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

Edgar said.   The boy turned and hurried off into the night, as though afraid Edgar would ask for the money back.
    With a chuckle and glance to the empty sky, Edgar entered his room.   He left the door open a crack until he'd located the lantern.   He lit it with practiced ease, turning the wick up just slightly to increase the flame's brightness.   Then he returned to the door.   He closed it and locked it carefully, then laid his bag on one of the two wooden chairs and pulled it open.
    The room had a small chest of drawers along the side wall, and he carefully unpacked and stored his clothing.   Next he pulled out the book he was reading, a novella titled Carmen, by Prosper Mérimée, and his worn copy of Children's and Household Tales – or – Grimm's Fairy Tales .   He set these aside almost without thought and drew forth a thick sheaf of papers bound in a ribbon, his pens, and a small bottle of ink.   He glanced at the window.   Through the curtains he saw that there was a light.   He placed the ink, pens, and paper on the table that rested against the wall beneath the window and pulled the curtain aside curiously.
    To the right, along the back of the building and on toward the tavern, only the moonlight shone down to illuminate the trees lining the near side of the Intercoastal Waterway.   To the left, however, at the very corner of the building, flickering lamplight danced outside the window of the room adjacent to his.
    What had the tavern keeper said?   Miss MacReady ?   And the boy, Tom? "She's up all hours…"
    It seemed that it was true.   Edgar smiled.   He was no stranger to late nights.   He sometimes believed he would be unable to write at all if it were not for the long hours between dusk and dawn, when the world quieted, after a fashion, the light flickered, the paper took on a yellow lamp-light hue, and his imagination wandered.   He thought of his desk, and his home – and that brought him to thoughts of his wife, Virginia, and her failing health.
    He turned abruptly back to the chair and opened a side-pocket on his bag.   He pulled free a large, silver-plated flask and carried it to the table.   The wind was picking up outside, blowing in from the south.   Trees swayed, and the roaring throaty breath of the storm teased along the walls and through the slats of the roof.   It was a proper night for writing, and only the words – and the whiskey – could draw him up and out of the cloud of despair that was his constant traveling companion.
    Virginia was always on his mind.   Theirs had been a troubled relationship from the beginning, their familial ties, and the girl's age, but he'd seen something in her – some fragile beauty – that completed him.   Now – having filled the hole in his heart, she withered, and he felt the pain like a fist squeezing the light from his world.
    If only she'd listen to him.   If only the things he knew – the things he could do – could ease her pain.   There were curatives – elixirs – potions and charms.   He knew he could restore her health, but she would not allow it.   Not at what she considered to be the cost of her soul.   Not if it meant becoming part and parcel to the powers that swam through the darker recesses of his mind.   It was likely that she had trouble deciding if he were evil, or simply mad.
    He knew that, despite her wishes, he could save her, but if he did, she would hate him.   She would not be happy, and making her happy was all that he craved.   Instead, she died, and he drank, and he wrote and he prayed that when all the smoke and dust had cleared that something of worth would remain.
    A dark shape dropped through the light from the MacReady woman's lantern.   Edgar walked to the window, glanced out, and actually smiled.   He unfastened the sash and lifted the window a crack.   The scents of blooming flowers and impending storm wafted in.   He lifted the window a bit farther, and with a hop, a large crow