In the Shadow of Blackbirds (19 page)

“Really?”

Mr. Darning didn’t respond at first. Instead, he dragged a large silver urn holding a silk cherry tree into the center of his staging area. I noticed his eyes glistened with tears. The bitter bite of grief scoured my tongue—it had a flavor similar to vinegar and was equally painful.

I cocked my head at him. “Are you OK, Mr. Darning?”

He stopped tugging on the urn and put his hands on his hips, exhaling a muffled sigh into his mask. “A close female friend of mine was one of the first San Diegans to die from the flu. A beautiful young singer, only twenty-four years old.”

“Oh. I’m so sorry.” I stepped forward two feet. “Is she the
dark-haired woman in the photograph in the window?”

He nodded and drew a handkerchief out of his breast pocket. “I started off so skeptical about spirits when I first hunted down frauds.” He wiped his left eye. “But now 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”—he pressed his handkerchief over his right eye and squeezed the other one closed; a stifled sob escaped his lips as a pained moan—“as being gone forever. I’m so sorry. I don’t mean to break down like this. It’s highly unprofessional.”

My throat stung from the grief and embarrassment saturating that room, and it took me several seconds before I could respond without a hoarse voice.

“It’s—it’s all right.” I rubbed my swollen throat. “I understand completely.”

“I’m sure you do.” He sniffed back his emotions and struggled to tuck his handkerchief back inside his pocket.

“Have you found any other possible true spirits?”

“I’ve read about scientists investigating the spirit world.” He cleared his throat and fussed with the arrangement of silk flowers. “A physician named MacDougall conducted experiments involving the measurement of weight loss at the moment of death. He theorized he was demonstrating the loss of the soul, which, according to his studies, weighs about three-fourths of an ounce.”

My eyes widened. “How in the world did he get volunteers to die on a scale?”

“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.”

“Holy smoke.” I shook my head in disbelief. “My uncle died in a home like that, but he certainly didn’t have people hovering over him, waiting with bated breath for him to go.”

“He received their written consent beforehand. It’s not as cold and unfeeling as it sounds. Other men have conducted similar research on mice. Some are using X-rays and cylindrical tubes to study the physical manifestation of the soul.”

“Maybe I should show them my compass.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Nothing.” I looked down at the toes of my brown boots. “Just a thought I had about turning myself over to a laboratory.”

“Are you referring to anything related to your experience with Stephen Embers?”

I played with the exposed pink skin of my lightning-burned fingers.

“I’m not scrutinizing you as if you were a trickster photographer, Miss Black. I’d honestly like to know what happened at his funeral. I was there, remember? I heard you insist he was talking to you.”

“I know.” I covered my eyes with my hands. “You probably think I’m either crazy or a liar.”

“No. You seem an honest girl.” He walked closer to me
with footsteps that scarcely made a sound. “Do you believe you’re communicating with Stephen?”

I dropped my arms to my sides and decided to be truthful. “Yes. I’m positive I am.”

Hope burned in his eyes. “Really?”

“That’s partly why I want you to photograph me today. I don’t want to go to Julius, because I’m afraid he’ll tamper with the image. But I’m so curious to see if a camera can capture any sign that Stephen is here with me.”

Mr. Darning glanced around the room. “Do you think he’s here with you right now?”

“No. I don’t know.” I shrugged and shook my head. “Oh, this all sounds so crazy when I talk about it out loud. I know how hard it is to listen to someone who sounds like she’s full of bunk, but everything changed after I died—after I was struck by lightning. I experience the world in an entirely different manner.”

“What other types of things do you experience?”

“I taste emotions. Your grief just now when you were discussing your loss felt as though I were swallowing a bottle of vinegar.”

“Really?”

“And I affect a compass. The needle follows me around the room, like I’m a ghost. Unless Stephen is there. Then it follows him.”

He stared at me without saying a word.

I pulled at the edges of my gauze mask, which rubbed
against my chin. “It sounds insane, I know. I never believed in spirits before this happened, and I’d love to find a scientific explanation. I’m planning to go to the library today.”

“Would you show me the compass phenomenon?”

“Yes.” I sighed in relief. “Yes, definitely—that would be really nice, actually. I’d love to get a professional’s opinion.”

“May I come over this weekend?”

“Hmm …” I rubbed my forehead and tried to remember what day of the week it was. “Oh, today’s Halloween, isn’t it? A strange day to be discussing spirits. That means tomorrow’s Friday. Aunt Eva will be home by five thirty. I suppose you could come over any time after six. You could stay for supper, if you’d like—although Aunt Eva mainly prepares onion dishes that incinerate taste buds and stomach linings.”

He laughed. “No, no, I don’t want to impose. I’d just take a look at you and the compass and be on my way.”

“That would be fine.”

“Well, this is indeed intriguing.” He rested his hand on the top of his camera. “Shall we take your photograph, then? See what happens?”

I nodded. “I’m ready.”

He showed me the entire process as we went along, demonstrating the prepackaged glass plates he purchased directly from Kodak, which he tucked into a protective wooden holder in the darkroom before sliding the holder into the slot behind the bellows. “This is the stage where the phonies typically cheat,” he said. “A trickster’s plate will contain a previously
photographed image, and that image will look like a transparent ghost when the picture is developed.”

“A double exposure.”

He nodded. “That’s correct. Now, I don’t guarantee anything will come of this photograph. I make no claims to possess mediumistic skills.”

“I know. But let’s just try it and see what happens. For the sake of science.”

The skin around his eyes crinkled in a way that told me he was smiling behind his mask. “For the sake of science.”

He positioned me in front of the gray backdrop with my arms folded behind my back. I gave a weak smile while he prepared the shot with his head ducked beneath a black cloth, and he took my photograph with nothing but the kindest display of professionalism.

Yet, in the aftermath of the violent flash, an empty feeling pestered me.

Stephen doesn’t want to use his energy to show up for a casual picture, you idiot,
I realized as stinging tendrils of smoke crept over my hair and skin.
Why would he pose for a photograph when he’s suffering? You’re wasting your time trying to satisfy your own curiosity.

Stop playing.

Go help him figure out what’s wrong.

ON THE CORNER OF EIGHTH AND E STOOD A GORGEOUS
white mansion with Grecian pillars flanking the entrance. A trim green lawn lined with rustling, feathery palms led to castle-sized wooden doors that promised knowledge, adventure, and hope. This was San Diego’s library.

Inside, the same surreal sulfur smoke as at Stephen’s funeral emerged from burning buckets of coal and blurred the view of the central desk and the pale green walls. Sunshine tried to stream through long windows, but the blue clouds blocked the light and cast drifting shadows across the solid oak furniture. I choked on a sulfuric stench that reminded me of rotten eggs, even with the gauze covering my face.

A masked brunette with a soft splay of wrinkles at the
edges of her eyes walked toward me through the burning haze. “May I help you?” she asked in that eager way of speaking all librarians possess.

“I need to look up quite a few subjects.”

She noticed my black bag. “You’re not a physician, are you?”

“No, I just brought this to hold my notes. It used to be my mother’s bag.”

“Ah, I thought you looked a little too young to be saving lives. You made me feel better for a moment, thinking you’d be able to help if anyone falls ill. Quite frankly”—she peered over her shoulder and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial tone—“I’m surprised the city hasn’t shut us down entirely. Only the reading rooms are closed.”

“Oh … they’re closed?” My posture wilted. “I was really hoping to do some studying here this morning. I need to read through too many books to carry home.”

“What subjects did you need to find?”

I ran through my mental list of categories. “Well, I’d like to find books on modern war poetry, trench warfare, German military practices, prisoners of war, blackbirds, birds in mythology …” I stopped for a moment to take stock of everything else. “Lightning injuries, electricity, magnetic fields, spirit photography, Spiritualism, and true experiences of life after death.”

Her eyes stopped blinking. She looked like a mouse that had been cornered by a cat. “Are you familiar with card catalogs and the Dewey decimal system?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“We allow our patrons to find their own books from the stacks. You seem an ambitious girl. Why don’t you try looking up these subjects on your own? I’ll even sneak you into the women’s reading room to make up for your troubles.”

“You will?”

“Yes.”

I exhaled an appreciative breath. “Thank you so much. Where is the card catalog?”

She pointed to the wooden files beyond the wall of smoke behind me. “Right over there.”

“I don’t have a library card yet. I’m new to the city.”

“I’ll leave an application for you in the reading room.”

I thanked her again and headed over to the drawers of cards that indexed books by subject matter.

By the time I reached the empty women’s reading room, I carried a stack of ten books in my arms, my muscles quivering from the weight of all those cloth- and leather-bound volumes. The handles of my black bag dangled from my right hand beneath the pile and cut off circulation to my fingertips. I parked myself at an oak table, all alone save for those blue sulfur-dioxide phantoms.

The librarian had left me both the library card application and a copy of the day’s newspaper. A story below the latest flu death tolls caught my eye: the opening of a Red Cross House for healing war veterans, whom the paper described as “Uncle Sam’s convalescent nephews.” In the accompanying
photograph, two local women in tailored black dresses served tea to a young man who looked like he’d just been dragged off the battlefield. His hair was as wild as mine after the lightning blasted through me, and his eyes seemed to be saying,
What I
don’t
need after a war is two crazy society bats pushing cups of tea my way.

An urge to visit those healing soldiers and sailors welled up inside me. I wanted to learn how the war that snatched away Stephen had affected other boys—and to find some sort of clue that would explain why he claimed to be tortured by birds. Plus that soldier’s distressed face saddened me. I felt compelled to help people like him, to lend a sympathetic ear and offer comfort that extended beyond cups of tea.

At the top of my first sheet of writing paper, I scribbled,
Visit the Red Cross House and talk to returning men.

Next, I opened
A Treasury of War Poetry,
published just the year before, and read firsthand accounts of the trauma of the trenches, told through bold and brutal poems such as “The Death of Peace,” “I Have a Rendezvous with Death,” and “The Hell-Gate of Soissons.”

“Into Battle,” by Julian Grenfell, mentioned a blackbird:

The blackbird sings to him, “Brother, brother,
If this be the last song you shall sing,
Sing well, for you may not sing another;
Brother, sing.”

A chilling reference to crows appeared in Frederic Manning’s “The Trenches”:

Dead are the lips where love laughed or sang,

The hands of youth eager to lay hold of life,

Eyes that have laughed to eyes,

And these were begotten,

O Love, and lived lightly, and burnt

With the lust of a man’s first strength: ere they were rent,

Almost at unawares, savagely; and strewn

In bloody fragments, to be the carrion

Of rats and crows.

With shaking fingers I transcribed
to be the carrion of rats and crows,
and gagged on both the mental image of birds feasting on dismembered dead soldiers and the rotten-egg fumes stealing through my mask. I put the poems aside and continued through the rest of the books, reading about lightning strikes, magnets, prisoners of war, and modern battle strategies. I studied trench combat, gas warfare, and a condition called shell shock that affected soldiers’ minds. I investigated Spiritualism and found stories of desperate, educated men like the novelist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the physician Duncan MacDougall, he of the soul-weighing experiment, who were risking their reputations to find proof of the afterlife.