Nevermore is a play about Edgar Allen Poe’s dark poems coming to life. But the play, performed by CK’s Drama program last month, isn’t completely dark.

Whether you know Poe’s poems or not, CK’s production left chills running your spine, with scenes of bottles smashing over people’s heads, Poe’s demons attacking him, and the Devil himself going after the man. Many of the scenes were frightening, but they weren’t all scary aspects. The costumes, the music, the makeup and the monologues all radiated a theme of disturbing fear. While watching this play, the audience felt a variety of emotions: happy, sad, mad, confused and pretty much every other emotion out there. “I loved it and would go watch it again,” said sophomore Jasmine Ching.

In the play, Edgar Allen Poe, played by Jon Madamba, meets Annabel Lee, played by Kennedy Jackson,  and they “loved with a love that was more than love.” But one day as they are on the beach, the Raven comes out and gives Annabel Lee a malarial fever, just to torture Poe.  Anabel passes away, or at least, Poe thinks she does. Eventually, Poe boards a ship with his friend Jeremiah Reynolds, played by JJ Halterman, and they travel to New York. But, on this journey, Poe is followed by the Raven, one of his very own creations. He has nightmares that turn very real, where he wakes up in his own poems. He goes on a journey, on this boat, living in his own poems, with the monsters he created, played by the crew of the ship.

As most people know, Poe’s works are not the happiest or ones that you would want to be stuck reliving. In this play, he lives through “The Telltale Heart,” “Masque of the Red Death,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” “The Gold Bug,” “The Oblong Box,” “The Raven,” and “Annabel Lee.” All this time, his creations are trying to kill him. They torture him so that he will come down to hell with them. They are very thankful for Poe and his writing, for they say that he has made hell a very wonderful place for all of them and they want him to join them. He escapes only because of his old lover, Annabel Lee. She makes a deal with Lucifer, played by Nate Johnson, who also happens to be the captain of the ship. She says that if Lucifer lets Poe write from his heart once again, then he cannot take Poe to hell with him.

And so, Poe writes and writes and writes. He writes about the day he saw Annabel Lee again. But again it is a cruel hoax played by the Raven and Lucifer himself. In the end, Poe is found wandering the streets and is taken to a hospital where his “friend” Jeremiah and Lucifer pose as doctors and poison him. The poison, however, does not kill him, but only makes him appear to die. What they want is for Poe to die from asphyxiation. He is buried alive. When Annabel Lee goes to his grave to say her final goodbyes, Lucifer appears. He impersonates Poe, acting as if Poe is not dead, as if he had somehow escaped. Annabel can hardly believe her long-lost lover, the lover she thought she had lost forever, is alive. As they hug, someone knocks on the coffin from the inside, trying to get out.

And with that, the lights go down, people clap, and the play is over. We will never know what happened to Poe, Annabel, and Lucifer that night.