Imp: Being the Lost Notebooks of Rufus Wilmot Griswold in the Matter of the Death of Edgar Allan Poe

by Douglas Vincent Wesselmann

  I heard the earth itself breathing below me.

  I heard rivers run and rocks grind.

  The core of the planet bubbled with molten iron.

  A continent crashed in floating collisions.

  War stirred on marching feet that pounded dry roads.

  God’s voice declared my doom in wordless speech.

  And always their jaws were grinding closer.

  The worms and the beetles and the larva were dining – but there was a closer sound. The maggots that grew spontaneously within me stirred. The eggs that life had laid within had hatched. I heard their jaws above all others. Within my very gut they turned and they bit. I had no body to feel them, but I heard them and they bit. I listened to the snapping of their little mouths.

  They chewed through my intestines. I heard my entrails leak fear and terror. I heard the tendons recoil as the teeth cut through them. I heard my muscles liquefy with a hiss. The sound of my skin opening was the tearing of linen.

  The worms chewed from without and the maggots from within. But at the peak of their frenzy, the sounds began to fade as if I were being pulled away across some wide gulf. The gnashing of their teeth became a hum and then, muted by distance, a low hiss – then a silence fell – a final, thick curtain of soundlessness.

  Until then I had assumed the passage of time.

  But I floated with no ears.

  I floated with no eyes.

  Had I ever had a nose?

  No flesh was holding my soul.

  I had no mouth.

  I had no more hunger.

  Only time.

  But time could not move.

  Time alone in a single instant.

  Time alone.

  Time.

  Time.

  Time.

  Me.

  I was suffocating.

  I was.

  I was alone. I was stripped of all my human features. I was bereft of all worldly senses. And in that final place, beyond time, I was aware of only one thing. I was.

  I was in a grave.

  I knew that truth.

  I was in a grave. My coffin covered and my name forgotten. I had reached that point in the scripture. “Better is the end of a thing, than its beginning.”

  I was suffocating.

  I was able to understand what I could not taste, or feel, or smell, or see, or hear – I realized where I was. I was in the grave. My being hung on a thread. And the thread became a sound unheard – a note of eternal clarity from an unmade trumpet.

  A film of shadow passed from my new eyes. A new, novel existence seemed to begin. Whatever stupor I had been in began to turn to a light un-seeable. Incense surrounded me in fragrance. God touched my finger with his, and my skin rejoiced. I tasted my own tears of joy.

  The drugs that I had been given had spent the last of their power.

  My eyes… I blinked.

  The black.

  The grave.

  I screamed.

  I screamed because in that instant. I realized. I understood. I was in the grave, and I was suffocating. I screamed again. My arms began to move. I tried to pull them up to my face. The lid was too close. I tried. I bent them and contorted the joints. My right hand reached my head, and I put the palm of my hand on the lid above me. So close. I could not breathe. I was suffocating.

  I tried to push the lid up. But I did not, could not, would never have the strength to lift the weight. The weight of the earth. The weight of the mud. It all pressed down on me. I felt warm piss leaking out across my leg and meeting cold water. I was lying in cold water. The coffin was leaking – the sodden earth around me, seeping its burden of rain into my box. The water was splashing as I madly pulled my left arm up to join my right. My elbow almost ripped as I bent and forced the joint. Wrist and shoulder, strained almost to breaking. My hand, wet with freezing water, reached up. I pushed again with both arms, with all my power on the lid above me.

  I scratched madly at the pine. I would tear through the wood and burrow like a mole. In the darkness I could see nothing. Only the sparks of my own efforts reflected on my retinas. The strain forced bursts of yellow light to being on the inside of my clenched lids. I scratched and clawed at the wood. I felt cold water and hot blood drip onto my face.

  I was suffocating.

  My fingers were shredding to the bone, but I dug. I dug for my life, and I screamed until there was no breath to scream.

  I was suffocating.

  I was buried in a coffin.

  There were stars flaring in my eyes, blood dripping on my face, and my mouth was open in a silent scream.

  I

  was

  suffocating.

  I remember no more of that night. I remember no more of that place. I remember no more of that time.

  Mark this as a truth that cannot be denied – it is impossible to remember something that has yet to end. The telling of it calls on no memory. For even now, years gone by, the horror is still happening. Every waking moment, I am in the coffin.

  And I am suffocating.

  Chapter 35

  October 3, 1849 2:10 a.m. - A Demon in My View -

  God is complete in Trinity. This is an element of Faith. It has been said that we humans are expressed in two parts – body and soul. Corresponding with the conditions of the worm and the butterfly. Death is but metamorphosis. Our present incarnation is progressive, preparatory, temporary. As the tripartite faces of God become one through creation, passion, and wisdom, so are our two natures joined in immortality when we pass through the chrysalis spun and split in our fatal agonies.

  But Satan, he is the singular one. Whole in his existence, he is the serpent, Prince of Light, little horn, dragon, devil, Beelzebub, the adversary, Abaddon, and father of all lies. So many names he has, but one adamantine core. The Lord of Demons is now – is what he once was – is what he shall ever be – one.

  “One. Two. Three. Pull!”

  The coffin jerked and bounced. It was being lifted.

  The voice was a harsh but low and breathy call.

  “One. Two. Three. Pull!”

  At first my feet were lower than my head. Another pull came, and my head dipped as my feet were raised. The angle became steep. Ice water covered my face, and I took my first breath. I choked.

  “The fucking mud sucks it like a black mouth.”

  “Just pull, damn it.”

  The coffin tipped to one side. Water rushed away from my head. I had air – cold air through cracks and pores of pine.

  “Shit. There’s water everywhere.”

  “More a pond than a grave.”

  “One more pull.”

  The box swung one way, then another. Water sloshed from side to side, not nearly so deep as it had been. There was a sudden acceleration.

  “It’s heavy, Nabbity. Let it drain.”

  “Quiet. The Butcher’s Hill men will hear.”

  My head bumped against the plank as the coffin was swung once, twice – then tossed to solid ground. I sensed that it slid across wet dirt and scrubby grass and stopped short against some stone. I could hear two men breathing hard with the exertion. Their lantern illuminated the flaw in the lid. I could see.

  “Shall I smash the lid or pry it open, Nabbity?” asked a thin, reedy voice.

  “No.”

  “Which?”

  “No smashing. No prying. No opening.”

  “Fuck, Nabbity. We going to lug this through the field to the wagon?”

  “Ssssh!”

  The lantern went out. I could hear the two men bumping up against the side of the pine boards. There was a scramble of feet and hands holding on to the coffin as if to steady themselves.

  A whisper. “What did you see?”

  “Don’t know. Looked like Molly.”

  “Fuck off, Nabbity. Molly’s dead.”

  “I know. It’s just…”

  “What did you see?

  “Looked like… Ah, I don’t know.”

  “Nothing then. S
ure aren’t the Butcher Boys.”

  “No.”

  There was a silence again. Something started clattering across the top of the coffin. Ice. Tiny pellets of ice were falling. The sound intensified and then slackened to a final slow roll like a muffled drum and stopped.

  I still held my bloodied fingers up by my face. I hadn’t been strong enough to lift the mud and the dirt that buried me, but now with only the nails holding the lid I was full of a mad hope. Could I push strong enough against the nails? I felt a new strength in my arms – strength from hope, and from another source. I wanted to be free of the box, that is true, but more than that, I wanted to kill these men. Revenge? No, it was simpler than that. I simply wanted to kill.

  I was filled with a rage I had never experienced. In the darkness of the coffin, I saw O’Hanlon’s blood flowing towards me, and my mouth was full of the coppery taste of it. I could feel Molly’s cold skin on my face. Jezebel’s hunger filled my nose. I became rage. I heard the men’s cruel voices like crows cackling on a corpse, and I wanted to bring death to their throats.

  I placed my hands on the lid and gathered all the strength I could find in my torn joints and bruised muscles. The coffin tilted again, this time to the side, and I half rolled towards the sap-filled board to that side. My head struck the pine hard.

  “Easy.”

  “Ssssh! Just a bit farther.”

  “Yeah. Yeah.”

  I was stunned for a moment. The box was jostled as if the men carrying it were walking over uneven ground. Their footing slipped on wet mud, and I was thrown against the side of the boards again.

  “Here. Up now.”

  There was the sound of straining grunts and effort as the coffin was raised higher again and then a shock as one end was dropped on a hard surface.

  “There now, slide it on.”

  “Give me a hand, Nabbity.”

  “Right next to the other.”

  “Two in one night and me paid but half again for the work.”

  “You’ve got your ten dollars. Fuck off.”

  There was a scraping noise as the grain of the rough pine was forced over an opposing angle of old, harder wood. The box jerked to a stop. There was a sound. What was it? A snapping as if a sail had furled. The small gray flaw above my head darkened, and the men’s voices became muffled.

  “Tie down the tarp.”

  “They’re both soaked already.”

  “Just do it.”

  “But it ain’t far to the Washington.”

  “We aren’t going to the Washington.”

  “But they buys the bodies. They always buys the bodies.”

  “You’re paid to do what I say. Do it.”

  A horse whinnied, and the wagon – yes, I was on a wagon – began to move.

  “Yo’ there.” The deeper voice – it was Nabbity – the name came back to me. O’Hanlon’s partner was driving the rig. “Yah! Yah!”

  “Still, I ought to get double pay.”

  “Stuff it,” Nabbity barked.

  The wagon bumped over a hump and hit a hole. I bounced inside the box. Soon a steady turn of the wheels produced a grumbling noise that vibrated through the axles, into the bed of the lorry, and up into the box and my spine on the hard wood. I shivered with cold. My clothes were wet, and the chilled air was beginning to have an effect.

  “So who’s in this last one?”

  “Shut it.”

  “Just wondering.”

  “You aren’t paid to wonder.”

  “That black Johnny Hop-Frog said the name. I’ve heard it somewhere.”

  “You hear too much.”

  My sense of smell was acute. In the darkness, with the cold numbing my fingers and limbs, my nose was the center of my attention, as if I’d regressed to a primitive state to match the rage that infected me. There was a fragrance. It was familiar. A musk hung in the air.

  The wagon hit another bump, and my box lurched to the side. It collided with another. The odor was stronger. Still too faint, I struggled to sense the place of the scent. I closed my eyes and pushed all of my attention to it.

  “That’s it.”

  “Shut it,” Nabbity mumbled. “Yah! Go there, Sugar.”

  “Yeah, the Hop-Frog boy what works for…”

  “Will you put a stop to it?”

  “Said the name ‘Raven,’ he did. We got some Mr. Raven in that last box?”

  “Jesus, you fucking ass. Enough now.”

  A musk – a sweet musk that tasted like lips in my nose. The boxes in the wagon jumped and skittered as another rut grabbed a wheel.

  “The Maryland? We’re going to the Maryland.”

  “Like I got a magpie on the buckboard with me.”

  “He wants them there? Shit, I’ll not go in there.”

  “You’ll do the job.”

  “I did the job. I did the Western, and I did Yellot’s, and I’ll not go in there. I heard the stories about that place.”

  “You’ll do the job, or I’ll slit you.”

  “Easy, Nabbity. Don’t know why O’Hanlon isn’t here, anyway. Usually I just digs and lifts.”

  “Sean isn’t here.”

  “Is it true what I heard?”

  “What did you hear?”

  “The Masons got O’Hanlon. Used him in a ceremony.”

  “Shut it.”

  “Just what I heard.”

  “You hear too much.”

  My body was shaking. I could not control the tremors induced by the cold. My clothes were stiff with the water as it started to freeze. My mind seemed to slow. But in my nose there was a burst of heat as I recognized the smell.

  “You’ll carry in his Molly in her fine casket, and you’ll carry in this here Raven in his pine box.”

  “I’ll not like it.”

  “He wants his Molly back. He’ll have her.”

  “I want a little extra.”

  “Ha! So ask him for your extra.”

  “Well…”

  “You’d be wise not to.”

  “True and true. Fox is one of a kind, isn’t he?”

  “One of a kind, indeed.”

  The wagon’s load shifted as wheels bounced over a small curb. My crude box touched Molly’s fine casket. I might have screamed if my mouth had not been frozen. My coffin kissed hers.

  My anger was as cold as hell itself.

  Chapter 36

  October 3, 1849 3:30 a.m. - Deep Into That Darkness Peering -

  I never knew myself to feel so keenly alive. The gentle reader may attribute such an exhilaration to my recent escape from the sucking mud of the grave and the resultant stimulation of thankful gratitude to God. Or perhaps, one of a more secular bent may think the drug that had of late flowed through my veins and yet lurked in my mind’s dark corners supplied me such a vivid euphoria. Both constructs would be wrong. My own deeply held conviction is that the intensity of my state was a direct result of the lust that roared through me from heel through skin to crown. I was totally alive in the all-consuming lust that filled me with a singular and undeniable desire – the desire to simply kill.

  In the box, I lay frozen and chattering, but had there been a mirror, had I been able to see my own face, I am sure that I would have beheld pure glee painted madly across the canvas of my face. I laughed without making a sound. I laughed, and I waited.

  “Open me,” I whispered, and I waited.

  The bumping of the wagon stopped. The springs on the seat creaked, and the frame of the lorry swayed as weight shifted. The sound of men’s boots hitting the pavement and steps leading to the back of the conveyance followed.

  “Let’s get the nice dry one first.”

  “You’re the boss.”

  Molly’s casket slid quickly off the boards beside me with a quick hissing sound. The men gave a quick grunt, and it was off the bed.

  “Over there, at the west end – the stairs go down.”

  “Down? I won’t go in that dungeon.”

  “It’s a cellar li
ke the one you live in. Now go!”

  Their voices were not whispers anymore. The sounds they made echoed as if the wagon and the men were between hard walls. Shuffling scrapes of boots bearing a heavy load faded. An iron door creaked in the distance.

  “Open me,” I whispered.

  I flexed my fingers and my hands. I tensed my legs and relaxed them. I tried to stretch the cold out of my bones.

  “Open me.”

  The snap of heels on stone came closer. The men were returning. I heard them come up the cellar steps and cross towards the wagon.

  “That’s it. I’m not taking this one.” It was the thin voiced man.

  “You’ll do your job,” Nabbity grunted as he started tugging at the box that enclosed all of my anger. I braced myself.

  “Did you see how he looked at me?”

  “Fah!”

  “He’s got the look. He put the eye on me. I’ll not go back.”

  “Grab the box.”

  “I’ll not…”

  “Should I carve out your lovely blues?”

  “I won’t do it.”

  I could not have braced myself for what happened next. Nabbity dropped the end of my coffin and, with only one end on the wagon, the other dropped. The pine box hit the pavement hard and bounced like a child’s ball. A crash echoed in the dark, and the horse neighed, jerking forward in its harness. The lip of the box that had been on the gate of the lorry popped up in the air and deflected sideways as the wagon moved out from under with the startled horse’s half step. The pine boards near split when the muddy casket smashed into the pavement again.

  I was deafened by the sounds and knocked about, near stunned, by the impacts. Above my face, the small crack of light had widened. Over at the edge, where the lip met the lid was a long sliver of gray light, and the rusted shaft of a nail, half-pulled by the stress of the fall. I turned my head to the left as a stab of pain hit me. There at eye level was a small knothole. The knot itself, less than an inch in circumference, had been knocked loose and lost.