Oblivion
Authors: Kelly Creagh
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13. Within the Distant Aidenn
23. In the Hearts of the Most Reckless
37. Neither of Ingress or Egress
43. The Heart Whose Woes Are Legion
45. Nameless Here for Evermore
46. In a Mad Rushing Descent as of the Soul into Hades
48. Dreams No Mortal Ever Dared to Dream
49. Only This and Nothing More
FOR MY DEAR FRIENDS AND FELLOW DREAMWORLD DWELLERS
April Joye Cannon, Nick Passafiume, and Bill Wolfe
*Â Â *Â Â *
The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?
âEdgar Allan Poe, “The Premature Burial”
There is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of him, who shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a plunge. To indulge for a moment, in any attempt at
thought
, is to be inevitably lost; for reflection but urges us to forbear, and
therefore
it is, I say, that we
cannot
. If there be no friendly arm to check us, or if we fail in sudden effort to prostrate ourselves backward from the abyss, we plunge, and are destroyed.
â
Edgar Allan Poe,
“
The Imp of the Perverse”
*Â Â *Â Â *
Providence, Rhode Island
The home of the widow Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman
November 9, 1848
“I beg of you to hear me, Helen!”
His voice rang shrill through the house, funneling up the narrow stairwell and down the hall, muffled little by the barrier of her bedroom door.
Pen in hand, Helen stared at the blank sheet of paper that waited on her writing desk. In her other hand, she clutched her white, lace-trimmed handkerchief, and the saccharine aroma of the ether contained within the cloth enticed her to breathe from its folds again.
She resisted, her focus remaining on the parchment.
But the promise of an empty page did little to ease the poetess's mind the way it might have on a quieter morning. Even the ether, with its power to lull her senses, could do nothing to slow the palpitations of her agitated heart. Not with her ears attuned to the beseeching roars of the man whose recent behavior both confused and terrified her.
“Helen, without you I am lost.
Lost!
” he shouted, the anguished plea like a cry from hell itself.
It was true that she was hiding from him, firm in her decision to wait him out as she would a storm. She told herself, again, that she
could not
see him like this, fearful less of what words might pass between themâeven of what answer she might give himâthan of what she would find if she dared to look too closely into those eyes.
“A single word!
One!
That is all I ask.”
“That is
enough
, Mr. Poe.”
At the sound of her mother's sharpened tone, Helen glanced toward the door, the tight ringlets of her dark-brown hair bouncing against her cheeks.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” her mother went on. “There is simply no excuse for this beastly conduct.”
Helen could tell her mother's patience had fled. Her indignation had at last morphed into fury, and it would not be long now until one of them would bend to the breaking point.
Goodness knew what would happen then. . . .
Clearly something had to give. Someone.
Despite her trepidation, Helen knew that if any semblance of peace was to be restored to her homeâto her
spirit
âthat someone would have to be her.
“Helen! I pray that you are listening,” he railed, continuing to ignore her mother's upbraiding. “Hear me in thisâin what is certain to be my final plea. My life, my very
soul
depends upon you!”
Helen dropped her pen to the desk, rising. She pressed her handkerchief to her lips, closed her eyes, and inhaled. Then she made her way to the door and, opening it, frowned at finding her sister, Anna, standing just outside with her back pressed to the wall.
“You're not going down there,” Anna said, her expression stern. “Ignore him as you have been. Let him crow on like his damnable raven until he has no voice left with which to squawk.”
Helen's name rose once again from the first-floor foyer, this time in a ragged scream.
Anna sneered. “Lord in heaven, have you ever heard anything so awful in your life?”
“Has he made any mention of what might have prompted this . . . visit?” Helen asked in a murmur, not wanting him to hear her, to know his howling had succeeded in drawing her from her seclusion.
“I think impropriety is the word you are searching for,” Anna replied in a hiss. “And yes. He did attempt to explain to Mother that after sitting for a daguerreotype this morning, he saw a white face in the studio's light-reflecting mirror. It stared straight at him, he said, with eyes black as night.”
“Those were his words exactly?”
“He is mad, Helen. Do not go to him.”
Helen made no reply but took her first steps toward the stairwell, skirts rustling.
“Do you care this little for me?” she heard him wail. “Do you doubt me? Or suspect I have not told you the truth entirely?”
“It is no use shouting these delirious inquiries, Mr. Poe,” her mother said. “It should be beyond clear to you that my daughter has no wish to entertain your call.”
“I am doomed, Helen! Doomed! In time and eternity. All I ask is for one word. Say yes, Helen. Say yes and save this poor wretch. Say what you have not yet said. That you
do
love me!”
“Edgar.” Helen spoke his name as she stepped onto the topmost stair. At the sound of her voice, his head jerked up.
Dressed in his shirtsleeves, his dark hair wild, his eyes crazed, he looked, to Helen, the very portrait of insanity.
She drew in a sharp breath. Clutching tightly to the banister, she steeled herself and began to descend, closing the distance between them one tremulous step at a time.
“Helen.”
He held a quivering hand out to her. “You
have
heard me. And now at last you've come. An angel sent to save me from perdition.”
“Edgar, what is the meaningâ?”
“My fate rests with you.” He fell to his knees and clutched the skirts of her dress, peering up at her. For a moment, Helen lost her ability to speak, wondering if what she saw could be attributed to the heightening effects of the ether.
Gone were the ghost-gray eyes of the man who'd proposed to her in the cemetery less than two months before, and she now wondered if the spectral gaze he'd claimed to have seen in the mirror that morning could have belonged to his own reflection.
For the eyes that stared up at her now, imploring and full of dread, were indeed as black as night.
Blacker.
A Valentine
Dear Varen,
After putting your name on paper, it seems I can hardly hold my pen steady. So this won't be neat. I'm not good with words like you are, so it won't be eloquent, either.
Valentine's Day is this weekend. I'm in English class, and Mr. Swanson wants us to work on composing romantic sonnets. He's gone over the format twice, but thinking about iambic pentameter and quatrains makes me feel like I'm trying to solve a math word problem. At least, I'm pretty sure my poetry reads like one.
If you were here, I know you'd already be done with yours.
I also know it would be beautiful.
I can see your desk from where I'm sitting. I won't find you there even if I look, but part of me is always afraid that I will.
Sometimes I wonder if that's what you wanted. For me to be afraid of you. For everyone to be afraid, so no one would try to get close.
They tell me that I died. They say that I was dead, and I want to tell them I still am. At least that's how I feel. Because I know where you are and what's become of you. Because I couldn't stop it and I couldn't bring you back. Because Reynolds was right when he told me I couldn't reach you.
Everything's broken.
And yet here I am, writing you what must be a Valentine.
Because even though I know I shouldn't still love you, even though I know that is the last thing I should have room to feel for you, more than anything, I want to tell you I do.
*Â Â *Â Â *
Isobel lifted her shaking pen from the vein-blue lines of her notebook, wondering how the confession had managed to escape her.
She'd never written like that before, where the words just poured out, unstoppable.
The final line burned into her retinas, echoing a truth that she'd hoped to keep hidden away, locked inside with everything else.