by Kim Newman
Breaking free of Muddy, I ventured upstairs, dragging myself up by the banister, conscious of a growing terror that made my heart a bellows and caused the blood to pound in my temples like a pagan drumbeat.
The door of the room I shared with Sissy, my wife-daughter-lover-child-muse-sister, hung open. Within, a candle burned with sickly greenish flame.
I stepped across the threshold, and found Sissy sprawled atop the covers of our bed, night-clothes rent, scarlet blood discharging from her mouth. Other flowing wounds, open and intimate, marred the whiteness of her tiny form. She had been sorely abused. I am convinced that it was on that night she truly began the long, slow, heart-breaking business of dying. This was the worst the fiend Allen could do, the crime that was beyond all forgiveness.
Howling, I glimpsed my own two evil eyes as I smashed the mirror on the wall. That was the nearest I came to seeing him, until much later.
After that, I lost some days to hysteria.
Sissy, of course, died. I had opportunities after that and continued to write as ever, but my darker double had the upper hand. He grew bolder, taking advantage of my increasing reluctance to venture beyond my hearth, to perform ever more fantastic and appalling acts in my approximate name.
Edgar Allen Poe was busy in those years.
His name was everywhere. My own was quite eclipsed. I lost a deal of money and alienated a publisher who might have advanced my cause greatly by insisting a printer destroy an entire edition of my two-volume Tales of the Folio Club because the hated Edgar Allen Poe had signed the introduction to this collection of my greatest stories. With that abortion was lost an original tale of mystery, – in which the Chevalier Auguste Dupin penetrates the tangled puzzle of ‘The Suicides of Saint-Germain’ – which would doubtless have been ranked among my finest pieces.
Allen even trespassed into print.
Now, I could not tell you which of my later works were his and which were mine. Most of the famous pieces, the stories and the poems, are and remain mine. Too much of the journalism, the fillers and the canting reviews of unreadable books, are his. The worst tragedy is Eureka, an unwilling collaboration. The original manuscript of this essay was mine, a clear-sighted and visionary work which would have placed my name alongside not merely Milton and Shakespeare but Newton and Galileo. After a period of protracted study and insight, a single-theory-of-everything came to me and I was able to contrive no less than an explanation in a manner that could not be mistaken of the material and spiritual nature of the universe itself. When the work appeared in print, it had been tampered with by my rival. Whole passages were rewritten so that the meaning was horribly obscure, and the grand, beautiful design marred beyond repair by pernicious nonsense and stretches that crudely imitated my own style and manner as if composed by a trained ape with a nasty knack for mimicry. My critics, firmly in the Allen camp, were savage and merciless. It was a setback I endeavoured to correct through lecturing and footnotes, but he had again lured me into evil ways and I could never reassemble my original version, could never recapture that moment of pure understanding that had prompted me to append such a thundercrack of a title to the book that should have been my finest but which became an embarrassment on a par with the poetry I tortured out of myself as a schoolboy.
The Eureka affair determined me to recommence my search for my enemy. Without a wife, I was less hampered by fear for my own safety. I was in my fortieth year, and the wrongs done me were stamped on my features. Implacable, purified by burning memory of the crimes against my soul, I turned about and looked for the trail.
It was late in the year of 1849 that I found him.
For months, I went from city to city, taking work as a lecturer and scribbler, capitalising on a fame which was now as much his as mine. I realised many who came to see me perform were hoping for a display of Edgar Allen-like madness and degeneracy rather than Edgar Poe-like sense and artistry. They were, for the most part, disappointed though, as before, the nearer I came to my quarry, the more like him I became.
I was unwelcome everywhere. Reports of my double came in from all quarters. He had engaged in fist-fights with editors and critics and common sots. He had approached literary ladies as if they were gutter drabs. He had declaimed his genius – my genius! – in such a manner as to alienate all who might have supported me. He had made fantastical claims of the wonders of the coming ages, misrepresenting as prophecy those fictions of mine presented as cautionary tales. He had delighted in the morbid and ghastly aspects of my work, but scorned the beauties and wonders I sought also to realise. He made bad jokes, undermining my once-prized reputation as a delightful wit; he even had the temerity to pass off as mine ‘X-ing a Paragrab’, a leaden failure at humour on the subject, no less, of misprints.
Sometimes, I would lecture and he would take the money owed me, scattering it in the worst dives. He made a will that ensured the permanent blighting of my name, appointing my worst enemy – Rufus Griswold, Rough Rufus, Griswold the grisly – as my literary executor. For near a century, my works were always republished, ascribed as often as not to Edgar Allen, with a libellous biographical sketch by the ghastly Griswold which attributed to me all the misdeeds and imperfections of character of my foul persecutor.
We played tag throughout the cities of the eastern United States: Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Baltimore. I realised things had changed between us. He was hunting me, as I was him, and I feared he intended to do away with me, perhaps to wall me up living in a cellar, and take my place.
I contrived in small ways to thwart him. In New York, certain I was in danger of being murdered, I shaved off my moustache to make a difference between us, so I would no longer be blamed for his crimes. That was a mistake; it made me, Edgar Poe, less the real man, and he, Edgar Allen, more the original.
It was night in the lonesome October, in the worst year of the century, and Baltimore was in the throes of a corrupt and hard-fought election. Then and there, I caught up at long last with my nemesis. I came upon him, and knew him for who he was, in an alleyway between taverns, steaming with the discharges of chronic inebriates, caked with a filth of loathsome putrescence.
Edgar Allen Poe was in a sorry state, a grotesque caricature of myself, having accepted many bribes of drink for each of the many votes he had cast for either of the candidates. At last, he was collapsed, shortly before sunrise, a tiny slug of a man. His clothes were shoddy, more threadbare even than those to which I was reduced, and he was as he had always been, a living spectre with a broken mirror for a face.
‘Thou art the man,’ I croaked.
It was but a moment’s work to wring the life out of him. But as I choked, he uttered words.
It was Edgar Allen; but he spoke no longer in a whisper, and I could have fancied that I myself was speaking while he said:
‘You have conquered and I yield. Yet, henceforward art thou also dead – dead to the World, to Heaven, and to Hope! In me didst thou exist – and, in my death, see by this image, which is thine own, how utterly thou hast murdered myself.’
These were my own words, cast back to me like an echo in my skull. They shook me to the core, and I hurried away, unseen by those who gathered about the stinking body on the cobbles.
Or was I the one gasping his last? And the shadow fleeing, my enemy?
He is buried, under my name. My miserly cousin Neilson Poe had me interred without marker. Later, he raised a subscription for a tombstone which was smashed – by a derailing locomotive – before it could be erected.
What was carved on that stone? His name, or mine?
I am what I am called, am whichever of us is invoked, and I shall be Edgar Allen as often as Edgar Poe. Each time the pernicious misspelling creeps into print the true Poe is beaked in the heart and the impostor reigns in illimitable triumph.
This is as it shall be, evermore.
AMERIKANSKI DEAD AT THE MOSCOW MORGUE
OR: CHILDREN OF MARX AND COCA-COLA
AT THE RAILWAY stati
on in Borodino, Yevgeny Chirkov was separated from his unit. As the locomotive slowed, he hopped from their carriage to the platform, under orders to secure, at any price, cigarettes and chocolate. Another unknown crisis intervened and the steam-driven antique never truly stopped. Tripping over his rifle, he was unable to reach the outstretched hands of his comrades. The rest of the unit, jammed halfway through windows or hanging out of doors, laughed and waved. A jet of steam from a train passing the other way put salt on his tail and he dodged, tripping again. Sergeant Trauberg found the pratfall hilarious, forgetting he had pressed a thousand roubles on the private. Chirkov ran and ran but the locomotive gained speed. When he emerged from the canopied platform, seconds after the last carriage, white sky poured down. Looking at the black-shingled trackbed, he saw a flattened outline in what had once been a uniform, wrists and ankles wired together, neck against a gleaming rail, head long gone under sharp wheels. The method, known as ‘making sleepers’, was favoured along railway lines. Away from stations, twenty or thirty were dealt with at one time. Without heads, Amerikans did no harm.
Legs boiled from steam, face and hands frozen from winter, he wandered through the station. The cavernous space was subdivided by sandbags. Families huddled like pioneers expecting an attack by Red Indians, luggage drawn about in a circle, last bullets saved for women and children. Chirkov spat mentally; Amerika had invaded his imagination, just as his political officers warned. Some refugees were coming from Moscow, others fleeing to the city. There was no rule. A wall-sized poster of the New First Secretary was disfigured with a blotch, red gone to black. The splash of dried blood suggested something had been finished against the wall. There were Amerikans in Borodino. Seventy miles from Moscow, the station was a museum to resisted invasions. Plaques, statues and paintings honoured the victories of 1812 and 1944. A poster listed those local officials executed after being implicated in the latest counter-revolution. The air was tangy with ash, a reminder of past scorched earth policies. There were big fires nearby. An army unit was on duty, but no one knew anything about a timetable. An officer told him to queue and wait. More trains were coming from Moscow than going to, which meant the capital would eventually have none left.
He ventured out of the station. The snow cleared from the forecourt was banked a dozen yards away. Sunlight glared off muddy white. It was colder and brighter than he was used to in the Ukraine. A trio of Chinese-featured soldiers, a continent away from home, offered to share cigarettes and tried to practise Russian on him. He understood they were from Amgu; from the highest point in that port, you could see Japan. He asked if they knew where he could find an official. As they chirruped among themselves in an alien tongue, Chirkov saw his first Amerikan. Emerging from between snow banks and limping towards the guard post, the dead man looked as if he might actually be an American. Barefoot, he waded spastically through slush, jeans-legs shredded over thin shins. His shirt was a bright picture of a parrot in a jungle. Sunglasses hung round his neck on a thin string. Chirkov made the Amerikan’s presence known to the guards. Fascinated, he watched the dead man walk. With every step, the Amerikan crackled: there were deep, ice-threaded rifts in his skin. He was slow and brittle and blind, crystal eyes frozen open, arms stiff by his sides.
Cautiously, the corporal circled round and rammed his rifle-butt into a knee. The guards were under orders not to waste ammunition; there was a shortage. Bone cracked and the Amerikan went down like a devotee before an icon. The corporal prodded a colourful back with his boot-toe and pushed the Amerikan on to his face. As he wriggled, ice shards worked through his flesh. Chirkov had assumed the dead would stink but this one was frozen and odourless. The skin was pink and unperished, the rips in it red and glittery. An arm reached out for the corporal and something snapped in the shoulder. The corporal’s boot pinned the Amerikan to the concrete. One of his comrades produced a foot-long spike and worked the point into the back of the dead man’s skull. Scalp flaked around the dimple. The other guard took an iron mallet from his belt and struck a professional blow.
It was important, apparently, that the spike should entirely transfix the skull and break ground, binding the dead to the earth, allowing the last of the spirit to leave the carcass. Not official knowledge: this was something every soldier was told at some point by a comrade. Always, the tale-teller was from Moldavia or had learned from someone who was. Moldavians claimed to be used to the dead. The Amerikan’s head came apart like a rock split along fault lines. Five solid chunks rolled away from the spike. Diamond-sparkles of ice glinted in reddish-grey inner surfaces. The thing stopped moving at once. The hammerer began to unbutton the gaudy shirt and detach it from the sunken chest, careful as a butcher skinning a horse. The jeans were too deeply melded with meat to remove, which was a shame; with the ragged legs cut away, they would have made fine shorts for a pretty girl at the beach. The corporal wanted Chirkov to have the sunglasses. One lens was gone or he might not have been so generous with a stranger. In the end, Chirkov accepted out of courtesy, resolving to throw away the trophy as soon as he was out of Borodino.
* * *
Three days later, when Chirkov reached Moscow, locating his unit was not possible. A despatcher at the central station thought his comrades might have been reassigned to Orekhovo-Zuyevo, but her superior was of the opinion the unit had been disbanded nine months earlier. Because the despatcher was not disposed to contradict an eminent Party member, Chirkov was forced to accept the ruling that he was without a unit. As such, he was detailed to the Spa. They had in a permanent request for personnel and always took precedence. The posting involved light guard duties and manual labour; there was little fight left in Amerikans who ended up at the Spa. The despatcher gave Chirkov a sheaf of papers the size of a Frenchman’s sandwich and complicated travel directions. By then, the rest of the queue was getting testy and he was obliged to venture out on his own. He remembered to fix his mobility permit, a blue luggage tag with a smudged stamp, on the outside of his uniform. Technically, failure to display the permit was punishable by summary execution.
Streetcars ran intermittently; after waiting an hour in the street outside central station, he decided to walk to the Spa. It was a question of negotiating dunes of uncleared snow and straggles of undisciplined queue. Teams of firemen dug methodically through depths of snow, side by side with teams of soldiers who were burning down buildings. Areas were cleared and raked, ground still warm enough to melt snow that drifted onto it. Everywhere, posters warned of the Amerikans. The Party line was still that the United States was responsible. It was air-carried biological warfare, the Ministry announced with authority, originated by a secret laboratory and disseminated in the Soviet Union by suicidal infectees posing as tourists. The germ galvanised the nervous systems of the recently deceased, triggering the lizard stems of their brains, inculcating in the Amerikans a disgusting hunger for human meat. The ‘news’ footage the Voice of America put out of their own dead was staged and doctored, footage from the sadistic motion pictures that were a symptom of the West’s utter decadence. But everyone had a different line: it was… creeping radiation from Chernobyl… a judgment from a bitter and long-ignored god… a project Stalin abandoned during the Great Patriotic War… brought back from Novy Mir by cosmonauts… a plot by the fomenters of the Counter-Revolution… a curse the Moldavians had always known.
Fortunately, the Spa was off Red Square. Even a Ukrainian sapling like Yevgeny Chirkov had an idea how to get to Red Square. He had carried his rifle for so long that the strap had worn through his epaulette. He imagined the outline of the buckle was stamped into his collarbone. His single round of ammunition was in his inside breast pocket, wrapped in newspaper. They said Moscow was the most exciting city in the world, but it was not at its best under twin siege from winter and the Amerikans. Helicopters swooped overhead, broadcasting official warnings and announcements: comrades were advised to stay at their workplaces and continue with their duly delegated tasks; victory in the struggle against t
he American octopus was inevitable; the crisis was nearly at an end and the master strategists would soon announce a devastating counterattack; the dead were to be disabled and placed in the proper collection points; another exposed pocket of traitors would go on trial tomorrow.
In an onion-domed church, soldiers dealt with Amerikans. Brought in covered lorries, the shuffling dead were shifted inside in ragged coffles. As Chirkov passed, a dead woman, bearlike in a fur coat over forbidden undergarments, broke the line. Soldiers efficiently cornered her and stuck a bayonet into her head. The remains were hauled into the church. When the building was full, it would be burned: an offering. In Red Square, loudspeakers shouted martial music at the queues. John Reed at the Barricades. Lenin’s tomb was no longer open for tourists. Sergeant Trauberg was fond of telling the story about what had happened in the tomb when the Amerikans started to rise. Everyone guessed it was true. The Spa was off the Square. Before the Revolution of 1918, it had been an exclusive health club for the royal family. Now it was a morgue.
He presented his papers to a thin officer he met on the broad steps of the Spa, and stood frozen in stiff-backed salute while the man looked over the wedge of documentation. He was told to wander inside smartly and seek out Lyubachevsky. The officer proceeded, step by step, down to the square. Under the dusting of snow, the stone steps were gilded with ice: a natural defence. Chirkov understood Amerikans were forever slipping and falling on ice; many were so damaged they couldn’t regain their footing, and were consequently easy to deal with. The doors of the Spa, three times a man’s height, were pocked with bullet holes new and old. Unlocked and unoiled, they creaked alarmingly as he pushed inside. The foyer boasted marble floors, and ceilings painted with classical scenes of romping nymphs and athletes. Busts of Marx and Lenin flanked the main staircase; a portrait of the New First Secretary, significantly less faded than neighbouring pictures, was proudly displayed behind the main desk.