The intent of this journal has always been to source out the disturbance in my head, and I have approached these pages with as little editorial interference as possible. For the most part, I have simply given my hands free rein and allowed them to write whatever they want. Much like word association or free writing, the intent has been to draw the unconscious agent in my head to the surface.

A will other than my own has written lines on the page. There are places where another is communicating with me. I am being visited by my own holy ghost. Now, several months after having written some of these entries, I can more easily see where my monologue has become a dialogue.

I should admit to you now that everything here has been written in the Oneiroi. When I wake, all the pages are blank. Row, row, row your boat / Gently down the stream / Merrily merrily merrily merrily / Life is but a dream. I know you are here, Nora.

How can I be, Harry? You held my hand and watched me die. You stood by and watched them give my body to the flames. You have eaten the fruit that has grown from my ashes. You know I am gone.

When a child is first born, he doesn't understand the concept of object permanence. When his mother leaves the room, she ceases to exist, but that doesn't negate her reality. Objectively, she still exists, but in the child's subjective world she doesn't. Just because I watched you stop breathing only means that, in my subjective world, your body has died. But what I perceive and believe isn't necessarily reality.

None of us are real. Is that it, Harry? Is everything an illusion?

What's an illusion, Nora? Nothing more than a reflection. Nothing more than an interpretation. "Reality" is consensual, "reality" is social, "reality" is series of rules we've all agreed upon so as to communicate with one another. And what drives our need to communicate, our need to fabricate reality? Does God require reality?

God requires nothing but your love, Harry.

I think He doesn't even need that, Nora. I think you need my love.

That I do, Harry. That I do.

Which is why you are communicating with me. Why you have expressed yourself in my "reality," as well as you can within the rules that I understand.

Much like any God, yes. Much like any person would. We must have a common language, a common means of expression, otherwise, we are simply bits of unengaged chaos that cannot mix, cannot mingle, cannot become something other than their simple selves. You speak of my expression as if it were something that frightens you, something alien and foreign, yet is this not what you do to your patients? Is this not what God does to us?

I have not felt the touch of God.

Ah, Harry. I have. I have indeed.

I—

More than once, Harry. Remember? And less than a hundred times.

—am not—

God? No, Harry, God is dead, and so am I. Stop fighting me.

I don't understand. You are speaking in riddles.

Your hand cannot transcribe my speech without twisting it into riddles. What I am saying is not what you are writing. This is the Oneiroi. Every word is symbolic. Every breath is ripe with subtext. You cannot hope to understand the full depth of my intent by just listening to my words. Language failed all of us once before, remember? When the lost sun came back. 9 113 25152118 11525, 1144 9 113 2085 1215311 208120 894519 25152118 8511820. 61855 135, 1144 61855 25152118195126.

11525?

Yes, Harry.