The Man Who Called Himself Poe

by Sam Moskowitz

"Certainly,״ I replied, though my skepticism could hardly

  have gone unnoticed.

  "That is good,״ he said. "Because if you will permit my

  brothers and me to call on you at your home on Angell

  Street, we may be able to convince you that there is life

  in space—not in the shape of men, but life, and life pos-

  sessing a far greater intelligence than that of your most

  intelligent men.״

  I was amused at the breadth of his claim and belief, but

  I did not betray it by any sign. His confidence made me

  reflect again upon the infinite variety of characters to be

  found among the nightwalkers of Providence; clearly Mr.

  Allan was a man who was obsessed by his extraordinary

  beliefs, and, like most of such men, eager to proselytize, to

  make converts.

  "Whenever you like,״ I said by way of invitation.

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  ׳THE M AN WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE

  “Except that I would prefer it to be late rather than early,

  to give my mother time to get to bed. Anything in the way

  of an experiment might disturb her.״

  “Shall we say next Monday night?״

  “Agreed.״

  My companion thereafter said no more on this subject. In-

  deed, he said scarcely anything on any subject, and it was

  left for me to do the talking. I was evidently not very enter-

  taining, for in less than three blocks we came to an alley and

  there Mr. Allan abruptly bade me good night, after which he

  turned into the alley and was soon swallowed in its dark-

  ness.

  Could his house abut upon it? I wondered. If not, he

  must inevitably come out the other end. Impulsively I

  hurried around one end of that block and stationed myself

  deep in the shadows of the parallel street, where I could

  remain well hidden from the alley entrance and yet keep

  it in view.

  Mr. Allan came leisurely out of the alley before I had quite

  recovered my breath. I expected him to pursue his way

  through the alley, but he did not; he turned down the street,

  and, accelerating his pace a little, he proceeded on his way.

  Impelled by curiosity now, I followed, keeping myself as

  well hidden as possible. But Mr. Allan never once looked

  around; he set his face straight ahead of him and never, as far

  as I could determine, even glanced to left or right; he was

  clearly bound for a destination that could only be his home,

  for the hour was past midnight.

  I had little difficulty following my erstwhile companion,

  for I knew these streets well, I had known them since my

  childhood. Mr. Allan was bound in the direction of the See-

  konk, and he held to his course without deviation until he

  reached a somewhat run-down section of Providence,

  where he made his way up a little knoll to a long-deserted

  house at its crest. He let himself into it and I saw him no

  more. I waited a while longer, expecting a light to go up in

  THE M A N WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE

  157

  the house, but none did, and I could only conclude that he

  had gone directly to bed.

  Fortunately, I had kept myself in the shadows, for Mr.

  Allan had evidently not gone to bed. Apparently he had

  gone through the house and around the block, for suddenly

  I saw him approach the house from the direction we had

  come, and once more he walked on, past my place of con-

  cealment, and made his way into the house, again without

  turning on a light.

  This time, certainly, he had remained there. I waited for

  five minutes or a trifle more, then turned and made my way

  back toward my own home on Angell Street, satisfied that

  I had done no more in following Mr. Allan than he had

  evidently done on the night of our initial meeting in follow-

  ing me, for I had long since concluded that our meeting to-

  night had not been by chance, but by design.

  Many blocks from the Allan house, however, I was startled

  to see, approaching me from the direction of Benefit Street,

  my erstwhile companion! Even as I wondered how he had

  managed to leave the house again and make his way well

  around me in order to enable him to come toward me, try-

  ing in vain to map the route he could have taken to accom-

  piish this, he came up and passed me by without so much as

  a flicker of recognition.

  Yet it was he, undeniably—the same Poe-esque appear-

  ance distinguished him from any other nightwalker. Stilling

  his name on my tongue, I turned and looked after him. He

  never turned his head, but walked steadily on, clearly bound

  for the scene I had not long since quitted. I watched him out

  of sight, still trying—in vain—to map the route he might have

  taken among the lanes and byways and streets so familiar

  to me in order to m eet me so once more, face to face.

  We had met on Angell Street, walked to Benefit and north,

  then turned riverward once more. Only by dint of hard

  running could he have cut around me and come back. And

  what purpose would he have had to follow such a course?

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  ׳THE M A N WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE

  It left me utterly baffled, particularly since he had given

  me not the slightest sign of recognition, his entire mien

  suggesting that we were perfect strangers!

  But if I was mystified at the occurrences of the night, I was

  even more puzzled at my meeting with Rose at the Athe-

  naeum the following night. She had clearly been waiting for

  me, and hastened to my side as soon as she caught sight

  of me.

  “Have you seen Mr. Allan?” she asked.

  “Only last night,” I answered, and would have gone on to

  recount the circumstances had she not spoken again.

  “So did I! He walked me out from the library and home.”

  I stifled my response and heard her out. Mr. Allan had

  been waiting for her to come out of the library. He had

  greeted her and asked whether he might walk with her,

  after having ascertained that I was not with her. They had

  walked for an hour with but little conversation, and this

  only of the most superficial—relative to the antiquities of the

  city, the architecture of certain houses, and similar matters,

  just such as one interested in the older aspects of Providence

  would find of interest—and then he had walked her home.

  She had, in short, been with Mr. Allan in one part of the city

  at the same time that I had been with him in another; and

  clearly neither of us had the slightest doubt of the identity of

  our companions.

  “I saw him after midnight,” I said, which was part of

  the truth but not all the truth.

  This extraordinary coincidence must have some logical ex-

  planation, though I was not disposed to discuss it with Rose,

  lest I unduly alarm her. Mr. Allan had spoken of his

  “brothers”; it was therefore entirely likely that Mr. Allan

  was one of a pair of identical twins. But what explanation

  could there be for what was an obvious and designed de-

  ception? One of our
companions was not, could not have

  been the same Mr. Allan with whom we had previously

  THE M A N WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE

  159

  walked. But which? I was satisfied that my companion was

  identical with Mr. Allan met but two nights before.

  In as casual a manner as I could assume in the circum-

  stances, I asked such questions of Rose as were designed to

  satisfy me in regard to the identity of her companion, in the

  anticipation that somewhere in our dialogue she would re-

  veal some doubt of the identity of hers. She betrayed

  no such doubt; she was innocently convinced that her com-

  panion was the same man who had walked with us two

  nights ago, for he had obviously made references to the

  earlier nocturnal walk, and Rose was completely convinced

  that he was the same man. She had no reason for doubt,

  however, for I held my tongue; there was some perplexing

  mystery here, for the brothers had some obscure reason for

  interesting themselves in us—certainly other than that they

  shared our interest in the nightwalkers of the city and the

  hidden aspects of urban life that appeared only with the dusk

  and vanished once more into their seclusion with the dawn.

  My companion, however, had made an assignation with

  me, whereas Rose said nothing to indicate that her com-

  panion had planned a further meeting with her. And why

  had he waited to meet her in the first place? But this line of

  inquiry was lost before the insistent cognizance that neither

  of the meetings I had had after leaving my companion at his

  residence last night could have been Rose's companion, for

  Rose lived rather too far from the place of my final meeting

  last night to have permitted her companion to meet me at

  the point we met. A disquieting sense of uneasiness began

  to rise in me. Perhaps there were three Allans—all identical

  —triplets? Or four? But no, surely the second Mr. Allan en-

  countered on the previous night had been identical with the

  first, even if the third encounter could not have been the

  same man.

  No m atter how much thought I applied to it, the riddle

  remained insoluble. I was, therefore, in a challenging frame

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  THE M AN WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE

  of mind for my Monday night appointment with Mr. Allan,

  now but two days away.

  I l l

  Even so, I was ill-prepared for the visit of Mr. Allan and

  his brothers on the following Monday night. They came at a

  quarter past ten o’clock; my mother had just gone upstairs to

  bed. I had expected, at most, three of them; there were

  seven—and they were as alike as peas in a pod, so much

  so that I could not pick from among them the Mr. Allan with

  whom I had twice walked the nocturnal streets of Provi-

  dence, though I assumed it was he who was the spokesman

  for the group.

  They filed into the living room, and Mr. Allan immediately

  set about arranging chairs in a semicircle with the help of his

  brothers, murmuring something about the “nature of the

  experiment,” though, to tell the truth, I was still much too

  amazed and disquieted at the appearance of seven identical

  men, all of whom bore so strong a resemblance to Edgar Allan

  Poe as to startle the beholder, to assimilate what was being

  said. Moreover, I saw now by the light of my Welsbach gas

  lamp that all seven of them were of a pallid, waxen com-

  plexion, not of such a nature as to give me any doubt of

  their being flesh and bone like myself, but rather such as to

  suggest that one and all were afflicted with some kind of

  disease—anemia, perhaps, or some kindred illness which

  would leave their faces colorless; and their eyes, which were

  very dark, seemed to stare fixedly and yet without seeing,

  though they suffered no lack of perception and seemed to per-

  ceive by means of some extra sense not visible to me. The

  sensation that rose in me was not predominantly one of fear,

  but one of overwhelming curiosity tinged with a spreading

  sense of something utterly alien not only to my experience

  but to my existence.

  Thus far, little had passed between us, but now that the

  THE M A N WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE

  1 6 1

  semicircle had been completed, and my visitors had seated

  themselves, their spokesman beckoned me forward and indi-

  cated a chair placed within the arc of the semicircle facing

  the seated men.

  “Will you sit here, Mr. Phillips?״ he asked.

  I did as he asked, and found myself the object of all eyes,

  but not essentially so much their object as their focal point,

  for the seven men seemed to be looking not so much at

  me as through me.

  “Our intention, Mr. Phillips,״ their spokesman—whom I

  took to be the gentleman I had encountered on Benefit

  Street—explained, “is to produce for you certain impressions

  of extra-terrestrial life, All that is necessary for you to do is to

  relax and to be receptive.״

  “I am ready,״ I said.

  I had expected that they would ask for the light to be

  lowered, which seems to be integral to all such seance-like

  sessions, but they did not do so. They waited upon silence,

  save for the ticking of the hall clock and the distant hum of

  the city, and then they began what I can only describe as

  singing—a low, not unpleasant, almost lulling humming, in-

  creasing in volume, and broken with sounds I assumed were

  words though I could not make out any of them. The

  song they sang and the way they sang it was indescribably

  foreign; the key was minor, and the tonal intervals did not

  resemble any terrestrial musical system with which I was

  familiar, though it seemed to me more oriental than

  occidental.

  I had little time to consider the music, however, for I

  was rapidly overcome with a feeling of profound malaise,

  the faces of the seven men grew dim and coalesced to

  merge into one swimming face, and an intolerable conscious-

  ness of unrolled aeons of time swept over me. I concluded

  that some form of hypnosis was responsible for my condi-

  tion, but I did not have any qualms about it; it did not

  matter, for the experience I was undergoing was utterly

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  THE M AN WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE

  novel and not unpleasant, though there was inherent in

  it a discordant note, as of some lurking evil looming far

  behind the relaxing sensations that crowded upon me and

  swept me before them. Gradually, the lamp, the walls, and

  the men before me faded and vanished and, though I was

  still aware of being in my quarters on Angell Street, I was

  also cognizant that somehow I had been transported to new

  surroundings, and an element of alarm at the strangeness

  of these surroundings, together with one of repulsion and

  alienation, began to make themselves manifest. It was as if

  I feared losing consciousness in an alien place without the

  means of retu
rning to earth—for it was an extra-terrestrial

  scene that I witnessed, one of great and magnificent gran-

  deur in its proportions, and yet one completely incompre-

  hensible to me.

  Vast vistas of space whirled before me in an alien dimen-

  sion, and central in them was an aggregation of gigantic

  cubes, scattered along a gulf of violet and agitated radia-

  tion—and other figures moving among them—enormous, iri-

  descent, rugose cones, rising from a base almost ten feet

  wide to a height of over ten feet, and composed of ridgy,

  scaly, semielastic matter, and sporting from their apexes four

  flexible, cylindrical members, each at least a foot thick, and

  of a similar substance, though more flesh-like, as that of the

  cones, which were presumably bodies for the crowning

  members, which, as I watched, had an ability to contract

  or expand, sometimes to lengthen to a distance equal to the

  height of the cone to which they adhered. Two of these

  members were terminated with enormous claws, while a

  third wore a crest of four red, trumpet-like appendages, and

  the fourth ended in a great yellow globe two feet in diam-

  eter, in the center of which were three enormous eyes,

  darkly opalescent, which, because of their position in the

  elastic member, could be turned in any direction whatso-

  ever. It was such a scene as exercised the greatest fascina-

  tion upon me and yet at the same time spread in me a repel-

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  163

  lence inspired by its total alienation and the aura of fearful

  disclosures which alone could give it meaning and a lurking

  terror. Moreover, as I saw the moving figures, which seemed

  to be tending the great cubes, with greater clarity and more

  distinctness, I saw that their strange heads were crowned by

  four slender gray stalks carrying flower-like appendages, as

  well as, from their nether sides, eight sinuous, elastic ten-

  tacles, moss green in color, which seemed to be constantly

  agitated by serpentine motion, expanding and contracting,

  lengthening and shortening and whipping around as if with

  fife independent of that which animated, more sluggishly,

  the cones themselves. The whole scene was bathed in a wan,

  red glow, as from some dying sun which, failing its planet,

  now took second place to the violet radiation from the gulf.