In the Shadow of Blackbirds

by Cat Winters

  I aimed my rifle at the crows on the boy and shot the largest bird dead, which sent a flurry of black wings flying past my face and a spray of machine-gun fire raining down upon us.

  Then I was back on the bed in the unlit room, and one of the birdmen propped up my head on a pillow and forced the narrow tube of a copper funnel between my teeth. I gagged and struggled to free my wrists and ankles from the ropes. There was so little light; all I saw were those luminous beaks. I heard a bottle uncork and smelled the sting of darkroom chemicals in the air. Panic charged through me. I tried pushing the funnel out of my mouth with my tongue, but the figure shoved the tube farther inside, making me gag all the more.

  “I’ll try to keep his head up,” said one of the birdmen in a strained whisper. “Unless … do we want to drown him with the acid? Maybe he’ll look more like a flu victim in the photograph if he’s choking.”

  “I don’t know. I just want to get it over with.”

  The creature tilted a bottle, and then he poured.

  Liquid fire careened down my throat and scorched my insides, burning all the way down to my stomach. I choked and coughed and spit out a substance that seared my face with the pain of a thousand pinpricks.

  A light exploded, white and fiery like a bomb. I was back in the trench in France, running through the mud with a rifle in my hands, bullets whizzing overhead, a gas mask covering my head and magnifying my wheezing breaths. The man in front of me went down, collapsing in a spray of blood and muck that splattered across my mask. A green mist settled over me, as poisonous as that liquid the dark birds poured inside me.

  I was back on the bed again, and the creatures were arguing over whether a picture had just been taken.

  “Was I in that picture?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  They shoved the copper funnel back in my mouth, and the volcanic river again sloshed down my throat. I turned my head and coughed out the poison into my pillow, burning my own flesh a second time. I cried out in horror.

  The figure jumped out of the way. Another flash of light and smoke erupted five feet away, momentarily illuminating the dark human halves of the birds, who watched me from by the camera.

  They were photographing me.

  “Why are you poisoning me?” I tried to yell, but my larynx had been so burned by chemicals it made my voice coarse and weak. “Don’t peck out my eyes.”

  “How long is it going to take?” asked one of the creatures in a deep and whispery voice.

  “I have no idea. Have patience. Take some more pictures. He really does look like he’s dying from the flu. I think the choking helps.”

  “What about the ropes? Dying flu patients aren’t tied to beds.”

  “Damn it. I didn’t think of that. Get those off him.”

  The creatures surrounded me again, studying me as I writhed and hacked out the stinging poison.

  “He looks like he’ll still fight. He’s strong when he’s delirious.”

  “I thought you were sticking him with morphine.”

  “Why the hell did I let you talk me into this?”

  “Think of the huge impact on the world of psychical research if we capture his soul as it’s leaving!”

  “You only think that because you’re more of a doper than I am, and he’s not your brother.”

  “He’s hardly a human being anymore. He’s as good as dead, right?”

  “Why did he say we were going to peck out his eyes?”

  “Because he’s a lunatic.”

  “I’m getting my gun.”

  “No! His spirit will leave too quickly. We won’t have time to photograph it.”

  “I can’t stand this. He’s looking at me. I’m getting my gun and putting him out of his misery.”

  “No!” I cried in a voice that didn’t sound human anymore. “Don’t shoot me. Get me out of here. Don’t kill me.”

  A flurry of action surrounded me—the rush of feathers, the scuttling of feet, voices arguing whether or not they should speed up the process. One of the creatures released my wrists from the ropes, but the deep-voiced one wrestled him to the ground and cussed him out. The room spun as if I were on a carnival ride. My throat and belly raged with fire. I turned on my side to curl up in pain and saw the silver metal of a gun shining on the bedside table.

  My salvation.

  I reached out, desperate to kill the squabbling birds with the bullets before they could finish with me. My clumsy fingers grasped the weapon. A brutal force knocked me in the head. The world slowed to a crawl, and a gunshot echoed in the black and heavy atmosphere. A white, bloodstained sky beckoned from overhead, tugging my soul toward it, while someone shouted from below, “Quick! Take a picture. We’re going to miss it! We’re going to miss it!”

  And the scene started over again. I opened my eyes and found the world dark and my wrists bound to a bed by coarse ropes that burned through the layers of my skin. I was on my back, and there was whispering near the door.

  This time someone grabbed my arms and shook me. I heard the name “Mary Shelley” and got confused. Mary Shelley? Why is she here?

  “Leave us alone,” I shouted. “Don’t poison me. You’re killing me.”

  A hand smacked me across the face. “Stop saying that. Why are you saying that?”

  “Don’t kill me. Please don’t poison me.”

  “Stop it. I’m not poisoning you. Why are you talking like you’re him?” My attacker shook me until a bare, sunlit room came into view. Julius’s face—not a bird’s—stared down at me. I didn’t see a single bird anywhere.

  Beyond Julius’s head, dark stains marred the ceiling’s white plaster—the shadows of blood. Stephen’s own blood was the red and white sky that haunted him.

  “Oh, God. Oh, my God.” I regained my bearings and tried to sit up, surprised to find my wrists weren’t tied with ropes. “Stephen? Can you hear me? Those weren’t monsters poisoning you.”

  “Don’t you dare say I was the one poisoning him.” Julius shook my shoulders. “Do you hear me? It wasn’t me.”

  “What do you think you saw, Miss Black?”

  I jumped at the sound of the other male voice as if I’d heard another gunshot. Mr. Darning stood by the camera and calmly sprinkled a box of powder across the flashlamp’s tray as if preparing for a normal studio portrait. “You looked like you were in a trance,” he continued. “I took a photograph of your intriguing state and can’t wait to see if we’ve captured a record of your communication with the other side.”

  My stomach lurched.

  Our conversations about spirits and science ran through my mind: A physician named MacDougall conducted experiments involving the measurement of weight loss at the moment of death … at a home for incurable tuberculosis patients … He would push a cot holding a dying man onto an industrial-sized silk-weighing scale, and he kept his eyes on the numbers while his assistants watched for the final breath … I’m compelled to find tangible proof that we all go somewhere when we die. It hurts more than anything to think of a sweet soul like Viv’s as being gone forever.

  “What did you see?” asked Mr. Darning again, his voice eager, his eyebrows raised. He positioned the loaded flashlamp into a holding stand next to the camera. “His spirit?”

  “No.” I steadied my breathing, even though the truth was falling into place with sickening clarity. “I witnessed two blackbirds experimenting on a delirious war veteran in the confusion of the dark.”

  Julius squeezed my arms. “Why are you talking about blackbirds, too? There were never any birds in this house.”

  “His attackers looked like birdmen with their dark clothing and beak-like flu masks. He wanted to shoot them, but he grabbed the gun wrong and must have pulled the trigger. It wasn’t a suicide—he was disoriented and fighting for his life. He died struggling to live. He wasn’t as good as dead.”

  “He wanted to shoot them?” asked Mr. Darning.

  “Did you hear what she just
said, Darning? ‘As good as dead.’ That’s what you kept calling him that night.”

  “Perhaps you should stop damaging your brain with illegal substances, Julius.” Mr. Darning ducked his head under the black cloth behind the camera. “I certainly wasn’t anywhere near your brother when he was in the throes of his neuroses.”

  “Get me off this bed before it happens again.” I squirmed to escape Julius’s grip. “I can taste the poison and the smoke from the flash. Don’t make me repeat that.”

  “Let’s take another photograph before she gets up,” said Mr. Darning. “I’ve got this new plate ready to go.”

  “Would you stop taking photographs?” shouted Julius. “Get out from under that cloth and stop treating my house like a laboratory. I’m sick of your morbid psychical research haunting me each night. I’m sick of listening to my brother’s bed shaking up here because of you.”

  Mr. Darning’s face reemerged. “Keep your mouth shut, Julius.”

  “I sometimes hated Stephen, but he was my brother. I never would have done anything so twisted if I’d been in my right mind. You became obsessed with death after your girlfriend died.”

  “Stop putting ideas into Miss Black’s head.”

  “She already has the ideas in her head. She knows who was in his room, Darning. Didn’t you hear her? She felt you poisoning him.”

  Mr. Darning left the camera and grabbed my shoulder. “Tell me exactly what you think you saw, Mary Shelley. No one’s going to hurt you if you tell me the truth. Who did those blackbirds look like?”

  “Stephen!” I cried out. “Stephen Embers, where are you?”

  “Don’t bring him here right now.” Julius covered my mouth with his hand, but I sunk my teeth into his flesh and freed my lips.

  “It wasn’t otherworldly creatures who tortured you.” I twisted and tried to get away. “It was two desperate men trying to win a contest. It’s in my notes from the library—they’re always desperate.”

  “Quiet!” Mr. Darning shoved me by my shoulders down to the scratchy brown blanket. “Just settle down. No one did anything wrong.”

  “Why did you have to treat him like he was nothing? He was a person—not an experiment.”

  “Boys in Stephen’s condition are better off dead, Miss Black.”

  “That’s not for you to decide.”

  Mr. Darning pinched my nostrils shut and forced my jaw closed with his free hand. My eyes bulged. My lungs fought to find oxygen. I scraped my nails into his hands, but he only clamped down harder. I kicked my legs and pounded on his knuckles.

  “Are you killing her?” asked Julius in a panic.

  “She’ll tell someone. Why did you have to blabber about everything? She’s a nice girl.”

  “I don’t want another kid dying in here.”

  “Well, I don’t want to go to jail. I don’t deserve to waste away behind bars for your goddamned lunatic of a brother who ruined our experiment.”

  The flashlamp exploded.

  An eruption of smoke and light attacked the room with the violence of shells blasting in Stephen’s war zone.

  Mr. Darning jumped off me and gaped at the Cyclops lens staring us down through the dissipating cloud of white. The flashlamp’s fiery aftermath—the same burning air Stephen carried with him to his death—invaded my nostrils and lungs.

  Julius stumbled toward the camera. “How did that go off by itself?” He covered the lens, as if he could hide everything they’d done by screwing the round cap into place. “What just happened, Mary Shelley?”

  I struggled to find my voice through gasps of air. “You wanted me to bring Stephen for a photograph”—I pushed myself to my elbows—“and he came.”

  The air boiled with rage, and the panes of all three windows shuddered in their frames with a fury that took away my breath. Mr. Darning froze. Julius peered at the restless glass with eyes large and black. I scanned the bedroom to see if Stephen stood anywhere against the wood panels, but I saw only faded rectangles where his pictures used to hang. His anger heightened all around us. The room felt ready to implode.

  Somebody pulled me off the mattress and dragged me under the bed, where I buried my face in my arms just moments before the windows shattered with a crash that rang in my ears. Shards of glass skidded across the floor and nipped my hands, and the men cried out in pain. They dropped to the floor with an impact that jolted my elbows.

  Then silence.

  I lay there beneath the bed, terror-stricken, shaking, my ears still ringing, but the air around me lightened a hundredfold. The bedroom’s toxic taste dissolved with the gentleness of cool milk tempering the bitterness of a cup of tea. I realized someone was holding me under the bed, keeping his arm around me, imparting warmth and a feeling of safety to my trembling body. “Grab the photographic plate that shows him trying to kill you,” whispered Stephen near my ear. “Tuck it inside that satchel lying next to you and run.”

  I lifted my head and found, to my right, the silhouette of Stephen’s old leather camera satchel caked in dust. I managed to get the tan strap over my shoulder in the cramped space beneath the bed and crawled out, careful not to cut myself on the battlefield of broken glass.

  I grabbed for the camera but lost my footing for a moment when I saw Julius and Mr. Darning lying on the floor, streaked in blood. Glass had sliced their faces and clothing and hands, each tiny wound bleeding a stream of bright scarlet. Julius stared at his bleeding palms like he didn’t understand what was happening.

  I had witnessed enough photography in my life to know to push down the dark slide sticking out of the top of the camera to protect the glass plate inside. I then pulled out the wooden plate holder that carried the fragile piece of evidence.

  “Mary Shelley,” groaned Julius. “I’m in agony. Get me my painkillers from my bedroom.”

  I stuck the plate holder in Stephen’s empty satchel. “I’ll call an ambulance when I’m a few houses down.”

  “No! Don’t call anyone.”

  “I’m calling the police.” I moved to leave, but someone gave me a shove from behind that sent me toppling toward the glass on the ground. All I remembered after hitting the floor was peering over my shoulder and catching the fleeting image of Mr. Darning’s face and the camera coming toward my head. Pain walloped my skull.

  My spirit slammed up to the far corner of the ceiling.

  My body remained below.

  DOWN ON THE GROUND, MY FORMER SHELL LAY IN A twisted heap—an empty body with Stephen’s satchel still strapped over my shoulder. A welt on my forehead bled and swelled like rising dough. Mr. Darning collapsed with the camera in his hands, crumpled over my feet, and seemed to lose consciousness. Julius curled into a ball four feet away and sobbed.

  “I told you to stay away from my house,” said a nearby voice.

  I looked beside me. Stephen was also crouching up there in the upper corner of the room with his back against the ceiling and his feet pressed against the wall. He looked less wounded and bloodied, although I could see where the bullet had entered his head. Burn marks marred the skin around his mouth.

  I edged closer to him. “He hit me with the camera. What if I stay dead? What if no one finds me or understands what happened?” My frustration rumbled down to the room and rocked Stephen’s bed against the wall.

  Julius sobbed harder. “Stop haunting me, Stephen. Leave me alone. Go away.”

  “Is everyone all right in there?” asked a woman outside the window, down below on the front lawn.

  “Who’s that?” I asked Stephen.

  “She sounds like our neighbor.”

  “I heard the glass break,” called the woman. “Are you up there, Julius? Is anyone hurt?”

  Julius struggled to lift his head. “Get me help! I’m bleeding to death here.”

  “I don’t know if I’ll be able to find an ambulance. I’ll fetch my husband and bandages.”

  “I need my painkillers! I’m in agony.”

  Mr. Darning groaned as if he wer
e coming to but remained limp across my feet.

  I turned my attention to the windows with their demolished panes and strained to hear the neighbor’s feet running to her house. I thought I detected the squish of heels hurrying across grass.

  Stephen wrapped his arms around his legs. “Those weren’t birds, then?”

  “No.” I slid all the way next to him and leaned against his side. “They were people.”

  “Did they really try to kill me to win a contest?”

  “Yes, they did. I’m so sorry.” I laced my fingers through his. “Mr. Darning loved a young woman who died. He was desperate for proof of the afterlife, and your brother was desperate for money. I guess they were both out of their minds on drugs. Maybe they became friends because of their addictions, or maybe—” A thought struck me. I remembered the peculiar puzzle of Mr. Darning catching every other flimflamming photographer except for Julius. “No, wait—did they already know each other before Mr. Darning started saying he was a fraud catcher?”

  Stephen cocked his head. “You mean Aloysius Darning?”

  “Yes. Did you know him?”

  “That was the name of a two-bit photographer whose business was about to shut down before I left for the war. I died because of him?”

  “One played the mysterious photographer. The other played the expert. And both profited. No wonder Mr. Darning always denied finding proof that Julius was a fake. He probably also posed as the spirit soldiers.” I looked down at the man who I once thought shared my father’s voice. “He was scamming me the entire time. I was just as desperate as everyone else, wasn’t I?”

  A door opened somewhere downstairs.

  Stephen braced himself against the ceiling. “If they find the glass plate inside the satchel, they’ll have documented proof of him attacking you while Julius stood by. People will ask questions. They might discover photographs from the night of my death.”