The Pet and the Pendulum

by Gordon McAlpine

  Allan answered automatically. “Rocky road, of course.”

  It had always been their favorite.

  “Wait, no,” he amended slowly. “Actually, I think my favorite is pistachio. Yours?”

  “Mint chocolate chip,” Edgar said without hesitation.

  “Do you boys want ice cream?” the nurse cut in. “We can do that.”

  The twins ignored her.

  “Are we . . . two separate boys now?” Allan asked his brother.

  “I think maybe we are,” Edgar answered.

  “What do you mean by that?” the doctor asked.

  The Poe twins didn’t have to be psychically linked to know they’d never make the doctor understand.

  “Never mind,” Allan said.

  The twins had never understood why they’d been like two boys with one mind. They’d just always known each other’s thoughts, been able to unravel problems many times faster than other human beings. Professor Perry had called it “quantum entanglement,” and, though he had been evil and deranged, Perry wasn’t stupid.

  And here was another problem Edgar and Allan couldn’t unravel: why had their mysterious connection ended?

  Was it the massive impact of the crashing satellite?

  Was it their three days spent unconscious?

  Was it exposure to some kind of outer space contamination from the explosion?

  Did it have something to do with their parents’ ghosts?

  Could this be what their dad had meant about their being free?

  Each boy’s mind remained razor-sharp, even if they might both be a nanosecond slower when dividing numbers like 278 by 277 to the ninth digit or picking up dead languages like ancient Greek.

  Together, they had been a remarkable force. But might being separate boys bring opportunities?

  For example, being brothers in a whole new way.

  “Hi, Edgar,” said Allan, as if for the first time.

  “Hi, Allan.”

  “By the way, pistachio ice cream is only good for nuts,” Edgar said good-naturedly.

  Allan grinned. “Mint chocolate chip isn’t even good enough to feed livestock!”

  Both boys laughed.

  Though neither knew it, Edgar and Allan Poe shared their last perfectly simultaneous thought at that very moment.

  I am my own boy. Wow, what possibilities!

  Mr. Poe in the Great Beyond

  Mr. Poe had been summoned to Mr. Shakespeare’s office on the 184,692,384th floor of the celestial office building. Generally, such a summons led to a demotion.

  Mr. Poe didn’t know what was lower than the Animal Languages Division, but as he approached the office, he didn’t care. He was overjoyed by the events of the last few days. His beloved nephews safe at last, and their parents freed from their orbiting tomb! In this light, nothing that his superiors might do to punish him could alter his sense of accomplishment and his newly found peace of mind.

  So he knocked on the door of Mr. Shakespeare’s office with a jaunty rhythm.

  “Enter,” Mr. Shakespeare called.

  Mr. Poe walked in to find something altogether unexpected.

  Standing beside Mr. Shakespeare’s large desk was Homer, the Greek father of Western literature, who ran the entire Arts Division. On the far side of the wide room, near the tall, wall-length bookshelf (filled exclusively with translations of Mr. Shakespeare’s plays) were Mr. Walt Whitman and Miss Emily Dickinson, Mr. Poe’s best work friends. Near the window, admiring the view—quite impressive from almost two hundred million floors up—were the kindly, nineteenth-century couple Genevieve and Clarence Du Valier, whom the Poe twins had set free from two centuries of haunting the Saint Louis Cemetery in New Orleans. And, rising from the couch, where they’d been sitting hand in hand, were Mal and Irma Poe, the building’s newest and most grateful inhabitants. Mr. Shakespeare rose from his desk chair.

  They all turned to Mr. Poe.

  Everyone held a glass of champagne.

  “Come in, Mr. Poe,” Mr. Shakespeare said. “Please.”

  Mr. Poe closed the door behind him and took a few steps forward.

  “I know I’ve been rather hard on you of late,” Mr. Shakespeare said. “But sometimes adversity brings out the best in a man or woman. And your latest bending of our rules—I’m referring, of course, to your talking raven—well, it was brilliant.”

  This from Mr. Shakespeare, of all people!

  Mal and Irma stepped toward Mr. Poe.

  Mal, who bore a strong family resemblance, held out his hand. The two men shook. “We couldn’t ask for a better ancestor than you,” he said humbly.

  Next, Irma threw her arms around Mr. Poe.

  At first, he was taken aback by the warmth of the contact, but after a moment he allowed it to sink in.

  It felt good.

  “Mr. Poe here is our number one rule-breaker,” Homer said to the gathered friends and colleagues. “But,” he added, “there are times when doing the right thing is more important than doing the officially approved thing. Not often, mind you. But in rare instances of the utmost importance.”

  Mr. Shakespeare handed Mr. Poe a glass of champagne.

  “And so,” Homer continued, “in that spirit, allow me to offer a toast to Mr. Edgar Allan Poe.”

  Everyone raised their glasses.

  “To Mr. Poe!” they said before drinking.

  Mr. Poe looked at Mr. Shakespeare. “So I’m not demoted?”

  Mr. Shakespeare laughed. “On the contrary, you’ve been promoted upstairs.”

  “To the penthouse,” Homer explained. “On the grounds of extreme courage, selflessness, and ingenuity.”

  Mr. Poe could hardly believe the good news.

  He had never imagined that his time here on the working floors of the celestial skyscraper, the “middle place,” might come to such a fortuitous end. And so suddenly!

  Mr. Shakespeare strode across the room. “Please accept my deepest respect, Mr. Poe.”

  They shook hands.

  “And allow me to apologize for sometimes being such a surly, onion-eyed malt-worm,” the bard continued.

  “Oh, you do yourself an injustice, Mr. Shakespeare,” Mr. Poe responded with a sly grin. “I never found you to be ‘onion-eyed.’”

  Mr. Shakespeare took the rebuke with good humor.

  “Of course, in the penthouse you’ll have no more professional responsibilities,” Homer explained. “You’ll exist in a continual state of peace and bliss.”

  Mr. Poe shrugged, embarrassed by his good fortune.

  But something nagged at him.

  “What if . . . what if I don’t actually want to leave here?” he asked slowly.

  Homer couldn’t hide the surprise on his bearded face. “Why in Zeus’s name not?”

  Mr. Poe wasn’t sure that a continual state of peace and bliss would be quite to his liking. For one thing, it would never give him anything to write about. And there was another thing . . . He glanced in the direction of Miss Emily Dickinson.

  Everyone noticed—including Emily herself, who blushed crimson.

  “I suppose your staying could be arranged,” Mr. Shakespeare said helpfully.

  “I could go back to writing fortune cookies,” Mr. Poe offered.

  Homer laughed. “Oh, that wouldn’t be necessary.”

  “If you stay, you can have a corner office on this floor, Mr. Poe,” Mr. Shakespeare said, slapping him on the back. “Just like mine. Fantastic view. And you can write whatever you want.”

  “Whatever I want?” He could practice his true calling!

  Homer nodded.

  “Why do you think Homer and I are still here?” Mr. Shakespeare asked rhetorically.

  “I didn’t even know you two were still at it,” Mr. Poe said.

 
“I just completed a new epic poem,” Homer acknowledged. “It’s better than The Iliad and The Odyssey put together!”

  “And I’ve been writing plays,” Mr. Shakespeare chimed in. “Tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, poem unlimited—”

  “I’ll stay,” Mr. Poe interrupted, wary that Mr. Shakespeare might go on forever.

  “Good,” his former boss said sincerely.

  “And what do you think your first new work will be about?” Homer asked Mr. Poe.

  He didn’t need even a moment to consider.

  “Twin boys, whose story will make for quite a book,” he said.

  THE END

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My heartfelt thanks to those who journeyed from beginning to end with Edgar, Allan, and me. First, to my agent, Kelly Sonnack, who saw the possibilities of an early draft and steadfastly helped me to realize and exceed those possibilities; to Sharyn November, editor extraordinaire, whose creative spirit is as vast as the night sky through which the Bradbury Telecommunications Satellite so recently orbited; to Sam Zuppardi, whose drawings jump off the page with energy, warmth, and humor; to Eileen Savage, designer, who made the books look more beautiful than I imagined possible; to Tara Shanahan for spreading the word that Edgar and Allan were out there in the world; to director Tony Hudz and actor Arte Johnson, who together made the audio versions of the Misadventures of Edgar and Allan Poe trilogy dramatic, funny, and unique. I know how fortunate I am to have worked with such wonderful people. My gratitude and best wishes to all of you.

  I am grateful also to Robert Arthur Jr. (1909–1969), a veteran writer of the golden age of radio, who introduced a book series for young readers in the 1960s, “Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators,” which captivated my nine-year-old imagination and inspired me to start writing stories myself. And to the great Robert Louis Stevenson, who demonstrated that an author can write well for more than one audience, more than one age group—that good writing is, simply, good writing. And to the Beatles, just because.

  Finally, to Julie, my love and gratitude for your living so graciously with the ups and downs of my sometimes chaotic writing life.

  —G. M.

  Thanks again to Gordon, the mastermind behind this whole fabulous misadventure, and to Kelly and Sharyn, who added their own magic to the crazy scheme and let me be an accomplice. To Nancy and Eileen for making it all look so pretty; to Tom and Lucy, who have been good friends to the Poe Boys over the past three years and even better friends to me for a lot longer than that; to Rob Baines for clearing out his attic and giving me the fountain pen he found there—I used it to draw these pictures! And thanks again to my family—mum and dad, Nic, Luisa, grandparents, and everyone who followed things from the beginning. And of course thanks to beautiful Jade—my fiancée!—for pretty much everything else.

  —S. Z.

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