Poe must die

TEN

“Believe,” said Paracelsus.

“I do.”

“Believe!” The word was a command.

“I do believe, sir. Oh I do, with all my heart.”

“Then I can bring your wife to you once again, but only for an instant. It is not easy to control the spirits of those who have gone on ahead. They are now free, you must understand this. Free from all worlds, all restraints-”

Lorenzo Ballou leaped from his chair, voice breaking with pain. “Dear God, anything! I will do anything you ask, pay any amount. Only bring her to me once more, I beg you!”

Paracelsus gently lifted a white-gloved hand from the table, pointed it at Ballou then lowered the hand to the table once more. As if by magic, Ballou sat down.

“Mr. Ballou, I do not seek your money. I require only that you place your faith in me without reservation, for without your complete commitment there is little I can achieve.”

Ballou, 250 pounds and 5’4”, wiped his perspiring forehead with one of his dead wife’s lace handkerchiefs. He was jowly, with pink flesh from his face and neck dripping over an expensive collar and silk cravat. His puffy and gray mutton chop whiskers smelled of his wife’s perfume, which he watered in order not to run out of it. Ballou, fifty-five, was rich from crooked real estate dealings; two months ago his nineteen-year-old wife had died in a fall from a new horse he’d purchased for her.

“Dr. Paracelsus, you have given me more than any man ever has. Twice you have united my dearest Martha and me and I cannot convey how much this has meant to me.”

“I understand.”

“You tell me things about Martha and I, things no mortal man could possibly know and oh, how reassuring it is to hear them once more.”

Paracelsus nodded. Lorenzo Ballou was a toy, something to mold into a believer who would open his wallet willingly. Paracelsus, a large man with shoulder-length white hair that appeared to glow in the dark candlelit room, touched a white beard that reached his chest and knew that today, Mr. Ballou would be most generous. The spiritualist, himself a ghostly looking figure in a floor-length white robe, could sense when a survivor’s gratitude was about to overflow. Mr. Ballou’s certainly would, especially after the little tableau Paracelsus was about to unfold for the widower’s private viewing. This would be a most successful and lucrative seance.

The two men were alone in a totally dark room lit only by five black candles on a table of black marble. Paracelsus had made Martha Ballou appear on two occasions. And now once again it was time for the grieving Mr. Ballou to view the dearly departed.

“Extend your hands, Mr. Ballou. Both hands. Yes. Keep them flat on the table and extend your fingers until they touch mine. Yes, yes.”

The fat man did as ordered, his eyes on Paracelsus’ face. The spiritualist had a majestic nose, large but far from comical. It belonged on a king, thought Ballou, on a man used to ruling others. And his eyes. A burning green. You that was it. A burning green, eyes of green fire. And behind those eyes was a power to bring dear Martha back to this world again. Ballou’s heart was about to burst with joy, fear, anticipation.

And then he felt something brush his face. The fat man looked up at the ceiling to see rose petals falling down on him.

“Her favorite flower!” Ballou’s shout filled the small room. “How did you know?”

Paracelsus, eyes closed, placed his hands on top of Ballou’s and pressed down hard. “You must not move. You must not disturb the spirits or they will retreat.”

“Yes, yes. Oh please don’t let her go away. I-”

Ballou listened.

Then-“That song. It’s one she used to sing on the stage.” He turned around in his chair and saw a trumpet floating in the air. The trumpet glowed in the dark, a shade of green almost as bright as Paracelsus’ eyes.

“Who is there? Who is playing-” Ballou tried to leave his chair, but the spiritualist, using surprising strength, pressed down harder on his hands, keeping the fat man in place.

When Ballou turned to face Paracelsus again, he looked down at the table and suddenly inhaled. Jerking both hands free, he picked up the pearl necklace. “But, but this is at home in my safe! It belonged to Martha and no one has the combination to the safe but me. Where-”

“Lorenzo. Lorenzo.”

The fat man snapped his head towards the woman’s voice and when he saw her, his eyes widened and he whimpered like a puppy, exactly like a puppy, thought Paracelsus.

“Martha, oh Martha dearest!” Ballou wept, his corpulent body shaking, his jowls shiny with his tears. He is mine, thought Paracelsus. I have him now.

The ghost was in a doorway behind a curtain of yellow gauze. A slim woman, dark haired and pretty in a pale blue robe with a hood that hid half of her face. She stood with her right profile to Lorenzo Ballou and had both hands folded in prayer.

“I come to you, dear Lorenzo, for only a moment. Only a moment.”

He stood up. “M-Martha.”

Paracelsus spoke swiftly. “If you go towards her, she will disappear. Obey me or she-”

He didn’t have to finish. Ballou sat down, his tear-stained face still on the ghost behind the yellow gauze curtain. A wet whale, thought Paracelsus, but a rich one and that is what concerns me.

“M-Martha. M-M-Martha.” All Ballou could do was sit and weep. They had so little time together before her death. Three months married, then-

“Lorenzo, dearest, you should not have killed Zachary and Beau. You should not have done that.”

The color left the fat man’s face and his breathing stopped. Zachary was the name of the horse Ballou had given her and Beau was the Negro groom who had saddled it for her. The day after his wife’s death, Lorenzo Ballou had taken both horse and groom deep into a wood and killed them both. The fat man, crazed with grief, had been alone when he’d done the killings.

“Martha, I-”

Her voice was gentle. “It was not the fault of the horse nor of dear, faithful Beau. They did not deserve to die, Lorenzo, but I forgive you. That is why I have come, to tell you not to have further nightmares about what you have done.” The ghost maintained the prayerful pose.

A stunned Ballou looked at Paracelsus. “I did not, I, I-”

Paracelsus lifted his white-gloved hands shoulder high, as if in a blessing. “I am not your judge. So long as you believe in me, no harm can come to you.”

“Yes, yes.” Ballou licked his fat lips and wiped more perspiration from his face. A nigger and a horse. Both were his property, to do with as he wished and neither had been missed. Ballou’s story was that the horse had been stolen and the nigger had run away, probably ridden away on the back of the stolen horse, who had been named Zachary after General Zachary Taylor, victorious general in the recent American war against Mexico.

“Martha?” Ballou looked at her. “Are you happy? Is all well with you?”

“I am supremely happy, Lorenzo.” The trumpet floated across the room, still playing the tune Martha had been singing when Ballou had first seen her, the tune she frequently sang around their lovely home. The tune, the ghost, the necklace and the dark room and Paracelsus’ green eyes. Lorenzo Ballou now had no will of his own, no mind but the mind that Paracelsus wanted him to have. The fat man wanted to believe, wanted to hear the voice of his wife and his own mind was as much Paracelsus’ ally as any deception the spiritualist could devise.

“I miss you, Lorenzo, dearest. I think of you and hope you think of me.”

“Oh I do, I do. Every day of my life, my love.” The tears would not stop flowing.

“Perhaps I can come to you again. The power lies with Dr. Paracelsus, If he can continue his work, if he can-”

More rose petals fell and the smell of Martha Ballou’s perfume was now stronger than ever in the room. A mother-of-pearl comb fell from the ceiling. Hers. It clattered on the black marble table and Ballou recoiled from it as though the comb were a snake. Again he looked up at the ceiling, at falling rose petals and the flying green trumpet which continued to play that song and when he again turned towards the ghost, she’d vanished.

He screamed her name, leaping from his chair and waddling across the room with all the speed in his fat, squat body. Reaching the doorway, he jerked the yellow gauze curtain left, right, all the while still whimpering like a puppy abandoned by its mother.

When he looked at Paracelsus, Lorenzo Ballou was a broken man.

“You must bring her back, you must!”

“My work is not my own. I am controlled by forces beyond my knowledge. Soon I must go, I must leave this place.”

“G-go? I do not understand.”

“I only serve.” Paracelsus bowed his head. “I follow my calling wherever it leads-”

“S-stay.” Lorenzo Ballou was on his knees, clutching the hem of Paracelsus’ white robe, then touching it to his lips. “I will give you any amount of money if you will only stay.”

“I cannot.”

“I beg you stay.” Ballou touched his forehead to the floor, his fat body shaking as he sobbed. “Ask-ask anything of m-me, anything and I shall do it. Only do-do not go. S-stay and b-bring Martha back to m-me.”

After Lorenzo Ballou left, Paracelsus locked the front door of his home, leaned back against it and sighed, nodded his head several times in complete satisfaction with all that he had achieved concerning the fat man, then returned upstairs to the seance room.

In his absence, gas jets had been lit and a beautiful woman with dark brown hair parted in the middle and a beauty mark to the left of her small mouth, sat with booted feet on the black marble table. Her shapely body was naked under an organdy negligee. She drank claret from a handcut crystal glass and smoked a tiny black cigar. Her name was Sarah Clannon and she lifted the glass to the spiritualist who ignored the gesture and walked directly to a full-length mirror, turning his back to her and taking off the long white wig. Dropping it to the floor, he pulled off his white robe, then removed shoulder and stomach padding, also letting this material fall at his feet. Since all around him did his bidding, it was just as easy for them to pick up after him as well. When he’d removed his false nose, he used the hem of the robe to wipe most of the makeup from his face.

Now he looked slim, handsome, thirty years younger. His face and body were perfect. Still wearing the white gloves, he stood nude before the mirror, gazing into his own hypnotic green eyes and when he smiled at his reflection, his eyes remained detached from any movement of his lips.

Sarah Clannon, eyes on the naked man, brought the small cigar to her lips. “How much?”

“Fifteen thousand. In gold. Personally delivered tomorrow by Mr. Ballou and his banker. And more to come.”

Her smile was dazzling, as pleased with him as it was with the money that would be hers tomorrow. She was an extremely sensual woman with eyes that lured and mocked, except that the naked man she now stared at with deep interest was someone she would never mock. She said, “Have someone oil that trap door. It almost stuck and had that happened, I would still be folded under this rather musty floor.” She blew a perfect pale blue smoke ring at his back.

He seemed entranced with his own eyes. “Laertes must be informed that his trumpet playing should coincide with the speed of the second trumpet as it flies overhead. One must do a thing perfectly.”

“I failed to notice, being preoccupied with my ethereal state. I thought I was an excellent dead wife.”

He turned to her and when he smiled, the effect on her was amazing. Her heart speeded up and she actually felt weak in the stomach. Only he, of the many men in her life, had that power over her. She neither knew, nor cared why. That he possessed it was enough. That she responded to it was everything.

He said, “Dead wives, dead wives. Last night Mrs. Edgar Allan Poe-”

“And damn cold it was in all that snow. I thought he would scream himself to death.”

“And this afternoon, Mrs. Lorenzo Ballou-”

“A whore fortunate enough to marry a wealthy thief. A whore who died while riding to meet her lover. What would Mr. Ballou say were he to learn that his wife was a slut who met her death because she was unfaithful.”

He said, “It would kill him and therefore impoverish us. Did you send Charles-”

“On the swiftest horse possible to the home of Mr. Ballou, where Charles will see that the pearl necklace and comb are placed back into the safe before Mr. Ballou arrives. You amaze me.”

“How so?”

“I would have thought Mr. Ballou would have clutched that necklace to his ample bosom and never turned it loose. But you accurately predicted that the combined effects of music, roses and the sight of me, his dear dead spouse, would so cloud his mind that he would not even remember his name. And so it did.”

He nodded. “And so it did.”

“With help from your eyes, my love. You rule us all with but a single gaze.” Her tone was mocking, but only gently. She believed in his power over all who were around him. She feared that power and because she feared it, she was drawn to him. He was a challenge, a man whom she could never control and therefore had to have.

He began to peel off the white gloves. “I wish you to handle any remaining monies owed to Mr. Ballou’s servants.”

“And to his lawyer?”

“And to his lawyer. All those who gave us needed information should be paid as soon as possible. Which brings me to Martha’s fellow whores-”

“Done,” she said. “Paid in full yesterday.”

“Excellent. Come bathe me.” He walked towards the onyx bathtub which had been placed in the room near the black marble table.

She stood up, ready to obey him. As always. “What of Mr. Poe?”

He eased down into the warm water. “Ah, yes. Mr. Poe. Twice we have presented him with visions of our choosing and twice he has found cause to doubt his own senses. Let us see if there is any change in him, if he is now more inclined to see other worlds as more real than this one.”

“And if he does not choose to believe as we wish him to believe?”

His eyes were closed. “I shall destroy him.”

She nodded, giving no more thought to Poe’s fate that she did to the floor beneath her. She was on her knees at the side of the tub, her hands slowly rubbing the warm water into his flesh and when she reached down into the tub, she took one of his hands and brought it to her lips, kissing it.

The little finger was missing. As it was on the other hand.

Jonathan, his eyes still closed, thought of the Throne of Solomon.

And of Asmodeus.