“Nice way to talk to your old pal,” McCobber said, pretending to be hurt. “Shut up, McCobber!” Eddie ran his fingers through his hair and, sighing once more, sank farther back into his chair. “Ah, maybe you’re all washed up!” the voice tossed in. Now they’re not only sour, but they’re rotten and they stink!”
“Arrgh!” Eddie flopped backward into the dusty upholstery and exhaled a frustrated sigh. Or, better yet, let’s climb up onto the roof and howl at the moon!”
“Ah, why don’t you just quit!” a small, unpleasant voice rasped in the boy’s ear. In disgust he ripped the offending scrawl from the roll of otherwise clean paper, crumpled the piece, and then tossed it into the graveyard of similar wads that lay at his feet. Every word that had flowed from his pen had felt absolutely perfect, landing with grace and beauty upon the white page.īut now, as he read and reread those same lines, they stiffened, curled up, and died-becoming lifeless black squiggles on the shroud of paper. He had soared on the wings of inspiration. The rush of creativity had made him feel as if he were flying. At that point the words, his words, had come to him so fast and furiously that he had barely had enough time to scribble them down. Just a few short hours before, he had crept up the stairs to this makeshift attic study for a nightly rendezvous with his imagination. They seemed to have slipped through his fingers and flown out the open window into the night, or at least, wherever they had gone, they were now beyond his reach. The wondrous words that had crowded his brain earlier that night were gone. His ink-stained fingers clutched a quill that scratched out yet another unsatisfactory verse, while his other hand propped up the head of the struggling poet. In the attic window of the Allan house, a candle burned as the young Edgar Poe grappled with a rhyme. The town, the street, and the houses were all dark and quiet, all except one.
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