“Mmm. Murder,” Poe mused, “that most hideous yet somehow fascinating of human pastimes.”
“You admit that you were somehow involved in foul play?”
“I admit nothing,” Poe said. “I enjoy mysteries too much. I invented them, remember? And so I am obliged not to reveal the answer to the riddle of my death.” He stood slowly and began pacing, hands clasped behind his back. “Besides, I fear I cannot fully recall what happened to me that night so long ago, so many eons ago. . . .” He reached a quivering hand out toward his audience, his fingers curling into a rueful fist. Isobel rolled her eyes. She never would have thought he had it in him!
“I was on my way from New York to Richmond.”
“Richmond to New York,” Varen corrected.
“That’s right,” Poe whispered, bringing his hand toward his brow, bracing his head. “The musty air of the grave! The lull of death’s sleep. These things can congest the brain, clog the memory—but you’re right. I was leaving Richmond, yes, where I had finally become engaged. I was to be married. Yes, married. But first! First I was to return to my home in New York to collect my dear aunt Moody.”
“Muddy.”
“That’s what I said.” Poe stopped then, tilting his head as though listening to something far off. “I remember traveling by train with my trunk full of manuscripts and lectures. The train stopped and then I . . . I . . .”
Isobel let her eyes stray from her father to scan the faces of her classmates. Everyone stared. Even Bobby Bailey, who usually laid his head on his desk, had sat up to listen.
“Perhaps, Professor Nethers,” Isobel ventured, “you can enlighten us about some of the details surrounding this mystery?”
Varen, maybe remembering Isobel’s whispered plea, took his cue. “For five days Poe went missing,” he said, his voice slicing into the stillness of the room. “He was found near a tavern in Baltimore in a state of delirium, wearing someone else’s clothing. He was then taken by his cousin and a doctor friend to the hospital.”
“Yes, I remember now . . . ,” Poe whispered.
“The doctor’s reports say that Poe raved for days, talking to imaginary people and invisible objects on the wall.”
“Demon!” Isobel’s dad shouted suddenly, shooting a finger out to point at the ceiling. With a collective shriek, the entire room jumped in their seats. “Thing of evil!”
A strange feeling stole its way over Isobel. Her brow knotted, and she felt her jaw tighten and set. As she watched her father improvise, her hands pressed down on the desktop while her thoughts and her memory slowly wound around reawakening fears. She remembered now that Varen had mentioned this in the library, that first time they’d met for the project—how Poe had screamed out to invisible beings while on his deathbed.
“On the night before he died,” Varen continued in a solemn tone, “he began screaming out a name, shouting it for more than a day, calling for someone no one knew. Someone Poe never reportedly knew, either. Someone named Reynolds—”
Isobel gasped audibly. Prickling white spikes of fear and panic shot through her, freezing her mind and stalling her body. She sat stunned, her eyes on Varen while her memory projected onto her mind the image of a black-shrouded figure.
Isobel had no way of telling how much time trickled by before she registered Mr. Swanson’s voice. Apparently, however, it had been long enough for him to guess that this wasn’t just another part of the presentation. “Isobel,” he said, “are you all right?”
Dazedly she looked for her father, who had all but dropped out of character to stare at her with a “What’s going on?” look on his face.
“Uh,” Isobel croaked, fumbling for the radio. Flustered, she pressed play, then pause, then stop. “That’s the—all—all the time we have today,” she stuttered, pressing play again in an attempt to cover her mangled lines. The tail end of another round of clapping trickled lamely through the boom box before dying out.
Her father made a hesitant bow, now to the live though somewhat sporadic applause of the class, whose attention had begun alternating between Isobel and Varen. No doubt they were wondering what they’d missed.
“I, uh, shall take leave of you now,” her father said, backing toward the door. He shot a questioning look at Isobel. She nodded at him. It was all she could manage. “Yes,” he affirmed, turning back to the class. “Here I take my leave, to return to this realm— nevermore!”
Isobel watched numbly as her father swept dramatically from the room, pausing at the door long enough to jiggle the light switch before ducking out. The bird dropped from his shoulder and onto the linoleum. A black-cuffed hand shot back in and snatched the bird out again. Isobel scowled, vaguely recalling having begged him to leave out the light switch part.
The bell rang, ending the class in what felt like a whirlwind. Everyone shot up from their seats, papers flapping, notebooks dropping, laughing and talking. Mr. Swanson rose too, announcing over the clamor, “Okaay, then. Very good job, everyone—and their parents, I suppose,” he added with a pointed look at Isobel that normally would have made her gulp.
“Papers up front, if you please. Your grades will be ready some time next week and, from there, we’re going to talk a little bit more about Mr. Poe, the antebellum era and the Romantics, then we’ll pick up on writers of the Civil War era. Have a very safe Halloween tonight, go Trenton Hawks. Pull up your pants, Mr. Levery, I don’t need to see your boxers—everybody please stay out of trouble!”
Trouble. Isobel’s gaze fell to the swirling grain of Mr. Swanson’s desktop, her brain repeating the word. She was in trouble.
Reynolds.
Hadn’t he been something purely out of her subconscious? Or could Varen have mentioned him before? No. No, she would have remembered that. Her dreams. Had they been real? It was the only explanation, she realized. It was the only thing that explained everything. The Poe book. She had thrown it away. The figure in the door at practice. The image in the mirror.
The run through the park. The voice in the attic. She wasn’t crazy—or maybe she was? Isobel funneled her focus onto a single black knot in the wood as she tried to recall something else Reynolds had told her. What he’d said about . . .
“Varen?” she asked breathlessly.
She stood abruptly and looked into the seat next to hers. She saw only their paper, bound neatly in a plastic report cover. She watched dully as all the others began piling on top, burying the neat Gothic typeface he’d chosen for the title. She looked up, her eyes locking on his desk in the corner. Empty. His satchel, his black book—gone.
32
Pinfeathers
Halfway out the door, Isobel slammed into her father, the makeshift raven flopping off his shoulder and once again onto the floor.
“Hey, whoa, Iz! I’m still here.” He gripped her shoulders to steady her. “How do you think we did? Hey, listen”—he dropped one arm to check his watch—“I better get on to the office so I can be back to pick you up before the game.” He bent to get the bird, and before Isobel could utter a syllable, six-foot-something Bobby Bailey stepped between them, blocking Isobel completely.
“Hey, man, that was awesome,” he said, engaging her father in a complicated series of handshakes and fist bumps.
“Hey, thanks,” her dad replied, navigating through the grips and punches as best as he could. “Uh, glad you thought so . . . man.”
Isobel peered down the hall both ways, searching for Varen’s familiar dark figure. Not seeing him, she elbowed Bobby aside. “Dad, this is important. Did you see which way Varen went?”
Bobby butted fists with her father one last time before passing on. Her dad, stuffing the bird under one arm, frowned. “Yeah,” he said, pointing, “he took off down that way. Didn’t even say hi or, you know, thanks.”