In the Shadow of Blackbirds

by Cat Winters

  The ticking stopped.

  I had killed a clock.

  I should have been saving my aunt and my dead first love, but instead I had murdered a beautiful Swiss timepiece, handmade in the nineteenth century by one of my greatgrandfathers up in the Alps. My fist throbbed. Little clock handprints bruised the sole of my foot.

  Death gave a good chuckle. I’m beating you, little girl. You see? You can’t fight me. Why even try?

  I grabbed clean cloths and returned upstairs to Aunt Eva.

  THE REST OF THE DAY UNFOLDED MUCH THE SAME: nonstop running up and down the stairs with soup and tea and cold compresses. Fruitless telephone calls to find doctors and ambulances. Bloody noses. Rasping coughs that sounded like the last gasps of a drowning person. Skin color checks. Onions. Vomit. Curse words that would have made my father cringe. Clothing changes when I couldn’t stand the mess of fluids on my own skirts.

  I opened a cookbook and learned how to make onion syrup by filling a jar with alternating layers of onions, brown sugar, and honey, but the concoction would need to sit overnight to be ready to consume. When my stomach growled, I stopped to eat an apple and drink a glass of water, but my breaks couldn’t have lasted more than two minutes apiece. There was no time to slow down.

  Somehow, night returned before it seemed due. Aunt Eva had made it onto a list for an ambulance, but every time I called for an update, the dispatcher added another twelve hours to the wait.

  “I’ll pay you money,” I told the man near midnight. “I’ll pay you to pick her up sooner. I bet you’re fetching rich people faster than the poor souls who slave away in the shipyard. That poor woman worked her fingers to the bone to keep the navy safe, and you’re just letting her die up there.”

  “Miss, her name is on our list. We’ll get her as soon as we can.”

  “You’re not a true patriot. You’re not one hundred percent American.”

  “Miss—”

  “I’m sorry, that was a terrible thing to say. I hate when people say that. I’m sure you’re a fine person.”

  “Miss, you sound tired. Are you ill as well?”

  “I’m fit as a fiddle. I’ve never been better. It’s lovely weather we’re having, too, isn’t it? A grand day for a cup of tea with my beautiful dead boy and my dying aunt.”

  “Miss, get some sleep. We’ll send an ambulance.”

  “He was just eighteen.”

  “Get some sleep.”

  “She’s twenty-six.”

  “Miss …”

  “All right.” I rested the earpiece on its hook and tottered on my feet. “All right.”

  I STRUGGLED TO STAY AWAKE, TO KEEP HELPING AUNT Eva, but my arms and legs refused to move at a normal rate. A snail of a girl was what I’d become. An old woman shuffling about in the stooped body of a sixteen-year-old.

  Candlelight illuminated a little porcelain clock on Aunt Eva’s bedside table. The morning ticked its way toward five o’clock. Almost twenty-four hours had passed since I’d first found her with the flu. The oil for her lamp had run out, so I hunkered down on her floor in the shadows with my arms wrapped around my bent legs.

  “I wonder how that Jones boy is doing, or whatever his name was,” I said to my aunt’s wheezing, weakening body. “The one who unsettled me at the convalescent home. Is his flu as bad as yours? And I wonder about Carlos and Mr. Darning, and Stephen’s friend Paul. Are they still alive? Is my dad alive? Will today be the end of the world? Because it sure feels like it.” I sank my head against my knees and smelled onions and blood on my black skirt. “It wasn’t all that frightening to die, come to think of it. Returning was the hard part, landing back inside this broken body and waking up to the war and the flu and people who do cruel things to other people.” I bit my lip and tasted dry skin. “Why did I even return? What a nasty joke to send a girl back inside her body, only to show her there’s nothing she can do for anyone in the world.”

  Aunt Eva muttered something in German and gibberish.

  “Hmm … maybe the onion syrup is ready. I should give that a try.” I grabbed the side of her bed with one hand and hoisted myself off her floor. “Let’s give that a try, shall we?”

  A cry of shock escaped my lips.

  My aunt’s face was brown. Those mahogany spots—the purplish, brownish signs of a body losing oxygen—were overrunning her cheeks and ears. She gurgled and sputtered, and blood again leaked from her nose.

  “No, that’s not fair!” I dug my fingers into her mattress. “I’m trying my hardest to save you, so you can’t turn purple. Don’t you dare let this beat you, Aunt Eva. Don’t you dare—”

  An ambulance wailed through the neighborhood outside.

  What would happen if I jumped in front of the vehicle to make it come to a stop? What would happen?

  “Let’s find out.” I left my aunt’s side and galloped down the stairs in the dark, somehow arriving at the bottom without breaking my neck. Outside a salty breeze blew through my hair and skirt, and the moon was a thumbnail sliver in the still-black sky. A cluster of voices murmured down the street, and I turned and smiled for the first time that day.

  There would be no need to jump in front of an ambulance, for there an ambulance sat—one block down.

  “Thank you!” I took off running to make sure I reached the driver before he could drive away or fade from sight. “Don’t be a hallucination. Please don’t be a hallucination.”

  Two uniformed policemen hauled a young woman out of an adobe-style bungalow with a red-tiled roof. Her unshaven husband ran his hand through his tousled brown hair while holding a toddler in his other arm. A grandmotherly woman beside him rocked a crying infant.

  “Please take my aunt, too!” I ran at the officers at the speed of hurricane winds. “Take my aunt; she’s in my house.”

  “There’s no room,” said one of them—an ugly man with squinty eyes and enormous ears.

  “She’s not very big. You can make room.” I was aware of my arms waving around me as if they had a mind of their own, but I couldn’t control them. “Please! Stop telling me to wait twelve more hours. This woman here isn’t nearly as sick as my aunt. Her face isn’t even close to turning purple.”

  “We don’t have another stretcher.”

  “Then I’ll carry her myself, you lazy, useless—”

  “I can help.” The flu victim’s husband put down the toddler and came my way. “I’ll help you carry her.”

  I stepped back, caught off guard by his kindness. “What?”

  “Stay right here,” he told the officers. “Where is she?”

  “This way. Thank you. Thank you.” With tears turning the road ahead of me into a blurry, bobbing streak, I led the man to our house, and we tore up the dark stairs together. “Thank you. She’s in here. She’s turning that brownish-purple color.”

  The man scooped my shivering aunt into his arms by the light of the candle.

  “Kalt,” she muttered. “So kalt. Grippe. Wilfredededed … mein Liebchen.”

  “Don’t speak German, Aunt Eva. She’s not even German, she’s Swiss.” I followed the man and my aunt out of her room, back into the blackness of the upper hallway. “She was born in America, and I killed her Swiss cuckoo clock. I kicked it clear across the kitchen as though it were causing our problems. Just like Oberon and those scissors that nearly got him.”

  “Do you have the flu, too?” asked the man on our way down the stairs. “You sound feverish.”

  “No, I’m fine. I just haven’t slept in twenty-four hours, and no one would come get her, and Stephen’s waiting for me.”

  He maneuvered Aunt Eva out the front door. “Where is someone waiting for you?”

  “He’s probably shivering down in the shadow of blackbirds again … um … Coronado, I mean. Did I just tell a stranger about the blackbirds?”

  Something rustled in the white branches of the eucalyptus when we passed beneath its long, fragrant leaves, and I wondered if Oberon was perched up there, waiting for the door to
open again so he could fly inside.

  “Where are your parents?” asked the man. We were halfway back to his house.

  “Gone. Dad said the flu wouldn’t be so bad in San Diego with all the warm, fresh air, but that’s not the first time he made a mistake. Why are you helping my aunt when you must be sick with worry about your wife?”

  “It’s better than thinking I allowed someone to die.”

  “That’s good of you.” Goodness—there was still goodness in the world. “I started thinking I was the only one left alive.”

  The ugly officer waved at us to move faster. “Hurry up—we need to get going.”

  The man nestled Aunt Eva in the back of the ambulance, squeezing her between his shaking wife and a white-haired woman with a face too young for her hair. They all wore dainty ivory nightgowns. Three sleeping angels. The last thing I saw before the officers shut the door was three pairs of bare feet, lined up in a row. Aunt Eva’s looked darker than the others.

  “Wait!” I lunged for the door. “Her feet looked black.”

  The ugly officer grabbed my arms and pushed me away. “We can’t wait any longer.”

  “Her feet looked black.”

  “It’s too dark to tell.”

  “They looked black. Let me see.”

  “We’ve got to go!” He forced me down to a seated position on the street. “Stay right there, and don’t you dare get up. You’re not helping anyone right now.” He took off toward the driver’s seat.

  “Let them go.” The man who had carried my aunt seized my elbow before I could shoot back toward the ambulance. “Your aunt is in good hands.”

  “Her feet looked black.”

  “It may have just been the lack of light.”

  “I didn’t even say good-bye.”

  “She’ll be all right … It’s all right.” The man put his arm around my shoulders and led me over to his crying children and the grandmotherly woman, while the sirens blared. “Do you want to come inside with us? None of us are feeling well, but at least we can be sick together. You seem to be alone.”

  I shook my head. “Stephen told me in that letter about the war to be careful offering my trust to people. He’s waiting for me. If I’m going to drop dead from the flu, I need to go to his house while I’m still able. I’m so tired.”

  “Why don’t you get some sleep before you find this person? You really look like you’re getting the flu.”

  “I’m not sick. I’m just tired.” I pulled myself out from under the man’s comforting arm and backed away. “Thank you. I’ve got to go. I’ve got to help someone before I die. My mother didn’t lose her life just so she could send a useless girl into the world. There’s got to be something more.”

  BACK IN MY BEDROOM, I STUFFED MY MOTHER’S LEATHER doctor’s bag full of my treasures—Stephen’s photographs, his letters, my goggles, The Mysterious Island, my mother’s coin purse, Dad’s note. I crammed everything inside the cloth-lined compartments with the same urgency as when I had packed for San Diego the night my father warned me people might be coming for him. The brass gear necklace with the lightning burn went over my head and shimmered on the bodice of my best dress—the black silk taffeta one I’d worn to Stephen’s funeral. The garment still smelled of sulfur and sorrow, but my plans for the morning required my finest clothing.

  Downstairs, I put on my coat and tucked an onion in my pocket. And a potato. Our next-door neighbor in Portland, Miss Deily, insisted a potato in the pocket would scare away the flu, and I was willing to do absolutely anything to buy a few more minutes. I tied my flu mask in place and lifted my leather bag by its handles.

  Outside, the sky to the east blushed pink, a color that would have looked brilliant in a chemist’s glass flask. I pulled my coat around me and headed south to the center of the city, feeling like the earth’s sole survivor. Smoke hung across the sky in a cloud that sprinkled ashes on the silent streets and sidewalks. I didn’t know if I was smelling chimneys battling the November chill or crematoriums disposing of the dead, but the city looked and felt like the Germans had just bombed us. The stacks of coffins in the undertaker’s front yard spilled out to the sidewalk, and the stench was overwhelming. I held my breath and kept walking.

  Death bit at the backs of my ears. I told you I was coming. Get ready. I’m here.

  “You’re not here yet,” I said. “I’m still upright and walking, aren’t I?”

  I clutched my mother’s bag and walked five more blocks to Mr. Darning’s photography studio, not far from the site of the Liberty Loan drive where Aunt Eva had purchased my goggles in another life. The red automobile that had been parked outside our house during the photographer’s visit sat next to the curb.

  I hurried to the studio’s door and banged on the glass. “Mr. Darning? Are you in there?”

  I held my breath. A figure moved inside.

  “Mr. Darning?” I banged again. “Please open up. It’s Mary Shelley Black. I need your help.”

  The photographer appeared behind the glass with rumpled hair and blinking eyes. With his mask in his hand, he opened the door, and for the first time I saw his entire face, including a trim mustache that matched his copper-wire hair.

  “Miss Black. You caught me off guard. I slept here last night because my neighbors all have the flu.”

  “It got Aunt Eva, too. I’m scared it’s going to take me at any minute.”

  “Oh, Jesus.” He pulled away from me.

  “I’ve been breathing the same air she has. I’m dead—I know it. Please take me to Stephen Embers’s house before it knocks me down.”

  “What?”

  “Take me over there, and convince Julius to allow me inside Stephen’s bedroom. Julius wants to take a picture of me for a contest. We can tell him the best place for a spirit photograph is up in Stephen’s room.”

  “But—”

  “I swear to you I’ll show you evidence of a soul who’s departed his body. I swear you’ll feel better about that girl of yours who died.”

  He tied his mask around his face. “I don’t know if I should allow you in my car—”

  “That’s her picture right there, isn’t it?” I pressed my hand against the window that separated me from the photograph of the beautiful dark-haired woman.

  “Yes, that’s Viv.”

  “If you had only a few hours left to live,” I said, my fingers running pale streaks down the glass, “and you knew you could spend those last precious moments freeing her soul so she could rest in peace, wouldn’t you do anything you could to help her?”

  His eyes shone with tears. “Of course I would.”

  “Then help me free a soul I love.” The vinegary sting of grief nipped at my taste buds. “Keep me safe from Julius while I call Stephen to me one last time.”

  He craned his neck toward me. “You’re—you’re going to let his spirit go?”

  I nodded. “It’s time. They all need to move on, Mr. Darning.”

  He blinked, and a tear escaped his left eye.

  I took my hand away from the glass. “But I promise you, what you’ll witness in Stephen’s room will be better than MacDougall’s scale experiments, better than my compass, and far better than Julius Embers’s usual photographs. You’ll have proof your Viv lives on in some other place.”

  He turned his gaze from me to the picture of the brunette woman, which told me his answer.

  He would be coming.

  I would be safe to explore Stephen’s last memories in the very room where he died.

  .............

  I SPENT MY FINAL CROSSING OF SAN DIEGO BAY IN THE automobile section of the Coronado ferry, seated on the passenger side of Mr. Darning’s ruby-red vehicle, my black bag tucked beneath my legs. Once the Ramona docked, Mr. Darning slammed his foot on the gas pedal and we sped across the island that wasn’t an island, past the streetcar tracks that had carried Aunt Eva and me to the Emberses’ house, and alongside the restless Pacific until we reached the two-story cottage with brown shing
les.

  He pulled the car next to the curb and shut off the motor.

  Three crows were perched on the Emberses’ roof. Their sinister caws laughed over the ocean’s roar, and I swore they stared me in the eye.

  “Oh no.” A headache erupted across my skull. “You were right.” I slunk down in my seat.

  Mr. Darning popped open his door. “I was right about what?”

  “I can’t get out of the car until those birds go away.”

  “Why not?”

  “I see their beaks.”

  “Pardon?”

  “They’re like scissors. They could tear me to shreds. I don’t like how they’re looking at me.”

  Mr. Darning didn’t move.

  “Kill them,” I shouted in a husky tone that startled the both of us.

  He stepped out of the car and smacked his hands together. “Shoo. Go away, birds. Get out of here.”

  The calculating birds didn’t budge.

  “Throw something at them.” I slid farther down against the leather. “Hurry, before they smell the gore on my clothing.”

  “What gore? Why are you talking like that? Your voice sounds different.”

  “Just kill them.”

  “I can’t go throwing rocks at somebody’s roof. Let me fetch my box of photographic plates from the backseat so we can go inside. Ignore the birds.”

  “I can’t ignore them. Look at their eyes. They’re watching me.”

  He backed away from the car. “You’re starting to scare me. Please … let me fetch my plates from the backseat.”

  The dark thugs on the roof flapped their wings and took flight. I ducked and gasped and covered my head with my arms while their feathers beat against my neck.

  Mr. Darning touched my back and made me jump. “The birds are headed east. They’re nowhere in sight. You don’t need to be afraid of them. All right?”

  I lifted my head and made sure the birds were truly gone. “All right.” My voice resembled my own again. “I’m sorry. They bother me these days.”

  He opened my door for me. “Calm yourself and stop shaking so much. There’s nothing to fear.” Despite his bold words, his own hands trembled.