In the Shadow of Blackbirds

by Cat Winters

“Do you want to show your beloveds you’re here?”

  SLAM.

  “Then play for us, spirits. Play.”

  The table vibrated under our hands, as if an electrical current buzzed beneath the wood.

  “Join us, spirits. Play. Show us you’re here.”

  The vibrations strengthened, rattling up my arms, jolting my neck, and trembling down my spinal column. The table creaked and shook and tilted back and forth, gaining momentum. Wood crashed against my rib cage, tipped away, and banged against me again. I couldn’t breathe. Pain and fear crippled me.

  No, no, no, screamed the rational voice inside my head. This is not what Stephen’s spirit feels like.

  The table hit me so hard it knocked the wind out of me. I regained my breath, kicked off my right shoe, stretched out my stocking-covered toe, and felt around in the dark for signs of fraud. After another blow to my ribs, my toes met with something soft and curvy and covered in smooth fabric: a pair of female legs, wrapped around the center post, shaking the table with all their might.

  One of the feet gave me a swift kick in the fleshy part of my calf.

  “Ow!” I cried.

  “Shh,” hissed Aunt Eva.

  The shaking stopped and Lena called out, “Don’t touch the ectoplasm. Keep all hands and legs to yourselves. Behave like proper ladies and gentlemen or you’ll do irrevocable harm to the one you want to see.” She exhaled five more of her drawn-out breaths, probably to calm herself after my investigative toes. “Close your eyes. Turn all thoughts to the dear souls you miss so much. Don’t allow anything else inside your head. No doubts. No fears. Nothing.”

  I closed my eyes and played along, even though my expectations had soured as much as when Stephen had told me about Julius’s photography tricks. I turned my thoughts to Mae Tate, the first student at my high school to die of the Spanish flu. No one in the séance room would have known about her. Mae had worn her dark brown hair in loose braids that hung a full foot below her backside, and she always sat at the front of the classroom because her father couldn’t afford to buy her eyeglasses. She collapsed on the floor during the first week of English literature, while we were studying William Collins’s “The Passions” in our McGuffey Readers. Mrs. Martin rushed us out of the room, as if the girl had caught fire, and we all stared with open mouths at the way Mae convulsed on the hard wooden floor like the victim of a witch’s curse.

  That’s all I could remember about Mae Tate at that moment. My mind clouded over. Other memories—stronger, richer ones; memories that wanted me to see and feel and taste them—invaded my brain.

  A room wallpapered in peacock green.

  Stephen’s mouth on mine.

  Mr. Muse.

  Lightning striking a sepia sea.

  Four words penned in an artistic hand: I DO LOSE INK.

  Blue smoke.

  A flag-draped coffin.

  A whisper: Blackbirds …

  “I see—the letter W,” said Lena across the table.

  W? I shook my head and reoriented myself. Oh, Christ. She’s going to tell Aunt Eva Uncle Wilfred came through.

  I opened my mouth to stop any fake uncles from emerging in the dark, but my voice got stuck in my throat. The air burned with the same stifling firework smoke I had smelled before Stephen showed up next to my bed. My eyes watered from the uncomfortable change in the atmosphere. The weight of suffering pressed down on my body.

  “They’re killing me,” said a voice behind me.

  I turned my head but saw only darkness.

  “They’re killing me,” it said again.

  “Stephen?” I struggled to break free of the circle, but Roy and my aunt tugged me toward them. “Stephen, I’m here.” I sprang loose from their grip with a force that tipped my chair backward. The wood and my elbow banged against the floor.

  Aunt Eva shrieked, and Julius cried out, “What was that?”

  “It’s all right.” I untangled myself from the chair and crouched in the dark. “Stephen, where are you?”

  “Help me.” Stephen’s voice came from a few feet away. “I swear to God they’re murdering me.”

  “You’re already dead. I went to your funeral. You died in the war.”

  “They’re coming. Oh, God, they’re coming!”

  “Stephen?” I reached out but grabbed only air. “What happened to you? Who do you see killing you?”

  “Ugly things.”

  “What types of things?”

  “Monstrous birds.” He gasped, which made my shoulders jerk. “Don’t you hear them?”

  “Birds are killing you?”

  “Blackbirds. They’ve tied me down. They’re torturing me.”

  My God, I thought. Is he halfway in hell?

  “Do you know who I am?” I sat up. “Can you see me?”

  A pause followed, long enough to swell with questions from the other sitters. What is she doing? What’s happening? What the hell is going on?

  “Shell.” Stephen’s voice brushed against my ear and shivered through me in the sweetest way. Static sparked across my hair. “My Mary Shelley.”

  I lowered my eyelids and smiled. “Yes, it’s me. You showed up in my bedroom last night, scaring me half to death.”

  “You’ve been pulling me toward you like a magnet. Keep me with you. Don’t push me back to France and home again. They’ve got me trapped there.”

  “You died in battle. No one’s going to hurt you anymore.”

  “No. You’ve got it all wrong. They haven’t finished with me yet. They’re never going to finish with me.”

  A chair scooted away from the table.

  “Keep me with you,” he said against my neck.

  “Keep coming back to me,” I whispered. “I’ll help you figure out what’s wrong, I promise.”

  Heavy footsteps clomped across the room.

  I opened my eyes. “Someone’s going to turn on the lights. Be careful, Stephen—”

  The electric lamps buzzed back to life and blazed against my corneas. The smell of fire in the air softened to the lingering wisps of Roy’s snuffed-out cigarette. My mouth cooled to a normal temperature.

  Stephen was gone.

  Lena plodded my way, brow pinched, ringlets jostling. She raised her hand, and before I could duck, she slapped my cheek. “How dare you take over my séance? How dare you? Who do you think you are, coming in here, questioning me, insulting me, making a scene in the middle of my sacred trance?”

  Julius got to his feet. “All right, all right. Calm down, Lena.”

  She turned on him and smacked him, too. “Why did you bring her here? Are you trying to make fun of my spiritual skills?”

  “No—”

  “Get her out of here.” Lena ran to the door and swung it open with a crash of wood against wall. “Get her out right now. I don’t want to see any one of you on my doorstep ever again, and that includes you, Julius. I hope you never find your brother.”

  I shot to my feet and tried to lunge at Lena, but Aunt Eva and Julius took hold of me and escorted me out to the entry hall, where Lena pelted the backs of our heads with balled-up handfuls of Julius’s flyers.

  AUNT EVA CLIMBED INSIDE THE CADILLAC WITH BOTH OF our beaded handbags quaking in her arms. I put my left foot on the running board to step in beside her, but Julius clasped my elbow and steered me down the sidewalk with enough speed to make me trip.

  “Where are you taking me?” I asked in a panic.

  He stopped below an electric streetlamp near the hamburger restaurant and yanked me close. “You’re not just pretending to see him, are you?”

  “No. I hate frauds.”

  He pushed his fingers into my flesh. His pupils looked as small as pinpricks. “Swear upon his grave you’re not lying.”

  “I swear upon his grave. I still believe your photos are fakes, but I’ve seen him and heard him, and I just felt him whisper against my skin. He thinks something’s still killing him.”

  Julius’s face paled. “What did he say?�
��

  “He told me monstrous blackbirds are tying him down and torturing him. The air burns whenever he comes, and he’s terrified, like he’s reliving his death over and over.”

  Julius swayed. He dropped my arm and leaned against the lamppost to steady himself, his skin chalky white.

  “I’m sorry, Julius. Did they tell you anything about the way he was killed over there?”

  “No.”

  “Did they mention birds? Or capture by the Germans?”

  “No.”

  “If he comes to me again, I’ll ask him more. He begged me to keep him with me, but I don’t know how to hold on to him. I was hoping your friend would help, but—”

  “Just make him leave. Make him go wherever it is he’s supposed to go.”

  “I will if I can. I feel so sorry for him. He’s suffering.”

  Julius pushed himself off the streetlamp and lurched back to his car, where Aunt Eva waited, clinging to the passenger-side door with blanched fingers. I followed, and we all sat in the Cadillac without a word.

  Halfway back to the house, Aunt Eva turned to Julius. “Do you think she’s going out of her mind with grief?”

  He sniffed and wiped at his nose. “She’s sitting right there. She can hear you.”

  “The lightning seemed to change her. She even feels different when I touch her. Is she really seeing him?”

  Julius didn’t answer. He held the wooden steering wheel with his right hand and rubbed the bottom half of his face with his left, and I could tell from his rigid jaw and troubled eyes that the fraudulent spirit photographer believed in his brother’s ghost.

  I COULDN’T SLEEP.

  I thumbed through Stephen’s envelopes and reread several of his letters to hear his living voice inside my head. Most of his messages were written on stationery as blue as the sea—his favorite color—with his initials, SEE, monogrammed at the top.

  One letter, from April 1917, stood out because of his discussion of the war and our friendship.

  Dear Mary Shelley,

  Happy birthday! How old are you now? Fifteen? Are you still as short as you used to be? Were you really short, or am I just remembering you that way because you’re two years younger?

  You probably already know this, but people teased me for being friends with a brainy girl. If I ever acted cold toward you when the taunting got bad, I apologize for my idiocy. None of those people ever write to me these days, so it seems stupid to have worried what they thought. They disappeared into my past without a trace, but the friend I considered abandoning because of them still makes me laugh with her brutally witty letters and bold honesty. I have never met a single soul like you, Shell.

  So this is war. The declaration changed Coronado and San Diego overnight. The men are all enlisting and everyone is hurrying to make sure we all look like real Americans. One of our neighbors held a bonfire in his backyard and invited everyone over to burn their foreign books. I stood at the back of the crowd and watched people destroy the fairy tales of Ludwig Tieck and the brothers Grimm and the poetry of Goethe, Eichendorff, Rilke, and Hesse. They burned sheet music carrying the melodies of Bach, Strauss, Beethoven, and Wagner. Even Brahms’s “Lullaby.”

  I kept wondering what you would have done if you had caught people dropping books into a hissing fire. I imagined you running over, reaching into the flames, and asking, “Have you all gone insane? Do you realize you’re killing art and imagination, not the Kaiser’s army?” But I stood there like a coward and kept quiet. I was afraid.

  I know this letter has turned much darker than what a birthday letter ought to be, but I find it hard to talk to people around here. Everyone wants to categorize the world as good or bad, right or wrong. There is nothing “in between” in their eyes.

  Be careful, Shell. It’s a dangerous time to have unusual ideas. Make sure you truly know people before you offer them your trust. There are monsters lurking everywhere, it seems, and they sometimes disguise themselves as friends, neighbors, and patriots. God, I hope no one ever finds this letter and accuses me of being a traitor. That’s not how I feel at all. I love our country. I just feel we’ve all gotten a little lost.

  Stay safe. Happy birthday.

  Your friend,

  Stephen

  I had forgotten that particular letter. Perhaps I had pushed it aside in my mind because the contents made me uneasy, but I now realized every sentence—from his shame over his thoughts of abandoning me to his curiosity about my reaction to book burning—was a testimony to how much I meant to him.

  I tucked the blue stationery back into the envelope and closed my eyes with my fingers folded around the crisp edges.

  THE THREE O’CLOCK CALL OF THE CUCKOO DOWNSTAIRS drew me out of sleep again.

  My room appeared to be empty and still. The air didn’t burn. I rolled onto my back and settled my head deep into the pillow, half drifting back to sleep.

  A minute or so later, something sank down beside my right hip on the bed. The mattress let out one of its accordion moans. A pair of legs settled beside mine.

  I opened my eyes.

  My breath caught in my throat.

  Stephen sat next to me trembling, sweating.

  I could see him.

  He slouched against the wall in a sleeveless undershirt and trousers a burlap shade of brown. His hair hung in his face, disheveled and grown since I saw him in April, and he held his head in his fists. “Oh, God, Shell. Please make them stop.”

  My voice escaped me. I wanted to lift my hand to see if I could touch him, but I worried I’d scare him away. I managed to say one word: “Stephen?”

  He wouldn’t move at first—he just held his head and shuddered. Then something gave him a start. His shoulders flinched like he had heard a gunshot, and he dove down next to me, pressed his cheek against mine, and squirmed closer.

  I stroked his hair above his left ear. “Why can I feel you?” A smooth lock slid between my fingers with the crackle of static. His face was covered in clammy sweat that dampened my skin. “I can feel you. Are we both half-dead?”

  “They’re killing me.”

  “It’s all right. Nobody’s here.” I wrapped my arms around him and clutched the soft folds of his cotton shirt. His breath warmed my neck, and his heart drummed against me as if he were still alive. My own heart galloped like a quarter horse. “Nobody’s here, Ste—”

  He gasped and peered over his shoulder.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Oh, God.” He pushed himself to his elbows. “They’re coming.”

  “Who?” My eyes flew to the wall, and I imagined for a moment I caught the shadow of a large bird soaring across the golden paper.

  “Oh, Christ.” Stephen crawled all the way on top of me, knocking his knees against mine. “Keep me with you.”

  “How?”

  “Let me be a part of you.”

  “How?”

  “Let me inside.”

  My shoulders tensed. “What do you mean?”

  “Close your eyes.”

  Another shadow flitted across the wall behind him. My eyelids refused to budge.

  “Close your eyes.” He cupped my cheek with his trembling hand and breathed the scent of burning candles against my face. “Please. Close your eyes and open your mind to me. Help me stay with you.”

  “Will it hurt?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m scared.”

  “You’re safe. I’m not. Help me.”

  At those words, I shut my eyes. He pressed his mouth against mine and kissed me in that urgent way of his, guiding my lips apart with his own, tasting of smoke and fire. My head went dizzy and buzzed with a violent hum that grew more deafening with every second. I couldn’t move beneath him. I couldn’t breathe. The oil lamp’s flame blew out beside me, which made the dizziness worse, like someone was spinning me around and around on a swing in a pitch-black room. Stephen no longer felt like Stephen but a massive weight I couldn’t lift. Lights flashed in fro
nt of my face—blinding, fiery explosions that singed the air and clogged my throat. Hungry eyes watched me from the corners of the room, ready to come closer. My wrists and ankles burned with the bite of heavy rope. I was going to die. Oh, my God, I was going to die.

  “Get me out of here!” I freed my mouth and tried to get up. “I don’t want to be here. Get me out of here.” I kicked and fought and struggled, but the bindings dug farther into my skin. Everything burned—my wrists, my lungs, my nose, my stomach. All I could do was shriek and writhe in the black, black world.

  A pair of hands reached around my shoulders.

  “No! Don’t shoot me. Get me out of here. Don’t kill me.”

  Someone scooped me upward, as if pulling me out of water.

  I broke through the surface and gasped for air, a light shining bright against my eyes. My room came back into view. My oil lamp glowed beside me again.

  Aunt Eva’s face hovered in front of mine, as pale as moonstone. She gripped my shoulders and stared at me as though she didn’t recognize me. “Mary Shelley? What were you screaming about? Are you all right?”

  I fought to catch my breath and looked around the room—the last thing I wanted to see was any creature with wings and a snapping beak—but there was nothing with us. My skin dripped with sweat, and my bones turned as heavy as when I had returned to my flesh after the lightning strike. My eyelids weighed a hundred pounds.

  “Mary Shelley?” Aunt Eva pressed her icy hand against my forehead. “Do you have a fever? Is it the flu?”

  “No.” I fell out of her hands and collapsed against my bed. “No. It was something else. It’s as bad as what he said. It’s worse. What were those eyes?”

  A thermometer jabbed me in the mouth. I tried to fight it at first, but my aunt held me down and wedged the glass beneath my tongue.

  “You’re talking like you’re feverish.” She stared at me. “Either that or that séance went to your head. We should have never left the house tonight. We should have never gone inside that trashy room with that cheap-looking girl.”

  My aunt’s spectacles blurred until the two lenses expanded into four wavering bottle caps. My eyelids closed. I fell asleep before she could even take the thermometer out of my mouth. My brain simply slipped away, and I was gone—completely gone without a single dream—for the rest of the night.