“I feel I am now a prophet,” Poe’s corpse declared, trotting along behind us.
Poe followed us like a dog. He begged while words were still his to command. But his mind was rotting within, and his sentences became phrases, and then only nonsense by the time we crossed the Falls.
“Blow off my head,” was the last thing the dead man shouted.
Still, he followed, though falling further and further behind. Finally, his mind must have forgotten us – or he was distracted by one sight or another. Like a child at a fair, he lost himself in the carnival of life that surrounded him. Then Poe lost us. Somewhere in the Fourth Ward, I last saw him. His eyes were wild. His arms flailed at the empty air. I imagined he might be brushing away invisible silver angels who were buzzing around his head – come to condemn him He stood his last stand against heaven, his feet slipping in the gutter’s slop, very near Gunner’s Hall and Ryan’s tavern. We went on. I did not look back again.
The keeper at the cemetery was frightened at first, but we impressed him with the need to keep his early bargain. We watched the men dig the grave deeper, and Molly and Caroline, with Virginia’s bleached bones, were buried in plot number “80” by half past noon.
I have heard since that a man claims to have Sissy’s bones under his bed. He is a prevaricator, I assure you. I saw the grave closed. It would not be opened again for four days, and then to receive the Raven himself.
Poe was taken to Washington College Hospital that very afternoon. Doctors at first thought he was drunk, for he mumbled and thrashed as in delirium praecox. His mind dissolved slowly over four days.
Poe shouted, by the Doctor’s report, “Reynolds! Reynolds!” I have reason to believe that they were wrong. I know whom Poe called out to. “Renard! Renard!” It is only to be expected that Fox would shadow his soul to the end. According to other accounts, Poe apparently said – and often repeated – something to the effect that “a friend would take a gun and blow my head off” or some variation of that phrase. It all seems about right.
No medicine or treatment helped him, or could ever help him. You see, Edgar Allan Poe was already dead. He died on September 12, 1849. Those who saw him afterwards met only his re-animated corpse. Jupiter exercised – as close as anyone ever could – control over Poe’s comings and goings.
That the poet became engaged, or gave a reading, or even flirted with a young girl in Virginia Beach was only a façade. That Poe acted as well as he did was a credit to his Southern breeding and the arcane and wonderful knowledge of my friend Jupiter. I also suspect that the truth of his situation may not have dawned on Poe until the incident on the boat to Baltimore. But that is only conjecture.
Finally, after a quiet, nearly comatose night on the seventh day of October, Poe’s heart had decayed beyond beating, and he was declared legally dead. Some have attributed these words to be Poe’s final utterance – “Lord help my poor soul.” Though I doubt the veracity of that quote, I will not argue the point. For indeed, I would pray for him that very mercy. That I could not give such forgiveness only gives evidence that I am not the saint I would wish to be.
Poe was buried the next day in plot number “80” at the Old Western Burying Grounds. The keeper never revealed the coffins that shared his resting place. Since then, of course, a church has been built over the graveyard, but the tombs have been kept in place. It is a Presbyterian Church. Poe would have approved. “You can trust a Presbyterian,” as he once said.
I visited his grave once, just last year. I found it somewhat neglected and sad. Perhaps I sought his forgiveness for my cruelty. I cannot say with any purity of motive that I did. But I left a small token there on his stone – a bottle of brandy – though I confess I drank full half of it – and three roses in memory of Virginia, Caroline, and my love, Molly. The January cold caused me distress, and my health has declined since. Now I lie on my own bed and know I shall never visit that place again.
Jupiter and Marie, accompanied by Hop-Frog, took the wagon and headed north that very afternoon to Pennsylvania. I have heard little of them since our parting, save that Dr. Leonard Galepa, for that is Jupiter’s true name, set up a practice near Gettysburg, a quiet and peaceful town set in beautiful round hills. May peace follow them always.
Back in New York, on hearing of Poe’s announced demise, I wrote an obituary for the October 9th Daily Tribune. It began:
“Edgar Allan Poe is dead. He died in Baltimore the day before yesterday. This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it.”
I have suffered much abuse for the seeming cruelty of my words. I do not regret the phrasing. Nor do I regret portraying Poe as a drunkard, a drug addict, and a womanizer, for all those things he was. In attributing his death to his indulgences, I have earned the enmity of his many defenders now in this life and I expect beyond.
I am invulnerable to these attacks. The proof of it is beneath my very skin. On my left side a scar bears witness to my protection from these wounds. Within my very flesh, wrapped in a scar, the purest ruby lives where Poe and Jupiter placed it.
I wish to state plainly that my motives were that of a conscientious literary executor. Poe had charged me in more lucid days with the responsibility. Had I given the true nature of the matters that led to his “death,” the public would have denounced him and his work. The genius of his stories and verse might have been hidden forever behind a wall of superstitious fear and blind hatred.
And so I declared him a drunkard. So be it. Poe’s supporters attack me. They invent more genteel explanations for his bitter end. They create legends and fables that soothe their own moral delusions. But whatever they do or say, they spend no time getting close to the real truth that only a few of us know, and that was my purpose.
Poe’s reputation will soar, free of his terrible secrets. Mine will decline, and I will fade into obscurity. I will have performed my service. Poe’s works survive his sins.
That is the only mercy I could give him.
My lungs fail, and every night I wake up in a terror. Every night I suffocate. I have not long to go before the lid closes above me, and I have no strength left to even claw at the satin lining of my second coffin. My body weakens, and my breath fails. But my surety in my actions remains.
I stand atop Mount Aetna, and I spin on my heel.
* * *
Acknowledgments
With thanks to Allan Guthrie at Jenny Brown Associates, Edinburgh, and all who support me and writers everywhere. With gratitude to the British Crime Writers Association, who kept short listing me for the Debut Dagger until I finally managed to grab it for this book. Imp is a labor of love - love of Poe, love of history, and love of the macabre.
About the Author
DouglasVincent Wesselmann (aka Otis Twelve) won the 2006 Debut Dagger from the British CWA for his novel “Imp: Being the Lost Notebooks of Rufus Wilmot Griswold in the Matter of the Death of Edgar Allan Poe.” Another ms., “On the Albino Farm,” won the 2005 London Book Fair Competition, Pulitzer Prize winner, Richard Russo named his short story “Life Among the Bean Bugs” runner up for the 2005 Kurt Vonnegut Prize. And his tale, “The Goodness of Trees,” received a Templeton Prize in 2005. His fiction has been published by The North American Review, Crimespree, The Reader, and in anthologies such as the cult classic, “Expletive Deleted (Bleak House) and “The Purpose Reader” (Cosimo). His “Magical Ruralism” novel, Tales of the Master: The Book of Stone (Grief Illustrated Press/Centering Corporation) was released in 2015. In the distant past, he was a founder of the Ogden Edsl Wahalia Blues Ensemble Mondo Bizzario Band, made infamous by radio’s Dr. Demento Show, and the anthem Dead Puppies. Despite rumors to the contrary, Wesselmann lives in the middle of North America, though he is considering moving to one of the edges.
Douglas Vincent Wesselmann
douglaswesselmann.com
[email protected]
Also by Douglas Vincent Wesselmann
Tales of the Master
On The
Albino Farm
Sometimes a Prozac Notion
Imp: Being the Lost Notebooks of Rufus Wilmot Griswold in the Matter of the Death of Edgar Allan Poe Page 30
