by L. E. Waters
Alexander clamps on and I try to thrash him off. “James, hold his head still and keep the towel ready if he screams.”
I hold out as long as I can until my lungs burn. Once I open my mouth for air, the moonshine rushes in, choking me horribly. I throw both of them from me with an involuntary survival reaction, and just as I gasp for air, George shoves the bottle down my throat. I spit the liquid out all over him and he knocks me sideways to the floor.
A loud knock rattles the door.
All the brothers freeze and George put his hands out for silence.
Another knock.
“We’ve located your trunk, Mr. Poe.”
I yell out, “Help—”
As James jumps on me with the towel, but I keep screaming with everything I have, the towel transforms it to a groan.
Alexander looks to George in a panic and George marches to the door. “Uh-um. I’m feeling terribly ill. I fear I have a violent stomach disorder I caught from someone on the train.”
I let out a loud moan.
“Do you need me to fetch a doctor?” the bellboy asks.
“There is nothing a doctor can do, but it’s best you stay away so you don’t come down with it.”
“Should I come back with your trunk later?”
“No, leave it there and I will come and collect it after you’ve gone.”
“But…what of the payment for my services?”
George snaps to Alexander who searches my pocket and takes out all of what I have left. George unfolds some of it and slips it under the door, then pockets the rest.
“Thank you, sir. I hope you improve soon.”
They wait for the footsteps to disappear and George rips open the door and pulls the trunk back in. “Pick him back up!” George demands and they right me, but my head spins.
He crams the glass back between my teeth. “Drink it, or I’ll knock you clear out.”
I begin swallowing and every gulp draws a tear. I swallow my promises, swallow my future, swallow any hopes of happiness. When three-quarters of the bottle is through, George lifts it up to examine. “Enough?” he asks his brothers.
“Look at him,” Alexander answers, pointing. “He’s drooling.”
James and Alexander hold their sides as they blur and echo in my fog. I can’t feel the ropes dig into me, I don’t feel them untie me, I only watch the room spin as I collapse to the carpeted floor. Laughter comes from far away. I don’t realize I’m being carried until we’re halfway down the stairs. I see women’s looks of concern and men’s disgusted faces from upside down. I try to plea to them, but my words are a blabbering of syllables, Alexander and James start up a ballad to mask my efforts. George slaps me on my back. “This one had all little too much fun.”
Cold air whips about me as soon as they lug me out to the side streets. How did it get so dark? The wind coming off the harbor is ill fated, carrying more dread with it than any of the gentle graveyard breezes. I get sick with all the bouncing upon my stomach. Alexander and James leap to the sides as the vomit splashes down the back of George’s pants.
“He got you!” James laughs.
“Aaggh!” George flips me off his shoulder and I land on a patch of ship planks, hard.
I turn over to get sick again. The pain of my stomach clenching makes me cry out.
“Should we just leave him here?” Alexander asks.
George looks around. “Let’s really sully him.”
I crack my eyes slightly to see them rousing a hobo, seeking shelter in a doorway. Four hands flip me over and peel off my coat. I try with all my might to stay within the only thing that is keeping me from freezing, but they remove all my garments—my tailored black suit, fine broadcloth shining boots, collared vest, neck cloth—in a few minutes. I try in vain to grab back some articles, but my arms do not obey. Elmira’s watch sleeps in that waistcoat pocket.
So much for undoing time.
The smell of the clothes they dress me in revives me and I fight a good minute not to have the vile clothes near me. Something hits me over the head.
Chapter 47
“What’s your name?”
Who is that?
“I’m trying to help you, but you’ve got to tell me your name.”
It doesn’t sound like any of the Roysters. I crack my eyes open and try to answer him. “Edgar—” but my teeth chatter so uncontrollably that I can hardly talk. The stranger removes his own coat begrudgingly and drapes it over me. He has to hold his nose from the odor of my switched clothes and waits patiently for me to try again.
“E.A. Poe,” is all I can get out before convulsing violently with the chill.
“Give me a name of someone I can call for you.”
His young eyes hold so much promise. So much useless promise in such a dismal world.
“Where are we?” I try to look around, the ache in my head cries out in protest to any movement. I have to get off these planks and back to Muddy. My only refuge.
“High Street, outside Gunner’s Hall.”
“Snodgrass,” I try to say, but it comes out much different. My eyelids shut without warning.
The stranger jostles me awake. “Doctor Snodgrass?”
I can only nod slowly before closing my eyes again.
I’m warm. Was I dead? I open my eyes again to see the inside of a lowly dock tavern. “He’s coming to.”
“Edgar?” Doctor Snodgrass asks.
Words just won’t come out.
He turns to the stranger. “Why is he dressed like this? He smells like the sewer.”
“That’s where I found him. On a plank in the gutters of the docks.”
“None of this makes any sense. Never in my life have I seen him wear such a cheap bandless hat, a common alpaca coat, dingy, bad fitting, gray pants. No vest. No neck cloth. And to top it all off, worn workman’s shoes, two sizes too big!” I hear him sigh. “No, this just doesn’t sit right.”
“He’s corned, sir.”
“I can tell he’s intoxicated, Mr. Walker, but it wouldn’t change a man’s clothes.”
“Attacked,” I try to say, but my lips and tongue do not obey.
“He must have been robbed.”
I bring my arms up to agree but a great convulsion comes over me. Snodgrass leaps to catch me before I fall.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
I wake again in the daylight, tied down to a hospital bed. Every muscle in my body throbs with such strain I can’t raise a finger. I can only move my eyes. There, the first sight I should see is Neilson sitting by my side.
He stirs as soon as he realizes I’m watching him. “Edgar!” He dashes out of the room and screams, “Doctor Moran! He’s opened his eyes!”
How many days have passed? Why can’t I move?
The unknown doctor dashes in and comes close to my face to examine me. “I can’t believe it. He has regained some consciousness, although he does still seem in shock.”
I shiver as the sweat that drenches my hair and sheet now cools. Neilson grabs a blanket off the end of the bed and drapes it over me.
The doctor asks me, “Can you speak?”
The words still stick in my throat. The air remains trapped and I choke on it.
“In a few days you’ll be back on your feet again.” The doctor turns to Neilson. “He’s rallying nicely.”
“I came at once to bring some decent clothes and clean linens.” He pulls the blanket up higher on my chest. “You were delirious, fevered and violent. Throwing water the nurses brought you. Mumbling incoherently for days.” He picks up a journal. “I’ve sat here all the while trying to write all the recognizable words, but I cannot figure out what you are trying to say. I know you’ve met with some great misfortune. I can see it in your eyes.”
My eyes fill with tears, sorry now for all the things I’ve said about him. All I took away. I gather up any energy I might have left, try with all my might to say Royster.
“Reynolds?” Neilson says with eyebrows ra
ised.
I shake my head with a groan. The agony of not being able to speak. I’d rather be burned.
“Well, you rest. You can tell me more tomorrow.” He sits back down in the chair next to the window. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Hours fly by like eye blinks. Every time I open my eyes again someone speeds up time. Nurses keep smiling and telling Neilson how much better I’m doing, but I only feel worse. If only I could speak, tell them the truth so Elmira doesn’t believe this of me. I can’t bear to think of her getting this news. What can I do to clear my name?
I’ll never get to make Elmira mine. We were so close. Things were almost healed—made right. If I only had a few more months, I might feel what others felt on their wedding day. I could die then, not now.
Again darkness.
Elmira stands by my bed. “This is a dream, Edgar. It’s all just a dream.”
“I’m not in this hospital bed?”
She smiles and shakes her head. “None of this is real. We will be together again. In another time, another place.”
She reaches her hand out to mine, and I crumble within her soft embrace.
A wave crashes behind my knees, nearly knocking me over. I turn around to a surging ocean. Alone. Without Elmira or the shelter of her body. I fall on my knees as the whitewater tumbles over me, crushing me against its shore. I grasp at the coarse sand below and bring my hands up out of the sea. The sparkling grains run out between the gaps in my hands, no matter how hard I clench them, I can’t save one grain. The sands flow back out for the ocean to reclaim them. There is nothing I can save.
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
I fight to open my eyes again, but Neilson hovers nervously and nurses stop smiling. This is it. This is how it would all end? After all the romantic, heroic or peaceful ways I thought to die, this is how everything will cease? A wave of warm fluid rushes from my limbs into my core and suddenly my voice is released, but with one final convulsion. I yell out, “Lord help my poor soul!”
Then I shut my weary eyes.
Epilogue
The bright sun blinds me. I remove my hand from the rocker arm to shield the glare. Zachariah still holds my other hand in his warm grasp, as Canada geese slowly descend from the sky in their perfect V. All honking out to each other, they use their large feet as brakes and skid down in loud splashes. They celebrate their successful landings by sticking out their long necks at each other with a cacophony of calls. Once they form a circle, they quiet and busy themselves with dunking and grooming on the tranquil lake.
It’s odd to go from such dismal ends to such a serene setting—as though waking from a terrible nightmare in your warm, peaceful bed. Zachariah snaps his free hand and billowing organdy curtains appear, cascading from the porch overhang to cut the glare.
I drop my hand back to the rocker. “I wish I didn’t have to witness the deaths. Each one is so painful in its own way.”
“How we die greatly affects who we are.” His voice is so smooth. I wish I could fall asleep to it in my chair. “You must process everything.”
“I think the worst thing was to be treated in such a way and not being able to tell the truth at the end.”
“Many souls face such an end.”
“I was so close to being with Elmira.” A chill rolls over the dunes. I let go of his hand to hug my body.
“Do you see a theme throughout the last three lives?”
“That I never get to be with the one I love.”
“Well, the greater theme.”
“Kohana gave in to rage. John André gave up his life. Poe gave up on himself.”
I stare at him, willing him to accept my deduction, but with his eyebrows suspended, he puts his hands out, waiting for a better answer.
I put my finger up to my lips, searching within for a deeper analysis. “First, I reacted with rage from loss. Then, I accepted my death following loss of trust. Last, I gave up on myself after experiencing many losses.”
“Yes. Loss.” He settles back into his chair.
“Loss of love?”
His hand rolls out with each addition. “Loss of love, loss of life and, ultimately, loss of self.”
“I’m just thinking though, what is the point of life if the important part is what we learn and not how happy we are? What’s the point of living if there is always something meant to interfere with your happiness?”
“The time you spend in these lives is relatively short, and the hardships and struggles you experience with your group only makes you love them more. You have seen that already, haven’t you?”
I nod, wishing I were with them now. As a monarch butterfly flutters by, Zachariah puts his finger out. The beauty lands and he brings it over to me. Once it’s on my shoulder, the sadness disappears.
“What would you appreciate more: a beautiful, sunny, breezy day every day, or such a glorious day after a hurricane?”
Zachariah brings his hands up and, just like that, we’re on a long pier over the ocean. I turn to face him on the robin’s-egg-blue, wooden bench. “Is this all an illusion?”
“What?”
I spread my hands out, gesturing around me. “This place. These soundings. You. Me.”
He looks up. “What makes things real, then?”
“Please tell me.” I sigh. “Is all this truly happening?” I think of something horrible. “Could I be in a coma and I’m imagining this all?”
He cocks his head toward me. “It is a valid thought.”
“How do I know I died? Maybe I’m still alive.” Adrenaline rushes through my body. “Can you prove to me I’m dead?”
He retorts, with heavy sea-glass eyes. “Was there any way someone could prove you were ever alive?”
I think about it for a bit. “Pain. Joy. Hunger.”
He shifts his head back and forth. “But you can have vivid dreams where you feel pain, joy, and even hunger, yet those never happened, right?”
I grab my temples. “You’re messing with my head now.”
He removes my hands. “Look, there is no point in thinking about it. Either you are dead or you are alive. What does it matter? Why don’t we keep going and see where it takes us then?”
“Well, it’s better than sitting in my old body back in that stale bed.”
“There are so many kinds of loss and different ways people deal with it. So you responded to loss of love in your Native American life with rage and vengeance, then you responded to loss of life with acceptance, next you experienced many losses and reacted to it with self-medication and despair, ultimately losing yourself.”
“Sacrifice, Devotion, now Loss. What else can there be?” My mind spins in anticipation of what’s ahead.
“Or maybe you are just in a coma and will wake up soon.” He gives a heavy wink.
I realize I don’t want to go back to that shriveled body and immediately feel brave enough to go back and view my next life. I put my arm up for him to hold.
He nods slightly but says, “Any other side lessons you might have learned here?”
I squint up at the sun breaking through the clouds. “How come at the end of John André’s life suddenly God meant so much to me?”
“That life was unique, in that you knew you were going to die. When you face that your guide tries to prepare you by surrounding you in God’s light, to help you make that transition positively.”
“So you came and helped me?”
“Me and the angels. Whenever you feel that bright, warm light, it’s the angels. They are always there when someone crosses over.”
“How come I don’t feel that when I die unexpectedly?”
“Oh, you do, usually right before. This was only different because you felt it many days before.”
“That’s why everything felt so peaceful.”
He nods. “Anyone who is told they are going to die in a certain amount of time will feel them. Otherwise they would fall into such despair and negativity they might not
cross into the light.”
I stroll to the end of the pier and look down at the raging surf beneath me. The barnacle-covered columns stoically hold the pier up, as the waves batter them repeatedly.
Grey, bottle-nosed dolphins emerge all around the pier. After some jumps, squeals and clicks, they disappear back under the surface where they came from.
In a flash, we’re back sitting on the bench.
“The dolphins reminded me of that dream.”
He gives me a half-wink. “I somehow thought they would.”
“You came to me again and I remembered it, without being on a vision quest?”
“I had to be sure you would go without Obadiah. I kept sending you that dream until you remembered it upon waking.”
“But what about all those other dreams? The dreams where I kept seeing the past but with the present identities?”
He puts his feet up on the top railing and lies back. “The more lives someone leads, the more they feel for certain emotional events. They can be so powerful and so close to their consciousness that simply seeing a person, holding an object, visiting a place, hearing a song or anything from a previous life can bring those memories back to them. This happens most in dreams, which is why so many people wake up speaking about such odd occurrences that make no sense to them. You, my dear, are beginning to retrieve them quite vividly in dreams now. Not everyone can do that.”
“They made me feel so close to people like Peggy, Smith and Honora. It’s probably why I trusted them so much.”
“And that is what you should have done. Even though Honora hurt you and Smith deceived you, it was what you needed to experience. Neither of them meant to damage you so.”
“No, I understand. It’s just part of the game right?”
“It’s not a game, Lazrina.”
“When am I going to get used to that name?”
He cracks a small smile, but I continue with my previous thought. “I wish I knew what happened to Peggy. I think I remember from history classes that Peggy and Arnold became outcasts together in England. I wonder what happened to Smith?”
“You can find all that out later.”
“So now I see why Smith was so bent on revenge on Arnold. It was all retribution for Hanska murdering Mika. Peggy and Smith got their revenge on him, or at least tried to.”