Summary

The Epigraph is a poem that ends with the lines: “To the maid with the pale blue eye / To the ghoul with the pale blue eye” (7). The opening chapter is titled “Last Testament of Gus Landor” and is dated April 19, 1831. Landor writes that he will be dead in a few hours. He describes his house and the people who are there. At least some of them, including Landor's mother, are already dead, making the reader assume all these people are dead. It is more difficult for him to interact with the living now. He especially wishes for the company of one man but does not yet identify “him” as Edgar Allan Poe. He believes that all these events happened so that he and Poe would meet. Landor imagines that Poe will be the first to read this story.

The next chapter is titled...