literature

A Letter from the Late Professor Stone

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Daily Deviation

November 5, 2017
A Letter from the Late Professor Stone by MidnightDaybreak
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Literature Text

March 13, 2018

To Whom It May Concern,

    If you’ve found this letter, which was hidden among the personal effects of my home, it can only mean that I am no longer of the living. This does not come as a surprise to me, given the recent events that have taken place in my life. I’ve sensed for days that my end was drawing near, and have decided to leave this letter in the hopes that it might prevent anyone else from befalling the same fate as I.

    I am neither a superstitious man, nor a religious one. I have long since left behind the childish ideals of the fantastical and supernatural. I see the world not through rose-tinted lenses; rather, I see it in the sepia hues of the past and the factual. Perhaps it was because of this view of the world that I am no longer a part of it.

    For the last several months, I have been accompanied against my will nearly everywhere by an uninvited entourage. I didn’t notice them at first because they were never the same. I guess I could say I sensed it before I noticed it. It was a feeling of paranoia; an inkling that I was being watched. Then it was a certainty. I began looking over my shoulder wherever I went, but never saw anyone noticeably suspicious; no one going out of their way to act inconspicuous and no vague recollection of the anonymous faces in the crowd. Everything seemed perfectly normal, to the point that I began to wonder if maybe it was all in my head.

    Then I met that woman.

    It would’ve been hard not to notice a woman like her. She was beautiful; otherworldly so. Given her apparent age, I might’ve thought she was a student of the university, but I have my doubts about that. No youngster in this day and age could have a possessed a beauty quite like hers. It was a classical beauty, timeless even. Her skin was as fair as freshly fallen snow; with a face so delicate its craftsmanship would make Alexandros of Antioch weep with envy. Not even a rose could compare to the color of her most supple lips. Her emerald eyes shone brightly enough to have adorned the rings of royalty, and her luscious ringlets of auburn hair fell like leaves caught in an autumn wind. And yet, while it is far from characteristic of me to say so, what struck me even more than her beauty was her… her aura, I suppose one could say.

    The first time I saw her was in a local café just outside the campus. Her presence as I ordered my normal latte was innocuous enough. She sat at a table alone, wearing a rather revealing black dress with emerald accents and an amethyst-encrusted butterfly brooch, and reading. I caught only a glimpse of her in my peripheral as I passed by that time. It wouldn’t be until our third and fourth encounter, each of them innocent and coincidental enough, that I fully came to appreciate her aesthetics. What I did notice from the get-go of our encounters was the unsettling chill I felt whenever I passed her. I’d use the old adage of feeling like someone was walking over my grave, but I’ve lately come to think that that might be a more pleasant experience than having that woman in the vicinity.

    By the time I fully came to appreciate the gravity of her presence, I had become all but a recluse. Between seeing her everywhere I went and the knowledge that I was being either watched or followed, the idea of leaving my home was becoming less and less a desirable one. I thought I’d be safer secluded within my own four walls, and did everything I could to limit my time out of doors to a bare minimum. For weeks, I cancelled all of my office hours. From home, to my classes, and back to home; these were the only places I went. Anthony, a kindly young man that lives next door, was willing enough to run my errands for me in exchange for financial compensation.

    These few weeks of seclusion gave me a much deeper appreciation for my life as a scholar than I’d ever had before. I’ve grown so used to being cooped up in libraries and studies that the privacy of my home was actually quite welcome, though I doubt I ever had complete privacy. Each time I walked by an open window, I was again overcome by the feeling that someone was watching me from the sidewalk outside, though, again, no one I saw outside struck me as significant.

    I think it was early in the New Year when I felt the first cold caress of true fear over all of this. Anthony had gone home to visit his parents over the holiday break, leaving me to fend for myself. To my surprise, I found these few weeks to be a relatively relaxed time. I didn’t feel watched when I went out, nor did I see that woman. It was as if my perceived personal terrors had taken the holidays off as well, a thought that made me anxious for them to end.

    When the new semester started, Anthony wasn’t around. I accredited this to him extending his vacation, and thought little more of it. I felt safer than I had in over a month, and confident to go on living my life as if nothing had ever happened.

    It was the end of the second week of the semester when I first heard about the accident. Anthony, while driving home from his parents’ place in Hale, had somehow ended up in the middle lane of the highway with semi-trucks to both his right and left. He tried to speed up past them, or so the official report said, but hit a patch of ice and spun out of control. His car bounced off one semi and under the trailer of the other. The exact result of such an event is more gruesome than I wish to detail in this writing, or to even recall. He was a fine young man with a bright young future ahead of him.

    Before leaving on his trip, Anthony had entrusted me with the key to his home and the simple request to take his mail inside for him while he was away. Given the aid he had been providing me, I couldn’t in good faith turn down such a task; and, while I had been collecting his mail each day as I did my own, I hadn’t been able to bring myself to take it inside his home, since doing so would increase the time I spent outside the safety of my own. I had instead been setting it in a pile on the table next to my front door, with the intention of turning it over to him when I returned the key.

    Grim as it may be, there was little need to keep it around posthumously. I had figured his family would come around to his home within the next week to clear out his personal belongings and I would give it them. I continued to collect it for him, letting the pile on the table by my door grow each day.

    I would like it to be known, should the contents of this letter be made public, that I never had any intention of violating Anthony’s privacy, neither before, nor after his death. I never gave his mail more than a brief glance while collecting it. But I firmly believe that anyone would’ve been curious at a very basic human level to see a pitch black envelope in someone’s mail, enough to give it a second glance. There was no address on the envelope; no return address, and nothing to indicate it should’ve even been left at Anthony’s address. The only marking on that ebony surface was a purple butterfly sticker.

    My first thought at seeing it was that it was a love letter of some kind, though I quickly pushed this thought aside. His death had been well-publicized by the media, including the campus bulletin and newspaper; the odds of his receiving letters of affection at that point after his death seemed very unlikely. It was only after a few moments of staring at the letter, particularly the butterfly sticker, that I felt a flicker of recognition. The sticker was simple enough to have been bought at any store, but the shape and shade of it took my thoughts instantly back to that woman, and the amethyst brooch she wore. She always had it on, no matter how many times I saw her.

    Feeling terrified, I ran to my door and locked myself inside. My hand was trembling, enough that I dropped everything I held except for that envelope. My better judgment told me, of course, that I shouldn’t open someone else’s mail, but given the circumstances, I felt even more certain than before that the envelope wasn’t intended for Anthony at all.

    Inside of the envelope was a single sheet of paper, folded twice. I opened it slowly, dreading what I might find inside. It was a handwritten note; one line penned in an elegant script, the letters looping and tangling together: “Accidents will happen.”

    I didn’t sleep a wink that night. I’d already taken to locking all of my doors and windows, and closing all of my blinds, but that night I went a step further and sequestered myself away in my study with my father’s antique revolver and the fireplace poker by my side; hardly weapons fit for defending myself, but the best I could muster on the spot. The night past uneventfully, but I didn’t feel safe. I cancelled all of my classes for the next week and refused to leave my home.

    Naturally, I called the police. I had avoided doing so until that time because I didn’t think they’d believe me, or would be willing to help a paranoid old man that was constantly looking over his shoulder. This letter was different, though; it was evidence. They took my statement, and also the note to analyze, but they weren’t able to learn anything from it. They also assigned surveillance detail to my person, which made me feel slightly better – enough that I could return to class, where my nightmare continued.

    It was early in the semester, and I’d cancelled several classes, so I didn’t recognize most of the faces I saw. I did, however, recognize the purple butterflies I saw around the lecture hall. A tattoo, a hairpin, a drawing on a notebook, a button pinned to a shirt or bag, males and females; they took different forms, but they were purple butterflies nonetheless, and with them came the return of the feeling that someone – or rather, multiple someones – was watching me, though far more direct now.

    Indecision gripped me. Should I tell the police? Were several of my students really conspiring against me? I decided to investigate by myself first; I pulled the transcripts of every student I’d seen with a butterfly, trying to find any correlation between them, but there was none. They came from different walks of life, different races and religions, different academic majors, ages ranging from eighteen up to over thirty. It looked like I would have to tell the police after all, but I wouldn’t even make it that far.

    I stopped by the mail room on my way out, as I always do, and felt once again the icy hand of fear digging into my chest. There was a black envelope in my mailbox, not addressed to me or marked in any way except for the purple butterfly sticker. I don’t think I can adequately describe how scared I was to see that sticker. Hesitant as I was, I peeled the envelope open and took out the single sheet of paper, folded twice, inside. It was another handwritten note; another single line written in that curling script: “They can’t help you.”

    I didn’t go to the police that time. I was beginning to realize the danger this woman posed. Even if the police wouldn’t learn anything from her letter, I was convinced she was responsible for the death of Anthony. As a scholar, I’m ashamed to say that that was the first moment I seriously began to consider why this woman was following me. I am, after all, just an elderly English professor. I’ve lived a relatively uneventful life devoted to the written word.

    I decided, at that point, that I needed to find out the why. This woman obviously wanted something from me, and I needed to know what. If not for myself, then for poor Anthony, whose blood was inadvertently on my hands. I ended my self-imposed exile and returned to my life as normal, looking over my shoulder at every turn. I knew I’d see the woman that was stalking me – more like haunting me – sooner or later, and I would confront her when I did.

    It was the middle of February before I saw her again, though there was no shortage of purple butterfly sightings leading up to that time. She hadn’t been in the café when I’d walked in, but when I turned away from the counter with my latte, there she was, sitting alone at the same table as before and reading to herself, amethyst butterfly brooch in place.

    My blood had never run colder than at that moment. No one else in the café seemed perturbed by her sudden appearance, or even to notice it. Going back to the beginning of this writing, this was the first time I truly wondered if this woman was something not of this world, but rather some sort of malevolent apparition. I’d never been more curious, terrified, confused, and apostate all at once. Her existence was starting to make me question not just the recent events of my life, but the world in general. I had to speak with her, regardless of my fears or the consequences.

    I sat down at her table and waited for her to acknowledge me, not knowing myself what to say. She continued to read without even looking at me, and I wondered if she were waiting for me to break the silence. Then finally, just as I was about to speak, she said something.

    “I’m sorry about your neighbor.” Her voice was as beautiful as she was; lilting and bell-like. If only there had been any emotion to it, instead of the utter apathy.

    Her comment wasn’t what I’d expected, but I would follow her lead. “Did you kill Anthony?”

    “I try not to dirty my hands personally,” she said to me, not once looking up from her book.

    My fists clenched in anger under the table. “But you did have a hand in it.” I didn’t ask this; I stated it.

    “I did,” she admitted.

    I took a deep breath, one that was both fear and rage.

    “He would’ve made a lovely addition, once I found a suitable inhabitant,” she went on speaking. I couldn’t even begin to fathom what it meant.

    I decided to cut right to the chase. “What do you want with me?”

    “Are you familiar with the Prose Edda, professor?” she asked.

    I found myself a little perplexed, but I answered honestly. “Of course; it’s an Old Norse literature that tells the tales of their mythology. It was meant to be a text book of sorts, to help poets and readers to understand alliterative verse.”

    “So you’ve read it?”

    “Of course.”

    “Then I don’t need to explain to you the details of Ragnarök.”

    If I was perplexed before, I was absolutely baffled now. I had recently read a newly published book on the subject. It contained new passages that had never been discovered before, including an expansion on the origin of the dragon Níðhöggr, who is said to herald the beginning of said event. I had intended to do more research on these new passages; maybe even take a trip to Iceland. It was fascinating, without a doubt, but it did little to make sense of my current predicament. This woman couldn’t have been following me all this time just to discuss the events of an End of Days myth. That simply didn’t make any sense. I, of course, told her this, not in so many words.

    “Not to discuss it, professor,” she told me. “To ensure it.”

    I would’ve called her mad, had it not been for the unshaking certainty and firmness in her voice as she said this. I could tell just by looking at her apathetic form that she believed in this myth with all of her being. If she was mad, it was a deep-seated madness that she was totally given over to. And if she weren’t mad… well, I can’t even begin to wrap my head around such a possibility.

    “What does this have to do with me?” I asked her.

    “This region is very closely tied to Ragnarök,” she told me, confusing me impossibly more. “Things that have happened here; things that are going to happen here. I have no doubt that, when the time comes, this entire state will become the first battleground.”

    I sat there in silent disbelief. The story of Ragnarök was at least a millennium old, much older than the state of Georgia. True, it’s not uncommon for the mythologies of different cultures and regions to have parallels; even seem to be carbon copies of one another at times. It’s also true that the Vikings came to this country long before European settlers, so the story could’ve made its way here before any recorded history. No amount of reasoning I could come up with could explain the things this woman was telling me, though, or what any of it had to do with me.

    “I’ll make this very simple, professor. Your new interest in Ragnarök creates a problem for me. Not right now, mind you. But if you do take your trip to Iceland, you will learn something that will turn the entire world on its head, and I can’t allow that.”

    “How did you know I was thinking of such a trip?” I ask her, not so distressed over it. She and her people had been following me for months, after all; there’s no certainty that I wasn’t overheard muttering such plans at one point or another. I think I might’ve only asked because doing so seemed like the natural thing to do.

    Her answer, of course, only did more to confuse me. “I have foreseen it,” she said.

    “Foreseen?” I asked her.

    “Yes, professor,” she replied. “I have foreseen that you will make a great historical discovery, and in doing so, bring the biggest secret in the world to light far too early. Trust me; put the idea out of your mind.”

    “That’s all?” I asked her, my fists only clenching tighter. Months of torture and the death of an innocent boy just to tell me not to go on a trip? And what of this great discovery? What mystery of the world could I possibly unravel? Me, of all people.

    “That’s all,” she said. She closed her book then and looked at me for the first time, and I have never been so awestruck in my life. As beautiful as she was to see in profile or from afar, she was a thousand times more radiant when viewed directly. I found myself lost and distracted, unable to focus on the conversation.

    “Do we have an understanding, professor?” She asked me this, and all I could manage was to nod dumbly. I felt as if I were lost in a trance, which lasted until she’d gathered her book and left.

    That was it. It’s been a month now. I haven’t seen the woman again, though I still see her butterflies fluttering on the edges of my vision. I’ve been reading a lot since then. Prose and Poetic Edda, Gesta Danorum, Viking sagas; any source I can get my hands on. I have thought long and hard about what I should do, and I have finally come to a conclusion.

    I am traveling to Iceland tomorrow to learn more about the legend of Ragnarök, the creation of the dragon Níðhöggr, and, if I’m very lucky, uncover this great secret that will turn the world upside-down. I have not come to this decision lightly. For one, I feel it is my duty as an educator to attain knowledge this great, no matter what affect it might have on the world. I also have a duty to Anthony, whose senseless death might be granted some meaning through my discovery. If I do come across this world-changing secret, I’ll be sure to publish it in his honor.

    Finally, I must take this trip for myself. As I’ve stated before, I am not a superstitious man. It is absurd to someone like me to even consider the possibility of an event like Ragnarök, or the existence of a great dragon that lives in the roots of some cosmic tree. This whole incident is a challenge to my very beliefs – a challenge I’m willing to accept.

    I understand, of course, the dangers involved in this undertaking. I don’t know if that woman was mortal or not. She could’ve been a ghost or demon for all I know; a witch, maybe. There’s also the chance that she could be a complete nut job. Of all the things she could be, though, dangerous is the only thing that’s certain. I know that I may very well be forfeiting my own life by taking this journey, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take.

    As I said in the beginning, if this letter is being read, then that woman has likely already gotten to me; and if that is true, then I beseech you, dear reader: search for the secret. There’s something out there in this world, or so the beautiful mad woman says. Tread lightly, because she could probably find you as easily as she found me, but don’t let that stop you. The answers are in Iceland. Ragnarök and Níðhöggr. If not for me – if not for the world – then, at the very least, for poor, dear Anthony. 

Yours dearly,

Professor Arthur C. Stone

UnAVerse
Stand Alone Story

So... yeah... this was another one of those ones that got away from me. Not it bad way, luckily.

I've been reading The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, and let me say that it is AMAZING! If you're a fan of awesome reading, I highly recommend it. Here's a synopsis.

The Historian has been described as a combination of genres, including Gothic noveladventure noveldetective fictiontravelogue,postmodern historical novelepistolary epic, and historical thriller. Kostova was intent on writing a serious work of literature and saw herself as an inheritor of the Victorian style. Although based in part on Bram Stoker's DraculaThe Historian is not a horror novel, but rather an eerie tale. It is concerned with history's role in society and representation in books, as well as the nature of good and evil. As Kostova explains, "Dracula is a metaphor for the evil that is so hard to undo in history."[3] The evils brought about by religious conflict are a particular theme, and the novel explores the relationship between the Christian West and the Islamic East.

--Source: Wikipedia

Yeah, it's pretty fantastic. The book is told heavily through letters left behind from a previous generation, and got me wanting to write something along those line. I'm ashamed to say that the plot pretty closely mirrors that of The Historian, applied to my own universe, but I say fuck it. It was fun to write, and that's what matters. Hopefully it'll be as fun for you guys to read! n..n

EDIT 8/31/2016: Fixed some spelling and grammar errors. See? I'm working people!!
EDIT 9/2/2017: Found myself re-reading this and cleaned up a few more mistakes.
© 2016 - 2024 MidnightDaybreak
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GrimAlpaca's avatar
Good day to you, and merry Critmas. I'm looking at your piece since a few days and will now write a critique for it, if you don't mind.

The amount of work you put in detailing both your protagonist, professor Stone, and the unnamed lady is astonishing, I must say: yours was a process at times unnoticed, often plain to see, but that perdured for the entirety of the narration. From the elegant English which underlines the professor's role to the wisely detailed, yet energic description of the mastermind, your passion seeps from the ink - or rather, my display. This, author, is the only thing that truly counts; this is what makes the difference between a Daily Deviation and another piece, and the reason for me to either grant stars or withhold them.

Concerning your characters, I consider them astonishingly believable and detailed. The professor in particular is a fine gentleman set on conquering peace for his departed neighbor's soul, even at the cost of his own life, which makes him a sort of hero I personally enjoy seeing. The way you managed to destabilize him to the point of seclusion betrays the danger personified by your villain, who is also seemingly omniscient. This being isn't infallible, though, as Stone ultimately decides against her will, in spite of the consequences.

The plot is promising and on par with the expectations raised by your overall display of skill. The narration, in turn, feels natural; deciding to elect professor Stone as both narrator and protagonist of the piece paid off as you expected, for the whole epistle theme is, in my opinion, an excellent point from which to tackle the plot, by leveraging the kind of character represented by the professor in the process. This story, my friend, feels real. Perhaps terribly so.

We are now to the point where I should comment your grammar, I believe. There are no major mistakes, of course, but you may want to address two minor flaws: "No youngster in this day and age could have a possessed a beauty quite like hers [...]" features a surplus "a", whilst "past" in "The night past uneventfully [...]" should've been "passed", if I'm not mistaken. Other than that, this is a piece to be taken as a model.

As anticipated above, your work clearly deserves a star from me. I saw that you were deeply influenced by other writings while assembling yours, but that has been only a bonus if this is to be the end result. The only thing I believe to be a shame? That this writing be an oneshot.