Dear diary, 

my completely overtired mind is reaching its limits. I'm going to get a camera for my apartment door. 

The knocking was worse this night than the previous one. In addition, there is a smell in my apartment as if an animal had died somewhere.  The nauseating stench of decaying flesh permeates every inch of my dwelling.

More and more, my apartment feels like a tomb where corpses slowly decompose, their ghosts rattling the doors to escape their grave. 

I'm beginning to look like a decomposer myself, my face wearing deep dark circles under my eyes, my skin looking sallow and my cheeks sunken.  I'm not usually very vain, but right now I look twenty years older than I am.  Maybe I should make a cosmetic appointment?  Maybe someone will answer the phone, no one at the property management company will.

My only consolation is the portrait leaning against my wall. Every time I run my fingers over the richly decorated, heavy gold frame, I am overcome by a feeling of inner peace. 

The Internet has turned out to be a stroke of luck.  While I have yet to find out what the painting looked like in its original state, I have come across the legend the archivist spoke of. At least, I suspect I have. 

There are no exact dates on the website, but it must be before the 18th century, because the legend speaks of a bloody nobleman. Who supposedly had his hundred wives bestially executed in his cellar before he himself was presumably assassinated. 

According to the website, the same night the castle was struck by lightning and burned down completely. According to that castle legend, the ghost of the lord of the castle still walks in the castle ruins, tormented by the women he innocently murdered.

I don't want to leave unmentioned that the website seems a bit, let's say, amateurish to delitantic and the curse stories sound ... well, not very believable.  A nobleman who marries a hundred women and then kills them?  If that were true and not just a transformation of King Bluebeard, why have I never heard of it? 

So far this is my only real lead though. I have written an email to the site owner.  Maybe there is a spark of truth in the story that leads me to the portrait. 

My top goal for today is just to fall asleep. I misplace things and find them in the strangest places. I thought about talking to the neighbor about his knocking, but he gives me the creeps. I don't know something about his look is piercing. I met him in the hallway today when I went to get the mail, briefly it seemed like he wanted to talk to me but then he just shook his head. 

Something else strange has me today beunruhihgt but I lead back to my forgetful tired VErstand. The painting seems to have shifted. 

The knocking is there again...