The Seducer: A Gone From Daylight Inspired Story - 24. William Harker’s Journal: Entry 24

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Friday, October 12, 1989

After classes I studied, ate, and waited on campus until Dr. V finished his classes and his office time. He’s taken to allowing me to help him around his office when he’s in residence. He particularly appreciates my abilities with the computer. For some reason, Dr. V is pretty ignorant about them. He prefers to hand write his notes and transcribe them with an old manual typewriter. At first, I tried to teach him how to use the word processor that came with his computer to help ease his writing. This ended up with me doing the transcription for him since the Department insisted that all professors start submitting things by computer in the future. This, apparently, was an experiment. An effort to do things ‘digitally’ and cut down on paper consumption. I had to learn an ‘E-Mail’ program that allows users to send each other messages and ‘attachments’. I remember working with something like that in High School with a mainframe they had set up. It’s a bit weird typing messages out and sending them off like that. I used to play around with an electronic bulletin board that was similar, but that was more ‘real-time’ and not something you could sit and write and then send later with attachments.

I am thankful that Dr. V’s penmanship is so beautiful and easy to read! I know I’d pity anyone that had to try to decipher my handwriting! I might start practicing using Dr. V’s technique. It is almost like a kind of calligraphy in the way he writes. He even uses a special fountain pen rather than just a regular old ball-point. It’s a beautiful pen! It looks like it’s made of black marble and gold!

When we got back to his place he completely surprised me with a gift!

“Because of your extra work with learning Romanian and your enthusiasm in helping me with the computer, I reward you with this…,” and he handed me a black enameled box with a big fancy gold ‘D’ on its cover.

“It is an heirloom that has been handed down to those who are special friends to our family for generations. I hope you like it!” He added before I opened it.

What I saw took my breath away and I thought that he must have made a mistake! It was a necklace! It had a gold chain and what looked like a silver wolf’s head pendant. The wolf’s head had a great looking snarl on its face and its eyes ‘glowed’ with two red rubies or garnets. I was and still am overwhelmed!

“Oh, but I can’t take this, Doctor! It’s got to be worth a fortune!” I really didn’t know if I should accept it. After all, I’d only done Dr. V these small favors and he, actually, was giving me another gift by teaching me Romanian for free! I felt more like I should be giving him something rather than vice versa.

“It is, actually, quite priceless. It is a one of a kind creation. But, then again, so are good friends.” As he said this, he took the necklace and clasped it around my neck. When he was done…he touched my neck at those sensitive spots behind the ears and then put his hands on my shoulders. We stood like that for a few seconds with me not knowing quite what to do. He then turned me around with a sigh to see how his heirloom looked on me.

“Yes. Yes, that suits you quite well, my friend. Go! Go and see!” He gestured to a mirror on the far wall and I obliged him by going to look for myself. The Wolf’s Head Pendant gleamed in the half-light and really did look like it had belonged on me.

“You see? Perfect!” I turned around startled! Dr. V’s voice had been right behind me and yet I hadn’t seen his reflection!

“How…?” I asked, completely flummoxed.

“How what, my friend?” Dr. V asked, smiling like nothing weird was happening!

“Your reflection…where is it?” I dared to ask.

“Oh! That mirror…it has strange qualities. It is quite old, you see. Such things can play tricks with the eyes at times. Come! You must be famished from a day working with my irritable old self! I had Magda do an old country dish from my home that I think you will love!” Dr. V passed off this strange phenomenon as if it were nothing!

Perhaps he was right, I’d been so caught up with the looks of the Wolf’s Head that I may have simply not noticed his coming up behind me. All this craziness with what went on at my dorm, that strange party I attended with Dr. V and his unconventional guests, the safe room, Ambrosio, Jake going missing, etc., all of it must be getting to me. It has all got me jumping at shadows and seeing things that can’t be real. My imagination must also be cranking at high speed with all those creepy stories Dr. V has been telling me.

Of course, Dr. V’s reflection had to have been there. Maybe the mirror is warped somehow? If it is an old mirror that could be possible! That must be it. A simple, rational explanation just like most everything else that I’ve found peculiar lately.

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Saturday, October 13, 1989

I don’t know.

I try not to feel weird at this estate. I try to feel at home. I succeed sometimes, but then things happen like what happened today!

Dr. V had research work to do back at ‘The Farm’ as Stanford is nicknamed. So, I stayed behind to study, read, and relax. I got bored so I decided to take a turn around the estate, maybe run a little bit, that sort of thing.

It was a beautiful day today. A blue sky with just the hint of a mist in the trees surrounding the estate. I’d guess that a fog bank was sitting just off the coast below the hills. I’d not much ventured into the woods of the estate before so I thought I’d do that. I’ve always liked old growth forests and the estate had a nice portion of one.

As I entered the woods, I found it well shaded, even dark in spots. It’s a coniferous woods so the smell of pine sap was strong. It overwhelmed any other scent that might have been under the trees. The air was moist with the cool mist and it made my pores open up giving me a ‘fresh’ feeling.

The soil was deep with a mulch of pine needles dotted with pine cones. There was no undergrowth to speak of other than pine saplings which were fairly scarce. So this caused me to shuffle my feet rather freely as I walked in the woods.

Shuffling along, I knocked my toe into a few larger pine cones that had gotten buried by the mulch. Nothing unusual for a pine forest. That was until my foot knocked into something quite a bit heavier. It wasn’t enough to stub my toe, but it was enough to stop me from shuffling any further.

Curious as to what kind of rock I’d kicked, I reached down to brush off some of the mulch. What I found curdled my blood!

There, staring up at me from the ground with mulch filling the eye sockets, was a human skull! A smell of mouldering decay assaulted my nose, but it was more earthy than putrid. I don’t have much knowledge of such things as body decomposition, but I figured that the skull had been from a person dead a very long time.

In short order, I found the rest of the skeleton scattered about the area under the trees. Everything was just clean bones. There were no clothes or jewelry around. It was like the body was just left out naked to be consumed by nature!

Any number of emotions hit me at that moment. Revulsion, fear, and shock were first, but then there was this lingering sadness. Someone had died out here and had been totally forgotten! Certainly, Dr. V couldn’t have known this was out here! He’d have had the authorities investigate and remove the body for a proper burial! That’s what any decent person would do!

So, of course, I had to ask him about it…

“Ah, what a dreadful thing to have to find, William! I am not surprised at your finding something like that however (???). It is my understanding that many people had gone missing up here in these hills in the past. Even before this estate was built. I have left much of the old growth forest around my estate intact, you see. No one has ever gone into those woods since my taking up residence here! It is more than likely that you may have found one of those unfortunate souls lost to this wilderness. I have to imagine the skeleton is very old indeed.” Dr. V said.

“Think no more of it! I shall have the proper authorities come and take the unfortunate soul for a proper burial.” Dr. V assured…just as I thought he would.

As I lay in bed writing in this journal, however, I can’t help but have lingering feelings of sadness about the person that once belonged to that body. Who were they? How did they come to this end? What family had missed them and, most importantly, how long had that body actually been out there?

It is a morbid fascination for me now. I suppose it’s only natural since this is the first time I’ve ever encountered a real dead person before!

How could I research this further? Where would I even begin?

I have no idea…