by Cat Winters
The needle pointed to Stephen’s photographs.
• October 29, 1918 •
AUNT EVA WOKE ME UP THE FOLLOWING MORNING BY exhaling a loud sigh next to my bed.
I held my breath and opened one eyelid. “What’s the bad news?”
She held her mask in her hand, so I was able to see her pursed, whitened lips. “Julius telephoned me last night. They’re burying Stephen this morning. I’ll be working an extra shift later so I can take some time off work to go to the funeral. The Emberses were so kind to me when Wilfred died.”
“I want to go, too.”
“No, you need to heal.”
“I want to be there. Please don’t make me miss saying good-bye to him.”
She sighed again. “All right, but I’m bringing you home the moment you seem too unwell to be there. I’ll feed you onion hash this morning to make sure you stay safe, and I’m putting us in another taxi so we don’t have to ride on the streetcars.”
“OK.” I closed my eyes, for they had started to sting.
Aunt Eva patted my arm. “Pick out your nicest dress. We need to leave in an hour.”
EVERYTHING I PUT ON MY BODY THAT MORNING—FROM A big blue hair bow to my black silk taffeta dress—felt like iron weights bearing down on my bones. My healing lightning burn itched worse than a poison oak rash beneath my bandages. Even my mouth hurt, probably because Aunt Eva made me eat enough onion hash to disintegrate my taste buds. I felt like a broken, clumsy version of myself as I made my way back into the briny outside air for the first time in more than a week.
The funeral rooms of Barrett & Bloom, Undertakers, were located on a hill east of downtown, inside a white colonial-style house with black shutters and two front doors that seemed three feet taller than a normal entryway. If caskets of flu victims had flooded the premises like at the undertaker’s house where I’d seen the children playing, then Mr. Barrett and Mr. Bloom must have kept them well hidden. All I saw on the lawn were trim hedges a vibrant shade of green and magenta bougainvillea that climbed the wall, twisting toward the second-story windows.
We entered a white foyer, and I stiffened at a disturbing sight: a glowing purplish-blue haze that drifted across the floorboards and rose to the ceiling like a restless band of traveling phantoms. The smell of freshly lit matches permeated my mask.
I inched backward. “What is this?”
“They’ve sprinkled sulfur over hot coals to fight the flu.” Aunt Eva nodded toward a metal bucket half hidden by the ghostly plumes. “They tried that same technique at church before the quarantine closed it down. The smoke burns blue.”
“That’s because it’s sulfur dioxide.” But knowing the scientific reason for the eerie blue smoke didn’t make me feel any better. “I don’t like it in here.”
“It’s to keep us safe.” She hooked her arm around mine. “Come on. I’ll be by your side.”
We followed the sound of voices and organ music through a doorway and found ourselves in a room about thirty feet long, wallpapered in a pale yellow. More buckets of smoking coal bathed the masked mourners in that noxious blue haze and made my eyes smart. If we hadn’t been wearing the gauze, none of us would have been able to breathe.
At the far end of the room, a bronze electric chandelier illuminated a closed, flag-draped casket shrouded in smoke, on display in front of amber curtains. My knees went weak, but I forced myself to stay upright, even though the luminous blue clouds billowing around the coffin made it look like the undertakers had placed Stephen in the middle of a giant laboratory experiment. A photograph of Stephen in his army uniform—the same portrait he had mailed to me—sat propped on a white pillar.
Aunt Eva squeezed my arm to give me strength and led me farther inside the sulfuric room.
Two dozen or so masked mourners milled about in the smoke or sat in the spindle-back chairs facing the coffin. A handful of girls my age, perhaps slightly older, dabbed their eyes with handkerchiefs, and I wondered, with a sting of jealousy, if any of them had ever been Stephen’s sweetheart. We had never discussed an interest in other people in our letters.
I tore my eyes away from the girls and met Mr. Darning’s gaze across the room. He was busy conversing with a few professional-looking men, so he merely gave me a polite nod of recognition. I was tempted to walk over to him just so I could hear that comforting voice of his.
Stephen’s cousin Gracie wandered by Aunt Eva and me, looking lost. Her stringy wig slid down the left side of her head, revealing a bald patch above her ear. Her flu mask—poorly tied—hung off her chin like a deflated balloon.
Aunt Eva touched the girl’s broad shoulder. “Gracie, how are you?”
Gracie turned our way with pale brown eyes that didn’t seem to focus on us. “I don’t know. Stephen’s mother couldn’t come. Nothing’s going well at all.”
“I’m so sorry.” Aunt Eva embraced the girl in a firm hug. “You’ve been through so much lately, what with Stephen … your mother … your own fight with the flu.” She helped Gracie pull her wig back into place to hide the ravages of the illness.
I tried not to stare. “Where’s Stephen’s mother?”
“She’s away for a while.” Gracie lowered her head. “She hasn’t been the same since Stephen …” She swallowed, and a peculiar emotion rose off her like a vapor—I could taste it over the sulfur, the same way I had tasted Aunt Eva’s metallic rage in the hospital. A sour, rotten flavor, like curdled milk.
Julius, wearing a mask for the first time that I’d seen, came our way. At his side strolled the bespectacled young man with the solid build who had driven him home the morning I learned of Stephen’s death.
“Go sit down, Gracie—you don’t look well.” Julius turned our way. “Thank you for coming, Eva. Mary Shelley, I was sorry to hear about your lightning accident. Are you better?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
Aunt Eva touched his arm. “How are you doing, Julius?”
“Not well. Um … There was something …” He rubbed his swollen eyes. “Uh … What was I just going to say? Oh—have you met my other cousin? This is Gracie’s twin, Grant.”
I gave Grant a polite nod. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you, too,” said Grant. “I’ve seen your picture enough times, even though I can barely recognize you in that mask. Girls look ludicrous in that gauze.”
I opened my mouth to retort that he probably looked better with the gauze than without, but I pressed my lips shut out of respect for Stephen.
Aunt Eva kept hold of Julius’s arm. “Gracie told us your mother’s not well.”
“No, she’s not,” he said. “She’s in a terrible condition. Everyone in this miserable family is either dying or cracking to pieces. It’s getting hard to take.” He slipped his arm away from my aunt’s and pulled a handkerchief from his coat pocket. Plump tears leaked from his eyes—a sight I hadn’t expected. He seemed too masculine to cry, even at a funeral for his own brother, but I tasted the genuine bitterness of his grief.
Everyone’s emotions seemed to come alive upon my tongue.
“So strange,” I whispered, to which Julius lifted his red eyes.
“What’s strange?” he asked.
“Just the way I’m feeling.”
I looked toward Stephen’s coffin again and had the urge to walk over and touch the surface. Aunt Eva guided Gracie to a chair. Julius wiped his eyes and mumbled something about spirits, but I excused myself and made my way toward the front of the room. Stephen’s dark eyes in the photograph watched me through the incandescent blue fog.
Two boys near his age stood by the casket for about a minute before I could approach, and I heard them saying something about “rotten luck” and “the damned Krauts.” They patted the lid like they were giving a reassuring touch to Stephen’s shoulder and departed with bowed heads.
I stepped toward the casket, my lungs wheezing and my legs rubbery. It was just the two of us up there: Stephen and me. I laid my nonbandaged hand o
n the flag covering the wood and tried to envision the way he’d looked when he watched me from his staircase—the interest in his brown eyes, the dimpled grin blooming across his face, the Verne novel lying open in his lap. The funeral room closed around us, becoming as intimate as the Emberses’ peacock-green sitting room, where we had dared to inch closer to one another.
“Stephen,” I whispered, “I’ve hung both of your photographs on my bedroom wall. I know we’ve never believed much in ghosts, but I have to wonder, were you in my room yesterday? Were you visiting your photos? Or me?” I closed my eyes and blocked out the hum of conversations behind me. “Do you know who I am, Stephen?”
Nothing happened that indicated he had heard me.
My lips shook beneath my mask. “It’s Shell, Stephen. Mary Shelley. I’m here for you, all right? I’ve been unwell, but I’d never miss saying—” I gulped down a lump as sharp as a razor blade. “I even wore one of my gigantic hair bows for you because I thought it would entertain you. Like when we were kids. I’d give anything to hear you—”
I stopped, for a heavy weight, thick and poisonous, had settled across my shoulders. My mouth filled with the same hot-metal flavor of rage as when Aunt Eva had yelled at me in the hospital. The fabric below my hand prickled with static, which made my heart pound.
“Stephen?” My voice rose an octave. I ran my fingers along the flag and shut my eyes again. “Are you all right?”
The flavor in my mouth grew more intense, and the flag beneath my hand sparked and crackled. Everything else in the room slipped away.
“Is something wrong, Stephen?” I asked again, feeling in my bones I’d hear an answer.
Three heartbeats passed. A whisper brushed against my ear.
“Very wrong.”
My eyes flew open. I peered over my shoulder to see if anyone stood nearby, but there was no one within ten feet of me. I dropped to my knees, pulled down my mask, and bent my bare lips closer to the coffin. “Did you just say very wrong? Oh, my God, did you just speak to me?”
“Mary Shelley?” called Aunt Eva from behind me.
“Stephen, talk to me again. What’s wrong? Why aren’t you all right?”
Another word burned in my ear. “Blackbirds.”
“What are you doing?” Aunt Eva grabbed my shoulders. “Stand up and put on your mask.”
“He’s whispering to me. I hear him. He’s talking.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Please be quiet—I need to hear him. He’s not all right. Something’s wrong.”
Two pairs of strong male hands pulled me backward.
“Wait.” I fought to break free. “He’s whispering. He’s talking to me.”
The soles of my dress shoes skidded across the floorboards. Everything else had gone silent: the organ music, the mourners. Stunned eyes looked at me through the smoke over white patches of gauze. The flag-draped casket disappeared from my view.
“Don’t take me away!” I kicked and flailed and arched my back. “I heard him in there. He said something about birds. Don’t take me away from him. He’s talking to me. He’s talking to me!”
My captors steered me toward the lobby, out of view of the horrified mourners. One of the men—Julius—turned me around and clutched my arms so hard it hurt. “What’s going on?”
“He was whispering to me. I heard him. He said something’s wrong.”
“Mary Shelley, stop,” said Aunt Eva behind me. “Stop it right now.”
The Emberses’ cousin Grant stood beside Julius with his hands on his hips and his brow furrowed.
Julius studied me with eyes that so resembled his brother’s, and I gripped the cuffs of his black coat sleeves. “Open the casket, Julius. What if he’s stuck in there?”
“We can’t open it.”
“Please—open it. I swear I heard him talk.”
“We can’t open the casket, Mary Shelley.” Julius’s eyes went bloodshot again. “His head is too damaged.”
His words tore into me with a bite a hundred times more vicious than the pain of the lightning bolt. My lips turned cold and sore with the realization that there would never, ever be another kiss. I’d never again feel the pressure of Stephen’s hand against the small of my back. I’d never receive another letter from him.
His head is too damaged.
A sob shook my shoulders. I hung my head and bawled like I’d never cried in my life.
Julius hugged me against his chest and allowed my tears to drench his coat’s black wool. I wept and choked on the blue sulfur smoke, while Aunt Eva struggled to situate my flu mask back over my mouth and nose.
Julius stroked my hair. “Take her back home, Eva. She shouldn’t have come.”
“That’s a good idea.” My aunt took my elbow and pulled me away from Stephen’s brother. “Come on, Mary Shelley.”
“I know I heard him.”
“Don’t talk about that right now.” She guided me to the door. “I know you’re hurting, but you need to let Stephen go.”
But I couldn’t.
Stephen wasn’t completely gone.
MY AUNT AND I RODE HOME IN THE BACK OF ANOTHER taxi without exchanging a word. All I wanted was to be alone. I was relieved when we returned to the house and she almost immediately flew out the front door, headed for work in the shipyard.
The need to write to Stephen hit me after she left.
During the past four and a half years, whenever something upset me or intrigued me more than I could bear, my first response was to spill my thoughts across a blank sheet of paper for him. I’d slip the letter in a mailbox and imagine it bundled in a brown postal bag, traveling down to Coronado by rail, jostling amid all the other letter writers’ stamped parcels for friends and relatives. And I’d picture Stephen reading my words with a smile on his lips and his own pen at the ready.
Fetching two sheets of stationery and a fountain pen from my bedside table might make everything feel normal.
But what’s normal anymore, Shell? I pictured Stephen asking as I headed up the staircase. Normal ended a long time ago.
“I just need to write,” I said out loud to the empty air.
I grabbed the writing utensils and went back downstairs to a weathered wooden table in the backyard. It sat under the sagging branches of sweet-scented orange trees. Breathing in fresh California air without my mask, I penned a message I knew I would never be able to mail.
October 29, 1918
My Dearest Stephen,
Do you want to hear something odd? I attended your funeral today.
Yes, you read that grim sentence correctly. Now I have to ask you something, and I want you to answer me truthfully: Did you speak to me when I was leaning over your casket? Do you see me writing this letter right now? Was your brother right all along about spirits hovering around us, waiting to be captured in photographs, or has something changed in me? My sense of smell has become extraordinarily acute—as if I can smell and taste emotions. Then there’s the compass needle, and your voice at the funeral—I’m not who I was before being struck by lightning.
You whispered to me that something is wrong—something about birds. I don’t care how many times I’ve skeptically laughed at the talk of ghosts, I heard you, Stephen. You sounded like you were in trouble.
And if something has happened, does that mean you’re unable to rest in peace?
Answer me, please—in any way that you can. Tell me what happened. Let me know if you are suffering. I want to help you, even if it means looking at life and death in strange new ways that make me shudder with fear and awe. If you’re stuck and afraid, I’ll do my best to help you figure out what’s wrong.
If you can still be with me again, then come.
Yours,
Mary Shelley
WHEN DAYLIGHT WANED AND THE AIR COOLED TOO MUCH for me to linger outside, I tucked my letter to Stephen in the dictionary I’d been reading all afternoon and opened a cabinet outside the kitchen door to switch on the main gas valve. Then
I dragged myself into the house, grabbed a matchbox, and poked flames in the wall lamps’ glass globes to ignite the delicate honeycomb mantles hidden inside. The matches smelled of sulfur dioxide—a scent I knew I’d forever associate with Stephen’s casket—and the odor made me want to retch. It took me twice as long as it should have to bring the lamps to their full brightness.
Aunt Eva planned to work late to cover her missed morning shift. Five hours to go before she would come home. Five hours of dwelling by myself after dark.
Supper was the furthest thought from my mind, but I knew Aunt Eva and I would both need to eat. I stirred up a bland pot of canned vegetable soup over her coal-burning, nickel-trimmed cookstove and ate in silence, wishing she could have afforded electricity. Not only did I enjoy the soothing hum of incandescent lightbulbs, but the gaslights emitted an eerie white glow far too similar to the blue haze in the funeral room. My shadow rising and falling across the pea-soup-green wallpaper made me jump and peek over my shoulder every few minutes.
When my bowl was halfway empty, a voice called out from another part of the house, “Hello.”
I froze. The hairs on my arms and neck stood on end.
The voice then asked, “Who’s there?”—a horrible, squeaky sound that resembled a child speaking on a phonograph record.
I braced myself for more words or movements from the other room and eyed the window as a means of escape. Was it a robber? Stephen? Another side effect of the lightning?
A squawk blasted through the silence.
Oberon.
“Oh … of course.” I sighed. It was just that silly bird talking, not Stephen or an intruder. Just a trained magpie saying what he always asked when someone entered the room.
I returned to my soup, swallowing down limp beans and carrots that tasted like rocks, when a thought struck me: Why did Oberon ask the question he always asked when someone entered the room if no one had entered the room?
