The Poe Estate

by Polly Shulman

  “Are we almost there?” I asked. My voice sounded more panicked than I meant it to.

  “What’s the matter, the Corpus creeping you out? I was going to give you a tour, but we can just go straight to the compass if you want,” said Andre. “Wait, hang on, take a look at this.” He handed me something cold and heavy, the size of a bullet.

  “What is it?” I peered into my hand, but I couldn’t really make out anything.

  “Poe’s gold-bug.”

  “Cool!” I squatted down and held it closer to the glowing floor. The insect had six hideous little scratchy legs, feathery antennae, and black markings on its back that made it look like a tiny skull. Griffin leaned down his vast head, snuffled at it, and sneezed.

  “Can I see?” asked Cole.

  The horrible little legs tickled my palm as I transferred it to his hand. “Ew! Is it alive?” I gasped.

  “Not exactly,” said Dr. Rust. “I wouldn’t call anything in this room alive, exactly. Well, except us.”

  “But it moved!”

  “The living are not all that move.”

  I had to admit that was true. I knew it from personal experience.

  “What’s the gold-bug for, exactly?” Cole asked. “What does it do? You said it leads people to treasure—could we use it to find Phineas Toogood’s?”

  Andre shook his head, making the shadows flicker oddly up his cheekbones. “No, unfortunately. In the story, they just drop the bug through the left eye socket of a skull that’s nailed to a tree to find where to dig. They could have used anything—a pebble or a bullet or whatever.”

  “Oh, too bad.” Cole handed him back the gold-bug.

  Andre put it away with a rustling noise and moved on a few paces. “Here’s your compass, Sukie.” He put a cold, round object in my hand.

  Something howled not too far off. As its lugubrious echoes fell away, Dr. Rust spoke. “Let’s wrap this up, shall we? This place is a bit too fetid even for me.”

  • • •

  What with the trip back through the Lovecraft Corpus and the broomstick ride home, it was dinnertime when we returned.

  Cole and I stumbled off my broom in the field behind the house and brushed stray twigs off each other, and he walked me to the kitchen door. “That smells good!” he said.

  “Mom must be making her pesto lasagna. Want to come in for dinner?”

  “Oh, yeah!”

  Mom was taking the lasagna out of the oven when I pushed the kitchen door open. “There you are,” she said. “I was starting to worry.”

  “Mom, Dad, this is Cole Farley. He’s lab partners with me and Lola in science class. We just came back from the library.” Well, that was kind of true, at least. “Can he stay for dinner?”

  Mom and Dad exchanged a glance I couldn’t interpret, with a hint of a smile and a hint of alarm. “Come on in, Cole!” said Dad heartily. “Grab a plate and sit down.”

  “Nice to see you again, Cole,” said Cousin Hepzibah.

  “Oh, do you two know each other?” asked Mom.

  “Yeah, Cousin Hepzibah was telling me about your family when I was here before. She has some great stories! Like my grandpa’s. And it even turns out we’re related, if you go way back to that pirate.”

  “Pirate? What pirate?” asked Dad. “You never told me about any pirates, Sally!”

  “I don’t know that story,” said Mom. So Cousin Hepzibah told it again, only I noticed she left out a lot, mostly the parts about the dead baby. She probably didn’t want to remind my parents to be sad.

  After dinner, Cole offered to help with the dishes, but he looked relieved when Dad said, “Looks like it might snow. I’ll run you home in the truck before it starts.”

  As he was putting on his coat, Cole said, “Don’t start that lab project without me, Sukie.”

  “What lab project?”

  “You know! The one we were talking about in the library. With the compass.”

  “Oh, that project!” Was he kidding? I had a magical compass that would help me finally find pirate treasure, and Cole wanted me not to use it?! “I don’t know, Cole.”

  “You can’t start without me! Promise you won’t?”

  I nodded reluctantly.

  “You have a science project with a compass? I thought you were doing physiology,” said Mom.

  Cole made a good save. “It’s just the Pitch with her extra credit. Ms. Picciotto, I mean, our science teacher. She’s always writing these hard problems in the corner of the whiteboard. It takes serious brains to solve them. That’s why I need Sukie.”

  Mom nodded. She’d seen me working on Ms. Picciotto’s extra-credit problems.

  When Cole and Dad were gone, I piled up the dishes and filled the sink with hot water.

  “Cole seems like a nice boy,” said Mom.

  “I guess.” I shrugged.

  “He is,” said Cousin Hepzibah. “Warmhearted and respectful.”

  “I’m glad you’re making friends,” said Mom.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The Poe Annex

  Cousin Hepzibah was eager to see the repository annex where they kept the haunted houses, so Elizabeth and Andre arranged to come back to the Thorne Mansion the next Saturday to take us all down.

  “Guess what?” said Andre when they called us to discuss the arrangements. “Turns out we have the logbooks from that pirate ship, the Pretty Polly! They might say where the pirate buried his treasure.”

  “Pack your overnight bags if you like,” said Elizabeth. “There are plenty of comfortable haunted houses you could stay in, and that’ll give us all weekend to search for treasure.”

  Cousin Hepzibah told my parents she would be visiting friends downstate and had invited me to come along.

  “Who are these friends?” asked my mother.

  “Librarians. Very kind, scholarly people. I believe you’ve met one of them, Kevin—Elizabeth Rew. She studies the works of Laetitia Flint, who’s a favorite of Sukie’s—isn’t she, dear?—so they’ll have plenty to talk about. She said she would pick us up and bring us home again. We’d like to stay overnight, if that’s all right with you. I’ll make sure Sukie does her homework.”

  “Of course, if you want to go, Sukie,” said my mother anxiously. She didn’t want to offend Cousin Hepzibah, but I could tell she didn’t like the idea of me staying with people she didn’t know.

  “I do want to go,” I said. “I love Laetitia Flint, and Dr. Rew is really nice. It sounds awesome.”

  Dad nodded and said, “Dr. Rew seems nice enough. Have fun, Sukie-Sue. Don’t give the librarians too much trouble.”

  • • •

  Andre and Elizabeth showed up Saturday morning, timing their arrival for after my parents had left for the city flea markets. Andre was carrying a rolled-up rug across his shoulders, the same way he’d carried me. “Hi, Sukie,” he said. “Hi, Cole. Ready to go? I brought a nice, comfortable flying carpet.”

  Cole pretended to be blasé. “Just let me get Cousin Hepzibah and our bags.”

  Andre unrolled the carpet on the porch with a flourish, and we piled our backpacks and Cousin Hepzibah’s bag on it. Cole climbed on and helped Cousin Hepzibah lower herself to sit down. Elizabeth sat on the carpet too, which lifted off gently, its fringe flapping in the wind. Andre and I flew along beside it, me on my broomstick and him on the Hawthorne walking stick.

  We flew between layers of clouds that spangled our hair with silver dew. Cousin Hepzibah had wrapped a large, thin scarf around her broad-brimmed hat, making her look like a passenger in one of those early automobiles.

  “Don’t worry, it’s perfectly safe. It’s our steadiest flying carpet,” said Elizabeth, but Cole surreptitiously held a fistful of Cousin Hepzibah’s coat, just to make sure she didn’t slip off.

  • • •

  Dr. Rust met us on
the roof and gave us a tour of the New-York Circulating Material Repository. Cousin Hepzibah seemed impressed. “What a well-organized institution,” she said. “It’s clearly meticulously run. But where is this annex where you hope to keep my home?”

  “Down in the basement,” said Dr. Rust.

  “Where the Lovecraft Corpus is?” I asked with a shudder. “Let’s not go in there again!”

  “I’m afraid we’ll have to,” said Dr. Rust. “The Poe Annex is an annex to the Corpus, and the only way in is through the Corpus. But we’ll hurry straight through.”

  “I can get your bag, Ms. Thorne,” offered Elizabeth.

  “No, Libbet, let me,” said Andre, taking the handle from her.

  The Lovecraft Corpus was just as abysmal as I remembered, and just as dark. Cousin Hepzibah bore it bravely, leaning on Cole’s arm and feeling each step before committing her weight. She did eventually ask, “Are we going much farther, Dr. Rust? I hope you aren’t intending to keep my house in here.”

  “No, no,” the head repositorian reassured her. “This is where we store our smaller supernatural objects. The Poe Annex is much bigger and more . . . pleasant. We’re just passing through here. We’re almost there.”

  Something howled. “We better be,” said Elizabeth. “Because that doesn’t sound good.”

  “Don’t worry, the gate is just up ahead,” said Dr. Rust. “Ah, here we are!”

  The gate to the Poe Annex was a tall, vine-twined structure of oak and iron. It creaked when Elizabeth pushed it open. Dr. Rust walked through first and invited each of us visitors in by name: “Enter, Hepzibah. Enter, Cole. Enter, Sukie.”

  As I passed between the twin granite pillars, I found myself pushing through an icy opposition. It lasted only an instant, then shattered into shards of empty air. I stepped out of the oppressive, reeking, humid gloom of the Lovecraft Corpus into a clean chill.

  “Ah! Much better,” said Elizabeth.

  “Wimp,” said Andre. “The Creature was nowhere near us.”

  “Yeah, well—still. The Corpus is not my favorite Special Collection,” said Elizabeth.

  We were standing in dim, in-between light—dusk or dawn, I couldn’t tell which—at the top of a hill. Stars were fading or just coming out. In the distance I could just make out low mountains, dark forests, groves of towers, the glimmer of water . . . all kinds of different landscapes. The air was crisp and still. I took a deep breath to rinse my lungs.

  “Which is your favorite collection?” Cole asked. He was still acting blasé, but I could tell he was excited.

  “Oh, the Grimm Collection, definitely—with its objects from fairy tales,” answered Elizabeth. “But I like the Poe Annex too. We’ve collected some awesome houses here.”

  “Why is it so dim?” I asked.

  “It’s not currently daytime in this exact spot,” said Dr. Rust. “Time doesn’t work the same way here—it’s not continuous. The annex is crepuscular by default, because lots of items in the collection run to dusk, but there are plenty of pockets of night and day. You’ll see. This way.”

  “Hang on, Doc,” said Andre. “Here’s something Sukie’ll like. You too, Ms. Thorne.” He took out a pocketknife, cut two flowers off a bush, and handed one to me and one to Cousin Hepzibah.

  It was a rose, white with red streaks on the petals. It glowed dimly in the dusk. “Thanks,” I said. “That’s beautiful.”

  “What is it?” asked Cole.

  “A Laetitia Flint rose,” said Elizabeth. “From her story ‘A Bed of Roses,’ about a pair of dead lovers. It’s variegated because it grows out of their tomb. Red for him, white for her.”

  “That rose is okay, but be careful of the plants around here,” said Dr. Rust. “Don’t pick them without asking first. Lots of them are poisonous—or worse.”

  “Let’s head over to the library now,” said Andre. “That’s where we keep the logbooks from the Pretty Polly.”

  “You mean we’re going back upstairs to the repository? Then why did we come down here?” I asked, confused.

  “No, no,” said Elizabeth. “We’re still in the repository, just more deeply in it. I’m talking about the Spectral Library—the Library of Fictional Volumes. We’ll take the train.”

  “The train goes through the annex, so Ms. Thorne can see our holdings,” said Dr. Rust. “This way.”

  Holding the Flint rose to my nose, I followed the repositorians downhill. The flower sparked a memory. It smelled like a rose, but not just any rose. It had a spice of carnation or clove under its citrony sweetness.

  “Cousin Hepzibah, does that rose smell familiar to you?”

  She took a deep sniff. “I think so. It’s very much like the one that grows on Windy’s grave. Where Phinny’s hand is buried.”

  I knew it then: It was the smell of Windy’s ghost.

  It was a haunting smell, and it made me sad. I wanted to find that treasure—of course I did. But this was about more than just treasure. When we found it, would it help that lonely ghost find rest?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The Train Through the Annex

  A big, slightly transparent white stone building stretched out in front of us. “This is Lost Penn Station,” said Dr. Rust.

  “It’s huge! What story is it from?” asked Cole.

  “It isn’t actually fictional, exactly,” said Andre. “It was a real train station that got torn down. But everybody loved it so much that it entered into the shared mythology.”

  “If it isn’t fictional, why is it here?” I asked.

  “In some real sense, it isn’t,” said Dr. Rust. “Only its echo is here.”

  “We have plans to start a collection of Lost Places,” said Elizabeth. “That’s going to be my next project, after the Poe Annex. All we have so far are a few spots in Manhattan, including Lost Penn Station. We’re using it as a train depot until we can acquire a good fictional one.”

  Inside the station, light streamed down from arched windows a long way up. A woman ran through me, furling her umbrella. Its raindrops spun through the air without wetting me.

  “That’s not a ghost, is it?” I said.

  Elizabeth shook her head. “More like a memory.”

  “If the people can just walk through us and the building’s not really there, why don’t our feet fall through the floor?” Cousin Hepzibah asked.

  “You’re right, they should,” said Dr. Rust. “But that would be very inconvenient, so we substantiated the floors. Don’t jump too hard.”

  “The train’s this way,” said Andre.

  We followed him through the vast station, with its lacy ironwork, to the staircases that led to the trains. They seemed much more solid.

  “Are these real trains?” I asked.

  “Yes—well, fictional trains,” said Elizabeth. She pointed to a freight train with an evil look to it. “For example, that one’s from a Willa Cather story. It goes way out West. We’re taking the train from the Hawthorne story ‘The Celestial Railroad.’”

  Sure enough, the compass pointed to a platform where an iron monster was belching steam and coal smoke. “All aboard!” said Andre, hopping up on a car, pulling the door open, and ducking his head to keep from hitting it on the door frame. He reached his long arm down to give me a hand up. Cole helped Cousin Hepzibah up next, and Elizabeth scrambled up after us. Dr. Rust shut the door, and the shaking metal monster clattered into motion.

  • • •

  As we rattled through the landscape, Elizabeth and Andre pointed out haunted houses.

  “Here’s Lyng,” said Elizabeth. “Isn’t it beautiful?” We were passing a manor house on a hill, the kind you might see on a TV show about an aristocratic English family and their servants.

  “What’s its story?” I asked.

  “It’s from ‘Afterward,’ by Edith Wharton. An American man ma
kes a lot of money, not very honestly, and buys an estate in England. But the guy he cheated killed himself and starts haunting him.”

  “Spoiler alert!” said Andre.

  “Oh, sorry.”

  The house disappeared around a bend. “If it’s an English house, what’s it doing here? Are we somehow in England now?” asked Cousin Hepzibah. “It doesn’t feel as though we’ve traveled anything like far enough. Shouldn’t we still be in New York, or at most New Jersey?”

  “No, we’re still in the Poe Annex. Standard geography doesn’t apply,” said Dr. Rust.

  Elizabeth elaborated. “Parts of the Poe Annex do have a relationship to New Jersey, of course. The Annex relates to the New England states, plus a few in the South and the West, and some more distant regions. But there’s no one-to-one correspondence with the geography you’re accustomed to. You can think of this as a separate dimension from our usual world.”

  “The geography here in the Poe Annex isn’t particularly linear,” said Dr. Rust. “We file the items by their call numbers, not continents. Even though ‘Afterward’ is set in England, it’s an American classic—Wharton was an American, and so are the characters and themes.”

  “Wow, Sukie! Can you believe all this?” said Cole. “I’m totally going to start paying more attention in Language Arts class.”

  I laughed. “Science, and now Language Arts? Who knew I would turn out to be such a good influence?”

  “I did,” said Cole. “It was obvious from the way you stuck your nose in a book and ignored me.”

  We passed a few more fancy English country estates and some gloomy houses, which Elizabeth said were from the ghost stories of Henry James. Cousin Hepzibah looked impressed.

  Then the train went through a town with a big house with lots of peaks and gables. “One, two, three, four . . . five . . . Is that the House of the Seven Gables, from the Hawthorne novel?” I asked.

  “No, but good guess,” said Elizabeth. “It’s from a different Hawthorne story, ‘Peter Goldthwaite’s Treasure’—I think I mentioned it before. The Hawthorne houses all have a certain family resemblance. It’s like the way houses designed by the same architect tend to look like each other.”