In the Shadow of Blackbirds

by Cat Winters

  An awful dream visited me. A crow as large as a bald eagle sat on my chest. I pushed at its lung-crushing body to get it off me, but it cawed and flapped its black wings and sliced my skin with its snapping beak.

  “Don’t!” I yelled with enough force to pull myself out of sleep.

  My eyes opened.

  I gasped.

  Stephen was on me—not a bird.

  I regained my wits, pushed him off, and crawled backward to the corner of my bed. “Stay back. Don’t come any closer.”

  He lunged toward me, so I stood upright on the mattress and shoved my spine against the wall. “Get back, Stephen!”

  “Don’t push me away.” He clutched my hips and tugged me down.

  “Let go of me! You can’t get close to me the way you did last night.”

  “I need you, Shell.” He pulled me to my knees. “Come closer.”

  “No.” I shoved him with enough fear-fueled strength to send him falling backward on his elbows. “You’re pulling me into your darkness when you get too close.” I stood again. “You have to stay back if you want me to help you.”

  He remained on his back and watched me with eyes black and fearful. He wore that white undershirt again, and I could see an unhealthy thinness in his arms and stomach. His cheekbones had become more prominent since April.

  “I see red marks on your arms,” he said. “They’re killing you, too.”

  “I’m all right, Stephen. Just scoot back a few feet so I can think clearly.”

  He kept staring at Julius’s marks on my skin.

  “Scoot back if you want to stay with me,” I repeated. “You need to listen to what I say so we can keep each other safe. Do you understand?”

  He edged backward a foot.

  “Do you promise not to come any closer? Look me in the eye.”

  He did as I asked, and a small spark of the old Stephen inhabited his brown irises again. I could still see the handsome boy I loved inside that changed, haunted person.

  “Will you stay right there?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “You promise?”

  He nodded again.

  “Talk to me, Stephen, so we can make sense of the ugly things and send them away.” I swallowed. “Tell me about France.”

  He dropped his gaze, and his photographs behind him shook with an unnerving tap, tap, tap, tap, tap against the wall.

  “Last night at the séance you asked me to stop you from going either there or to your house,” I said. “What parts of the war do you experience?”

  “I’m not talking about France.”

  I lowered myself to a kneeling position. “I need you to tell me what happened so I can help you get some rest. What do you see?”

  The picture frames trembled harder.

  “Tell me, Stephen.”

  “Trenches flooded with rainwater. Mud. Filth. Gas masks.” He sat upright and pulled his knees to his chest. “Blood-soaked bodies hanging on barbed wire. Artillery shells whistling and screaming overhead. Rats the size of cats crawling over me. Flashes of light that bring out the huge, dark birds.”

  My flesh went cold. “Tell me more about the birds.”

  “I don’t know where they come from.” He buried his face against his knees. “But they’re like no creature I’ve ever seen. I can’t tell how many there are. They show up, and I expect them to peck out my eyes, but they just keep watching me and killing me, and they never go away.”

  “How are they killing you?”

  His body shook as if something cold had surrounded him. “It’s dark and shadowy. I’m struggling too much to see them through the smoke and flashing lights. My wrists are tied to something. They stick the tube of a copper funnel down my throat and gag me.”

  “Were you tortured over there? Did the Germans capture you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I inhaled a gust of fiery air. “The air burns whenever you’re with me. What do you smell when you’re with these birds?”

  “Fire, yes. And those goddamned flashes of light explode over and over and over and over.”

  His lightning photograph whacked against the floor, saved from shattering by the braided rug.

  I heard a movement in Aunt Eva’s bedroom down the hall—a squeak of her mattress. I held my breath, counted to twenty, and turned my attention back to Stephen. My voice dropped to scarcely above a whisper. “What do you see when you’re in your bedroom?”

  He lifted his face, his eyes dim and weary. “A bloodstained sky.”

  “In your bedroom?”

  “Yes. And the closed door and windows that won’t let me out.”

  “You feel trapped in your bedroom, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is your brother ever there?”

  “No, just the birdmen, when it’s dark.”

  “Birdmen? They’re part man?”

  “I don’t know. It’s dark. They’ve got hands and beaks.”

  “You see them in your room? Not just on the battlefield?”

  “I don’t know if it’s my room or not. It’s hot from all that light …” He brought his hand to his left temple.

  “Are you all right, Stephen?”

  He winced. “It hurts my head.”

  “What does?”

  Mr. Muse’s frame banged hard enough to make a dent in the wall.

  “Oh, God.” He opened his eyes. “I want to shoot them.”

  “Please stop that knocking sound. Aunt Eva will hear you.”

  “You’ve got to keep them from getting at your eyes.”

  “There aren’t any birds here, Stephen. Listen—your brother gave me some of your books, and I can feel the warmth you experienced when you read them. I wonder if going inside your house and touching anything left over from your time in France—”

  “No! Stay away from that house.”

  “I can’t go to France, but I can get into your bedroom.”

  “No. Don’t go anywhere near there. If they’re there, they’ll take your beautiful eyes.”

  “How am I supposed to help you, then?” I raised my voice. “Tell me. What am I supposed to do?”

  I heard Aunt Eva running across the floor of her room. I turned toward my door and heard the second frame clatter to the ground. By the time I leapt over to the pictures to hang them back on the wall, Stephen was gone.

  Aunt Eva walked in just as I placed the lightning bolt image back on its nail. I saw the expression on her face when she caught my fingers wrapped around his photograph—the slump of her shoulders, the sudden downturn of her mouth. The previous glow of awe in her eyes when I’d mentioned communicating with the spirit world had now dimmed to deep concern.

  She didn’t say a word about Stephen. She told me to go back to bed and left my room.

  The compass’s needle followed me again. The smoke and frustration in the air lifted. I tucked myself beneath my blankets, but I couldn’t sleep until the early hours of the morning, when the crickets stopped chirping and the first strains of light glowed through the lace of my curtains. I could only lie there and think of a white, bloodstained sky and Stephen’s insistence that he was being watched and murdered by those hideous dark birds.

  WITH MY MASK TIED TIGHT AND MY BOOTS LACED FIRMLY in double knots, I returned to the Red Cross House in the morning, an hour after Aunt Eva left for work.

  I grabbed The Adventures of Tom Sawyer from the donated book pile and headed back into the throng of bandaged men and twittering canaries, the latter of which set my nerves on edge with their erratic, fussy, twitchy bird movements.

  “Are you all right?” asked a woman’s voice.

  I pulled my eyes away from a cage of yellow birds and found the Red Cross nurse with the amber cat eyes standing next to me. “Yes. Why?”

  “You’ve been staring at that cage for at least two minutes. One of the men who’s been eagerly awaiting the end of Tom Sawyer called me over and asked what you were doing.”

  “Oh.” I blinked away a f
oggy haze muddling my head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t sleep well last night. I’m sure I’ll be fine once I sit down and start reading again.”

  “If this is too much for you—”

  “I’ll be fine. I’m happy to be here again. I want to help.”

  Her eyes seemed to ask, Are you sure about that? I gave her a confident nod and watched her walk away.

  Then my attention wandered to the part of the room where Jones and Carlos had rested the day before, and I half expected to hear myself called Aunt Gertie again.

  Carlos sat in his same leather chair, reading another old issue of the Saturday Evening Post.

  The seat beside him was empty.

  Fear twisted inside my gut. Had Jones killed himself?

  I strode over to Carlos, whose dark eyes shimmered above his mask when he saw me. “Good morning, querida. You’ve come back to us.”

  “Of course I came back.” I nodded to the empty chair. “Where’s Jones?”

  “Jones?” He knitted his eyebrows like he didn’t understand. “Oh, the joker there. That wasn’t his real name. I just called him that because so many of you gringos are named Jones.”

  “Oh.” I glanced around the room. “Well, where is he? Is he sitting somewhere else today?”

  “He’s in the influenza ward. They found him burning up with a fever in the middle of the night.”

  “What?”

  “A nurse told me this morning.”

  I hugged Tom Sawyer to my chest and clawed the cloth cover. Tears pricked at my eyes.

  “Don’t cry for him, querida. He was kind of a bastard.”

  “I’m not crying for him specifically.” I wiped my eyes with my fingers. “I don’t know. Maybe I am.”

  “He might not die. Not everyone does.”

  “I know.”

  An awful silence passed between us, which made Jones’s chair seem all the emptier.

  “I heard you say something about a dead soldier yesterday.” Carlos reached his hand toward me across the armrest. “Did you lose a sweetheart?”

  I nodded. “His funeral was only three days ago.” I sniffed and wrapped my fingers around Carlos’s. “Oh, this is silly. I’m supposed to be the one comforting all of you. That Red Cross nurse is going to give me the boot at any second.”

  “Shh. It’s all right.” He gave my hand a squeeze. “I lost my sweetheart, too. She did not die, but she took one look at my missing legs and ran away. I have not seen her since I got back to San Diego in early October.”

  “I’m sorry.” I sniffed again. “Maybe she’ll get braver with time.”

  “Maybe.” He shrugged. “I don’t really think so, though.” He gave my fingers another squeeze—a gentle gesture that reminded me I wasn’t standing there all alone in the world. “Where was your boy from, querida? Around here?”

  “Coronado. He was supposed to finish his studies at Coronado High School last spring, but he enlisted instead.”

  “Oh, I wonder if he knew that Coronado fellow who’s convalescing here.”

  “What? Did you—” My lips couldn’t function for a moment. “There—there’s a person from Coronado here?”

  “You may have seen him—the poor hombre missing the left side of his body. I remember Jones making another one of his terrible jokes about the boy. ‘That Coronado bugger is all right,’ he’d say whenever anyone wheeled him by.”

  I remembered the boy—the sleeping one from the day before whose head was a mess of gauze. That one’s in the arms of Madame Morphine, the man with the eye patch had said before asking for his cookie.

  “Do … do you think …” My tongue struggled to keep up with my thoughts. “Do you think he might have known my friend Stephen?”

  “I don’t know.” Carlos let go of my hand. “Go ask him yourself.”

  “Are you sure you don’t mind me going over there right now?”

  “I’m not going to chase after you.” He snickered and gestured with his chin toward his missing legs.

  “Thank you so much for telling me about him.” I pulled down my mask and kissed the top of Carlos’s head through his thick black hair. “Thank you, thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, querida. Thank you for not having huge warts and buckteeth.”

  I slid my mask back up and took off across the room, slowing my pace when I realized how jarring it would be for the Coronado boy to wake up to the crashing of boots against tile.

  I found him in the same chair as the day before—a mangled young man who could have been Stephen’s age. His head seemed to have caved in on one side and now hid beneath all those crisscrossing bandages, including his left eye, which may or may not have still resided in its socket. The left sleeve of his button-down shirt lay empty and deflated, as did the left leg of his tan trousers. All I could see of his actual body was a hand, a pale eyebrow, and an open right eye the color of green tea.

  He drew in his breath beneath his flu mask. “Oh, sweet Jesus.” He sounded like he could only talk out of the right side of his mouth; each s that he spoke whistled through his teeth. “I thought I was a goner.”

  “I’m sorry I scared you.”

  “You looked like an angel.” He took a few shallow breaths. “I don’t mean that in a flirtatious way. You honestly looked like a golden beam of light. I thought you were going to take me away.”

  I shook my head. “No, I’m just a person.” The chair where the man with the eye patch had been the day before was empty, so I pulled it closer to the boy and lowered myself into its cushion with a squeak of leather. “Are you in much pain?”

  “They keep me on morphine. I’m too far gone to care about the pain when I’m doped up like this.” He chuckled a little. “It’s nighttime that’s the worst. That’s when everything aches and the nightmares come breathing down my neck.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. I’ve heard the others talk about the nightmares, too. I’m sure it’s not easy.” I found my hands shaking. “Umm … look … someone told me you were from Coronado.”

  “Yes.” He pushed himself up a little straighter. “That’s where I’ve lived all my life. Except for my time in the army, of course.”

  “Did you go to the high school there?”

  “Yes. Good old Coronado High.”

  “Did you know Stephen Embers?”

  “Stephen?” He nodded. “Yes, definitely. We’ve been friends since he first moved to the island.”

  My heart beat faster. “D-d-did you see him in France?”

  “Yeah, a group of us from school joined up at the same time.” He cocked his head at me and raised his visible eyebrow, as if he suddenly recognized me, even with my mask covering most of my face. “Say … what’s your name?”

  My entire name counted too much to hide any part of it. “Mary Shelley Black.”

  “Ohhh …” The soldier’s eye brightened. “No wonder you look so familiar. Stephen pulled out that photograph of you all the time.”

  “He did?”

  “I was there when he first got it in the mail, and boy, you would have thought you had sent him a pile of gold from the way he reacted.” He held his chest and took a longer break to catch up with his breathing.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “Sorry. It’s sometimes hard … to get the words out.” His labored speech sounded like it was tiring him, and every s whistled worse than before, but he kept going. “I was just going to add that Stephen wedged your photo inside his helmet when we were down in the trenches. He mooned over it—when he was feeling well. He told the rest of us boys you were the prettiest and smartest girl in the world.”

  “He said that?”

  “I was even”—the exposed section of the boy’s forehead turned pink—“a little jealous of him.”

  I blushed as well, and smiled so much the strings of my mask tautened enough to hurt. My eyes smarted with tears, but I sniffed and held myself together for the sake of Stephen’s friend.

  “How’s he doing?” asked the boy
.

  My blood drained to my toes. “What do you mean?”

  “Have you seen him yet? Or did they put him in a hospital on the East Coast first? They said that might happen.”

  My eyes narrowed in confusion. “Weren’t you there when it happened? Stephen died in battle in the beginning of October.”

  “October?” He shook his head. “No, that’s not possible. He wasn’t even overseas in October.”

  I clutched the armrest. “Pardon?”

  “They had to send him home.”

  “Alive?”

  “Yes.”

  “When? Why?”

  He answered in a tone so hushed I had to balance myself on the last two inches of the chair to understand him. “It was pretty bad. I hate to be the one to tell you.”

  “Please, just tell me.”

  The boy swallowed. “Stephen sort of … well … he lost his mind over there in the trenches. Got to the point where he couldn’t even move anymore. He’d just huddle in the mud, shaking. They tried to help him in one of the field hospitals once—examined him to see if he was faking. But then they sent him straight back into battle … and he got worse than ever.”

  I folded my hands to conceal how much they jittered. “What did they do to him then?”

  “They discharged him and shipped him home. He wasn’t the only one like that. Hell—excuse my language—but hell, most of us went a little off our rockers over there. You couldn’t help it. Some of the fellows’ bodies and brains just stopped working right. Scary as heck.” The soldier rubbed the right side of his bandaged forehead and wheezed a little. “Stephen was so bad off I didn’t think anything could fix him. It was like something inside him broke.” He turned his eye back to me and looked like a lost pup. “You don’t know where they took him once he got back to the States, then?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know anything. His brother said he died a hero’s death over in France. He never said anything about him coming home.”