Bookman's wake

Had tumbled down to hell’s back door,

A-burning there, forevermore.

“The misspelled word,” she said. “But it’s all out of sequence. He’s giving his brother all that success before The Raven , when it really didn’t happen till five or six years later.”

“Creative license again. He thought it worked better dramatically. But the real question is, what is this business of the misspelled word? What the cop in St. Louis told you, that Hockman had just gotten a new book with a misspelled word…that’s damned interesting.”

“And not just any word. The same word.”

“How could Grayson make that mistake again?”

“If we knew that, we’d know something, wouldn’t we?”

“Whatever happened, it was disastrous.”

“The god begins to fail. He starts doubting himself, becomes obsessed by a vision of his failure. He tries to put it right, but he can never do it well enough.”

“Nothing he does can satisfy him now.”

“It can never be good enough.”

“He sinks into despair.”

“And takes refuge in alcohol and sex.”

And Rigby heard in disbelief the Craven’s method

and motif

Of luring maidens into wretchedness behind his

bedroom door.

One poor fool she filled herself with fantasy, then

killed herself,

Unable to instill herself into his craven heart

before

She turned up high the unlit gas and died upon

her father’s floor:

To irk the Craven nevermore.

“God, there was a girl who killed herself,” Trish said. “I kissed her off with a paragraph. I didn’t think it had that much to do with Grayson, it was months after their affair and she seemed despondent over everything, not just him.”

She looked at me, riddled with doubt.

“Who knows what it had to do with,” I said. “Maybe it’s just Richard again, trying to blame some circumstantial tragedy on his brother.”

“What about Laura Warner?”

“You did what you could with her. You chased her pretty hard.”

“Not hard enough.”

“Then that’s what revised editions are for.”

We were in the last lines now. The dark-haired god idolized in the early verse had suddenly been reduced to ridicule.

The time had come to resurrect the ancient failure

that infected

Every facet of his life…

She looked at me and I gave her the next line from memory.

But his second task was tougher; it was Poe who

made him suffer…

“Poe defeated him,” she said. “He never did get it right.”

“Then where’d the book come from?”

She shook her head.

“And the ashes…”

“I don’t know.”