Poe Read online

  Her long table is at the front of the tent to the right of the band, and she points me to the seat directly next to her. For a moment she hums along to the song, and I try not to stare at her face, or where her face should be. It’s like the person who rubbed her image out from the photograph in the newspaper has somehow rubbed her out in my dream as well.

  “You’re sure we don’t know each other?”

  I shake my head.

  “That’s funny, because you look familiar somehow. But that can’t be, because I don’t know many Russians. Except for the gardener. But you don’t have an accent.”

  “You have a Russian gardener?”

  “He’s divine. He can make my rosebushes bloom in winter. He whispers something to them; I’ve seen him. But he only gives me the red ones. The white ones he saves.” She leans forward and says in a conspiratorial tone, “He has jars and jars of the creepiest stuff—Pollie told me she’d never had such a scare as when she tried to clean his room. Said there were actual dried batwings in a jar.”

  She turns to an invisible waiter behind her, clicks her finger, and he darts forward. “Do tell Pollie to make sure the cream is whipped properly for the mousse.”

  “Yes, madam,” says the waiter, disappearing to wherever waiters go.

  “I tell you, it’d almost be easier for me to cook myself. If I don’t stay on Pollie she’ll send out burnt pork chops. Servants get distracted so easily.”

  I realize that like any other politician, she’s completely self-absorbed.

  “Take our stable boy. Twelve years old, the little scoundrel, and he ran away with fourteen silver spoons and a chafing dish. I let Pollie stay, even though he’s her brother and she should have known. But it’s not easy to find someone who can make a cheese soufflé that won’t fall. In this part of the world at least. What do they eat in Russia? Something nasty with beets, if I remember.”

  “Amelia!” calls out a portly man from the dance floor. “I’m famished! Where’s the main course?”

  “Coming, Stanley. Give your wife one more spin. It’ll be worth the wait, I promise you!” Then to me under her breath, “Not that he needs another dinner. He’ll be dead from a heart attack by sixty, like his father.”

  A large woman comes up behind us, opens her arms.

  “Doris,” says Amelia, “you look ravishing tonight. Simply ravishing.”

  While they exclaim over how beautiful they both are, I scan the crowd, wondering what it is I’m supposed to see. Some of the servants look familiar (from the Aspinwall photograph probably), but none of the partygoers, who twirl on the grass with a woozy swirl, and I’m surprised to realize that the two shots of whatever hard liquor I downed earlier are having an effect. This is a dream after all. Still, I loosen my bow tie.

  As soon as Doris is out of earshot, Amelia whispers, “God, what a terrible dress. It looks like someone with dull scissors cut up a burlap bag. They lost everything in the crash, sad to say.”

  A waiter deftly leans between us, puts down a delicate porcelain plate with neatly sliced roasted duck, white asparagus, and julienned potatoes. My mother served something nearly identical every Christmas Eve. The smell washes over me and causes a wave of grief to rise, choke my throat.

  “Ugh, a little overdone,” complains Amelia. She picks up her fork, and there’s something strangely familiar about the way she does this, its studied grace… and something else too about the cadence of her voice. I try to make the connection, but then her fork spears a slice of duck before disappearing into the haze of her face. I feel like I’m going to be sick.

  “Distracted, like I said. Oh, speaking of Russians—I’m going to have a séance here on Halloween. You should come.”

  There, in between the dancers, I see something for just a split second. My fingers clutch the tablecloth.

  “My gardener was the inspiration. He has the oddest book with the most provocative pictures—beheaded women, demons dancing around a funeral pyre, very macabre. I’ve seen him carrying it in his leather bag. He pulls it out when he thinks no one is looking, but of course I’m always looking. I once asked him about it and he pretended to not understand me. Such an annoying habit with foreign servants—you have no idea, no idea how difficult it was to plan a successful party in India. Still, I managed a peek at this book of his—not that I rummage around the servants quarters, but you can’t be too careful. And then Eleanor mentioned that when she went to England, séances were all the rage; anyone who’s anyone has a salon. They invite real psychics who channel spirits—Russians, she said, are very good—and the most amazing things happen. Eleanor said she met an actual disciple of Rasputin, who was able to make contact with her grandfather Edmond Wright—no connection to the Wright Brothers; they made their money in coal, the Wrights.”

  A face, caught at the edge of the dance floor, cold and familiar, flashes and then disappears.

  “So I asked the gardener if he knew of anyone, and he just stood there, looking for all the world like an imbecile, and I know he understood me perfectly well—he even smiled a bit, like I was the idiot, if you can believe such an impertinence—and then he turned on his heel and walked away, just like that. I would have fired him,” she says with a sigh, “but I’ve become somewhat famous for my red winter roses. They’re very pretty on the Christmas tree.”

  Poe. She stands at the edge of the dance floor, haughty and thin, like a severe ballerina. Her clothes are dripping wet, her hair clings to her wet, cold face, and something greenish and slimy drapes around her neck like a silk scarf. None of the partygoers see her; none give her a second glance. She stares at me and her eyes are like glittering diamonds, void of warmth and expression.

  I quickly look away, down at my plate. But instead of roast duck, I find the severed head of a puppy sitting in a sauce of bright red blood. A spasm of blinding white light hits, and the world tilts to one side, then the other.

  “It was amazingly expensive to get her to come, Khioniya, which doesn’t sound like a Russian name, does it? More Italian I would think. She said she already had an engagement for Halloween—a duchess, I believe—but I told her about the funny book and the gardener, and she changed her mind. She’s on a ship right now—it takes forever to cross the Atlantic. I’m very good on the water. I never get ill.”

  The dancing crowd parts, and standing next to Poe I see little Delia, her innocent eyes now equally hard—she holds a large kitchen knife in one hand; blood drips to the soft grass beneath. Delia giggles the same ethereally evil giggle I last heard coming from Maddy before she fell through the floor.

  Then her eyes turn completely black.

  The world tilts again. I feel like I’m going to vomit.

  I clutch the white tablecloth, try to steady myself—there’s so much I want to know, need to know, but Amelia’s blurry face is stretching into a whirl of color, and I’m falling again—where, into what, I’m not sure.

  “No one will forget,” says Amelia. “Everyone will hear about my Halloween party. I’ll be famous…”

  Delia’s small, haunting voice sings.

  Take her by the lily-white hand,

  Save her from the water,

  “… I’ll be famous forever.” Amelia’s voice is distant now, has a floating quality.

  Leave her and you might just find,

  There’s no end to the slaughter.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: FOOTPRINTS

  The old woman’s body was found under an old railroad tunnel that was once used to transport coal and timber. The fingers were frozen solid but not the heart, which the truck driver thought might still have been beating when he put his hand to Alice Chesterfield’s cold neck to check for a pulse, despite the frozen puddle of blood. Despite the gaping hole in her stomach.

  “One of these days your fuckin’ luck is going to run out, Shakespeare,” Nate mutters irritably into the phone after giving me this delightful news. I wish I hadn’t picked up. I’m still groggy from my dream, my head is throbbing like I have a m
assive hangover, and a lingering visual of the puppy’s head served on a silver platter isn’t exactly helping. But now there’s a frozen dead woman missing most of her internal organs and I’m lucky—how?

  “What are you talking about?”

  Nate either ignores, or doesn’t hear, my question. “Just because you’re, like, my dad’s new favorite reporter, doesn’t mean I’m not still the editor. You might think you’re hot shit ’cause you get to go cover a fuckin’ murder, but if you don’t fuckin’ get me copy by noon, then I’m gonna tell Dad you’ve blown your deadline. And no fancy words.”

  None of this is making any sense.

  “Nate—”

  “Turn on the TV,” he says. “Noon.”

  Click. I look at the clock—10:10 A.M.; that gives me barely two hours to get it done. And, oh right, I was supposed to get Mac an article by Saturday, which is today. Nate is obviously setting me up for failure, the little fucker.

  Of course my TV is crap and the cable bill hasn’t been paid, so I have to experiment with a pair of bent bunny ears (thank God New Goshen still is on analog) until I get a fair, if sporadically fuzzy, picture. There are two reporters covering the murder, one all the way from Albany and the second from Rochester, New York. They both have concerned, serious tones but can’t hide their excitement, because it’s not just a murder, I discover, watching the B-roll of downtown New Goshen and accompanying narration, it’s a slaying, the difference being the viciousness of the attack—multiple stab wounds—and the rumored ritualistic removal of the spleen.

  The slender reporter from Albany is standing at the top of the tunnel, wind whipping her hair in her face, which she professionally ignores. It’s so strange to see a place I drive by every day framed and flattened into two dimensions.

  I turn the volume up.

  “Police are not verifying whether satanic rituals played a part in this tragedy, although we have a report from a first responder that many of the details are bizarre. There is also no confirmation whether this death is related to a recent homicide which claimed the life of fifty-six-year-old Celia Jenks. Two murders in one year would be a record, given the town’s elderly population and traditionally low crime rate.”

  A record and an advertising bonanza for the paper. No wonder they want the story in an hour.

  “No arrests have been made in that case, and police say they cannot comment on an ongoing investigation. An autopsy report of today’s victim is expected to be released by Grace Memorial Hospital later this week. We’re waiting to hear if the autopsy report of Celia Jenks will be reexamined as well.”

  They show a picture of Celia sitting at a kitchen table, smoking a cigarette.

  “Holy shit,” I whisper. I jump to my feet and race to my wall of clues. There she is again—the woman from the morgue; the woman whose picture I snapped at a crosswalk. I reach out a tentative finger and trace the edge where the photo is torn just below her hand, as if she might just reach back. “Celia,” I whisper. “Your name is Celia Jenks.”

  It’s another piece in the puzzle, and a thrill runs through my body. Of course I just solved Mystery #2 on my list, but now I have another. How the hell is she connected to this new dead woman?

  Did they say the autopsy report would be released by Grace Memorial?

  I gasp like I’m now the lead in a cheesy detective show, grab my jacket and keys without explaining further to my female (albeit dead) partner, and don’t even bother to look back as the door slams behind me.

  “I can’t talk to you,” hisses Jessica, patently ignoring me as she strides down the hall holding a stack of thick manila folders. The now-familiar hospital fluorescent lights flicker above us, and a nurse passes by in blue scrubs.

  “Can I carry those for you?” I ask in my most chivalrous voice. I don’t wait for her to respond and pull the folders from her arms. Jessica is pencil thin and probably in her early thirties, but the glasses and mousy brown hair make her seem a decade older.

  “Give those back—”

  “C’mon, all I’m going to do is take a quick look at the files. Five minutes, I promise.”

  “I can’t talk to you,” says Jessica, trying to pry the files out of my arms. “We’re not supposed to discuss the results with reporters.”

  “Five minutes. Four.”

  “No,” she whispers. A doctor walks by holding a clipboard, and she gives him a tense smile. “I’ll get fired.”

  “You won’t get fired—I’m the morgue guy. You can say you were talking me down from filing a lawsuit. You’d be a hero.”

  Now she glares at me. “You know what a long drive it is to Albany for fried wontons?” She grabs the files back in a way that’s surprisingly manly and heads for the elevator doors, which just opened.

  “I’m sorry,” I add, trying hard to keep up. “I was emotionally traumatized. By almost being flayed alive. And there isn’t any decent Chinese food in New Goshen, unless you know someplace and you’ve been holding out. Hey, did you just get your hair cut? Looks really nice. And those glasses—what can I say but wow.”

  “Will this man not shut up,” Jessica mutters under her breath. She stops, looks around. Everyone is suitably busy. “If I let you borrow the files, will you promise to never talk to me again? Ever?”

  I hold up my right hand. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  She snorts. “I should be so lucky,” she says, shoving the bottom three files at my chest in what can only be described as a hostile manner. “Three minutes. Janitor’s closet across the hall. Any longer and I’m calling security.”

  “You’re a doll,” I say, and her eyebrows rise in surprise. I must be still channeling my debonair dream alter ego—next thing you know I’ll be saying she’s the bee’s knees.

  Inside the cramped closet, I prop open the first file, marked “Alice Chesterfield,” on a steel cabinet next to a red plastic box labeled “Hazardous.” Probably contains leftover radioactive waste or infected needles. Lovely.

  The photos from the morgue, in full color, are quite shocking. An old woman’s nude body is splayed out on a metal table, and there are circles on the photo highlighting wounds, with arrows pointing to the smaller ones on her hands—“defensive” is written in black Sharpie above them. Her eyes and mouth are still open. Mrs. Alice Chesterfield was ninety-five, a widow, and apparently lived alone in an old motel on Harrison Street called The Hurry Back Inn that mostly rents on a weekly basis, due to the lack of tourists. Room 306.

  I check my watch. Two minutes.

  I grab my notebook and start jotting down details. Flipping quickly through the images, I note that one is a close-up of her abdomen where her spleen should have been, another shows a bite wound circled on her thigh, and the last is of a series of numbers, scribbled hastily on her arm with a black marker.

  Impossible. Jessica raps on the door—one minute.

  But there’s something else—what is it about her, she looks familiar… And then it hits me—I’ve been looking at that face for months. It’s the face of the old woman crossing the street in the other black-and-white photograph—one of the two tossed across the room and torn in half by Poe. How is it possible I have photos of the two victims? I don’t get it.

  There’s no time to think—I can feel Jessica getting nervous on the other side of the door—so I hurriedly open the second file. This one’s a little dusty. Celia Jenks—spleen gone, attributed to a pet cat that hadn’t eaten in the week it took for someone to notice the smell. Just seeing the first photo makes me gag, and for a moment I’m back in the morgue, overwhelmed by the smell of shit, pizza, and formaldehyde, but I have to keep looking for something, a confirmation. And there it is—the fourth photo. A close-up of her right hand clenching a note with another set of numbers.

  My heart slowly petrifies as I recognize the tight, furious handwriting, then the numbers—they’re the first row from Daniel’s magic square. And I would bet my life that the numbers written on Alice’s back match the second row.
r />   The floor beneath my feet seems to tilt, and I drop the files on the floor as my stomach reels. Schizophrenic knife-wielding brother is back. There were six rows in his magic square—does this mean four more people will die?

  Suddenly Jessica opens the door; a slice of light pours into the dark closet. “Time’s up,” she says firmly. I can tell from her tone that she’s not kidding about calling security. That might not be a bad idea, considering who’s on the loose.

  “Right,” I mutter absently, not even looking her way as I race for the elevator doors.

  “You’ve completely lost your mind, haven’t you?” she calls after me.

  What little I had left.

  Time is important—I can feel it slipping by me, through me, the precise click of each and every second. The air is electric, like when the sun is shining and there’s not a cloud in the sky, but the barometric pressure has dropped. Like a big storm is coming.

  I gun my car through the red lights, getting a few honks and causing a couple of near accidents. I call 411, which gives me the wrong number for Crosslands—twice—so when it actually rings through and Lisa picks up, I’m almost rear-ended by the car behind me when I jam on the breaks.

  “Is anyone there?” she asks in a bored tone. I fondly remember boredom.

  “Hey, it’s, uh, me. Got a minute?” An Oldsmobile lurches out of a parking space in front of me; I press the heel of my palm against the horn. The elderly driver flips me the bird.

  “Sure, Mr. Stevenson, I always have a moment to talk to family. How can I help you?”

  A part of me wants to tell her everything I’ve just found out, but then this probably isn’t the kind of news one should blurt over the phone to someone at work. And she’s fine as long as she’s there; Crosslands keeps all the doors locked to keep the residents with dementia from wandering away.