The Tell-Tale Start (7 page)
Read The Tell-Tale Start Online
Authors: Gordon McAlpine
Roderick Usher needed them.
Aunt Judith looked at her watch. “It’s five minutes to eight.” She wrung her hands nervously. “The district representative will be here any minute.”
The boys dutifully put their dishes in the kitchen sink and told their aunt they would be seated at their desks and hard at work when she and the representative made their way downstairs to the classroom.
The doorbell rang.
“Get downstairs, now,” Aunt Judith instructed. “We don’t want it to look like we’ve been waiting. She needs to believe this is a day just like any other.”
The boys grinned. “Yes, just like any other.”
What the Baltimore School District’s Mrs. Antonia Shepard saw when she entered the basement, a steaming mug of tea in her hands, was like nothing she had ever seen or even imagined in her forty-seven years of work. She nearly dropped her tea. “My word, what kind of classroom is
this
?” she exclaimed.
Allan and Edgar sat dutifully at their two desks, just as they had promised their aunt. However, the desks were now at the center of a gruesome, torch-lit medieval dungeon that would have terrified Lucifer himself, to say nothing of a blue-haired school-district employee. To make their conditions appear even more distressing, the boys had smeared Vaseline on their faces, which, in the flickering light, looked like sweat. They panted with exhaustion over piles of printed assignments as thick as phone books, the stubs of pencils clutched in their pale hands.
“What
is
all this?” Aunt Judith’s voice was faint with shock.
“We’re working as hard and as fast as we can, Aunt Judith,” Allan answered, bowing his head again to a page covered with equations.
“We’ve been at it since sunrise,” Edgar said, breathless.
“Just like you told us.”
“I mean, what’s all
this
?” she repeated, gesturing at the classroom turned torture chamber.
“It’s academic motivation,” Edgar answered.
“‘There’s nothing like a medieval environment and techniques to inspire a boy,’” Allan said. “Isn’t that what you always say, Aunt Judith?”
Mrs. Shepard turned on her angrily. “Don’t you think you’re working these boys a bit too hard?”
“No, this isn’t how it is,” their aunt stammered. “You must understand…”
The boys muttered something unintelligible, resting their heads on their desks.
Mrs. Shepard went to them. “What is it you’re saying, lads?”
“We need a vacation,” Edgar whispered, his voice and manner as pathetic as poor Tiny Tim’s.
“Indeed you do,” Mrs. Shepard answered.
“Maybe a car trip halfway across the country?” Allan proposed, equally pathetic. “Maybe to Kansas?”
“That’s a wonderful idea, young man,” Mrs. Shepard said. “Fresh air, open spaces.” She turned to Aunt Judith, daggers in her eyes.
Aunt Judith nodded slowly, her face pale. “We could do that, I guess.”
“You
guess
?” Mrs. Shepard said. “You
must
get these boys out of this…this”—she searched for the right word—“this
dungeon
and out into the open!”
“To Kansas?” the boys pressed.
Mrs. Shepard’s gaze remained severe.
Aunt Judith sighed, defeated. “It’s quite far, but I suppose we can make educational stops along the way….”
Mrs. Shepard nodded.
The boys struggled to keep from smiling
“I’ll show Mrs. Shepard out now, boys,” Aunt Judith said. “Then I’ll be back and we’ll
talk
.”
The plan had worked perfectly.
Roderick Usher, here we come
.
However, their celebration was cut short when they climbed to the basement window to watch Mrs. Shepard leave.
A car awaited her at the curb. After she got in and said a few words to the driver, the car pulled away and the boys caught sight of who was behind the wheel—the
small, redheaded man from the principal’s office, Mr. Archer! The hair plucker.
“Hey, what’s he got to do with this?” Allan exclaimed.
“Egad,” Edgar muttered.
“Some kind of treacherous fix?” But they had no further time to consider the mystery.
“Boys?”
They turned.
Aunt Judith stood at the head of the basement stairs. The boys expected to find an aggravated expression on her face. But that was not what they saw.
Instead, Aunt Judith’s eyes were swollen with tears.
The boys’ hearts sank. They hadn’t actually meant to hurt her. The truth was, they hadn’t given her much thought, being so focused on Roderick. Nonetheless, they’d embarrassed her in front of the school official, and their poor aunt didn’t deserve that. The boys searched for clever words to make her feel better, but for once they could think of nothing to say or do. They only hung their identical heads.
“I’m sorry, boys,” she said.
She
was sorry? They looked up.
She looked away. “I got so carried away with the idea of being back in the classroom, a teacher again after all
these years, that I forgot how much your cat means to you. He’s your best friend, the last present your parents gave to you. I know why you did what you did. I’m so sorry,” she repeated. “Don’t worry, I’ll talk to your uncle about making things right.” She wiped the tears away, smiled, and shook her head reflectively. “A medieval dungeon…
Oh, Edgar and Allan, you’re a pair of wild cards, that’s for sure. Jokers.”
The boys shared the same thought:
If we’re Jokers, then she is the Queen of Hearts.
But they didn’t say anything.
It was sometimes hard for them to tell their aunt and uncle how much they really liked them.
WHAT THE POE TWINS DID NOT KNOW…
Mrs. Natasha Perry
Prisoner #89372
State Prison for Women
Senior Citizen Wing
Ossining, NY 10562
NOTE: The text of the preceding letter is written in a replacement code to render the communication gibberish to the prison guards or any other reader except its intended recipient. The decoded translation is as follows:
Dear Mother,
As my great triumph nears, I can’t help but recall the story that first inspired me so many years ago. Remember showing me
The Wizard of Oz
on TV? Yes, even then I recognized that the character of Professor Marvel (aka the Wizard) possessed the potential to be the most powerful man in the world. Consider how he manipulated others by pulling strings behind the scenes. He ruled an entire city and held the whole land in fear and awe of him. However, he lacked killer instinct, and so in the end he merely floated away in a pathetic balloon. (Oh, why didn’t he just kill Dorothy and her friends when he had the chance?) Still, he
was
my inspiration and he remains my namesake now that I’m in hiding, but I will not make his mistake. I do
not
lack the killer instinct. You’ll soon see. Hope the prison food still agrees with you.
Regards,
Your Son
Mr. Poe in the Great Beyond
The
famous author Edgar Allan Poe tied his silk cravat around his neck and glanced into the office restroom mirror. He brushed his fingers through his thinning black hair. He had to admit that he looked pretty good, considering he’d been dead now for more than a century and a half. Maybe even better than he’d looked when he was actually alive, struggling to make a living from his writing.
Here, one didn’t have to worry about money. Still, everyone was gainfully employed. One would go crazy with boredom otherwise. Some folks speculated that Heaven was the only place you could actually be idle and remain happy. This wasn’t Heaven. It was more of an “in-between” place.
Mr. Poe had no complaints.
He liked his job. Why not? He still got to be a writer. During his lifetime he’d gotten his fill of writing short stories, poems, essays, and book reviews. He didn’t miss “high literature.” Well, not much. No, his new job, writing the fortunes for fortune cookies, was fine. It taught him how to be concise. And it was important work, especially as Mr. Poe sometimes put a few of those fortunes to special uses, which he kept secret from his ever-prying boss, Mr. Shakespeare, who disapproved of any contact between those here in the afterlife and those still living.
What are rules for if not to be broken?
Besides, how else was Mr. Poe to help his great-great-great-great grandnephews, his namesakes, who scurried about the Earth below making trouble for those who deserved it and making life more interesting for everybody else? Edgar and Allan were not ordinary boys. For reasons that even Mr. Poe did not understand, the boys’ thoughts and feelings were tied to each other. But it was not just this unusual characteristic that sustained Mr. Poe’s interest. He admired their adventurous spirit, their darkly perverse sense of humor, and their disregard for any rules that were mere foolishness. Ah, what he’d give to be young and brilliant again and living outside the
boundaries set by society. What on Earth—or in this in-between place—could be finer?
Yet all was not well for his nephews.
For years, Mr. Poe had observed a murderous, power-mad professor of quantum physics spying on Edgar and Allan. Now the professor was using a false name and plotting to kidnap the boys for some kind of scientific experiment. Though Mr. Poe wasn’t clear on the details, he knew he had to bend office rules to help the boys as best he could.
After a last glance in the mirror, Mr. Poe returned to his cubicle, which was always messier than Emily Dickinson’s, but never quite as messy as Walt Whitman’s. Mr. William Shakespeare stood waiting for him, arms crossed and an angry expression on his pale, oval face.
This behavior did not intimidate Mr. Poe.
With a few lucky breaks when he was alive, Mr. Poe might have been an even greater poet than Shakespeare.
“But soft! what light through yonder window breaks?” he said to Mr. Shakespeare, moving around his desk and taking his seat.
“Enough of your guff, Mr. Poe.”
Mr. Poe wondered if it was those starched Elizabethan
collars Mr. Shakespeare insisted on wearing that made him so irritable. No matter. Mr. Poe leaned back in his chair and put his boots up on his desk, lacing his hands behind his head as if he were merely contemplating a summer day. “Guff?” he asked, in the same mocking tone his nephews had used with their principal.
Mr. Shakespeare ignored him. “Poe, I’m missing a book from my personal library. It’s a text on quantum entanglement. Marvelous stuff. Indeed, this new science seems to prove once and for all what I proposed more than four hundred years ago—that there are ‘more things in heaven and earth…than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’”
Mr. Poe hated it when Mr. Shakespeare quoted himself.
“Let me assure you, losing a book is quite unusual for me,” Mr. Shakespeare continued, fiddling with his tight collar. “Why, I haven’t misplaced a volume from my personal collection since…well, since I ‘accidentally’ dropped
your
first book of poems into the office furnace here when you were just a beginning scribbler down in Baltimore.” He smirked. “Anyway, you wouldn’t happen to know what’s become of the book, would you?
Not your book of ‘poems,’ that is. The expert, critical judgment of the flames took care of that. But my missing book on quantum physics?”
Mr. Poe felt his anger rise. “‘Judgment of the flames,’ my derriere!” he thought. His first book of poems had been good. And yes, Mr. Poe had borrowed the science text from Mr. Shakespeare’s office. At this moment it sat on a shelf not two feet from where Mr. Shakespeare stood. Anyone could see it. (Though in one of Mr. Poe’s stories, “The Purloined Letter,” his detective solved a case by realizing that sometimes the most effective place to hide something was in plain sight.)
“Perhaps you can consult one of your old plays to locate the missing book,” Mr. Poe suggested snidely. “After all, to hear you tell it, your writing contains all the wisdom of the ages.”
Mr. Shakespeare laughed. “
Please.
I’d never say such a thing about my own work. It’s only countless generations of scholars who heap such praise upon me.”
Mr. Poe sighed. He too had plenty of fans among the critics. Perhaps not as many as Mr. Shakespeare, but then Mr. Shakespeare had been in the public eye for well over two centuries longer than Mr. Poe. Still, there was no use arguing with the boss. Mr. Poe pointed to the book.
Mr. Shakespeare nodded and picked it up. “There’s something else, Mr. Poe.”
There always was.
“Of equal importance to me,” Mr. Shakespeare continued, “is learning why
you’ve
suddenly become fascinated with this new science.”
“I’m a man of diverse interests.”
“Yes, but isn’t it also true that your nephews are at this moment being menaced by a secret organization whose ambitions have something to do with this subject?”
A question to which Mr. Shakespeare already knew the answer….
“If you’ve been researching this subject with the intention of somehow getting involved in the boys’ dilemma,” Mr. Shakespeare said, “then I must remind you that it is not our place to interfere in the lives of those below, however dangerous their situations. Understand?”
“I understand that’s the policy,” Mr. Poe said.
“And do you plan to abide by it?”
Mr. Poe glanced at his pocket watch. “Ah, I see it’s time for my coffee break, Mr. Shakespeare.” He swept his boots from his desk and stood. “If you’ll excuse me, please.”
“You’ve only been at your desk three minutes, Mr. Poe.”
“Is that all? Funny, it seems as if I’ve been sitting here listening to you for hours and hours.”
“Mr. Poe, your attitude is not likely to get you promoted upstairs anytime soon.”
Mr. Poe shrugged.
“And there’s yet another thing,” Mr. Shakespeare said.
“Isn’t there always?”
Mr. Shakespeare continued. “Mr. Picasso in the art department just told me that you were recently seen hanging about his poster room. He further explained that a poster with a picture of a sleeping kitten was released with an unapproved, altered message, and that this poster just happened to make its way into the home of your nephews.”
“Well, isn’t that a coincidence?” Mr. Poe observed, folding his arms across his chest.
Mr. Shakespeare stamped his foot. “You imbecile! Didn’t you know that unauthorized transmissions from our world to the world of the living often become garbled? Typographical errors? Lines cut short, words printed backward, or whole passages upside down?”
Mr. Poe shrugged. “Nothing’s perfect.”
“Imperfection is precisely why we prohibit communiqués.”
“I’ll keep that in mind in the future, boss.”
Mr. Shakespeare shook his head. “Exactly what message do you think you sent down to your nephews on that poster?”
There was no use lying, Mr. Poe figured. “Beware the catnapping.”
“‘Catnapping’ as one word?”
“Of course,” Mr. Poe said. “That terrible professor was plotting to steal their cat. They needed to be warned.”
Mr. Shakespeare put his hand to his forehead. “The message went through with an extra space. Instead of ‘catnapping,’ it read ‘cat napping,’ Mr. Poe. Two words. You managed only to warn your nephews to beware sleeping cats!”
Mr. Poe’s face paled at the news.