Poe the Hunter- Bedlam in Baltimore

by Nathan Galion

  At last, however, the roar of the sceidra was heard in a section of the forest far away from Poe and Quincy. The hunters ran through the forest and in the direction of the roar. They evaded the stumps of trees and hurdled through leaf-covered grounds to arrive at the suspected location of the monster. But once there, they did not find anything. The sceidra had led them on a wild chase across the landscape.

  The roar of the sceidra was heard once again and the hunters ran in its direction. Quincy drew his gun determined and ready to confront the sceidra and slay it with his first shot. His hopes, however, were dashed when he and Poe arrived at the scene of the latest roar and again found nothing.

  “Come out, you cowardly fiend!” Quincy screamed. “Emerge and face your death!”

  As if on cue, the sound of rustling branches from the treetops above startled Poe and Quincy. Poe drew his gun and aimed at the branches along with his partner who was at the ready. Trees shook and tremored as the sceidra moved stealthily through the branches. Still invisible to the duo, they did not want to waste their ammunition on an unseen target and were also afraid of murdering another innocent forest animal. It could be a bird or a squirrel, they thought. The men awaited the outcome of the shaking trees. Without warning, the sceidra materialized from the shadows of the forest’s foliage, but from behind the hunters. It struck an offensive stance ready to attack.

  Poe felt its presence behind him and whipped around. There, directly in front of him stood the sceidra in all of its frightening magnificence.

  The monster had three eyes and a long darting tongue that appeared to be tasting the air. It had the body and head of a crocodile and a thick, elongated tail. Two rows of jagged teeth lined its jaws. Its eyes were multicolored and filled with swirling sparkles, which is how the sceidra hypnotized its prey. It did not take long before Quincy turned around and fired the first shot that struck one of the sceidra’s eyes. It released a terrible roar, then fell to its knees wailing. The hunters felt no pity for the creature and proceeded to unload their guns into the monster’s scaly body.

  They had emptied their magazines, but the sceidra was still breathing and writhing on the ground in pain. Quincy brandished his golden dagger and furiously strode toward the weakened monster. Seething with anger, he stood over the injured creature and started stabbing it repeatedly determined to end its murderous spree. Alas, the damage he inflicted did not kill it. Quincy was shocked. The sceidra was alive despite being in immense pain.

  Poe drew closer to the monster as it roared. It was suffering from the wrath of the golden bullets. He became as stunned as Quincy from the fact that the first-rate ammunition had not killed the sceidra. After a few minutes on the ground, the sceidra surprised the hunters by leaping up and grabbing hold of their throats. Staring deep into the hunters’ eyes, the spiraling colors of its two remaining eyes started to hypnotize them. The men grappled with the sceidra attempting to get away.

  The men started to sweat profusely as veins started popping out on their foreheads as they continued struggling against the hypnotic power of the sceidra. In a testament of strength, Poe twisted away from the creature and broke free, then plunged his dagger in its head. He kept sinking the blade in deeper until finally the beast released Quincy as it crumpled to the ground.

  As the hunters gathered their breath, they heard more roars coming from close behind them.

  “Edgar, tell me that the noises we have just heard do not belong to more sceidras!”

  Poe wanted to reassure Quincy that this was not the case, but he looked behind him and felt his heart sink as he saw a pack of seven sceidras quickly approaching in the distance with their sights on the men, determined to rip them apart for wounding one of their own. As the injured sceidra was on the ground and wailing in pain, Poe and Quincy wasted no time and ran off. The sceidras hurried to their injured kin, then spotted the hunters fleeing the forest. Little did the sceidras know that the hunters would be confronting them soon enough.

  Chapter 6

  The setting was tense inside the hunters’ residence as the sun awakened from its slumber. Both men were fuming over their defeat and ashamed that they failed to kill the sceidra. While the lore assured them that gold was the primary tool to use against the sceidra, Poe and Quincy failed to realize that they were not seeing the entire picture. Furthermore, they were upset at themselves for not considering the possibility that the forest was home to more than one sceidra. It was a decision that cost them the battle.

  Both men were in the library ready to begin their investigation from a different angle, but unsure of where to begin. Frustrated, Quincy snatched the book of lore from off Poe’s desk and shook it at him angrily as he launched a tirade about their mishandling of the skirmish. “We should have known that there is more than one sceidra in the forest! This book you had so much faith in has tricked us! We were to go in the forest and kill this monster, but we failed, Edgar! We went into battle ill-advised and thus unprepared and are lucky to have escaped with our lives. Imagine, our corpses at the morgue and everyone reading about our deaths in the paper!”

  “Quincy, I am as mad as you are about the entire ordeal! But there is not one positive reward from complaining and letting anger get the best of you! We learned a lesson from the battle despite being the losers. We are now equipped with more information than previously, so we must build upon what we knew with what we know now.”

  “I am not satisfied with your assurances, Edgar. More and more victims will die by the second unless we destroy every sceidra in that forest!”

  “I assure you, Quincy, that nobody will dare go near the forest! We aren’t the only citizens of Baltimore who read the daily newspaper. People of this city have been informed and are aware of the danger. Not one man, woman, or child will tread on the grass of the dreaded landscape! No one is foolish enough to venture into those woods, or at least I hope not, but if they do, that is on them. I refuse to feel remorse for another’s ill-gotten bravery and I strongly suggest you don’t either.”

  Quincy remained silent for a minute. He considered Poe’s lecture in his mind and discovered an assurance that felt right and made complete sense. Locking eyes with colleague, he nodded his head in agreement. “I hear truth in your words, my dear Edgar. Of course, I hope you were right because I might obtain tomorrow’s newspaper and read about yet another untimely death. But overall, I now find comfort in your assurances. I thank you kindly.”

  “No need to thank me. After our defeat, I am keeping myself in the positive and doing all I can to make light of a situation that has become dire. Even if nobody is entering the forest, we will still need to exterminate the sceidras.”

  Once Quincy nodded again with understanding, Poe switched topics. “Have any deliveries arrived today?”

  “Yes, the courier dropped off a letter addressed to you from a ‘Ms. Osgood.’”

  Poe’s eyes became wide as saucers. The response he desperately anticipated had finally arrived. No sooner than Quincy had retrieved it from the desk, Poe seized the letter from his hand and rushed off to his room. Quincy’s face twisted with confusion as suspicions arose in his mind.

  • • •

  Poe sat at his desk slowly reading the letter, absorbing every word. The letter began with Ms. Osgood stating that her name is Frances and that she would like nothing more than to have Poe address her by her first name. She quipped that being called ‘Ms. Osgood’ made her feel many years past her actual age. Frances then revealed how flattered she felt upon receiving Poe’s letter and poem and explained that she already had a fondness for him as an author. Poe’s heart skipped a beat as he read about how she possessed a collection of his literature and felt privileged to now have an original poem by Poe dedicated to her.

  “The poem’s scintillating diction and romantic plot aroused my soul,” she explained. “Reading about a gentleman who was separated from his virtuous woman by external, nightmari
sh challenges pained my heart and caused tears to spring forth from my eyes.”

  Frances included a poem with her letter as well and prefaced it by stating that she was experimenting with this form of writing and hoped that Poe might “provide an insightful, meaningful critique for the purpose of improving my craft.” She added that it would be an honor and a joy to hear from Poe about how she too can become an accomplished poet. Poe ejected the poem from the envelope and unfolded it. He read the first line and saw that the poem was about a woman who dwelled in a city.

  The character Frances created lived alone without the comfort of family and friends. One day, she read a newspaper article about a man who was dying in a hospital in a neighboring city because he suffered from an “injured heart.” The woman traveled to the man’s location by way of a schooner and went directly to the hospital to pay him a visit. She arrived at the man’s room to find him lying in bed squirming under the sheets in obvious pain with an expression of sadness and heartbreak on his face. He did not notice the lady walking to his bedside because he was too distracted by his own suffering.

  The woman was so grief-stricken upon seeing the man in such a horrible condition that she began to weep for him. She did not know how to comfort him or how to heal him of his pain, yet she bent over and placed a kiss in the center of his forehead. Immediately, the man felt all the agony melt away. He was healthy again! He gazed up at the woman and his eyes told him all she needed to know. Amazed, she placed her hands on her cheeks as her tears of sorrow transformed into joyful waterworks. Feeling the splash of her tears caused the same to spill from his eyes. He rose from his hospital bed and embraced her, thanking her for the amazing miracle that saved his life. The last line of the poem ends with the woman extending an invitation to the man to visit her home.

  Poe interpreted the last line as a hint that Frances wished for Poe to come knocking at her door. “A deliberate ending,” Poe whispered to himself as he decided that his love interest must have concluded the poem in this manner on purpose. The hunter dropped the poem on his desk and picked up the letter. He continued reading until the end where the invitation to visit was no longer a subtle hint. She provided the hunter with her home address and wrote the words “I hope to see you one day and build a relationship with you that will last millenniums…”

  Seeing that she signed her name with a flourish, Poe smiled and was giddy with happiness. His heart raced with excitement and his mind was consumed with thoughts of what the future would bring. He welcomed the prospect of a new woman in his life.

  • • •

  Poe sat in the comfort of his kitchen drinking his coffee and reading the newspaper. He breathed a sigh of relief to see that the front page was devoid of headlines about any recent murders in the forest. Sure, there were articles about murders that happened within the city, but none that demanded his investigative skills because all of these victims still had their brains, hearts, and livers. He was happy to see this, and not just for Quincy’s sake, but his as well.

  Quincy slammed the front door startling Poe and raced into the kitchen. He gave Poe a hearty greeting and dropped a small book onto the table.

  “You would not believe what this book is about! Go on, pick it up and have a look, my good man,” Quincy exclaimed.

  Poe slid the book toward him and read the title: The Myth of Daniel Moore. Poe placed his coffee cup down and looked at the book with curiosity. Opening the cover, he perused the chapter headings and observed that the book was written by an anonymous source. “I infer you were at the library and found this book, which is about the man who injured and weakened a sceidra but failed to kill it with gold. Why should I give this work any care, Quincy?”

  “Because I read it at the library, Edgar, and I now know the true way to kill a sceidra.”

  Poe looked at the thrilled and eager expression Quincy wore on his face. He waited for his hunting sidekick to pass on the information he learned in the book, but an unbreakable silence existed between the men. “Well? Are you going to keep me in suspense until the sun sleeps while wearing that juvenile expression across your face, or will you spill what you have learned already?”

  “Right, of course! The book starts off with the author stating that he was a witness of the fateful event in which Daniel Moore died whilst confronting the sceidra. But I shan’t reveal every detail in the book, so I oblige your ears and attention as I speak to you the true way to kill a sceidra. I learned in this magnificent work of literature that each sceidra was created differently from one another. The Alpha sceidra created its children with a particular blood, so in essence, these offspring are forbidden from coming into contact with the DNA of their relatives. Therefore, if the blood of related sceidras becomes intermingled, they will die!”

  Poe looked at Quincy with a mixture of confusion and fascination. He wondered about how the author knew of this method if he only witnessed the fight between the English explorer and the monsters. “First of all, how does the author know of the different blood types of the sceidras if he was simply a witness of Daniel Moore’s death? Did he theorize this? What kind of research does the author present to corroborate his claims?”

  “Exactly! This is a theory, Edgar! But I have not yet revealed to you about how he came to this theory. it is because the author witnessed Daniel Moore kill three sceidras with his golden dagger! He stabbed one after the other with the same blade, then sunk it into the third monster, then stabbed the first one yet again, which caused the different types blood to cover the dagger as it was thrust into each of the creatures. The anonymous source does have something to validate his hypothesis!”

  Poe looked down at the ground for a few seconds, trying to absorb the layers of information unloaded on his brain by his compatriot. Never has he learned of a way to kill a monster in such a concise and factual manner as the lesson Quincy just extrapolated. Poe suddenly had an epiphany and looked up at his partner. “I think I know just the weapon we need!”

  “After blessing me with this research, Quincy, I propose a classic bow and arrows, but with golden arrowheads instead of regular ones. And instead of using multiple arrows, we would need only one. The arrow would retract after each blow. Using this technique, we can plunge the arrow into as many sceidras as possible until all of them die. We would shoot one sceidra with the arrow, retract the arrow, then discharge it again at another sceidra! Do you understand?”

  Quincy’s eyes widened from their sockets and a smile spread across his mouth spread from ear to ear. “I like your intuitive thinking! And your words are the words that come out of the mouth of babes!”

  Poe erased the smile from his face and looked at Quincy with a perplexed expression, signaling a lack of humor from the latter’s joke. “Bite your tongue! I am not a babe.”

  “I meant that as a reference to the biblical phrase…you have ruined the moment, Edgar.”

  Quincy slapped Poe on the back in jest and the hunters returned to their cheery mood. They shook each other’s hands in a vow to be victorious in their mission and hoped that it would come soon and the end swiftly.

  Chapter 7

  After a day full of revelations and contemplations regarding the sceidra, the evening quickly approached as Poe made it his mission to get his hands on the weapon he craved. Thus, he left his home to revisit the weapons and ammunition shop owned by his friend, Walter. Poe walked the streets with a renewed energy and every footstep he took exuded electricity. Poe felt the cool breeze kiss his skin as he took in the sight of Baltimore’s citizens brushing past him as they tended to their business.

  Once he arrived at Walter’s shop, he pushed the door open and the bell overhead jingled delightfully notifying the owner of a customer’s presence. When Walter appeared, he saw that it was no ordinary customer.

  “Edgar! Your presence graces my shop once again – and so soon! It is as if I have laid eyes on the sunrise even though the moon is quickly
approaching.”

  “Always a pleasure to see you, too, Walter! I am humbled by your compliment.”

  “I assume you are here with news of your latest hunt. Do not keep me in suspense. Speak freely of all that transpired!”

  “I’m afraid it did not go quite well for Quincy and me. The beast got the best of us. The golden bullets and daggers did nothing more than deliver slight damage to the monster. It was an event my partner and I had not anticipated.”

  Walter expressed a sour look on his face upon hearing Poe’s grievance. “My condolences, Edgar. The sting of defeat can bring a hunter’s spirit down in a matter of seconds. My God who rules the Earth, gold is good for nothing but filling the pockets of the greedy and rich. It won’t save a man’s life until Hell is overcome with a blizzard. But look on the bright side, you and Nathaniel are alive and, like I always say, tis always better to be above the pavement then six feet underneath it!”

  Edgar responded with a hearty laugh. “That, my good lad, is a fact I dare not argue against! Since I’m thrilled to still be alive and kicking, I’ll have you know that I also bring glad tidings to you in addition to a request.”

  The shop owner’s facial expression turned to one of curiosity. “Well, do not keep me in suspense another moment! Enlighten me!”

  “During Quincy’s early morning research at the library, he discovered a technique that may kill our monster. Of course, this was fascinating news that I was elated to hear! The monster, which is known as a sceidra, can only be killed when the blood of its own kind enters its system. From Quincy’s research, we ascertain that once we taint each sceidra with the blood of another, they will all die, so it is actually in our favor that there is more than one in the forest! That is the good news! So, I come to you now because I know you have the weaponry that will help us annihilate these dreadful creatures.”