My Clockwork Muse (9 page)

"Edgar! Edgar!"

I cried out in fear. The thing was shaking me
and I felt it slapping my cheeks. I blinked my eyes open. A black
shadow filled my vision. I drew back in terror, my heels digging
for purchase.

"Edgar! Wake up, man!"

The shadow resolved itself into a face, but
it was the face of Doctor Coppelius, not Burton. Confused, I looked
around and saw that I lay not on the stairs of the boarding house
basement under the flaming torso of a murderous cadaver, but in my
own bed and under my own roof. This seemed to have little calming
effect on me.

I pulled Coppelius close. "It was Burton!" I
cried, falling back at once against my pillows and covering my
face.

"There, there, Edgar. You have had a bad
fright, but you are safe now."

Coppelius tried to comfort me with his
too-sharp voice as he patted me with his too-coarse hands. I spread
my fingers, looked out and saw that it was true. I was safe in my
own bed. I let my hands fall away and saw Coppelius' bulging blue
eye peering at me from beneath his shaggy brow. As hideous as
Burton had been, Coppelius might have been worse. At least Burton
had the excuse of being dead. On the other hand, Coppelius was,
presumably, not trying to kill me.

"What happened?"

"You are safe now, my dear man," Coppelius
said with a strained smile—which did not surprise me, for all of
his expressions were strained. His countenance could be endured
only from a distance, and now I found myself nose-to-nose with the
man. And what a nose! It was a great twisted bulbous thing,
pock-marked and purple. It seemed to emerge like some mangled jut
of rock from a crashing sea of wild gray whiskers. He gave me his
usual cock-eyed look. One of his eyes was forever hidden under an
extravagant brow. The other bulged from its socket, a pale gauzy
blue eye. He pointed the hideous orb at whatever object he meant to
observe and now he was pointing it at me. I looked askance at it,
wondering how he could see through the thing. Even in my relief at
finding myself free from Burton, I recoiled in revulsion when he
laid his gnarled old claw atop my hand.

"But how did I come to be
here
?" I
asked.

"I brought you in my coach," Coppelius said,
turning his attention to a tangled wad of rubber tubing he now
clutched in one fist. It seemed to cling to his wrist and fingers
like a snarl of tiny snakes. He jammed it into his doctor's bag.
Before it disappeared, I thought I saw a flash of needle amid its
coils.

"But Burton..." I stammered. I felt a rising
panic as memories flooded back to me. "I was being pursued through
the ghastly dungeon. Pursued and
caught
, I should say!
Caught on the stairs, I tell you! The thing had me in its
grasp!"

"Calm down, Edgar," the old man said. His
gnarled claw made paternally for my shoulder, and I dipped it out
of the way in horror lest it touch me. In his other hand, he had
taken up a small glass vial containing some kind of red fluid. He
held it to the light shining in through the window and pointed his
vulture's eye at it. "It is over now," he went on, absently patting
the air above my withdrawn shoulder, and putting the vial into his
bag. Once the vial was gone, he turned his full attention to me. I
shuddered. "You were found on the stairs, Edgar, it is true. But as
to this pursuit you speak of..." Coppelius shook his head,
unleashing a halo of dust or dandruff from his wild hair. "Tell me:
what is the last thing you remember?"

"I have just said it. The ghoul was burning.
I felt its fingers on my ankle. Oh, God, I feel it still!" Under my
sheets, I shook my foot convulsively to cast off the lingering
sensation of those skeletal fingers. "I looked into its face. It
was as close as you are to me. There can be no mistake. Gruesome,
yes; disfigured, putrefying, twisted and torn—dead, I tell you!—all
true! But Burton it was, nonetheless. Billy Burton, whom I know to
be alive. It was his corpse that attacked me. I bashed its head in,
and yet it continued after me undaunted—"

"Mr. Poe!" Coppelius cried in shock.

I refused to be interrupted; I continued in a
loud voice, "—with its rotting brain spilling over its face. I
tried to reason with it. 'I did not kill you!' I cried. And yet it
sought its hideous revenge on
me
, an innocent man! So I
thought to consume the thing in flames—"

"Mr. Poe!" I had risen from my pillows and
Coppelius forced me back. "You are exciting yourself. I must
insist—"

I strained against his hands. "You think me
mad?"

"I think the only thing consumed in flames
was the basement itself." Still restraining me with one hand,
Coppelius reached into his bag and produced a vial of clear liquid.
He forced it to my lips. "Drink!" he commanded. I allowed the
substance to slide over my tongue and down my throat. He was my
doctor, after all. "There. That will calm you." As he withdrew the
glass, I saw in the doctor's handwriting on the label the word
'Laudanum.'

Far from calming me, the sight of the glass
sparked another urgent thought. The vial in my trousers pocket! Was
it still there? I made to jump from my bed when I realized I was
dressed only in my underclothes. That was when I first saw Olimpia
standing at the open door. I felt my face redden and I pulled the
sheets up to my chin. I wondered how much she had heard. I was
suddenly afraid that perhaps I
had
sounded mad.

Oh, but she was beautiful! Her radiance
seemed to brighten the room. She was wearing the same tall stylish
fur hat I had seen her in yesterday, as if she had just come in
from outside, though the day was warm. She wore a high-necked
blouse and a pair of silk pantaloons which fit snugly around her
hips. Dressed out of time and place as usual, it was a fit that
might have been considered scandalous were any other than her
father and I there to see her. I, however, was enchanted.

She smiled wanly when she saw my eye catch
hers. Her red lips parted slightly. Noticing my embarrassment, she
lowered her gaze, but I could see that she looked upon the scene of
her father's work with practiced neutrality. Whatever she had heard
from my lips, she had no doubt heard a thousand times before.

Seeing her now in the company of Coppelius, I
pondered how divinely gorgeous her mother must have been to offset
her father's hideousness in producing such a lovely daughter as
Olimpia. I found it an intriguing puzzle, however much the idea of
a wife to Coppelius repulsed me.

"My trousers," I said, with a little
embarrassment at calling attention to my condition. "Where are
they?"

"You needn't concern yourself with your
trousers just now, Edgar," Coppelius said. "You must rest. I
daresay, you are fortunate to still be among the living."

"That's what I've been saying." I rose up
from my pillows again only to be forced back down.

Coppelius pointed his eye at me crossly.
"What you have been saying makes no sense. Monsters ... Bah! You
would be well-advised to speak a little less freely of monsters and
dead men. As your doctor, Edgar, I understand your condition ...
The challenges you face. Others might be less understanding."

"You think I imagined it." The thought came
as a revelation to me. My words were more accusation than
question.

"I think you were fortunate not to be killed
in your own fire, Edgar."

My flesh began to creep. "My own fire?" It
sounded too much like Gessler referring to 'my man Burton'.
My
man?
My
fire? By God, I was
sleeping
when
Gessler ushered me into that foul dungeon! I struggled for words to
express my outrage. "Are you saying ... What
are
you saying?
That I set some fire? It was the dead man, Burton, who was burning!
And even then, he continued to pursue me, engulfed in flames!"

Coppelius frowned. "You continue to speak of
this dead man, this Burton—"

"But he lives, I tell you." How could I
explain what I myself did not understand?

"Then let the living be!" Coppelius snapped.
"For your own good. I'm telling you, no more talk of Burton. Or
ghouls. Or ghosts."

"But I am only saying what happened."

Coppelius cocked his eye at me sharply. "And
I am only saying, Edgar, that the firemen who rushed into that
blazing basement, pulled you52 \f "Times New Roman" \s 12
and you
alone—
from the flames."

The words struck me in the face with greater
force than even the spray of spittle from his misshapen lips. He
sat scowling at me, his spit-moistened mouth twisted into a baleful
frown. I looked past him and saw Olimpia slide out of the doorway
and disappear into the other room.

"Me alone?" I repeated in disbelief. "None
other?"

Coppelius shook his head sadly.

I suddenly felt beset by enemies. I knew what
Doctor Coppelius thought, that I had imagined the creature. Gessler
believed even more—that I had killed the man to begin with. I knew
only what my senses conveyed to me. Unfortunately, what my senses
conveyed to me was madness.

Once my shock had subsided, however, I found
the explanation actually rather quite simple. Of course!

"Obviously," I said with equal measures of
hopefulness and certainty, "the fiend was consumed in the flames.
He must have been consumed utterly. My God, man, he was
half-consumed when I ... when I left him!"

"There was no fiend, Edgar."

"Then how do you explain what I saw? Are you
calling me a liar, sir?"

"If I believed you lying, son, this matter
could be easily put to rest. As it is, I’m afraid there is no
simple solution."

"Then you think I'm mad." By God, it was
true! I wanted to leap from my bed and run, but my clothes had been
taken from me. I looked wildly around the room. Was I a
prisoner?

"Not mad—" Coppelius began.

"Then what else can it be? Who but a madman
would believe he was chased by a corpse when he was not?" I found
myself laughing. "Is this a common enough delusion that a sufferer
should just shrug his shoulders and say 'I must have been
mistaken'? What trick of light produces corpses bent on
murder?"

"Not a trick of the light," Coppelius said,
"but a trick of the mind." The doctor gave his temple a few taps
with a twisted forefinger and fixed me with a grave look. "A fever
of the mind. A fever that produces not murderous corpses, but
hallucinations and—"

"Somnambulism," I finished for him.

Coppelius nodded. "Somnambulism," he agreed.
"Triggered by trauma. The death of your wife ... This business with
the police ... I understand this condition of yours, Edgar. The
police do not, and will not be as forgiving, in any case."

"I have done nothing that requires
forgiveness," I said feebly. The drug was beginning to cloud my
mind. "You think I boarded a train to the city in my sleep?"

"If asked, that is precisely what I intend to
say." Coppelius took the vial I had drunk dry and replaced it in
his black bag. When he was finished, he turned and patted my hand.
The clammy feel of his leathery palm made my stomach turn. "For
your own good."

"For my own good? You mean to tell the police
that I am mad? And that is for my good?"

"The police think you intended to burn the
entire building down."

"They think
what
?" The drug must have
been affecting my hearing, making it sound as though the police
suspected me now of arson. Perhaps there was more than laudanum in
Coppelius' glass. "For what reason would I be suspected of
intentionally starting a fire?"

Coppelius stood, bag in hand. "To destroy
evidence," he said. "It is lucky for you that I managed to spirit
you away before you started babbling to them about this ... this
fiend of yours. This dead man you speak of—"

"Billy Burton."

"Yes." Coppelius thrust his top hat onto his
head. His coarse gray hair jutted from under its brim like sheaves
of dry wheat. "This dead man should remain our secret." He tapped
the side of his great purple nose. He may have been winking, but I
couldn't see his eye under his overgrown brow. His bulging
vulture's eye merely stared.

"But—" I started to say, thinking to tell him
that it was Burton who would now be my salvation. The dead one, who
had started the fire, would exonerate me of arson. The living one
would exonerate me of murder.

I would have attempted to explain this, but
there came to my ear at that moment the familiar sound of tapping.
I did my best to ignore it. It was coming from the sitting room,
beyond the door. When Coppelius gave no indication of hearing, I
smiled at him in my most casual manner. He smiled back. At the best
of times, the tapping was maddeningly insistent. In the company of
others, I found it was all but unbearable. A line of sweat broke
out on my forehead.

Coppelius scrutinized me closely. "You look
flushed, Edgar."

I waited to see if the tapping showed in his
expression, that if by some twitch or prick of his ear he might
reveal his awareness of the sound. But he gave no sign. I felt as
though he was having me on, that we were locked in a contest to
which neither of us could admit.

My eyes never wavered from his. "It is this
business of the evidence that has me agitated," I said.

I looked around again for my trousers and
finally found them hanging over the back of a chair within arm's
reach of my bed. Grasping handfuls of the fabric at a time, I soon
felt the shape of the laudanum vial concealed within the pocket. It
was still there!

"Far from destroying evidence," I said with a
burgeoning sense of triumph, "I have preserved some."

I was about to produce the vial when I
suddenly8212 \f "Times New Roman" \s 12and without any solid reason
known to me—thought better of it. I let my hand fall away and
instead told him about the trowel. I concocted some nonsense on the
spot about how it could be examined to ascertain ownership and
usage. Coppelius was unimpressed.