Tell me if you can do so—and let me hear that it is your fixed purpose never to yield to temptation.
If you should come to Richmond again, and again should be an assistant in my office, it must be expressly understood by us that all engagements on my part would be dissolved, the moment you get drunk.
No man is safe who drinks before breakfast! No man can do so, and attend to business properly.
I have thought over the matter seriously about the Autograph article, and have come to the conclusion that it will be best to omit it in its present dress. I should not be at all surprised, were I to send it out, to hear that Cooper had sued me for a libel.
The form containing it has been ready for press three days—and I have been just as many days deciding the question.
I am your true Friend, T. W. White I let it fall. I couldn't remember when I'd felt this weak. Nevertheless, I struggled, I rose, I crossed the room to a small mirror and studied myself within it—my face yet not my face. Haggard, red-eyed. I rubbed my temples again. So poor Poe was drinking too much, and this is what it felt like.
How had I wound up in his body?
I recalled Ligeia's hands drifting past me, doing things with the stuff of life itself it seemed. I remembered Valdemar, Peters, Ellison. And my last encounter with Poe. Did he think Annie was dead?
Could that be the cause of his present unhappy state?
If that were so, might it change things for the better with him if I were to leave him a message? I looked about for something to write it with.
"Eddie!" the voice of an older woman, from the next room. I elected not to answer it. "Eddie! Are you up?"
There. On the small table by the window. A pen. An inkwell. I hurried to them. Paper.
Paper ... ? The man was working for a magazine. He must have some paper. None in the drawer—
"Would you care for some tea, Eddie?"
Aha! In the box beneath the table.
I drew up the room's only chair, collapsed upon it. How to begin? I would have to refer to our shared experiences with Annie.
How many visions of a maiden that is, I wrote. And then the strength went out of me. I put down the pen. I could hardly keep my head up. At my back, I heard the door open. Curiosity bade me turn, but I was too weak to do it. I slumped.
"Eddie!" I heard her cry.
I was already losing myself again, floating, drifting away. Her voice grew tiny. My muscles went numb and the world turned gray. Then something stirred the currents of life inside me and shadows drifted across my eyes.
After a long while I sighed and looked upward. Ligeia's face was near, brows slightly knit in what might be an expression of concern as she scrutinized me.
"How do you feel?" she asked.
I shook my head and I patted my stomach. The feelings of hangover had vanished.
"Fine," I said, stretching. "What happened?"
"You don't remember?"
"I remember being in another place, in someone else's body."
"Whose?"
"Edgar Allan Poe's," I said.
"The one of whom you asked Monsieur Valdemar?"
I nodded.
"We go way back. And I'll bet he was here in my body while I was off in his."
It was her turn to nod.
"Yes," she said, "and he seemed either drugged, drunk, or mad. It was difficult to gain control, to send him back."
"Why did he come in the first place? Does this sort of switching happen often?"
"This was the first time I've ever seen or heard of it," she said. "That was a very strange man. It was almost as if I'd conjured some dark spirit."
I decided against asking what her experience was in the dark spirit area. I'd had enough excitement for one morning.
"He asked after an Annie," she continued, "and said something about his heartstrings being a lute. If he is not mad he must be a poet. But I wonder now—whether the thing that led to the transfer lies with him or with you."
I shrugged.
"Wait. Did not Monsieur Valdemar say you are somehow the same person?" she asked. "That would explain the metaphysics of it."
"Like all metaphysics, it explains nothing of any practical value," I said. "I am neither mad nor a poet.
My heart is not a musical instrument. I'm just in the wrong world, I think, and so is poor Eddie Poe. I don't know how it came to pass, but the man we're following had something to do with it."
"Rufus Griswold?"
"I believe so. Yes, that's right. You know the man?"
"We met once, in Europe. Years ago. He is dangerous—in some highly specialized ways as well as the ordinary."
"I gather he's some kind of alchemist."
"More than that," she said. "A black magician of some persuasion I do not know."
"Ellison thinks he interfered in some fashion with a relationship between Poe and Annie and myself to produce the present state of affairs, giving him Annie as a guide, displacing us all from our respective worlds."
She spread her hands and met my eyes.
"I do not know," she said. "But I find the idea fascinating. Shall I see whether I can learn more about it?"
"Please."
I rose.
"However ..." she said.
"Yes?"
"I'd like to question Monsieur Valdemar every morning, at about this time," she said. "The routine will be good for him."
"It will?"
"Even the dead need good work habits," she explained. "And I feel that, as head of this expedition, you should be present on these occasions."
"I guess I should," I agreed. "Too bad."
I headed for the door, halted when I reached it.
"Thanks for—everything," I said. "See you at lunch."
She shook her head.
"I take all my meals here," she told me. "But you're welcome to join me sometime."
"Sometime," I said, and I went out. The passageway about me was suddenly filled with white fire.
"Comment?" I heard Ligeia say, as at a great distance, right before her door fell shut.
"This way, Perry," a familiar voice called out. "Please."
It being the voice of the one lady I would walk through fire for, I moved ahead. But even the living can use a little peace and quiet, I reflected, momentarily envious of Valdemar.
IV
... Down the corridor of white fire, like a tunnel of flowing silver or a melting ice cave, rushing, I went.
For Annie called, and it seemed she must be just a bend away. But I turned a corner, I climbed, I turned again, and the brightness flickered—almost pulsing—and she still seemed just as near, but no nearer.
Again, I climbed.
"Annie!" I called out, at length. "Where are you?"
"Where I always am," she answered, her voice suddenly higher-pitched. "On the beach."
"I can't find you. I seem to be lost," I shouted.
Abruptly, the flames parted. For an instant, I was taken back to a long gone day. Nor did it seem unnatural that Annie as a small girl stood beside a pile of brushwood, a gleaming seashell in her hand, a line of troubled ocean visible beyond her right shoulder.
"Annie! What's happened?" I cried.
"It's Eddie," she said, "Edgar Allan... ."
"Poe," I said.
She frowned, then nodded. "Yes," she agreed. "Poe, too. And he's denying us. He is drawing away, and it hurts."
"I don't understand. What can I do?" I asked.
"Talk to him. Tell him we love him. Tell him we're real. Tell him—"
The flames closed again, hiding her from my sight.
"Annie!"
"I can't stay!" I heard her call out, weakly.
"How can I help you?" I cried.
I became aware of a pulsing in my hands, and then the ground began to sway and my shoulders were suddenly straining and the flames were flapping audibly.
"Annie!"
What I took to be the beginning of a response proved only the cry of a bird. But it might well have been a thunderclap for the drastic change it seemed to signal. Immediately, the flames became the flapping canvas of a sail, the throbbing thing in my hands a line leading to the nearby mast. My feet rested upon another line, the rolling of the vessel transmitted to me through it. My height above the deck made me uneasy and I gripped my line more tightly. I have always been bothered somewhat by high places, and a windy—possibly pre-storm—morning at this altitude troubled me considerably.