Matthew Pearl - The Poe Shadow

I shrank from the commotion and, finding that the man was in the process of gripping a crowbar, I hastened down the stairs, past the frantic younger woman, through the front hall, back to the door. I ran at such velocity that I could not stop myself until I was in the middle of the street, where under the vague glow of a faraway streetlight I could see a giant horse and carriage coming right for me, leaving me without time to move in any direction where I would not fall directly under its mass of hooves and wheels. Having no chance to save myself from this gruesome fate, I merely blocked my eyes with my arms from the sight of death.

In a miraculous motion, I was pulled bodily to the curb, out of harm of the carriage. My wrist was held tightly. My deliverer struggled to move me closer. I had shut my eyes in lifeless surrender, and now opened them warily upon this person, as though to find a phantasm haunting me from beyond instead of a human. I looked and found I was gazing on the face of Edgar A. Poe.

" Clark!" he said quietly, gripping me tighter, his mouth contracting into a small, intense line under the dark mustache. "We must take you away from here."

I paused, I looked again, reached my hand to his face, and in that instant all things trembled and disappeared into blackness.

When I experienced a brief moment of consciousness, it was in a dark, moist chamber. I felt myself being lowered, and I fought a strange foreboding of mortal danger. As my eyes unclosed slightly, and I lifted my neck as high as it would move, I could see only one object with true clarity, for it loomed above, the very horizon of vision.

It was a rectangular tablet, with writing upon it: HIC TANDEM FELICIS CONDUNTUR RELIQUAE.

I gasped as I realized it was a gravestone marker, and with horror translated its morbid epitaph of my twenty-nine years… Here at last he is happy.

BLACKNESS OVERTOOK MEagain. When I rose from my trance, I sat up in a sudden frenzy and gasped at the harsh thirst burning my throat. Though I could feel myself blinking, I could see nothing, and my thoughts shifted between persuading myself I had been blinded and assuring myself that I was only in a space or chamber with no light. A lamp now came on from across the room.

I heard a small voice near me: "He is awake." I could see a bowl of water and reached for it.

"No," another voice counseled sharply. " That is for the hand."

One of my hands had been hurt in my efforts at the burial yard.

"Here."

There was now a little circle of candlelight and two children, a boy and girl, whose fair complexions looked green to me, making them look like goblins under the conditions, and who stood around me in stocking feet. The gaslight was turned up now and I saw that the girl was holding forth a glass of water, patiently waiting for me with a look of perfect sweetness. I drank it feverishly.

"Where-" I began to say, then looked up again at the terrible grave marker! In the light, I could now see that it was a large and detailed sketch of a grave marker, and could read its full inscription. HIC TANDEM FELICIS CONDUNTUR RELIQUAE EDGAR ALLAN POE and, below that, OBIIT OCT. VII1849.

I turned to the little girl, grateful for her kindness. I felt suddenly protective of the children. "You are not scared?"

"No," said the girl. "Only worried for you, mister. You were a frightful sight when Father brought you in!"

I breathed easily for the first time in months. I realized I had been changed into a clean suit of clothes, and was sitting on a flat board resting on two chairs, a makeshift bed I had been lying on.

"I'm afraid, Mr. Clark, there are rarely spare beds in a house with six Poe children and one new Poe baby! I should hope this would afford you some rest nevertheless."

The man speaking was the one who'd rescued me from the street-only it was not Edgar, but rather Neilson Poe. He looked different than the last time we had met, at the police station house. He was thinner and wore a mustache that made him an almost perfect replica, at first glance, of the portraits of his cousin.

"William. Harriet." Neilson looked sternly to the children, who had remained loyally at my side. "To bed." The two children hesitated.

"You have been a great help," I said in a confidential voice to the boy and girl. "Now you must listen to your father."

They fled soundlessly from the chamber.

"Why am I here?" I asked my host.

"Perhaps you could answer the question better," Neilson said with concern, and sat across from me.

He explained that he had received word that there had been some attempt to dig out the coffin of Edgar Poe at the Westminster burial ground and, though the hour was late, he had hired a coach and started immediately for the cemetery. The streets, however, were in poor condition from the rains, and the drive necessitated a path across Amity Street, where Neilson Poe heard a great commotion that he thought was emanating from the old dwelling of his relation Maria Clemm, which-fifteen years ago-had been inhabited by Edgar Poe, as well.

Neilson, finding this coincidence most bizarre and disturbing, considering his current destination of Edgar's grave, had the driver return in this direction. Stepping down on the pavement, he began to investigate, but remembering that he should continue to the cemetery to inquire into those strange happenings, he instructed his driver to turn the carriage back around, facing the other direction, to save time. At this point, with the driver engaged in this task, I was seen emerging from the street door and, finding that I had placed myself in the immediate path of the carriage and would be crushed, Neilson pulled me down to the pavement, where I fainted.

Having seen the layer of dirt on my clothing as he lifted me into the carriage, Neilson Poe considered that the complaint he had received from the cemetery might not be entirely unrelated to my presence at Amity Street.

I remained silent, unsure how much to say. He went on.

"I transported you here at once, Mr. Clark, and my messenger boy assisted me in lifting you onto this board. The boy then brought back a doctor from the next street, who examined you and departed only a short time ago. My wife has been upstairs praying for you to recover your strength. Had you been at the Westminster burial yard tonight, sir?"

"What is that?" I asked, pointing at the sketch of the grave marker. It sat on a shelf harmlessly with other papers and books but, having initially been illumined by a little light in the chamber, had been the sole and dreary object of my attention during my brief revival of consciousness earlier.

"It is a sketch by the man I have hired to build a suitable marker for my cousin's grave. Perhaps we should speak of this later. You seemed excessively overtired."

"I will sleep no more," I said to him. Indeed, I felt my slumber had rapidly rejuvenated me. There was something more, too. Although Neilson Poe had doubts about my affairs, and I had my own about him, he had protected me-his children had protected me. I felt safe. "I am appreciative of your family's assistance this evening, but I'm afraid I know more than you may realize. You have told me and the police that Edgar Poe was not just cousin but friend. Yet I know what your cousin called you."

"What is that?"

"His ‘bitterest enemy in the world'!"

Neilson frowned, stroked his mustache, and calmly nodded without recoil. "It is true. I mean that he was known to make comments such as that, about me as well as others who cared about him."

"What would lead him to think that of you, Mr. Poe?"

"There was a time, when his affections for young Virginia had just developed. I had married my wife, Josephine, who was Virginia 's half-sister, and, feeling that my sister-in-law at thirteen was too young to leave with him, I offered to provide for her education and allow her to enter into society if she remained with us in Baltimore. Edgar saw this as an insult. He said he would not live another hour without her. He felt that I was seeking to ruin his happiness and that he would never see his ‘Sissy' again. He could not bear himself under the pressure of any grief."