“It was as if you were each in two places at once!” Mr. Wender continued. “How’d you pull it off? Hidden microphones and earpieces?”
“Pull what off?” Aunt Judith inquired, turning to the twins.
Uncle Jack scratched his balding head.
A limousine, shinier and longer than either of the limos that had carried the boys to and from the TV studios, glided up to the curb. A uniformed driver jumped out and ran to open the back door.
“We have to go to the production office,” Mr. Wender announced. “Why don’t you explain your stunt to your aunt and uncle? It’ll give them a good laugh. And keep up the good work, you two.”
“See you this evening, boys,” Cassie called.
She and Mr. Wender climbed into the limo, and the chauffeur closed the door.
And whoosh!
Gone.
It was a lot for Uncle Jack and Aunt Judith to take in.
Two weeks before, their nephews were fighting crime. Now it was TV, movie, and Internet stardom. . . .
“All this and it’s not even eight o’clock in the morning yet,” Aunt Judith observed.
Uncle Jack shrugged, as if giving up trying to understand what his nephews had gotten into this time. “Listen boys, they’ve got pastries here in New Orleans called beignets. They’re like doughnuts, only better.” He lowered his voice, turning away from Aunt Judith who didn’t like him to eat sweets. “Who’s up for breakfast?”
WHAT THE POE TWINS DID NOT KNOW . . .
A LETTER DATED ONE WEEK BEFORE:
NOTE: The text of the preceding letter is written in a replacement code intended to disguise the communication as mere gibberish to prison guards or any other reader except its intended recipient. The decoded translation is as follows:
Dear Cassandra,
As your grandmother, I’m proud that you’ve become one of the most accomplished con artists in the entire southern United States. Your violent streak is a credit to the family. And now you’ve been presented with an opportunity to put your talents to great personal use!
Surely you’ve read in the newspaper about your father’s recent failure in Kansas and his subsequent escape from authorities. You and I have something to gain from these events, my dear. Namely, revenge.
Wasn’t it he who long ago put me behind bars for a crime he committed? His own mother, who taught him everything he knew! And wasn’t it he who abandoned you as a girl, ignoring your offers these past years to aid him in his criminal enterprises? What kind of a father is that? But now you have a chance to destroy the project to which he’s dedicated himself for more than a decade, his Edgar and Allan Poe quantum physics experiment. It is simple. All you need do is kill both of the twins before he finds a way back to this country. That’ll teach him to underestimate you, my dear!
Can it be coincidence that the Poe twins are coming to New Orleans, your home? No, it is fate! I trust you can find a way to get hired onto that movie crew. You must act now. Time is short.
Grandmother
2
“THE STUFFED CAT”
WITH the boys’ first scene not scheduled to start shooting until seven p.m., the Poe family bought tickets for a late morning tour of New Orleans on a red double-decker bus that would have looked more at home in London.
“That’s strange,” Allan said. “Look at the license plate.”
“Seems more appropriate for a fire truck or police car than a tour bus,” Edgar observed.
Allan nodded. “Unless it’s not meant for everybody.”
“Yeah, another warning for us.”
It wasn’t the first.
Since crossing into Louisiana, the boys had noticed license plates on passing cars that read:
They had kept an eye out for unusual occurrences. Still, nothing bad had happened.
At least not yet.
“Everybody on board,” called the driver.
The twins left Aunt Judith and Uncle Jack on the lower level and took seats on top in the open air. On an empty seat between them, they unzipped their backpack. Out popped the curious head of their beloved black cat, Roderick Usher.
“Hey, you can’t have a cat up here,” said the driver when he came to check on the upstairs guests before embarking on the tour. “This is a bus, not a circus train!”
Edgar and Allan not only disliked what the driver had to say, but also the way he said it.
He stared the boys down, his hands on his hips. “No pets allowed.”
“That’s cold as ice,” Edgar said. “Downright frozen.”
The driver waved his hand in front of his face as if to disperse a bad smell. “I just want that pet off my bus. Now.”
The twins weren’t going to leave Roderick alone all day in the hotel room.
“This isn’t a pet,” Allan said.
“I don’t care what you call it,” the driver snapped. “It’s a cat.”
“No, it’s not,” Edgar insisted.
“You think I’m blind?”
The boys shook their heads. “It used to be a cat, but it’s not anymore.”
Their parents had brought Roderick home as a kitten just one week before the rocket launch that took their lives. Naturally, Allan and Edgar would have loved him even if he’d been ordinary. But Roderick was not ordinary. With a figure eight of white fur against the pure black of his chest, he was very stylish. And he happened to be among the smartest cats in the world.
“He used to be a live cat,” Allan explained to the driver. “But now he’s more like a stuffed toy.”
“Yeah, don’t you recognize expert taxidermy when you see it?” asked Edgar.
The driver narrowed his eyes.
Edgar and Allan had taught Roderick many tricks. Just two weeks before, in Kansas, Roderick had saved their lives by unknotting a rope on command (the cue being the twins whistling “Ring Around the Rosy”). Additionally, Roderick could imitate the sound of a monkey whenever his masters said the words “tree swinger,” the barking of a dog whenever they said “poochie,” and the crying of a baby whenever they said “spilled milk.” But his greatest feat was what the boys called “The Stuffed Cat”—Roderick would tighten his muscles and freeze, glassing over his eyeballs, for up to three minutes or until the boys released him with a snap of their fingers. His cue was the phrase “downright frozen.”
So this was what Roderick was doing now.
“You mean taxidermy as in dead?” the driver asked, looking at Roderick’s motionless head and eyes. “Like the stuffed animals in the natural history museum? Or a hunting lodge?”
Allan nodded. “‘Taxidermy,’ an early nineteenth-century word, derived from the Greek—”
“Taxis meaning ‘arrangement,’ and derma meaning ‘skin,’” Edgar finished.
By now, a trio of female tourists, all wearing matching shirts and too much perfume, had gathered around the twins.
Edgar removed the stiff, motionless cat from the backpack and held it toward the driver. “Want to hold him?”
The man stepped back.
“My, he looks so real,” said one of the ladies.
“We’re very good taxidermists,” Edgar said.
The driver took a deep breath. “Well, I guess a stuffed cat can stay.”
“Thanks, sir.”
Grunting, the man turned and clambered down the spiral staircase. A few moments later, the bus lurched to a start, veering into the traffic outside the tourist office.
The Poe twins turned to the trio atop the bus and winked. “Watch this, ladies,” they said, snapping their fingers.
Roderick suddenly came back to life, meowing and purring.
The women jumped, startled.
Then they started laughing. “Nice trick, boys!”
“Hey, it’s Roderick you should be complimenting,�
� Allan said.
Settled in their seats, with Roderick curled between them, the twins soaked up the November sun as the bus pulled away from Jackson Square. It was warmer here than in Baltimore, where their friends would be bundled now in winter coats and mittens.
Allan and Edgar wore T-shirts.
Nothing beat a winter day spent in the warm sun, except maybe a school day spent out of school.
This was both.
It had been almost six weeks since Edgar and Allan were expelled from Aldrin Middle School, victims of Professor Perry’s lies. Since then, they had not only traveled to Kansas, rescued their cat, and escaped the professor’s plan for their destruction, but, in doing so, had also earned a handwritten letter from the Baltimore superintendent of schools inviting them to return to class. Of course, in the meantime, Mr. Wender had asked them to be movie actors.
So school had to wait.
They didn’t miss the homework or the tests, which for Edgar and Allan were always too easy to be of much interest.
But they missed their friends.
So when the red double-decker bus drove past the magnificent old mansions on St. Charles Avenue, they thought of Katie Justus. She wanted to be an architect and spent most of her free time drawing pictures of houses with stately columns and century-old ivy, just like these.
And when the bus stopped on Magazine Street so that everyone could disembark for a lunch of po’ boy sandwiches (a famous New Orleans specialty consisting of roast beef or fried oysters or shrimp on a toasted French roll), the boys wished their best friend Stevie “The Hulk” Harrison was there too. He’d probably eat three or four, if given the chance. And they regarded the sandwiches as the best-named food ever, in any language: po’ boys!
“There should be an ‘Edgar’ and an ‘Allan’ variety,” Edgar observed.
“Yeah, and they’d look and taste exactly alike!” said Allan.
“Bay shrimp, sauerkraut, blue cheese, and jalapeños!”
And when they stopped at the New Orleans Pirate Museum, they were reminded of their friend David Litke. He loved pirates and would have been impressed by the life-size wax figures of the notorious brothers Jean and Pierre Lafitte, who had gained pardons from the United States president for helping to defeat the British navy in the early 1800s.
Pirates turned heroes—that didn’t happen very often.
“Maybe we should become pirates,” Edgar whispered to his brother as they lingered over a glass display case of crossed swords and authentic pirate flags.
“Good idea,” Allan said. “Except . . . our days are already pretty full being archaeologists, cryptologists, linguists, detectives, and cultural critics.”
They drifted toward a display case containing three gold coins, authentic Spanish doubloons. Above the case was a sign that read:
THE LAFITTE BROTHERS’ HIDDEN TREASURE HAS NEVER BEEN FOUND
“Let’s go, everyone—time to move on!” called the tour guide.
For Edgar and Allan, the highlight of the tour came when the bus stopped outside the walled, centuries-old Saint Louis Cemetery, which boasted no grassy, parklike setting but instead consisted of row upon row of tightly packed, ornate, aboveground crypts. Crumbling stone angels and gargoyles watched over this chilling city of the dead.
“Let’s all stay together as we walk through the cemetery,” the guide announced as the group disembarked from the bus and started toward the ornate iron gates of the necropolis. “We wouldn’t want to lose any of you to local ghosts!”
Most of the group laughed, but Uncle Jack and Aunt Judith exchanged a look of anxiety.
They didn’t even like spooky movies.
So real cemeteries? Forget it.
With Roderick safely tucked inside Edgar’s backpack, the twins moved with the group up one avenue of macabre mausoleums and down another.
“Because of the damp conditions of the ground here in New Orleans, as well as the traditional burial practices of city founders, our cemeteries generally consist of these aboveground vaults,” the guide explained.
“Creepy,” murmured Aunt Judith, drifting nervously toward Uncle Jack.
Uncle Jack jumped, startled, when she unexpectedly brushed against him. “Yeah, creepy,” he agreed, taking her hand.
Edgar and Allan walked behind them, smiling.
They loved the place.
And then they saw something that made them love it even more.
In the oldest section of the cemetery, many of the names and dates cut into the stone mausoleums had been worn away by two centuries of wind, rain, and sun. Generally, these markers were evenly worn. But Edgar and Allan noticed one crypt that was different. It featured a marker upon which some letters had been worn away in the ordinary fashion, while the remaining letters showed no wear at all.
This was the sort of thing most people didn’t notice.
But Allan and Edgar had a gift for recognizing patterns where others saw only randomness. (Two connected brains were not merely twice as efficient as one, but many times more efficient.) They’d learned from license plates, fortune cookies, misprinted books and magazines, and countless other sources that the world was full of hidden messages for those willing to fully engage their perceptiveness and imagination.
They studied the two markers.
A missing “G” in Genevieve, “H” in here, “O” in our, “S” in “sister,” and “T” in “rest.”
G-H-O-S-T . . .
Then a missing “T” in “with,” “O” and “U” in “our” and “R” in “lord.”
The twins examined the inscription for Genevieve’s husband, Clarence, noting the order of missing letters on his marker.
Put together with those of his wife, the omissions spelled this:
GHOST TOUR MEETS HERE MIDNIGHT
WHAT THE POE TWINS DID NOT KNOW . . .
A REPLY TO GRANDMOTHER’S LETTER:
CASSANDRA PERRY
Mrs. Natasha Perry
Prisoner #89372
State Prison for Women
Senior Citizen Wing
Ossining, NY 10562
Dear Grandmother,
I received your letter. Best idea ever!
I had tea with Mr. Wender’s assistant. Or should I say former assistant? Now I’m the new hire.
Yours, C
3
IN A KINGDOM BY THE SEA
THE Poe twins sat in their dressing room, a converted RV parked on a French Quarter street, working a French crossword puzzle to honor the founding spirit and language of New Orleans. 3 across: “What daisies use to propel a bicycle.” Pétales de fleurs—flower petals. 11 down: “Has a head and tail but no body.” Pièce de monnaie—a coin. The boys put down their puzzle when Mr. Wender’s assistant, Cassie, strode into the trailer with a clipboard in her hand and a worried expression on her face.
“Boys, you’re due on set!” she shouted, her bracelets clattering. “Do you hear me?”
The dead could probably have heard her.
“There’s no cause for panic,” Allan said, spying her worried face in the mirror.
“Moviemaking is nothing but panic!” she answered emphatically.
Ordinarily, the twins would object to being hurried. They would have found a way to turn the tables on Cassie (such as setting her watch back, or changing the time zone on her smartphone). But today they chose to cut her some slack. After all, she was new on the job and probably just wanted to impress Mr. Wender, whose previous assistant, now hospitalized, had somehow ingested a small quantity of rat poison.
And it was, after all, their first day of shooting.
“Have you learned your lines?” Cassie asked anxiously.
The twins nodded, having rehearsed the night before with Mr. Wender. A “run-through” he’d called it (previously, Edgar and Allan
had thought the phrase “run through” referred only to what pirates did to others with their swords).
“Then let’s go!”
Outside, the street swarmed with extras dressed in early nineteenth-century costumes, technicians, caterers, photographers, a few journalists, and a handful of production assistants who carried either clipboards (like Cassie) or cardboard trays balancing large cups of coffee.
“Hurry, hurry,” Cassie implored.
In the movie, this block of New Orleans would stand in for nineteenth-century Richmond, Virginia, which had been the boyhood home of Edgar Allan Poe. The two-hundred-year-old buildings had been renovated to look new. Even the wrought iron on the balconies glistened. Expert lighting cast some sections of the set in shadow and others in a glow as mysterious as moonlight. And a camera atop a tall crane would provide a dramatic overhead view.
The twins were impressed.
“We’ve no time to lose.” Cassie pulled the boys along, Roderick trotting behind.
“Is the set on fire or something?” Allan murmured.
“Hello, boys!” called Aunt Judith from across the set, near the buffet table. “Love your costumes!”
Uncle Jack stood beside her, talking in a loud voice about his love of old silent movies to a note-taking journalist who expressed gracious interest.
The twins started toward them to say hello, but Cassie put her perfectly manicured hands on their shoulders and steered them in the opposite direction.
“You’ll have time for family later. It’s moviemaking time now.”
In tonight’s scene, which would open the film, one of the twins would portray the author as a solitary boy meeting an entrancing twelve-year-old girl named Annabel Lee. Later in the movie, her character would prove the inspiration for one of the adult Poe’s most famous poems.
Once Upon a Midnight Eerie: Book #2 (Misadventures of Edgar/Allan) Page 2