I sat in the hotel room in nowhere West Virginia as Chuck scavenged for food. We had driven over seven hours toward home, but we were physically exhausted, more so emotionally spent, and we knew we couldn’t drive straight through to Michigan. However, searching for a vacant room took well over an hour since every hotel was booked—mainly because there just weren’t any hotels in the area as it was pretty desolate. I wondered if our dinner might not be cookies and chips from the vending machine down the hall.
After changing into my cotton pajamas, I turned on the small RCA television and crawled under the itchy and loud flowered bedspread that covered the full-size bed. I was startled when I heard a throat clear. Propping myself up with two uncomfortable foam pillows, I looked over to see Poe sitting in the gray tweed desk chair staring out the window at the sunset that had colored the sky pink.
“I’m tired, Edgar,” I said flatly, grabbing my glasses off the nightstand and putting them on. I was almost legally blind without my contacts or glasses.
“And testy, too,” Poe added, grinning back at me while smoothing his dark hair back with his left hand.
“You must be wearing off on me.” I took a deep breath and bit my tongue so not to say anything more.
Poe laughed heartily. There was something about him that felt lighter, and I wondered if perhaps I had extracted his normal moodiness with my empathic ability. I moaned out loud at the thought, which only made Poe cackle louder.
“I promise that I won’t bother you for long, I just wanted to be a tattle.”
I raised my left eyebrow at him in question.
“Alto’s missing,” Poe crowed.
“What? Are guides allowed to split?” I bit my bottom lip, trying not to panic. Alto has been my guide since birth and he was my most helpful and sensible guide. This wasn’t like him. “What did you do to him, Edgar? Did you piss him off?”
“I am insulted that you would think such a thing!” Poe huffed. “He said something about reconnecting with his ancestors.”
From the stories Alto had told me, when he was alive he originally lived in the Carolinas. It all made sense. Ever since we had passed the North Carolina border on the way to Asheville, I had stopped feeling his presence. And then there were the oddities with the séance at the Reynolds Mansion. Alto, who always acted as my spirit guard, didn’t. He was also in charge of making sure that my business continued and that I had clients, yet I hadn’t received one booked client since I left Michigan. He planned this all along. I was ticked off.
“Looks like I am your mainstay.”
I groaned, threw the pillow over my head, and pretended to suffocate myself when I heard Chuck unlock the door. Although I was starving, the smell of the pizza mixed with Poe’s announcement made me feel instantly nauseous, and I think I turned a shade of green.
“Are you okay?” Chuck looked at me, puzzled.
I swung my legs off the side of the bed and pushed the blankets away. Chuck gave me a peck on my cheek and handed me a piece of ham pizza that, although feeling physically ill, I graciously took a big bite of. “I will be. I just need nourishment and sleep.” And for Alto to come back, I said silently in my head.
“No, seriously, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Normally Chuck didn’t press, so I thought it best to just tell him. He knew about Alto and Tallie, just not Edgar. I knew that it still wasn’t the right time to confess, so I said what I knew he would understand.
“Alto’s gone.”
“Like he’s been kidnapped? Or we lost him en route? He couldn’t have died; he’s already dead.” He scratched his cheek in confusion, smearing tomato sauce on it, which made me laugh and broke some tension. I took a napkin and wiped it away.
“Are guides allowed to do that?” he asked.
“I think he took a vacation without telling me.”
“After forty years with you, I’m sure he needed it,” I heard Poe sarcastically interject telepathically to me.
I agreed with him. What a frustrating job my guides had. Maybe I shouldn’t be so angry. But really, couldn’t he have at least forewarned me? Alto was the strong and quiet type, but he was also dedicated to a fault. But to leave me with Poe, who probably flirted erroneously with Tallie so that she decided to jet, too. I wasn’t seeing or feeling her much lately either.
“What are you going to do?” Chuck asked, taking another bite of his pizza. I looked over to where Poe had been sitting to see if he might have a suggestion, but I found only an empty seat.
“I’m not sure,” I sighed, throwing my half-eaten pizza away in the garbage. I plopped back down on the bed, hoping the ceiling would miraculously have an answer written on it. It didn’t. I would just have to deal with the missing-in-action guide when I got home. Or hope that he would show up from his holiday soon.
It would be another two weeks before Alto came back, but not before I put a call out that if he didn’t show up as soon as possible he would be replaced. And secretly while Alto was gone I held out hope that he would return quickly because Poe was driving me nuts and I needed my reliable, go-to guide to help me deal with him.
Just as Alto decided to show up for Spirit Guide duty, Poe came to me demanding another trip.
“We have to do what?” I asked, agitated.
“You have to go back to Baltimore,” Poe repeated.
I held my head, feeling a headache coming on. “Sure, I can just hop on a plane and tell the family that I have business in Baltimore when I don’t. How exactly do you want me to explain this?”
Poe had already thought up an intricate plan and was ready to pounce on me the moment I questioned him.
Just a few months beforehand, Chuck and I had traveled to Gettysburg. “Haunted locations are where most everyone spends their anniversary, right? Or maybe that’s just us,” I had commented over and over during our trip. I had also said that the kids needed to visit, so Poe thought that a combined trip—flying into Baltimore, driving to Gettysburg, and then driving back to Baltimore would fit quite well with his scheme. And seeing how much I loved and adored Gettysburg, he had me there. But just to make him sweat, I contested.
“Nope. I have no money nor do I have time, Edgar. It won’t,” I looked him straight in the eyes, “and cannot work.” Walking away from him without offering him a chance to debate it gave me the upper hand. Or at least that was how I saw it.
For several months Poe continued to beg for me to make the trip, and I continued to defend my original decision. But secretly I was plotting in my head how to instigate the trip with Chuck. I, too, felt the need to get back to Fell’s Point, walk the cobblestone streets, and visit the alleyway. I wanted to challenge my visions and empathic mediumship. There were answers to some of the secrets that I felt needed to be shared, so I decided to use that as leverage.
It was still dusk when I climbed out of bed. Chuck’s CPAP machine breathed in and out, helping Chuck to not snore and to sleep deeply. He didn’t move when my white and gray Siamese kitten climbed into my place and snuggled up next to him.
Without turning on any lights, I sat on the red couch in my living room, my mind filled with worry and wonder. I could feel my guides around me and thought this might be the best time to have a heart-to-heart with Poe.
“Tell me about Reynolds, Edgar, and I will think about talking to Chuck about a trip,” I asserted.
The morning was a gloomy one and instead of sunshine, storm clouds rolled in. Poe stood in front of me with a blank look on his face at first. Then, he mumbled something about me being incorrigible but nonetheless sat down on the living room’s paisley-patterned armchair and began.
“First we have to discuss Mary Rogers.”
“The premise of your book The Murders of Rue Morgue?”
Poe puffed his chest out and smiled.
“This case, and your book, is still mentioned in criminology classes, Edgar. When I took Introduction to Criminal Justice at the university, your book and this case was one of the first discussions, along with the introduction of the notion of ratiocination—the exercise of reason in the process of analyzing clues.”
“And so it should be,” he proudly added to my eye roll. “Can I begin now, or would you like to share the story with me?”
I smirked and made a motion that I was zipping my lips.
“Mary Cecilia Rogers was a stunningly beautiful brunette and a charming twenty-year-old. She was hired to stand behind the cigar counter but for one reason: to attract men, which ultimately worked. She was easy to talk to, and even more so, easy to look at. However, she wasn’t the brightest girl.”
I laughed. “It sounds like maybe Mary is Kim Kardashian reincarnated.”
Poe looked at me with a puzzled look and sighed. He had been with me long enough now to realize I didn’t sit quietly through stories.
“But it was the summer of 1841 when she became the talk of the town. Not for her beauty, but for her death.
“Born in 1820, Mary lived a comfortable life in Connecticut until her father and three of her half brothers died and her mother had to sell their property and relocate to New York City. There, Mary and her extraordinary looks came to the attention of John Anderson. He was a young entrepreneur who was looking for a gimmick for his newest business, Anderson’s Tobacco Emporium. He hired Mary at a generous wage to work, smile, and flirt behind the cigar counter. The store catered to professionals, mostly that of writers, reporters, and those working in the city’s nearby government offices. Mary’s so-called fame made her
notorious and thrust her into the limelight, which made her uncomfortable, or maybe more so made her mother uncomfortable, if not maybe even jealous. What truly happened was John Anderson and Mary were having an affair and her family was dissatisfied with the arrangement. The very reason he hired Mary was making him horribly jealous. When one of her half brothers claimed some riches and opened a boarding house, she moved on to help him with his business, but within a year he, too, would die.
“No matter where Mary went, her fame followed, though. Soon Mary had two very serious suitors—Alfred Crommelin, a tall, handsome, and polite man who had been a boarder at the house, and Daniel Payne, a common worker who was a cork cutter by trade. Her mother also detested Daniel, who had no money and was an alcoholic, but Mary didn’t care about that. She fell in love with Daniel and accepted his hand in marriage after previously being engaged to Alfred.”
“Now that sounds scandalous in itself,” I added.
Poe ignored me and continued.
“On July 25, 1841, a Sunday morning, Mary went to Daniel’s apartment and told him she was going to visit her aunt. She asked Daniel to meet with her early that evening. That evening a severe storm rolled in, and when Mary didn’t show up Daniel thought perhaps Mary stayed overnight to wait out the storm. But Mary never showed up the next day. When Daniel went to her aunt’s house, she was unaware that Mary was to make a visit at all.
“It is here that it gets a bit complicated,” Poe warned.
I was sitting on the edge of my seat. I always loved a good mystery, and one of the best storytellers was sharing the tale with me.
“Mary’s so-called mother, her current fiancé Daniel, and her former fiancé Alfred Crommelin all searched without results.”
“Wait,” I held up my hand to stop him, “what do you mean so-called mother?”
“Oh, apparently promiscuity ran in that family. Mary’s mother was actually her grandmother. Mary’s true mother was more than likely her mother’s eldest daughter from her first marriage.”
“Did she know that?” I asked, thinking how skeletons were buried deep in every family, in every time period.
Poe nodded. “She had to. Phoebe would’ve been forty years old when she had Mary. Now can I continue?”
I made a gesture for him to get on with it.
“In a panic, an ad was placed in the newspaper asking for any information on the whereabouts of Mary Rogers and to please inform her mother. Because of Mary’s past profession as the Cigar Girl, and her interaction with the many newspaper reporters and editors, the story quickly became a media frenzy and made headlines.
“She had previously disappeared before.”
“What?” I asked, stunned.
“Yes, just a few days before this incident. Her mother claimed that she found an apparent suicide note and took it to the police only to discover that Mary was visiting with friends.”
“Was it a suicide note?” I asked, confused.
“No,” he dryly replied.
“And did you know Mary personally?”
Poe nodded. “I was living in Hoboken at the time. Would you please just let me continue?”
I sighed and gave him a thumbs-up.
“It was that Wednesday after Mary went missing when she was found by two men from Hoboken, New Jersey. In an attempt to cool down from the hot summer day, they had taken refuge by Sybil’s Cave, a popular spot on the Hudson River. They spotted something floating in the shallow waters, ran down the dock, and borrowed a boat to see what it might be. Their attempt to fish it out helped to make the discovery of Mary Rogers’s badly beaten and decomposed body.
“The coroner’s report was grisly. Mary’s angelic face had been badly beaten. There were finger indentations around her neck, along with a garotte of lace from Mary’s clothing that was submerged in her skin and tied in a sailor’s knot. Her hands had been tied and her back was raw, which indicated that she had been dragged for quite a distance. Fabric from her clothing was used to strangulate her and used as a gag. Finally, there were bruises and abrasions covering her private areas.”
“She had been raped?” I asked in disgust.
Poe once again glowered at me.
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
“The coroner described the corpse in his report as ‘… her face was swollen, the veins were highly distended. There was a mark about the size and shape of a man’s thumb on the right side of the neck, near the jugular vein, and two or three marks on the left side resembling the shape of a man’s fingers, which led me to believe she had been throttled and partially choked by a man’s hand. It appeared as if the wrists had been tied together, and as if she had raised her hands to try to tear something from off her mouth and neck, which was choking and strangling her. The dress was much torn in several places … a piece was torn clean out of this garment, about a foot or 18 inches in width … this same piece was tied round her mouth, with a hard knot at the back part of the neck; I think this was done to smother her cries and that it was probably held tight round her mouth by one of her brutal ravishers. Her hat was off her head at the time of the outrage, and that after her violation and murder had been completed, it was tied on.’
“Furthermore, the doctor concluded that in no way had she been pregnant and believed that more than two or three people had committed the horrible murder.
“Newspaper editors and those associated with the Penny Press, which was much like a tabloid magazine today,” Poe explained, “many of which knew Mary, had a field day with the reports. They began reporting their own theories, as New York at that time was becoming unruly and even dangerous with a large amount of immigrants and gangs. But to make matters worse, there wasn’t a police force, so instead a group of constables and magistrates gathered together to bumble their way in hopes of solving the case and publicly charged every one of Mary’s suitors, and there were many, but they were all cleared.
“Mrs. Frederica Loss ran a tavern called Nick Moore’s House in the woodlands near Hoboken, not far from where Mary Roger’s body had been brought to shore. Her smart business sense with the tavern earned her enough money to buy several acres where she raised her three less-than-stellar sons.
“One month after Mary’s disappearance, on August 25, 1841, two of her boys were supposedly collecting sassafras bark when they discovered articles of women’s clothing, including a handkerchief monogrammed M. R. and women’s gloves. They immediately brought the mildewed and crumpled items to their mother. It would be a week or so before Mrs. Loss contacted the authorities.”
“Why?” I asked, confused.
“Think about it, Kristy. Use logic. With Frederica Loss’s new celebrity status, her tavern became the hot spot for spectators. She made a statement to police that she had seen Mary on the day of her disappearance with a man of ‘dark complexion.’ She said that they came into her inn at about 4:00 on the afternoon of Sunday, July 25, and the landlady served them refreshments: liquor for the man and lemonade for Mary. Loss went on to say that she heard a scream in the evening and thought it was one of her sons. She later forgot about it all when she found her children safe.”
“That sounds fishy for sure!”
“It was. Loss’s story began to disintegrate, especially when the Herald reported that Mary Rogers was wearing gloves when her body was discovered and it was unclear why there would be another pair of gloves found in the thicket on Loss’s property.”
“It was Mary’s ghost that began to unravel many. And maybe still does,” Poe added.
“Even you?” I squinted and looked at him.
He swallowed hard and continued.
“Mary’s fiancé, Daniel Payne, plunged into a deep grief after Mary’s death. The already alcoholic cork cutter drank even more heavily and his brother feared that Daniel was slowly going insane.”
I was going to say something witty but thought it best not to interrupt again.
“In the weeks following Mary’s death, Payne was under suspicion in her death because of the Tattler’s assertion that the body taken from the Hudson was not Mary Rogers at all and Payne had to identify her body. It was soon after that when Payne confessed to many that Mary’s ghost was visiting him. Most people assumed that it was the spirits—as in alcohol—and not really Mary’s spirit. It all became too much for him and on the morning of October 7, 1841, Payne left his New York lodging, caught a ferry to Hoboken, and stopped in Loss’s tavern. He asked for directions to the thicket where his love’s clothing had been found, and on his way purchased a small bottle of the poison laudanum and some brandy. Sitting next to the thicket, he took out a piece of paper and wrote: To the World—here I am on the very spot. May God forgive me for my misspent life. Putting the note into his pocket, he quickly consumed the poison.”
“And he died there?”
“Not yet … ”
“Laudanum took some time to work, apparently, so Payne went back to Loss’s tavern for more liquor. He finally stumbled back to the place where Mary’s body had been brought ashore. He lay down on a bench there and died.”
I held up my hand to once again stop Poe. This all was just too similar to Poe’s own passing. It was all becoming a bit clear to me. “He was poisoned. He didn’t commit suicide,” I cried.
Poe ignored my outburst. “His suicide brought the Mary Rogers case back to the headlines, although his cryptic note was seen as an admission of guilt as his murderer had hoped. Plus, he had an iron-tight alibi and
numerous witnesses who saw him on that fateful day. But murder was not at all what anybody thought. Instead, they saw him as a love-struck romantic who could not bear life without his Mary.”
“What happened to Frederica?”
“In October 1842, innkeeper Frederica Loss was accidently shot by one of her sons.”
“There are an awful lot of accidents,” I sarcastically said.
“For over two weeks Frederica lay on her deathbed, in and out of consciousness, and often shouting at the ghost of Mary Rogers. In her last moments, Ross confessed that Mary Rogers and a young ‘dark and tall’ doctor arrived at her inn on that Sunday and Mary had an abortion
performed, from which Mary died of complications. Frederica said that her son assisted in sinking Mary’s body in the river where it was found. Mary’s clothing was discarded in a neighbor’s pond, but afterward thought unsafe, so it was found and scattered through the woods.”
“And that is what you ran with in your second mystery. Detective Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin believed the murderer and the lover to have been a naval officer of dark complexion who had previously attempted to elope with Mary, or Marie,” I corrected, “Dupin believed that he killed her the next time they saw one another. Did you honestly believe that to be the truth?”
“Who are you talking to?”
I jumped and grabbed my chest. Chuck stood in the doorway between the living room and kitchen just staring at me, curiously.
I blushed. “I am going over a new story I am thinking of writing,” I explained, pointing to the notebook in my lap.
Chuck scratched his gray whiskers on his chin and grinned cockeyed. Walking over to me, he kissed me on the nose. “You would tell me if you were planning on killing me, right?” he joked.
“Oh, for sure,” I laughed.
“It’s a good thing I’m okay with weird, Kristy.” He walked into the hallway and into the bathroom.
“You have no idea,” I mumbled. Noticing that Poe had disappeared, I decided to make some blueberry muffins for breakfast. Baking had a way of soothing my nerves.
I was a ball of nerves that whole day waiting to hear the rest of Poe’s story. With my busy life, that wouldn’t happen till later that evening. Then the kids were busy in their rooms, Chuck had crashed on the couch in front of a Detroit Tigers baseball game, and that gave me time to escape.
“You know that there was, and still is, speculation that you were Mary’s murderer,” I began our conversation. It made me wonder for a split second if guides were allowed to be criminals. Could it possibly be a way to help with karma? I shook the thought out of my head.
Poe huffed. “I loved and lost. I never loved and murdered—except in my stories,” he added with a wink and a sideways grin.
“So … tell me the real story,” I prodded, grabbing an ivory cable-knit blanket off the back of the couch, wrapping it around me and preparing myself for story time.
“I did know Mary,” he confessed. “Most every male that worked in that area knew her. She was hard to miss. Her bright smile and effervescent personality, well she had an innocence about her that made men want to take care of her,” Poe shrugged.
I eyed him with curiosity, but before I could ask the question he held up his hand. “No, Kristy, I didn’t have an affair with her. But I had taken her to dinner one night not long before she went missing. We discussed our very dysfunctional families and our even more misadjusted lives.”
I thought for a moment, feeling a tad bit like Nancy Drew. Carefully I began, “Edgar, do you think that perhaps
someone saw you with Mary and thought she was a threat—and killed her because of you. And killed her boyfriend just the same?”
Poe grinned with pride. “Now you are beginning to understand how to properly reason.”
His grin disappeared just as quickly as it appeared.
“You feel guilty don’t you, Edgar?”
“Yes, Kristy. I do. Although I did not kill her, she was murdered because of me. And that puts blood on my hands just the same.”
My stomach felt sick, and I wasn’t so sure I wanted to hear the remainder of the story, but I knew that whether I was prepared or not, he was going to share it with me. I rested my hand on my soured stomach and nodded for Poe to continue.
“Well, you know how sensitive I am … ”
“Wait. What? Sensitive or insane?”
“Both,” Poe jested. “I knew that she was having a difficult time after leaving her job at the cigar shop and how disastrous her family life was. I thought I would engage her with my company over food and drink to help cheer her. Honestly, who wouldn’t want some time with me?”
My sick stomach churned, now because of Poe’s overly blown ego.
“It was small talk, and I bored quickly,” Poe conjured up his memory. “But she was a sweet girl, with many dreams, all of which were being contained by who she called her mother. She wished to travel and she wished to love, but not to the men whom she was betrothed. She asked for my assistance in finding her a means to travel.”
“Travel to where?” I questioned.
“She didn’t much care.” Poe shrugged. “Somewhere, anywhere that nobody knew of her. Funny how so many want that celebrity status and yet many who have it try to run away from it.”
I understood that all too much through Poe’s own stories. He sorely wanted to be recognized, but at what cost? It sounded as if Mary had gone through a similar ordeal.
“I saw a man sitting in a leather cushioned seat near the doorway of the tavern. He was shrouded by shadows, with a strong chin that he raised proudly, as if already savoring a victory. He looked like an obsessed fan, the way he stared at us. But was he an admirer of mine or possibly one of Mary’s? I wasn’t sure which at that time. I all but ignored it and forgot about it—until she was noted as missing.”
“Don’t tell me that you were at Loss’s Tavern.”
“We were.”
We all have our own quiet obsessions. Something that grabs our eye, holds our attention, or simply pulls at our heart. Something we can’t help but look at. I’m not sure if it’s because we are looking for something, or if the something is looking for us. But regardless, we all feel it. That pull, or that whisper that softly beckons us, and no matter how we try to steer clear of the obsession, we become even more obsessed. My obsession has always been figuring out the whodunit. I knew that was one of the major bonds Edgar Allan Poe and I shared.
“I had hoped that when she was reported missing she had just taken off for a new life. Until they found her body.”
I could sense Poe’s remorse, even after so many years.
“I began my research to find out who he was after offering the information to the police and finding that the police were close to nonexistent and those who pretended to be law officers were incompetent.”
“Sounds like not much has changed,” I smirked.
Poe’s shoulders slouched as he implored the memory. “Her ghost visited me, Kristy. She asked me to make what was wrong to right. It made me wonder where the boundaries which divide Life from Death lie. Shadowy and vague at best. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins? And so I thought by writing her story in the only way I knew how that something would come of it.”
“Well, Edgar, most women don’t want it publicized that they died as a result of an abortion!” I criticized.
He hung his head. “It was merely my way of showing that she died within, from lack of having a childhood. She was whored out by her own family! And the killer within the story was in a way me because I didn’t save her. Today it still remains a mystery in history books.”
“But if you know the truth, Poe … well, maybe I can help,” I offered sympathetically.
Poe had a reputation for being fueled by passion, which was often interpreted as madness. He was a man who wanted justice and honesty to prevail, but he lived in a lifetime where it didn’t exist. Illnesses and death were an everyday occurrence. Pirates were the norm and people owned slaves and called it good and rich. Even Poe himself was raised to see slaves as a commodity. I often wanted to debate slavery with him, but seeing as he passed away before the Civil War, I wondered if he would understand. Although we were in a different time and place, so much was the same, so much had gone unchanged.
“Or maybe it will put you in harm’s way,” Poe contemplated.
“After over 160 years,” I laughed, “I doubt it. What, is the ghost of the killer going to come and haunt me? Or maybe I will have a curse put upon me!” I howled.
Poe shook his head and looked at me with steel eyes. I pursed my lips together with regret. But before I could allow him to continue or apologize for acting silly, my phone rang. Despite not recognizing the out-of-state number that showed on my caller ID, I answered it anyhow.
After about a fifteen-minute conversation, I hung up the phone. Poe was still staring at me with a bored look.
“That was a paranormal group in Fort Wayne, Indiana. They want me to come speak at their upcoming conference and investigate with them at a 1900s Masonic Temple. How cool is that?”
“Kristy, remember that there are no coincidences in life.”
“Only pure synchronicity,” I completed his thought. “What do the Freemasons have to do with Mary’s murder?” I sarcastically replied.
Poe shoved an unlit candle jar off the table in an impromptu fit of rage. Guinness, my Australian Shepherd, jumped and barked at Poe, which woke Chuck up from his nap. He came storming into the living room, reprimanding the tricolored pooch. If Guinness could only talk, I just know that he would have squealed on Poe.
Great, I said in my mind to Poe. Now you got Guinness in trouble with your juvenile behavior. If you don’t want me to go to the conference I won’t, but you need to talk to me. And not with means of poetry, or code, or half stories, but with the whole shebang.
“Go, Kristy. You’ll see.” I heard him respond telepathically.
Angry and frustrated with Mr. Edgar Allan Poe, I told Chuck about the opportunity. He seemed just as thrilled as my famous guide.
What am I missing? I wondered. I realized that Chuck didn’t love paranormal vacations as much as I did. And I knew that Indiana lent itself to being one of the most boring states in the United States, but still.