“I think impropriety is the word you are searching for,” Anna replied in a hiss. “And yes. He did attempt to explain to Mother that after sitting for a daguerreotype this morning, he saw a white face in the studio’s light-reflecting mirror. It stared straight at him, he said, with eyes black as night.”
“Those were his words exactly?”
“He is mad, Helen. Do not go to him.”
Helen made no reply but took her first steps toward the stairwell, skirts rustling.
“Do you care this little for me?” she heard him wail. “Do you doubt me? Or suspect I have not told you the truth entirely?”
“It is no use shouting these delirious inquiries, Mr. Poe,” her mother said. “It should be beyond clear to you that my daughter has no wish to entertain your call.”
“I am doomed, Helen! Doomed! In time and eternity. All I ask is for one word. Say yes, Helen. Say yes and save this poor wretch. Say what you have not yet said. That you do love me!”
“Edgar.” Helen spoke his name as she stepped onto the topmost stair. At the sound of her voice, his head jerked up.
Dressed in his shirtsleeves, his dark hair wild, his eyes crazed, he looked, to Helen, the very portrait of insanity.
She drew in a sharp breath. Clutching tightly to the banister, she steeled herself and began to descend, closing the distance between them one tremulous step at a time.
“Helen.” He held a quivering hand out to her. “You have heard me. And now at last you’ve come. An angel sent to save me from perdition.”
“Edgar, what is the meaning—?”
“My fate rests with you.” He fell to his knees and clutched the skirts of her dress, peering up at her. For a moment, Helen lost her ability to speak, wondering if what she saw could be attributed to the heightening effects of the ether.
Gone were the ghost-gray eyes of the man who’d proposed to her in the cemetery less than two months before, and she now wondered if the spectral gaze he’d claimed to have seen in the mirror that morning could have belonged to his own reflection.
For the eyes that stared up at her now, imploring and full of dread, were indeed as black as night.
Blacker.
1
A Valentine
Dear Varen,
After putting your name on paper, it seems I can hardly hold my pen steady. So this won’t be neat. I’m not good with words like you are, so it won’t be eloquent, either.
Valentine’s Day is this weekend. I’m in English class, and Mr. Swanson wants us to work on composing romantic sonnets. He’s gone over the format twice, but thinking about iambic pentameter and quatrains makes me feel like I’m trying to solve a math word problem. At least, I’m pretty sure my poetry reads like one.
If you were here, I know you’d already be done with yours.
I also know it would be beautiful.
I can see your desk from where I’m sitting. I won’t find you there even if I look, but part of me is always afraid that I will.
Sometimes I wonder if that’s what you wanted. For me to be afraid of you. For everyone to be afraid, so no one would try to get close.
They tell me that I died. They say that I was dead, and I want to tell them I still am. At least that’s how I feel. Because I know where you are and what’s become of you. Because I couldn’t stop it and I couldn’t bring you back. Because Reynolds was right when he told me I couldn’t reach you.
Everything’s broken.
And yet here I am, writing you what must be a Valentine.
Because even though I know I shouldn’t still love you, even though I know that is the last thing I should have room to feel for you, more than anything, I want to tell you I do.
* * *