Stop Your Heart

&;#8230;.Stop Your Heart

a short story by J.B. Pravda

"It's a gift&;#8230;&;#8230;.since oy was a kid; nobody knew it,
but oy could tell me body to do lots of things" was the boast of Miss
Maggie Magee.

"Like what, can you tell us what sorts of things?" was the obvious
question Det. On Duty Randalthorpe routinely issued, a reflex really in
The London Metropolitan Police Bureau's Investigations Division, newly
formed with the advent of fingerprints.

"All sorts of things, you know&;#8230;.make meself feel orgasmic,
think they call it" pointing to her groin.

Having signaled his fellow observer, M'Ordant, the new exchange officer
from France, made for the outer office just off the interrogation room.
"Most unseemly for so young a woman" he mused.

"Not at all, not in London's East End, Marcel" cautioned Inspector
Connery.

A man was dead. Well-respected, to say the least, his death certificate
specified acute heart failure, massive in its effect, of itself
extremely rare for a man of 49 with no prior history of such
difficulties. Making Ins. Connery's task unusually difficult was the
interest of the Palace in the matter.

"She's primping for the Fleet Street crowd, that's all" Connery
gathered; "No, not that simple" he concluded.

"Mon frere, have you not read Poe?" Marcel M'Ordant puzzled.

"The American drunkard&;#8230;..see here&;#8230;." Connery
blustered; "Got plenty of live ones here and now" he confabulated,
failing to hide his ignorance.

"As you wish" Marcel offered, having taken the decision, impelled by
preternatural instinct, to make his own inquiries.

"Curious, isn't it" pondered Dr. Charrington, having perused the
morticians'recent entries from locales ostensibly irregular unto one
another. As Court Physician Royal, he had been made special consultant
to the Metropolitan dectectives by leave of HRH, for whom the deceased
held some undisclosed interest---- indeed, fascination was the
deduction of M'Ordant, he having viewed same as a further indicium of
the moribund state of this decadent monarchic anachronism.

His audience was none other than Marcel M'Ordant, who had turned up a
sudden steep rise in heart-related illnesses in the verge region of
London City proper; what distinguished these cases in particular was
the mauled state of, or in at least one----the royal's
interest------the decedent's right arm's absence. In every instance,
however, distinctive claw and non-human incisor gashes abundantly
evinced upon the cadaver's torsos.

"Dr., are you perchance acquainted with E.A. Poe?" Marcel was not
confident.

"Yes, yes, of course&;#8230;..man of letters and science, you know;
quite well-regarded in each those circles in his day&;#8230;.why do
you ask?"

"Simple continental curiosity&;#8230;..odd, is it not, Poe wrote
mostly of exotic European themes and venues, while poorly traveled"
M'Ordant observed.

"No provincial, he, surely" agreed the avuncular physician.

The conferees were interrupted by a messenger from the morgue
pathologist; as the paper was tendered to Charrington on a silvered
platter balanced upon white-gloved hand, M'Ordant's heart registered a
palpable arrythmia. The stiff parchment-like missive reeked of
officialdom, scrolled with waxen seal. The seal was breached gingerly,
revealing the following: "Most esteemed colleague, it is my duty to
report to you in this most irregular fashion that a messenger has
proffered into Hospital's custody a certain signet ring, bearing an as
yet alien symbology, featuring the initials 'E.A.P.'. I have undertaken
to secure same in our safety combination box, awaiting your
instructions, and have remonstrated with the zoological officials, in
the name of HRH, that utmost discretion must be the hallmark of their
conduct. Your Servant, Harold M. Pancrest, M.D."

"Perhaps this should fall to your bailiwick, so to say" Dr. Charrington
confided with that archaic Francophile term and knowing
bemusement.

"Just so" was the preoccupied riposte from Marcel; he was deep in
musing, searching his school day readings for some utilitarian ken.
"Messieur le Doctor, my compliments; I shall return after further
divinings" M'Ordant bowingly assured.

Just who, or what, was afoot may have been an enigma to most 'modern'
officials on this emerald isle, though Marcel well knew of the esteem
for Poe in his native continent unto this very fin de siecle moment; a
clue bearing such tantalizing initials, he
intuited&;#8230;&;#8230;&;#8230;was
heart-stopping&;#8230;&;#8230;&;#8230;&;#8230;&;#8230;&;#8230;&;#8230;&;#8230;&;#8230;&;#8230;&;#8230;&;#8230;..

He would speak with the girl/woman whose pseudonym was 'Maggie
Magee'.

His people possessed instincts unknown to this Anglo-Saxon tribal
breed, consisting principally in their Latinate voluptuousness so often
taken for lassitude, storied since these Gauls and their long-term
adversaries had collided countlessly upon the fields of battle in
France and, most indelibly, on English shores by way of the Normans at
Hastings some nine centuries hence.

"Madamoiselle, may I offer my compliments: Marcel M'Ordant, envoy of
the Prefecture of Paris, on assignment here in your fair city. May I
sit?" his manner, aimed to disarm her, rather transparent.

"Why, you're a purrfect gentleman, you are, naw like these blokes been
bleedin me regular, say that to ya" the older-than-her looks coquette
offered.

"Your treatment, it is satisfactory, no" Marcel empathized; he was
seeking his opening.

"Know that eye bean to Paris, don't ya" she made it known that the
formalities were over.

Marcel knew when he was advantaged and did not delay: "Who is E.A.P.,
Maggie?" his throat dryly put to her. Her pupils visibly dilated,
within a noticeably squinted housing. The room, brightly lit by bulbous
electricals throughout its comfortable expanse, more like some fine
genteel suite of rooms designed to elicit volitional offerings from
such select candidates, grew dimmer, doubtless the result of a passing
cloud formation&;#8230;&;#8230;

"That be Mr. Poe" was the facile retort; "Right proper gentleman, he"
matter-of-factly was the volunteered remainder provided.

For the next hour, Marcel was regaled with an account of her doings in
his City of Light of such a character as to cause that appellation to
undergo obligatory revision toward a much darker region of the photonic
spectrum. It concluded with this haunting polysyllabic refrain: "Your
feline, now, that's a mystery; never quite know what it be
thinking&;#8230;.." Her 'gift', it seemed, extended beyond the
species nominated homo sapiens sapiens. At her protestation of
weariness, Marcel took his leave; there was much to be sorted
out.

Orphaned at an early age, one Mr. Allan of Richmond, Virginia had taken
the lad in as his own, thus imparting the now renowned middle name;
while he had wed his younger cousin, little but that they had made
their way to America from Wales during the days of religious oppression
and witch burnings ablaze throughout Europe was known of his biological
family. Yet the macabre fascination, often based in factual happenings
stemming from his sometime editorial occupation, pressed heavily upon
both Poe and his latter day parser. Most persistent among the stories
surrounding that family was that he was descended from a coven of
Wiccans whose multifarious unions had produced a species unto itself,
something of a seeding of the world with their strangely empowered
spawn.
Of ultimate bedevilment, however, was the numerous commonalities of
description found in the legendary tales of the senior Poe and the
telling of tales audited by M'Ordant-----both seeming to emanate from a
cluster of strange powers said to be invoked by these Welsh Wiccans,
the very name "Poehwh" thought to signify 'pagan power'! Those who bore
its etching in gold near or upon the skin of the right hand would
inhere, somehow, to its spellbinding qualities.

Marcel, after much reflection, was, at best, somewhat spellbound by
what he had heard, replete with sordid assignations and cross-channel
meanderings of one 'Mssr. Poe', seeming stateless expatriate devotee of
the man of belles letters&;#8230;.and his coven clan. He repaired to
the Court physician's confidences. Having related his asexual
depth-plumbings of the cryptic woman in custody, he was to meet himself
coming through the door beyond imagining.

"What you relate is a source of heightened fascination with these
grisly phenomena, bringing to mind an obscure work, indeed, never
published, collected by my dear father and rediscovered by me in your
absence, he a rare manuscript collector, and that one, nonpareil"
Charrington mused, vacant in aspect, seeming to stare at its yellowed
pages.

"Impossibe" Marcel objected; he knew since boyhood every tale, or so he
thought.

"Nay, my dear man; for this one was found on his very person, freshly
minted, so to say, when found demised he was in the gutters of Lord
Baltimore's namesake&;#8230;..tragedy of tragedies, his right arm
missing" revealed Charrington.

"It sounds like one of his tales rather than the truth!" the Gaul
expounded.

"However you choose to receive it, the fact is that on that very night
he had visited, in unkempt and raucous state, the zoological gardens,
wherein he communed with a caged Bengal tiger, of India" preached the
surgeon. "No manner of triage could have spared him, sadly" compounded
he.

"Are you suggesting, Professor, that somehow this girl's claims are
connected to some innate wildness?" Marcel challenged.

"Nothing of the sort&;#8230;..I, too, am a man of science; no, you
see, the tale in question speaks graphically of one Maggie Magee, whose
talents included the stopping of hearts, just how being her unique
secret!"

Marcel, at this precise moment, felt an overwhelming pain in his chest,
falling out straightaway. " 'Maahgeeh'&;#8230;for 'magikal', you
see" whispered Dr. Charrington, now wearing the signet ring garnered
from safekeeping by the morgue.

M'Ordant's body was shipped by merchant carrier across the channel, to
the burial site wherein Miss Magee, assumed name of this trollope of
Parisian brothels, and her victims, had been laid to rest in a
graveyard said to have been a coven's place of worship in ancient
times.