Nevermore, p.31
Nevermore, page 31
Several yards to my right—leaning upon the long wooden handle of a shovel whose blade was plunged into a substantial mound of dirt—stood a figure I recognized at once as the unsavory, shaggy-browed wretch with whom I had exchanged such acrimonious words on the day of Crockett’s battle with Neuendorf. At his feet stretched a freshly excavated hole whose dimensions left no doubt as to its intended purpose as a makeshift human grave.
Neuendorf himself sat directly before me, coolly observing me from his vantage point atop a large, oblong rock. The third member of the gang—the wretch who had pulled me so unceremoniously to my feet—was positioned to my rear, his visage being entirely concealed from my view. All at once, he released his grip on my elbow, walked over to Neuendorf, and turned towards me with a smile of fiendish delight—thus disclosing a set of gruesomely discolored teeth from which the two upper incisors were missing. At my first glimpse of his repellent dentition, I recognized him as the second of the two illbred louts I had encountered at the time of Crockett’s wharfside battle.
“He’s wide awake now, Hansie,” said the toothless one. “Let’s get down to business.” His countenance, as he uttered this statement, was suffused with a singular excitement—his small eyes gleaming with anticipation, his pale tongue avidly moistening his lips.
For a moment, Neuendorf continued to scrutinize me in silence. Then he slowly slid from the rock, took several lumbering steps in my direction, and growled: “Why not?”
That my death was imminent seemed certain. That my interment would be ignominious in the extreme was incontrovertible. To be horribly murdered and left to molder underground somewhere deep in the wilderness—surely, this was a most appalling, a most unimaginable fate. And yet, I was powerless to prevent it. With my hands tightly bound behind my back and three implacable brutes surrounding me, resistance and flight appeared equally impossible.
Still—I silently vowed—if I am destined to die in such a manner, I can at least do so in a manner befitting a Poe! Putting this bold resolution into action, I drew myself up to my fullest height, threw back my shoulders, and—as Neuendorf planted himself directly before me—spoke thusly:
“You may shoot, stab, strangle, or dispatch me in any other manner which your diabolical ingenuity may contrive, Hans Neuendorf. But never shall you see me quail—or cower—or cry out for mercy, for the noble, the valiant, the indomitable spirit of my heroic grandfather, General David Poe, continues to live and breathe within my own bosom!”
Stung to the quick by the penetrating force of this bold declamation, the villain grabbed me by the shirtfront and exclaimed: “Who said anything about stabbing or shooting or strangling? You need live bait for fishing. And that’s all you are, you jabbering little shitass. Live bait.”
Though conveyed with his characteristic savagery, this statement could not fail to have a reassuring effect upon me. So I was not to be slain, after all! My sense of relief quickly faded, however, when—emitting a maniacal cackle—the repellent-looking creature who stood leaning upon his shovel gazed at me and said: “Live buried bait!”
The appalling implication of this latter observation caused the blood to congeal within my veins. “Why, wh-whatever do you mean?” I asked in a hoarse, stammering voice.
“Real simple,” replied Neuendorf, his simian features contorted into a look of sheer, gloating malice. “I want that Tennessee bastard out here where I can deal with him myself—no coppers, no crowds. And you’re the bait that’s gonna lure him. You’re going down into the ground, my friend. I got a man, Charlie Dawson, on his way to the Barnum Hotel right now, to tell that shit-heel Crockett he better haul his ass out here in a hurry if he hopes to dig you up alive, you damn quivering little worm.”
So inconceivably dreadful was the purport of this statement that, for several moments, I could scarely breathe, let alone speak. My breast heaved—my brain swam—the very hairs stood erect upon my head. At length, through sheer effort of will, I managed to gasp: “But surely you do not mean to subject me to the ghastly, the unspeakable horror of premature inhumation!”
Wrinkling his brow in apparent befuddlement, Neuendorf replied: “I’ll show you what I mean.” Locking the upper portion of my left arm in an iron grip, he nodded brusquely to his toothless associate, who immediately stepped to my opposite side and applied a corresponding hold to my right limb. Thus flanked by the two ruffians, I was hauled unceremoniously to the edge of the freshly excavated hole, while the third member of the unutterably repellent trio looked on in diabolical merriment.
That our ordinary physical capacities represent only a fraction of our latent powers becomes strikingly evident in moments of extreme crisis. Faced with the prospect of such a fearfully, such an inconceivably hideous death, I summoned up every ounce of my strength and began to struggle against my captors with the fierceness of a tiger. But my exertions were in vain. At the first sign of resistance, Neuendorf and his cohort simply redoubled their hold upon my arms. Shouting, writhing, kicking, I was thus dragged inexorably toward the edge of the yawning pit.
For a moment, I stood tottering at its brink, my arms still tightly clamped in the unbreakable grip of my captors, my bulging eyes fixed in an extremity of horror upon the gaping hole at my feet.
“Breathe deep, you son-of-a-bitch” growled Neuendorf. Then, with one sharp, vicious motion, he and his loathsome assistant released their grip and hurled me downward into the grave.
I landed with a thud upon my back, the impact of the fall driving the air from my lungs. Gasping for breath, I gazed upwards in an agony of terror and perceived my three tormentors staring down at me with a single, shared expression of demonic glee. As I attempted—unsuccessfully—to emit a shriek of horrified protest from my fear-constricted throat, Neuendorf glanced over at his shovel-wielding henchman and spoke two words whose dreadful import froze the very marrow in my bones:
“Bury him.”
CHAPTER 30
To be buried while alive is, beyond question, the most harrowing—the most ghastly—the most sheerly calamitous—ordeal that has ever fallen to the lot of mere mortality. Indeed, it may be asserted without hesitation that no event is so terribly well adapted to inspire the supremeness of bodily and mental distress as is premature inhumation. The mere thought of this appalling fatality carries into the heart a degree of exquisite and intolerable horror from which the most daring imagination must recoil. We know of nothing so agonizing upon Earth—we can dream of nothing half so hideous in the realms of the nethermost Hell.
I hasten to add that there is nothing merely speculative about the foregoing assertions; rather, they are solidly founded upon my own actual experience—upon my own direct and personal knowledge.
No sooner had Neuendorf issued his dreadful command than his shovel-wielding henchman thrust the blade of his implement into the mound of freshly excavated dirt and began, with fiendish deliberation, to re-fill the hole at whose bottom I lay helplessly prone. The first load of soil landed at my feet—the second upon my upper legs—the third squarely upon my chest. As the full, awful awareness of my predicament forced itself into the innermost chambers of my soul, I once again endeavored to cry aloud. My lips parted—my fear-parched tongue moved convulsively in my mouth—but before the slightest sound could issue from my lungs, another mass of dirt struck me square on the face, filling my nostrils with the peculiar odor of moist earth and causing me to spit—and choke—and cough uncontrollably. Despair—such as no other species of wretchedness ever calls into being—flooded through my bosom and drove the blood in torrents upon my heart.
And then, amid all my infinite miseries, came suddenly the blesséd cherub Hope, arriving in the guise of a loud, reverberant, and inexpressibly beautiful sound. It was the sound of a booming male voice, calling out in tones so strong and commanding that—even with my ears partially obstructed by the dirt which had just landed about my head—I could clearly apprehend each separate word:
“Throw down that shovel, you low-down, yellow-bellied varmint, or I will make daylight shine through you faster than God’s wrath!”
The voice was none other than that of my remarkable companion, Colonel Crockett, who had arrived—by what mysterious, providential agency I could not begin to conceive—in the very nick of time! The intensity of my emotions at this propitious intervention can scarcely be conveyed in mere words. Those who have been condemned to a ghastly, unspeakable doom, only to be delivered at the penultimate moment by a sudden and wholly unforeseen reprieve, can alone appreciate the feelings which suffused my bosom at this seemingly miraculous occurrence.
Frantically shaking the soil from my face and head, I blinked my eyes rapidly and cast my gaze upward. Directly above me, poised on the brink of the open grave, stood the shovel-wielding lout, his implement still clutched in his hands, his eyes fixed in the direction from which the frontiersman’s menacing words had emanated. All at once, the sonorous voice called out again:
“Drop that digger right now, you no-account serpent, or I will perforate your ugly carcass for a certainty. Blamed if I ain’t feeling fiercer than the latter end of an earthquake!”
Hearing the unmistakable note of savage resolve in Crockett’s warning, the ruffian wisely relinquished his implement, plunging the blade into the soft earth at his feet. As he did so, Neuendorf—who was standing out of the range of my vision—spoke up in a crudely sarcastic tone:
“Ain’t you the brave one, with a gun in your hands.” A momentary pause ensued. “Shit, that-there looks like Charlie Dawson’s rifle.”
“I relieved him of it,” came Crockett’s reply. “He won’t be needing it no more, for I have dispatched the varmint to a place where they give away brimstone and the fire to burn it.”
By this point, I had managed, by dint of much athletic wriggling, to work myself around onto my belly. From this attitude, I was able to move onto my knees and from thence to a standing posture, the topmost portion of my body from the shoulders upward protruding from the mouth of the grave.
With my head thus elevated, I glanced rapidly about the clearing. The scene that presented itself to my eyes was dramatic in the extreme. Several yards off to my right stood Crockett, a somewhat battered-looking flintlock rifle held at waist level in his hands. The muzzle of this well-worn, though still-formidable, piece was aimed directly at the breast of Hans Neuendorf, who faced Crockett with a look of absolute, overpowering malice. Flanking Neuendorf were his two detestable henchmen, their visages similarly contorted with expressions of sheer antipathy and loathing.
The look on Crockett’s own countenance was one of cool but deadly determination. Keeping his weapon levelled at Neuendorf’s chest, he flicked his eyes in my direction, then—returning his gaze to the reprobate crew before him—addressed me thusly:
“How’re you faring, Poe? Blamed if you don’t look like a gol-danged groundhog with his head poking out of his burrow.”
“Though somewhat unsettled by my recent ordeal,” I replied, “I am, in all essential respects, perfectly well, owing to your timely arrival. Lacking the use of my hands, however—which remain securely bound behind my back—I am incapable of dimbing from this hole and offering you my assistance.”
“Don’t you fret none about helping me, Poe, for I can deal with this pack of rapscallions easier than swallowing a mouthful of huckleberry pie.”
“You think you’re the pig’s whiskers, Crockett,” growled Neuendorf. “But to me, you ain’t nothin’ but a fart in a windstorm. Lay down that firearm and we’ll see just how big you are.”
This insolent remark brought no immediate response from Crockett, who merely glared at his opponent, his dark eyes blazing. Slowly, however, a smile of the purest disdain spread across the frontiersman’s rugged countenance. In one rapid, fluent motion, he lowered his rifle—leaned it against the trunk of a nearby tree—stripped off his high-collared coat—and, planting his hands upon his hips, threw back his head and proclaimed:
“Why, you damned, impudacious varmint! I’ll persuade you that I’m pluck and grit united in one individual. My gizzard’s so all-fired hot that I’m fixing to breathe fireballs! I will double you up like a spare shirt—twist you into the shape of a corkscrew—and chaw you as small as cut tobacco.”
“Crockett,” Neuendorf muttered in reply, “you talk too damn much.” Even as he spoke these words, his right hand was inching towards the handle of a long-bladed dagger hanging from the side of his belt in a faded leather scabbard. All at once—in a movement swift as thought—he plucked the knife from its sheath, and—grasping it by the very tip of its blade—raised it high above his head and flung it through the air directly at Crockett’s bosom.
So great was the dexterity with which this projectile was thrown, and so deadly the intent, that it would surely have pierced the very heart of the frontiersman, had he not—with a rapidity quite as remarkable as that with which the weapon was hurled—dropped into a crouching position. Even so, the revolving blade passed alarmingly close to his body, missing his left shoulder by mere inches before burying itself in the tree trunk against which he had rested his firearm.
Eyes flashing, Crockett sprang from his crouch and threw himself at Neuendorf, driving his head into the midsection of his brutish adversary, who expelled a loud, agonized grunt as the enraged frontiersman fell upon him like a panther. Rolling upon the ground, the two combatants began to punch—bite—gouge—and kick—with such extreme, such uncontained fury that a cloud of dust rose up around them and obscured their struggling figures. The very earth seemed to shudder from the force of their battle, and the stillness of the forest was shattered by the savage oaths that issued from their throats as they fought.
In the meanwhile, Neuendorf’s two associates leapt into action, the bushy-browed shoveller snatching up his implement; while his toothless companion—after glancing about for a suitable weapon—seized a large, gnarled branch that lay on the grass nearby. Raising these objects above their heads, these two miscreants arranged themselves on either side of the grappling pair, their evident intention being to deal the frontiersman a deadly blow with their makeshift clubs. This nefarious plan, however, could not immediately be put into action, since the two combatants were so completely intertwined that it was impossible to strike at Crockett without risking a lethal blow to Neuendorf.
Seeing my companion outnumbered by a ratio of three to one, I felt desperate to assist him by some means. Without the use of my hands, however, I was powerless to remove myself from the hole. All at once, a solution occurred to me. Leaning the upper part of my back against one wall of the excavation, I raised my feet, one at a time, and pressed the soles against the opposite wall. I thus found myself suspended several feet above—and approximately parallel to—the bottom of the grave. Very slowly and cautiously, I then proceeded—by an alternating, precisely coordinated movement of my shoulders and feet—to inch myself up the sides of the excavation until I had reached the surface; whereupon, with one firm, decisive thrust of my legs, I propelled myself out of the excavation and onto the ground!
Struggling to my feet, I quickly took stock of the situation. By dint of his unparalleled fighting skills, the frontiersman had by now achieved a superior position, kneeling above the supine figure of his opponent and delivering a succession of blows to the villain’s face. Crockett’s ascendancy, however, had placed him in an exceptionally vulnerable situation, exposing him to the murderous designs of Neuendorf’s henchmen. Indeed, at that very moment, the shovel-wielding villain was standing directly above the frontiersman, poised to bring his implement crashing down upon the latter’s skull!
I parted my lips, intending to shout a warning. Before I could produce a sound, however, Crockett—evincing an instinctive, almost preternatural alertness and agility—flung himself away from the body of his opponent and rolled to one side, just as the shovel descended. At that instant, Neuendorf groggily raised his head. Completely missing its intended target, the heavy blade struck Neuendorf on the left temple with a sickening thud.
Bounding to his feet, Crockett sprang at the shovel-wielding henchman and—drawing back his tightly balled right hand—delivered a staggering blow to the scoundrel’s jaw. Dropping his implement, the villain let out a quivering moan and fell crossways over Neuendorf’s unconscious body.
At that instant, the second of Neuendorf’s minions leapt to the attack. Wielding the gnarled branch like an aborigine’s warclub, he charged madly at Crockett, who stooped—snatched up the fallen shovel—and, as the enraged attacker came at him with a roar—drove the rounded end of the wooden handle into the latter’s abdomen. With an agonized expulsion of breath, the ruffian doubled over at the waist; whereupon Crockett elevated the shovel high over his head and, in one savage, sweeping motion, brought the edge of the blade crashing down upon his antagonists neck, causing the cervical vertebrae to break with an awful—an appalling—snap. As heavily as an overstaffed sack of feed, the toothless villain dropped lifelessly to the ground.
For a moment, Crockett stood panting over his vanquished foes, eyes still enkindled, clothing dishevelled, hair hanging wildly about his flushed and weather-creased countenance. His shovel was poised to deliver another blow—if needed—to the prostrate figure sprawled at his feet. At length—perceiving that his antagonist would never rise again—Crockett dropped his heavy implement to the ground and stepped in my direction, pausing momentarily to extract Neuendorf’s long-bladed dagger from the tree trunk in which it was lodged.
“I am happy as a soaped eel to see you alive and kicking, Poe,” he declared as he came up beside me. “Here. Swivel around, and I will have you free quicker than winking.”
Obeying, I turned my back to the frontiersman and—tilting my body forward from the waist up—extended my tethered wrists in his direction. “But how,” I inquired as he proceeded to saw at the rope with his blade, “did you manage to arrive so expeditiously—even before Neuendorf and his minions could put their unspeakable design into action and entomb me, while still living, in the earth?”
