Michael and his pupils had to interview someone famous for their English class. Glorvina had suggested they interview Mr. Edgar Allan Poe, the sisterhood of banshees’ favorite author.
Michael was a little uneasy about interviewing Mr. Eddy. He was superstitious and wary about dark worlds. But his pupils were eager and did lots of preparatory research so they would know just what to ask Mr. Eddy.
When I came upon them in the forest, Don Quijote was behaving like a hypochondriac because he had just read “The Masque of the Red Death.” He had bared his chest and rolled up his sleeves and his trousers to see if there were any red spots on his arms or legs.
“Come, Alonso, the only thing wrong with you is that you become over involved with what you read,” said Michael.“Cover up before you catch pneumonia and really have reason to feel feverish. Our interview is at midnight, but one never knows how long it will take to get somewhere else, so we had best be on our way.”
The sun was setting when we got to Mr. Eddy’s red brick Baltimore house. We stood before the white door respectfully, waiting for it to be midnight.The darker it got, the more frightened Michael became.
“Nonsense! You are at least as brave as my housekeeper!” Don Alonso assured him. “You both walk frequently through a ghostly battlefield at dead night, among terribly violent, horribly mutilated fallen soldiers. How can that be less scary than meeting a friend at midnight?”
A light suddenly shone through the little window of the attic. We all heard the door come unlocked. By the light of a lantern before it, we saw we would have but to push it to enter the house. We knocked anyway, and although we were not sure it would be the right thing to say at such a place, Sancho called out “People of peace!” That is a way to assure those within that one comes with good intentions.
In answer, the door wafted wide open and we stepped into a place where there was neither darkness nor light but we could somehow see a host of clouds, some compact and sofa-like and others wispy and foggish.
“Toot tooroot toot!”
An angel shimmering before us had shaken its wings, meshed with white angels’ trumpets instead of feathers, and they blew this distrubing sound.
“It is Israfel!” I breathed. “The angel of music!” And I remembered with a shiver that to hear him blow his trumpet meant that one was about to die.
“That wasn’t my trumpet!” said the angel in a low, melodious voice. “That was only my wings.”
To prove it, he unfurled his white, green-leafed flowery wings again, with the same resulting blare.
“No one will die here tonight. They are waiting for you upstairs. Step on a hefty cloud and it will carry you there.”
We thanked the angel for its advice and chose a proper cloud for an elevator. It deposited us inside the attic. And there, the light of a small oil lamp lit the dark figure of a distinguished man dressed in ink black who was writing at a table.
The odour of hot coffee filled the rarified air, and we saw that beside the writing table there was, barely visible because encircled by a lavender mist, a much smaller, round little ebony table on which pieces of a china coffee set, white and with pink roses, were perilously heaped.
The startling flutter of wings made us see a black as night raven’s attempt to perch even more perilously on the piping hot coffee pot.
“Ow!” the raven cawed, flying off the lid. “No more perching on pots. Nevermore! ”
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