The Man Who Called Himself Poe

by Sam Moskowitz

  The skullface feebly shifted its position to meet his gaze.

  The man managed to speak, moaningly:

  “Useless. I can't move—unless she lets me. Her eyes keep

  me here—half alive. I'd have died long ago, but somehow—”

  Poe thought of a wretched spider, paralyzed by the sting

  of a mud wasp, lying helpless in its captive's close den until

  the hour of feeding comes. He bent down, holding his blaz-

  ing tinder close. He could see Gauber's neck, and it was a

  mass of tiny puncture wounds, some of them still beaded

  with blood drops fresh or dried. He winced, but bode firm

  in his purpose.

  “Let me guess the truth,” he said quickly. “Your wife was

  brought home from the grave, came back to a seeming of

  life. She put a spell on you, or played a trick—made you a

  helpless prisoner. That isn't contrary to nature, that last.

  I've studied mesmerism.”

  “It's true,” John Gauber mumbled.

  “And nightly she comes to drink your blood?”

  Gauber weakly nodded. “Yes. She was beginning just

  now, but ran upstairs. She will be coming back.”

  “Good,” said Poe bleakly. “Perhaps she will come back to

  more than she expects. Have you ever heard of vampires?

  THE M AN WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE

  9 9

  Probably not, but I have studied them, too. I began to

  guess, I think, when first she was so repelled by the odor of

  garlic. Vampires lie motionless by day, and walk and feed at

  night. They are creatures of the moon—their food is blood.

  Come.״

  Poe broke off, put out his light, and lifted the man in his

  arms. Gauber was as light as a child. The writer carried him

  to the slanting shelter of the closed-in staircase, and there

  set him against the wall. Over him Poe spread his old

  cadet cloak. In the gloom, the gray of the cloak harmonized

  with the gray of the wall stones. The poor fellow would be

  well hidden.

  Next Poe flung off his coat, waistcoat, and shirt. Heaping

  his clothing in a deeper shadow of the stairway, he stood up,

  stripped to the waist. His skin was almost as bloodlessly pale

  as Gauber s, his chest and arms almost as gaunt. He dared

  believe that he might pass momentarily for the unfortunate

  man.

  The cellar sprang full of light again. The cloud must be

  passing from the moon. Poe listened. There was a dragging

  sound above, then footsteps.

  Elva Gauber, the blood drinker by night, had revived.

  Now for it. Poe hurried to the niche, thrust himself in,

  and pulled the trap door shut after him.

  He grinned, sharing a horrid paradox with the blackness

  around him. He had heard all the fabled ways of destroy-

  ing vampires—transfixing stakes, holy water, prayer, fire.

  But he, Edgar Allan Poe, had evolved a new way. Myriads

  of tales whispered frighteningly of fiends lying in wait for

  normal men, but who ever heard of a normal man lying in

  wait for a fiend? Well, he had never considered himself

  normal, in spirit, or brain, or taste.

  He stretched out, feet together, hands crossed on his bare

  midriff. Thus it would be in the tomb, he found himself

  thinking. To his mind came a snatch of poetry by a man

  named Bryant, published long ago in a New England review

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  THE M AN WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE

  —Breathless darkness, and the narrow house. It was breath-

  less and dark enough in this hole, heaven knew, and narrow

  as well. He rejected, almost hysterically, the implication of

  being buried. To break the ugly spell, which daunted him

  where thought of Elva Gauber failed, he turned sideways to

  face the wall, his naked arm lying across his cheek and

  temple.

  As his ear touched the musty bedding, it brought to him

  once again the echo of footsteps, footsteps descending

  stairs. They were rhythmic, confident. They were eager.

  Elva Gauber was coming to seek again her interrupted

  repast.

  Now she was crossing the floor. She did not pause or turn

  aside—she had not noticed her husband, lying under the

  cadet cloak in the shadow of the stairs. The noise came

  straight to the trap door, and he heard her fumbling for the

  latch.

  Light, blue as skimmed milk, poured into his nook. A

  shadow fell in the midst of it, full upon him. His imagina־

  tion, ever outstripping reality, whispered that the shadow

  had weight, like lead—oppressive, baleful.

  "John,״ said the voice of Elva Gauber in his ear, “I've

  come back. You know why—you know what for.״ Her voice

  sounded greedy, as though it came through loose, trembling

  lips. “You re my only source of strength now. I thought to־

  night, that a stranger—but he got away. He had a cursed

  odor about him, anyway.״

  Her hand touched the skin of his neck. She was prodding

  him, like a butcher fingering a doomed beast.

  “Don’t hold yourself away from me, John,״ she was com-

  manding, in a voice of harsh mockery. “You know it w o n t

  do any good. This is the night of the full moon, and I have

  power for anything, anything!״ She was trying to drag his

  arm away from his face. “You won't gain by—״ She broke

  off, aghast. Then, in a wild dry-throated scream:

  “You’re not Johnl”

  THE M A N WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE

  101

  Poe whipped over on his back, and his bird-claw hands

  shot out and seized her—one hand clinching upon her snaky

  disorder of dark hair, the other digging its fingertips into the

  chill flesh of her arm.

  The scream quivered away into a horrible breathless

  rattle. Poe dragged his captive violently inward, throwing

  all his collected strength into the effort. Her feet were

  jerked from the floor and she flew into the recess, hurtling

  above and beyond Poe’s recumbent body. She struck the

  inner stones with a crashing force that might break bones,

  and would have collapsed upon Poe; but, at the same mo-

  ment, he had released her and slid swiftly out upon the floor

  of the cellar.

  W ith frantic haste he seized the edge of the back-flung

  trap door. Elva Gauber struggled up on hands and knees,

  among the tumbled bedclothes in the niche; then Poe had

  slammed the panel shut.

  She threw herself against it from within, yammering and

  wailing like an animal in a trap. She was almost as strong as

  he, and for a moment he thought that she would win out of

  the niche. But, sweating and wheezing, he bore against the

  planks with his shoulder, bracing his feet against the earth.

  His fingers found the latch, lifted it, forced it into place.

  “Dark,״ moaned Elva Gauber from inside. “Dark—no

  moon—״ Her voice trailed off.

  Poe went to the muddy pool in the comer, thrust in his

  hands. The muck was slimy but workable. He pushed a

  double handful of it against the trap door, sealing cracks

  and edges. Another handful, another. Using his p
alms like

  trowels, he coated the boards with thick mud.

  “Gauber,״ he said breathlessly,
  “All right—I think.״ The voice was strangely strong and

  clear. Looking over his shoulder, Poe saw that Gauber had

  come upright of himself, still pale but apparently steady.

  “What are you doing?״ Gauber asked.

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  THE M AN WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE

  "Walling her up,” jerked out Poe, scooping still more

  mud. "Walling her up forever, with her devil.״

  He had a momentary flash of inspiration, a symbolic germ

  of a story; in it a man sealed a woman into such a nook of the

  wall, and with her an embodiment of active evil—perhaps

  in the form of a black cat.

  Pausing at last to breathe deeply, he smiled to himself.

  Even in the direst of danger, the most heartbreaking mo-

  ment of toil and fear, he must ever be coining new plots for

  stories.

  "I cannot thank you enough,״ Gauber was saying to him.

  "I feel that all will be well—if only she stays there.״

  Poe put his ear to the wall. “Not a whisper of motion, sir.

  She’s shut off from moonlight—from life and power. Can you

  help me with my clothes? I feel terribly chilled.״

  His mother-in-law met him on the threshold when he

  returned to the house in Spring Garden Street. Under the

  white widow’s cap, her strong-boned face was drawn with

  worry.

  "Eddie, are you ill?” She was really asking if he had been

  drinking. A look reassured her. "No,” she answered herself,

  "but you’ve been away from home so long. And you’re dirty,

  Eddie—filthy. You must wash.”

  He let her lead him in, pour hot water into a basin. As he

  scrubbed himself, he formed excuses, a banal lie about a

  long walk for inspiration, a moment of dizzy weariness, a

  stumble into a mud puddle.

  "I’ll make you some nice hot coffee, Eddie,” his mother-in-

  law offered.

  "Please,” he responded, and went back to his room with

  the slate mantelpiece. Again he lighted the candle, sat down,

  and took up his pen.

  His mind was embellishing the story inspiration that had

  come to him at such a black moment, in the cellar of the

  Gauber house. He’d work on that tomorrow. The United

  THE M AN WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE

  IO 3

  States Saturday Post would take it, he hoped. Title? He

  would call it simply “The Black Cat.”

  But to finish the present task! He dipped his pen in ink.

  How to begin? How to end? How, after writing and publish-

  ing such an account, to defend himself against the growing

  whisper of his insanity?

  He decided to forget it, if he could—at least to seek

  healthy company, comfort, quiet—perhaps even to write

  some light verse, some humorous articles and stories. For

  the first time in his fife, he had had enough of the macabre.

  Quickly he wrote a final paragraph:

  There are moments when, even to the sober eye of

  Reason, the world of our sad Humanity may assume

  the semblance of a Hell—but the imagination of man is no

  Carathis, to explore with impunity its every cavern. Alas!

  The grim legion of sepulchral terrors cannot be regarded

  as altogether fanciful—but, like the Demons in whose

  company Afrasiab made his voyage down the Oxus, they

  must sleep, or they will devour us—they must be suffered

  to slumber, or we will perish.

  That would do for the public, decided Edgar Allan Poe.

  In any case, it would do for the Philadelphia Dollar News-

  paper.

  His mother-in-law brought in the coffee.

  THE M A N WHO COLLECTED POE

  The possibilities of what Edgar Allan Poe might have written had he

  lived even a few more years continues to haunt most students of

  literature. It is humanly natural that leading present-day writers who

  acknowledge the influence of Poe, such as Robert Rloch, would con-

  jecture on the subject. As the title suggests, this story deals with the

  world’s greatest collector of Poe, whose acquisitive instinct was

  boundless.

  Robert Bloch might be called a second-generation influence of E d -

  gar Allan Poe. Blach idolized H. P. Lovecraft and Lovecraft had

  earlier worshiped Edgar Allan Poe. A number of the Lovecraft stories

  were powerfully influenced by Edgar Allan Poe. Robert Bloch was in

  turn at first highly imitative of H. P. Lovecraft.

  The similarity of Bloch’s fantasies to those of H. P. Lovecraft de-

  lighted readers and his work proved readily salable. Lovecraft’s

  stories were appearing less frequently and those of Bloch were ex-

  cellent pastiches. As the years passed, it became apparent that the

  tales told in the Lovecraft manner, which had proved an easy method

  by which a seventeen-year-old writer could attain professionalism,

  would also prove a trap. Scores of the stories sold, but Bloch’s reputa-

  tion remained on a perpetual plateau.

  Gradually he developed his own powerfully imaginative approach,

  laying the stress on the terrors of the mind rather than terrors of the

  soul or superanimated disgust. His first big success in this vein was

  “ Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” (W eird Tales, July 1 9 4 3 ) , telling of

  the search for Jack the Ripper by one of his victims and of the un-

  pleasant moment of encounter. This tale was anthologized many times

  and used as the basis for several radio dramatizations.

  Bloch’s problem was a sick wife and the necessity of grinding out

  an endless barrage of fiction at full speed just to meet the rent. He

  did not have the time to give his best ideas the thought and polish

  they required for full impact.

  Twenty-five years of effort preceded the Alfred Hitchcock adapta-

  tion of his novel Psycho, which caused a sensation at the very time

  when Bloch was in Hollywood and able to take advantage of the

  publicity. It has since become apparent that he possesses one of the

  THE M A N WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE

  1 0 5

  most original imaginations of this era in the presentation of psychologi-

  cal terror. His interest in Edgar Allan Poe is now a compliment to the

  long-term vitality and influence of the master rather than a literary

  debt.

  The Man Who Collected Poe

  By Robert B bch

  a u t h o r 's i n t r o d u c t i o n

  Would Edgar Allan Poe be able to sell his stories if he

  were writing today? This is a question which has long

  intrigued editors, authors, readers, and critics of fantasy.

  It is a question I have sought to answer in the only pos-

  sible way—by writing a story of Poe in the manner

  which Poe himself might have written it. I do not claim

  a tenth of his talent or a tithe of his genius . . . but I

  have proposed deliberately, insofar as possible, to re-

  create his style. Poe scholars will recognize my deliber-

  ate inclusion of sentences and sections from “The Fall of

  the House of Usher,” and the casual reader will quite

  easily
discover them. The result is, I believe, a “Poe

  story” in a rather unique and special sense . . . and one

  which it gave me great pleasure to write as a tribute to a

  figure to whom 1, like every other writer of fantasy, must

  own indebtedness.

  —R obert Bloch

  During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the

  autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low

  in the heavens, I had been passing alone, by automobile,

  through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length

  found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within

  view of my destination.

  I looked upon the scene before me—upon the mere house,

  and the simple landscape features of the domain—upon the

  bleak walls—upon the vacant eye-like windows—upon a few

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  THE M AN WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE

  rank sedges—and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees

  —with a feeling of utter confusion commingled with dismay.

  For it seemed to me as though I had visited this scene once

  before, or read of it, perhaps, in some frequently rescanned

  tale. And yet assuredly it could not be, for only three days

  had passed since I had made the acquaintance of Launcelot

  Canning and received an invitation to visit him at his Mary-

  land residence.

  The circumstances under which I met Canning were

  simple; I happened to attend a bibliophilic meeting in Wash-

  ington and was introduced to him by a mutual friend.

  Casual conversation gave place to absorbed and interested

  discussion when he discovered my preoccupation with

  works of fantasy. Upon learning that I was traveling upon a

  vacation with no set itinerary, Canning urged me to become

  his guest for a day and to examine, at my leisure, his unusual

  display of memorabilia.

  “I feel, from our conversation, that we have much in com-

  mon,” he told me. “For you see, sir, in my love of fantasy I

  bow to no man. It is a taste I have perhaps inherited from

  my father and from his father before him, together with

  their considerable acquisitions in the genre. No doubt you

  would be gratified with what I am prepared to show you, for

  in all due modesty, I beg to style myself the world’s leading

  collector of the works of Edgar Allen Poe.”

  I confess that his invitation as such did not enthrall me,