The Final Breath
I've written a short novella and made it available on Amazon KDP.
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Visit the KDP online store HERE
In the final days of Edgar Allan Poe’s life, a secret society draws him back to Baltimore to write what should not be written. In a fictional tale of horror and the occult, Poe discovers the cost of creation, and the danger of finishing a story too well.
Excerpt
September 27, 1849 - Richmond, Virginia
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The heat in Richmond clung like regret.
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Poe stood by the window of his boarding room at the Swan Tavern, watching the shapes of the street blur in the glass. Rain had passed earlier and had wetted the cobbles, just enough to awaken the smell of horse and dust and the metal tang of the canal beyond. Now, in the hesitant morning light, the world looked suspended. It was between storms, and between sentences.
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His trunk sat packed in the corner. A soft creak in the lid suggested it had tried to speak, perhaps to warn him. He ignored it.
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Instead, he touched the edge of the letter that lay on the table. Not Elmira’s, which still bore her familiar lilac scent, tied in ribbon and kindness. The other one. The strange one. The one that had arrived without name or seal, slipped beneath the door in the night.
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The paper was thick. Coarse. Watermarked with a spiral so faint it appeared only at a slant. The script inside was neatly formed - obsessively neat - and written in an ink that shimmered oddly, like oil or bruised fruit.
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“Edgar,
The breath persists. The ink is not yet dry.
You are needed. The Society in Baltimore is open. Come.
E. M.”
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He had not spoken that name aloud in many years. Elias Mercer. Dead for more than a decade. Burned alive, or so the reports claimed, in the fire that consumed the old apothecary hall in Charleston. But this… this was his hand. Or a perfect imitation.
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