I knew where they were.
“Guests come here to die, some of them. Perhaps you are one of them?” she asked.
“I mean to be saved,” I said. “I mean to save myself from this creature. I will not offer it harbor. It is a criminal fled from the land of dreamers, and it is a nightmare.”
“Thule,” she said. “That is the origin of the ship in the bay, in and out of our waters these twenty years,” she said. “There have been men from aboard it here. Those curtains came from a Thule trader, once, long ago, and this sapphire as well. There are beautiful things to be had in the land of dreams, as well as horrid ones. The ship is a ship of explorers, hunting something fled here years ago. I believe you may know all too well what it is they seek.”
I looked at her. Her skin glowed pale and her eyes shone, and I wondered when she had lost her own ghosts, or whether she boarded them here in hope of being transported one day to their realm.
I glanced at the curtains. I’d not examined the toile the night before, and today I saw the pattern was quite other than I’d imagined. Explorers, yes, their spears raised and pressing into the flesh of something without edges, a blot in the fabric speckled with stars. Another scene of the darkness taking them, dead men in the snow. Another of ships filled with vague forms, their faces stricken, and beneath them, the water itself made of night.
I shivered. What was it I contained? Would I be free of it?
“What shall I do?” I asked her.
“If it emerges,” she said, “you must wrest it back into the land of dreams. Only then will you be free.”
I went out into the city, trying to calm myself for the portrait. It was a silly thing, to attempt beauty in a portrait such as this one. It did not matter, or so the medium said. All that mattered was the method.
Half to the studio, worrying that perhaps my fever had returned—the stowaway heated my body to an uncomfortable degree—I felt a presence behind me.
I spun on my boot heel, but saw no one. It was full daylight, and there was no reason to suspect another thief, but I walked on, shifting toward a busier street, listening for steps behind me. I knew better than to rove alone, even at this time of morning, a time not unreasonable for any lady to be unaccompanied. I wouldn’t be mistaken for any of those nightingales who’d be swaying toward their rooming houses at this hour, rather than away from them, but something possessed me to keep on my own path, to pass quickly by any carriages for hire. I had a horror that if I looked to the drivers I’d see a series of monsters leaning forward over the reins.
How many could there be of the creature that plagued me? Where had my first husband found the stowaway? I’d scanned map after map, but on none of them could I find the country called Thule. No, all that was on those maps was a vague area of nothingness with that label. Had it come aboard as cargo, hidden in a barrel of sugar, a secret folded in the silk? Had it pretended to be rope? My husband had been an importer of trade goods, but what had he gone to dreamland to acquire? He had filled his hold with a devil, and now the devil held me.
There were no steps in the street behind me, but only the sound of a cane, tapping, tapping, each cobblestone scratching beneath it, and the sound of splashing as well, as whatever wraith it was moved over the stones. I readied myself to scream, to run, but there was no need.
“Lady,” a weak voice whispered. “Lady, will you hear me? I am a broken man, and not long for this world. The mistress of the inn sent me after you.”
I turned and saw him for the second time: the man who’d walked out of the bay, still drenched, his waistcoat dripping, his black suit hanging on him as though he was a cadaver. He was correct in his assertion. Blue shadows bruised his eyes, and his cheeks were gaunt. He looked as though he’d climbed from out of a tomb.
“Where have you come from, Sir?” I asked him. The Sir was an afterthought. He was not demon, not ghost, but not whole either.
“A ship,” he said, and I knew him to be deranged, but who was to say that I was not? He was a kindred spirit in that fashion, and so I let him speak. “I swam from a ship that floats there still—on the border of Dream-land—”
He extended a trembling finger toward the horizon, as though I would see his ship. There was nothing to be seen. “—and up again into the light.”
“And what is your name?”
“Edgar,” he said, and swayed, leaning heavily on his cane.
I felt the stowaway twist inside me, and I flinched, bending at the waist. My corset was laced particularly tight, some vain hope of caging the creature and keeping it still. It did not wish to be still.
“Are you well?” he asked.
“I am not,” I said.
“Nor I,” he said, and gave me a look of profound sympathy. “Not since the death of my wife.”
I was reminded of my ghost husband. There were no men made of anything more than trouble in my history, and this one was no different.
“My name is Mrs. MacFarlane,” I said.
“What is your Christian name?” he asked. He was no threat, his body wizened like that of an ancient, though he could not be much older than I.
“Annabel,” I told him. Recognition flickered on his face for a moment.
“Ah, then it is true,” he murmured. “Annabel. I have heard your name in passing, yes, in passing through the night. I have heard it whispered in a dream I had.”
“Are we acquainted?” I asked. He was oddly familiar to me, it was true, more so than just the vision of him staggering up from the sea.
“No, no. We have never met in the waking world,” he said, and the alert look he’d had was gone again. I smelt the alcohol on him, and more than that. He smelled of the sea, of salt, of blood. “I am a dreamer destined only for sorrow, Annabel, and there is one more thing I must do before I end my days.”
Was I entranced by his suffering, so akin to my own? Or his handsome face, his history of loss. Some part of my heart, one I had not noticed in some time, felt enticed to compassion for one so miserable.
“I thought that I was destined for death as well,” I told him recklessly, “but I refuse to accept it. I am to the portraitist. Will you accompany me, sir? I dislike undertaking the journey alone.”
Quite unexpectedly, he smiled.
“You would take me to a photographer?” he asked. “This broken poet? Four days ago, I attempted suicide on a train. When I woke, it was on a ship in this bay, and I knew the crew of tattered men, and I knew the captain. He hunts the night for a beast he cannot find, a thing from his own sleeping kingdom which has fled to this one. He has sent me into the town to seek on his behalf, Annabel, to seek the beast. Have you seen it?”
He stood, his hands hanging, a pleading expression on his face. And here was I, containing the beast he sought. Here was I, an unwilling case for a spirit I’d never invited in.
“I have not,” I told him. I could not trust him yet. I’d met handsome men before. I’d met a handsome ghost, a betrayer of my body. “I do not even know your full name,” I said.
The man before me winced.
“Edgar Poe,” he said. “I am a writer of horrors. It is only reasonable that I should end in horror myself. I have spent my life a dreamer, and now my dreams haunt me in daylight.” He lifted his shoulders and his expression was that of profound regret. “It was a dream I made, long ago, and I worked at it, night after night, inventing its appetites. The dream made itself flesh and escaped the boundary of the land I’d made for it. After that, I know not where it went, though I am told there have been tales of its takings. I did not imagine I would be held here to reckon with my imagination, unable to die unless I captured it.”