and she had come out to the museum.
The afternoon was waning, but...
There was still sun.
And shadows, she thought, going into the parking garage. For a moment, she paused, turning quickly. She had felt certain that she was being followed.
She saw no one. But since she couldn’t see anyone, she spoke aloud.
“You wretched little bastard! If you’re following me, just show yourself. And if you can’t have the manners to do so, well, shove the hell off!”
No one replied. She tensed, hearing a footstep. It was just a man in a hoodie, hands deep in his pockets. He looked up at her as if she was crazy, shaking his head. He didn’t speak to her, but muttered beneath his breath.
“I’m not following you, lady. Take a pill.”
Wincing, Vickie let out a breath and hurried to the elevator at the parking garage, and then across the asphalt to her own car. She got in and set her key in the ignition.
It was then that he spoke.
“Good afternoon, miss.”
She nearly broke the key in the ignition, switching it off, turning to stare at the ghost.
It wasn’t that she was in the least afraid of the dead. Dylan Ballantine—the teenaged ghost who had saved her in high school—had taken it upon himself to be her near constant companion and torment her through a great deal of her college years. Now, he had a lovely girlfriend, Darlene—a young woman sadly lost to killers, but who had reached out to Vickie to help solve her case. She was used to having spirits around.
It had nothing to do with fear. It had everything to do with Poe’s ghost following her around and popping up in her car.
He was now seated next to her in his suit, waistcoat and an ascot. A curl of his dark hair fell over his forehead.
“Ass!” Vickie muttered, so startled that she was shaking. She was glad—at least—that he had spoken before she’d driven out into traffic.
Then she realized that she had just called a man who had created work she had admired all her life an ass.
But he did not seem to be offended.
Rather, he grinned at her with sheer pleasure.
“Wonderful! You do see me, and quite clearly!” he said. “I mean, one must face it. There were times, indeed, when I might have been compared to the lowliest of the beasts of burden! But I beg of you, believe this! I can be charming and sincere and offer the utmost assistance as well. And, my dear Miss Preston—oh! First, forgive me being so forward, but I observed some of the most recent events and heard your name. I am, of course, Edgar Allan Poe—and I do believe that you need assistance!”
“Sir, I will tell you this,” Vickie said, irritated and amazed that a ghost could make her feel so aggravated, “I see you clearly.”
His pleasure increased; his dark eyes twinkled. “I’m quite overcome—so deeply pleased. Why, it hasn’t been since...perhaps 1921 or so, when Mr. Abraham Grisham was in the city that I was able to speak so simply and easily with the living. He was a charming man—quite well lettered. He spoke to me at the burial ground. Oh, you mustn’t think that I spend my days sitting melancholy in the cemetery—despite the words I wrote. I... Well, I’m not at all sure what I’m doing here, but, my dear young woman, I dearly hope that you realize I wrote fiction, and that I was no ghoul!”
“No, of course not. I had a dream about you, about the day you died,” Vickie said.
“You seem like an intelligent young woman. I’d not have whispered in your ear as you lay sleeping had it not appeared so. I listened at the restaurant... You were knowledgeable. I was so pleased. So many people see me in such a sad light. As if I did nothing but haunt old, decrepit, decaying houses crumbling apart! Graveyards by night... They seemed to think I was a drunken, broken man, even in death, wasting away on a tombstone. That was that wretched Griswold—Rufus Griswold.” He stared at Vickie, as if waiting for her to say something.
She did. “Rufus Griswold. You attacked him with some rather pointed criticism of his work. When you died, he found his revenge. But you see, in the end, of course, you won. People became enamored of your work more and more with each year. I can assure you, very few people today would know the name Griswold—but there is probably no one who has ever attended a school in America who has not heard of Mr. Edgar Allan Poe.”
“Bravo, Miss Preston, and words most kind. Far sweeter to my ear than those I heard before! Imagine—those that came harsh upon the ear before as you traversed the garage! Such rude words to fall from such rose-like lips!” the ghost said, shaking his head. “Dear me! Not that I have not known my share of opinionated members of the gentler sex, but...you can be quite hasty and devilish in your speech!”
She narrowed her eyes. “Trust me, I’ve said worse. Usually, when your kind makes acquaintance with me, it’s because they need help. If you wish for some kind of assistance, Mr. Poe, it’s not good manners to pop up here and there, and then disappear, testing the sanity of the living.”
He still looked at her, amused.
“Should I care? I’m afraid I’m quite beyond help, though, to be honest, I don’t at all understand this existence.” For a moment, he looked stricken—he had an expression that suited every description of him as a haunted and miserable man who had led a life of substance abuse, scraping for an income, continually plagued by death and misfortune in those around him. “My Elmira has gone,” he said. “All those I would call beloved, or friend—or even enemy. So...you, Miss Preston, surely need help. Not me. Therefore, I am at my leisure. You may do the groveling, if you so choose.”
“You may get out of my car, if you wish to be so rude,” she said.
He smiled at that. “My apologies! It is not my intention to be rude. You have no grasp of what it is like to be among the dead. Here on earth. Quite uncomfortable—I mean, those unused to being critiqued and disparaged would barely make it! People walking through you, not seeing you, not noting a pleasant, ‘Good morning!’ And those of my kind. Oh, the wailing and lamenting! Quite enough to give one a dreadful headache—I mean, had one actually had a real head that might ache!”
She had actually been really angry—as much as she admired Poe. She’d simply seen the dead most of her adult life, and there was one thing she knew for a certainty. They were very much like their living selves. Some were giving, some needed help, some were kind—and some were self-absorbed and self-righteous and not so nice.
“Do you know what happened to Franklin Verne?” she asked him.
“Most sadly, I do not,” he told her. “But of this, I’m quite certain. He did not kill himself. He did not fall back into the ways of sin or the flesh or into a vat of wine, as they might well say! I knew Franklin Verne. Well, I did not know him as those who called him friend might know him—I know the man because I observed him. He was a good man. A good writer. He loved his wife very much. I felt that we were kindred spirits.”
Vickie studied him, waiting. It had been, she knew, way too much to hope that the ghost of Poe, having appeared in her dream and now in her car, had all the pat answers she might need.
“He loved his wife, and she loved him,” Vickie said.
He nodded, grave now, not taunting or teasing. “You see, he reminded me of where I was when... Well, I don’t know what happened at the end myself, but I am referring to the point when I left this earth. When I died. I was on a train...and then I was dead. I have been listening to theories ever since. But that is no matter now. It is far too late to be solved. But so—here is one truth. Sarah Elmira Shelton was my first love. We were so young...and in love as only youth can be in love. Her father betrayed us. I went on. And believe me, I did love my Virginia. Dear, sweet, innocent Virginia! So very lovely! And yet, she was gone. And then I was back in Richmond, and there was my Sarah Elmira, a widow herself. She was no flushing young rose; time