There was a loud crack against the cellar wall. And another. One of the ladies yelped as a pebble hit her, far more fiercely than before. And then another until it was clear that the hail of pebbles that flew at us far exceeded the number we had thrown.
“We have summoned a being from the lowest order!” Mrs. Fontaine cried out. “One who died after a life of vice upon this plane. Its intentions are evil. Run! Run upstairs, now!”
The sisters scurried upstairs and the serving girl scuttled after them, with the professor at her heels. Then the candle was extinguished, leaving utter darkness. It was then that my arms were grabbed by preternaturally strong hands, and I was dragged further into the cellar.
“Help!” I called out. “Someone help me!”
There was the sound of a door slamming shut, and I struggled against the malicious spirits that were determined to drag me to Hell. I thrashed and wriggled like a strung up fish, until I felt a heavy crack upon my head and succumbed to nothingness.
* * *
Later, much later, an eerie jeweled light appeared in the sable darkness. I struggled to bring myself back to sentience, to breathe in the airless room. My body ached and as I tried to arise from my bed, the floor rushed away from my feet. Window—I needed to open a window—but I could not ascertain its location. Fear caught hold of me as I discerned movement—there! Near the dark velvet curtains! The jeweled light grew brighter and brighter, then transformed into a woman’s eyes that glared like a cat’s when they capture the light. As I watched, morbidly transfixed, a second pair of eyes appeared and then another and another! Until hundreds of eyes glowed from the shadows—unnatural and unblinking. A chill slowed my heart and moved through my body—death itself creeping through me, its slow, icy poison finishing me inch by inch. It came to me in a blinding flash of horror that I had swooned—how long ago I did not remember—and now I was trapped, utterly trapped, within my familial tomb, the spirits of my decaying ancestors drawing the life from me so they might rise again. And as these treacherous phantoms waited for sleep to reclaim me, I knew that if my eyes fell closed I would never come back from the darkness.
But my head throbbed and my body ached. I was lying on damp earth, my chin resting upon the floor of my prison, and when I put out my arm, discovered I was at the very brink of a pit, with only empty space in front of me. There was a smell, which increased as my senses cleared; it was the smell of rotting eggs—or the sulfurous fumes of Hell! I could hear noises, faint but somehow disturbing, creeping noises moving toward me. As fear gripped me ever tighter, my senses became inhumanely acute. The sound of feet pattered ever closer, and eyes gleamed like a demon’s in the blackness. And then, with a rushing, something scuttled past me—soft fur, sharp claws, and somewhere . . . teeth. I jerked back my body, arms thrashing. A soft body thudded against my hand and squealed as it connected with a harder surface. And another! As my panic increased, so did my memory. Pebbles . . . flying pebbles thrown by malicious spirits . . . and now, much more horribly, live things sneaking round me, hoping to taste warm flesh, their preternatural eyes accustomed to the darkness, unlike my own. I scrabbled to my feet like a tormented madman and flung myself toward the walls of my cell. They were of dank, musty soil, easily scraped and furrowed by my fingernails, yet most assuredly a prison. I felt my way along the unyielding walls, seeking the prison door, until my foot met with emptiness. A shriek escaped my lips as I grappled to steady myself and sank to my heels, determined not to plunge into the bowels of the earth.
How long I crouched on the floor I do not know. The intensity of the gloom was oppressive and stifling, and it was a struggle to breathe. I itched at the dusty ground around me, seeking a stone, a clod of dirt, anything to test the depth of the pit before me. At last, I found a pebble and threw it—down, down, down, it went, but there was no thud or splash, no sound of it connecting with the bottom. Most surely the house was situated atop the gateway of Hell itself! Horror conquered me, and then the darkness.
How much later did I awake? The darkness remained, but the terror had softened to fear. I had no sense of the size of the pit so moved forward cautiously, arms outstretched, my eyes straining from their sockets, searching for a faint ray of light.
“Mrs. Fontaine! Are you there? Mrs. Fontaine!”
But all I could hear was the breathing of the rats that lived in my cellar with me, the famished rats waiting to catch me unawares. The noise from their impatient feet and urgent teeth echoed diabolically How long before they formed a mob and threw themselves upon me, teeth and claws burrowing deep into my still-living flesh?
“Mrs. Fontaine!”
I do not know how many times I called out from my crypt. Had she been hurt? Was she also a prisoner? At last, I found a rectangle of wood lodged in the earthen wall that seemed to be my prison’s door, but there was no latch to open it. I pounded heartily upon it.
“Help me, someone!” I repeated my pleas over and over until I collapsed into unconsciousness again.
* * *
It may have been hours or possibly days later that I heard a steady rapping. I could not tell if it came from within my prison or outside it. Then there was a sound of splintering wood and a loud crack! Daylight flared through broken planks.
“Poe! Are you there?”
My stuttering heart calmed. It was Dupin at last. “The pit! Heed the pit!” I croaked with the remnants of my voice.
“Poe, I am here. You are safe.” The gleam of a lantern showed him my location. “The devils,” he muttered, as he made his way toward me. “Grasp my arm. You must be weak. I am sorry it took me so long to find you.”
“The lantern. Shine the lantern. I must see it.”
Dupin held the lantern aloft and its feeble beams illuminated the damp walls.
“No, the pit. Show me the pit.”
Dupin held the lantern over it. “There is a hole, framed with wooden beams. I think perhaps it was once a trapdoor.”
“But what can you see? I dropped a stone into it and there was no sound. It seemed to fall into infinity.”
Dupin held the lantern over the pit, leaned to look into its depths and quickly recoiled. “Let us leave this place,” he muttered, trying to usher me toward the broken door, but I clung to his arm, dragging him back.
“You must tell me! What did you see?”
“Here, drink.” Dupin handed me a flask. The water was like nectar upon my tongue and throat as I gulped its coolness.
“What was down there, Dupin? Was it the mouth to Hell itself?”
“One might say that,” he said softly.
“I must look!” I wrenched the lantern from his grasp with an energy that seemed superhuman and leaned over the pit. As the lantern’s feeble light trickled into the gaping darkness, a terrible tableau was revealed. There below were the bones of a man, his clothes still intact, his flesh long gone. It was as if he had been on his knees with head bowed when he expired and had toppled onto his side, hands still clenched fiercely in prayer. His last hours came to me with horrible clarity—the ragged breathing, his collapse into the dust, his final muttered prayers.
“But God did not listen,” I said softly.
“Poe, please. Let us leave this desperate place.” Dupin leaned over Hell’s mouth and took the lantern from my hand, gently pushing me from the edge with his other. I staggered back just as he gasped. Then suddenly, inexplicably, he leapt in.
“Dupin! My God!”
Moments later he scrabbled up from Hell itself and as I went to grab his earth-stained hands with my own, I saw that he was clutching something.
“It is a letter.”
And there in the lamplight, I saw the familiar green seal upon it.
LONDON, FRIDAY, 10 JULY 1840
I entered a peculiar state after my incarceration. My vision had a terrible acuity, but my other senses were dulled and everything seemed to move more slowly. It was as if I were submerged in crystalline water, my terror diluted to doomed resignation. Perhaps this w
as what it was like to drown.
The feeling did not leave me when we were returned to Brown’s Genteel Inn. Dupin ushered me to my room and prepared a steaming basin of water laced with a pungent elixir.
“Wash with this. It will help restore you after your ordeal.”
“Dupin, I need sleep. I am quite overcome.”
“That cellar was inhabited by rats and a recently dead man. The soil was most certainly as noxious as the air. This should counter some deleterious consequences of your imprisonment. I have also summoned a French doctor I know—not a charlatan like those who profess to have studied medicine here. He will examine you.”
“There is no need. I am simply tired.”
“Please.” He handed me a wash towel, pushed me toward the steaming basin and adjourned to the sitting room.
It was only as I removed my clothes that I noticed the terrible state of them. What had the desk clerk thought upon my entrance through the door? He had been as courteous as ever, despite my appearance as a slovenly beggar. My trousers were covered in mud and stained green at the knees with what must be slime. My frock coat was equally filthy, and my shirt! The stench that came from it would never be removed. I discarded all my clothing into a malodorous heap, determined that they should be burned rather than laundered.
I leaned over the basin Dupin had prepared for me and sniffed at the water. It smelled of vinegar and garlic, freshened up with rosemary, lavender, peppermint, and finished with a spicy hint of nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves. It was not entirely unpleasant, so I washed myself from head to foot, then put on a clean nightshirt and crept into my bed. The sheets were deliciously cool and smelled of lavender.
Just as my eyelids fluttered shut, voices woke me again. Niceties were exchanged in French, and I heard Dupin describe in brief the hell-hole where I had been imprisoned. Dupin and a gentleman resembling a giant stork entered my bed chamber. He was dressed somberly in a black frock coat and trousers with thin white stripes that exaggerated the length of his legs. A large alligator bag was clutched in his hand.
“May I introduce Dr. Froissart, a most revered friend of the Dupin family and doctor to French Ambassador Guizot. And this, my dear doctor, is Mr. Edgar Poe, esteemed author, literary editor and friend.”
“It is a great pleasure, Mr. Poe, although I regret that we meet in the aftermath of such disagreeable circumstances. Chevalier Dupin has told me something of your ordeal,” he said in a slow, sonorous voice. Dr. Froissart approached my bedside. “The criminal element in this city is vicious and at times quite ingenious. There are many ways to disguise the murder of a man as an accident. We must ensure that your health is not compromised.”
“I had him bathe in vinaigre des quatre voleurs,” Dupin said. “His clothes were fouled by the rat-infested soil and the air was infected with vapors of decomposed flesh. I am concerned that he was bitten.”
“No, not bitten. I batted them away.”
“Or he might have been scratched. The foul beasts spread pestilence with claw or tooth,” Dupin continued, as if I were unable to hear what he was saying. The sense of being locked inside a dome of water increased.
“Please, Mr. Poe. I must examine you. I apologize for the indignity, but any scratch or bite must be cauterized or you risk an unpleasant death.”
Wearily, I eased my legs from under the coverlet and sat up.
“I will send for coffee,” Dupin said.
“Tea,” the doctor instructed. “It is better in the circumstances.”
Dupin nodded and left the room. Dr. Froissart promptly threw open the curtains, then picked up the small table next to my bedside and repositioned it near the window. He extracted an amber-colored glass bottle from his bag and cotton wadding, then unfurled a leather roll that contained sharp metal instruments that glistered in the sunlight.
“If you would,” the doctor said, indicating my nightshirt. When I removed it, he gestured that I should stand. “Please, here,” he said, indicating a pool of sunlight.
The doctor extracted from his bag a peculiar instrument that resembled a magnifying glass suspended from a metal halo and fitted it onto his head so the magnifying glass was directly in front of his left eye. I watched with the objectivity of a fellow doctor as he clasped a small hammer-like implement and tapped it gently upon my back, then my arms, while inspecting my skin for scratches or bite marks.
“Very good. I see nothing on your skin. Now I must only check your scalp.” He tilted my head slightly and such was his height that he had the perfect view of my entire cranium. The doctor removed a metal comb from his tool kit and checked every inch of my still damp head. “Very fine,” he said at last. “You may dress again and return to bed if you wish.”
There was a perfunctory rap on the door. Dupin entered, carrying a tray of tea things and warm scones. My stomach growled at my mind’s dismissal of the offering.
“I could find no punctures of the skin or scalp, which is most fortunate. Now we must hope that no pestilence entered the body through the sinuses or mouth. I will give you a prophylactic you must take daily.”
The doctor rummaged in his capacious bag and removed a wooden box. When he opened it, a selection of vials were revealed, all neatly labeled in Latin. He carefully mixed the contents of several vials into a small glass bottle. Dupin watched intently.
“Wormwood?” he asked, eyebrows raised.
“Artemisia absinthium is a vermifuge. It also deters fleas, lice and tics and protects against the plague and similar fatal fevers. Most helpful when a subject has been exposed to rats. It also quells anxiety, which is useful given the circumstances.”
Dupin nodded. Dr. Froissart closed the bottle and shook it vigorously. He then opened it again and carefully dripped the elixir into a glass of water. “Ten drops morning and night,” he instructed before he handed the glass to me. “It has little taste if you drink it quickly.”
I sipped the elixir down, relishing its bitterness. The unpleasant feeling it left in my mouth helped to better connect me with the world around me.
“Tea?” Dupin asked Dr. Froissart.
“Yes. No milk.”
“Of course not. Most terrible habit of the English. Poe?” Dupin held the pot’s spout over the third teacup. I nodded and he delivered the cup to my bedside table. Dupin and Dr. Froissart settled into two chairs and murmured softly about symptoms of pestilent afflictions, while I sipped at the hot beverage. I had thought the tea might revive me, but twilight began to envelop me, and I wondered if a sleeping draft had been put into my cup. When my companions began to speak in French, I felt a conspiring tone seep into their discourse and drew on all my strength to hear their words.
“I have an article from the scene of the attack I would like you to analyze. I suspect it is not what it seems.”
I could hear a rustling as Dupin passed something to Dr. Froissart, but could not lift my weighted lids to see what the object was.
“Better to examine the entire thing,” Dr. Froissart eventually said. “I believe I will immediately be able to identify what it is in situ. There should be no need to transport it unless required as evidence.”
“Unfortunately, it is evidence of malediction rather than any crime punishable by imprisonment. My investigation is for Poe’s peace of mind.”
Resentment welled up in me to hear Dupin discuss my state of mind with the doctor.
There was the clack of teacups placed into saucers and the sound of Dr. Froissart gathering his things, then Dupin said: “Valdemar is in London—or was four days ago. Have you heard anything of him?”
“No, but I have been distracted. The situation here is difficult and the Ambassador may be called away at any time.”
“There are some things perhaps you might check for me. I am convinced he is still in London and planning something. It will offer me my chance if I learn what that is.”
They stepped outside my bedroom and I overheard nothing further except my chamber door close. I had an idea to follow
them back to Bayham Street, but my legs would barely support me as I made my way slowly into the sitting room. And then I saw the letter on the marble table.
93 Jermyn Street, London
Sunday 14 June 1790
Dear Henry,
The Monster has been captured! I write this news with much relief tempered with caution as the accused is none other than that unlucky Welshman, Rhynwick Williams—the very man who spied the true Monster in the act.
It seems our former ballet dancer is known for pressing his attentions upon the ladies too forcibly (and therefore unsuccessfully), so when the news spread that he was hauled to Bow Street after Miss Anne Porter’s accusations yesterday, it was astonishing how many ladies suddenly remembered him as their attacker. Truth conquered by the desire to blame!
Mr. Williams’s misfortune unfurled in this manner on Saturday evening. Miss Anne Porter was walking in St. James’s Park with another lady and her betrothed, Mr. Coleman, when she became highly agitated, claiming she had just seen the monster who attacked her after the Queen’s birthday ball. The gallant Mr. Coleman pursued Rhynwick Williams, but the incredible dolt lost his prey and took to knocking on doors in hopes of finding him again. I would not dare to put such a scene in our play as no sensible audience would believe it! Later that evening, Mr. Coleman came across Mr. Williams by chance at St. James’s Place; and he insisted that Williams accompany him to the Porter residence. Williams did not refuse (quite why, I do not understand) and the two proceeded to the Porter’s door. When the sisters caught sight of Mr. Williams, they shrieked: “That is the wretch!” And so Mr. Williams was apprehended and taken to Bow Street. Anne Porter went there this morning and selected the ill-fated flower maker from a crowd of people. The false Monster will now go to trial and of course the true Monster must cease to exist. Promise that you will never again assume the guise of the Monster unless onstage in the title role!
Edgar Allan Poe and the London Monster Page 19
