards said Marion was having another episode, though I didn't hear any banging as usual with her, only hurried, grouped footsteps and swift whispers. I pressed my ear against my door all night; not one sound besides that. I know they are lying to me, though why, I have no clue as of yet.

I now feel watched; I don't know why, but I feel like the words I am writing down now are spoken out loud as if they can all hear what I am writing, but I know they can't. Why won't my mind rid itself of this intruding thought? It angers me!

They warn me not to go down past the first storey; I ask why, but they refuse to answer.

Entry #7

I had another dream last night.

It was different. I have had lucid dreams my whole life, but since the ordination, always once or twice every week, a strange moment would be spliced into them, and they would go from indulgent and pleasurable to strange and esoteric in a way like viewing a scene you were never meant to; like being in a place you aren't supposed to, or, maybe, listening in to whispers across a door frame. I can't find a way to describe their likeness in any further detail: my mind is blank with ideas. They would be something akin to clips of one film cut into another; completely unrelated and irrelevant, a dream, and then, something else.

I do not know if they are right or not; ever since my ordination and my pilgrimage to the estate, I have been plagued, or blessed, maybe, I don't know at this point, with these "visions" I now call them, but they are not; they are more than just visions, I swear it on my life, I can feel it; they're as if I have been transported to a strange chamber or realm, or, I don't know. Marion and that man with the green coat told me I should begin a dream journal and catalog them so that when my mind goes blank with memory, they are not forgotten. I do not care for that; I wish to forget them. I don't know why, but they feel wrong in such an ungodly and unholy, grotesque and disgusting way. I feel as though I am touching the cold, freezing, and bloodless skin of a rotting corpse, something so questionable, taboo, and horridly terrible.

I do not wish to put into words what I saw, for I fear that will make it "real" or, in a sense like that, you understand me? Whoever sneaks into my chamber and reads my papers, I'm speaking to you now: do not question me about these visions anymore; they make me miserable and horrified.