Nevermore

Isobel let her eyes stray from her father to scan the faces of her classmates. Everyone stared. Even Bobby Bailey, who usually laid his head on his desk, had sat up to listen.

“Perhaps, Professor Nethers,” Isobel ventured, “you can enlighten us about some of the details surrounding this mystery?”

Varen, maybe remembering Isobel’s whispered plea, took his cue. “For five days Poe went missing,” he said, his voice slicing into the stillness of the room. “He was found near a tavern in Baltimore in a state of delirium, wearing someone else’s clothing. He was then taken by his cousin and a doctor friend to the hospital.”

“Yes, I remember now . . . ,” Poe whispered.

“The doctor’s reports say that Poe raved for days, talking to imaginary people and invisible objects on the wall.”

“Demon!” Isobel’s dad shouted suddenly, shooting a finger out to point at the ceiling. With a collective shriek, the entire room jumped in their seats. “Thing of evil!”

A strange feeling stole its way over Isobel. Her brow knotted, and she felt her jaw tighten and set. As she watched her father improvise, her hands pressed down on the desktop while her thoughts and her memory slowly wound around reawakening fears. She remembered now that Varen had mentioned this in the library, that first time they’d met for the project—how Poe had screamed out to invisible beings while on his deathbed.

“On the night before he died,” Varen continued in a solemn tone, “he began screaming out a name, shouting it for more than a day, calling for someone no one knew. Someone Poe never reportedly knew, either. Someone named Reynolds—”

Isobel gasped audibly. Prickling white spikes of fear and panic shot through her, freezing her mind and stalling her body. She sat stunned, her eyes on Varen while her memory projected onto her mind the image of a black-shrouded figure.

Isobel had no way of telling how much time trickled by before she registered Mr. Swanson’s voice. Apparently, however, it had been long enough for him to guess that this wasn’t just another part of the presentation. “Isobel,” he said, “are you all right?”

Dazedly she looked for her father, who had all but dropped out of character to stare at her with a “What’s going on?” look on his face.

“Uh,” Isobel croaked, fumbling for the radio. Flustered, she pressed play, then pause, then stop. “That’s the—all—all the time we have today,” she stuttered, pressing play again in an attempt to cover her mangled lines. The tail end of another round of clapping trickled lamely through the boom box before dying out.

Her father made a hesitant bow, now to the live though somewhat sporadic applause of the class, whose attention had begun alternating between Isobel and Varen. No doubt they were wondering what they’d missed.

“I, uh, shall take leave of you now,” her father said, backing toward the door. He shot a questioning look at Isobel. She nodded at him. It was all she could manage. “Yes,” he affirmed, turning back to the class. “Here I take my leave, to return to this realm— nevermore!”

Isobel watched numbly as her father swept dramatically from the room, pausing at the door long enough to jiggle the light switch before ducking out. The bird dropped from his shoulder and onto the linoleum. A black-cuffed hand shot back in and snatched the bird out again. Isobel scowled, vaguely recalling having begged him to leave out the light switch part.

The bell rang, ending the class in what felt like a whirlwind. Everyone shot up from their seats, papers flapping, notebooks dropping, laughing and talking. Mr. Swanson rose too, announcing over the clamor, “Okaay, then. Very good job, everyone—and their parents, I suppose,” he added with a pointed look at Isobel that normally would have made her gulp.

“Papers up front, if you please. Your grades will be ready some time next week and, from there, we’re going to talk a little bit more about Mr. Poe, the antebellum era and the Romantics, then we’ll pick up on writers of the Civil War era. Have a very safe Halloween tonight, go Trenton Hawks. Pull up your pants, Mr. Levery, I don’t need to see your boxers—everybody please stay out of trouble!”

Trouble. Isobel’s gaze fell to the swirling grain of Mr. Swanson’s desktop, her brain repeating the word. She was in trouble.

Reynolds.

Hadn’t he been something purely out of her subconscious? Or could Varen have mentioned him before? No. No, she would have remembered that. Her dreams. Had they been real? It was the only explanation, she realized. It was the only thing that explained everything. The Poe book. She had thrown it away. The figure in the door at practice. The image in the mirror.