Once Upon a Midnight Eerie: Book #2 (Misadventures of Edgar/Allan) (3 page)

“There should be an ‘Edgar’ and an ‘Allan’ variety,” Edgar observed.

“Yeah, and they’d look and taste exactly alike!” said Allan.

“Bay shrimp, sauerkraut, blue cheese, and jalapeños!”

And when they stopped at the New Orleans Pirate Museum, they were reminded of their friend David Litke. He loved pirates and would have been impressed by the life-size wax figures of the notorious brothers Jean and Pierre Lafitte, who had gained pardons from the United States president for helping to defeat the British navy in the early 1800s.

Pirates turned heroes—
that
didn’t happen very often.

“Maybe we should become pirates,” Edgar whispered to his brother as they lingered over a glass display case of crossed swords and authentic pirate flags.

“Good idea,” Allan said. “Except . . . our days are already pretty full being archaeologists, cryptologists, linguists, detectives, and cultural critics.”

They drifted toward a display case containing three gold coins, authentic Spanish doubloons. Above the case was a sign that read:

“Let’s go, everyone—time to move on!” called the tour guide.

For Edgar and Allan, the highlight of the tour came when the bus stopped outside the walled, centuries-old Saint Louis Cemetery, which boasted no grassy, parklike setting but instead consisted of row upon row of tightly packed, ornate, aboveground crypts. Crumbling stone angels and gargoyles watched over this chilling city of the dead.

“Let’s all stay together as we walk through the cemetery,” the guide announced as the group disembarked from the bus and started toward the ornate iron gates of the necropolis. “We wouldn’t want to lose any of you to local ghosts!”

Most of the group laughed, but Uncle Jack and Aunt Judith exchanged a look of anxiety.

They didn’t even like spooky movies.

So real cemeteries? Forget it.

With Roderick safely tucked inside Edgar’s backpack, the twins moved with the group up one avenue of macabre mausoleums and down another.

“Because of the damp conditions of the ground here in New Orleans, as well as the traditional burial practices of city founders, our cemeteries generally consist of these aboveground vaults,” the guide explained.

“Creepy,” murmured Aunt Judith, drifting nervously toward Uncle Jack.

Uncle Jack jumped, startled, when she unexpectedly brushed against him. “Yeah, creepy,” he agreed, taking her hand.

Edgar and Allan walked behind them, smiling.

They loved the place.

And then they saw something that made them love it even more.

In the oldest section of the cemetery, many of the names and dates cut into the stone mausoleums had been worn away by two centuries of wind, rain, and sun. Generally, these markers were evenly worn. But Edgar and Allan noticed one crypt that was different. It featured a marker upon which some letters had been worn away in the ordinary fashion, while the remaining letters showed no wear
at all
.

This was the sort of thing most people didn’t notice.

But Allan and Edgar had a gift for recognizing patterns where others saw only randomness. (Two connected brains were not merely twice as efficient as one, but many times more efficient.) They’d learned from license plates, fortune cookies, misprinted books and magazines, and countless other sources that the world was full of hidden messages for those willing to fully engage their perceptiveness and imagination.

They studied the two markers.

A missing “G” in Genevieve, “H” in here, “O” in our, “S” in “sister,” and “T” in “rest.”

G-H-O-S-T . . .

Then a missing “T” in “with,” “O” and “U” in “our” and “R” in “lord.”

The twins examined the inscription for Genevieve’s husband, Clarence, noting the order of missing letters on his marker.

Put together with those of his wife, the omissions spelled this:

GHOST TOUR MEETS HERE MIDNIGHT

WHAT THE POE TWINS DID NOT KNOW .  .  .

A REPLY TO GRANDMOTHER’S LETTER:

IN A KINGDOM BY THE SEA

THE
Poe twins sat in their dressing room, a converted RV parked on a French Quarter street, working a French crossword puzzle to honor the founding spirit and language of New Orleans. 3 across: “What daisies use to propel a bicycle.”
Pétales de fleurs
—flower petals. 11 down: “Has a head and tail but no body.”
Pièce de monnaie
—a coin. The boys put down their puzzle when Mr. Wender’s assistant, Cassie, strode into the trailer with a clipboard in her hand and a worried expression on her face.

“Boys, you’re due on set!” she shouted, her bracelets clattering. “Do you hear me?”

The dead could probably have heard her.

“There’s no cause for panic,” Allan said, spying her worried face in the mirror.

“Moviemaking is nothing
but
panic!” she answered emphatically.

Ordinarily, the twins would object to being hurried. They would have found a way to turn the tables on Cassie (such as setting her watch back, or changing the time zone on her smartphone). But today they chose to cut her some slack. After all, she was new on the job and probably just wanted to impress Mr. Wender, whose previous assistant, now hospitalized, had somehow ingested a small quantity of rat poison.

And it was, after all, their first day of shooting.

“Have you learned your lines?” Cassie asked anxiously.

The twins nodded, having rehearsed the night before with Mr. Wender. A “run-through” he’d called it (previously, Edgar and Allan had thought the phrase “run through” referred only to what pirates did to others with their swords).

“Then let’s go!”

Outside, the street swarmed with extras dressed in early nineteenth-century costumes, technicians, caterers, photographers, a few journalists, and a handful of production assistants who carried either clipboards (like Cassie) or cardboard trays balancing large cups of coffee.

“Hurry, hurry,” Cassie implored.

In the movie, this block of New Orleans would stand in for nineteenth-century Richmond, Virginia, which had been the boyhood home of Edgar Allan Poe. The two-hundred-year-old buildings had been renovated to look new. Even the wrought iron on the balconies glistened. Expert lighting cast some sections of the set in shadow and others in a glow as mysterious as moonlight. And a camera atop a tall crane would provide a dramatic overhead view.

The twins were impressed.

“We’ve no time to lose.” Cassie pulled the boys along, Roderick trotting behind.

“Is the set on fire or something?” Allan murmured.

“Hello, boys!” called Aunt Judith from across the set, near the buffet table. “Love your costumes!”

Uncle Jack stood beside her, talking in a loud voice about his love of old silent movies to a note-taking journalist who expressed gracious interest.

The twins started toward them to say hello, but Cassie put her perfectly manicured hands on their shoulders and steered them in the opposite direction.

“You’ll have time for family later. It’s moviemaking time now.”

In tonight’s scene, which would open the film, one of the twins would portray the author as a solitary boy meeting an entrancing twelve-year-old girl named Annabel Lee. Later in the movie, her character would prove the inspiration for one of the adult Poe’s most famous poems.

It was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know,

By the name of Annabel Lee . . .

The second and final of the boys’ scenes, to be shot the next day, would depict a dream in which the young Edgar Allan Poe meets his double—a good Poe/bad Poe confrontation. It would be the last scene in the movie. Originally, Mr. Wender had planned to use special effects to make one young actor appear to be two.

But then he saw Edgar and Allan on the evening news.

“Over there,” Cassie said, pointing to three canvas folding chairs with names stenciled on the backs—
EDGAR POE, ALLAN POE
, and (best of all)
RODERICK USHER
. “Hurry up and sit.”

Allan turned to her. “You rushed us here just so we could sit and wait?”

“Welcome to moviemaking, boys,” she answered blithely, before disappearing into the crowd near the buffet table.

Reluctantly, the twins sat.

“This movie star stuff isn’t as glamorous as people think,” Allan observed.

Roderick meowed in sympathy as he hopped onto his chair.

From someplace behind them, a girl’s voice responded to their comments.

“You two are lucky.”

The boys turned.

Sitting in similar folding chairs were twin girls of about the same age as Edgar and Allan. They wore identical black nineteenth-century-style dresses, and their auburn hair was long and loose. Their eyes were luminous, and their heart-shaped faces pretty, even if their attire seemed more suitable for a funeral.

“Are you talking to us?” the boys asked.

One of the girls nodded.

Edgar and Allan noted only the slightest difference in their appearances: in the blue irises of one were tiny specks of green that were absent in the pure blue eyes of the other.

“Why do you say we’re lucky?” Edgar inquired.

“Because she hurried
us
out here twenty minutes ago,” said the girls.

“Are you two playing Annabel Lee?”

The girls nodded.

Edgar and Allan were not surprised to meet another set of twins here. Film companies often cast twins to play a single juvenile role, switching between them on long working days. The girls had already appeared in five scenes with the adult Poe character, “haunting” him. This was their only scene with the Poe twins.

“Of course, our real names aren’t Annabel Lee,” said the girl with the green in her eyes. “My real name is Em.”

Em as in emerald, like the flecks in her irises—an easy way for the boys to remember which girl was which.

“And I’m Milly,” said the other.

“We’re Edgar and Allan Poe,” they said in unison.

“Oh, we know who you are,” Milly answered. She displayed a smartphone. “We’ve seen your pictures and followed your story on all the news sites. That is,
I
followed it.” She nodded toward her sister. “Em doesn’t go online.”

Em shrugged off the comment. “I’m more interested in the eternal than in that which is merely current,” she said. “In short, poetry. But I
was
impressed with your valorous deeds.”

“Yeah, after I told you about them,” Milly said. “Otherwise, you’d never have known.”

Em straightened in her chair and recited:

“Perhaps the kingdom of Heaven’s changed!

I hope the children there

Won’t be new-fashioned when I come,

And laugh at me, and stare!”

“See what I mean?” Milly said to the boys, shaking her head.

Edgar met Em’s eyes. “That poem’s by Emily Dickinson.”

She nodded and smiled.

“Who else would it be by?” Milly asked. “We’re the Dickinson sisters.”

“Em and Milly Dickinson . . .” Allan mused aloud.

“Emily Dickinson was our great-great-great-great grandaunt,” Em said proudly.

“That’s amazing,” said Allan. “Since our great-great-great-great granduncle—”

“Oh, we know!” Milly interrupted.

“But we don’t consider our meeting you to be a coincidence,” Em said. “See, we don’t believe in coincidence.”

The boys looked at each other—they didn’t believe in coincidence either.

“We believe in fate,” Em continued.

Edgar and Allan were impressed.

“Which of you is Edgar and which is Allan?” Milly asked.

Not an easy question . . .

“You can call me Allan, if you want,” one of the twins volunteered, for simplicity’s sake.

“And you can call me Edgar.”

The girls looked relieved. Then a wave of dismay crossed Milly’s face. “OK, but when you’re dressed in identical costumes, like now, how can we tell you apart?”

The twins didn’t have an immediate answer.

“Just call us whichever you want,” Edgar said, at last.

The girls looked at each other quizzically. Then they turned to Edgar and Allan.

“You’re no ordinary boys, are you,” Milly observed.

The boys were uncertain how to answer.

“We don’t mean that in a bad way,” Em assured them.

“See, we aren’t much interested in ‘ordinary’ boys,” Milly said.

Em smiled. “Just extraordinary ones.”

“Well, um, I guess that’s us,” they answered.

Once more, Milly displayed her phone. “Can I put your contact information in here?”

“We don’t have cell phones,” Allan said.

“Don’t tell me you’re both dinosaurs like my sister, please!”

Edgar shook his head. “It’s not exactly like that.”

Actually, Edgar and Allan were experts when it came to electronic technologies, particularly computer hacking. A few months before, they’d knocked out the electrical grid for the entire city of Baltimore as a prank. Afterward, they were forbidden by their aunt and uncle from touching anything attached to the Internet.

“Our aunt and uncle don’t allow us to go online,” Allan said.

Milly shuddered. “They must be monsters!”

Edgar shook his head. “They have their reasons.”

“Actors to the set!” called a voice over a bullhorn. “Places, everybody!”