<div class="floatright">(http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p121/Mab_faerie/Elliquiy/Fatal%20Frame%20RP/3d87bccc-3262-498c-9304-e5ce4bd1ac06_zps54265354.jpg)</div>Things just seemed to slide farther down hill since that night when Elaine had pointed out the writing in Cassandra's diary. At least, it seemed to be her diary even though she wasn't actually writing it herself. At first, the Canadienne tried to wrack her brain to figure out who or what might be doing it... maybe it was some sort of spirit, or just some kind of curse... had Malcolm Renault put a curse on her? Was he capable of that kind of power? She wasn't sure, and pretty soon it didn't even really seem to matter.<br/><br/>She withdrew even deeper into herself as the days passed by, then weeks... neglecting her studies, not even leaving her room except to get food maybe once a day. That damned diary was bringing it all back, all the pain and anger she had told herself she had buried, it all came flooding out and she wasn't sure how much longer she would be able to take it. On several occasion, she even threw the damned silver book out the window, but that would only reward her with another nightmare and when she woke the next morning, it would be sitting there on her dresser, just like she had found it on that first night.<br/><br/>The days after she left the coven she had become almost a shell of her former self, little more than a ghost, drifting through existence and wondering when it would ever get any better. It had, but all that was seeming to peel away as the diary recorded her downward spiral into despondency... both the first time it had happened, and even now it kept recording her thoughts and feelings, as if whatever force was writing it could peer into her soul. Elaine would knock on her door from time to time, but Cassie would just groan and tell her to go away.<br/><br/>Just when she thought that things couldn't get any more fucked up, she had another nightmare. This one was even more vivid than usual, which for Cassie was saying something, since all her dreams tended to be quite lucid. But in this one, she was in the middle of a field of cherry blossoms, the moon looming high overhead. A light breeze ruffled her long platinum hair and the thin white dress she was wearing, and she clutched her favorite camera to her chest as she gazed off in the distance. There was some kind of large house just over the horizon, and she felt compelled to walk towards it.<br/><br/>In her mind she knew that it was a very bad idea to go towards that house, but she couldn't stop herself. She even tried to will herself to stop at one point, fearing that she was reaching some point of no return, but her legs kept moving, one feet placed inexorably in front of the other, the large house looming ahead, even bigger than she had thought it was as she neared the front door. "Noooo... I shouldn't... I want to go home..." she mewled, but it was too late. She saw herself reach out to the door, placing her palm on the old wooden frame, then a flash of light and she blacked out.<br/><br/>When she came to, she was in a darkened room, with no idea how she had gotten there, everything was silent except the pounding in her chest and her heavy breathing as she peered around, trying to adjust her eyes to the pitch black darkness. "I must still be dreaming," she whispered to herself. She still had her camera, and she was still wearing that dress, which draped lightly down her full figure and almost gave her a ghost-like quality. She must still be dreaming, she could only hope that she was. For the moment she remained in the small room, too scared even to search for a source of light, but she knew she would have to move eventually. Or wake up.