In the Shadow of Blackbirds (26 page)

“Did she call you on the telephone to invite you over?” I heard Aunt Eva ask when I returned to the top steps.

“No,” said Mr. Darning.

I came to a halt.

“She invited me when she came to my studio for her portrait yesterday.”

Oh no.

“What?” squawked my aunt, as loud as Oberon. “She left this house?”

“Was she not supposed to?”

“No. I thought she was at home all day. Mary Shelley Black! Get down here this instant.”

“I’m coming, Aunt Eva.” I squeezed the compass to my chest.

She and the photographer stood together in the living room, and the glare she shot my way could have frozen the Sahara. “What were you thinking? Why don’t you just go to
the hospital and let flu patients cough in your mouth, get it over with? Is that what you want?”

“I’ll go crazy if I just bury myself in onions at home all day. I have to get out.”

“I’m going to write your father.”

“Fine—write him. He’d be proud of me. I’ve been helping convalescing veterans at the Red Cross House.”

“What?”

“Should I go?” asked Mr. Darning.

“No, please, not yet.” I lugged the case over to the game table in front of the windows. “I want you to see the compass, and I want Aunt Eva to witness it, too.”

With hesitation, Mr. Darning rested his brown derby hat on the sofa and approached the compass. Aunt Eva crept our way with her mouth pinched tight and her hands on her hips. Oberon whistled and squeaked.

The photographer leaned over the device and rubbed his gauze-covered chin, and I noticed he smelled like the fine leather seats of an automobile. Out the window, I could see a shiny red touring car with a foldable top parked beneath our streetlamp.

He drew a sharp breath. “Ahhh, yes. I see what you mean.”

The needle pointed squarely at me.

“Ahhh, yes! This is absolutely fascinating, Miss Black. Absolutely fascinating.”

“The needle even stays on me when I move.” I stepped around to the right side of the table, holding out my arms as
if I were walking a tightrope. Mr. Darning backed out of the way for me, and I crossed over to the left. The needle followed my movement like a devoted duckling.

Aunt Eva watched and gasped. “I had no idea that was happening. When did you discover this?”

“When I came home from the hospital.”

“Hmm, I wonder …” Mr. Darning returned to the compass and pressed his hands against the case. “Did the lightning change your magnetic field? Or did your experience of momentarily dying—of becoming a temporary spirit, as it were—do this to you? Is your soul having trouble settling back inside your body?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. I haven’t yet found any information about the otherworldly effects of getting struck by lightning.”

“You say the needle also follows Stephen when you think he’s around?” he asked.

Aunt Eva gasped again. “What?”

“It does.” I nodded. “Once, the needle moved everywhere, like he was upset or confused. Another time it pointed to his photographs hanging on my wall.”

Mr. Darning shook his head in amazement. “This is remarkable. Like MacDougall’s scale experiments on the dying. I’m so impressed with all of this.” He rubbed his arms and tittered like a schoolboy. “You’ve given me gooseflesh.”

“You don’t think I’m going out of my head with grief, then?” I asked.

“This needle seems to be telling us otherwise, doesn’t it?” His eyes beamed at me. “Would you bring the compass to my studio Monday and let me photograph the way you affect it? Better yet, I’ll bring my own compass so I know nothing’s being rigged.”

“But you dislike supernatural photography,” said Aunt Eva.

“I dislike fakes. As with everyone else, I’d love to find proof of the survival of the spirit beyond death. Maybe Mary Shelley’s body is demonstrating that the soul exists as a magnetic field.” He leaned his elbows against the table and bent even closer to the apparatus. “Come to my studio Monday, say around ten o’clock in the morning, and I’ll record what you’re experiencing. Bring Stephen’s photographs as well, and we’ll see if we can attract signs of him.”

“All right.” I peeked at my aunt’s bloodless face. “As long as Aunt Eva doesn’t mind me leaving the house again.”

“Let’s see what the flu does to our block first. We might not even be here Monday.” She massaged her forehead with her hands balled into fists. “I hate to be rude, Mr. Darning, but I’m overwhelmed by everything that’s been happening and really need to feed Mary Shelley her onions.”

“Please, don’t let me keep you.” Mr. Darning tore his eyes off the needle and fetched his hat from the sofa. “I’m sorry to interrupt your evening, but this has been remarkable. Thank you for allowing me to be a witness.”

“You’re welcome, Mr. Darning.” I followed Aunt Eva and him to the door. “Did my other photograph reveal anything?”

“No—oh, I forgot to bring that with me. I’ll give that to you on Monday as well.”

“Nothing peculiar showed up, then?”

“I’m afraid not. But let’s not give up. I think we’re on to something here. Perhaps we’ll open an unchecked door in the world of psychical research.”

I smiled. “Thank you so much for coming. I feel better now that I’ve shown the compass to someone with your background.”

We said our good-byes, and Aunt Eva allowed him to slip out a small crack in the door before she locked us up again.

She grabbed me by the sleeve and pulled me close. “You should have told me he was coming.”

“I’m sorry. I’ve been distracted and forgot.”

“That’s the second day in a row a man has shown up while I look a mess.”

“You look fine.”

“I have salt hanging out my nose.” She brushed at her nostril.

“I’m sure he understands.”

“That doesn’t make it any less embarrassing.” She pushed me away. “I’m so furious at you for leaving this house, Mary Shelley. What is wrong with you?”

“Stephen didn’t die in battle in October.”

She gawked at me like I was speaking in tongues.
“What?”

“I met one of his friends at the Red Cross House today, a boy named Paul from Coronado. He said Stephen lost his
mind over in France and the army sent him home before October. Julius lied—Stephen didn’t die heroically.”

She closed her gaping mouth. “Well … perhaps the family was embarrassed about the actual cause of death. The push to have a war hero might make people say things that aren’t true.”

“Why was he tortured, then?”

“You don’t know that he was. Maybe he caught the flu on the way home.”

“He probably came home before the flu even spread. He might not have lived long enough to know about the pandemic. And that doesn’t explain the birds and the burning air.”

“What birds?”

“He’s haunted by birds. They troubled the men in the trenches because they ate the dead.”

My aunt stepped back with terror in her eyes. “You need to let this morbid fascination go, Mary Shelley.”

“I told you, he’s coming to me—I’m not making it up. He needs my help.”

“Even if he does, how on earth is a sixteen-year-old girl supposed to help a dead young man who lost his mind in France? There’s nothing you can do for him.”

“That’s not good enough.” I stormed back into the living room to fetch the compass and accidentally knocked an elbow into Oberon’s cage, which sent the bird flapping and screeching. “Oh, be quiet, you awful bird.”

“Don’t take out your anger on Oberon.” Aunt Eva placed
protective arms over the magpie’s cage. “Maybe you should speak to the minister at church. You’re starting to scare me.”

I hoisted the compass. “A minister would think I’m either crazy or possessed by the devil. I’m tempted to speak to Julius.”

“No.” She blocked my path to the stairs. “Don’t you dare speak to Julius after what he did to us yesterday.”

“I want him to tell me how Stephen died.”

“I told you, the family might be embarrassed and too upset to discuss it. Maybe that’s why Mrs. Embers lost her nerves. Sometimes the truth is too terrible to discuss. Do you truly believe I tell the girls at work the real reason why you came to live with me?”

The compass slipped in my sweaty hands, but I caught it before it fell.

“I tell my friends your father went to war,” she said, “just like Stephen’s family is saying he’s a hero. The world is an ugly place right now, and some things need to be hidden. Don’t go poking around in other people’s business.”

I sighed in disgust.

She squeezed my arms. “Will you promise me you won’t contact Julius?”

I gritted my teeth and nodded.

“Good.” She jutted out her chin. “Now let’s go eat our onions. Put Wilfred’s compass away and then come right back downstairs—but be careful with that. It’s been in his family for years.”

“I will.”

Oberon jabbered and screeched as I took the compass upstairs, and my mind replayed Paul’s conversation about the birds.

They ate us when we died. They hovered on the edges of the trenches and stared down at us, watching us, waiting for us to get shot or bombed.

You’ve got to keep them from getting at your eyes,
Stephen had told me when he spoke from the shadows of my bed.
They’ll take your beautiful eyes.

At the top of the stairs, I murmured under my breath, “‘And strewn in bloody fragments, to be the carrion of rats and crows.’ No wonder they haunt you so much, Stephen. But did they really kill you?”

I set the compass on the end table next to my bed, and the needle jerked away.

“What … ?” My blood sped through my veins. “Are you … ?” I turned and searched the room for signs of Stephen, but saw only furniture and his crate of books.

“Are you here?” I asked. “Are you with me right now?”

The arrow swayed and shifted in every direction. Pressure mounted in the air like a kettle about to boil. Smoke engulfed my nose.

I clutched the compass’s case. “I’m sorry if I scared you with that poem. Please don’t be upset. Please come back and talk to me.”

Something whacked against the floor.

I jumped and turned again.

At first I didn’t see anything out of place. Nothing moved. Nothing rustled in the quieting, rapidly cooling atmosphere.

I poked around the room and discovered the source of the sound—Stephen’s lightning bolt photograph lay facedown on the braided rug, stiff and motionless, like the dark blue bodies on the sidewalk when Julius drove us to the séance. I held my unsettled stomach and picked up the frame. The fall had cracked the wood, but the glass remained intact, as did the photograph beneath. I hung the picture back on its nail, and the anagram Stephen had written between the golden waves caught my attention:

I DO LOSE INK

“Link,” I whispered, picking out the verbs. “Soil. Lend. Nod. Sink. Don. Die—”

A headache flared between my eyes. I rubbed my forehead above my nose.

“Mary Shelley,” called Aunt Eva from downstairs. “Are you all right? Did something fall up there?”

“Everything’s fine. I’m coming.” I straightened the lightning bolt’s frame and whispered, “I’ll figure it out, Stephen. I’ll figure everything out. I just need to think. I’m sure the answers will come.”

DRESSED IN MY WHITE NIGHTGOWN, MY HAIR FREED FROM
its ribbon, I gathered the strength to write my father a letter by the oil lamp’s light.

November 1, 1918

My Dearest Father,

I received your letter, and I am relieved to hear you are well. Are they giving you enough food? I would feel better knowing that you are eating properly. If I sound like a little mother, perhaps that’s because Aunt Eva fusses over me night and day and shows me how to be an expert worrier. She’s caring for me well, but you can probably guess which one of us is the braver member of the household.

Is there any chance they’ll drop the charges before your trial? Do you have a lawyer? If there’s any possibility you won’t stay in jail, please tell me as soon as you can. I really miss you. I was just remembering the other day about the time we built that mousetrap together and hunted all over the store for that little pest Phantom. And remember when you taught me how to fix our phonograph? I figured out how to make the same repairs on Aunt Eva’s machine just two days ago. You would have been proud.

Now for the hardest part of this letter: my sad news.

Stephen died. Can you believe that, Dad? Stephen Embers died. I am doing better than expected, so please do not worry. His funeral was lovely. Everyone treated him like a proper war hero.

I have been reading quite a bit to keep my brain active—and to help me understand the war better. I have a question for you: when you were in the Spanish-American War, did you see soldiers whose bodies and brains had stopped working right? They’re calling it shell shock now, but I’m sure it happened before they invented shells. I’m curious about that subject and would like more information. Perhaps when I am older, I will try to learn how to repair broken minds in addition to exploring the inner workings of machines and electrical devices. These damaged men need help, and figuring out how to heal them seems a worthy challenge.