Poe - [Anthology] Read online

  He spoke of phenomena and contraptions I could not understand while his hands moved against his bonds, fingers straining to reach the unseen. His eyes seemed to watch an invisible dance in the air between the bed and ceiling: flit, flit, glide.

  I had hoped to make some sense of the “terrible things” Dr. Griffin mentioned, but as my uncle spoke on and on until his voice dried to a whisper, I could find no reason in the words. There was only one word that made sense to me and when he said it at last, his eyes moved to the far corner of the room.

  “Reynolds.”

  I turned in time to see the man called Reynolds slink out of the room. The tail of his brown coat (how like the coat my uncle had been found in) slithered out the door a second before it closed.

  How long has he watched you?

  How did he get in?

  My heart stammered in my chest. I grabbed my bag and followed Reynolds from the hall, only in time to see his coattails once again slide around a distant corner. I fled past Dr. Griffin and into the blowing rain of the day. Reynolds was a tall man with a long stride and there was no keeping pace with him. By the time I reached the store where I had first met Reynolds, I could see no sign of him.

  Then, coming down the cobblestones, appeared the same gold and claret four-in-hand I had seen the day before, Reynolds now perched beside the driver. The horses’ hooves didn’t seem to touch the ground, even though I heard them clearly ring against the street stone. I lunged into the street, for the driver would have to stop for fear that he might hit me, but he didn’t. The hot breath of one horse curled over my cheek before the world went black.

  I woke, if one can awaken when one does not remember sleeping, atop the auburn horse, harness and tack cutting into my left hand, while my right still clung to my bag with its pistol. The ground sped away beneath me at a dreadful haste and for a moment I buried my face in the horse’s mane. My cheek lay against hot horsehide, silky red-gold mane blinding me, every part of my body jostled as the carriage continued onward.

  I chanced a backwards glance at the driver and Reynolds and squeezed my eyes shut a second after. They were not men!

  Another look proved this true. The driver sat tall in the seat, a black coat dripping from his narrow body. A tattered blue scarf gave the illusion of a neck, but I feared he truly had none. The octangular head was small and gray, with bulging black eyes that must have taken everything in at once. Surely he saw me staring at his four spindly legs and two arms, all of which seemed employed in driving the carriage. His arms bore spines and hooks, over which he had draped a couple of reins, but I felt certain this wasn’t their main usage.

  “Miss Franks!”

  It was Reynolds who spoke, but a Reynolds I did not recognize. Reynolds possessed a squat body, colored brown with slim yellow stripes, and he now spoke through mandibles. His brown coat had pooled around him; why, his thin arms would never support the fabric!

  “Hold fast!” he said. “We cannot stop in the endless lands.”

  I turned my head around so that I might see these endless lands for myself, lifted myself on elbows enough to see around the whipping horse mane.

  Every bit of Baltimore had vanished and all around us spread a seemingly endless blur of gold shot through with ruby stars. Whirlpools twisted in the sky, churning nausea within me as I watched them. I watched until I felt I would be ill, then bowed and buried my head again. I prayed the ride would soon be over, but perhaps there was no one to answer that prayer, for the ride went on and on.

  The motion of the horse beneath me soon became familiar, enjoyable. I had never known such a sensation.

  Its warm hide was also a comfort as the air grew colder around us. There seemed to be no sun yet all around us were slanting shafts of light. Colored golden and ivory, they fell from above and the more I watched them, the more my eyes began to adjust and see what truly lay around us.

  The land was no longer barren. Perhaps it never had been. My eyes became accustomed to the light and the way it changed the landscape around us. From one angle, the land was empty; from another, I could glimpse strange constructs in the distance. There seemed to be little near the horizon; everything I was able to see hovered in that sunless sky. If I saw other people, it was only briefly; I saw what seemed a woman, but the wind was tearing her apart. She shredded, arms and legs peeling apart like fabric, and then even her clothing lifted up and away. This didn’t seem to bother her. She smiled and went on her way, into the vast sky.

  Oh, that vast sky—my uncle’s sky? Had he seen this place and breathed this air? This air, that smelled vaguely of apricots and roasting meat, washed over us in abrupt gusts, forcing my eyes shut. I savored the darkness.

  I couldn’t understand this place. What was it and how could it exist? The more I wondered, the more ill I felt. I remembered my Baltimore with its rain-washed streets, hints of sky caught between close buildings, people rushing to and from work. There seemed no such things here.

  The carriage never slowed. My nausea deepened. I became aware of hands on my shoulders, an arm under my legs. Reynolds lifted me from the horse and carried me back into the carriage itself. I lay on the padded bench and stared at him sitting opposite me. In this light, he looked like a man and had a beautiful mouth.

  The thought should have shocked me, but it didn’t.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he said.

  “That much is plain.” I had to fight to say the words and my voice didn’t sound right when I finally forced them out. I fought also to sit up, to focus my attention on Reynolds. Even though I knew he wasn’t a man, he appeared as such and it gradually began to calm my mind.

  “You’ve placed me in quite a predicament,” he added.

  I could hardly believe he was serious, but I recalled the look on his face the day we’d met, when I’d pulled him back from this very carriage. I now understood I had kept him from returning. What had drawn him out in the first place? What else tied us together? My uncle, I thought as my eyes settled on Reynolds’s vest.

  “You—You’re wearing my uncle’s vest,” I said. “I sewed it for him—”

  “A gift last Christmas,” Reynolds said. His dark velvet voice was rough again.

  “How can you know that?” My hands sought the bag at my side, but I no longer carried it; my pistol was lost.

  “Edgar told me all about you.” His mouth bent into a smile and I realized this man knew things about me he shouldn’t know. He knew about my first pet (a kitten named Croak) and my first formal dance (how I’d stumbled down the last two stairs and fallen to reveal entirely too much to those gathered); he knew my uncle’s stories could frighten me, and he knew that deep down, I loved the fear.

  “I don’t understand.” I blinked back tears and looked out the carriage window. The angle of light allowed me to see to the horizon this time. Against its water-washed color, I saw a wrecked whalebone ship. Closer to the carriage wheels, I saw pallid bloated creatures upon the shifting ground. One of them held a golden key in its mouth.

  “How long have you known my uncle?” I asked. I looked back at Reynolds, who watched me and not the world beyond the windows. “How long was he your prisoner?”

  “I did not imprison your uncle, though others of my kind did.”

  “I felt you put those shackles on him,”

  Reynolds said nothing to that. Maybe it was an action he couldn’t argue; maybe he had been forced. Whichever, he kept his silence, watching me with keen eyes that seemed to see all of me at once. He knew my parents were dead, and he knew—he knew Edgar was my only family.

  “Stop watching me,” I whispered.

  “I will not,” Reynolds said. “I spent far too many years dreaming of you to look away now.”

  I curled my hands into my skirts. “What the devil do you mean by that?” If I thought I could have survived it, I would have jumped from the carriage. I think Reynolds must have known this, for he grasped my hands and held me firm.

  “Your uncle should neve
r have come here. I tried to fix that and failed. The least I could do was see that he didn’t die alone this time. He’s gone now. All you’ve known is gone. You shouldn’t be here, but I can’t help but be happy you are.”

  I jumped from the carriage then. Reynolds’s words scared me worse than the idea of death. I wrenched my hands out of his, pushed him backwards, and kicked the door open. I flung myself into the speeding landscape and landed in sandy, loose ground.

  There was no sign of the carriage, nor any sound from it. Its wheels had left no tracks. Wherever I was, I needed to get out, but there was nothing to guide me. No sun, no landmarks, nothing on the horizon here. I wiped the grit from my eyes and strained to see through the beams of light.

  Reynolds found me first. I caught him from the corner of my eye, running at me as fast as the carriage horses had flown. I turned to run, but the ground seemed to suck me down. Reynolds was on me before I could escape; he dragged me down and pinned my hands, slapping a shackle around one wrist.

  “Beast!” I cried, unable to wrench myself free.

  “Literally, that is true,” Reynolds said. His nice mouth curled in a sneer. “Edgar called me fonderous.”

  I slapped him with my free hand. He felt of flesh and bone and his skin reddened as would any man’s under a strike, but he only laughed and secured the other shackle to my other wrist.

  “Come on.”

  Reynolds kept hold of the shackles, pulling me alongside him. The ground beneath our feet became increasingly more solid, less sandy, and I walked with a little more assurance. Even if I didn’t have the first notion where we were going, we were certainly making a good pace.

  “I want you to understand,” Reynolds said as we crested a slight rise in the land. I could see beasts in the distance, moving high in the sky. Even so, they were still tethered to the ground by long, spindly legs.

  “Then speak plainly. I am your captive audience.”

  A look of pain crossed Reynolds’ face; I had seen the same thing in my uncle at the hospital just that morning.

  “We must reach the city, Miss Franks,” he said. “Will you come back into the carriage? We cannot reach it on foot.”

  I now saw the carriage awaiting us, a claret-colored shimmer in the strange air. There was no choice, was there? Go with Reynolds to his city, or stay here where I knew no direction and might wander forever. I lifted my hands.

  “Unbind me and I will come with you,” I said.

  Reynolds did not argue. He unlocked my shackles with a key he kept in his sleeve. We climbed back into the carriage and, without word to the driver, were off. Reynolds watched me the entire ride and I told myself I didn’t care. I didn’t care.

  I never witnessed stranger things than I did in the city itself. The light continued to play tricks upon my mind, and the buildings seemed half open to the sky. The people of the city were paper thin; on edge they could not be seen, though when they turned a certain way in the light their monstrous faces became dreadfully apparent. Some looked as our carriage driver did; others I could barely comprehend. I quickly learned how to look in order to see only the slimmest slice of them.

  When I learned this manner of looking, I discovered something else. This city was not anchored to the ground. Indeed, the entire place was on the move, buildings and artworks balanced on the backs of immense creatures. A great distance below us, I could see their small feet moving; legs made of thin spire-wire upward to their fabulous bodies—bearing these incredible weights. So too I realized the carriage had come to rest upon its four horses; they carried us without effort through the buildings, the creatures, the people balanced upon a road of memory between.

  “This place makes no sense,” I said and Reynolds laughed darkly. He pressed behind me at the carriage window, his hand beneath my ribcage. Did he fear I would jump again? Or did he just find pleasure in touching me?

  “Your uncle wanted to understand it. Do you remember his stories? His poems?”

  I had forgotten them (and indeed Baltimore, my uncle, the rain, the everything) until Reynolds brought them back to me. I had trouble breathing when I remembered it all. All I had now lost.

  “He wrote of this place,” I said. Once the idea was voiced, I saw my uncle everywhere I looked. There, he had written of that strange creature with its shrieking hair; and there, he had written of that building, ever in flame. My uncle’s mind sparked in every shadow of this place; as the creatures made their roads of memory, so too my uncle made the roads, circling ever on, one begetting the beginning of the other.

  “He helped create this place,” Reynolds said.

  The horses carried us to an enormous throne, so large it took three of the creatures to support it. How they managed I’ll never know. Reynolds bid me to hold his hand, for I’d never walked a street such as this; it was alive beneath my feet, guiding us from the carriage up to the throne where a woman awaited us.

  Her boundless hyacinth hair spilled down her body like water, to her feet and beyond, where gardenias and sand dollars scattered. Silver stars gleamed around her head. She wore a comet for a bracelet; endlessly circling, sparking with vilest fire. Near her throne sat dark, hand-woven baskets filled with fruit. She reached down, plucked a green pear, and offered it to me.

  I did not take it. I had read my uncle’s stories and knew well enough what happened to young women who ate the fruit of strange lands. The queen, if she were such, took no offense. She smiled down at me, then looked at Reynolds.

  “You failed,” she said.

  “I did.” He bowed before her. “He has died alone yet again.”

  “Speak plain, the both of you.” Granted, my uncle had also written stories of outspoken young women; their end was little better than that of those who ate the fruit. I didn’t care; I was somewhere beyond care.

  Neither spoke. Rather, they showed me.

  The queen twisted the pear in half and within its gritty flesh I saw my uncle writing. He wrote of this place, of a city near a sea. He slept each night and thought he dreamed, but his dreams were not that at all. He came here, snatched away by these people. Fairy, he named them, but they were not; it was the only word he knew to apply.

  They stole him away every night, him and more of his kind, artists all, for these creatures loved their minds. I felt this love equal to my own for Edgar Poe. But this love had a dark side for as they loved these artists, they consumed them.

  When my uncle made to escape and leave this place behind, they chained him. They held him, naked and dirty in an unlit cell. How many cells stretched in the darkness? I could not count them all. This placed smelled of one’s worst imaginings—darker, fouler. There was a seam of light that came through the door to hover above the floor. The seam! Within this light, dust sparked, dreams flicked.

  In this place, my uncle wrote stories in his head. Despite their cruelty to him, some part of my uncle still loved the magic of these people, the impossibility. He loved that they made him create better stories, stories that helped create their fantastic reality.

  Only one person visited my uncle; Edgar came to name him Reynolds. Reynolds came daily, to take stories for his people, to bring Edgar a measure of food and clean water. Eventually Edgar’s stories turned from madmen to a sorrowful young woman who did not even know she was sorrowful. The thing that pleased her most were the stories, so my uncle kept on spinning them. Reynolds fell in love with this young woman. With me.

  My uncle escaped them—I laughed through my tears at the sight of him slipping his bonds like a magician. He stole clothes—no, see there, it is a hand! A hand offering Edgar clothing that was not his own. Reynolds’s hand.

  “Death has little meaning here,” the queen said as she squashed half of the pear and tossed it away. “Though it means much in your world.”

  “Please speak plain,” I whispered, the scent of pear and despair sharp in the air between us. I glanced at Reynolds. “Please.”

  “I helped your uncle escape,” Reynolds said. “The
first time, he died alone, unknown. I undid that memory—”

  As one undoes a knot, I thought. I had looked into his eyes before; I had kissed that mouth once. I remembered these things though through a wash of water; they were blurred and indistinct. Reynolds had tried once before; I had not listened.

  “—and tried again. I brought him to Baltimore, got you the note. You reached him, and yet now you’ve come here and he will die alone;has died alone. You—”

  “Can only return to death,” the queen said and threw away the rest of the now-rotted pear.

  “Your uncle is dead,” Reynolds said. “The moment he returned, the years he had been here caught up to him.”

  “But he wasn’t gone years,” I said. Surely there was a mistake. I felt desperate to make these creatures understand that. “Only overnight. I feared him drunk and sleeping it off.”