NOT QUITE DEAD
* * *
ALSO BY John MacLachlan Gray
The Fiend in Human
White Stone Day
John MacLachlan Gray
* * *
NOT QUITE DEAD
St. Martin’s Minotaur NEW YORK
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
NOT QUITE DEAD. Copyright © 2007 by John MacLachlan Gray. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.minotaurbooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gray, John, 1946–
Not quite dead / John MacLachlan Gray. — 1st St. Martin’s Minotaur ed.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-312-37471-6
ISBN-10: 0-312-37471-2
1. Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849—Fiction. 2. Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870—
Fiction. I. Title.
PR9199.3.G753N68 2007
813′.54—dc22
2007024873
First Edition: November 2007
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
AUTHOR’S NOTE
* * *
Not Quite Dead is founded, to the point of collaboration, on the life and work and sensibilities of Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Dickens.
Put in theatrical terms, I have cast these men as actors in a drama of my own imagining. They lived at one time, but now they exist only in the mind, and the mind can mix things up.
Remember that what you are told is really threefold: shaped by the teller, reshaped by the listener, and concealed from both by the dead man of the tale.
——VLADIMIR NABAKOV
NOT QUITE DEAD
* * *
PROLOGUE
* * *
There is no greater human hazard than a defeated Irishman abroad. If you had played a part in the New Ireland rebellion of 1848 on the confederate side, and harbored no wish for hanging and no faith in the good will of your countrymen (whose tepid support for the movement produced its own bitter memory), there were two places you might escape: to France or the United States of America.
France was close by and Catholic, to be certain.
Having chosen that country, however, an Irishman quickly discovered that one Catholic is not like another, that God and the Savior and the Holy Mother and the Universal Church would not remove the stigma of a foreign accent and name. That to be wholly human in France, you had to be wholly French.
For an Irishman to mingle on a daily basis with persons who regarded him as subhuman was a situation demanding a violent response. Finn Devlin would as soon stay home and hang there.
Therefore, like the destitute Irish who came before and after him, he turned to America, where he would be likewise regarded as a sort of elevated ape.
For such humiliation, he might just as well have fled to France.
And once in America, there was no returning home.
FOR TRANSPORTATION to the New World, the law-abiding Irishman engaged an agent in London or Liverpool, who lied freely since all tickets were one way. They lied about everything: about conditions and provisions on board, the length of crossing, how close Quebec and St. John were to the United States, and how an Irishman could expect to be treated upon his arrival.
Few who could pay the fare were rejected for their own good. Ship’s doctors inspected and passed passengers who could barely walk with infirmity and disease. For even the healthiest, already damaged by starvation, a bout of dysentery was enough to do the job.
Over the next six to ten weeks (and six weeks more in quarantine), the Irishman would inhabit the hold of an unseaworthy rust bucket in company with up to five hundred others, in a windowless crawl space between decks, with no toilet facilities and eighteen inches of allotted space apiece. Ship’s fever would reap a glorious harvest. The daily splashes of shot-weighted cadavers would multiply. By sight of land, half the ship’s human cargo would be consigned to the depths of the sea.
Welcome to the New World.
It was a normal occurrence for a lone survivor of a family of ten to step ashore, bewildered and heartbroken, only to be met on the wharf by yet another “agent”—who, for the price of all he had left, would direct him to a fictional place of employment.
Finn Devlin did not endure all that he had suffered in Ireland, only to fall victim to the imperial beast in another locale.
BY THE ABOVE process of elimination, Devlin stowed away on the cargo vessel Medium, a three-masted bark of eight hundred and sixteen tons out of Liverpool. This he accomplished with the assistance of a team of Irish stevedores prepared to look the other way for a leader of New Ireland—especially when the boat was about to transport him far away from home.
In assessing Devlin’s chances—alone, friendless, living off the fat of his gut with naught to eat or drink but his own urine and the occasional rat—one might expect that the Medium would become for him an even crueler sort of coffin ship. However, such a prospect did not apply in his case.
Given sufficient hardship or grievance, a man can transform into a quite different species—animal or vegetable. During the potato famine, many Irishmen became potatoes themselves, rotting in the ground. Others turned into slugs, slipping by unnoticed. Others became pets for their English masters, Poodle Irishmen, prepared to sit and lie down on command.
A few Irishmen survived by paring their lives down to two overwhelming objectives—independence for Ireland and revenge for themselves—with such hot intensity that the two objects melded into one. Not Poodle Irishmen but quite another sort of dog.
As for the voyage, there is no situation that cannot be turned to your advantage if you are young enough, and single-minded enough, and the possessor of a strong stomach.
Devlin’s opportunity occurred one starless night, with the Irish Sea barely behind them and the ship idle. The favorable breeze had forsaken her with little progress to be made by tacking. Already famished and thirsty, Devlin risked a furtive scuttle across the main deck and all but collided with the second mate, on watch beneath the square-rigged foremast, a sailor by the name of Mumford.
After some conversation, the truth of it is that Finn Devlin agreed to commit an unnatural act in return for food and tobacco. This act they performed behind the coiled line by the taffrail, and Devlin so hungry he could have eaten the tar that coated Mumford’s hands, themselves the size and texture of pork hocks.
Over the following days and weeks the act was repeated, by which means Devlin avoided exposure and execution, and would live another day to secure independence for Ireland, and to feed his bottomless craving for retaliation.
Devlin endured what took place between them for the rest of the voyage; this he was able to stomach with the assistance of Mumford’s tattoos.
As an experienced hand steeped in the ways of seamen, Mumford’s tattoos made a visual record of his thoughts and beliefs: eyes on the pectorals for alertness on a long voyage; a rooster for protection from drowning; hinges to add strength to the joints. As well— fortunate Finn Devlin!—there were breasts on Mumford’s shoulder blades, and a simulation of a woman’s most private part, strategically placed to distract another man from the horror of the act.
In return for his mortal sin, as the weather grew colder Devlin was permitted to share Mumford’s bed and blankets. Having charge of the bosun’s locker, the second mate provided his altar boy with a re
efer jacket against the bone-crushing North Atlantic cold.
For in truth Devlin was an uncommonly handsome young man and Mumford was in love—if the term can be properly applied to such a monstrous association.
Some nine weeks into the voyage, Devlin drove a marlin spike into Mumford’s mouth. The eyes on his chest looked not a bit surprised; the eyes on his face, decidedly so. Devlin was not certain why he had done this, whether he hated Mumford more as a defiler, or as a Protestant.
No matter. Overboard went the second mate, down to the bottom of the oily black sea, fodder for toothy fish with glowing yellow eyes and squid with tentacles a fathom long. As the bubbles dispersed on the water’s surface leaving only congealed droplets of tar, so disappeared all that had passed between them, though it would fester in Devlin’s mind for life, and in the sight of the Virgin who watches over us all.
Crouched in the hold of a between deck, the boots of the crew thumping inches above his head while they underwent a two-day search (second mates were, in general, not highly regarded), Devlin killed and ate a rat, then drank his own urine, to remind himself of what he had avoided.
A week later, on another dark night, huddled against the bollards of the foredeck in Mumford’s reefer jacket, Devlin discerned an oncoming vessel—a sloop with a blunt prow like the nose of a whale, a mast well forward for balance and sails the color of tea.
As the sloop approached he could discern the name on her bow— the Scamp. Presently the two vessels were at close quarters, their boards touching. The sloop’s crew of three held lines steady while her skipper received from the captain of the Medium a rectangular package wrapped in heavy paper.
Only the most cursory exchange took place between the two captains—a sure sign that something illicit was taking place.
Sensing an opportunity, Devlin decided to join the possessors of the object, and by the time the Scamp was under way he was in hiding beneath the tarpaulins that covered the high coamings over the hold. There he waited until the crew became unwary, and before dawn once again Mumford’s marlin spike was put to quiet use, and one by one the captain and crew of the Scamp joined the second mate at the bottom of the sea.
In first light, the Pennsylvania coast now visible, Devlin guided the sloop into a small cove, its water like mercury in the gray light of morning. After dropping anchor he searched below for the precious thing, which he eventually located in the captain’s quarters, still in its heavy paper wrapping and inscribed with an address: Topham & Lea Publishing Company, Philadelphia.
He held the package gently in his fingers—by the weight he no longer expected gold or jewels, yet banknotes or stock certificates remained a tempting possibility.
When he tore open the package, he was utterly unprepared for what he saw.
Devlin stared fixedly at the object for what could have been moments or hours—a piece of time in which everything became, or seemed to become, dreadfully, perfectly clear.
With a sudden motion and a cry that could have been mistaken for the shriek of a gannet, he cast the object overboard with all the force at his command. The vile thing fluttered through the air like a bird, to disappear into the sea with barely a dull splash:
DAVID COPPERFIELD
FINAL FOUR NUMBERS LXI-LXIV
BY
CHARLES DICKENS
“GHOST SHIP”CONFOUNDS
LOCAL POPULATION
by James Preston Wilcox, The Philadelphia Inquirer Wednesday, March 14, 1849
Fishermen off the coast of Mystic Island made a significant catch yesterday morning in the form of a sloop, the Scamp, drifting smartly in the direction of New York City with no hands on board.
The vessel’s registered owner, Mr. Henry Topham, the publisher, reports the theft of “An object of considerable value,” and offers a substantial reward for its return, but declines to identify the object, as a protection against fraud.
In the meanwhile, lacking an immediate explanation as to the whereabouts of the Scamp’s captain and crew, residents refer darkly to the “ghost ship of Mystic Island,” and will no doubt suffer considerable distress when this quartet of scamps are plucked from some squalid hideout on charges of theft.
CHAPTER ONE
* * *
Baltimore, 1849
History, n. An account mostly false, of events mostly
unimportant, brought about by knaves, and fools.
—Ambrose Bierce
Here begin the memoirs of Dr. William Chivers, not to be read until the author’s demise.
I DO NOT expect that my tale will enhance my reputation. I can but trust the fair-minded reader to take into account my years of service and my spotless moral character, up until the events of which I write.
Perhaps you have already grasped the fact that, as you read this, I myself am dead. While I cannot personally affirm this, the manuscript in your hand was secured in a sealed envelope, care of the lawyer Carville D. Bendix of Richmond, with clear instructions that it remain so until my death. Only if he followed my instructions to the letter was he to receive the balance of his fee. (Ordinarily, lawyers are paid to circumvent the law, but not in this case.)
In reporting the following I harbor two objects:
My first aim, and a public-spirited one, is to shed light on the lingering mystery over the death of Edgar Allan Poe—the author, critic, and essayist, whose fame and notoriety will resound long after my death, and yours too, dear reader, I dare say.
My second purpose is to attain an understanding for myself of the events to follow, and to place them in the context of natural law.
Since Eddie’s catastrophic reappearance in my life, one question has nettled my mind by the day, the hour, the minute: By what cause-and-effect sequence of natural events did this happen?
I say “natural” because many would resort to a metaphysical explanation, which is how the ignorant deal with the unknown. Here in the New World, a plenitude of spooks have immigrated from Europe and Africa on the backs of their believers—not to mention the all-embracing Christian hobgoblin of Original Sin, pounded into us every Sunday morning.
Having eschewed the supernatural, and having found no explanation through ratiocination, I write the following in the hope that a trickle of enlightenment might escape through the nib of my pen onto the paper before me. I write to inform myself; to notice what I see; to enlighten the part of me that thinks it thinks.
At the end of it I hope to put a period to my tale, in mind and on paper, and to lock it away like a tiresome volume of verse—penned, no doubt, by Edgar Allan Poe.
Though my name appears on the title page it seems apt that I identify myself fully. My name is (or from the reader’s point of view, was) Dr. William John Chivers. I served as resident physician at Washington College Hospital until my resignation (which occurred shortly before its bankruptcy, though I was in no way responsible), and I am an alumnus of the college as well. Putting aside my service in the Mexican War, the hospital was my life—and my home, since my wife’s passing, when I took rooms on the top floor.
Though as mentioned I am far from superstitious, as happens with anyone whose life takes an unexpected direction, looking back I am surprised by the absence of anything like a premonition. Seated in my armchair, smoking my pipe, scowling at the latest issue of the Scientific American, from my point of view there was nothing unusual whatsoever about the arrival of an emergency patient.
It was Election Day in Baltimore, when white male citizens over the age of twenty-one exercised their franchise with their fists. Inevitably, injuries accrued.
As well, city hospitals such as ours were almost always located in the poor neighborhoods near the docks, whose residents occupy the underside of the city—creatures of sea and land, creatures with claws and teeth. From Washington College Hospital, a short stroll down the hill brought you to Lombard Street, an area notorious for beatings, knifings, garroting, and other popular pastimes of inner-city life.
Therefore, it was scarcely
an unusual occurrence that, by mid-afternoon on Election Day, a citizen might find himself transported to Washington College Hospital with a concussion, sans his money and watch. In this context, the carriage was spot on schedule, and as I watched the vehicle ascend Washington Hill in a steady grist of rain I actually laughed to myself—snorted rather—as though someone had just told me an old, tired joke.
Whoever the patient was, he was hard up and without family or friends, otherwise he would surely have been nursed at home. Nobody went to Washington College Hospital willingly. Once you encounter the term hospital gangrene, by mouth or in print, it tends to stay with you.
In all fairness to my institution, the patient would have been no better off at home. It was the state of medical care that, whichever building you occupied, if you broke a leg and it festered, you would probably die. If you contracted a bad cold or a kidney stone, you might well die. If you were pregnant, there was an excellent chance that you, the child, or both of you would die.
Or more often than not, a person would die with no warning at all: your aunt might experience an earache one evening while at her knitting, and by morning would be discovered dead, having slept late.
People died all the time. In the streets, taverns, and gambling halls, it was not a rare thing for a man, in mid-stride or mid-shout or midpiss, to drop dead in his tracks. From an early age, pedestrians were taught to distinguish between a sleeping man and a dead man in the street (the sleeping man will cross his ankles).
In short, death was easier to achieve than life, and in America that was enough for devout Protestants to apply the work ethic. Your aunt did not become sick, she began to fail. Death was capitulation, and thoughts of death self-defeating, like the expectation of losing at a sport. Though the popular veneration of death approached obscenity in its public expression, the dead themselves were privately despised. People approached hospitals as they might a house filled with vampires, and I have seen even Baptists cross themselves upon entering.
Not Quite Dead Page 1
