Edgar Allan Poe

He's had a fittingly gothic stranglehold on my imagination ever since I got a battered paperback of horror stories as a kid. I was too scared to open it for about a week because of the shock of the lurid face screaming on the cover, a face that still floats gaping in my nightmares. Not that the illustration had anything to do with the stories. When I finally read them, something more shadowy wormed its way into my mind's corner. Something itchy and flitting.