Free POE MUST DIE by Marc Olden

his “desire to die and get rid of these literary bores” with their fluttering fans, huge crinolines and handkerchiefs soaked in ether against the odors of dead horses and manure clogging Manhattan streets. He and dear Muddy needed the money, so do it and be done. Then rest and tomorrow, Miles Standish.
    Eddy Poe, “a soul lost,” “a glorious devil” in the eyes of women who collected lost souls, now had less than one dollar in change in his pockets. He turned to see Rachel staring through the window at him and when she saw him looking back, she vanished.

     
    Someone called his name.
    Poe quickly brought his head up from his chest. He was awake and listening.
    He was in his cold, bare cottage and seconds ago, he’d fallen asleep in the small sitting room, chin on his chest and slumped on a wooden chair. His sleep was fitful, uneven, a tortuous escape from reading the wretched poetry of women whose hands should be removed to prevent them from ever picking up a pen again. Believe the Talmud when it says— Who can pro-test and does not, is an accomplice in the act. Poe’s protest against this drivel had been to slip into uneasy sleep.
    Someone called his name.
    Poe’s cloak was around his shoulders, his greatcoat across his knees; he lacked money for firewood. Two cheap candles sputtered and dripped wax on a tiny table covered with sheets of poetry, and though some of the sheets were perfumed, all reeked with the odor of incompetence. Poe was to read, edit and may God forgive him for doing so, praise these miserable musings.
    It was almost midnight with dear Muddy asleep upstairs, widow’s cap covering her snow white hair and Poe was now awake and listening. Someone had called his name. Or had he dreamed—”
    “Eddy! Eddy!”
    He heard it clearly. A woman’s voice coming from outside the cottage.
    “Eddy, come to me! Come to me!”
    Who?
    “Eddy it is I, it is your beloved Sissy!”
    His wife. His dead wife.
    Poe was on his feet, to the door and tearing it open, staring out into the night and seeing her by the snow covered lilac bushes near the road. His heart was about to shatter; he could barely breathe. The agony was incredibly exciting.
    “Eddy it is I, Virginia. I love you. Come to me!”
    He saw the slim, cloaked figure of a woman, her pale thin face made whiter by moonlight and in Poe’s tormented mind, weakened by illness, by sorrow, by unending disappointment, the line between real and unreal disappeared. His heart was seized by well-remembered grief and he leaped from the front porch, falling to his knees in snow, screaming her name.
    “Sissy! Sissy!”
    He crawled towards her, reached for her with trembling hands. He got to his feet, stumbled through knee high snow, every inch of his body and mind aching to touch her. For one touch, one touch, he would give his soul and more. He fell face down in the snow, his eyes now blinded by the icy softness and when he struggled to his knees, she was gone.
    “Sissy!” Her name echoed in the night.
    He looked down at the footprints in the snow, saw the blood in them. His wife had died of a ruptured blood vessel in her throat and that had been one year ago and she’d died in his arms.
    Still on his knees, Poe pressed handfuls of the blood stained snow to his lips and cried out his wife’s name again and again.
    And somewhere in his newfound hell he remembered that Rachel had told him the dead could be made to live once more. He remembered.

SIX
     
    S YLVESTER P IER’S FINGERS clawed in vain at the noose drawn tightly around his neck.
    He hung from the ceiling, feet just inches from the floor, eyes bulging hideously. The other end of the rope had been passed through a hook embedded in the ceiling of the tenement room and Jonathan, in controlled rage now pulled down on it, keeping Sylvester Pier in the air. Pier had betrayed him and would pay for it with his miserable life.
    Meanwhile, the childlike grave robber suffered in his last seconds on earth.