The Man Who Called Himself Poe

by Sam Moskowitz

  The scene had an indescribable effect on me; it was as if I

  had been permitted a look into another world, one incredibly

  vaster than our own, distinguished from our own by antip-

  odally different values and life forms, and remote from

  ours in time and space, and as I gazed at this far world, I

  became aware—as were this intelligence being funneled

  into me by some psychic means—that I looked upon a dying

  race which must escape its planet or perish. Spontaneously

  then, I seemed to recognize the burgeoning of a menacing

  evil, and with an urgent, violent effort, I threw off the bond-

  age of the chant that held me in its spell, gave vent to the

  uprushing of fear I felt in a cry of protest, and rose to my

  feet, while the chair on which I sat fell backward with a

  crash.

  Instantly the scene before my mind’s eye vanished and the

  room returned to focus. Across from me sat my visitors, the

  seven gentlemen in the likeness of Poe, impassive and si-

  lent, for the sounds they had made, the humming and the

  odd word-like tonal noises, had ceased.

  I calmed down, my pulse began to slow.

  “W hat you saw, Mr. Phillips, was a scene on another star,

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  ™ 3י M AN WH0 CALLED HIMSELF POE

  remote from here,” said Mr. Allan. “Far out in space—indeed,

  in another universe. Did it convince you?”

  *Tve seen enough,” I cried.

  I could not tell whether my visitors were amused or scorn-

  ful; they remained without expression, including their spokes-

  man, who only inclined his head slightly and said, “We

  will take our leave then, with your permission.”

  And silently, one by one, they all filed out into Angell

  Street.

  I was most disagreeably shaken. I had no proof of having

  seen anything on another world, but I could testify that I

  had experienced an extraordinary hallucination, undoubtedly

  through hypnotic influence.

  But w hat had been its reason for being? I pondered that

  as I set about to put the living room to rights, but I could

  not adduce any profound reason for the demonstration I had

  witnessed. I was unable to deny that my visitors had shown

  themselves to be possessed of extraordinary faculties—but

  to w hat end? And I had to admit to myself that I was as

  much shaken by the appearance of no less than seven iden-

  tical men as I was by the hallucinatory experience I had

  just passed through. Quintuplets were possible, yes—but had

  anyone ever heard of septuplets? Nor were multiple births

  of identical children usual. Yet here were seven men, all of

  very much the same age, identical in appearance, for whose

  existence there was not a scintilla of explanation.

  Nor was there any graspable meaning in the scene that I

  had witnessed during the demonstration. Somehow I had

  understoood that the great cubes were sentient beings for

  whom the violet radiation was life-giving; I had realized that

  the cone creatures served them in some fashion or other,

  but nothing had been disclosed to show how. The whole

  vision was meaningless; it was just such a scene as might have

  been created by a highly organized imagination and tele-

  pathically conveyed to a willing subject, such as myself.

  That it proved the existence of extra-terrestrial life was ri­

  THE M A N WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE

  165

  diculous; it proved no more than that I had been the victim

  of an induced hallucination.

  But, once more, I came full circle. As hallucination, it

  was completely without reason for being.

  Yet I could not escape an insistent disquiet that troubled

  me long that night before I was able to sleep.

  IV

  Strangely enough, my uneasiness mounted during the

  course of the following morning. Accustomed as I was to the

  human curiosities, to the often incredible characters and

  unusual sights to be encountered on the nocturnal walks I

  took about Providence, the circumstances surrounding the

  Poe־esque Mr. Allan and his brothers were so outré that

  I could not get them out of mind.

  Acting on impulse, I took time off from my work that

  afternoon and made my way to the house on the knoll along

  the Seekonk, determined to confront my nocturnal compan-

  ion. But the house, when I came to it, wore an air of singular

  desertion; badly worn curtains were drawn down to the sills

  of the windows, in some places blinds were up; and the

  whole milieu was the epitome of abandonment.

  Nevertheless, I knocked at the door and waited.

  There was no answer. I knocked again.

  No sound fell to my ear from inside the house.

  Powerfully impelled by curiosity now, I tried the door.

  It opened to my touch. I hesitated still, and looked all around

  me. No one was in sight, at least two of the houses in the

  neighborhood were unoccupied, and if I was under surveil-

  lance it was not apparent to me.

  I opened the door and stepped into the house, standing

  for a few moments with my back to the door to accustom my

  eyes to the twilight that filled the rooms. Then I moved cau-

  tiously through the small vestibule into the adjacent room,

  a parlor sparely occupied by horsehair furniture at least

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  THE M AN W O CALLED HIMSELF POE

  two decades old. There was no sign here of occupation by

  any human being, though there was evidence that someone

  had not long since walked here, making a path through

  dust visible on the uncarpeted flooring. I crossed the room

  and entered a small dining room, and crossed this, too, to

  find myself in a kitchen, which, like the other rooms, bore

  little sign of having been used, for there was no food of any

  kind in evidence, and the table appeared not to have been

  used for years. Yet here, too, were footprints in substantial

  numbers, testifying to the habitation of the house. And the

  staircase revealed steady use as well.

  But it was the far side of the house that afforded the

  most disturbing disclosures. This side of the building con-

  sisted of but one large room, though it was instantly evident

  that it had been three rooms at one time, but the connecting

  walls had been removed without the finished repair of the

  junctions at the outer wall. I saw this in a fleeting glance,

  for what was in the center of the room caught and held

  my fascinated attention. The room was bathed in violet

  light, a soft glowing that emanated from what appeared to

  be a long, glass-encased slab, which, with a second, unlit

  similar slab, stood surrounded by machinery the like of

  which I had never seen before save in dreams.

  I moved cautiously into the room, alert for anyone who

  might prevent my intrusion. No one and nothing moved. I

  drew closer to the violet-lit glass case and saw that some-

  thing lay within, though I did not at first encompass this

  because I saw what it laid upon—nothing less than a life-

>   sized reproduction of a likeness of Edgar Allan Poe, which,

  like everything else, was illuminated by the same pulsing

  violet light, the source of which I could not determine, save

  that it was enclosed by the glass-like substance which made

  up the case. But when at last I looked upon that which

  lay upon the likeness of Poe, I almost cried out in fearful

  surprise, for it was, in miniature, a precise reproduction of

  THE M A N WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE

  167

  one of the rugose cones I had seen only last night in the

  hallucination induced in my home on Angell Street! And

  the sinuous movement of the tentacles on its head—or what

  I took to be its head—was indisputable evidence that it

  was alive!

  I backed hastily away with only enough of a glance at

  the other case to assure myself that it was bare and unoc-

  cupied, though connected by many metal tubes to the illu-

  mined case parallel to it; then I fled, as noiselessly as possible,

  for I was convinced that the nocturnal brotherhood slept

  upstairs and in my confusion at this inexplicable revelation

  that placed my hallucination of the previous night into an-

  other perspective, I wished to meet no one. I escaped from

  the house undetected, though I thought I caught a brief

  glimpse of a Poe-esque face at one of the upper windows. I

  ran down the road and back along the streets that bridged

  the distance from the Seekonk to the Providence River, and

  ran so for many blocks before I slowed to a walk, for I was

  beginning to attract attention in my wild flight.

  As I walked along, I strove to bring order to my chaotic

  thoughts. I could not adduce an explanation for what I had

  seen, but I knew intuitively that I had stumbled upon some

  menacing evil too dark and forbidding and perhaps too vast

  as well for my comprehension. I hunted for meaning and

  found none; mine had never been a scientifically oriented

  mind, apart from chemistry and astronomy, so that I was

  not equipped to understand the use of the great machines I

  had seen in that house ringing that violet-lit slab where that

  rugose body lay in warm, life-giving radiation—indeed, I

  was not even able to assimilate the machinery itself, for

  there was only a remote resemblance to anything I had ever

  before seen, and that the dynamos in a powerhouse. They

  had all been connected in some way to the two slabs, and

  the glass cases—if the substance were glass—the one occu-

  pied, the other dark and empty, for all the tubing that tied

  them each to each.

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  THE M A N WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE

  But I had seen enough to be convinced that the dark-

  clad brotherhood who walked the streets of Providence by

  night in the guise of Edgar Allan Poe had a purpose other

  than mine in doing so; theirs was no simple curiosity about

  the nocturnal characters, about fellow walkers of the night.

  Perhaps darkness was their natural element, even as daylight

  was that of the majority of their fellow men; but that their

  motivation was sinister, I could not now doubt. Yet at the

  same time I was at a loss as to what course next to follow.

  I turned my steps at last toward the library, in the vague

  hope of grasping at something that might lead me to some

  clue by means of which I could approach an understanding

  of what I had seen.

  But there was nothing. Search as I might, I found no key,

  no hint, though I read widely through every conceivable

  reference—even to those on Poe in Providence on the

  shelves, and I left the library late in the day as baffled as

  when I had entered.

  Perhaps it was inevitable that I would see Mr. Allan again

  that night. I had no way of knowing whether my visit to

  his home had been observed, despite the observer I thought

  I had glimpsed in an upper window in my flight, and I

  encountered him therefore in some trepidation. But this was

  evidently ill-founded, for when I greeted him on Benefit

  Street there was nothing in his manner or in his words to

  suggest any change in his attitude, such as I might have

  expected had he been aware of my intrusion. Yet I knew

  full well his capacity for being without expression—humor,

  disgust, even anger or irritation were alien to his features,

  which never changed from that introspective mask which

  was essentially that of Poe.

  “I trust you have recovered from our experiment, Mr.

  Phillips,” he said after exchanging the customary amenities.

  “Fully,” I answered, though it was not the truth. I added

  something about a sudden spell of dizziness to explain my

  bringing the experiment to its precipitate end.

  THE M AN WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE

  169

  “It is but one of the worlds outside you saw, Mr. Phillips,”

  Mr. Allan went on. “There are many. As many as a hundred

  thousand. Life is not the unique property of Earth. Nor

  is life in the shape of human beings. Life takes many forms

  on other planets and far stars, forms that would seem bizarre

  to humans, as human life is bizarre to other life forms.”

  For once, Mr. Allan was singularly communicative, and I

  had little to say. Clearly, whether or not I laid what I had

  seen to hallucination—even in the face of my discovery in my

  companion’s house—he himself believed implicitly in what

  he said. He spoke of many worlds, as if he were familiar

  with them. On occasion he spoke almost with reverence of

  certain forms of life, particularly those with the astonishing

  adaptability of assuming the life forms of other planets in

  their ceaseless quest for the conditions necessary to their

  existence.

  “The star I looked upon,” I broke in, “was dying.”

  “Yes,” he said simply.

  “You have seen it?”

  “I have seen it, Mr. Phillips.”

  I listened to him with relief. Since it was manifestly

  impossible to permit any man sight of the intimate life of

  outer space, what I had experienced was nothing more than

  the communicated hallucination of Mr. Allan and his broth-

  ers. Telepathic communication certainly, aided by a form

  of hypnosis I had not previously experienced. Yet I could

  not rid myself of the disquieting sense of evil that surrounded

  my nocturnal companion, nor of the uneasy feeling that the

  explanation which I had so eagerly accepted was unhappily

  glib.

  As soon as I decently could, thereafter, I made excuses

  to Mr. Allan and took my leave of him. I hastened directly

  to the Athenaeum in the hope of finding Rose Dexter there,

  but if she had been there, she had already gone. I went

  then to a public telephone in the building and telephoned her

  home.

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  ׳THE M AN WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE

  Rose answered, and I confess to an instantaneous feeling

  of gratification.

  "Have you seen Mr. Allan tonight?״ I asked.

  "Yes,״ she replied. "But
only for a few moments. I was on

  my way to the library.״

  "So did I.״

  "He asked me to his home some evening to watch an

  experiment,״ she went on.

  "Don’t go,״ I said at once.

  There was a long moment of silence at the other end of

  the wire. Then, "Why not?״ Unfortunately, I failed to ac-

  knowledge the edge of truculence in her voice.

  "It would be better not to go,״ I said, with all the firmness

  I could muster.

  "Don’t you think, Mr. Phillips, I am the best judge of that?״

  I hastened to assure her that I had no wish to dictate

  her actions, but meant only to suggest that it might be

  dangerous to go.

  "Why?״

  "I can’t tell you over the telephone,” I answered, fully

  aware of how lame it sounded, and knowing even as I

  said it that perhaps I could not put into words at all the

  horrible suspicions which had begun to take shape in my

  mind, for they were so fantastic, so outré, that no one could

  be expected to believe in them.

  "I’ll think it over,” she said crisply.

  "I’ll try to explain when I see you,” I promised.

  She bade me good night and rang off with an intransi-

  gence that boded ill, and left me profoundly disturbed.

  V

  I come now to the final, apocalyptic events concerning

  Mr. Allan and the mystery surrounding the house on the

  forgotten knoll. I hesitate to set them down even now, for

  TIIE M A N WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE

  1 J 1

  I recognize that the charge against me will only be broadened

  to include grave questions about my sanity. Yet I have no

  other course. Indeed, the entire future of humanity, the

  whole course of what we call civilization, may be affected

  by what I do or do not write of this matter. For the cul-

  minating events followed rapidly and naturally upon my

  conversation with Rose Dexter, that unsatisfactory exchange

  over the telephone.

  After a restless, uneasy day at work, I concluded that I

  must make a tenable explanation to Rose. On the following

  evening, therefore, I went early to the library, where I was

  accustomed to meeting her, and took a place where I could

  watch the main entrance. There I waited for well over an

  hour before it occurred to me that she might not come to the

  library that night.

  Once more I sought the telephone, intending to ask