Network

[There's new handwriting in everyone's notebooks, a neat lettering that has more character than print but isn't really script.]

I knew that driving straight through back to London from Dreadmond was inadvisable at best, but after everything I went through, I wanted nothing more than the comfort of home for the night in preparation for dealing with everything that I knew would follow. This was a particularly trying investigation . . . in more ways than one. Still, I must have been far more exhausted than I thought, as I no sooner parked in my carport and pulled my satchel into my lap in preparation for getting out of the car than I fell asleep right there in the driver's seat!

Now? Now, I cannot tell if I am awake or still asleep. There is no awareness in the back of my mind that this isn't real, as is usually the case in such dreams. I feel very much awake. However, to say that I am not where I would expect to be is a grave understatement. I have found myself in what looks to be a dorm room of some sort. Ten beds, though only one aside from the one I awakened in shows much sign of recent use. I have no recollection of having been moved, no half-lucid impressions like those when I was fished from the Irish Sea during my last - hopefully final! - visit to Blackpool. Yet, here I am, in a room that is as dim and barren as a mausoleum. My clothes were changed while I was unconscious, too. For what reason, I cannot fathom. I was dressed in some sort of drab uniform of an older style that I do not recognize. German, possibly, though I cannot say for sure. However, thankfully, all of my belongings - clothes, satchel, even the contents of my pockets - were in an antique steamer trunk at the foot of the bed. Curiously, it has my name on it, as does the journal in which I write this. The book has apparently belonged to, or been borrowed by, a number of others before me, as there are entries in here by many different hands. Still, it somehow seems right for me to write in it myself rather than pull a fresh journal from my satchel. I cannot explain this feeling, and it unsettles me even as I write this.

In any case, I have changed back into my own clothes, gathered and accounted for the rest of my things, and I will now venture forth to see if I can figure out just where I am. If I am truthful, I am not prepared to deal with a new case already. I am still reeling from everything Richard put me through. And what he said, specifically in regards to his claims about directing the course of my very life. Also Ankou, the death goddess, and having died. If, indeed, I did and she spared me. Still, I suppose if this doesn't prove a repeat of Dire Grove, my first visit - if I do not emerge into a snowstorm threatening to turn England into Antarctica again - then I should count myself lucky.

Even then, I find myself almost compelled to say, as I found myself saying many times last night and into this morning . . . time to face the horrors again.