And on it went like a dark current flowing through the still air.
The stage consisted of an austere pedestal table and little else. The speaker, a diminutive man dressed in a threadbare black suit, dull linen shirt and bow tie, leaned against the pedestal as though wounded. His hair was as black as crow feathers, and unruly above his ears as though caught in a gale. His complexion had a deathly pallor to it. He looked ill. Only his deep-set, penetrating eyes reflected any kind of life energy — albeit one of madness.
The performance lasted another forty minutes, at which time the pale, black-haired imp nodded stiffly to the applauding throng and walked off stage.
The Scotsman made his way against the flow of the departing foot traffic toward the stage. He climbed the wooden stairs, and flashed his star at the manager. With a nod, the skinny gray codger indicated an unmarked door across the wings. The Scotsman went over and knocked briskly.
"One moment, if you please," came a muffled voice in a hoarse, unmistakable Virginia drawl.
The Scotsman waited, and waited, and waited as the theater cleared, the ensuing silence making the burly man uncomfortable. At last he knocked again. This time there was no reply save for a faint exhalation of air.
"Sir?"
No response.
"Sir, are ye decent?" The Scotsman knocked a third time, then tried the brass knob, found it unlocked, and pushed the door open.
"Oh my," the poet murmured, looking up from the corner of the room where he was slumped in a bentwood rocker. His jacket was off, his sleeves unbuttoned and pushed up on his slender, feminine arms. A small glassine flask of a narcotic preparation, its rubber stopper loosened, sat on the table next to him. He made a futile effort to cover the bottle with an issue of the Daily Democrat that lay on the table but it was of no use. "Oh my, my, my," he muttered apologetically while unfurling his sleeves with trembling fingers.
In a moment of modesty, perhaps even deference, the Scotsman turned away.
It was not a grand gesture or in any way meant to bestow unwarranted courtesy to the poet. It was simply innate to the Scotsman's personality. A recent immigrant from the slums of Glasgow, liberal in temperament and politics, he was a gentle soul wrapped in a protective armor of brawn and cunning. He'd been a cooper in the village of Dundee, Illinois, before joining the Chicago constabulary, and his hands and shoulders were still callused and rough from making barrels. He wore a beard to give his youthful, pug-nosed face a bit more gravity, and he was quick to smile. But also quick to defend the weak. And perhaps this was why he made no effort to embarrass the poet, even though he recognized at once the behavior being displayed before him.
The bottle more than likely contained laudanum, an opiate derivative. Over the years, the Scotsman had witnessed all manner of unfortunates — prostitutes, derelicts, prisoners — using the infernal stuff to ease the pain of their hellish existence. The effect was quite sad — a theft of life force, a numbing of the senses. A century ago it had been legal, even fashionable among the aristocracy. But now the substance was being outlawed in more and more territories each year.
"Good Lord you've come to incarcerate me," the voice croaked from across the room. The poet had obviously seen the tin star attached to the burly man's lapel, and now the pale man slumped even further into his rocker.
The Scotsman bowed his head. "Not at all, Sir. On the contrary I've come to solicit a consultation."
By this point the poet had gotten himself back in order, his sleeve clasped and his jacket back on. Now he rose and stood facing his visitor. "I beg your pardon?"
"Name's Pinkerton," the Scotsman said, finally making eye contact and extending his large hand in greeting. "Allan Pinkerton, Cook County Sheriff's department."
The poet stared. Thunderstruck. Speechless. "I — I am dreadfully sorry but I do not —"
"I enjoy yer work immensely, Sir, it is indeed an honor to make yer acquaintance." Pinkerton kept his hand extended, his expression completely free of guile.
At last the poet reached over and shook the deputy's hand. "A consultation you say," he said somewhat tentatively.
"That is correct, Sir."
The poet frowned. "With all respect, Mr. Pinkerton, since when does the sheriff's department have a need for poetry seminars?"
Pinkerton's grin widened. "Naw, I shouldn't think old Sheriff Bradley and his minions would have much time for poems nowadays." The grin faltered then. "In fact, I would ask that ye treat our discourse with the utmost discretion from this point on."
The poet shrugged. "As you wish."
The law man looked almost sad then, his voice softening. "Especially since it involves an act of diabolism worthy of the netherworld. If you follow my meaning."
The poet looked at him. "I must admit, Sir, I am not certain that I do... follow your meaning, that is."
Pinkerton rubbed his whiskers, measuring his words. "There has been a rash of killin's in this township of late that have the sheriff and his lads vexed. Since I am only the lowliest of deputies I am acting in a somewhat unofficial capacity this evening by seeking yer counsel."
The poet stared at him. "My counsel in regard to what?"
"Finding the party or parties responsible."
Another frown from the poet. "I must confess, Mr. Pinkerton, that I am as vexed by your inquiry as your sheriff must be by these crimes."
"Sir, I implore ye —"
"But what in heaven's name could have given you the notion that I would have anything whatsoever to contribute to matters such as these?"
A long pause. Pinkerton's grin returned. "Oh, Mr. Poe... I've read all yer tales."
3.
"THE UNTRIMMED FINGERNAILS OF THE DEAD"
8 March - 11:21 PM
The human remains of the 39th Street victim had been kept, according to Pinkerton's confidential orders, under lock and key in a deserted, remote stable five miles west of the stockyards. It was a highly irregular request, and it raised more than a few eyebrows among city officials. Victims of murderous crimes — usually gun fights, barroom brawls, things of that nature — were traditionally surrendered to the next of kin as quickly as possible, and very little consideration was given to their sorry state. But Pinkerton saw the Ashland Packing House victim as evidence (of what, he had no idea), and hence the need to keep it preserved for the purposes of further regard and study. Fortunately Sheriff Bradley was out of town at the moment, and his second-in-command, A. L. Fricke, was so overwhelmed with the requisite paperwork that he honored Pinkerton's strange request simply out of expediency. For the time being, the corpse could stay on ice... at least long enough for the mysterious visitor from Richmond to have a look.
"Merciful God," Edgar Allan Poe muttered as he gazed down at the ragged form engulfed in mist. Nestled in a swaddling of gore-soaked linen, the corpse lay upon a monolith of river ice, cut with a cross-saw from the north canal, an object which now oozed the most infernal gray vapor. A frozen snake, the long speckled tendril of a water moccasin, was visible within the ice, suspended in the milky medium. Unable to tear his gaze away, Poe shivered convulsively in his black frock coat, keeping one gloved hand clutched at his shopworn ascot as though he might fall apart at any moment.
Edgar Poe had seen quite enough death in his day — far more than one man should have to endure. In 1811, at the age of two, he lost his beloved mother, an actress, to tuberculosis. This primal memory of loss and abandonment — of seeing the woman's remains laid out, not unlike this poor soul, across a mortician's granite — haunted the poet to this very day. Abandoned by his actor father, Poe was subsequently sent to live with a foster family in Richmond. The matriarch, Francis Allan, was a kind-hearted women to whom young Edgar became very attached. Unfortunately death came calling again in 1829 and took the gentle Mrs. Allan to her great reward. The boy was devastated, his spirits trampled. The tragedies turned him inward, and prompted a burgeoning alcohol habit.
Eventually Poe moved in with distant relatives in Baltimo
re — a widowed aunt, Maria Clem, and her lovely daughter, Virginia. The vulnerable young man of letters immediately fell for his angelic cousin. They were married in 1836; Poe was 29, his beloved Virginia only 13.
The final slash of the Grim Reaper's scythe came one day in 1841. Virginia was singing an aria for Poe in their Baltimore home when she coughed. A tiny droplet of blood appeared on her lip. Poe stared and stared, his heart sinking, mortified at the first telltale sign of tuberculosis. Virginia's subsequent spiral into illness — and, ultimately, death — was the final blow to Edgar Allan Poe's tender spirit and volatile imagination. Hounded by sorrow, he plunged into a severe opium addiction, not to mention the waxing and waning of terrible melancholia. It is no wonder that his subsequent work would become so dark, so disturbingly personal... and yet so universal. 'The Raven' was published only two years after Virginia's death, and by the time Poe had reached his 39th year — only months ago, in fact — he had amassed a blood-chilling body of yarns and lyrics, including 'The Telltale Heart,' 'A Dream Within a Dream,' 'Lenore,' and 'The Pit and the Pendulum.'
It was none of those gloomy fantasias, however, that had compelled the sheriff's deputy to call on the poet. It was a more obscure tale which Poe had composed seven years earlier, in 1841, with little fanfare in Graham's Magazine, that had captured Pinkerton's imagination... a subject the Scotsman was about to broach.
"I apologize for the unpleasant sight before ye, Mr. Poe," the Scotsman said from the shadows of an adjacent stall, his prominent whiskered chin visible in the shade of his constable's hat. "But there is a quite salient point to this troubling presentation."
The poet could not reply, could not, in fact, utter a sound. He managed only to gape at the sorry state of the mangled, ashen cadaver before him.
It lay in its sodden cloth nest, a rag doll of scourged flesh and ruptured, splayed organs. It looked as though it were once a sinewy, pale gentleman of indeterminate age — albeit one who had recently been fed through Colonel McCormick's new fangled reaper machine. The man's left eye lay on his cheek like a wilted flower bulb. Deep gashes ravaged his exposed skin. His nails curled off his fingertips like blackened talons, continuing to grow, unabated in death.
"What in heaven or hell could have done this?" the poet murmured as though oblivious to the Scotsman's pronouncements of import.
"That, fine Sir, is precisely the matter to which I intend to direct your attentions."
Poe managed to wrench his gaze from the remains to the Scotsman. "I... I beg your pardon?"
"Yer fine tale in Grahams a few years ago put me in mind to call on ye one day. Alas, Sir, that day has come."
"My tale... ? In Grahams Magazine you mean to say?"
"Correct, Sir. The one takes place on Rue Street. The one with the Doo-Pin fella."
For a moment the poet looked nonplussed. The flicker of burning kerosene, diffused by the icy fog, glinted in his dark eyes. "August Dupin you're referring to? 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue?'"
"That's the one!" The Scotsman nodded, a spark of recognition in his eye. "A thousand apologies fer massacring the particulars."
"I haven't the wildest notion... I'm afraid I... I need to... I need to take leave of this downtrodden place."
"I understand, Sir, believe me." Pinkerton rubbed his chin. "Perhaps we could continue our discourse in one of the outlying taverns."
The poet closed his eyes. "I implore you, Mr. Pinkerton. Lead on. Please."
The Scotsman gently assisted the frail poet away from the body.
4.
"CURIOUS PHENOMENA"
9 March - 12:07 AM
They exited the barn, and plunged into the dank, reeking Chicago evening. A ubiquitous stench hung in the air, as it had since the founding of Fort Dearborn a half century earlier, as it had since the Patawatomis named the area Checagau (for the marshy, wild-onion aroma that seemed to cloak the land). But now the smell had transformed into the odor of wilderness rendering itself into a city — the stink of sap, the blood of the ox, the smoke of the forge. Adding to this mélange, most of the roads were still hard-trampled earth — the decades of horse dung and carcasses pulverized into the surfaces, giving off an unmistakable bouquet that assaulted the senses.
Mr. Poe felt his gorge writhing with nausea as he stumbled along, trying to keep up with Pinkerton's robust gate. "How in the Lord's name could 'Rue Morgue' have anything to do with this wretched business?"
Pinkerton pointed at a massive black walnut along the adjacent roadside. "I've arranged a horse-car for our conveyance, Mr. Poe," he said, indicating the shadows beneath the tree where a carriage was parked, the team snorting, tossing their heads, their breaths visible in the chill. "If ye would honor me with yer presence for a few minutes longer, I will attempt to explain it all to the best of my ability."
Poe reluctantly followed Pinkerton on board the brougham, a rickety affair belonging to the constable's department, hewn from worm-eaten pine and rusted iron wheels. The bench seat was as cold as a winter paving stone. The two men perched themselves precariously on the seat, and Pinkerton gave the reins a snap. The buckboard lurched.
"What caught my attention when I first encountered yer fine tale," the Scotsman called out over the clopping hooves and rattling chassis, the carriage starting westward down the leprous dirt path, "was the notion of one looking too closely at a thing to see it."
Poe was bouncing on the cold seat, trying to comprehend what the Scotsman was saying. "I'm sorry... the notion of one looking at... what was that again?"
"I believe the way ye put it was, the French police 'impaired' their vision by looking too close."
Poe swallowed hard, trying to follow the thread of the conversation, as the buggy pitched and bumped along the rutted path. They were alone in the outskirts now, alone in the darkness. At present only a thin sliver of a moon shone down on the road.
Right then something shifted on their flanks, something barely perceptible, like the rustle of leaves out in the tall trees, behind the shadows. At first Poe sensed it more than anything else, more than he heard anything, or saw anything. "All right... y-yes... I believe I do recall Dupin having this dialogue," he mumbled, distracted, unnerved, "but I still must protest that I am at a loss as to the relevance."
Pinkerton nodded, yanking the reins, steering the team around a bend, and then into a grove of hickories.
The darkness deepened around them, a thin lattice of moonlight filtering down now as the witching hour approached. Poe reached down into his breast pocket and retrieved his vial of laudanum. He thumbed off the stopper, and took a healthy swig, the bitter almond tasted burning his throat. Pinkerton was talking again but Poe could hardly hear a thing over the rushing of his pulse.
In his peripheral vision he sensed something moving along on either side of them, behind the trees, in the darkness, tracking their progress. At first he thought it might be the shadows of birds, perhaps Peregrines or Illinois vultures slinking along the ground with the stealth of a night wind.
"... but alas, in yer terrific tale," Pinkerton was saying, "the gentlemen eventually got interested in them horrible murders on the Rue Morgue, the lady and her daughter. Am I correct?"
"Well... as I recall, yes... you are, Sir... you are indeed... but what of it, then?"
In the darkness Pinkerton snapped the reins, chewing the inside of his cheek for a moment, measuring his words. "Them poor women mutilated like that, well it was certainly shocking, but the point of the tale, the reason that I have disturbed yer privacy this evening, Sir, is the central observation this gentleman Du-pan ended up makin'."
Poe looked at him, trying to ignore the ghostly movement on their flanks. "Du-pin, yes, yes... now you have my unsullied attention, Sir."
"It seems to me, if ye pardon the impertinence, you've gone and invented, in a tale, a way to conduct an investigation in the actual world."
Poe glanced over his shoulder. Something in the distance, behind the elms, was glimmering intermittently now.
It looked like fireflies, like amber sparks of light bouncing along in perfect step with the carriage. "I... I... I am afraid, Mr. Pinkerton... once again, you have left me in your proverbial dust." Poe took another gulp of his medicine, and squinted to see better what was hounding them in the darkness. His vision blurred. He was dizzy and intoxicated from the laudanum, and was becoming unhinged with high nervousness. Back in Baltimore they had filled his impressionable brain with stories of Indian attacks. Were these the shimmering glimpses of savages gripping spears, knives, cudgels? "You're... you're saying I... I've invented something?"
"A way to analyze the leavings of a killer, Sir!" In the moonlight, bullwhipping the reins, the Scotsman looked almost maniacal. His bulldog face practically glowed with enthusiasm. "The art of detection, Mr. Poe."
"I'm... I'm sorry... the art of what?"
"Detection, Sir, detection," Pinkerton said, glancing over his shoulder at something. "It will revolutionize police work as we know it... in fact, I wish to show ye something else. You'll see, Sir. You'll see soon enough. We're almost to O'Shaunnesey's, and then I'll show ye —" All at once the deputy fell abruptly silent, his expression hardening, his prominent brow knitting with concern.
Poe's heart thumped in his chest. "Wh-what is it, Sir? What's the matter? Wh-what is —!?"
"Lord-God-almighty!"
Pinkerton whipped the reins.
The Belgians snorted and kicked up from a canter to a gallop now. The wheels chattered. It felt as though the brougham was about to fall apart beneath them. Poe started to say something else but his breath froze in his throat as he gazed out at the tree line.
The specks of amber light revealed themselves not to be insects but rather eyes — eyes! — engulfed in a churning tide of fur and teeth, eyes that belonged to wolves. The pack of ferocious creatures hurled furiously through the forest on either side of the carriage like a feral escort. At least a hundred strong on either side of the road, weaving through the woods like drooling, bloodthirsty demons of all sizes and shapes, some enormous and scarred and bloodstained, the color of soot, some small and sleek, the color of chimney ash.
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