The ravens tale, p.17
The Raven's Tale, page 17
“Let us dance,” I sing out at the top of my lungs, “to Edgar Poe’s tragic tale of the Ushers!”
Out of the emerald-and-onyx sheen of the ballroom’s walls step five young women in dresses of black barege silk with short, capped sleeves and coiled rope sashes. They wear ebony gloves that reach up to their elbows, and black jewels drip from their ears and necks. Feathered masks designed to look like ravens conceal all five of their faces.
The young ladies approach the gentlemen seated on the bed—now a settee of purple velvet—and they each offer a hand to the young man whose hair corresponds to the color of their own. A blonde for Miles George, a redhead for William Burwell, and so forth.
Next to a roaring fireplace with flames as tall as I, an orchestra strikes up a discordant waltz, harsh to the ears yet stirring to the heart. The musicians’ muses buzz above their heads as a cloud of hummingbirds with bewitching coats of turquoise and sapphire that twinkle in the rays of the fire. The longer the firelight flickers against the musicians, the clearer it becomes that their faces lack flesh. These musical accompanists to the risqué revelry are mere skeletons with talent in their bones!
One of the cellists—a willowy woman in a vermillion dress—strums the main melody, and if you listen quite carefully, you can hear her weeping with a percussive beat-beat-beat, beat-beat-beat, beat-beat-beat.
The young men and women step-step-step, step-step-step, step-step-step to the rhythm of the waltz, while my poet sings his dreary song of the tragic Ushers—a dreary yet ravishing song. And oh, how his imagery causes the rich blue blood to flow through the university boys’ veins! The waltzers spin and glide quick-quick-quick, quick-quick-quick, quick-quick-quick until they fall to the floor, exhausted and sickened, for my poet just sang out such a grisly exclamation:
“James Usher sealed his sister’s dead body into the wall!”
The musicians cease playing and wait for me to react, bows raised above quivering strings, hollow eye sockets directed my way. I lift the hems of my swishing skirts, and with my feet bedecked in red satin slippers, I step over the masked girls and university boys strewn across the floorboards and clamber toward my poet, who loosens his crimson cravat by the flames of the fire. He’s breathless from his tale, his handsome face shining in the light of that theater chandelier that once lit the fair face of his mother.
“Do you feel the elation?” I ask of him.
Edgar nods, his pupils dilating from the intoxication of his own imagination, his eyes so violet, so luminous, I see creativity pulsating throughout his irises.
I offer him my hand, my fingers clad in a black glove that conceals my nails.
The members of the orchestra straighten their postures. A breath of anticipation gasps from the fire. I nod, and the musicians resume the same discordant waltz, amplified to twice its previous volume. The floor beneath my soles trembles with music.
My poet and I entwine ourselves together and launch into a dance that travels around the entire room. We stare each other in the eye, not missing a single beat-beat-beat, beat-beat-beat, beat-beat-beat with our feet-feet-feet, feet-feet-feet, feet-feet-feet. Our shadows whirl across the walls, gliding, growing, transmogrifying into a pair of ravens—while young Usher seals his sister’s corpse into the wall, while our audience freezes in horror on the floor, while I try-try-try, try-try-try, try-try-try to evolve into my future self before the music stops.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Edgar
The enchantment of the night washes out of my room with the flow of my friends spilling through my door. I’m left in silence to blow out my candles, afraid to let the tallow burn too long, unable to afford any new candles soon.
Lenore remains in the room with me, again resting her right hand on the windowsill. Her presence warms me yet unnerves me; comforts yet disquiets.
“I feel you evolving,” I say while bent over the candle that lights my table, not yet blowing that one out.
“As do I,” she says. “Glorious feathers are sprouting down the nape of my neck as I speak.”
I pull a piece of charcoal from my writing box and sketch the face of Agnes Pye Usher on the wall above the table. The tallow of the remaining candle wafts a beefy odor into the air that makes my stomach growl.
“I don’t know what my future holds for me anymore.” I thicken the folds of skin beneath Agnes’s eyes. “I doubt I’ll have much more time to write.”
“What are you talking about? We’re just now finally getting started.”
“Pa visited me yesterday after I left the hills.”
Lenore hesitates before asking, “He’s not dragging you back to Moldavia just yet, is he?”
“Not yet.” I sigh, and my chest aches when I breathe—or, rather, fail to breathe. My inhalations are so shallow, so asphyctic, that my ears ring with the warning peals of impending unconsciousness. “I’ve fallen into a debt so deep and vile . . . He said he’d send more money. I don’t believe him. He yelled at me for even talking about the fees.” I rest the charcoal on the table, leaving Agnes’s face suspended on my wall without a body, and I strive to inhale heartier breaths. “I’m moving to the West Range. Rowdy Row. A haven for students in similar situations. They won’t frown upon gambling, if that’s what I’m reduced to.”
Lenore doesn’t answer. For a moment I believe she’s left me, but when I turn, I find her watching me, the sharp sting of betrayal blotting out the fire in her eyes.
“Mr. O’Peale will be joining you in this new endeavor, won’t he?” she asks.
I avert my eyes from hers. “I’ll need my wit to survive at the card tables. I owe so much money to so many people . . .”
“What about your Gothic art? What about tonight?”
I stifle a laugh. “There’s no place for Gothic art in the world of gambling and debt, unless I can earn my fortune from selling that”—I choose a word that seems apt for the situation—“nonsense.”
Lenore’s hand falls from the sill. “What did you just call it?”
“I know we entertained the fellows tonight, but the fervor of such fantasies can’t last forever.”
She seethes, but I ignore her and put the charcoal crayon away.
“Eddy,” she says, and when I refuse to turn around, she continues: “The biggest success John Allan will ever have in his life is convincing you that you’ll turn into a ‘sickly, filthy burden on society’ if you write your poems and stories.”
I clench my jaw and endure the ghastly beat of my pulse inside my ears. “Don’t say that.”
“He’s winning this battle.”
I slap a hand on my table. “Don’t you think I know that? I hear his doubts in my head every single day, but it’s impossible to ignore him when he holds my future in the palm of his hand.”
Lenore marches over to the fireplace, where she pesters the kindling with the poker. “You should publish your poems. Let the world see them.”
“They’re not good enough.”
“That’s John Allan talking again.”
I sigh. “They still need work. ‘Tamerlane’ isn’t even finished. That’s Edgar Poe talking.”
Somehow, she coaxes the sticks in the grate into a crackling conflagration. The flames gild the cadaverous hue of her skin.
“I agree about ‘Tamerlane,’” she says. “The poem needs more scenes of suffering and heartbreak before we can share it with the world, but, oh, some of the other poetry will haunt their souls! And if we concoct anything even half as brilliant as what we created tonight . . .”
“Naturally, you believe that ‘Tamerlane’ requires more suffering.”
“It lacks passion and originality.”
“I know.” I tug a handkerchief from a pocket and wipe away the charcoal from my fingers. My gaze strays back to my sketch of Agnes Usher, another child of actors whose parents died and abandoned her to Richmond.
“You have more riches than you realize, Edgar,” says Lenore, her voice seeming to crackle with the fire. “You simply need to decide what to do with what you have.”
I shake my head. “But I would trade all that I have—the intellect, the talent, the expensive education—all of it—if I could have just grown up in a home with my own flesh and blood. Or at least with a family that doesn’t long to cast me off.” I rub a hand through my hair, my head now throbbing, my eyes smarting. “They used to dress me up—Ma and Pa. They put me in yellow linen trousers, red silk stockings, a handsome purple coat, and a velvet hat—transforming me into a fine little dandy—and they’d stand me on a table, where I’d recite Sir Walter Scott’s ‘The Lay of the Last Minstrel’ to all their friends. And even then, when I was a child no higher than their knees, I was trading my talents and intellect for affection.”
A draft of cold air nips at my neck. I crumple my handkerchief into a ball on the table, my fingers still dirty, and I gaze again at Agnes Usher.
“They all hated that I hailed from the world of the theater”—I lick my right index finger and blot away a smudge on Agnes’s cheek—“and yet they loved me and praised me because I entertained them. They devoured my theatricality. But I would give anything—I would sacrifice all my muses, all my intellectual riches—if I could shake off this feeling that I’m always alone—that something is always missing.”
I clasp my hands around the back of my neck and tell myself that I still might have Elmira, even though she doesn’t write. And my life might not end if I move away from my friends of the West Lawn to live in a cheaper West Range room. I might not lose at the card tables—might not find myself expelled for gambling. Pa might send that money after all.
The sudden sense that I’ve just suffered yet another loss grips me.
I swivel around and discover that Lenore no longer accompanies me, as though she wandered into the flames of my fireplace and sizzled away. Another cold draft of air hits my face.
I possess no urge to create.
I possess nothing at all but a temporary room scattered with drawings of nonsense.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Lenore
A face that resembles my poet’s peers through Eddy’s window. For a moment, I wonder if Eddy somehow duplicated himself and locked his other self outside.
The figure turns away from the glass, and moonlight scampers across the crown of a retreating gray hat adorned with striped mockingbird feathers. I pounce at the window, but Garland O’Peale disappears into the night.
Edgar withdraws into himself over at his table.
“I would trade all that I have,” he says, “the intellect, the talent, the expensive education—all of it—”
He doesn’t notice me lifting the sash and climbing outside, even though a cold draft of air slips past me and dishevels his hair. I slide the window shut behind me and dash down an alleyway between garden walls.
Out on the Lawn, I spy the glint of the spade lying next to the open grave up ahead.
“Did you hear the terrible tale of the Ushers, Mr. O’Peale?” I call into the wind, and I skip across the grass toward the hole gaping in the ground. “Oh, my—how our poet springs to life when he’s conjuring tales of madness and mayhem! You should have witnessed his ingenious passions sparkling in his amethyst eyes.”
“I knew he was a liar,” says Garland from somewhere behind me. “He told me he planned to snuff out your light tonight.”
His voice rips across the air with a tear of my silk hat. I grab the brim and spin around to face him.
“Why would he snuff out a light,” I ask, creeping backward toward the grave, “that beams from his own two eyes?”
Garland steps out of the darkness and stalks toward me in his pretentious coat and pantaloons that mimic the grays and the stripes of the university’s uniform. He also wears a curious pair of spectacles that hide his eyes.
I continue slinking backward. “Your type of art is fine for a brief laugh, Mr. O’Peale, but I offer sumptuous feasts of words that the world shall savor for centuries.”
Garland balls his hands into fists and breaks into a run.
I swing back around and lunge toward the grave, and just as the devil reaches my heels, I take a flying leap over the six-and-a-half-foot-deep pit.
Garland drops down into the ground behind me.
After the initial thump, he goes silent.
I lift my spade and scoop up a pile of mud and mulch, which I promptly dump onto his head.
Garland shrieks and claws at the walls of dirt, flailing around in the dark like an ant.
“You may have a tongue that cuts like a knife, Mr. O’Peale,” I say while scooping up another serving, “but I can bury you alive.”
“No, don’t!”
I throw the dirt against his hat and his back.
“Stop that!” he calls out, hunching down. “Help me out of here.”
“Oh, I’ll help you out”—I toss in a nice, damp patch of earth crawling with plump pink worms—“if you listen to my proposal and stop ripping me apart.”
He squeals and slaps away the worms.
“Did you hear me?” I ask.
“What proposal?”
“You and I both share the same two adversaries.” I shovel yet another helping and dangle the spade over his head without yet dumping it, although the wind insists on showering him with a light dusting. “And those two adversaries are named John Allan and Edgar Allan Poe.”
“Poe isn’t our adversary.”
“Ha!” I sprinkle down a few drops of soil onto his mockingbird feathers. “What you don’t realize, my fine sir, is that we’re not meant to be prancing around in these human forms. We can’t even pick up a pen and write on our own terms. We’re meant to evolve directly into spiritual beings, immune to harm and death, whirring with creative energies. Our artist knows this, but he’s not fully embracing his art. He’s clinging to the threats and insults of John Allan and leaving us trapped out here, vulnerable and underdeveloped.”
“I feel neither vulnerable nor underdeveloped.”
I release the dirt onto Garland’s hat, and he panics again, slapping his palms against the wall.
“Let me out of here!”
“You feel vulnerable, you liar,” I say, “which is why you want to rid yourself of me. But I can’t think of any reason why an artist couldn’t work with more than one muse.”
“You distract him from his satires and comedies.”
“Dark works of art require great wit, and satire sips from uncomfortable emotions. We should collaborate, Mr. O’Peale. I propose we work together.”
He gasps. “How?”
I thrust the blade of the spade into the ground and lean against the handle. “Watch over Edgar when he moves to Rowdy Row and assure that he remains healthy, alive, and enamored with words. If he dies, I fear that we may die, too. If the college expels him, he’s told me that John Allan will force him to spend all his time working in the counting room of Ellis & Allan. Keep Eddy safe and intellectually stimulated.”
Garland squints up at me. “And what will you be doing?”
“Strengthening myself in the wilds, developing my repertoire. During his direst moment, bring him out into the hills. Let us show him the power of his art and evolve together, before John Allan takes him away.”
Garland removes his hat and picks dirt from the feathers. The moon scarcely reaches him down in that dank pit, but a sliver of light illuminates him enough to show me a downy layer of feathers encasing his skull.
“I accept your offer,” he says, to my utter shock.
“Do you?”
“Yes. I will accompany him at the card tables.”
“Keep him safe.”
“I will. You have my promise.” Garland lowers the hat back down on his head. “Now help me out of here please . . . Lenore, is it?”
I hesitate at first, rehearing Garland’s promises in my head, sifting through his tone for any indications of insincerity and danger.
“The sheriff’s coming!” shouts a student who bolts across the Lawn. “Get back in your rooms. Blow out your candles. He’s looking for card players.”
“Hurry!” Garland digs his fingers into the wall and attempts to climb his way out.
I grab his wrists and help to hoist him up, and after much wriggling and grunting, he clambers to his feet on solid ground, still clinging to my arms.
Before I regain my balance, however, he swings me around with a surge of unexpected strength and pushes me down into that hole.
I land on my backside with a force that jolts my neck. Clods of dirt rain down from the sides of the grave and pelt my face.
I spit out soil. “Why did you just do that?”
“As I said”—Garland leans his head over the pit—“I’ll keep him safe. You have my promise. And I’ll start by protecting him from you.”
I wipe the filth from my eyes and push myself up to my feet. My neck and tailbone hurt like mad.
“You are his greatest adversary, Lenore,” calls down Garland. “The gravest dangers for a man tormented by death are constant reminders of the grave!”
His words slice through my hat, knocking the top half clear off. The decapitated crown lands in the darkness behind me.
I hear a rumble of footsteps and more shouts of “The sheriff’s coming!”
“Thank you for telling me of your vulnerability, Madame Macabre,” says Garland, his spectacled face still looming overhead. “If you do manage to crawl out of this hole, you had better, indeed, run far into the hills. If I ever see you again on the university grounds, if I catch you calling to Poe from the hills, I’ll gladly silence your melancholy voice, so my artist can at long last live!”
His voice tears a rip in the left shoulder of my dress, and the chilled and humid air of the tomb laps at my skin.
Garland bolts away just as I hear a man who must be the sheriff pounding on dormitory doors.
I slouch down in that cold slip of earth and wait for the world to settle above before I dare to dig my feet into the graveside walls and make my escape. My stomach cramps with unfamiliar pangs of human emotions.
