Linda Fairstein - Entombed

"Many of the things, yes," she said. "I suppose you know that Virginia died here, quite tragically, within the first year after they arrived."

Mike whispered in my ear, "She would have been better off in a pediatric hospital."

Mercer asked Bailey, "How old was she?"

"Only twenty-five. Pulmonary consumption is what they called it then. Tuberculosis. Some of Poe's most famous poems were crafted at that very desk in front of you-'Annabel Lee,' 'Ulalume,' 'The Bells.'"

I thought of these familiar rhymes, each portraying themes of a man's enduring love for a woman who had died.

She was a child and I was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea…

The wind came out of a cloud, chilling and

Killing my Annabel Lee.

"And this," she said, stepping back so I could look over the half-door that opened into a tiny room that held only a single bed, with a small round table and chair beside it, "this is actually the bedroom in which Virginia died."

Stark and almost bare, the room was smaller than any jail cell I had ever seen. It was depressing to contemplate the last days of Virginia's young life, and far easier to understand the great melancholy that enveloped the poet while she lay dying.

"There's not even a fireplace," I said. "How could she have possibly made it through the winter in here?"

"There are letters from friends who visited the Poes during those months. Edgar used to wrap her in his coat under the thin coverlet and sheets. The bitter cold certainly must have hastened her death."

Behind me, in a corner, was a duplicate of the bronze bust of Poe that stood in the Hall of Fame. Mike pointed to a scroll on the wall next to the statue that listed the names of the Bronx natives who supported the preservation of the cottage. Gino Guidi's was at the top in bold letters. There were only several others I recognized who had achieved prominence beyond the neighborhood: from fashionistas like Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein to leaders of the bench and bar, like Justin Feldman, Roger Hayes, and the Roberts brothers-George and Burton.

Opposite the half-door was a very narrow staircase that wound up to the second floor.

"You'll have to go up one at a time," Bailey said. "Three of you won't fit there."

I ascended first, to see two more little rooms-one in which Poe slept when he wasn't keeping vigil by his bride's bed, and the other in which Virginia's mother lived, first with the couple, and then after both had died. These quarters had low, sloping ceilings and only the light from an eyebrow window that looked out to the park. I held on to the railing and backed down the stairs. Mike and Mercer were waiting at the front door, and I walked toward them behind our knowledgeable guide.

"So despite his success," I asked Bailey, "they were still quite poor, weren't they?"

"Desperately poor," she said. "There's a letter he wrote to a friend in which he complained of living in such dreadful poverty here that he had no money for shoes or-"

Her words were cut short by a bloodcurdling scream that seemed to come from the far end of the park.

"Help me! Help!" I heard. The voice sounded like that of a child or adolescent.

Mike and Mercer stepped outside and Kathleen Bailey was down the steps immediately behind them, running toward the playground, where four or five people were gathering at the scene of the commotion. I stopped on the porch for a few seconds, debating whether or not to leave the cottage open and unguarded.

Passersby clustered on the sidewalk, some moving in the same direction as Mike and Mercer, while others withdrew with their children, disappearing down the side streets.

I walked several more steps down the path and fixed myself at the gate, so that I could keep one eye on the house while watching the melee, still available if the guys wanted my help.

Suddenly, before Mercer got to the playground, I saw an older kid dash from behind the swings, race around the bandshell, and cut out across Kingsbridge Road into the traffic.

"Get him!" the voice screamed again.

I stood on my tiptoes to see whether Mike and Mercer had reached the small crowd at the far end of the park. It was too late for me to turn and look when I finally heard the noise behind me. Everything went black as I felt a crushing blow against the back of my head.

The pain was so intense that when I regained consciousness, I couldn't bear to open my eyes. I tried to inhale and give air to my aching brain, but there was something in my mouth that I gagged on as soon as I drew breath.

My pain was dwarfed by fear. I was in a box, smaller than a coffin. I didn't need to look. I could feel the wooden boards beneath my back, close to my arms on each side, and knew there was not enough space above me to allow me to pick up my head.

Panic prevented me from doing what I needed to do most- regulate my breathing and conserve whatever oxygen there was available.

Slowly, I opened one eye. A sharp pang sliced across my forehead, forging little lightning streaks in my line of sight. There was a board above me-several boards-and between them were slats through which the gray daylight filtered in.

I wasn't underground. I wasn't buried in the earth. I tried to eliminate those two horrors that had frightened me the most.

I sniffed the air as I breathed in. The odor was dank and moist and the wood beneath me was wet and cold.

I closed my eyes again and watched as the lightning streaks dissolved into yellowish blobs that floated back and forth across my eyelids.

Ordinary street noises seemed close by. Automobile traffic and honking horns, then police sirens too far away to be useful to me. I could hear voices of women-a group of women-speaking in Spanish but walking away from whatever sidewalk was near my temporary coffin.

Voices again. This time it sounded like men, coming from the opposite direction. It was Mercer Wallace, calling my name, opening and closing doors as he did. I must still be somewhere within Poe Cottage.

Surely he and Mike would think of the poet's bizarre tales of premature burial, one of which had launched us on this hunt for a killer. The "dull, quick sound" of my own heart beating-like that of the telltale one-seemed deafening to me. Surely they would figure to look everywhere for me before leaving and locking up the sad little house. How did Poe describe that telltale noise that haunted the murderer? Like the "sound a watch makes when enveloped in cotton."

Voices came closer, and footsteps on pavement, too. I was on my back; my arms had been folded behind me and loosely restrained-probably with my woolen scarf-my hands beneath my thighs. The walls of my confinement restricted me, and I couldn't free my hands, which were tingling from the lack of circulation. I moved my right leg to try to bring my knee up to knock against the floorboard above me. But the space was tight and I could only lift it an inch or two. It rubbed against the wood but made no noise.

The pounding on the back of my brain was intense. My neck strained as I raised my head, knocking the crown of it against the boards. My hair cushioned the contact and it seemed to me even less audible than my heartbeat.

"What's in here?"

It was Mike's voice, and I almost laughed with relief at how ridiculous I had been to panic with my two friends only yards away.

"Just the root cellar," Kathleen Bailey answered. "Nothing."

Of course I had noticed the slanted roof of the small addition that was off to the right of the cottage entrance. It had a door that faced the rear street, where we had circled around before parking the car. It seemed no larger than a dollhouse. No wonder there were boards on either side of me, too. They supported the uneven flooring as the ground beneath sloped down the short incline.