Editor’s Note: The original of this manuscript, thrice folded and brittle with age, was found secreted in a volume from Poe’s own library, now in the rare book collection at the University of Virginia. To date, it remains the only unpublished Poe MS extant. The editorial comments noted here, found on the MS in Poe’s own hand, give the reader an inside look at the Master honing his craft.
Prof. Daniel Curran, Charlottesville VA
To-night, what a gleeful guest have I! He grins at me confidentially from across the chamber, oblivious to the pestilential draft that courses from the open window sash–flowing, then ebbing, like icy pulses from some monumental heart {author’s note: is the heart thing going to be a running gag in every story?!}
Ensconced safe and tight {I’ll say!} in my library, I reflect upon my visitor, we two surrounded by towering shelves of both familiar and forgotten volumes of ancient lore {and some pretty racy French gazettes!}. The flames in the flagged hearth flare fitfully, like leaping, dancing sprites {or that guy in Riverdance, but not as effeminate}. My silent friend regards me from his chair from across the room.
And what a meet {jeez, why not just say “suitable?” The last person to use “meet” was like Thomas Aquinas, for crissakes) evening for a rendezvous with a colleague as ghastly as thou. This is the final day of October, the eve of All Hallows {do I have enough of those mini Three Musketeers [TM] for those little fiends who troop by the house like sailors on liberty and who bent that little arm thingee on my mailbox last year?}
Familiar friend, you there sporting your all-knowing grin, like the leer of a clown in a subterranean circus, with stalactites {are those the downward facing ones??I.} dripping sulfur, surrounded by covens of black-cloaked judges {reminds me of a Cirque-du-Soleil act I saw once; and there’s nothing scarier than a French clown, believe-you-me!}.
But why need I dissemble further; why hide your identity? You, my malodorous comrade, are a human skull. A memento mori I chanced across in some tenebrous bazaar in Bombay {I think it was actually a Pier One in Bethesda}. And my yellowing sentinel, chuckling homunculus, squats there as I write this, grinning all the while.
Mon Frere, your smile is archaic, the bores of your black eye sockets a half-glimpse into the inner circles of hell! You are the one who laughs last. You confront me, and my readers {all nine of them} with questions implacable and eternal.
— Is the fate that lies beyond us fair or foul?
— Why strive for wealth or station when each of us shall join you anon {Anon??! Jeez!!}
— Do the dead monitor or mark the lives and days of the living, with envy or pity?
— {Did I put the cheese back in the icebox?}
Hark! I hear the toll of the parish church bells. ‘Tis midnight. Bing! Bong! Bong! Bing! Dong! {I think they get the idea}…The candles gutter and flare. The shriek of a night bird rings from beyond the window panes {and if it’s that G.D. raven again, who shat on everything, this MS included, he’s got a surprise waiting in here in the shape of a tennis racquet!}.
But what is this I espy? My companion’s expression has undergone a distinct change. Your smile has dissipated! You no longer bear the distinctive merriment of your genus! Never was beheld before a skull that frowns, as this one now does. It is as if you were recalling anew the terrors of your tomb!
And now the curtains of my study are lifting— twisting, writhing, even dancing, as if alive {not unlike that Wyeth painting with the blowing curtains in the bedroom, which frankly always gives me the willies}. Can it be…?
It is your spirit returning! Now enters my abode a vengeful ectoplasm intent on haunting the Owner of its earthly remnants! {especially if you somehow found out how little I paid for it/you}. I shriek and…
Hang on a sec. Oh. My bad. It was just the curtains blowing in the draft I mentioned. And the skull is still grinning. It was merely a play of the light, the legerdemain {look it up, you illiterates!} of the fluttering candle– so like the human soul, and as easily extinguished!
No, loyal reader, the one who laughs last, still laughs indeed.
{Huh?! What kind of finale is this? FAIL! I really need to watch the brandy and laudanum cocktails! Re-write!!}
Fall, 1847
