The Man Who Called Himself Poe

by Sam Moskowitz

  place—almost. You remembered the names—almost. You put

  them into your stories and poems.”

  His interest heightened. This girl might look like a fool—

  except for those intense eyes—but she obviously had an

  unusual imagination.

  “Where, then, is Aarn? On the other side of the world? In

  the garden of the Hesperides?”

  “Quite near here, Mr. Poe. In space, that is. But not in

  time. It is a long way in the future.”

  “Then you . . . and I, you say . . . came from the future

  to the present. My dear young lady, it is you who should

  be writing tales of fantasy, not I!”

  Her level gaze did not change. “You did write it. In the

  tale of the Ragged Mountain. About the man who went back

  through time for a little while.”

  “Why,” said Poe, “so I did, now I think of it. I had forgot-

  ten that clumsy effort. But that was just a freakish fancy.”

  “Was it? Was it only chance that made you write of

  traveling in time, a thing no one had ever seriously writ-

  ten of before? Or was it a suppressed memory?”

  “I wish it were so,” he said. “I assure you that I am not in

  love with this nineteenth century. But, unfortunately, I can

  remember my whole life quite clearly, and I have no mem-

  ories of Aarn.”

  “That is Mr. Poe speaking,” the girl said. “He remembers

  only his own life. But you are not only Mr. Poe, you are

  also Yann.”

  He smiled. “Two people in one body? Tell me, Miss Don-

  THE M AN WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE

  181

  sel, have you read my 'William Wilson ? It tells of a man with

  two personalities, an alter ego—״

  "IVe read it,״ she said. "And I know that you wrote it

  because you have two personalities, though one of them

  cannot remember.״

  She leaned forward, and he thought that her eyes were

  more compelling than those of the mesmerists in whom he

  had been so interested. Her voice was almost a whisper.

  "I want to make you remember. I will make you remem-

  ber. It s why I came after you. . . .״

  "Speaking of that, how does one travel temporally?״ he

  interrupted, trying to keep to lightness. "In a flying ma-

  chine of some sort?״

  Her face remained dead serious. "The body cannot move

  in time. No physical, material object can. But the mind is

  not material, it is a web of electric force locked into the

  physical brain. If the mind can be unlocked from the brain,

  it—being pure force—can be hurled back along the dimen-

  sion of time and lock itself into the brain of a man of a

  former age.״

  "But to what purpose?״

  "To the purpose of dominating that brain and body and

  investigating the historical past through the eyes of a man

  living in that past. It is not easy to do and there is danger in

  it—the danger of selecting a host whose mind is so powerful

  that it dominates its visitant. And that is what happened to

  Yann, Mr. Poe—he is in your brain but dominated,

  numbed, affecting only your subconscious and giving it

  half-memories that you think are dreams and fancies.״

  She added, "You must have a powerful mind indeed, Mr.

  Poe, so to dominate Yann.״

  ‘T ve been called many things but not a dullard,״ he said,

  and then, with an ironical wave of his hand around the

  shabby office, “You see the heights to which my intellect

  has brought me.״

  "It has happened before,״ she murmured. "One of us was

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  THE M A N WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE

  trapped in the brain of a Roman poet named Lu-

  cretius. . .

  “Titus Lucretius Carus? Why, madam, IVe read his De

  Rerum Natura, and its strange theories of an atomic

  science.״

  “Not theories,״ she insisted. “Half-memories. They so tor-

  mented him that he killed himself. And there were others,

  in other levels of time.״

  Poe said, admiringly, “A bizarre idea, that. It would cer-

  tainly make a tale. . . .״

  She interrupted. “I am speaking to you, Mr. Poe, but I

  am trying to speak to Yann. To awaken him from his

  numbed captivity in your brain, to make him remember

  Aarn.״

  She went on, rapidly, almost fiercely, and all the time

  her eyes held his. And he listened in fascination as the names

  and places and things of his tales came into her speech,

  sometimes altered, sometimes unchanged, all woven into a

  fabric by this girl’s impassioned imagination.

  “There was—or I should say, here and now, that there

  will be, an Age of Violence beyond anything the world

  has known. And the climax of it will be a setting loose of

  fiery forces that will wreak unprecedented destruction.”

  Poe thought of his own tale in which mankind had

  perished in a worldwide explosion of flame, and the girl

  seemed to catch the thought from the half-smile on his

  face.

  “Oh, not all of humanity were—or will be—destroyed. But

  many, many, and when the Age of Violence passed, there

  were thousands where there had been millions. So our

  world, of centuries from now, the world in which Aarn

  lives, is not the crowded, bustling place that this one is.

  “Yann, rememberl Remember our beautiful, clean, un-

  crowded world! Remember the day that we drifted down

  the Zair in your boat, all the way from the mountains. Down

  the yellow waters with the great water lilies about us, and

  THE M AN WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE

  1 8 3

  the forest dark and somber beyond them, all the way until

  above Aam we came to the Valley of Many-Colored Grass,

  and walked there amid the silver trees and looked down

  on the fliers skimming in the sunlight above the towers of

  Aarn.

  "Don’t you remember? That was when you first told me

  that you had been to the Temporal Laboratory at Tsalal,

  and had volunteered for the going-back. You would go back

  to a time not long before the Age of Violence, and would

  see the world as it was before the great wars shattered it,

  would see through the eyes of another man all the things

  that had been lost to history in the devastation.

  "Do you remember my tears? How I begged you not to

  go, how I reminded you of those who had never come back,

  how I clung to you? But your historical researches had so

  obsessed you that you would not listen. And so you went.

  And it was as I had feared, and you did not come back.

  "Yann, this is Lalu speaking! Do you know what a torture

  it can be to wait? Until finally I could bear it no longer

  and won permission from the Temporal Laboratory to come

  back to this time and search for you. And the weeks Iv e

  been here, in another persons body, seeking in vain, until

  at last I found the clue, found the names that we knew in

  Aarn in tales that had become famous, and knew that only

  the writer of them could be your host. Yann/”

  Poe had listened,
half-dreaming, as the names from his

  own fancied worlds had floated on the air. But that final

  shrill cry of agonized appeal brought him to his feet.

  "My dear Miss Donsel! I do greatly admire your imagin-

  ings, but you must control yourself—”

  Her eyes flamed. "Control myself? W hat have I been doing

  all these weeks, in this ugly and terrible world, confined in

  the body of this meaty girl?”

  A cold shock stabbed through him at those words. No

  woman, not even in jest, would think of herself or speak of

  herself in that way. But then it must mean . . .

  1 8 4

  THE M AN W H 0 CALLED HIMSELF POE

  The room, the angry face, everything, seemed to waver,

  as though under water. He felt a strangeness rise in him, the

  world seemed to fall away from him, and for a moment

  his old dreams seemed to rise into reality around him,

  changed but real.

  “Yann?”

  Was the girl smiling? Of course, the minx was succeed-

  ing in hoodwinking the famous Mr. Poe with moonbeams

  and nonsense, and would happily tell all her little friends

  about it! The pride and arrogance that were deep in his

  nature made him stiffen, and the strangeness ebbed.

  "I regret,” he said, “that I cannot devote more time now

  to your ingenious jeu desprit, Miss Donsel. I can only thank

  you for the assiduousness with which you have studied my

  little tales.”

  He opened the door, and bowed to her. She stood up, and

  her face was not smiling now, but stricken.

  “No use,” she whispered, finally. “No use at all.”

  She looked at him, and said in a low voice, “Goodbye,

  Yann,” and closed her eyes.

  Poe stepped toward her. “My dear young lady,

  please . . .”

  Her eyes opened again. He stopped short. All the intense

  life and intelligence had gone out of those eyes, and she

  stared at him with a stupid, goggling gaze.

  “W hat?” she said. “Who . .

  “My dear Miss Donsel . . .” he began again.

  She uttered a squawking scream. She backed away from

  him, and put her hands up to her face, and stared at him

  as though he were the devil.

  “W hat happened?” she cried. “I . . . everything went

  away . . . I went asleep in the middle of the day . . . How

  did I . . . ? W hat am I doing . . . here?”

  So that was it, he thought. Of course! Having played the

  part of the imaginary Lalu, she must now mime it out that

  her visitant had left her.

  THE M A N WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE

  1 8 5

  He said, smiling acidly, “I congratulate you, not only on

  your imagination but on your acting abilities.”

  She paid no heed to him at all. She ran past him and

  tore open the door. It was late, and his assistant had gone

  home, and by the time Poe followed her into the other

  office, Miss Donsel had run out into the street.

  He hurried after her. The gas street lamps were on, but in

  the passing traffic he could not at first see her. Then he

  heard her shrill call, and saw her climbing into a public

  cab that had pulled up. He started after her, and saw her

  face, eyes round with terror, looking back at him the mo-

  ment before she disappeared into the cab. The driver spoke

  to his horses and the cab went on.

  Poe, always short of temper, felt an angry impatience.

  He had let himself be made a fool of, even to listen to

  that chit and her clever beguilings. Probably by now she

  was mirthfully triumphant.

  And yet . . .

  He walked back to the office. Thin flakes of snow were

  drifting down in the sickly yellow of the lamps, and the

  dust in the street was beginning to turn to greasy mud. The

  raw wind brought the sound of brawling voices from fur-

  ther along the street.

  “This ugly and terrible world . . .” Well, it had often

  seemed so to him, and tonight it grimaced more repellently

  than ever. He supposed it was because of all the airy fan-

  cies of the sunset towers of Aam that the girl had picked

  from his own book and stuffed into his ears.

  He went back into his office and sat down at the desk. As

  his anger cooled a little, he wondered again if there was

  not a tale in all that artful nonsense? But it so echoed all his

  other stories that they would say he was repeating himself.

  Yet still, the idea was intriguing—the man lost out of his

  time . . .

  “I have reached these lands but newly, from an ultimate

  1 8 6

  THE M A N WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE

  dim Thule, from a wild, weird clime that lieth sublime, out

  of Space, out of Time . . .

  “Did I write those lines? Or . . . did Yann?”

  For a moment Poes face yearned, haggard and haunted.

  If it were true, if beyond tomorrow was a finer world, Thule,

  Aam, Tsalal? If the phantom, lovely shape he could never

  quite see, Ulalume, Lenore, Morelia, Ligeia, was a mem-

  ory . . .

  He wanted to believe, but he could not, he must not. He

  was a man of reason and a thing like this if believed could

  shatter reason, could kill a man.

  It would not kill him.

  It would not.

  W ith a hand that trembled only slightly, he opened the

  desk and reached in for the bottle.

  FICTION BY POE (?)

  THE LIGHTHOUSE

  “T h e L ig h th o u se” is th e title g iv en a story o f w h ic h E dgar A llan P

  w rote scarcely m ore than six h un d red w ord s b efo re his death . It

  naturally in trigu in g to sp ecu la te on w h a t h e m ig h t h a v e h a d in mi!

  if h e h a d liv e d lo n g en o u g h or h a d actu ally n o t sto p p ed at th e poi

  w h ere th e m an u scrip t breaks. A true d e v o te e of E d g a r A llan Pc

  R obert B loch , in 1 9 5 2 d e c id e d h e w o u ld take a w hirl at com pletii

  th e story.

  T h e finished w ork, u n d er th e title o f “T h e L ig h th o u se” appear

  in th e January—F eb ru ary 1953 issu e of Fantastic as a collaboration 1

  E d gar A llan P o e and R obert B loch . A t th e tim e, th o u g h it m ad e

  striking cover scoop for th e m a g a zin e, th e im p a ct w as n o t gre

  d e sp ite th e fa c t th at th e fragm en t w as k now n prim arily to sp ecializ

  P o e researchers, b eca u se B lo ch w as still a stru gglin g p ulp ster, 1

  gard ed as trading off th e rep u tation o f a great literary figure.

  T im e has altered th e p ictu re slightly. R obert B lo ch , sin ce t

  p u b lica tio n of that story, has b eco m e a w orld -ren ow n ed author. I

  has g o n e on to do th e scripts for m an y striking m o v in g p ictu re sc

  cesses. F e w d en y th at h e is o n e of th e m o st a d ep t m anipulators

  literary terror alive tod ay. In this context, his assum ing th e job

  co m p letin g a P o e story is rem o v ed from th e p resu m p tu ou s to t

  lo g ica l, and w h a t h e d id w ith it b eco m es o f prim ary in terest to a

  So as to p la y fair w ith th e reader, E d gar A llan P o e ’s last w ord

  “ch alk”
u nd er th e January 3rd entry. R ob ert B lo ch b eg in s w i

  January 4th .

  The Lighthouse

  By Edgar Allan Poe and Robert Bloch

  Jan. 1—1796.

  This day—my first on the lighthouse—I make this entry

  my diary, as agreed on with DeGrát. As regularly as I ct

  ig o

  THE M A N WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE

  keep the journal, I will—but there is no telling what may

  happen to a man all alone as I am—I may get sick or

  worse. . . .

  So far well! The cutter had a narrow escape—but why

  dwell on that, since I am here, all safe? My spirits are begin-

  ning to revive already, at the mere thought of being—for

  once in my life at least—thoroughly alone; for, of course,

  Neptune, large as he is, is not to be taken into consideration

  as “society.” Would to heaven I had ever found in “society”

  one half as much faith as in this poor dog; in such case I and

  “society” might never have parted—even for a year. . . .

  W hat most surprises me is the difficulty DeGrát had in

  getting me the appointment—and I a noble of the realm! It

  could not be that the Consistory had any doubt of my abil-

  ity to manage the light. One man has attended it before

  f

  now—and got on quite as well as the three that are usually

  put in. The duty is a mere nothing; and the printed instrue-

  tions are as plain as possible. It would never have done to

  let Orndoff accompany me. I should never have made any

  way with my book as long as he was within reach of me,

  with his intolerable gossip—not to mention that everlasting

  meerschaum. Besides, I wish to be alone. . . .

  It is strange that I never observed, until this moment, how

  dreary a sound that word has—“alone”! I could half fancy

  there was some peculiarity in the echo of these cylindrical

  walls—but oh, no!—that is all nonsense. I do believe I am

  going to get nervous about my insulation. That will never

  do. I have not forgotten DeGrat's prophecy. Now for a

  scramble to the lantern and a good look around to “see

  what I can see.” . . . To see what I can see indeed!—not

  very much. The swell is subsiding a little, I think—but the

  cutter will have a rough passage home, nevertheless. She

  will hardly get within sight of the Norland before noon to-