by Mike Nappa
It seems fitting to me, at this moment, that I’m praying the last words of Edgar Allan Poe. Lord, help my poor soul. I’ve wondered often if God answered that poet’s prayer, or if it was just a cry into emptiness by a man lost in the blinding night.
“We’re here.”
It takes a few moments to make my legs work again, to uncramp and enliven them with blood flowing once more. It’s dark, and we’ve parked at the end of a dirt road, surrounded by cover of many trees. To our left is a small cottage—a literal “little house in the woods.” Under different circumstances, I’d probably like it, windows warm with yellow light, the scent of smoke puffing through a fireplace chimney. But right now it’s only a prison scene to me.
Southie stops unpacking the trunk long enough to look at me, hard. “Don’t do it,” he says, like he’s reading my mind. He waves his hand, and I see he’s got the gun in it. “I don’t feel like killing another bazo tonight.”
My legs couldn’t run right now anyway, I think. But maybe tomorrow. Or the next day. He can’t watch me forever, can he?
My captor loads me with a long leather tube and a small wooden crate, then turns me toward the door. He’s got two similar tubes, and I see he’s carrying my pages too, still wrapped up in my portfolio case, almost ready to send. So close, I tell myself. So close to being done. Should’ve finished that Poe project before I took the new job, before I got mixed up in . . . this.
A broad man with a sour expression opens the door to the cottage.
“What took you so long?” he growls, and I hear an Irish brogue that’s almost musical in its sound.
“Skiddah here needed a little hand-holding.” My Southie grins back. “But we got it all, no problem.”
“Who’s he?”
“Your new assistant.”
The burly Irishman glowers at me in the dim light on the porch. “Can he draw?” he says.
“He’s a forger,” Southie says. “Caught him making a wicked-good copy of this one.” He raises a leather tube with a rolled-up oil painting inside and waves it toward the Irishman.
“Don’t need a painter,” the Irishman snaps. “Not yet at least, not for a few more weeks. Maybe even a month. Need a penciler right now. A sketch artist.”
“I can draw,” I say suddenly. Maybe if I make myself useful, I think, they’ll keep me alive long enough for me to find a way to escape.
“See for yourself.” Southie shoves my portfolio into the Irishman’s hands, then pushes past him to enter the cottage.
The stocky man looks hard at me for another moment, then unzips my work. He flips through a few comic book pages, nodding once or twice, making unintelligible grunts at the images he sees. Then he slaps the case shut again. He wraps his arms in front of him, pressing my artwork to his chest almost like he’s giving it a hug.
His stare is hard to hold, but I try not to wilt under his gaze. He’s looking at me as though he’s trying to gauge whether it’s easier to kill and bury me here in the woods or to invite me inside for dinner. Finally he nods, decision made.
“Clocks,” he says to me brusquely. “I need lots of clocks.”
Mike Nappa is an entertainment journalist at FamilyFans.com, as well as a bestselling and award-winning author with more than one million books sold worldwide. When he was a kid, the stories of Edgar Allan Poe scared him silly. Today he owns everything Poe ever wrote. A former fiction acquisitions editor, Mike earned his MA in English literature and now writes full-time.
Books in the Coffey & Hill Series
Annabel Lee
The Raven
coffeyandhillseries.com
Nappaland.com
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