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have loved. You can tell this from my past that I loved more greatly than any of you.” He turned to them. “Now go, when I’m done with him, you may have him. But not now.”
    “Can we not have anything tonight?” Charlene said.
    The Count motioned to a bag he had brought into the room with him. Charlene ran over to it and opened it. I thought that maybe my ears were deceiving me but … it was the screams of a young baby. Charlene picked it up with fervor and the three women circled around it, and faded from the room. I could hear the screams of the child in the hallway as they grew farther and farther away.
    Outside I saw the dim, shadowy figures of the women as if they had turned to shadows and then they were gone.
    The horror of it overcame me like a sickness, and I slipped into unconsciousness.
     

May 17 th
     
    I woke up in the bed in my room. Last night seemed like a dream but I knew it couldn’t be. My clothes were hanging in the bathroom in a way I don’t usually have them and some of my other things were laying around the room in places I never put them.
    Although my internet connection isn’t on and I’m posting offline, I’m grateful that the Count hasn’t opened my blogging app. If he saw this blog, he would erase it all and probably just destroy this Mac that’s been with me for years.
    I’m looking around this room that has become my prison cell and for some reason I’m comforted. As confined as I feel, as much as I miss Mina’s big brown eyes and the way she kisses me , and the mushroom burger at U Burgers, and my friends at Patsy’s Bar just next door to my condo, I feel relief.
    Anywhere is better than with those three demonic women who are waiting to tear into me.
     

May 18 th
     
    I keep thinking the three women were a dream. The color of their lips and tongues against the backdrop of moonlight was so vivid it doesn’t seem real. I went down to the room today to lay on the couch again to see if it would jog my memory, but the door had been slammed shut so hard it had splintered and jammed.
    Later in the n ight, as I lay in bed, I heard silky feminine laughter from down the hall and could see two pinpoints of yellow at my door, looking in.
    It was no dream.
     

May 19 th
     
    The Count has turned on my internet for a brief time. He’s monitoring my emails and activity but I didn’t do anything but hit the post button on my blogger app and it should have posted everything online. Please, please please, anyone out there, call the police and get them here!
     

May 19 th , Continued
     
    I can see now why he turned my internet back on. He’s asked me to email Mina and my editor at Rolling Stone and tell them that I’ve completed the interview and will be leaving for home in another week.
    I don’t know why he can’t just let me go. Who would believe me if I told them what I’ve seen here? And if they did believe me, they would just chalk it up to the eccentricities of a rock star. But for some reason he’s gotten it into his head that I have to stay. That I know too much. A thought hit me today that frightened me to my core: what if he wants to turn me into one of those … things that was on me the other night? Some ghostly phantom to be locked away in this place forever.

 
    May 28 th
     
     
    Some drug addicts have taken up in the mansion. I say drug addicts because I’m not sure what else to call them. They seem like they just sit in the courtyard and shoot up and absently strum guitar s. Some of them will disappear for a while and come back with a bag of hamburgers or a box of pizzas and that will last them a couple of days. Sometimes they have sex right there for everyone else to see like it’s the most normal thing in the world.
    One came up to the mansion near the window and saw me looking down on him. I shouted for help and explained that I was a prisoner but he looked at me like he had no idea what I was saying. It wasn’t until later, when I really paid attention to