Poe Page 18

I look down at the ring on my right hand and see the same insignia.

  “How?” I whisper.

  There’s something else hidden away in the floorboard, wrapped in decaying black velvet. I reach in, releasing a small plume of dust, and pick it up, immediately recognizing the weight and feel of a manuscript. Gingerly I unfold the velvet and find a series of loose pages, the edges tinged by fire. They look like they were written by the same author of my book—there are pages in Greek and Russian with similar medieval illustrations, although these are darkly violent and graphic. I see a man being flayed alive, three young boys burning on a pyre, a black crow sitting on top of a corpse with a dangling eyeball clutched in its beak. There is a palpable sense of evil hovering lightly under my fingertips, and a part of me thinks that the best thing to do would be to burn it all immediately.

  And then I see a man with a knife slitting a woman’s throat in a snowy wood, the blood spreading out like a dark, accusatory stain. I hold the page in front of me, hand slightly trembling, hoping I won’t find it, but I do. The warm light of the hallway renders the page slightly transparent, and through the stain is a watermark—the same insignia on my ring.

  I suppress a sudden wave of nausea.

  But why would Daniel leave these here for me to find? It feels like a taunt; he knows something I don’t.

  Of course the one person I could talk to about it I can’t. I can’t let Lisa know that Daniel was here, that I think he is somehow involved in—if not directly responsible for—the murders. I need her too much to push her over that edge, an edge I know very well, every narrow, black, razor-sharp inch. I was pressed against it for months after my parents died.

  So I take the pages, rewrapping them carefully in the velvet before slipping them with the photo under my jacket so Lisa can’t see. It’s a theft and a betrayal, I know, on many levels. I quietly replace the boards and move the mattress back to its original position. Now there’s only one more thing I need.

  I find the gun in the top drawer of Elizabeth’s dresser. A Glock. It’s the deadliest thing I’ve ever touched in my life—I hadn’t expected it to be so cold, like a corpse. At my father’s wake I touched his hand—his dead body was shockingly cold and hard, like a stone in winter. But this is colder.

  And as I arrange my face into an innocent expression, heading back down the stairs to the relative warmth of the living room, a dark foreboding prickles at the base of my spine, like an omen.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: THE MAD MONK

  By the time we get to the apartment, my nerves are a jangled mess—I think I see Daniel in the shadow of every apartment stoop, every alley. Is that him just behind the dumpster outside Sacred Heart Collectibles? Or looming in the backseat of a passing car? It’s like being surrounded by an invisible army—all eyes on me—like snipers are watching my car roll by through their scopes on rooftops. The gun isn’t helping much either. I keep thinking it’ll go off somehow, that when I turn the wheel I’ll inadvertently shoot my foot off.

  Lisa, on the other hand, nodded off almost as soon as the heater came on, and already she looks much better; her face is soft and relaxed. In terms of consolation prizes, I’ll take it. She doesn’t wake up until I open the passenger-side door, letting in a cold blast of frigid air.

  I reach out a hand and force a passable smile. “I’d carry you, but that might seem patriarchal.”

  Lisa gives a small but lovely sigh. “Minus one for feminism. You’d probably just drop me anyway.”

  I mock gasp. “I would not,” I protest, pulling out her bag from the backseat. “Okay, well, maybe on the stairs. But you have excellent health insurance.” I quickly scan the street—no schizophrenic brother in sight.

  Lisa leans her head back, taking in the stars. “Oh God, it feels good to get away from the house. It’s like it’s haunted.”

  “Uh, Lisa?” I say hesitantly, pausing on the steps.

  “Yeah?”

  “You remember that whole part where I told you my apartment is haunted, right?”

  Lisa smiles at me and chivalrously opens the entry door. “But that’s your ghost, not mine.”

  “Right,” I say, shuffling in after, following her up the stairs. “We’ll see how you feel once it starts snowing in my bedroom.”

  My apartment door is safely locked, and it only takes about five minutes of fumbling with the key to open. I turn on the light and feel a wave of relief—everything is exactly the way I left it. In other words, a chaotic mess. But somehow I’ve got to slip the photo and pages from Daniel’s room somewhere Lisa won’t see, and I’m not sure how my superstalker ghost, Poe, will react to having an overnight guest. The blinking light on my answering machine tells me that Mac hasn’t forgotten about the article either.

  “God I’m starving,” says Lisa, collapsing into her egg chair. She gives it a good spin.

  “Right, food,” I say. “Let’s see what I’ve got.”

  Which is when I see that something in fact has changed in my apartment since I left—a few poetry magnets have been pulled from the others, forming the message:

  mad monk ring father

  “Well that makes completely no sense,” I mutter. “Unless the mad monk has a cell phone.” My ghost needs a reality refresher.

  “You lost over there?” Lisa calls. “I’ve got a wicked recipe for ramen noodles and tuna, if you want some help.”

  “Nope, got it all under control,” I quickly reply, reshuffling the magnets. Lisa might think a ghost is no big deal, but it’s not a theory I want to test at the moment.

  I open the fridge, take a quick inventory, and find excellent ingredients for botulism. There’s a limp bunch of celery, two slices of moldy American cheese, and a sad tomato that’s shriveled down to the size of a prune. I take the opportunity though to slip the photo and pages into the empty vegetable bin. One problem solved.

  But that doesn’t address the food issue—I know the cabinets are empty because I tossed out all the stale cereal, and I haven’t yet gotten to the grocery store. Then I realize the sole clean towel I have is crumpled in the bathroom corner. I’m so not prepared for girl company.

  I frantically open the freezer door and discover a miracle—a single, perfectly sealed frozen lasagna that I must have bought… months ago?

  “You didn’t eat that?” Lisa is leaning against the doorway, a hint of a smile on her face. She’s taken off her jacket, and her sweater is invitingly askew. “Your neighbor Doug brought that over before you got back from the hospital.”

  “Yeah, well, my freezer wouldn’t usually be a good place to look for actual food.”

  “What’ll we do while it cooks?” Lisa yawns, dusky circles budding beneath her eyes.

  I have a very clear idea about what I’d like to do, but I’d be sinking pretty low to take advantage of the situation. Plus I need some privacy to look at Daniel’s pages more closely.

  “Why don’t you get some rest and I’ll wake you up when it’s ready?”

  “You’re no fun,” says Lisa, lightly pulling at my T-shirt collar. “You sure you don’t want to come with?”

  I swallow. Hard. “If I don’t get this article done—”

  Lisa raises her hands. “Life of the artist; I get it.” She yawns again, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. “I am pretty wiped out too.”

  I smile weakly.

  She taps me on the chest. “Just don’t burn it.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence!” I call as she walks away. She shuts the door of the bathroom behind her, and I hear the faintest gurgle of running water. Lisa curled up in my bed—it’s a delicious thought.

  Which is disrupted by the swish, swish, swish of the poetry magnets on the fridge.

  Now I know the whole communication-via-poetry-magnet thing was my idea, but it’s disturbingly creepy to see them actually in motion, being arranged by some invisible ghostly hand. Creepy and annoying. Got enough on my plate without dealing with the undead.

  “Give me a minute,
will you?” I mutter, and the magnets instantly stop. Praise Jesus. I make sure the deadbolt is locked (not really in the mood to entertain Daniel), wrangle the lasagna out of its packaging, relight the pilot (I generally stick with food that can be nuked), and crack open the window just enough to let some of the gassy fumes escape. I notice the bathroom door is open and decide to see if Lisa needs anything, only to find her fast asleep on my disheveled mattress.

  For a moment I just look at her. Amazing. She fills the apartment—it feels complete, whole. I lean over and lightly brush her lips with a kiss.

  “I love you,” I whisper. The words roll out before I can even think about them; thankfully she’s unconscious. But I realize they’re strangely true.

  God, I want to crawl into bed next to her. A wave of exhaustion suddenly hits, and it’s so peaceful here in the room, so quiet. But I have articles to write. Pages to decipher. And ghosts to wrangle.

  I stand in the kitchen trying to look as intimidating and authoritative as possible while also trying, and failing, not to feel like an idiot. After all, I’m talking to an apparently empty room.

  “Ground rules. No magnets while Lisa’s awake. In fact, no spooky stuff at all.”

  I watch as the words on the refrigerator are rearranged.

  no rules

  Funny. Ghost girl is giving me lip? I don’t think so.

  “Look,” I say seriously, “I will quit this whole thing and move to Florida. I hate snow. Always have. A schizophrenic, knife-wielding brother isn’t really helping the situation. But I get the feeling that you want me to be here figuring out this whole Aspinwall magical mystery tour. Am I right?”

  This time the magnets arrange themselves in what can only be described as a sullen manner.

  your world rigid

  “Cry me a river,” I say. “Is that a yes, you’re going to cooperate, or a no, have fun in Florida?”

  A magnet drops to the floor.

  yes

  Good. Second problem solved. Next, with serious misgivings, I hit PLAY on my message machine.

  “IT’S TEN AND I STILL DON’T HAVE AN ARTICLE YOU LAME-ASS MOTHERFUCKER—”

  I hit STOP. Okay. The good thing about Mac is that it’s never unclear where one stands with him, even if that standing changes by the hour. I pull out my laptop and do the thing that I’m sure makes every writer sick to their stomach, something scarier than staying overnight at a haunted mansion, waking up in a morgue, or facing a schizophrenic knife-wielding brother.

  I open a blank Word doc.

  BRUTAL NEW GOSHEN SLAYING CAUSES PANIC IN THE STREETS

  That could be considered true. I saw two cars on the street driving home—two more than usual. Mac will love the headline at any rate.

  Police aren’t saying whether a serial killer is on the loose (This is good—create a rumor; keep the flow, keep the flow). Friday morning truck driver Vincent Prevey discovered the body of 95-year-old Alice Chesterfield in the street (Okay, officially under a railroad trestle, but there’s nothing threatening about the word “trestle”; it sounds benign, like a Christmas tree decoration), the victim of a brutal assault. Preliminary reports show she bled to death, having suffered multiple stab wounds (Jessica is so going to kill me). But is this a random act of violence, or, more troubling, the work of a mad serial killer on the loose? (Crap, Lisa’s going to kill me. Strike mad.)

  The FBI is reportedly theorizing that the initial assault took place at Mrs. Chesterfield’s apartment at The Hurry Back Inn, and at some point she was taken to a second location, although it’s unclear where she died. (Now the FBI is going to kill me. Or put me in jail. Same thing.)

  Another resident of Goshen, 50-year-old crossing guard Celia Jenks, was also brutally murdered one month ago. Until today, the primary suspect was her boyfriend, local baker Fred Danvers, who, although he makes a mean apple Danish, has a criminal record, including a domestic violence charge from 1998.

  But what’s the connection? Could it be the ill-fated Aspinwall mansion? Mrs. Chesterfield was one of the few still alive who were there the night of the tragic fire in 1940. In 1970, Celia Jenks and her husband, Will “Wolf” Jenks, purchased Aspinwall, where tragedy struck again when Wolf was killed by a wild animal. (Kind of ironic when you think about it.)

  It only takes another twenty minutes to finish the article, and I decide that it’s so bad I will have to retire the pseudonym D. Peters when I finish my real book, but for now that’s the best I can do, and I e-mail it to Mac.

  Now, back to the spooky stuff. I pull the loose pages I found in Daniel’s room from the vegetable bin, along with the photo of Rasputin. If possible, it’s even more bizarrely compelling under my bright fluorescent light—a Manson-esque portrait of insanity.

  Which makes me think of Poe’s magnet message—mad monk. “Why does that sound so familiar?” I whisper.

  For no reason whatsoever my television flickers on—no signal, just snow and deafeningly loud static.

  “What the fuck.” Christ, I don’t want to wake Lisa up. I race to unplug the damn thing but then I see them—of the array of books that I’d stacked to form my no-budget television stand, a few titles stand out. The Quiet Revolution: Rasputin and the Tsaritsa, Rasputin and Gnosticism in Early Twentieth-Century Russia, Rasputin: Mad Monk or Mystic Prophet?

  I slap a hand against my forehead. Biggest idiot ever.

  Granted I’ve been busy of late, what with drowning, nearly being flayed alive, almost shot by the FBI and whatnot, but I can’t believe that I’ve somehow missed the biggest connecting thread of them all. All those hours of mind-numbing research years ago for my ill-fated historical Rasputin novel, my eBay finds that I’d hoped would give it some semblance of authoritative weight, sitting here staring me in the face for weeks. The gardener at Aspinwall—Russian. The psychic at that ill-fated Halloween—Russian. The medieval pages are Russian; shit, even my ring, or at least the same symbol, worn by the most infamous Russian of all time—Rasputin. Whom I, for some strange reason, decided to write about, although not so strange when you consider that my father was…

  Russian.

  I jerk the television off the books and quickly pull out Rasputin: Mad Monk or Mystic Prophet? Thank God I had the good sense to highlight the good bits to crib from later.

  I vaguely remember it was his fellow Russians who dubbed Rasputin “The Mad Monk.” Given his rather liberal views in Victorian society—he thought that in order to truly repent, one had to sin and sin often (alcohol and sexual licentiousness being key)—it’s no wonder that some members of the Russian royal family were more than a little perturbed about his free access to the daughters in the tsaritsa’s nursery. So he racked up a serious list of enemies, including Iliodor, a former friend and rival monk.

  I quickly skip through the first few boring chapters (including a long-winded introduction by a professor that’s so dull it could cure insomnia) until I get to the pages that made me think Rasputin could successfully be characterized as a zombie.

  Because lots of people tried to unsuccessfully knock Rasputin off. First up, a seventeen-year-old former prostitute and student of Iliodor, who waited for Rasputin while he was walking along a gravel path, nose innocently buried in a book, and plunged a knife into his abdomen. As his entrails fell out of his stomach, she screamed, “I have killed the Antichrist!” Just a bit prematurely, because Rasputin sprinted away, cradling his guts in his arms, and she chased him down the street until he managed to grab something and club her in the face with it.

  And I get woozy from a paper cut.

  The assembling crowd was all for beating said prostitute to death, but instead she was picked up by a constable, put on trial, and sentenced to an insane asylum, where she stayed for a few years, until she was busted out by a different crowd during the February Revolution.

  Somehow Rasputin survived—if he wasn’t a zombie, then damn, that must have been a good surgeon for 1914—and he went on his merry way, which pissed off the Russian nobles. Con
sidering this was before the February Revolution and the nobles were still in power, probably not a bright idea. Finally they decided to band together and assassinate him properly. Led by Prince Felix, they invited him down to a cellar and served him cakes and red wine that had been laced with enough poison to easily kill five men.

  But then Felix thought, you know, it takes time to conceal a body—we should really move this along a bit faster. So he pulled out a revolver and shot Rasputin in the back. Which would just about do it, one would think. All bases covered.

  Rasputin fell to the floor, and they must have all thought, Great, mission accomplished. They headed back to the palace to take a break, murder being harder work than they were probably used to. But forgetful Felix left his coat in the room, so he went back to get it, because damn, it’s cold in Russia. And he walked into the room expecting to find Rasputin dead in a pool of his own blood—hopefully nowhere near his coat, because as everyone knows, bloodstains are impossible to get out.

  But instead he found Rasputin standing.

  Rasputin then grabbed Felix by the lapels, screaming something like “You bad boy” and tried to strangle Felix. The posse heard the ruckus, and they shot Rasputin three more times, and he fell again. They thought, Okay, mission really accomplished, but when they approached the body they discovered he was struggling to get up.

  Rasputin. The first Freddy Krueger of the twentieth century.

  Well, what else is a crew of Russian nobles going to do but try to beat him to death? They clubbed away at him with anything at hand, because this was now well past the realm of vampire horror stuff. They went so far as to castrate Rasputin—ouch—then they rolled up his body in a carpet and threw him in the Neva River for good measure.

  When Rasputin’s body was eventually discovered, the coroner found water in his lungs, as if the poison, gunshot wounds, beating, and castration hadn’t killed him—as if he’d drowned.