Моника Шонесси - The Tell-Tail Heart

I hopped from bed to bed, exciting the broken humans into an unmanageable state as I avoided the nurses' grasping hands. Pillows and bedpans and spoons filled the air—hoorah! Several boys with crutches banged them against the bedframes, creating a rhythm that drove me around the room faster than the horse-drawn carriage. I was a lion in a jungle of blankets. I was untouchable. I was glorious.

"Run, cat, run!" they cried. "Run, cat, run!"

Eddie hovered in the doorway, shamefaced, his hands in his coat pockets. On my second go-round, someone beseeched him to help, and he reluctantly obliged. When he headed in my direction, I doubled back, landed in Caroline's lap, and waited for truth to break the horizon. He reached us, out of breath. "I am ashamed to admit," he said to Caroline, "the wayward cat is mine. May I take her?"

Caroline handed me to Eddie and looked up at him. Perhaps look was the wrong term.

His reaction to the girl's eyes surpassed even my own. He stared into their depths and stammered, "Two makes a pair!"

A Ghost of a Girl

Agirl with two glass eyes can be most persuasive. The stern of nurses crumbled at her request that I be allowed to stay, and, after issuing several admonitions about "the hell cat," they left to quiet the rest of the patients. When the room returned to a state of normalcy, I curled in Caroline's lap, where she stroked my fur with hands spun—I swear it—from silk. If not for her unfortunate association with a murderer, I might've added her to my list of approved humans.

Eddie fell into the familiar role of bedside companion and pulled up a chair. When he introduced himself, she mentioned one of his older pieces, "The Fall of the House of Usher," a tale he wrote the summer we met. "A fan!" Eddie said with a toss of his head. "And a fair one at that. If I may admit, you remind me of Mrs. Poe."

"I do?" She nestled her hands into my fur to warm them.

"Yes, except for your eyes. Hers are hazel, and yours are the loveliest shade of…let me think."

"Blue?"

"How mundane a description. No, I shall call them oceania ."

"We secretly call them Ferris Blue since most of us are graced with the color. But I like your description better."

"Ferris? As in the great Ferris family?"

"Miss Caroline Ferris. Pleased to make your acquaintance." She held out her hand, skeletal and frail, and waited for Eddie to shake it. He did so, gently.

"That's a very old name you carry," he said, "one of the oldest in Philadelphia."

"It is heavy at times," she said. "But one cannot simply set these things aside when one grows weary. Still, being a Ferris has its charms. Or, rather, had them. Gala invitations have dropped off sharply since my unfortunate turn. Most are factories of tedium, but I am sad to have missed Charles Dickens in March. My second cousin Bess hosted a dinner in his honor."

"I met him then. Twice. An enthralling storyteller, if I may confess. Boz and I run in the same circles, and he was cordial enough to grant me interviews." Eddie took his coat off and pushed it back on the chair. "I could have listened to him for hours."

"Did he tell many stories?"

"We spoke mostly of poetry."

"And his manner?"

"As if Philadelphia would make a fine footstool."

"I knew it!" She giggled, rousing me from my contentment. But the delight was short lived. Her voice resumed its usual dirge. "My Uncle Gideon still mingles with that crowd. You may have seen his name in the paper or heard it in the streets around Rittenhouse Square."

"Gideon Ferris? I thought he fell on hard times after Jackson killed the U.S. Bank."

"No, no, we still own several coal mines to the west." She began to stroke me again, and I rolled belly side up. "How else could he have afforded my new eyes?"

"Yes, it is a considerable mystery."

I peeked at Eddie. Strange that he'd repeated the constable's phrase from yesterday. He smoothed his mustache, as if uncertainty preceded his next statement.

"If you don't mind me asking, Miss Ferris, how did you lose them?"

"Vanity," she said matter-of-factly. "It is a sad story, Mr. Poe, and I do not wish to trouble you."

"Sad stories are my life's work." He crossed his legs and rested his hands on his knee. "I would be honored to hear yours."

Caroline sat back against her pillows and blinked her doll eyes. I fairly expected them to roll back in her head. "You wouldn't know it to look at me now," she said, "but I was once quite pleasant to behold. The summer I turned eighteen, I received three marriage proposals." Her face brightened. "In those days of never-ending sunshine, I wanted for nothing. Private tutors in art and poetry, dancing assemblies at Powel House, gowns stripped from the fashion plates, regattas on the Schuylkill. And, Mr. Poe, you have never properly summered unless you've summered on Cape May. I'm almost ashamed to admit these pleasures in the company of unfortunates." She gestured to the occupied beds around her. "Pity would be no more, if we did not make somebody poor. And mercy no more could be, if all were as happy as we."

"William Blake," Eddie replied. "Well stated."

"Like all good fairytales, however, mine was not without tragedy. And it struck soundly my twentieth year." She reached for a glass of water on her nightstand, and Eddie handed it to her. After a sip, she continued. "In October of 1837, my parents booked passage on the steamship Home to travel from New York to Charleston. But a gale overtook the vessel and broke her apart near Ocracoke, scattering bodies to the sea. Lifeboats were of no use as they capsized in the boiling surf. Ninety-five souls lost, including those of my parents, only a quarter mile from the shore." The liquid in her glass trembled, so Eddie took it from her and replaced it on the nightstand.

"Take heart, Miss Ferris. I, too, lost my parents at a young age, and I am no less a man."

"Thank you," she said. "I will remember that in my darkest hours. Though I suppose, all of my hours are dark now."

"I did not mean to take you from your story." He patted her hand. "Please continue."

I stood and stretched. Caroline's lap had grown too bony for comfort, so I crossed to the end of the bed and secured a new spot until they'd finished their conversation. Hunting requires a great deal of patience, and I had plenty.

"After my parents died," she said, "I went to live with my Uncle Gideon. He and my father were close, very close, so my uncle treated me as his own flesh and blood. Life was tolerable, if not acceptable, for several years until my illness. Rapid heartbeat, general weakness, thinning hair. For the longest time, doctors didn't know what was wrong with me. And then my eyes began to…" She sat forward. "Mr. Poe, are you constitutionally prepared?"

"For things of a physical nature, I am not. But for this, none are more suited than I."

She lay back again. "It started with pressure behind my eyes, propelling them forward as if drawn by magnet. This predicament wasn't so much painful as alarming. But we Ferrises are hardy stock, and I persevered without complaint. A year later, however, they'd begun to bulge from their sockets with such protuberance that leaving the house was no longer possible unless I wore a mourning veil. And what is a mourning veil without the rest of the costume? From then on, I became a black ghost, drifting the streets of Philadelphia, wailing for a life lost—my own."

"Dear, God," Eddie said.

"Just going to market for bread and cheese became a hardship, and every night, I needed help binding my eyelids closed with a strip of muslin so I could sleep. As you can imagine, Uncle Gideon became my constant caretaker, leaving only for business trips to Virginia. It was during one of these jaunts that I caught an infection in both eyes, turning them as red and runny as ox hearts. Yet I was too proud to ask for help. How could I, looking as I did? He returned three weeks later to find me crawling around the kitchen on all fours, weeping and scratching at the bottom cupboards for a tin of crackers. Why, I had almost starved! By the time Uncle checked me into Wills, my eyes were beyond hope, and Dr. Burton had no choice but to remove them. So you see, vanity stole my sight." She delivered a stillborn smile. "They diagnosed me with Grave's Disease the same week. That was nine months ago."