Free The Killing of Bobbi Lomax by Cal Moriarty

twentieth-century approximation of the accent, not a nineteenth-century version, he hoped it might still have on it the lick of the pilgrim fathers.
    On the desk in front of him sat a first edition of one of the author’s collections – Clark put his hand on it as if he were at a séance, attempting to summon the soul of the author from within it. He turned up the headphone volume and closed his eyes. As the tape instructed him, he began to follow the clearly defined instructions it had taken weeks to hone, and soon he began to repeat the words of a familiar poem:
    Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
    Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
    While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
    As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
    ‘’Tis some visitor,’ I muttered, ‘tapping at my chamber door –
    Only this, and nothing more.
    Minutes later, as instructed, he took up the turkey quill, dipped it in the ink and wrote the name.
    Edgar.
    Allan.
    Poe.
    Edgar Allan Poe
    The words written so close up to one another there was barely room for the paper to breathe between the lines as the quill traveled high and writ large:
    Edgar Allan Poe
    Edgar Allan Poe
    Clark filled the sheet of blotting paper in front of him and had just begun to write on another when the control word halted him mid-flourish.
    Raven .
    He looked down at the page. Even without the high-powered microscope he could see the tell. He had figured out that in his previous attempts at mesmerizing himself he had been unable to let go of him, of Clark, kept getting stuck in his childhood because he was still doing things that he, Clark Houseman, did. Things like drinking JD. And so, he had thought of a simple switch that might unblock him from his own past and perhaps help him get deep into the lives of others. He would switch his tipple for theirs. In the glass he was about to take a hit from was cognac: pricey French cognac – Poe’s favorite – from a company that had existed for over three hundred years and which Kenny had gotten him a case of, from one of his booze-mafia buddies.
    He took a swig from the glass, then another. It warmed his mouth and his throat as it traveled into the far reaches of his stomach. Soon it would be in his veins. He pressed rewind, then play. As he did so, he stared at the hand-drawn vortex he had pinned to the wall in front of him and, once again, he repeated the words of the poem until this time they became their own rhythm: napping, rapping, rapping, tapping, napping until the drawn lines of the vortex seemed imprinted on his mind.
    Clark soon felt his entire being alter – everything from his posture to the way he held the pen shifted and resettled until he felt like he owned the quill, the ink and the signature that flowed from it. Each time his hand moved across the page more confidently than the last, until it moved completely without hesitation.
    Clark Houseman was dead. For now. Edgar Allan Poe was alive and living in his body, his resurrected lifeblood coursing through Clark’s veins, down into his fingers, into his grip and writing upon the page as Poe himself. Poe’s hand now wrote the familiar words over and over and over.
    Edgar Allan Poe. Edgar Allan Poe. Edgar Allan Poe.
    Raven.
    Raven.
    Clark looked down at the page, saw what he had done. He needed to see, see it quickly up close just to make sure, but he was sure it was right, at least to the naked eye. He searched the workbench next to him and the floor around it for what seemed like the longest time until he found the university microscope buried under a pile of research material. He grabbed it, shoved the paper under the glass and peered down into the latest batch of signatures, checking through each line, every movement, every flourish of the quill. And when he was done he checked each and every one again.
    They were perfect.
    Flawless.
    There were no hesitation marks.
    Not