Free Nevermore by Keith R.A. DeCandido

asked, indicating Sam’s cast with his head.
    Where Dean probably would’ve had some kind of smartass response, Sam found he couldn’t think of anything funny enough for a total stranger. And the truth would hardly suffi ce. Oh, well, I broke my hand when I was fi ghting a zombie in a grave-yard. See, I was trying to lure her back to her grave so my brother and I could impale her in it so she’d die again. No, I’m not crazy, and why are you backing slowly away from me like that?
    “It’s a long story,” he mumbled.
    That seemed to satisfy Anthony. “Okay. Well, this is where Edgar Allan Poe lived for the fi nal years of his life.” He proceeded to tell Sam several things he already knew from reading the website.
    “Unfortunately,” Anthony added, “you can’t really appreciate the view now.” He moved past Sam to reopen the door. “But if you look over there—” He pointed to the left. “—you can see that it goes downhill right at Valentine Avenue?” Sam nodded. He’d actually gone down that hill briefl y in his endless search for a parking spot.
    “The cottage was right on the top of the hill, and you could see all the way to the Long Island Sound from here. This isn’t where it was originally Never
    81
    more
    built.” Now pointing across Kingsbridge Road, he said, “You see that apartment building with the yellow façade? It was about there. It was moved here when the park was built. This whole area
    used to be farmland owned by the Valentines, a Dutch family. They’re the ones the avenue’s named after. The Poe family rented the cottage, and they could barely afford it.”
    “I saw that on the website,” Sam said, “and I thought it was kinda odd. I mean, Poe’s one of the most popu lar American writers. And he was broke?”
    “Oh, definitely. I mean, yeah, he was popu lar, and still is. Aren’t too many writers that get football teams named after them, even if it’s one step removed.”
    Sam frowned, then remembered that the Baltimore football franchise was named the Ravens. Poe died in Baltimore, and was buried there, and the team was named for Poe’s most popu lar poem.
    “And none of his stories have ever gone out of print. But most of the money he made from his writing got sunk into magazine endeavors that failed. Anyhow,” Anthony led Sam into the next room, “we’ve re-created the atmosphere of the cottage as best we can. Obviously, most of the furniture isn’t available, but we’ve done our best to put the types of furnishings that would’ve been present, given the time and the Poes’ level of poverty.” 82 SUPERNATURAL
    Sam followed Anthony into what had to be the largest room in the cottage, which included a fireplace—now closed, according to Anthony—a chair, a writing desk, and some framed pictures.
    There was also a hanging bookcase on the wall, each shelf filled with old- fashioned leather- bound volumes in what Sam knew was a popu lar binding style in the mid-nineteenth century. “These hanging shelves were more common in those days, since the fl oors were almost never
    even—as you can
    see,” Anthony added with a grin.
    Grinning back, Sam shifted his weight back and forth on the creaky wooden fl oors.
    Anthony continued: “The wood warped when it got damp, too. A bookcase on the fl oor just wasn’t practical.” He pointed to the wall. “That’s an il-lustration of the cottage.”
    Walking over to peer at it, Sam saw the exact cottage he was standing in, at the top of a steep hill that matched the contours of Briggs Avenue and East 194th Street when he had driven down and up those respective streets. The surrounding ground, though, was all grass and trees. It seemed idyllic.
    “Poe’s wife Virginia was very sick—what they called consumption back then, which we now know as tuberculosis. He’d come to New York in 1844 to engage in those publishing endeavors that bankrupted him, and when Virginia got more sick Never
    83
    more
    in 1846, they moved up