Etched Deep & Other Dark Impressions

by David Niall Wilson

  It was a body, and, as he stepped closer, staring in fascination, he saw that it was a familiar body. The small, ferret-like man lay face down in the dirt. His arms were flung out to the side, not as if to catch himself when he fell, but in reaction to something. That something glittered in the dim light, and Edgar saw that it was the blade of a very long, very thin dagger. The hilt stood out from the man's back like a planted cross, and blood ran down the sides of the body to pool on the alley floor.

  Then Edgar saw the manuscript, and he forgot the body. The words whispered softly to him, and a stray breeze caught the top corner of one page and threatened to spirit it away. The man's head rested on a pillow of words. Blood had splattered on the paper, and the pool beneath the body seeped upward, encroaching on the white, word-speckled pages.

  Edgar took a last glance around and saw no one. He leaned down, lifted the man's head by its greasy hair, and yanked the pages free. He released his grip and watched as the head fell back with a soft, wet thud. A low, wet moan bubbled over the man's thin lips and Edgar drew in a quick gulp of air. It was the last sound Edgar heard as his heartbeat sped and roared. He ran off down the alley, tucking the papers beneath his jacket and fighting to clear the image of that knife, stark and final, pinning the small man's jacket to his spine.

  Back in his rooms, Edgar slammed the door behind him and collapsed against its worn wooden surface with a groan. He clutched his coat, and the sheaf of papers, tightly to his chest. The room was sparsely furnished with no more than a bed, a chair, and a small desk upon which rested a stack of clean paper, his ink well and a quill. Edgar made his way across the darkened room, banging his shin smartly on the foot of the bed and crying out softly. He knew better than to make too much noise and risk awakening the other tenants of the building. Grouchy old men flanked him, and down the hall was a woman with hearing so keen she would sometimes complain that the scratching of his quill on the paper was too loud.

  He'd filed away her words. He'd filed away the images, as well. He could see her, lying awake, late into the night, her eyes wide open and glaring at the wall that separated them, flinching at each stroke of ink on his paper and dreaming of ways to make him stop.

  Edgar flipped the thumb switch on the gas lamp and urged the flame higher, chasing the shadows back into their corners and illuminating the surface of the desk. There was enough fuel for a few hours' work and no more. He couldn't afford to waste a single minute.

  He pulled the papers out of his coat and dropped into the chair and smoothed the top sheet out with the palms of his hands. He bent over the page and read, his head cocked to one side and resting on the heel of his hand. The fingers of that hand tugged at his hair as he read, his face trapped between amazement and revulsion.

  The tales were wondrous, but the words were lacking. Edgar himself could never have concocted such frightening images from his own limited experience, but the man who'd written these pages had an equal inability to distill those same images into words.

  Now, Edgar reflected, the fellow lacked even the ability to sit on his barstool and speak the words for another's benefit. Pity.

  Edgar fingered his quill and scowled at the pages. Some of them were spattered with the man's blood, entire words obscured by the thickening goo. Edgar shuddered and tried to read more quickly.

  When he had read every word, he sat back in his chair and stared off through the one window in his apartment distractedly. Edgar knew he could do better. He could bring these tales to life. He could bring them to the world.

  He glanced at the lamp and saw that the reading had cost him nearly half of his oil. He turned the wick down just a touch, hoping to preserve a few extra minutes of light. He carefully stacked the dead man's pages and glanced around the room. The lack of furnishings also provided a decided lack of good places to hide things. His impatience got the better of him, and he rose, lifted the corner of his mattress, and slipped the manuscript beneath it. He knew he'd have to find a better place eventually, on the off chance they traced his steps from the alley, but for now this would have to do.

  He returned to the desk and slid a fresh sheet of paper into the pool of flickering light. He unstoppered his ink, poured a small amount into the well, and tapped the tip of a battered quill against the surface of the desk to clear it.

  The dead man's words whirled through his mind. So many images beckoned to him that it was difficult to sort them, or his thoughts, coherently. He decided to go with what was clearest in his mind, and that would be the events of the evening, what he'd heard in the bar. He dismissed the image of the dagger-hilt cross and the small man's back and he began to write.

  “The Tale of the Heart.”

  Edgar stared at the words he'd written, and then frowned. With a quick flourish he dragged the quill through the title and wrote another beside it.

  “The Tell-tale Heart.” He smiled at the subtle rearrangement and wished, just for a moment, that he could grab the small man from the past, drag him to the desk and show him. It wasn't just the words–it was the way they were used–the art was in their arrangement.

  As the flame guttered, threatening to blow out every time he moved, Edgar dipped his quill again, and continued to write.

  Morning found him sprawled across the desk, his head resting on the paper and the quill still in his hand. The ink had dried on the tip and the lamp had gone out. As he righted himself, his stiff back crying out in protest, he recalled just when that lamp had betrayed him.

  One story done, the next begun. The lamp had given up its last before he'd had a chance to finish. Edgar had plowed ahead, willing his brain to fight through the sleepless fog and finish that second story in the dark. His hand rested on the desk still, awaiting further orders.

  No, he could recall no more than a bird, a man and a chair. His brain spun its wheels, trying to wrap itself around that fragmented memory. The lone window admitted a small square of sunlight, which fell upon the paper, taking the place of the lamplight. Edgar smiled a smile that was not his own and chuckled. He cleared the detritus from the pen and began to write. His smile widened with each word.

  He wrote through breakfast and lunch, ignored all but one cry for his body to relieve itself of the day's doings. He wrote straight up until two, when he slammed down the quill and gathered together the pages, which now comprised four stories.

  He had to eat. He knew he had to rest, and he had other work to do. He stared at the pages grasped tightly in his hands, and frowned.

  It wasn't odd for him to drop by the offices of the printer late, and he considered whether, along with the criticism that lay half complete on the desk, buried under the pages, and the blood, he should submit one of the stories. He itched to see them printed, to see the typeset words on better paper than the poor stuff he scribbled on, but.

  There was the other man. The stories were changed; there was no doubt of that. The words were Edgar's. Still–there was the matter of the heart. There were the images, the blood-soaked, too-vivid images, not the least of which was the recurring visage of the small man, gesticulating wildly at his friend and spouting his ideas like a madman. What if that friend read the papers? What if that friend, even though he'd never so much as turned in Edgar's direction, knew who he was, and had seen him scribbling the stolen words, night after night? If that man were looking for his friend's killer–or, worse yet, if that man was his friend's killer–what would he do when he read that story?

  Edgar's brow broke out in a cold sweat, and he brushed his sleeve across it. He gathered together the sheaf of bloodstained papers and ordered them as neatly as he could, then glanced around the room. There was so little furniture that, under close scrutiny, he saw the close resemblance to a cell. He moved to the bed, lifted the hard mattress, and tucked the papers carefully beneath it once more. Then, with the newly finished stories tucked neatly under his jacket, he headed out of his room and down the stairs.

  The sunlight assaulted him, brighter somehow when unhampered by gla
ss. Nevertheless, he lowered his head, squinted shut his eyes, and trudged up the street toward the printers, trying to pry his mind from thoughts of the stories brushing up against him through the linen of his shirt, or the soft moan the man had uttered when his head struck the alley floor.

  That night, Edgar dreamed.

  He dreamed of New York City. He sat in a chair, facing an older man–an editor. He wasn't sure how he knew this, but he did.

  Edgar sat nervously in his chair. He fussed with the pleats of his pants and slicked back his hair, watching the broad-shouldered man in the expensive suit read his stories. They were his stories now and no other's. The only man who could say otherwise was cold and stiff. Besides, while the ideas had not been born in Edgar's imagination, the words certainly had. That made the stories his and thus the fame would be his, as well.

  The man read on, eyes widening at one word and narrowing at another. Edgar found it impossible to gauge the man's true response–his vision was oddly vague. Sounds were louder than he could ever remember. As the man read, he put each finished page down on the desk face up, in order. Edgar thought of how this stack would mount up, of how he would have to re-order the pages when the man was done. He wondered which story the man was reading, and why his eyebrows went up and down–why his lips pursed, and then frowned, and then went back to a fine hard slit. Edgar fidgeted with his shoe and frowned.

  And then he saw it.

  The top page on the stack, the one the editor had just set down, had a small red mark on the upper left corner. It was not a fingerprint, for surely he had seen the man grasp the page by the top right corner. Edgar frowned and looked more closely.

  The bottom page in the man's hand sprouted a red spot of its own. It blossomed before Edgar's eyes and grew larger as he read. Edgar swallowed and looked away, blinked three times in quick succession. When he looked back, the red spot was still there and it had grown larger still.

  More spots broke out on the pages in the editor's hands. Still more popped up on the stack on the desk. Edgar twitched inside, his stomach tying itself into a huge knot and his eye beginning to spasm. The editor's expression continued to shift through emotions, following the words on the page, but his hands dripped with blood. His fingers smeared the pages, and a steady drip had begun at the edge of the desk, falling from where blood pooled beneath the pages.

  Edgar could barely breathe, and that drip became louder. He watched each droplet form, release from the congealed miasma on the desktop, then fall, quivering through the air to PLOP into the puddle beneath the desk.

  Then the editor scanned the final page and looked up. He grinned at Edgar. It was the big man. The man who'd been with the smaller one in the bar–and he was smiling. His smile widened impossibly and the teeth it revealed were long, sharp, and hungry.

  Edgar screamed.

  Edgar sat up with a start. He was shaking and drenched in sweat. It was still dark, and the soft glow from the gaslights shone through the windows, illuminating galaxies of dust motes as they danced in the darkness. Then he heard the PLOP and his heart nearly stopped.

  Edgar had made tea, and though it would be hours before the city awakened, he could no longer sleep. He had managed to stop the leak in his sink with an old rag, but the echo of that last PLOP gave him no peace. He still felt clammy from the sweat-drenched nightmare, and he sat at his desk, pen in hand, brooding.

  He was trying to pen a criticism of the latest work by Mr. Charles Dickens, whom he admired, but the words would not come to him. Not those words. The others would not leave him alone, but Edgar had to eat, and he knew he could not sell the stories. Not yet.

  “Who is he?” he muttered.

  The image of the big man, shaking his head in bafflement at the end of the bar as his friend spewed forth those amazing images in a constant stream, came to Edgar again and again. He tried to remember details. Had the man's hands been calloused? Had he ever come into the tavern with any particular item in his hand that might give a clue to his profession, or his home? Had Edgar ever heard their names?

  Bleary eyed, he returned to the work at hand. He had a deadline, and if he missed another, he would no longer have to worry about finding the words at all, because he would be finding a job–and a home–instead. As the sun rose slowly over the city, the scratching of his quill ticked off the moments on the clock, first hesitantly, and then in a steady stream.

  It was three days later when he finally saw the man, alone at the end of the bar in The Swan. Edgar watched him carefully, trying not to be obvious. He wanted to walk over, offer his hand, and ask where the man's friend was. Get it out in the open. Instead, he watched as the familiar stranger morosely nursed a half-pint and stared at the mirrored wall behind the bar in silence.

  It was like being in the theatre and watching a play enacted with one of the main characters missing. The big man's hat sat, just as it always had, on the bar at his side. The stool beside him was pressed tightly against the wood base of the bar, empty with the aspect of having been empty for a very, very long time. The barman brought pint after pint, but the two men exchanged no pleasantries, and none of the regulars dropped by to ask questions, or offer condolence.

  Edgar drew forth a small sheet of paper from his pocket and placed it on the bar beside his own drink, but when he took his pen in hand, there was no urge to write. The room was filled with subtle sound, low-pitched conversations and clinking glass, the clatter of carriage wheels on the street outside, and the cries of merchants as they closed their shops and carted their wares off the main thoroughfare.

  No words. There was nothing for him to borrow, nothing to steal. The empty barstool mocked him. He began to hallucinate forms and movements in the clump of felt the big man called a hat, and each winking crystal goblet signaled to him, and then ignored him when he turned to see.

  Then it started. Edgar turned his gaze to the blank sheet of paper, and was horrified to see that it had a spatter of blood near the upper right corner. Had he grabbed this from the wrong sheaf of paper? Had it soaked from his desk somehow, or been shaken free of his clothing after he left the alley?

  But no, it was fresh, wasn't it? It was too red to be dried on the paper, and it was spreading. Edgar glanced up to see if the barman had noticed, but he had not. No one had seen–yet. No one knew.

  Edgar glanced down the bar at the big man, and as he did so, he felt something on his palm. Alarmed, he glanced down again and gasped, unable to contain the exclamation. The blood had pooled, not soaking into the paper, but leaking out of it. There was a gelatinous globe of deep, red blood quivering atop the paper. It had sprung an inner leak along one side and the trickle that ran out across the bar was what had touched Edgar's hand.

  He glanced up again wildly. The barman was walking toward him, and Edgar's heart pounded. He found that he couldn't breathe, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the big man at the end of the bar had spun in his seat and had fixed him with a cold stare. When the man slowly rose, Edgar could take no more. He leaped back from his stool, toppling his beer, and spun crazily, nearly veering into a table and two men playing chess on his way out.

  Shaking his head, the barman swiped his cloth across the counter and mopped up the spilled pint, cursing under his breath and vowing to charge the odd little man who'd spilled it double the next time he came in.

  Edgar crashed out into the growing twilight and lit off for home. Everywhere he looked things were tinged in red. There was no sound of pursuit, but how far behind could they be?

  He reached his rooms and slammed in through the door. The hinges complained, and the knob jiggled wildly about from the sudden fury of his entrance. He shut it just as quickly and ran to the bedside. He grasped the edge of the old mattress and pulled it upward. The pages were still neatly pressed beneath mattress and frame and Edgar let go an audible sigh of relief. Then he grabbed the stack and sorted it roughly. He pulled free those pages from which he had already written and set them aside in a rough stack. As
he turned away, the mattress fell back into place with a solid thud.

  He crossed to the old fireplace by the door, the room's one ounce of charm. It was sweltering outside, but tonight, the fireplace would add its own heat to the already jungle-like summer night.

  Edgar set match to paper and sat back on his haunches, watching as the papers went up in a swift puff of smoke. Cheap paper, it had been, as rough and feeble as any he had seen. And now it curled and charred and wasted away to ashes.

  Just before the blackened edges spread inward, Edgar caught site of a small stain on the bottom of one page. Blood. Black devoured red and the stain disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. Then another arose on the blackening surface. And another. Another.

  "No," Edgar mumbled into his right fist. "No, no…"

  He sank back onto his haunches and rubbed the palms of his hands into his eyes until the pressure nearly made him pass out.

  He came slowly back to his senses as evening's shadows lengthened to night. He had not, he realized, bought more oil for his lamp. There was a stationary shop around the corner he knew to keep late hours, and to carry small jars of oil. He might make it there and back if he hurried.

  Edgar glanced into the ashes on the hearth, but there was no sign of blood, or dampness of any kind. Only the bone-dust of words. Turning away, he slipped out into the night.

  He walked through the moonlight, his head bent low and eyes on his shoes. As luck would have it, the stationary shop was open and the gentleman with the tight mustache and careless hair admitted him long enough to purchase one small bottle of oil. He clutched it tightly to his chest and turned toward home, letting the light of the moon guide him.

  By the time he reached his door once more, he felt immensely better. Surely the words would flow and his review would be complete. No more purloined stories or nonsense about bleeding paper.

  Once the lamp was refueled and the match struck, the shadows receded and all that remained of the day's madness was a tangy odor of smoke that teased at his nostrils and made him think of fat Christmas sausages. Edgar settled into his chair, took up his quill, and began to read what little he'd written already. Still, his eyes shot to the stack of stories on the back corner of his desk. They were hard to avoid and even harder to remember.