In the Shadow of Blackbirds

by Cat Winters

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Julius surprised me at the factory and offered to drive me home.” Aunt Eva gestured for us to hurry inside. “Come in, both of you. Shut the door, Mary Shelley. Julius, please have a seat in the living room.”

  Julius sauntered in with his crate.

  “Who’s there?” asked Oberon.

  I grabbed my aunt by her wrist before she could take two steps up the stairs. “Why is he here?”

  “He’s lonely and grieving, so he picked me up from the shipyard. I invited him to supper. Go in and sit with him.”

  “Where are you going to be?” I asked.

  “Upstairs.”

  “Why?”

  She yanked me toward her and spoke through gritted teeth: “Because I wasn’t expecting him, and I need to change out of these awful, smelly work clothes. I’m embarrassed beyond words right now. Please be a kind hostess while I make myself presentable.” She pushed me toward the living room and announced in a cheerier voice, “If you’ll both excuse me for a moment …”

  She hurried up the rest of the stairs. A smell of grease and perspiration so thick I could almost see it lingered in her wake.

  I headed into the living room and plopped myself in the rocking chair across from Julius. “Why are you here?”

  “Why do you sound upset?”

  “I just want to know what you want.”

  He tossed his hat on a cushion beside him and sank back into Aunt Eva’s flowery ivory sofa—a tiny piece of Victorian doll’s furniture compared to his long body. As usual, he wore no mask, and a pale and worn appearance soured his entire face. His eyes were bloodshot and his pupils pinprick small, as they were the night before.

  “You should be nice to me,” he said. “I brought you something.”

  I turned my attention to the fruit crate sitting at his feet. “Oranges?”

  “No.” He hoisted the crate with a grunt, carted it over to me, and dropped down on one knee by my side. A chalky flavor numbed my tongue—a feeling emanating from Julius that I couldn’t identify.

  “I brought you Stephen’s books,” he said.

  I opened my mouth to react, but no words found their way to my lips—only a shaky flutter of air.

  He placed a leather-bound volume on my lap: Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days. The cover’s rich mahogany scent filled my nose, bringing me back to rain-soaked Oregon afternoons spent with Stephen.

  A second book followed: The Mysterious Island, the novel Stephen had been reading the day we last saw each other. I touched the embossed title and remembered how the book had rested on his knee when he sat at the bottom of the staircase. I smelled briny sea air and heard the low thunder of waves crashing against the beach across from his house, as well as the ticking of the grandfather clock with the pockmarked moon face and the swinging brass pendulum.

  A tear burned down my cheek. Julius pulled a handkerchief out of his coat pocket and offered it to me.

  “Thank you.” I wiped my eyes.

  He rose from the floor and sat on the little round end table next to me. “I know how close the two of you were since you were children.” His chilly hand settled around my shoulder. “And I’ve been thinking quite a bit about what you said after last night’s séance. I don’t think you’re crazy.”

  I kept my eyes on Stephen’s books.

  “Mary Shelley,” said Julius as he moved his fingers to the back of my hand, “will you please help me remove his spirit from my house?”

  Those words got me to look straight at him. “Do you see him, too?”

  “No, but I hear him. In his room. Sometimes, even in the middle of the day, the floorboards groan, and I know it’s him.”

  “Is that what those noises were when I last posed for you—when you and Gracie kept looking up at the ceiling in horror and your mother got hurt?”

  “I—yes, I think it was.” His hand trembled against mine. “I can’t even sleep in that house anymore. I want to move, but I need money.”

  “Are you planning to sell the house?”

  “I can’t. My stepfather left the property to Stephen and my mother.”

  “What about all the money from the spirit photographs?”

  He snorted. “I’m not a fellow who saves up his nickels and dimes. I have an expensive image to maintain. Customers to impress. Hobbies …”

  “Then don’t complain about being stuck there. Maybe if you hadn’t tossed out Stephen’s photographs or hurt him—”

  “I told you before, brothers fight. That’s just how it is.”

  “You’ve destroyed his work. He called you violent and a fraud.”

  “I called him meddlesome and spoiled. It’s all a matter of perspective.”

  “I’m going to see if Aunt Eva needs anything—”

  He clasped my elbow before I could step past his big feet. “Don’t go. I’m sorry. I just want you to help him. Please, Mary Shelley. Put him to rest.”

  “Why do you even care?” I asked. “You were never nice to him.”

  “That doesn’t mean I want him to suffer. He was just a kid, for Christ’s sake. He …” Julius’s voice cracked, and grief’s sharp sting overpowered the ice-cold numbness on my tongue. “He did a stupid thing by running off to war when he could barely even put up a fight here at home.” He closed his eyes and clenched his jaw, and I could feel his battle against tears in his squeeze of my arm. “Jesus, look at me.” He shook his head and let out a pained laugh. “Who knew that little pip-squeak of a brother would ever make me cry?”

  I removed his hand from my elbow with a delicate motion. “I am trying to help him. If you have even the smallest inkling why he thinks birds were killing him overseas …”

  “Germans shot him. There were no birds.”

  “But something terrified and hurt him before he died. And I bet he won’t ever leave this earth until he understands what happened to him.”

  “He died in combat. What more does he need to know?” Julius pulled his handkerchief out of my hand and wiped his eyes.

  “Maybe he’s like Hamlet’s father’s ghost, needing justice for his murder.” I rubbed my arms to fight off an outbreak of gooseflesh. “I still think he may have been a prisoner of war. He seems mistreated—tortured.”

  The taste of Julius’s grief dissolved in my mouth, replaced by numbness again, as if he were retreating from pain.

  “What else could possibly help him feel at peace, Julius?” I asked. “You lived with him all his life. What do you think I could do to convince him to move on?”

  Julius lifted his lashes and regarded me with his deep brown eyes. A strange look of serenity washed over his face, and his breathing softened. “I just heard him.”

  “What?” I cocked my head and listened for whispers, but I heard only Aunt Eva’s footsteps bustling around upstairs. “Are you sure you didn’t just—”

  “Mary Shelley …” Julius took me by the elbow and guided me down to the rocking chair. His voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “He said … he knows you threw that photograph into the bay.”

  I froze.

  Julius leaned close, his forehead a few short inches from mine. “He said he wants another picture of the two of you together. Before he goes. That’s what he needs.”

  “How … ?” I swallowed. “How do you know I threw that photo in the bay? Did Aunt Eva—”

  “He just told me. You shouldn’t have done that. It upset him. He thinks you don’t want to remember him.”

  “No … he doesn’t think that. It’s those birds—”

  “He wants a photograph.”

  I searched Julius’s face for signs of trickery, but he kept his eyes on mine. His stoic expression showed me nothing.

  He gathered both my hands in his freezing palms. “I’ll capture you together one last time. I’ll give you a copy of it to keep somewhere special. And then you can tell him good-bye.”

  “But …”

  “Mary Shelley
.” He smiled in a pitying sort of way. “What did Stephen want more than anything else in the world? What made his heart beat fastest?”

  My face flushed. I turned my eyes toward the floorboards. “To be as skilled a photographer as his father.”

  “No. You know that’s not the right answer.” Julius nudged his knee against mine. “He wanted you.”

  I shut my eyes to stave off more tears.

  Julius bent close again, his breath brushing against my cheek. “He doesn’t want you to ever forget him.”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “Help him. With a photograph. Invite his spirit into another picture with you. Prove you’ll always remember him.”

  “But … he hated spirit photography.”

  “Please, Mary Shelley.” Julius strengthened his hold on my hands. “I just need one … last … picture.”

  I looked him in the eye again, and this time I saw something wild and unstable staring back. “Wait …” I squirmed. “What’s all this about, Julius? Why are you really here?”

  “It’s about you helping Stephen and me get out of that godforsaken place.”

  “How could one photograph get you out of that house?”

  “I’m going to send it to a contest. A scientific publication is looking for proof of the existence of spirits.” His eyes gleamed like a child’s on Christmas morning. “And they’re offering a prize of two thousand dollars for solid evidence.”

  “No.” I pulled my hands out of his. “I’m not helping you get any money.”

  “I’d give you a fair percentage of the prize money if you brought him to me.” He clasped my shoulder. “I bet we could produce solid evidence—a photograph of Stephen that would make the judges’ scientific eyes pop with fear and awe and respect.”

  “No!” I shot to my feet. “Absolutely not. Cripes, Julius, I thought you were here because you truly cared about your brother.”

  “I do care. If you turn down this opportunity, you’re the one abandoning him, not me. Why would you do that to him? Why would you let him suffer?”

  I drew in my breath to give myself confidence. “I’m sure one of the reasons he’s unsettled inside your house is because he hates what you did to his father’s studio.”

  Julius shrank back, so I summoned the courage to go further. “Stephen said your drug abuse and fraudulence probably led to his father’s heart failure. Maybe he wants you to stop lying and to stop doctoring those photographs.”

  He absorbed my words for another silent moment. His eyes watered and reddened, and he seemed on the verge of either bawling or erupting with rage. He stood up and towered above me at his full, intimidating height. “I am not a fraud. I do not doctor photographs. I did not drive my stepfather to an early grave.”

  “But you’re a drug addict.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I can tell just by being next to you.” I breathed in again, the chalky scent coating my throat like novocaine. “You’re numb. Maybe if you sobered up, you wouldn’t feel the need to prey upon innocent people.”

  He grabbed both of my arms and lifted me to my toes. “You try living with your brother’s ghost and sending your mother away half out of her mind. You try growing up with a stepfather who loved your brother more than you and tell me you wouldn’t touch one speck of a substance that takes away the pain.”

  “You’re hurting me.”

  “Don’t ever accuse me of being an addict and a fraud again.”

  “Let go of me.”

  “I came to you for help.” He shook me. “I came to you as the brother of a boy who loved you.”

  “Let go of her!” Aunt Eva ran up behind Julius and pulled on his shoulders.

  “Leave me alone, Eva.”

  “What are you doing to her?”

  “Leave me alone you stupid, clingy woman!” He let go of me and shoved my aunt to the floor.

  The room fell silent, aside from my rapid breathing and the clicking of Oberon’s talons as he paced his perch.

  Aunt Eva slowly propped herself up on her elbows. She was wearing a brown silk dress, and she smelled powdered and perfumed. Little tortoiseshell combs dangled from stray blond strands. Her glasses hung cockeyed on her nose. She wasn’t wearing her flu mask.

  “Get out of my house.” She pushed herself up to a standing position and straightened her spectacles. “I don’t ever want you near my niece again.”

  “No—I can’t. I need her to help me!”

  “I said get out.” She charged at her wall of photographs, yanked down the picture with the white-draped figure and me, and pitched the frame at Julius’s head. He deflected it with his arm, and the frame crashed to the wooden floor in a shower of glass.

  He backed away. “You’re crazy.”

  She grabbed the framed article with his soldier spirit photos and threw that at him as well. He jumped away and let the glass shatter at his feet.

  “I’m calling the police if you don’t get out of here this minute!” She pulled down another photo—the one with Uncle Wilfred’s spirit. “I’m sure Mary Shelley has marks on her arms from your fingers.”

  The third frame whacked him in the temple. She then pelted him with his hat.

  He grabbed the fedora, yelled obscenities I’d never even heard before, and bounded down the hall. He must have swung the front door closed with all his might, for the house shook and the rest of the photos on Aunt Eva’s living room wall were knocked crooked.

  Aunt Eva exhaled in a way that sounded like a sob. She put her hands on her hips and hung her head, taking deep breaths that wheezed from the depths of her lungs.

  I hesitated between comforting her and cleaning up the glass.

  “Are you hurt, Mary Shelley?” Her voice turned choppy. “Do you need a doctor?”

  “No. You got to him before he could hurt me too badly.”

  “I can’t believe—I don’t understand.” She tromped out of the room and into the kitchen.

  I followed after her.

  With her back to me, she opened the surface of her tan cookstove, lit a match, and stirred up the smoldering coals like she was jabbing the poker into Julius’s heart.

  “I can cook, if you’d like,” I said.

  She kept digging at the coals.

  I rubbed my arms, still feeling Julius’s finger marks throbbing beneath my sleeves. “I’m sorry about what he did to you.”

  “I wasted nearly a year of my life wanting that man. I spent Wilfred’s last months hoping Julius would be my chance to have someone who wouldn’t waste away and die on me. I had no idea he thought so little of me that he could come over and bully us like we were nothing. Why was he hurting you?”

  “We were arguing about Stephen.”

  She shook her head and slammed the stovetop closed. “It’s my fault for always pushing you at him. It’s my fault for allowing you to see your childhood friend again. I could have saved us both so much heartbreak if I hadn’t been swept away by—” She wiped her wet cheeks with a dishcloth. “And here I am, twenty-six years old, with no husband or children of my own.”

  “I’m surprised you’d still want children after dealing with me.”

  She sputtered a small laugh. “But I do. And I—I lost my husband just as I was starting to age. I’m not pretty like you and your mother. I’ll never find someone to love me again.”

  “You are pretty, Aunt Eva, even though you never seem to think so. And you’re not old. My mother didn’t give birth to me until she was thirty.”

  “But she died when she gave birth to you.”

  “Because of severe bleeding that had nothing to do with her age. There’s still time for children. Isn’t it amazing that right now you have the opportunity to head downtown in trousers and short hair to build ships—to join in some of the same adventures as men?”

  She blew her nose into the dishcloth. “A job doesn’t hold you when you’re lonely. It doesn’t comfort you when a killer flu comes barreling into to
wn.”

  I walked over and placed my hand on her smooth, silk-covered shoulder. “I’m here for you, though. We’ll take care of each other.”

  At the hospital my touch had soothed her, and again she relaxed under my palm. She faced me with eyes swollen with tears. “Are you really communicating with Stephen? Did you honestly hear him and feel him in that séance room?”

  I pursed my lips and nodded. “Yes.”

  “Are you sure you’re not just imagining him? I know you’re desperately lonely, too. You have no friends here. You have no father and no school, which I’m sure can cause—”

  “It’s truly him, I swear. He seems to need my help in understanding his death. Otherwise, I doubt he’ll ever rest.”

  Her mouth quivered. “Do you believe he’s been with you anywhere else besides that séance room and his funeral?”

  I lowered my eyes.

  “Mary Shelley, where do you think you’ve encountered him?” She gulped. “In this house?”

  I nodded and met her gaze. “He comes to me at night. I’ve seen him. I’ve felt him. I think someone did something terrible to him.”

  A deep groove of concern formed above the bridge of her nose.

  “Don’t be afraid of him,” I said. “He doesn’t seem to want to do any harm. He’s just scared. I think between the war and the flu, no one’s going to escape getting haunted. We live in a world so horrifying, it frightens even the dead.”

  She left my side and grabbed an onion and her knife from the worktable. “Go clean up the broken glass while I fix supper. Let’s put the subjects of death and the Embers brothers to rest for the evening. I’ve had enough for one day.”

  I did as she asked, for the kitchen was drenched with the taste of heartbreak, and I could barely breathe.

  I BROUGHT THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND TO BED WITH ME THAT night. My room sweltered with a heat unthinkable for an Oregon girl in fall, so I wore my sleeveless summer nightgown made of batiste and embroidered lace and stretched out on my bed beneath the oil lamp’s light.

  Part One, I read silently to myself, Dropped from the Clouds. Jules Verne and his brilliant writing transported me into a hot-air balloon that careened toward a South Pacific island on the winds of a catastrophic storm. The lingering pain of finger marks on my bare arms faded the further I dove into the story, and the ache of missing Stephen and my father softened to a point I could almost tolerate. Warmth spread like candle wax through my blood. I fell asleep ten chapters in, with Stephen’s book squished between my cheek and the pillow.