My fists again clench. “I don’t understand why we keep having this same fight.”
“Because you’re seventeen years old now. You can’t keep wasting your time like this. I refuse to invest in expensive university tuition if you’re planning to live the life of a pauper.”
“You used to encourage me to write. When I attended Master Clarke’s school, you sat beside me in front of his desk and laid out my poems in front of him. You asked if he thought they were good enough for publication.”
“You were a child, Edgar. A clever child with a spark of talent, but you’re not going to seem so clever and charming when you’re a grown man falling behind on your bills.”
“But—”
“You’re a well-bred Southern gentleman, educated in both London and Richmond, for God’s sake. Fight off the urge to write these terrible Byron imitations of yours before you turn into a sickly, filthy burden on society, just like your—”
The word he wants to say hangs in the air between us with a chilling weight.
He longs to compare me to my mother. My poor mother, Eliza Poe, who struggled to ensure that her young children would be sent to good homes as she withered on her death bed. A woman whom less-charitable snobs viewed as a whore because she trod the boards as a working actress.
My foster mother’s footsteps whisper across the hall downstairs. She hears us, I’m certain of it. She tries to stifle a cough, but it erupts from her throat like the bark of a dog.
Pa inhales a long sniff through his cavernous nostrils and raises his book back in front of his face.
“Are you referring to my long-dead mother, Pa?” I ask, my chin lifted.
The book remains in place.
“Pa, are you insulting her memory?” I swallow. “On the Sabbath, no less?”
“Edgar!” calls Ma from the bottom of the staircase. “Go out to the kitchen and ask Judith and Jim if they have everything they need for Sunday dinner. They’ve just finished preparing the dining room.”
“Ah, yes,” I say as I back away from the Lord of the Manor. “I can see why I should strive to model myself after you, dear Pa. Such a fine, loving gentleman, faithful and utterly devoted to his family.”
Pa lowers his book. “Do you want me to kick you out of the house this morning, boy?”
I freeze.
“I’m not legally bound to raise you, Edgar. Don’t you ever forget that.”
“How can I possibly forget when you constantly remind me?”
“If you don’t want to find yourself homeless and penniless today, then shut your damn cocky mouth and show me respect. You’re a charity case, and I’ve been generous enough to raise you like a prince.”
I turn and escape down the hall, hurling my coat onto the table outside my room with a flutter of the flame in the agate lamp. I slam my door shut behind me, hard enough to rattle the books on my shelves, and I sequester myself inside my chamber—my library and sanctuary overlooking the Allan kingdom of orchards and terraced gardens that slope down into the fog of the James River valley.
I pull out my draft of “Tamerlane” and, with fresh ink and a goose-feather quill, I scribble down my new couplet, despite that man’s threats and games.
The gay wall of this gaudy tower
Grows dim around me—death is near.
A log shifts in the hearth behind me. Startled, I turn around, fearing that Pa followed me into the room. The only movements I detect are the flames in the grate, as well as the dance of shadow and light the fire casts on the maroon fleur-de-lis of my wallpaper.
I turn back around, fetch a clean sheet of paper and a charcoal crayon, and expurgate myself of the restless abominations chewing on my soul by drawing a fiendish young woman in a black dress of mourning. I sketch long, snaking tendrils of ebony hair, smirking lips, a strong chin raised in defiance, and a pair of deep-set eyes that seem to tease: I dare you to show me to the rest of the world. I dare you to show them your morbid fancies, Eddy Poe.
The scent of smoke from my hearth—of ashes decomposing—sends me down once more into that basement crypt beneath Monumental Church, and I’m forced to remove my cravat to breathe.
My fantastic lady isn’t wicked enough, I realize, and so, instead of adorning her throat with a necklace made of pearls, I draw for her a macabre piece of jewelry that inspires a pleased chuckle from the back of my throat: a necklace beaded with twelve perfectly white, utterly hideous human molars.
I rub a hand across my mouth and ponder what more fineries the lady requires, tasting a smudge of charcoal on my bottom lip.
Something scratches at the wall behind me.
Again, I jump.
Once more, I turn, and I freeze with fear, for the glow of the fire on the shadows of my wall seemingly wriggles and yawns into the shape of a mortal being who sways to the mesmerizing rhythm of the flames. At the center of the figure beats a tiny pulse of light.
A heart.
A silent, beating heart.
“No, that’s madness,” I whisper, and I return to my drawing, now appalled at what I’ve just sketched on the paper, my eyes locked on the string of teeth encircling the girl’s neck.
What if Ma sees this? Or Elmira? So much horror. Oh, God, the attention—the fretting that would ensue!
Behind me, the lungs of the fire exhale a loud breath, perturbed by the wind stirring in the chimney—perturbed by me, perhaps. A sudden rain pelts my windows with a tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap that heightens my anxiety. The seething clouds in the sky extinguish the sunlight, and all four walls of my chamber reflect the orange of the flames—the radiant, wriggling orange of the flames.
I crumple the drawing into a ball, rise from my chair, and turn for the fire to burn this revolting excuse for art that’s just oozed from my fingers, but my feet come to an abrupt halt.
I’ve just heard a voice.
A voice in my room—near the fire—just uttered four words:
“Let. Them. See. Me.”
I inch backward, my legs stiff, my head shaking in denial, and the small glow of light within the figure on my wall brightens and pulsates with the same tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap as the beats of the rain.
Tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap . . .
The drawing falls from my fingers, dropping to the floor. I clasp my hands beneath my chin, and instead of merely mouthing words of prayer, as I did in church, I call out in full voice, “‘Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name . . .’”
Another loud breath gusts from the flames, and to my horror—to my wonder—the wriggling reflection of a figure made of fire thickens, solidifies, and steps out of the wall. Yes! A girl in a dress made of soot and black feathers climbs out of my wall! Her narrow sleeves and skirts drip with shadows that plunk against the floorboards to the same anxious rhythm as the rain’s tap, tap, tapping. Her eyes glimmer with firelight; her maroon lips match my wallpaper; her hair hangs to her waist in tangles of inky black curls. Her skin is the dismal gray of ashes, and I gulp in response to the sight of her nails—long, and hooked, and metallic.
My mouth falls open, and the trembling worsens. My pulse throbs inside my ears.
“I’m awfully hungry,” says the girl in a low voice that vibrates with a sound like a cello. “I want more words. I want the attention and fretting you’ve just promised.”