POE MUST DIE (9 page)

“Rachel—”
He had to make her see that the dead do not return.

She walked back to the window.

Outside in the February cold, Poe pulled his cloak around him and waited for an omnibus which would take him to a train. From there he’d leave for the country, for his small cottage in Fordham where there was work to do. Mrs. Clemm, his mother-in-law, the dearest friend left in his life, lived with him and it was she who found these horrid and untalented women who paid her a few dollars to have Poe praise and edit their poems. Humiliating labor but it put bread on the table.

More than once, Poe had sat alone on a rock near his tiny cottage and muttered of his “desire to die and get rid of these literary bores” with their fluttering fans, huge crinolines and handkerchiefs soaked in ether against the odors of dead horses and manure clogging Manhattan streets. He and dear Muddy needed the money, so do it and be done. Then rest and tomorrow, Miles Standish.

Eddy Poe, “a soul lost,” “a glorious devil” in the eyes of women who collected lost souls, now had less than one dollar in change in his pockets. He turned to see Rachel staring through the window at him and when she saw him looking back, she vanished.

Someone called his name.

Poe quickly brought his head up from his chest. He was awake and listening.

He was in his cold, bare cottage and seconds ago, he’d fallen asleep in the small sitting room, chin on his chest and slumped on a wooden chair. His sleep was fitful, uneven, a tortuous escape from reading the wretched poetry of women whose hands should be removed to prevent them from ever picking up a pen again. Believe the Talmud when it says—
Who can pro-test and does not, is an accomplice in the act.
Poe’s protest against this drivel had been to slip into uneasy sleep.

Someone called his name.

Poe’s cloak was around his shoulders, his greatcoat across his knees; he lacked money for firewood. Two cheap candles sputtered and dripped wax on a tiny table covered with sheets of poetry, and though some of the sheets were perfumed, all reeked with the odor of incompetence. Poe was to read, edit and may God forgive him for doing so, praise these miserable musings.

It was almost midnight with dear Muddy asleep upstairs, widow’s cap covering her snow white hair and Poe was now awake and listening. Someone had called his name. Or had he dreamed—”

“Eddy! Eddy!”

He heard it clearly. A woman’s voice coming from outside the cottage.

“Eddy, come to me! Come to me!”

Who?

“Eddy it is I, it is your beloved Sissy!”

His wife. His dead wife.

Poe was on his feet, to the door and tearing it open, staring out into the night and seeing her by the snow covered lilac bushes near the road. His heart was about to shatter; he could barely breathe. The agony was incredibly exciting.

“Eddy it is I, Virginia. I love you. Come to me!”

He saw the slim, cloaked figure of a woman, her pale thin face made whiter by moonlight and in Poe’s tormented mind, weakened by illness, by sorrow, by unending disappointment, the line between real and unreal disappeared. His heart was seized by well-remembered grief and he leaped from the front porch, falling to his knees in snow, screaming her name.

“Sissy! Sissy!”

He crawled towards her, reached for her with trembling hands. He got to his feet, stumbled through knee high snow, every inch of his body and mind aching to touch her. For one touch,
one touch,
he would give his soul and more. He fell face down in the snow, his eyes now blinded by the icy softness and when he struggled to his knees, she was gone.

“Sissy!” Her name echoed in the night.

He looked down at the footprints in the snow, saw the blood in them.
His wife had died of a ruptured blood vessel in her throat and that had been one year ago and she’d died in his arms.

Still on his knees, Poe pressed handfuls of the blood stained snow to his lips and cried out his wife’s name again and again.

And somewhere in his newfound hell he remembered that Rachel had told him the dead could be made to live once more. He remembered.

SIX

S
YLVESTER
P
IER’S FINGERS
clawed in vain at the noose drawn tightly around his neck.

He hung from the ceiling, feet just inches from the floor, eyes bulging hideously. The other end of the rope had been passed through a hook embedded in the ceiling of the tenement room and Jonathan, in controlled rage now pulled down on it, keeping Sylvester Pier in the air. Pier had betrayed him and would pay for it with his miserable life.

Meanwhile, the childlike grave robber suffered in his last seconds on earth. Pain and a lack of air had turned his pleasant face blood red and ugly. He rasped through his open mouth, in a total panic to breathe again and Jonathan, sensing his agony, pulled harder. The two were alone in a shabby room whose only comforts were a pile of straw for a bed and a tin bucket of burning charcoal for light and heat. Sylvester Pier, along with Hamlet Sproul and Tom Lowery, had taken what belonged to Jonathan and for that, all three would die. The three grave robbers would be a sacrifice to Asmodeus, to buy Jonathan time in his frenzied attempt to survive the demon.

Brainless Sylvester Pier. Happy when someone else was thinking for him, leaving him free to stroll Manhattan’s muddy streets in uniforms stolen from drunken military men.

Pier kicked the air and felt the darkness squeeze his brain tighter and tighter. The noose dug into his neck, making his ears ring and giving him pain that was complete, unrelieved and his eyes would not stop watering.
Air. For the love of Mary and Joseph, let me breathe.
His gray mongrel dog lay on its side, breathing slowly for it suffered as well. Jonathan had kicked it several times with a booted foot, crushing ribs on its right side, driving sharp ends of broken bones into the dog”s entrails and the dog had lay down to die.

“I want you to know why you are dying.” Jonathan pulled harder, jerking the young grave robber higher in the air. “You are scum, the three of you. I set you an important task and you betrayed me. Here is my answer.”

Jonathan eased his grip on the rope, letting Sylvester Pier’s feet barely touch the dusty wooden floor.
Let him think he will live. Let him think that I have been weakened by mercy. Let his agony be prolonged.

Sylvester Pier, standing on tiptoe, greedily sucked in air. The rusted sword that was part of his uniform slipped from his belt and clattered to the floor.
Air.
He felt as though he’d been without it for a long, long time. He’d come to this decaying, abandoned building because of a message received from Edgar Allan Poe.
Come alone ten tonight. First house, Worth Street. Third floor, corner room. Important we talk. Trust me, your gain. E. A. Poe.

Your gain. Message and Mr. Poe’s black bordered card had been folded around an eagle coin and slipped to Sylvester Pier at a crowded dog fight. After betting the ten dollars and losing, Pier had left to keep his appointment with the little poet, whom he liked.

In full naval officer’s uniform and with his dog in his arms, Sylvester Pier had stepped into the dark room and been struck on the head. When he regained consciousness, he was dangling from a rope connected to a ceiling hook where a chandelier had once glittered in days when the slum tenement had been a grand Dutch mansion.

Jonathan jerked hard on the rope, again sending Pier into the air. “I want you to know why you are dying. You, Sproul and Lowery were hired to do a job for me. Instead, you satisfied your own greed and turned from me and I cannot allow that to go unpunished. There will be no disobedience, especially by such as you.”

Caught between an unwillingness to believe what was happening to him and an increasing horror at how near he was to death, Pier tried to say the word
why.

Jonathan sensed this. He smiled.

“Mr. Lazarus,” he said and pulled down on the rope as hard as he could.

When Sylvester Pier was dead, Jonathan released the rope, letting the body fall to the floor. From down in the narrow, muddy street a Hot Corn girl lifted her voice in song.

“All you that’s got money

Poor me that’s got none

Come buy my lily hot corn

And let me go home.”

Jonathan could not go home yet. The sacrifice to Asmodeus must be made and that meant Sylvester Pier still had a role to play. From under his cloak, Jonathan produced a surgeon’s scalpel. Dropping to his knees beside the body, Jonathan pulled open Pier’s naval officer’s tunic, revealing a red undershirt. With one quick move, the undershirt was slashed, baring the grave robber’s hairless chest.

By the tiny light from the bucket of burning charcoal, Jonathan used the scalpel on Sylvester Pier.

And the Hot Corn girl sang.

SEVEN

“I
SHALL BE
blunt, Mr. Poe.”

“Which means, Mr. Standish, that you are prepared to beat me about the head with unpleasant truths while expecting me to admire your courage in doing so. We despise each other, you and I, and having established that let us proceed.”

Miles Standish, plump, red bearded and well groomed in a suit of orange and green plaid, continued as though he hadn’t heard. “I shall be blunt, Mr. Poe. You have ambitions—”

“A contamination which afflicts you as well.”

“You seek money, sir. A great deal of it. I am referring to your attempts to finance a magazine which you would publish and edit. ‘The Stylus’ I believe you propose to call it, and I ask you now, is it your intention to squeeze money from Rachel—”

“Sir, you are objectionable!” Poe was on his feet, soft southern voice trembling. The part of him that loved violence wanted to take a whip to this pompous fool and slice him into bleeding strips. Poe’s nostrils flared with rage; a vein throbbed on his high pale forehead.

He fought for control, forcing himself to speak slowly. “You are accusing me of using my relationship with a lady for personal profit. That is something I cannot forgive.”

Miles Standish touched his steel-rimmed spectacles with manicured fingers, then hooked his thumbs into the pockets of a green silk waistcoat. Poe was poor, a walking bundle of rags, the writer of unprofitable books. Failure is the only crime, thought Standish and Poe was guilty of it and therefore should be despised.

Standish said, “She is a woman quite rich. Need I say that she is also vunerable at the moment, having lost her husband both in life and in death. I am given to understand that you prefer she not pay the ransom—”

“The money to be snatched from the outstretched palms of the ghouls and pressed into mine. I believe that is your train of thought.”

“It is no secret, Mr. Poe, that you have tried for years and failed to get the money to publish your own magazine. Your personal problems are, of course, your concern. But we are discussing my client and she represents a possible upturn in your, let us say, sorry fortunes.”

Standish inhaled snuff from between his thumb and forefinger, sneezed to clear his head, then wiped his nose with an orange silk handkerchief. “That is, if she agrees to help you and let me say I shall do all in my power to see that she does not.”

Poe looked down at his worn, snow-wet boots. Battered leather on a spotless, pearl gray carpet. He and Miles Standish were in the billiard room of the lawyer’s Washington Square mansion, a large room with a billiard table, rocking chairs, huge desk, fireplace and stained glass windows alive with the morning sun. The room represented money, something which had eluded Poe all of his life. He didn’t need Standish to remind him of this.

Poe stared at a stained glass window, losing himself in its sensuous beauty, in its bright green, red, purple. He’d always been poor. Practically all of his writing had been short pieces—stories, poems, criticisms, journalism. Quick writing for quick money; he’d never known the luxury of enough cash to attempt longer works. Fast Eddy. Do it in a hurry, collect your few coins and stand ready to do it all over again. Run like a frightened deer. Live from dollar to dollar and watch your wife starve because you couldn’t feed her.