Read the cards. Found the bookshelves and the little table with the three ornaments – glazed cockerel, two white ceramic bowls with lids, blue flower print. Saw drinks trolley and counted the bottles.
Have never stayed outside my body for so long.
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Aware of a presence in the sitting room. Not pleasant experience. Started to think of a hat, or dream of a man in a hat, wearing dark glasses and leather gloves who was staring at me. Suit and tie. Pale face.
Then the man was inside the large mirror over the fireplace, but not visible inside the room with me, but I could feel him inside the space.
Heard words inside my head. ‘When the door opens, go through it. Cast thyself down.’ But I couldn’t see beyond the doorframe in the corner of the sitting room. He must have meant that one. There wasn’t another door. Does that door lead to another corridor up there? House is confusing and always so dark. Door was already open, but leading where? I could see it behind the piano with all of the framed photographs arranged on top, but could see nothing through the door that he wanted me to go through. Made me anxious.
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Had that been HIM inside the sitting room? I asked them in the afternoon when we were eating (food is terrible here). They smiled and said it wasn’t for them to say.
On the day that he’d deciphered one particular cluster of notes, a fragment had frightened Seb enough to stop him working. He’d left the house and spent an evening at a restaurant, followed by the noisiest pub that he could find in the harbour, before dragging his feet back to the house close to midnight.
Bedroom. Big bed with quilted covers. Metal bed frame. Could have been inside a museum. Walked through the room and into an adjoining dressing room. It was filled with women’s clothes in alcoves and on stands, like artist’s busts – fur coats, dresses, lots of shoes, hat boxes. A table with cosmetics and bottles. All very old. From the war, 1940s, and the 1950s, I guessed. Don’t understand why it’s there. Whole floor of the house seems preserved, but from before HIS time. But this was where HE lived, in this sphere. They said that this is where HE was.
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Voice inside my head said, ‘Come out of there! Gentlemen don’t mooch through ladies’ things!’
I couldn’t turn around and go back through the bedroom. Knew the bed wasn’t empty any more and I became frightened. Could sense that it had become occupied. Don’t like the tricks at all.
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I tried to end the experience but couldn’t. Have tried before in those rooms. Not possible to get off that floor of the building at all, unless I am inside the corridor of the black doors. It ends only if HE lets it end. That’s what I suspect. But I had to walk through the bedroom, past the bed, to get back to the corridor of black doors to have any chance of getting out. I kept my face turned away from the bed.
Feelings of loathing and revulsion and rage filled the room, but these were not my emotions or my projections.
Bad scene. Angry room. Angry woman inside.
Why wasn’t I told about her?
Saw a bit of her in the mirrors on a dark cabinet at the end of the bed as I left. Very pale, very thin form. Dark glasses like HE wears, and her head was covered by a headscarf. She was sitting up in bed with the bedclothes pulled down to her waist, but showing her little breasts. Nipples and fingertips were black.
Was that Diane?
The experience only ended when I’d returned to the corridor of the black doors.
In the morning I refused to go upstairs in the building again. No way.
They said that was okay. They said I could go outside instead.
Very surprised by that. But I do want to try the next sphere. I told them that I came here for that.
The final two segments that Seb translated suggested to him that Ewan had placed himself in grave danger by continuing with the unpleasant trials, and that he was, more or less, being played with or tormented by his guides, or hosts, or whatever they were. This made Seb wonder at Ewan’s motivations for arriving in Brixham. Perhaps Ewan had reneged on some agreement, or even an association with something that he’d realized was not in his best interests as a projector, but too late.
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Don’t like the house at all now. Really bad feeling inside and it makes me feel ill. There is no light at all, even in the windows. Just very grey outside, or completely black, or a heavy fog curls and breaks on the window panes. So how can that be the next sphere outside, and this the entrance? There is no light.
They’ve been saying ‘Patience, patience, patience,’ so why are they letting me go outside now?
Tired of the trials though, and the tricks.
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Spent the day reading the files again. So many. Incredible. But this is not the same place it was once. Those still here don’t know exactly, or won’t tell me, where all of the others are now [Text illegible]
Some of them are in the highest sphere, I am told. They must be because they were already old in the 1960s.
‘Some still come here. You’ll meet them soon.’ But they won’t say when.