POE MUST DIE

by Marc Olden

  Figg spat on the table of food. “Lovely lot, they are. Maggots crawlin’ over garbage ‘ave a sweeter smell.”

  Poe looked down at the table. “Honey mixed with peppercorns. Considered an aphrodisiac in the Orient. And this meat here, what is—”

  “Partridge.” Sarah snapped the word at Poe.

  Poe smiled at Figg. “Throughout the ages, Mr. Figg, impotent men have believed that the flesh of the partridge will return their sexual powers. Among fowls, there is none more lecherous than the partridge. It is said to be so sexually adept that it has the ability to make pregnant its mate merely by using its voice.”

  Figg snorted, pistol still pointing at Volney Gunning’s head. “Only the bloomin’ voice? Saves a patch of ‘ard work, don’t it?”

  Sarah, sardonically playing the hostess, fixed a cold smile on his lovely face, flicking a closed fan at the table. “Goat’s milk with the leaf of the Satyricon plant. Sip it, Mr. Poe and you will be able to achieve sexual congress no less than seventy times in rapid succession. Assuming you have that objective. These are love apples, commonly called tomatoes and this, this dish is bull’s testicles. Resembles an ordinary meat pie—”

  Poe aimed his cold gray eyes at Sarah, “Yesterday when you killed Miles Standish, did he beg for his life?”

  Sarah snapped his fan closed, eyes still on the table. Amelia and Messalina quickly exchanged glances, looked at Poe then looked away.

  Sarah stood up, forced a smile and slowly walked towards Poe. He moved with the grace of a woman flirting. Hips swayed, the fan fluttered, Poe smelled perfume, saw the flash of gaslight on jewelry. Sarah was close enough to touch him. Poe leaned back, uncertain as to how he should deal with this he-she, this lovely and evil thing.

  Sarah closed her fan, placing the hand that held it on Poe’s shoulder. Figg watched Poe stand rigid as a bird hypnotized by a slow crawling snake.

  “Dear, dear, dear Mr. Poe.” Sarah’s voice was soft, low, seductive. “Can we not comfort you as well?”

  Lord help us, thought Figg. This one really thinks she’s a woman and if I didn’t know the bloody difference, I’d think so too. And Poe, he can only stand there like his feet are nailed to the carpet. Nothing he ever learned about women has prepared the little man for this day, I’ll wager.

  Poe’s jaw trembled. He gripped his stick with two hands. This was no woman, this was—

  Figg heard the tiny click, saw the blade.

  The knife was just behind Poe’s shoulder.

  Sarah’s fan. Sarah had pressed a button, sending six inches of slim, bright steel out of the fan’s handle.

  Figg was in motion.

  He did it all at once. Shift the pistol to his left hand, shove Poe forward and out of the way and with his right hand, grab Sarah’s fan hand.

  Figg swung the arm behind Sarah’s back, jerking it up hard, fast and high, jerking it up between Sarah’s shoulder blades and driving the prostitute up on his toes. And with a sickening pop, breaking the arm at the right shoulder blade.

  Sarah collapsed on the floor, blonde wig falling off. His face was white, his mouth open in terrible shock. He inhaled loudly through his opened mouth.

  Figg leveled the pistol at the other two male prostitutes who were on their feet, fists tightly around their fans. The blades in each fan glittered brightly.

  Figg pulled his other flintlock from his pocket. “I don’t miss too often from this close up.”

  Poe slowly got off the table. He’d fallen on it, smearing the front of his coat with erotic food and drink. His nostrils flared at the smell and he winced. “My gratitude, Mr. Figg.”

  “Accepted, Mr. Poe.”

  Poe looked at Volney Gunning. “Where is Jonathan, sir and be quick about it.”

  Gunning, vunerable in his pathetic nudity, began to weep. “I cannot say.”

  “You cannot or will not?”

  “Cannot. I, I do not know.”

  Returning a pistol to his pocket, Figg then bent over, picking up Sarah’s fan knife. “I could use this ’ere thing on yer tender parts, Mr. Gunning. Bet you would converse with us then.”

  Gunning shook his head, continuing to weep. “I do not know, I swear I do not know.”

  Figg sneered. Bloody poof. No spine, no spunk. Figg moved towards him.

  Gunning was on his feet. He ran towards the drapes, disappearing behind them. Everyone in the room was caught by surprise. As the two other naked men were getting to their feet and the two male prostitutes were looking in the direction Gunning had gone, they all heard the sound of window glass breaking and they heard Volney Gunning’s fading scream.

  Sarah moaned, but in the race to the window, Sarah was forgotten.

  Through the broken window, they looked down at the bleeding body of Volney Gunning barely visible in the snow and darkness behind the building. Gunning’s head was at an ugly angle, an angle possible only in death.

  Poe said, “Jonathan terrified him, Mr. Figg. More than you or I ever could, Jonathan terrified him.”

  A shivering Prosper Benjamin moved quickly away from the window, rubbing his arms, muttering to himself. “This is tragic. This is tragic. What shall we do?”

  In the center of the room, he turned to point a finger at Poe and Figg. “You two! Your fault. You killed him and I shall see you hang for it. Yes hanged!”

  Poe said, “And reveal to the world the degenerate you are? Unlikely, Mr. Benjamin. Our modern times have not accepted homosexuality and that, sir, is an understatement. There is nothing lower than a homosexual and I, for one, would make sure that the press and public learned of your proclivities even if I have to write the article myself. No sir, you will not do anything to indicate that Mr. Figg and I are criminally involved with the death of Mr. Gunning. For your sake and that of Mr. Pietch, I suggest you evolve a tale explaining Mr. Gunning’s sudden demise. I hear footsteps on the stairs. Think fast, Mr. Benjamin. Your time is at hand, sir.”

  Poe opened the door and Figg gladly followed him through it.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  JONATHAN. THE SECOND DAY.

  The sun was a hard brilliance; it shone down on the snow to create an eye-piercing glare. Dark shapes slunk in and out of the glare, heading towards the barn on Hugh Larney’s abandoned horse farm. The shapes were starving wolves and they had heard the whinny of the two horses used by Jonathan and Laertes. The wolves, experienced and intelligent, had killed horses before. Made desperate by hunger and a bitter February cold, the wolves closed in on the barn.

  There were seven of them and they moved in killing formation, spread out and alert, lean gray bodies loping easily and gracefully across the snow, heads turning left and right to sense danger. Their eyes glittered, their jaws hung down to reveal deadly teeth.

  Suddenly the wolves stopped, freezing in their tracks. Their ears flattened against their skulls and a couple of them began inching backwards, mouths closed, heads darting left and right, eagerly seeking the source of the overwhelming danger they now felt.

  There was no sound except the howl of the wind. Then came the howl of the wolf leader and the others took it up. The leader’s sense of danger was stronger and he had warned the others. They felt it too and answered him.

  The wolves turned and fled, leaving their tracks in the snow and soon they had gone. Behind them all was quiet. No sound came from the barn where Jonathan and Laertes slept.

  But the wolves had felt the danger and evil now accumulating around the barn and even these most vicious of killers in nature’s scheme of destruction did not want to confront it.

  * * * *

  A worried Poe sat on the edge of Rachel’s bed, holding her hand. Behind him the doctor said, “She rests now but that is because of the medicine. According to the servants, her screams occurred too frequently during the night.”

  “Jonathan,” whispered Poe.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “It is of no matter, sir.”

  “There is a great disturbance within her, Mr. Poe
. She is deeply troubled and I would assume that her recent ordeal—”

  “Yes doctor. She suffers from having confronted an evil most of us can barely imagine.”

  Jonathan. The corpse of Justin. The savagery of Hamlet Sproul. Near death and degradation at the hands of Sproul’s cohorts. Yes doctor, there is indeed a great disturbance with her and I pray to God it does not last, for she will grow to dread the night as I do and she will quake at the thought of what terror sleep can hold for her.

  “I leave you now, Mr. Poe. Her maid-servant has instructions as to the proper medication and she is to contact me immediately should the crisis reassert itself.”

  Poe didn’t turn around. “Yes, doctor. You have my deepest gratitude.”

  “Yes, well … ”

  Poe still did not turn around. He kept his eyes on Rachel, now deep in a drugged sleep. Was she again having nightmares about Jonathan?

  Her fingers clutched Poe’s hand and her lovely face suddenly contorted and Poe’s heart fluttered.

  He turned to look at the door, on the verge of calling the doctor back. Then Rachel relaxed her grip and Poe looked down at her once more. My dearest, my dearest. Leaning over her, he gently kissed her perspiring brow. My dearest Rachel.

  A tear fell from Poe’s eye, disappearing into the thick, soft redness that was Rachel Coltman’s lovely hair.

  * * * *

  Sarah Clannon screamed Jonathan’s name over and over. She was delirious, thrashing about on the bed and Hugh Larney could barely hold her down. The wound in her side was infected, turning yellow and an ugly green. If she died, if she died …

  Larney screamed over his shoulder, “Get the bloody doctor, you fool! Get him!”

  The servant turned and ran.

  THIRTY-SIX

  “YER HERE TO bite the ken.” Wade Bruenhausen started his rocking chair in motion again, slowly rubbing greasy hands on his shirt front. The Dutch procurer was fat, with a nose as long and as pointed as a carrot and he smelled of shit. Figg, who found it easy to dislike him, turned his face away from the man’s body odor.

  “Ain’t what we’s ‘ere for,” said Figg looking around the dirty cellar where Bruenhausen lived with his child whores. There was nothing in this house they wanted to rob.

  “I says you are.” Bruenhausen rocked faster, moving in and out of the orange glow from the fireplace diagonally behind him.

  “You can bloody well say what you like. We told you what we want. We want Dearborn Lapham.”

  Bruenhausen stopped rocking. “Do you now? The gentlemen want little Dearborn. Lots of gentlemen want little Dearborn. What makes you two so special, besides the fact that I do not much like either one of you by the sound of your voices?”

  “We wants ’er. We will pay for ’er time.” Figg looked at Poe standing several feet behind him. It was Poe’s idea. Don’t waste time searching for Hugh Larney. The hours were too few and too precious for that. Make him come to us. Dearborn Lapham. When Larney learned that Poe and Figg had her …

  It will be too much for his vanity, Poe had said. Pray that it is, replied Figg. Poe was worried about Rachel, about her nightmares and her need for a doctor. He feared that as long as Jonathan existed, Rachel would live in terror. The spiritualist’s continued existence would damage hers. So find Jonathan before the nine days were up and destroy him.

  Figg no longer had a woman to worry about, nor did he have nine days to find Jonathan. The second day was ending and that left one more week. Figg himself had barely been in New York a week. Seven days more and Jonathan would be beyond his revenge. Beyond anyone’s revenge.

  Make Hugh Larney come to them. Then force him to reveal Jonathan’s whereabouts. So it was down to the Bowery and Wade Bruenhausen, who “read” his bible to his child whores and thieves by quoting long passages he’d memorized. The gross and smelly Bruenhausen, with most of his black hair gone because of an earlier attack of yellow fever, was surly, suspicious. He wore a frilly shirt, knee britches, silk stockings and high heels, the dated clothing of another century. All of the clothing was filthy, as though Bruenhausen had rolled around in coal dust.

  He reminded Figg of a huge, vile toad.

  Bruenhausen coughed up phlegm from his throat, spitting it on the floor just inches from Figg’s boots. His voice was an ugly whisper, the result of a severed vocal cord presented to him some years ago by a broken bottle in the hands of a drunken acquaintance.

  “Mr. Poe ain’t sayin’ much. Then again he has been known to say too much. I still remember you telling that church committee that I should be hanged for what I was doing with little children.”

  “Hanged, drawn and quartered, I believe I said.”

  “Oh you did, that you did. I remember. Some folks took your words to heart, Mr. Poe, and I was forced to absent myself from New York for a brief turn. Might I inquire as to why you want the services of Dearborn Lapham, considerin’ how you condemned my, er, business practices some time back?”

  Poe stepped forward. “She is the key to a mystery we seek to unravel.”

  “Is she now?”

  Bruenhausen leered and resumed rocking, lifting his dirty, white high heel shoes off the floor each time he rocked backwards. Poe was a hypocritical bastard. Criticizing Bruenhausen and now showing up with heat in his loins for the tender flesh of a child. Hypocritical bastard.

  The Dutchman said, “You cannot have her. She is reserved for a special customer and he pays me well, more than you two can afford.”

  Figg said, “I have cash money. We know you sends ‘er to Hugh Larney, but all the same we would like to ’ave ’er for a time. No ‘arm will come to the child. We will pay you a good price.”

  The man disgusted Figg, who would have preferred to hold the Dutchman’s bare backside to the flames.

  The rocking stopped once more. “It is heartwarming, Mr. Poe, to have you come to me after all these years. You are here to take—”

  ''To pay.” Figg was losing patience.

  “No!” A smug Bruenhausen resumed rocking.

  Figg looked around the dark cellar. “Is she about?” Straw in corners for the children to sleep on. Cardboard boxes, empty barrels, empty whiskey bottles. A junk factory smelling like a privy and Figg didn’t want to spend any more time here than he had to. Near the front door, three dirty kids with long curly hair, their thin bodies covered by rags, stood watching the three men. Figg couldn’t tell if they were boys or girls under the grime, but he knew one thing for sure—they would not live long working for Wade Bruenhausen.

  “Is she about, says the Englishman.” Bruenhausen stopped rocking. “I would say that you are not a young man, that you are large and you are a plain man, lower station and you have little patience with matters which do not go your way.” The rocking resumed.

  “The girl,” growled Figg.

  Bruenhausen responded to the threat in the boxer’s voice. He whistled sharply between his teeth—three shrill tweets. Instantly, the children ran from the cellar, leaving the three men alone.

  As Poe and Figg turned to look at the empty doorway, Bruenhausen leaned to his left as though listening to the flames in the fireplace.

  “Saint Luke, chapter four, verse ten. ‘For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee: And in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.’”

  Figg and Poe were staring at him, when they heard the noise behind them. Turning, they saw the dark cellar quickly fill with children. In seconds, fifteen of them crammed into the room and most—boys and girls—held weapons. Knives, clubs, broken bottles. One who didn’t was Dearborn Lapham, who stood uncomfortably in the first line of children.

  Bruenhausen’s rocking was slow and deliberate. Menacing. “My rod and my staff, Englishman.” Bruenhausen reached for his own neck with a hairy hand.

  “Look at them,” he said. “Abandoned urchins who know no loyalty save that which I have placed in their hearts and minds. No one dares cha
llenge me so long as the little ones are around. Some are as young as five, none over fifteen and I own them, Englishman. Own them body and soul and it is for fear and love of me that they will deal with you. You will not be the first to feel their wrath. When I clap my hands together—”

  He stopped rocking, hands poised in front of his chest and only inches apart. “Twice. That is the signal. And afterwards, we shall see if you are carrying anything of value. Dearborn?”

  “Yes, Mr. Bruenhausen?”

  “You shall watch your friends be chastised.”

  “Yes, Mr. Bruenhausen.” Dearborn always did as she was told.

  The Dutchman adjusted the tiny black spectacles which hid his sightless eyes. “I owe you, Mr. Edgar Allan meddlin’ Poe, and a debt should always be paid. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth and so it is written. As for your English friend, I do not enjoy his manners.”

  The Dutchman’s smile was cruel as he lifted hands from his lap and his hands were again in front of his chest and inches apart when Figg pulled the trigger on the flintlock, firing through his coat pocket, briefly setting fire to the cloth and sending a ball through both of the Dutchman’s hands.

  Bruenhausen screamed, jerking backwards in the rocking chair, sending it over and down to the floor. Now he was in the straw and dirt, arms crossed in front of his chest, blood pouring down the back and front of both hands.