“Rachel, who has convinced you that your husband can be brought back to life?”
“I, I-” She folded her arms under the lavender shawl, a barrier against Poe. She aimed her chin at him. She feels anger and fear, he thought and so do I, for she is now in the hands of those who will harm her if they can.
He shook his head slowly. His southern voice was softer than usual. “And so they have you as well.”
She spun around, her back now to him.
Poe hurried around the sofa, a hand reaching out for her. He wanted to protect her. “Rachel, they are frauds!”
“They are not!”
“Rachel, these newfangled spiritualists are obscene frauds, please believe me. It is a new fad and will soon be exposed for the dangerous nonsense it is. Spiritualists claim they can evoke the dead. Rachel, they cannot. They claim to be able to speak to the dead. They cannot. They claim the dead speak through them and I tell you this is not so. Oh Rachel, do listen, I beg you!”
She covered her face with her hands and Poe took her in his arms, stroking her long hair. “Rachel, Rachel.”
Poe despised spiritualism because he pursued the truth in all things and this was lies, merely another affront to what little human intelligence could be found in this boorish nation. Money changed hands of course, for as Washington Irving had told him, the almighty dollar reigned in this democratic land.
In dark rooms and for large fees mediums throughout New York City were causing tables to turn and tilt, musical instruments to play through the touch of invisible hands, spirits to “write” on slates, bells to ring, bodies to levitate in darkness and even glasses of water to overturn.
And this trickery was growing ever popular in America. In New York spiritualism was an epidemic, a most lucrative one to be sure, with victims prepared to believe over logic and sanity. Spiritualism was on the rise because people like Rachel would do anything, pay anything to hear that the beloved still lived. These days, no one asks after your health, but how does your table turn. Good and how is yours, sir. Spiritualism was fraud for money, a rising fad and one which Poe wanted to see exposed.
She looked at him and he felt her pain.
“Eddy, I love him as much as you loved Virginia. I want him back.”
“You will never see him alive.”
“Eddy, get him back for me. Bring us together again. Please.” Her fingers dug into his arms. Her intensity and determination were unnerving.
“Rachel-”
“He is waiting for me to-”
Poe grabbed her shoulders and shook her, shouting at the top of his voice. “Not in this world, not in this world! You must understand this. You must! The dead have no place in this life, in this world, not your dead, not my dead, not-”
A fist banged on the door. “Missus, are you-”
Rachel shouted, “I am fine, Charles. There is no need for alarm. Please return to your duties and thank you.”
Poe lowered his voice. “Do not do this, please! Flee these people. They will only harm-”
“Miles Standish will not harm me!”
“Miles Standish.” Poe’s hands dropped from her shoulder. Miles, with his historic name, was the lawyer for Rachel and her husband, a man Poe knew had too much interest in the dead. He was obsessed by the medical profession and spent hours watching the dissection of cadavers. He was wealthy, educated and he would be responsible for arranging for the ransom money to be withdrawn from Rachel’s accounts. Poe, who felt that Miles’s interest in Rachel was growing more personal than professional, did not like him. It was more than jealousy; on first meeting, Standish had made fun of Poe’s threadbare clothes and Poe had retaliated with a cutting remark that had drawn laughter from those present. Poe knew Miles Standish would never forgive him for this public humiliation.
He said, “Did Miles arrange for you to become involved with-?”
“Oh Eddy.” She walked away from him. “Miles wants me to be happy.” She stood looking through a window out onto Fifth Avenue at a hay wagon moving slowly on the cobbled street. “Hay is expensive, Eddy, did you know that. Thirty dollars a ton.”
“Damn the hay!” He gripped her shoulders and turned her around to face him. “Rachel!”
Her face was streaked with tears. “I will die without him, Eddy. Please bring him back to me. Please.”
“Rachel, I-”
“You know how it feels, you know the hurt, the emptiness. You told me.”
Poe bowed his head. “What do you want me to do?”
“I trust only you, none other. Go to Mr. Standish tomorrow. He is away today on business. I shall give you a note. Speak to him about the ransom. Tell him to begin arrangements now, to have the money ready so that, so that…”
“I shall.”
“Thank you.” She touched his cheek with one hand. “Tell him to see me when he has spoken to my bank. I do not want him in this house until he has done as I asked. Please let him understand this.”
“A question.”
“Yes.”
“Who is the spiritualist in whom you have placed your trust?” And your funds, he thought.
She hesitated.
“Rachel, you ask much of me and I do it willingly. But in turn, you must be honest with me.”
“Paracelsus. He calls himself Paracelsus.”
Poe threw back his head and laughed. “Paracelsus. To hear this name is worth my trip this morning through the snow. Paracelsus.”
Poe continued to laugh until he again sat down on the green velvet couch. “I raced from my sleep, such as it was, to arrive here early enough to make my report and now you tell me that a spiritualist calling himself Paracelsus has promised to reunite you and-”
“I will not have you scorn him!”
Poe quickly stood up. “My apologies, dearest Rachel. It is just that the name is of such magnitude that I could not help but be impressed. The original Paracelsus was one of the most startling figures in magic. A sixteenth century Swiss university professor, brilliant, arrogant. He was magician, physician, alchemist, philosopher. It is said he achieved miraculous cures-”
“I do not want to hear more. You mock me.”
“I do not.”
“Then you will do as I ask?”
He nodded slowly.
“I thank you, Eddy.”
And even though she stood in front of him, she had closed a door and Poe was no longer able to touch her.
“Rachel-” He had to make her see that the dead do not return.
She walked back to the window.
Outside in the February cold, Poe pulled his cloak around him and waited for an omnibus which would take him to a train. From there he’d leave for the country, for his small cottage in Fordham where there was work to do. Mrs. Clemm, his mother-in-law, the dearest friend left in his life, lived with him and it was she who found these horrid and untalented women who paid her a few dollars to have Poe praise and edit their poems. Humiliating labor but it put bread on the table.
More than once, Poe had sat alone on a rock near his tiny cottage and muttered of his “desire to die and get rid of these literary bores” with their fluttering fans, huge crinolines and handkerchiefs soaked in ether against the odors of dead horses and manure clogging Manhattan streets. He and dear Muddy needed the money, so do it and be done. Then rest and tomorrow, Miles Standish.
Eddy Poe, “a soul lost,” “a glorious devil” in the eyes of women who collected lost souls, now had less than one dollar in change in his pockets. He turned to see Rachel staring through the window at him and when she saw him looking back, she vanished.
Someone called his name.
Poe quickly brought his head up from his chest. He was awake and listening.
He was in his cold, bare cottage and seconds ago, he’d fallen asleep in the small sitting room, chin on his chest and slumped on a wooden chair. His sleep was fitful, uneven, a tortuous escape from reading the wretched poetry of women whose hands should be removed to prevent them from ever picking up a pen again. Believe the Talmud when it says-Who can pro-test and does not, is an accomplice in the act. Poe’s protest against this drivel had been to slip into uneasy sleep.