Journal of Conn O'Dowd

4th May 2015

Please, let me stay awake. I can't go back. I can't return to Valhalla. But if I close my eyes that's all I can see. The blackness of the arena. The murderous dead, with their cataract covered eyes and their obedience to him. And there's him. I can hear him laughing. Every hour of every day I can hear his scorn and it makes me wonder, do I truly dream of Valhalla? Am I really back on Earth? Or is this a dream. Is this some mental trick he's devised to torment me. Is Valhalla still my reality?

I don't know. I can't be certain. I'm not sure of anything now. Who am I? I can't even answer that. I knew once, I think. Vampire. Sire. Warrior. Then she came back, and now I don't know. Am I a vampire? Or a god? Or a lost soul? I'm not strong enough to be a warrior. I know that now. I'm not good enough to stand Sire.

Am I even here at all?

Is this sofa real? I can feel Frec's fur under my hand, but is he here or is this an hallucination? I want it to be real, but if it is, why do the dead still follow me? They're in the shadows and I can hear their footfalls echoing my own. Sometimes I stop to listen and the footsteps which follow me halt too. They still, like me, waiting. Maybe they aren't there at all. Perhaps it's all in my head, but I daren't look over my shoulder. I don't want to see them there, leering at me, reminding me that I'll never escape and that they'll always catch me, no matter how fast or how far I run.

Running. The nightmares always start with running. Fleeing from what chases me and charging headlong towards HER. She's always there. She's everything in my dreams, the nightmares which are possibly reality. She's the glowing beacon I need to reach in order to have any hope of salvation. Magic pours from her, lighting my way through dense woodland in a world devoid of stars, sun or moon.

The need to get to that light is all consuming. Day after day I try to reach it, because I want to believe it can guide me home. Yet, often, I lose sight of it. Of her. The wall of trees and foliage becomes too dense for the light to reach me. I crash through the bramble thickets and scramble over fallen logs, trying to reach her. Vines tangle round my limbs and thorns tear at my skin, and inevitably they find me instead. Tiw's army. With their weapons and their unforgiving hands.

They laugh as they approach, with his laugh, because he controls them. The feel of their cold hands on my skin is as repugnant as it is terrifying, because I know that once they have a hold of me there'll be no escape. It doesn't matter how I fight and struggle. It doesn't matter that I thrash, that I kill any I can as I try in vain to defend myself. Once they have me, there's nothing I can do but wait to see how long they make me suffer before I die again.

Prayers spiral round and round in my head and whisper past my lips, prayers that make them laugh all the more because no one who cares enough to intervene can hear me. I pray to any god who'll listen to get me out of Valhalla, to take me away from this torment. Mainly I pray to her, to the light who had diverted my course so far away from what I'd planned, and whose request that I hold on is the only reason I fight at all.

She never answers. I think she used to answer when I begged for a quick death, for mercy, but she doesn't anymore. If I'm caught, she leaves me in the hands of the dead. She leaves me to the burn of iron entering flesh, to the scorch of fire or a pounding rain of fists and feet.

More often than not, they'll take me to Tiw. He likes to watch. My pointless prayers amuse him almost as much as hearing me beg. I wish I was strong enough not to plead. I wish I could swallow down the words which ask him to stop, to leave me be, to let me fade away into a forgotten memory. My fortitude abandoned me weeks ago, the first time he had them...

I'm not a man.

I'm nothing.

Maybe that's why she leaves, even when I do manage to find her. She'll shout the name she always used for me. She'll encourage, until I'm mere steps from reaching her. I'll step into the multi-coloured pool of light that surrounds her and for a second I believe I'll be alright. That I made it this time. That she'll give me back some semblance of peace. She looks like salvation. Then she looks at me with scorn, and the shadows come alive with the ghouls that hunt me.

I never manage to grasp her hand. Day after day she pulls away from me, skipping out of reach. As she fades into nothingness I can hear her whispering, "You aren't my Leof. You aren't my Leof..."

Rather than kill me, she inflicts the wound that cuts deepest, then she leaves me to them.  She doesn't care as the shadows close in on me, or as the dead claim me for Tiw, just as they always do. But, then, why should she? Why would anyone want to love what I've become?

Not a man. Too weak to be of any value. Am I anything more than a ghost? Am I anything more than an echo, repeating the same screams and the same pleas until I drive everyone around me mad?

There's no way out of this. Please, don't let me fall asleep. I can't bear for her to leave me there again, nothing more than a plaything to be used for Tiw's sick amusement. Don't let them chain me down again. Don't let them step out of the shadows and come for me.