My legs weaken. I open my mouth but can’t even shriek.
The creature saunters toward me on the hard soles of slippers carved out of charcoal, and with every clomp of her feet, my spine grows colder, colder, colder . . .
My eyes water.
I still can’t speak.
She stops right in front of me, the shadows bleeding from her sleeves like gallons of black paint, staining my rug, and the smells of hot coals and charred wood engulf my nose. My knees fail me; my head dizzies. With a thump, I drop down to my chair, and the wickedest, the most brilliant lines of prose and verse hum inside my head.
The girl clasps my face in her hands, her palms fiery and firm, and she breathes down on me with a heat that singes the wiry little hairs inside my nostrils.
“Why are you shaking so much, Eddy?” she asks. Rings of fire radiate from her pupils, pulsating out to the edges of obsidian irises.
I squeeze my lips together to suppress the tremors in my chin. My eyes veer toward the necklace clasped around her throat, just inches from my face—a necklace strung with a collection of human teeth that clink together with each of her movements.
“Wh-wh-who are you?” I ask in a strained whisper that pains my tonsils.
“I’ve been with you for so long, Eddy,” she says. “You know who I am.”
I shake my head. “You can’t be here.”
“I’m hungry.”
“No, you must leave! Pa could walk into this room at any minute.”
“Why are you suddenly so afraid of me?” She cocks her head, and the fire in her eyes dims. “I’ve been with you every single time a macabre verse or a grotesque image flickers through your brain. I’m with you in graveyards and during bleak midnight—”
“You can’t be here!” I grab her wrists and fight to pull her hands off my face. “I’m so close to escaping this place. Please! Get out!”
Her fingers squeeze down on my cheekbones. “At the very least write down my name.”
“You have no name. Please, for the love of God! Leave!”
She bends closer, and those teeth at her neck again clatter together. “Don’t leave me standing here as a nameless creature, Edgar. I might be able to pass myself off as a decent muse if you christen me with a poetic appellation that falls from the tongue like satin.” She glances at the goose-feather quill resting in my brass inkstand, revealing the profile of her aquiline nose—a nose curved into the shape of a beak, even more so than Pa’s hawkish proboscis.
“Give me a name that means ‘light,’ not shadow,” she says, “and we may be able to show them there’s beauty in horror.”
She drops her hands from my face and steps two feet away.
I touch my cheeks, for they now itch like mad. A chalky film of soot coats the tips of my fingers.
The girl fetches my charcoal drawing from the floor, lays it out on the desk beside me, and, with a slap of her left palm against the paper, she says, “Name me.”
I scoot around to face my desk, wiping sweat from my brow with the back of my right sleeve. Naming her might chase her away, I reason. If all she wants is a name, then give it to her. For heaven’s sake! Give it to her!
My hand shakes when I slide the gray quill from my inkstand.
“Edgar Poe,” she says so softly, and I peer at her once more. “Bestow on me a name that they shall sing forevermore.”
Hearing this, I write:
Lenore
Someone raps upon my door.
I leap up from my chair. “It’s Pa!”
“Are you certain?”
“Leave!” I grab her by the arms and shove her toward the door that leads from my bedroom out to the upper level of Moldavia’s double portico. “Get out!” I swing the door open. “Don’t ruin my chances for the university. Please! Go hide somewhere. Disappear!” I push her outside and hear the swish and rustle of all the feathers flocking her skirt. “He’ll kill you if you stay!”
I slam the door shut, bolt the latch, and pull the purple curtains shut to stop seeing her stunned black eyes peering in through the glass.
Ma opens the main bedroom door. “Edgar?” she asks. “Were you just shouting?”
I wipe more soot off my cheeks and clear my throat. “I’m sorry. I’m . . . um . . . I lost my temper over Pa’s latest insults and abuses.”
Ma stands in my doorway with one hand on the latch, the other at her breast. The sadness elongating her eyes, the redness of her nose that betrays recent tears, pains me to no end, and yet I don’t want her lingering here inside my chamber, hearing any sounds that might arise from that . . . creature I’ve just thrown outside.
“Where’s Pa?” I ask, moving away from the back door, even though I feel the curtains looming behind me.
Ma drops her hand from her chest. “He just stepped out.”
My heart jumps into my throat. “He’s . . . Pa? . . . P-P-Pa’s somewhere outside?”
“Yes. He went into town.”
We lock eyes. Pa’s escapes into town typically mean he’s visiting his newest mistress, the widow Elizabeth Wills—and yet that disgusting possibility isn’t the predicament that horrifies me at present.
He’ll see what just emerged from my room.
He’ll see her. Dear God, he’ll see my demon muse!
I wheel around and yank open the curtains, hoping to pull the wraith back inside, to hide her somewhere in the house.
But she’s gone.
CHAPTER FOUR
Lenore
Ahhh . . . the sight of my name branded in ink in the whimsical loops of my poet’s handwriting has quickened the blood in this odd new body of mine. Down on the snow-covered streets of the city, surges of ecstasy careen through my soul—my flourishing, strengthening soul, stifled no more. I spread out my arms, and my eyes flutter closed at the pleasurable thickening of my bones, my muscles, my organs, my skin . . . My fingernails harden, my lungs swell with air, and the shadows cease dripping from my sleeves.
I smooth out the feathers lining my skirt and say with a pleased sigh, “Let them see me!”
Off I then traipse to a section of the city where clusters of chimneys pipe thick plumes of smoke into the steely winter sky—where brooding brick mansions and acres of land give way to smaller homes built of wood, butted together on streets down the hill from the neoclassical columns of the state capitol building.
A chorus of church bells peals to the north and the east—a clanging commotion I don’t care for in the slightest, for it reminds me of that white-haired bishop’s pontifications. My shoulders jerk at each bong.
Si. Lence. Your. Mu. Ses!
Si. Lence. Your. Mu. Ses!
A one-horse carriage rolls toward me, its driver an older man with the face of a prune who shrinks down in his seat when he spies me wandering toward him.
“Aha!” I shout, and I raise the hem of my skirt to better clamber through the snow. “You look like you’re close to meeting my old friend Death, sir! Not much longer until that rickety heart of yours stops ticking and you slide feetfirst into your grave!”
His eyes bulge from their sockets. “W-w-what did you just say?”
I smile, warmed by his terror. “I said, not much longer until Death fetches you from the comforts of your bed and sends you down into the cold red clay of the Richmond earth!”