Nevermore: A Novel of Love, Loss, & Edgar Allan Poe Read online

  "Then Roberto was there. Before I knew what had happened, he was at my side, and Thigpen was staggering back. I remember there was blood; the man held his hand to his face. Roberto wanted to follow and attack him, but I managed to wrap myself around him and hold him back.

  "By this time everyone was moving and shouting. Men held Thigpen back, and others grabbed Roberto and pulled me away."

  Anita fell silent for a moment, and then continued. Her voice was lower, and it was thick with new emotion.

  "Roberto is not a rich man," she said. "He works on one of the farms. He migrated here with his family – we are treated little better than slaves. I have good work here, but …

  "They took Roberto away. They took him down to the road, and several men – men I'd served drinks and meals to, beat him. They left him by the trail, and remained close by to be certain he did not return.

  "This Thigpen, he grew very cold, and very quiet. He did not scream at me … he talked to the owner of the tavern. I am not sure what he said, but it must have been a threat. They gave him more to drink, and I was called aside. I was told…I was told that if I did not go to that man's rooms and treat him well, I would no longer have a job – and Roberto would be arrested.

  "When I asked why – when I begged that it not be so, I was told that Roberto had struck a lawman. That his life should be forfeit and that I should be glad – proud – that I had the chance to redeem him."

  Lenore listened, her grip tightening on the pencil and the eraser as the story whirled slowly into darker and darker shadows. Though she worked as she always had, something felt different. She hurriedly finished the details on a young man whose features she'd exhumed from the lines and whirls of the tree's bark. She felt the soft rush of his escape. She did not even glance at the others, but moved straight to the image of the man she now knew as Abraham Thigpen.

  Of all the faces she'd found, his was buried most deeply. She started at his chin, working her way up one shade and angle at a time. She was not ready to meet the gaze of his eyes, even dead and spirit trapped in the swamp. She had never known them, those that she drew. Not before they were free – almost never after, though a few had been recognized over the years. Good, bad, whatever, she didn't know them and now this. Now this – evil – so close beneath her fingers, so intertwined with her mind. The words continued – as if in some way Anita had been drawn into the process.

  Something dark – with wings – flashed across the periphery of her vision. There was a sound – like a thud – but it floated to her from far away, and though she thought it might be important, she couldn't concentrate on it. The walls blurred. The room faded. Her fingers worked, and she was aware of the work, but she did not see the image. Anita's story claimed her, and suddenly she stood outside herself – outside the tavern – on the long wooden porch that led down the front of the building.

  Ahead of her, a tall man lurched drunkenly down the North Carolina side of the Halfway House. He held a girl – Anita – by the wrist, dragging her after him. Lenore tried to move toward them – tried to call out. She could not. She was there, but at the same time, she was not.

  "Please," Anita sobbed, pulling back against Thigpen's grip. "Please do not do this. I want to go home."

  The man turned, and Lenore saw his eyes flash a bright blue – cold, like chips of ice.

  "Shut your mouth, girl," he said. "You will do exactly what I say, or your new home will be a place far from here. There are jails for women like you – places where you could be locked away and forgotten. Your man, as well. He attacked me – I could have him killed."

  "Please," she said – softer. She no longer fought, and he ignored her. He stopped by one of the doors, fumbled in his pocket, and produced a key. He was obviously drunk, but it did not seem to prevent him from functioning – a sure sign of a man more used to spirits than sobriety. An odd way for a man of the law to behave.

  He dragged Anita through the door, and slammed it closed behind him. Lenore tried, again, to cry out. She moved as if to follow, but the world shifted once again, and she found herself suddenly inside the room. She had not moved, but the world shifted, and she was there.

  Anita lay sprawled across the bed. Thigpen stood over her, leering. In one hand he held a flask. With the other, he began to unbutton his shirt, letting it fall open to reveal a chest matted with thick, dark hair. His face – the same face from the image she'd drawn – was dark and filled with lust. He tipped back the flask.

  "Take off your clothes, girl," he said. "Take them off now, or I will be forced to do it for you. I assure you, I will enjoy that, if it is necessary, but they will come off."

  Anita was crying. Her hair was a mess, and she looked like a crumpled flower. She wore a long, dark skirt, and a white blouse. She gripped the bottom of the blouse, sliding it slowly up. Thigpen stood, wavering from side to side, and watching. He tipped the flask again, took a long drink, and must have emptied it, because he tossed it aside. He staggered toward the bed, reached for the next button on his shirt, and tried to take another step forward.

  The alcohol was stronger than he'd imagined, or perhaps he'd just been too far gone to notice. As he neared the bed, his feet became tangled. He fell toward the bed so quickly that Anita had to scramble aside, falling to the floor, to avoid having him land on her. She scrambled across the rough planks until she came up against the wall, then she turned back, hands flat on the floor, ready to press up and run.

  There was no need. Thigpen had fallen face-flat on the bed. He was not moving, and after a long moment, deep snores filled the air. Anita sat very still, drawing one hand up to her breast. She listened…but there was nothing. Very slowly, she pressed off the floor and stood. She crossed the room to the door at a run, turned, and stopped with her hand on the doorknob.

  She hesitated then, but Thigpen did not move. With soft cry, she opened the door and fled into the night, not looking back.

  Lenore thought that the vision would end then – but what happened surprised her. The vision shifted. Instead of returning her to her mind, and her work, the lighting changed. When Anita fled the room, it had been very dark outside the door. Moments later, at least it seemed moments, sunlight filtered in through the crack where the girl had left the door ajar, and through the window across the room. She saw motes of dust floating in the air, and in the distance she heard a cock's crow.

  Heavy steps sounded on the wood outside. The door was already open, and someone pushed it wide, roughly. Sunlight poured in, but Thigpen did not move.

  "Abraham Thigpen!" a voice called loudly.

  Thigpen still didn't stir. A man walked through the doorway, surveyed the room, and scowled. He was tall and blonde, with a wide-brimmed hat and a shiny gold badge on the lapel of his jacket. He glared down at the prone body, still deep in drunken sleep, then crossed the room and kicked the foot of the bed hard enough to shake the wall.

  "Thigpen!" he said, voice booming. "Get up."

  Thigpen rolled over then, put a hand to his eyes to shield them from the glare of sunlight from the door.

  "Wha…who are…"

  The man kicked the bed again.

  "I said, get up," the man repeated.

  Thigpen sobered in an instant, scrambled up the bed and against the headboard, shaking his head to clear the cobwebs.

  "What do you want? Get out of my room."

  "Not likely, friend," the man said. "You're going to want to get up, unless you want to be shot in your bed and create a scandal."

  Thigpen grew silent. He threw his legs over the side of the bed, and stood, nearly falling backward as the remnant of the night's alcohol hit him full strength. He was close enough to the wall to prevent a fall, but his voice was slurred, and his movements were sluggish.

  "Who…are you?" he asked.

  "It's funny that you don't know that," the man said. "Very funny, I think, since you've been flashing my badge around the tavern, claiming to be a man of the law, trying to rape local women – an
y of this getting through? Story ring a bell? I'm going to say this one time…you get yourself together. You strap on whatever iron you carry, and you get outside. I'll be waiting. I'm watching the door, and others are watching the window. I'm going to give you a chance you don't deserve. You meet me out front – one of us will walk away, the other will help fertilize the local crops. If you kill me, you'll have an honest chance to be gone from here before others show up to kill you or lock you away."

  "You have the wrong man," Thigpen said thickly. "I am a duly appointed…"

  "Five minutes," the man said. "Five minutes – outside, face me, or I shoot you like a dog."

  The door was suddenly empty and Thigpen reeled, nearly collapsing back over the bed. He dropped and knelt there for a moment…then he rose. He stared at the door, and then, as if in a trance, he turned away. He crossed the room, buttoning his shirt, and tucking it back into his jeans. His gun belt hung over the chair where he'd left it, and he grabbed it, fumbling it around his waist.

  Every step he took, every movement he made, his balance improved. His coordination returned. He recovered almost as if controlled by some unseen force. His lips curled down at the corners, and the ice-chip eyes chilled. Lenore saw this, saw the sudden transformation, and shivered. Then, as he headed for the door – the world shifted again.

  Edgar wrote furiously. He had tossed aside his story in progress after only a few moments and begun anew. The words flowed so quickly through his thoughts that his fingers were cramped, and more than once he'd had to toss aside a pen and just grab another in fear of losing the thread.

  It was like nothing he'd ever written before. He tried, just for a couple of moments, to pinpoint the inspiration. All of his writing came from twisted versions of things he'd seen, or done, or read. This was unfamiliar, raw and very powerful, and he had no idea why it had come to him.

  Grimm had stepped closer, bending his head inquisitively toward the paper. The bird rarely showed any real interest in what he did, and this was another thing he wished he had the time to contemplate, but he knew the old magic when it wrapped around him, and he sensed nothing malign in whatever this was. Even if he had, he would not have pulled away. He trusted Grimm to drag him back to reality if he got in over his head, and he'd had just enough of the whiskey in his flask to unleash his own shadows. He could be dangerous himself, if provoked, though he preferred to direct that at the pages, impaling them with quills and staining them with the ink of his nightmares.

  The story grew from the roots of a great tree. It stretched up into shadows. He frantically recorded his impressions, the moon's face glaring down through intricately bound branches. Eyes – dark, hollow eyes without life – stared back from the heights, and the mist from some hidden body of water rose like tendrils of cloud to slip in and out between those branches, leaves, and ghostly-images.

  Beyond the tree, he saw an open stretch of ground. In that space, two men faced off. One was tall and blonde, beefy and intense. The other was dark. He blended into the chilly air and the wisps of mist. His eyes were cold, dead chips of ice, and though he stood at an odd, ungainly angle, there was a sense of speed and confidence in the angle of his chin, and the loose way his hand hovered over the butt of a holstered pistol.

  Edgar knew the tales from the west. He knew the gunfighters, the lawmen, the wild savages and the mountains of gold. He'd met them and lived them in the words of others, in the newspapers and the stories of strange, dark men in taverns. It was how he built the fantasy worlds that bound his own stories. He plucked the details. He listened, and then he thought about what he had heard. He brought characters to life in his mind and then he let them flow back out through his fingers.

  This was subtly different, and yet, very similar. The two men were not cowboys, but they faced off in classic, end-game stances, the angry challenger, and the calm, snake-quick killer. That much was obvious – the larger man, in some odd way, represented the light, and the dark man had a slimy, dark aura about him. He smiled, but it was superficial and fragile, like a porcelain mask painted carefully and placed over something hard and ugly. The first movement, a twitch of the lip, or the raising of an eyebrow, would shatter it.

  Edgar wrote. He built a story around it – a long road, a chase, a string of bodies stretching down roads leading west. The road ended with a woman – a girl, really. Her fate hung in the balance.

  Then something shifted. He felt a surge, and knew that the dark man would win. He would aim and drive a slug of lead through the better man's heart. He would take the girl, and disappear into the night. He would send the man's spirit drifting to the trees and the fog.

  It was too much.

  With a burst of will Edgar reclaimed the pen. The story fought him, flowing on toward its conclusion, but he concentrated, gritted his teeth painfully, and dragged the quill across the paper. He marred the ending. He slashed across the words and recreated the image. He feared he'd be unable to do it justice, that all the words and work would be wasted and it would be too weak to do any good. Still, he wrote.

  He raised the quill, dipped it into the ink, drove it back at the paper and continued. The dark man's smile splintered into a thousand points of obsidian. His hand shot down and the barrel of his gun rose, and the other man, a hair's breadth too slow, retaliated. Edgar’s gaze shifted ever so slightly. A black blur passed before his eyes and, a moment later, before the eyes of the dark man as well. Grimm, it had to be Grimm, but it could not be – not in the story – not in the image.

  The stories never leaked into the real world, or vice versa. They were just stories. The images – the characters – they suffered – he always made them suffer – but they were bearing the pain so that he didn’t have to. They were projections – shades of reality.

  This was not. This was happening, and what he wrote – how fast he wrote it, and how well, mattered. He had no idea how he knew this, or why he believed it, but it was true. Grimm had not dragged him out of it; instead, the old bird had joined the battle, adding his own dark speed and darker vision to the flow of ink and shadow.

  Edgar wrote the bird’s trajectory into the story. He drove it, like a blindfold, across the dark man’s eyes. He couldn’t stop the strike, the whipcord fast reaction or the snap of the trigger, but the bullet whizzed past its target – within inches. It might have actually grazed the tip of the big man’s ear. It was enough. The second gun barked, and the dark man was driven back. The slug caught him directly above the heart. He spun, and as he spun, another shot caught the spinning shoulder, driving him into a pin wheeling arc toward the loamy ground.

  He spun, and he fell, and when his narrow, hooked nose struck the ground, it drove through the soft earth and planted. He lay, at an odd angle, twitching. Smoke curled, just for a second, from the end of the bigger man's pistol. He stood very still, brushed his hand back along the side of his face, where the bullet had skimmed so close it left a red, burning streak.

  Edgar tried to finish the story, to give it a proper ending, and seal away the shadows, but as he worked, the images faded. He fought a losing battle with his mind for control of the words. He heard the loud flutter of wings. He saw the dead man's blood, seeping into the ground. He saw a woman's startled face, and a drawing, a tree, and then a stream of faces, one after the other, roaring directly at him and dissipating to smoke as they brushed his eyelashes.

  And then – as suddenly as it all began – it was gone. He sat stunned, staring at the scratched, torn paper on the table and the ruined, brutalized tip of his pen. Grimm was nowhere to be seen, and from what seemed very far away, he heard a woman's cry, and the crash of something falling.

  Edgar pushed back from the table, lurched to his feet and turned toward the door. He needed air, and he needed to know what the noise was – why it seemed to echo as much from his thoughts as from the night – who had cried out, and why. More than anything, he needed to know the ending to the story. It lay crippled and unfinished, stillborn on the table and he felt
as if – if he did not finish it – he might never write again.

  The air sizzled with power. He recognized it – knew it did not concentrate in such measure without provocation – but did not believe he was capable of such a burst on his own. He'd seen many strange things, recorded most of them in prose and verse, and set them aside, moving on as much as was possible. This experience had shaken him to his core, and he was not even certain that – when he opened the door – he'd find himself in the same world from which he'd entered.

  He felt a breeze, and knew, somehow, that the window was open. He remembered closing it after Grimm's entrance, but he didn't turn. He grabbed the doorknob, jerked it open, and stepped out into the darkness.

  As he moved into the chill night air, he saw that the door to his immediate right, the corner room, was also open. Lamplight streamed out and pooled on the wooden slats and the ground beyond. A woman stood there, silhouetted, staring into the distance. She turned, caught sight of him, and stared.

  "Did you…" she said.

  Edgar took in her eyes, her long hair, slender figure, and the serious set of her jaw. Something sparked between them, and he knew that she'd felt some – or all – of what he'd felt. Maybe caused it.

  "No," he said. "I don't think so. Maybe a part…"

  Another woman stepped out into the darkness behind the first. She was younger, darker, stumbling a little, and staring out beyond the porch through glazed, empty eyes. She paid no attention to her surroundings. Instead she stepped down to the ground and walked very slowly forward to where two trees stood about thirty feet apart. When she reached a point between them, she turned back.

  "Here," she said. "It was here. They stood, there," she pointed toward the tree nearest to the bar, and then at the ground beneath her feet, "and here. Thigpen was shot here. He died. I was there."