The Man Who Called Himself Poe

by Sam Moskowitz

Upon perceiving my unease he laughed shortly and laid

  a hand upon my shoulder. “Come, this should interest you

  as an aficionado of fantasy,” he said. “But first, another drink

  to speed our journey.”

  He poured, we drank, and then he led the way from that

  vaulted chamber, down the silent halls, down the staircase,

  and into the lowest recesses of the building until we reached

  what resembled a donjon-keep, its floor and the interior of

  a long archway carefully sheathed in copper. We paused

  before a door of massive iron. Again I felt in the aspect of

  this scene an element evocative of recognition or recollec-

  tion.

  Canning’s intoxication was such that he misinterpreted, or

  chose to misinterpret, my reaction.

  “You need not be afraid,” he assured me. “Nothing has

  happened down here since that day, almost seventy years

  ago, when his servants discovered him stretched out before

  this door, the little box clutched to his bosom; collapsed, and

  in a state of delirium from which he never emerged. For

  six months he lingered, a hopeless maniac—raving as wildly

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  1 1 5

  from the very moment of his discovery as at the moment he

  died—babbling his visions of the giant horse, the fissured

  house collapsing into the tarn, the black cat, the pit, the

  pendulum, the raven on the pallid bust, the beating heart,

  the pearly teeth, and the nearly liquid mass of loathsome—

  of detestable putridity from which a voice emanated.

  “Nor was that all he babbled,” Canning confided, and here

  his voice sank to a whisper that reverberated through the

  copper-sheathed hall and against the iron door. “He hinted

  other things far worse than fantasy; of a ghastly reality sur-

  passing all of the phantasms of Poe.

  “For the first time my father and the servants learned the

  purpose of the room he had built beyond this iron door, and

  learned too w hat Christopher Canning had done to establish

  his title as the world's foremost collector of Poe.

  “For he babbled again of Poe's death, thirty years earlier,

  in 1849—of the burial in the Presbyterian cemetery—and of

  the removal of the coffin in 1874 to the comer where the

  monument was raised. As I told you, and as was known then,

  my grandfather had played a public part in instigating that

  removal. But now we learned of the private part—learned

  that there was a monument and a grave, but no coffin in

  the earth beneath Poe's alleged resting place. The coffin

  now rested in the secret room at the end of this passage.

  That is why the room, the house itself, had been built.

  “I tell you, he had stolen the body of Edgar Allan Poe—

  and as he shrieked aloud in his final madness, did not this

  indeed make him the greatest collector of Poe?

  “His ultimate intent was never divined, but my father

  made one significant discovery—the little box clutched to

  Christopher Canning’s bosom contained a portion of the

  cmmbled bones, the veritable dust that was all that re-

  mained of Poe’s corpse.”

  My host shuddered and turned away. He led me back

  along that hall of horror, up the stairs, into the study.

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  THE M AN WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE

  Silently, he filled our beakers and I drank as hastily, as

  deeply, as desperately as he.

  “What could my father do? To own the truth was to

  create a public scandal. He chose instead to keep silence; to

  devote his own life to study in retirement.

  “Naturally the shock affected him profoundly; to my

  knowledge he never entered the room beyond the iron door,

  and, indeed, I did not know of the room or its contents

  until the hour of his death—and it was not until some years

  later that I myself found the key among his effects.

  “But find the key I did, and the story was immediately

  and completely corroborated. Today I am the greatest col-

  lector of Poe—for he lies in the keep below, my eternal

  trophy I”

  This time I poured the wine. As I did so, I noted for the

  first time the imminence of a storm; the impetuous fury of

  its gusts shaking the casements, and the echoes of its thunder

  rolling and rumbling down the time-corroded corridors of

  the old house.

  The wild, overstrained vivacity with which my host

  hearkened, or apparently hearkened, to these sounds did

  nothing to reassure me—for his recent revelation led me to

  suspect his sanity.

  That the body of Edgar Allan Poe had been stolen—that

  this mansion had been built to house it—that it was indeed

  enshrined in a crypt below—that grandsire, son, and grand-

  son had dwelt here alone, apart, enslaved to a sepulchral

  secret—was beyond sane belief.

  And yet, surrounded now by the night and the storm, in a

  setting tom from Poe's own frenzied fancies, I could not be

  sure. Here the past was still alive, the very spirit of Poe's

  tales breathed forth its corruption upon the scene.

  As thunder boomed, Launcelot Canning took up Poe’s

  flute, and, whether in defiance of the storm without or

  as a mocking accompaniment, he played; blowing upon

  it with drunken persistence, with eerie atonality, with nerve-

  THE M AN WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE

  1 1 7

  shattering shrillness. To the shrieking of that infernal in-

  strument the thunder added a braying counterpoint.

  Uneasy, uncertain, and unnerved, I retreated into the

  shadows of the bookshelves at the farther end of the room,

  and idly scanned the titles of a row of ancient tomes. Here

  was the Chiromancy of Robert Flud, the Directorium In-

  quisitorum, a rare and curious book in quarto Gothic that

  was the manual of a forgotten church; and betwixt and be-

  tween the volumes of pseudo-scientific inquiry, theological

  speculation, and sundry incunabula, I found titles that ar-

  rested and appalled me. De Vermis Mysteriis and the Liber

  Eibon, treatises on demonology, on witchcraft, on sorcery

  moldered in crumbling bindings. The books were old, but

  the books were not dusty. They had been read—

  “Read them?״ It was as though Canning divined my in-

  most thoughts. He had put aside his flute and now ap-

  proached me, tittering as though in continued drunken

  defiance of the storm. Odd echoes and boomings now

  sounded through the long halls of the house, and curious

  grating sounds threatened to drown out his words and his

  laughter.

  “Read them?״ said Canning. “I study them. Yes, I have

  gone beyond grandfather and father, too. It was I who pro-

  cured the books that held the key, and it was I who found

  the key. A key more difficult to discover, and more impor-

  tant, than the key to the vaults below. I often wonder if Poe

  himself had access to these selfsame tomes, knew the self-

  same secrets. The secrets of the grave and what lies beyond,

  and what can be
summoned forth if one but holds the key.״

  He stumbled away and returned with wine. “Drink,״ he

  said. “Drink to the night and the storm.״

  I brushed the proffered glass aside. “Enough,״ I said. “I

  must be on my way.״

  Was it fancy or did I find fear frozen on his features?

  Canning clutched my arm and cried, “No, stay with me! This

  is no night on which to be alone; I swear I cannot abide the

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  THE M AN WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE

  thought of being alone, I can bear to be alone no more!״

  His incoherent babble mingled with the thunder and the

  echoes; I drew back and confronted him. “Control yourself,”

  I counseled. “Confess that this is a hoax, an elaborate im-

  posture arranged to please your fancy.”

  “Hoax? Imposture? Stay, and I shall prove to you beyond

  all doubt”—and so saying, Launcelot Canning stooped and

  opened a small drawer set in the wall beneath and beside

  the bookshelves. “This should repay you for your interest in

  my story, and in Poe,” he murmured. “Know that you are

  the first other person than myself to glimpse these treasures.”

  He handed me a sheaf of manuscripts on plain white

  paper; documents written in ink curiously similar to that I

  had noted while perusing Poe’s letters. Pages were clipped

  together in groups, and for a moment I scanned titles alone.

  “ 'The Worm of M idnight/ by Edgar Poe,” I read, aloud.

  “ 'The C ry p t/” I breathed. And here, “ 'The Further Ad-

  ventures of Arthur Gordon Pym’”—and in my agitation I

  came close to dropping the precious pages. “Are these what

  they appear to be—the unpublished tales of Poe?”

  My host bowed.

  “Unpublished, undiscovered, unknown, save to me—and

  to you.”

  “But this cannot be,” I protested. “Surely there would

  have been a mention of them somewhere, in Poe’s own let-

  ters or those of his contemporaries. There would have been

  a clue, an indication, somewhere, someplace, somehow.”

  Thunder mingled with my words, and thunder echoed in

  Canning’s shouted reply.

  “You dare to presume an imposture? Then compare!” He

  stooped again and brought out a glassined folio of letters.

  “Here—is this not the veritable script of Edgar Poe? Look at

  the calligraphy of the letter, then at the manuscripts. Can

  you say they are not penned by the selfsame hand?”

  I looked at the handwriting, wondered at the possibilities

  of a monomaniac’s forgery. Could Launcelot Canning, a

  THE M AN WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE

  1 1 0

  victim of mental disorder, thus painstakingly simulate Poe’s

  hand?

  “Read, then!״ Canning screamed through the thunder.

  “Read, and dare to say that these tales were written by any

  other than Edgar Poe, whose genius defies the corruption

  of Time and the Conqueror Worm!”

  I read but a line or two, holding the topmost manuscript

  close to eyes that strained beneath wavering candlelight;

  but even in the flickering illumination I noted that which

  told me the only, the incontestable truth. For the paper,

  the curiously unyellowed paper, bore a visible watermark;

  the name of a firm of well-known modem stationers, and the

  date—1949.

  Putting the sheaf aside, I endeavored to compose myself

  as I moved away from Launcelot Canning. For now I knew

  the truth; knew that one hundred years after Poe’s death a

  semblance of his spirit still lived in the distorted and dis-

  ordered soul of Canning. Incarnation, reincarnation, call it

  what you will; Canning was, in his own irrational mind,

  Edgar Allan Poe.

  Stifled and dull echoes of thunder from a remote portion

  of the mansion now commingled with the soundless seething

  of my own inner turmoil, as I turned and rashly addressed

  my host.

  “Confessi” I cried. “Is it not true that you have written

  these tales, fancying yourself the embodiment of Poe? Is

  it not true that you suffer from a singular delusion bom of

  solitude and everlasting brooding upon the past; that you

  have reached a stage characterized by the conviction that

  Poe still lives on in your own person?”

  A strong shudder came over him and a sickly smile

  quivered about his lips as he replied. “Fool! I say to you

  that I have spoken the truth. Can you doubt the evidence of

  your senses? This house is real, the Poe collection exists, and

  the stories exist—they exist, I swear, as truly as the body

  lying in the crypt below!”

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  THE M AN WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE

  I took up the little box from the table and removed the

  lid. “Not so,” I answered. “You said your grandfather was

  found with this box clutched to his breast, before the door of

  the vault, and that it contained Poe's dust. Yet you cannot

  escape the fact that the box is empty.” I faced him furiously.

  “Admit it, the story is a fabrication, a romance. Poe's body

  does not lie beneath this house, nor are these his unpub-

  lished works, written during his lifetime and concealed.”

  “True enough.” Canning's smile was ghastly beyond be-

  lief. “The dust is gone because I took it and used it—because

  in the works of wizardry I found the formulae, the arcana

  whereby I could raise the flesh, re-create the body from the

  essential salts of the grave. Poe does not lie beneath this

  house—he lives! And the tales are his posthumous woi'ks!”

  Accented by thunder, his words crashed against my

  consciousness.

  “That was the end-all and the be-all of my planning, of

  my studies, of my work, of my life! To raise, by sorcery, the

  veritable spirit of Edgar Poe from the grave—reclothed and

  animate in flesh—set him to dwell and dream and do his

  work again in the private chambers I built in the vaults be-

  low—and this I have done! To steal a corpse is but a ghoulish

  prank; mine is the achievement of true genius!”

  The distinct, hollow, metallic, and clangorous yet ap-

  parently muffled reverberation accompanying his words

  caused him to turn in his seat and face the door of the

  study, so that I could not see the workings of his counte-

  nance—nor could he read my own reaction to his ravings.

  His words came but faintly to my ears through the thun-

  der that now shook the house in a relentless grip; the wind

  rattling the casements and flickering the candle-flame from

  the great silver candelabra sent a soaring sighing in an an-

  guished accompaniment to his speech.

  “I would show him to you, but I dare not; for he hates me

  as he hates life. I have locked him in the vault, alone, for the

  resurrected have no need of food or drink. And he sits there,

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  121

  pen moving over paper, endlessly moving, endlessly pouring

  out the evil essence of all he guessed and hinted at in life

  and which he lea
rned in death.

  “Do you not see the tragic pity of my plight? I sought to

  raise his spirit from the dead, to give the world anew of his

  genius—and yet these tales, these works, are filled and

  fraught with a terror not to be endured. They cannot be

  shown to the world, he cannot be shown to the world; in

  bringing back the dead I have brought back the fruits of

  death!״

  Echoes sounded anew as I moved toward the door—

  moved, I confess, to flee this accursed house and its

  accursed owner.

  Canning clutched my hand, my arm, my shoulder. “You

  cannot go!” he shouted above the storm. “I spoke of his

  escaping, but did you not guess? Did you not hear it through

  the thunder—the grating of the door?”

  I pushed him aside and he blundered backward, upset-

  ting the candelabra, so that flames licked now across the

  carpeting.

  “Wait!” he cried. “Have you not heard his footstep on the

  stair? Madman, I tell you that he note stands without the

  doorr

  A rush of wind, a roar of flame, a shroud of smoke rose

  all about us. Throwing open the huge, antique panels to

  which Canning pointed, I staggered into the hall.

  I speak of wind, of flame, of smoke—enough to obscure all

  vision. I speak of Canning's screams, and of thunder loud

  enough to drown all sound. I speak of terror born of loathing

  and of desperation enough to shatter all my sanity.

  Despite these things, I can never erase from my conscious-

  ness that which I beheld as I fled past the doorway and

  down the hall.

  There without the doors there did stand a lofty and en-

  shrouded figure; a figure all too familiar, with pallid fea­

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  THE M AN WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE

  tures, high, domed forehead, moustache set above a mouth.

  My glimpse lasted but an instant, an instant during which

  the man—the corpse—the apparition—the hallucination, call

  it what you will—moved forward into the chamber and

  clasped Canning to his breast in an unbreakable embrace.

  Together, the two figures tottered toward the flames, which

  now rose to blot out vision forevermore.

  From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast.

  The storm was still abroad in all its wrath, and now fire came

  to claim the house of Canning for its own.

  Suddenly there shot along the path before me a wild