My Dreams are getting weird.

Which seems like a strange statement considering the "normal" state of my dreams, but now I seem to just be dreaming about random events that I'm fairly sure are going on as I'm dreaming or at least around that time with occasional strange prophetic dreams.

So as you can probably guess... talking about dreams time.

I had a dream about a meeting. There were puppets, Nests, Timberwolves and Proxies.

Each one seemed to have a representative talking. I saw The Second talking for The Proxies, A random puppet was talking for the puppets, I don't know why Spider Girl wasn't there. Also pretty sure her name was Ariadne. The Nests and Timberwolves though seemed to be on the same side and there were three people talking for them. A man in a heavy black cloak similar in style to those Organization XIII cloaks from Kingdom Hearts, but without the metal parts and it was tied closed with straps of what looked like red tape as opposed to zipped closed. The man's face was invisible in the back of the hood, but his voice seemed to emanate from all around him.

For The Nests there was a guy with short white hair and wearing an immaculate White Suit with a pattern on the back in the shape of wings. I recognized him as Oliver Bough, The Dove.

Lastly standing in front of The Nests and Timberwolves was a figure wearing simple ragged grey clothing. He had a machete in his hand and his face was covered by a white facemask with drawn on blood dripping down from the left eyehole. The eye holes themselves seemed empty. Like there was nothing behind them. I knew who it was, but I also knew that it wasn't him. There was something wrong about him.

The Dove spoke at this point and took my attention.

"This all we got? Why aren't the other Servants pitching in?" he asked angrily.

"The Newborn and The Choir are still mulling over Jack's words and whether they're true or not, EAT says she'll wait and see what happens. The Blind Man is with us, but he claims he doesn't really control The Archive anyway. The Cold Boy says he refuses to help us or Jack and is busy dealing with The Brute, but if the girl is stupid enough to go after him he will kill her, The Snake says it's not her problem and that we don't really need her help and The Unnamed Child and all her servants have disappeared just like they did when we tried to kill Nathan and his crew last time and remember I'm only helping you as long as we make sure that Lisa isn't harmed," The Second explained matter of factly.

"Alright," The Dove stated quietly and then seemed to rally as he found something else to complain about.

"Well what about the doll chick?! Where's she? She should be here!" he argued glaring at the puppet who lowered his head.

"The Mistress wandered off... She does so often... Won't tell us where she goes... Never tells us where she goes... She knows though... Knows everything... Knows if we try to escape... Comes back and hurts us if we do..." the puppet answered before letting out a series of quiet whimpering. The Dove turned away from The Puppet in disgust.

"Well alright then. What's the plan now?" he asked.

The cloaked figure spoke up, "The Grotesque has been slacking off he will be keeping her nights busy again starting tonight and with that-" he was cut off then as suddenly my dream changed and I found myself back in a Grotesque nightmare. So that's a thing again unfortunately as well. Luckily this one didn't last long as I was woken up by Lisa seemingly mere minutes after it started.

Also Sally seems to be adamant about finding some way to make it up to us for running away during the fight. A request to hear her play however was rejected with much apologies as she is apparently very shy of playing in front of others and only really plays when she's alone. She says it makes her feel better when she's feeling sad. She says that she will however repay us in any other way as soon as we come up with one.

Why did this seem like a good idea?

"Hey... Hey... Amanda... I have a confession to make. I might have lied a little. I might have tricked you into coming here under false pretences... Sort of. There was no information about The Man In Grey coming here, but I figured if you showed up here and I made some... interested parties aware you'd be here the resulting disaster that would be caused might draw him here anyway... You don't seem very happy, but hey... It might work and I promise you will not die even if the plan fails. I'll make sure of that... You still don't seem ha-" That somewhat paraphrased quote from Muffin, followed by the sound of a certain woman's fist connecting with his jaw >.>, were the words that began the worst day of my life so far.

So, yeah turns out Muffin is a lying Jerk. Portnoy and Dr. Malice were not aware of this plan, or at least they promise me they weren't. It turns out Muffin had no information regarding a Man In Grey Appearance his plan was to use me as bait to manufacture a disaster that might, keyword: Might, draw The Man in Grey here. He had himself, Portnoy, Dr. Malice, Lisa, Sally and I waiting in a shopping mall. Apparently he didn't believe it would work if there weren't innocents caught in the crossfire. Which made me reject the initial plan immediately and caused him to explain his true plan which of course I couldn't really reject since it was a trick anyway and I'd already fallen for it. He had also informed as many servant groups as he could find that I would be there as well as that he would be there, and apparently killed a whole bunch of people to make sure they'd take an interest in him being there, and on cue shortly after explaining this to me and before I could leave, the place began to explode.

It would seem in fact that someone on The Servant side was a bit smarter than my dear, "loyal and trustworthy" friend Muffin and had, knowing that we'd be there, set up traps in advance. Hidden bombs had been placed in strategic locations throughout the mall. In fact their placement was so strategic that if it wasn't for some quick work by Lisa, Muffin and Portnoy we all would have been instantly killed when the bombs went off. The bombs did not go off all at once and we were fortunate to be standing quite far from the first detonation and instead only saw the explosion go off across the... Atrium I think they're called? I had just enough time to see a piece of shrapnel tear through the arm of a woman and into the chest of her son before Lisa barreled into me and Drove me and Sally to the ground. Portnoy somehow managed to pinpoint the nearest bomb and Muffin grabbed a column, tore it out of place and tossed it in the way of the explosion just as it went off. The support beam took the brunt of the explosion and all of the shrapnel and kept us safe. Muffin was knocked unconscious and suffered some, major for a normal person, but minor for him, injuries. Portnoy was somehow completely unharmed and seemed just as surprised by this fact as we were and Dr. Malice... Well he was decapitated by a piece of shrapnel, but he'd be back of course. As we recovered from the explosion we could hear other survivors. Most of them injured, crying and occasionally screaming. Sally appeared to of lost consciousness as well leaving just Lisa, Portnoy and I still awake and ready when the servants moved in. Two groups entered one from each end of the atrium. It looked like Timberwolves on one end and the others had nothing identifiable about them which was worrisome as it meant they could be any number of different kinds of servant.

Also unfortunately it seemed these two groups had their act together a little more than most and were working together as opposed to the crossfire shootout I had been sort of hoping for as our only reasonable chance to survive this. Both sides seemed to be doing a sweep and we stayed down just watching them. We got up after we saw they were shooting every body they saw in the head to be sure they were dead. Me and Lisa stood up and Portnoy stayed down on the ground at which point those near us immediately turned their attentions on us. Attentions of course also included guns and we turned and tried to flee behind cover as gunshots went off behind us. Upon hiding behind one of the few columns that wasn't torn out of place or too badly damaged. I turned to look at where The Servants were attempting to figure out a plan. At this point I saw that one of the Timberwolves had turned on the others and had killed two of them and was now running through a hail of gunfire as the rest of the Timberwolves opened fire on the traitor. I took this as a sign that Dr. Malice had found a new body and that there were now four of us fighting which was slightly better odds than they were before.

There were about ten of the Timberwolves and about five of the at the time unidentified servants. The Timberwolves were at current busy with Dr. Malice and so the unidentified servants were moving on us now. Two of them stopped near Sally and Portnoy and prepared to execute them. Portnoy acted at this moment rising up in one movement a knife in his hand and gutting the immediately identified servant standing over him. I say immediately identified, because as the knife sliced it's way through the servants body a swarm of blackbirds launched out of the wound and swarmed Portnoy who backed away flailing wildly.

Something somewhat strange happened here. Well two strange things, but one of them was Portnoy strange and the other was a more normal strange. The more normally strange thing is one of the birds seemed to suddenly veer sharply for no adequate reason and collided with the head of The Nest about to execute Sally. This knocked him off balance and his shot instead hit the floor just by her head which seemed to wake her up. She woke with a start, grabbing her didgeridoo case and swinging it at the servants feet sweeping them out from under him and causing him to fall to the ground his gun going off and I swear suddenly twisting so that the shot hit another nest in the head. Sally looked around, holding her didgeridoo case like a weapon. Seemed to realize where she was and bolted, which I can't really blame her for. In the Nests' surprise none of them really tried to stop her and she managed to get away. They were probably also more concerned by the inferno that was Portnoy.

He was holding a short sword now and it was aflame as was his knife and he was slaughtering his way through the birds that were attacking him. The three nests that were still alive however were taking aim and so at last Lisa and I decided to act. Lisa dived out from behind the column we had been hiding behind and tackled one of the Nests at the knees then rolled off of him and delivered a bone breaking kick to the side of another one's knee. This took down two of them, but the last one was going to shoot Portnoy and I couldn't let that happen. I didn't know what else to do so I threw the Pocket Watch at him. I don't know if it was guided or I just got a really lucky shot, but it hit the guy right in the chest and immediately it did the same thing to him as it had to the puppet last time. Within seconds there was nothing left of the guy. His clothes, skin, muscle, bone... all turned to dust. Even his gun seemed to disappear.

At this point The two remaining nests seemed to just stop moving as did The Birds which worked fine for us. Lisa took advantage of their distractions to knock out one and Portnoy decapitated the other, the flaming sword apparently managing to cauterize the wound so the birds couldn't get out. The sounds of gunfire had moved on elsewhere, apparently Dr. Malice had managed to lead the timberwolves out of the atrium to a different part of the mall so we used this chance to escape.

I grabbed the pocketwatch, Lisa and Portnoy grabbed Muffin and we hurried out of the mall. Dr. Malice would be fine and likely catch up with us later.

We didn't find Sally outside, but she showed up at, Lisa and I's current livingspace a few hours later looking ashamed and relieved when we told her no one had been hurt.

So... yeah. I killed another person, Muffin is a lying bastard who almost got us all killed and the absolute worst part out of all of it...

Apparently the stupid plan worked. The mall massacre was on the news later that night and one of the reports was about a survivor who had been hiding and who had spotted a man matching The Man in Grey's description standing on one of the upper floors overlooking The Atrium watching the whole thing.

I ended up risking my life and all my friend's lives to get him to show up so I could talk to him and he actually showed up and I didn't get to talk to him! 

A friend?

Hey everyone.

So few new things. One a friend... Hopefully. Not exactly ready to stop being wary, but we engaged in a bit of heroics and got a new traveling companion out of it. A group of servants. Puppets specifically were hounding some girl. Lisa and I stepped in. Neither of us are killers and I'm not much of a fighter and up until then I didn't believe Lisa was, but it seems one other thing she forgot is that she knew how to fight.

There had only been two puppets and they move kind of stiffly... I'm guessing they weren't willing. So anyway Lisa managed to hold them off, unable to actually put them down obviously since they could continue moving even if unconscious. While she did that I rescued the girl and ran off with her to hide. After seeing that we had made it away Lisa fled the fight and we met up later.

The girl's name is Sally Foret. She's a musician apparently. Plays a really unusual instrument as well. A didgeridoo... Yeah kind of unusual, but pretty cool. She has it in a case that she carries on her back. Apparently the puppets tried to steal it from her. She seems a bit shaken by her encounter with the puppets and so we're letting her accompany us for a bit.

Lisa confirmed she's not a Fear. She seems to be a runner actually as she knew the things that attacked her were puppets. She won't say what Fear she's running from though she confirmed that until today she hadn't really gotten into a fight with puppets before and so it seems she's not running from The Wooden Girl. Most likely The Puppets are just here for us and for some reason Sally just attracted their interest for some reason.

I bet that Spider girl was watching the whole thing. After her last plan failed she probably set that up just to see what we'd do. I'm willing to bet we'll run into her again soon enough. I bet she was what that dream was referring to.

Anyway so after that Lisa and I, with Sally managed to get to the city where Muffin and the others were waiting. Muffin met us in a house he appears to have... acquired through likely dubious means and told us that he has it on good authority that The Man In Grey will be showing up in this town soon and that this might be my one chance to meet him and find out what he wants from me.

Things that have happened.

So it has been a bit of time since I last updated...

Numerous reasons.

Came out of shocked and instead entered a period of horror that left me pretty much unwilling to do anything meaningful. This occurred mid travel to our next destination and Lisa pretty much had to guide me every step of the way as I blundered blindly. I'm still not quite... okay I guess. Every once in a while I'll just flash back to it. I also can't really bring myself to get rid of the pocket watch, but I've kept to keeping it in my pocket and not taking it out. I don't really want to look at it.

The other reason I haven't been able to talk is as I've said we've been on the move again. Our plan is to every few days at random move from one city to another hoping to confound any planned attacks by our enemies.

Anyway stuff has happened since the last post. For one The Grotesque hasn't shown up again and so instead I had another prophetic-ish dream?

I saw the heavenly gates again. This time though I saw myself there. There was something behind the gate now as well. An amorphous being stood behind the gate all I could see of it were eyes, some human, some not and all staring at me. Voices screamed through the gate at me.

"Release Us!" and it sounded like thousands of people speaking in one voice. Then a new voice sounded. It was loud and filled with anger and it simply said:

"There is no God, but I!" and then something hit me in the dream and I woke up.

Lisa also says that with her memories returning certain abilities she had are also returning. Apparently she can sense the presence of Fears which she says should make it harder, if not impossible for any Fear to sneak up on us. So, it's unlikely I'll get caught again like I did with The Liar. As long as Lisa is around anyway.

Lastly got a contact from Muffin. He, Portnoy and Dr. Malice think they found something interesting and want us to come join them when we have time. They told us where to go and so we'll be heading there shortly. So... hopefully that will lead to something useful.

I don't know if you can read this...

... but, I think you might of blown your whole wad on that first night, Grotesque. Last nights torture was... Terrible I'll readily admit that, but I don't think anything as mundane as that is gonna leave as much of an impression as that first night did. Just saying.

It would be somewhat tedious to go into the details of exactly what happened last night in my nightmares and I apologize for forcing you to read through all the details last time. Suffice to say, pain, mutilation and various forms of physical torment were involved.

I woke up in pain and in tears and I am in no way suggesting that this nightly torture has stopped being extremely disturbing and horrifying. Just that the first nightmare was far more traumatizing then this more recent one has been.

Oh right also I killed someone today.

I'm sort of in shock about that in fact and it might be responsible for why I actually feel so calm.

I'll get to it in a moment, but it has made me rethink things. The nature of these recent events have been arguably subtle. Not in terms of their approach obviously. The grotesque purposely introducing itself into my dreams is hardly subtle and a mad man bursting into my bedroom just as I awoke and attempting to strangle me to death is not subtle either. However they have been subtle in that they've left it ambiguous as to why.

It could very well be that these are all related to Jack's threat or that they could be random occurrences. However the chance of two random occurrences that cannot in fact be confirmed as random occurrences and of course the overall coincidental natures of these things has started to make me reverse my decision.

I no longer believe Jack's threat is false. I don't know how, but I'm fairly sure he has found a way to convince some of if not all The Fears to come after me and he instead desires me to believe his threat false. What does this actually change? Not much. As I've said regardless of the verifiability of the threat we have been acting as though the threat was true regardless simply because it was safer to assume so regardless of personal opinions.

I suppose I should tell you about the person I... Neutralized.

Lisa and I sleep in the same bed. Normally we actually don't as we both enjoy lots of room to sleep, however we decided to share a bed as I had hoped that her presence might mitigate the effect of The Grotesque's nightmares. Which unfortunately did not work.

She was awakened by a sound and left the bedroom to check on it at which point she stepped out of the bedroom into what can only be described as a spider web. The moment her body came into contact with the patterned string the string looped around her pulling her tightly against the web which then began to envelope her and apparently attached her to the ceiling fully bound to the point where she couldn't move at all. She did not see anything that happened after her binding, so I'm not sure if anything happened in the interim, but after that I woke up from my nightmares to find a crazed looking man standing at the foot of the bed. He was swaying drunkenly and at first I wasn't sure I had awoken from my nightmares at all. He pounced onto the bed standing and brought his fists upwards as he stood over me. I felt something incredibly thin and soft slide around my throat and then abruptly tighten and pull my head upwards. I tried to scream, but the string was tight enough around my throat to make it impossible. In fact a later examination would find that the string had been tight enough to of started to cut into the flesh leaving a thin bloody line around my neck. I tried to grab at the string, but the part around my neck was too tight to grasp and the parts of it that must have been attached to his hands were so thin as to be invisible and my desperate hands failed to contact them at all. With my other hand I desperately struck with the object I was holding.

Which happened to be the watch. It struck the side of his head and probably would have done nothing if it was an ordinary pocket watch. However, in this case when it struck him it was like all the lights went out of the world. It was like being back in The Grotesque's world of nightmares. Everything was pitch black and yet I could plainly see. The string wrapped around my neck disappeared and I could see it turn to ash in his hands as did all the rest of the strings wrapped around his body. His flesh began to I don't even know... It was like it was cracking and turning into dust and then there was a sound like fluttering wings and then well his skin just all turned to dust and his muscles and organs. There was just a skull and then the pocket watch fell to the floor and the completely clean skeleton of the man I murdered fell on me. I immediately of course shoved it off of me, grabbed the pocket watch and rushed out of the room. In the other room I found someone else. It was a woman in a a red and black dress with a spiderweb motif. She held in her hand a staff topped with a roll of thread that seemed to be constantly moving and fidgeting. A single thread led from the staff to the cocooned Lisa. A spider was slowly crawling across the thread and The woman looked at me with what can only be described as irritation. I had seen her before. In the other universe Muffin had met her... He had killed her indirectly while she was in a delusional state brought on by Dreslith's power. I let the pocket watch fall from my hand and instead merely grabbed onto the chain beginning to spin it in my hand.

"Do you know what happened to the puppet you sent in to kill me?" I asked spinning the pocket watch.

She nodded though she didn't really seem afraid or even interested in me.

"Want the same to happen to you?" I asked trying to seem threatening despite the fact I was still actually stunned and terrified by what had just happened and I don't think I actually would have had the guts to do it purposely. She gave a small shrug in response anyway and tugged on her staff. The thread detached from the cocoon and seemed to shoot back into the end of the staff dragging the spider with it. She then turned and casually walked out.

I remained standing there for a bit then fell to my knees and retched for a bit though I didn't actually throw up. Shortly after I decided to check the cocoon and managed to free Lisa. Apparently she had been suffocating in there which makes me wonder what the point of the spider was. If she was going to die of asphyxiation anyway why bother sending a spider? I imagine they're poisonous or something, but who knows. That woman is a strange one and having only ever seen her in the delusional state I don't actually know anything about her

Lisa has been resting and I think the shock is starting to wear off. My hands are trembling... I think I'm going to go see how she's doing.

Nightmares again... but more so.

I may have been a bit... what's the word... Putting something or using something that would better of been used later on?

Hasty?

Is that what I'm thinking of?

Whatever...

I may have been a bit hasty in naming the last post nightmares.

It would probably be more accurately called dreams or something else entirely. This post far more deserves the title nightmares. I don't think I can consider this proof of Jack's threat, but I seem to have definitely gotten the attention of one of The Fears.

Last night I started having another set of weird symbolic, possibly prophetic dreams. The only one I remember was a brief glimpse of the clock faced me facing off against that same faceless man marked by the red hand that stabbed Lisa. Immediately after that an effect occurred in my dreams. You know in movies when like the film reel seems to burn up and the scene just slowly falls apart, blurring around large blank holes appearing in it? Yeah that happened and then I was strapped into a chair. From the pain in my body it seemed to be one of those old torture chairs. The ones with spikes on the arm rest and on the seat and leg rests and pretty much just anywhere where your body touched the chair. I could feel pain all over my body as the spikes sank into my skin. A voice was speaking in rich lyrical tones as I struggled to free myself from the chair to no avail and simply causing the pain to worsen.

"Apologies my dear, can't have you seeing what's to come. That wouldn't be fair so I'll be occupying your nights from now on," the voice spoke and then a hand grabbed my head from behind and tipped it back in a way that probably would have broken my neck in the real world... also come to think of it probably should have pulled my head through the back of the chair...

There was a creature standing behind me. It looked like a furry humanoid creature with bat like wings. It's hands were clawed and blood seemed to drip from the clawed hand clutching my face. It was only after the pain settled in that I noticed it's hand wasn't bleeding, its claws were stabbing into my face. I screamed and thrashed and then all the pain disappeared and I was sitting in a metal fold out chair. A small pool of blood formed beneath the chair dripping out from the wounds that remained on my body despite the cessation of pain.

"There is so much fun we can have in your sleep. I could simply continue hurting you or I could show you our visions of your future. Would you like that? Oh I know let me show you the end we have planned for you,"

I was again in a different place. I was strapped now to a new chair... Well actually an old chair.

It was the chair The archive put me in that allowed them to measure my brain or whatever and confirm my dreams. I wasn't strapped down then, but I was now. It was also a different room. The one the archive had had been clinical, but had felt still like a safe place. This one seemed like a room in an insane asylum that had been out of order for years after the patients had rioted and killed all the abusive staff. The walls were stained and grey and above all old. There was a rusty metal door that swung open admitting an elderly man. I knew him immediately on sight.It was the fear known as The Blind Man. Now I should probably state that while probably even at the time I knew it was all a dream there was definitely a part of myself that didn't grasp that. All the pain I had been feeling and everything that was happening to me felt real and for the most part I believed was real. I was terrified, I thought I was dying. Really if you've had a nightmare and remembered the feeling you felt when you didn't realize it was a nightmare that's how all this felt.

So, The Blind Man entered and I began to panic and scream and beg him not to kill me. The other voice spoke in my head at this point. "Don't worry we won't kill you, We don't have any reason to want you dead. It's so much more fun to keep you alive and torture you continuously," it said and then The Blind Man moved behind me and his bone thin, wrinkled hands grabbed my head. There was a sudden dull throbbing in my head that made me gnash my teeth and squirm and then things began to appear in front of me. Places, events, people. All things from my life. My friends, my home, my history... and then one by one it vanished. I could feel my memories being erased. I couldn't remember them once they vanished, but I could feel their loss. I could feel them missing. Tears streamed from my eyes even as I forgot why I was crying.  Soon I began to forget things I had learned and eventually I slumped in the chair my mind completely cleared of every memory, but how to breath and the other things necessary to continue living.

Again I feel the need to explain. Obviously if my memories were erased until I was essentially a blank slate how do I know any of this. Well because it was a nightmare none of it really happened and so while in one sense I felt and knew my memories were being erased there was another part of me that knew it was all fake and still had all my memories. It was like there were two of me. One in the chair and the other watching what was happening to the other me.

I was left alone then in the room. Just sitting in the chair not caring, or feeling until night fell and I slowly drifted into sleep. At which point I had like a dream within a dream which I guess is possible when The Grotesque does it? I had a dream wherein I relived my entire life rebuilding all the memories taken from me right up until the moment they were taken from me. I woke up with my memories restored and with the full knowledge of what was about to happen. The Blind Man was back and having my memories erased and my mind reduced to a vegetable was much worse the second time because I knew it would happen and I also knew it was going to happen again and again.

It was here I woke up for real. I remained lying there crying and fearful and my entire body hurt where the spikes had stuck into me and where The Grotesque's claws has stabbed into my face. There were no physical injuries though. I told Lisa about it and her attempts to comfort me where useful, but I feel terrible now still... I don't want to go back to sleep, but I know what happens if you try to remain awake.

I started writing this around 6:00 PM and had to stop and cuddle with Lisa quite a few times while attempting to write it. It's 9:00 PM here now...

I'm gonna have to go to sleep soon...

Nightmares

I feel I may have neglected you for the last little while, but I've been busy with running, explaining things to friends, planning things with friends and myself, obsessing over the Pocket watch and thinking.

Not much has changed since my last post in terms of my situation. Lisa is still with me and is now caught up on what Jack told me. Muffin, Portnoy and Dr. Malice are now also aware, but I'm still on my own on that front as they appear to have their own plans to deal with this. I've been constantly on the move. Lisa is surprisingly adept at finding places to live, food and other useful materials while on the run. My guess is it's a result of the memories that are still returning to her. So, doing pretty well on the whole now being a runner thing. I'd probably be dead in a day without her... So hopefully nothing happens to her.

As I said though I've been thinking and I think Jack's threat, might have been a bit... er bluffy? Is that a word?

Yeah according to my dreams of that other universe Jack created The Fears, but there's nothing to suggest they actually work for him directly so, I'm not sure I buy that he can just set them after me. If anything they've shown a rather rebellious attitude towards him historically. I mean they didn't really know their own origins until Muffin told them about it, but even so they've always seemed to treat Jack as at best a necessary evil to associate with at times and at worst an enemy to be shunned and hated. I don't see them coming after me just because Jack told them to and I see them coming after me even less so if he tells them that the reason they should come after me is because I might be a danger to him.

If anything most of them would be happy to help me take him down a peg... however I'm supposed to do that...

Still... If Jack told me they'd come after me he must of had a reason for it... It's occurred to me the entire thing might have been a lie, but even then I don't think Jack would tell me all of that for literally no reason. He has to of had some intention in telling me these things. So... It's best to remain cautious no matter what.

Also while I am still mostly convinced that Jack's threat is a lie it is definitely true that something is taking an interest in me. Lisa goes out on occasion in each town we stay at. Mostly to procure things and just find out about anything useful in the surrounding area and recently she's reported lots of sightings of things of a... abnormal nature. Things of and relating to The Fears. Occasionally servants or servant activities or unusually large numbers of runners. Things that would suggest some kind of event starting to take place.

Omens I suppose you could say.

We're keeping an eye on it and I'm not stupid enough to assume that I'm automatically right... anymore...

Right so I'm not assuming that I'm right. We're going on the safer assumption that Jack was telling the truth, however unlikely it seems, and reacting with proper levels of paranoia.

I'm also keeping the Pocketwatch nearby at all times... Strangely enough it seems to have an effect on my dreams if I fall asleep while holding it. The effect being most often that I no longer have any dreams.

However on one occasion and only one so far. I had a dream that was different from most others. Normally I dream of things that occurred in the past. Recently my dreams have gotten closer to events that took place in the very recent past such as my meeting with Lisa. However only since I've gotten the pocketwatch and begun sleeping with it in hand have I had any dreams of the present or possibly future.

It was more symbolic than usual even and also was not a seamless sequence of events like usual.

It was more like snippets of events.

A man cloaked in flames who I'm pretty sure was Harold setting fire to a building made out of ice.

A room filled with spiderwebs and a woman wrapped in strings who smiled at me and then... well burst open to reveal a large humanoid spider...

A massive stone maze in the center of which the minotaur howled and held up a bloodied mask.

and lastly a static scene of what looked like the classical image of heaven, but the gates were locked up with chains that had locks on them. Each lock had no keyhole, but instead had a symbol on it. I recognized some of the symbols, The Twin Triangles, The Stick and The Serpent, The Operator Symbol... You know The Fear symbols. I assume they were all the symbols of the fears.

You might wonder how do I know these are from the present or future... Well I don't... Mostly it's just a feeling however I'm pretty sure the feeling is correct as one of them most likely happened the same night I had the dream. The next morning there was a news report about a museum being burned to the ground. Lisa confirmed that The Museum was a location known to be used by The Children of The Cold. As well the police were looking for someone matching Harold's description who had been seen entering the building shortly before it burned down.

So, call it a hunch, but that one at least was probably dreaming of the present. The rest I don't know about... But it feels like they're also something that was happening at the time or something that was going to happen soon.