A Halloween Message from Poe

You thought I died. 

You thought I collapsed on a Baltimore street, was taken to a hospital, and quietly expired. It’s the story they tell. 

The story is a lie.

I lived on, beyond the doctors, beyond the grave, inside the coffin where they buried me alive. Then I was summoned by the world’s purest passion: anger.

I went into the coffin as Edgar Allan Poe. I emerged two centuries later as Poe distilled, Poe compressed, Poe hardened like a diamond.

I am the Raven.

I am filled with rage, and I am coming to get you this Halloween. 

You think that Halloween is about tricks and treats? It's about evil. It's about death. It's about the black void above which we dangle, legs flailing, like an insect over a spiderweb.

Happy Halloween? I don’t think so.
 

Read more in Ronald Kidd’s novel of mystery and horror, “Room of Shadows.”