In the Shadow of Blackbirds (37 page)

“But what if they don’t see the plate? What if nobody searches inside the satchel?”

“Go back down there and show them the plate yourself.”

I shrank back against the ceiling’s plaster, terrified of dropping into that damaged flesh below. Down there, my body grew grayer and colder by the minute.

“Go on,” said Stephen. “I can’t ever leave, knowing you died because of me. Push yourself back into your body. Stop the world from mucking up everything so badly.”

A gray-haired couple blew into the bedroom with rolls of white bandages tucked in the crooks of their arms. They contemplated the blood and the glass and struggled to make sense of the scene. The man knelt beside my body and searched for my pulse.

“Go back, Shell.” Stephen stroked my hair with soothing fingers. “You’ll be all right.”

“What if the world never gets any better?”

“It’ll have a far better chance if you’re in it. Go on. The only way I can rest is if you survive.”

I met his brown eyes. The same sense of urgency that had gripped us in his family’s sitting room overcame me.

“Send me off as a happy young woman,” I said.

“What?”

“I want to go off to my battles the same way you went to yours. Send me off as a happy woman.”

Gravity gave me a sharp tug that threatened to pull me away from him. We clasped hands before I could slide too far.

He leaned down and kissed me, and his touch no longer summoned images of bloodstained skies, battlefields, and murderous blackbirds. Instead of smoke and fire, his mouth tasted of the divine sweetness of icing on a cake when the sugar isn’t overdone. The taste of love before any pain gets in the way.

Our lips stayed together until gravity proved too strong.

He held tight to my hand. “Go live a full and amazing life, Shell. Come back when you’re an old woman and tell me what you did with the world.”

I nodded and clung to his fingers. “Swear to me you’ll rest.”

“I swear.”

My body down below appeared closer than before. At any second I’d plunge into an excruciating pool of ice. Our arms stretched farther apart, and our hands shook against each other. Every precious second we had spent together during our shared lives—from the day he brought his little Brownie camera to school to the morning I spied him through my goggles at the bottom of his Coronado staircase—warmed my soul and killed the darkness. I was ready.

A silent count to three.

A plea that the end wouldn’t hurt—for either of us.

I closed my eyes and let him go.

IN THE MINUTES FOLLOWING MY DROP INTO THAT
frozen, leaden body, I somehow found the strength to reach inside Stephen’s satchel and hand the wooden plate holder to the Emberses’ neighbor, who was shouting to his wife that I wasn’t dead.

“Here.” I forced the smooth wood into the man’s hand. “Here’s evidence that the people you found me with are monsters.”

Before my eyelids drooped closed again, a flood of yellow warmth brightened the far corner of the ceiling—and disappeared.

MY MEMORIES OF THE MOMENTS AFTER MY BRIEF DEATH
in Stephen’s bedroom were a muddled assortment. Chills
that penetrated down to my bones. Pain boring into my skull. Salty broth forced between my lips. Muscle aches. Wheezing. Flooded lungs. Gasps for air. Delirium. Drowning.

Somewhere toward the end of my suffering, I dreamed about the anagram Stephen had written at the bottom of his lightning bolt photograph.

I DO LOSE INK

In the dream, the words stared at me from behind the glass of his battered and splintered picture frame that had fallen to my floor too many times. I tried with all my might to unscramble his hidden meaning, but the letters slid around in the sepia waves and repositioned themselves into dozens of nonsensical phrases.

Oiled oinks. Kid loonies. Doe oilskin. Die ski loon. Ski on oldie.

My brain hurt. I massaged my exhausted eyes and tried to make the real title come into focus.

Sink. Die. Soil. Ink. Look. Slide. Side.

Before the dream ended, I saw it, sharp and clear:

LOOK INSIDE

I AWOKE IN AN UNLIT CORNER OF THE HOSPITAL WITH
sweat-soaked bandages wrapped around my head and something stringy tied to my right foot’s big toe. Perspiration drenched the hospital gown sticking to my body. My mouth
tasted pickled. I strained to lift my head to get a look at the end of my cot and found a toe tag tied around my flesh, awaiting my death.

“Lord, have mercy! She’s still fighting to live.” The stocky nurse I remembered from my lightning injury waddled toward me with cobalt-blue eyes shining above her mask. “You’ve been struck down by lightning, given a concussion that knocked you dead, and spent a week getting clobbered by the flu—but here you are, blinking at me like a confused newborn. I wish all my patients possessed your mighty will to live.”

I stared at the woman with my lips hanging open. “I had the flu?”

“Yes, you most certainly did.” She set her clipboard beside me on the cot and placed her cold hand against my forehead. “Your temperature was one hundred and five degrees when they hauled you in here with that head injury, and you developed a bad case of pneumonia. Some detectives have been asking to speak with you, but I told them they’d need to find a spirit medium if they intended to chat with you anytime soon.”

I wiggled my itchy foot. “Is that a toe tag on me?”

“It is. I half wondered if tying it there would make you mad enough to prove me wrong about dying again.” She went to the foot of the bed and untied the string. “I guess it worked.”

“How long have I been here?”

“Well, it’s Sunday, November tenth …” She flipped through her clipboard. “You came in November fourth, just
about a week ago. Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated the throne and escaped to Holland since then.”

“He did? Is the war over?”

“Not yet, but soon, we hope. Very soon.” She pulled a thermometer out of her white pocket and gave it a good shake.

“Did anyone bring a doctor’s bag that belonged to me?” I asked. “I left it inside a red automobile in front of a house on Coronado.”

“It’s sitting right below your cot.”

“I need to look at a photograph tucked inside.”

“I need to take your temperature first.”

“Please let me have my—”

She shoved the little glass tube inside my mouth before I could say another word. The thermometer made the insides of my cheeks itch, and I was tempted to pop it out with my tongue, but I needed her help.

She kept track of the time using a wristwatch, and after a grueling wait that seemed to ramble along for an hour, she fetched the stick from my mouth. “Ninety-eight point six.” Her eyes glistened. “Congratulations, my little fighter. You’re beating the infamous Spanish influenza.”

I tried to sit up. “May I have my bag now?”

“Lie down, lie down—you’re not completely healed yet.” She lowered me back to the cot by my shoulders. “I’ll pull out whatever it is you need, but then we need to get you resting and eating and drinking so we can send you on your way. Why do you own a doctor’s bag, anyway?”

“My mother was a doctor.”

“A lady physician for a mother?” She whistled. “No wonder you’re a bold one, missy.”

I heard her click open the black bag’s clasp beneath me, and I swallowed with anticipation.

“I see a pretty photograph of a butterfly—”

“It’s the other one. The lightning bolt.”

“Here it is.” She set Stephen’s picture on my stomach. “My, my, my. That’s a beauty. Must have been taken by quite the photographer.”

“Yes. It was.” I ran my fingers down the chipped frame to his words written at the bottom. The letters—written below an older, scratched-off title—were just as I remembered:

I DO LOSE INK

LOOK INSIDE.
Not a title at all.

A request.

The nurse patted my knee. “All right. I’m going to check on some of the other patients, and then I’ll bring you clear broth and get a doctor to examine your lungs and head. Don’t go anywhere.” She chuckled and shuffled away on the soft soles of her shoes.

I pried open the frame’s back cover and saw the shine of a gold key—and a note, written on the photo’s cardboard backing in Stephen’s gorgeous handwriting.

April 29, 1918

My Dearest Mary Shelley,

My mind keeps replaying the events of yesterday and giving our time together a new ending, one that doesn’t involve Julius ruining everything for us. That morning feels like an unfinished work of art, interrupted and spoiled. If I could have had just five more minutes with you, I would have kissed you until our lips ached, and I would have told you I’ve loved you from the moment you fixed my camera on those church steps when we were little kids.

Even when the world seems like it’s spinning out of control, you’re always there for me, Shell, whether in person or through your letters. During my darkest moments, you have always reminded me that life is interesting as hell (pardon my French, but there’s no other way to put it). If nothing else, I will fight in this war to ensure people like you remain free to dream your dreams and become whatever you desire.

This photograph is for you—a small compensation for putting up with my brother’s spirit games and for sending me off to battle with a contented soul. I photographed the lightning storm from my bedroom window last winter. I’m guessing you would have loved seeing the bolts pierce the Pacific. I wish you had been here beside me.

You’ll also find a key to a safe-deposit box at the main San Diego post office (I’ve written the box number, as well as my military address, below). I don’t have time to put this parcel in the mail myself, unfortunately. The idea of giving this key to you just struck me as I was getting dressed to leave this morning. Hopefully, my
mother will send it before Julius snoops and you’ll be as skilled at this anagram as you were with
Mr. Muse.
A regular letter would likely disappear in Julius’s hands.

Please take the contents of the box and do with them what you like. I don’t want to risk writing them into a will or leaving them in my house. Julius would get to them somehow. My mother has copies of her favorites, but the negatives are in the box. You may keep the photographs or sell them if you can. Never send any profits to my brother.

If I lose my life in France, perhaps show my work to a few people as proof that I was once in this world. It’s hard to imagine disappearing without a shred of evidence that I existed. I would be eternally grateful.

Thank you for coming back into my life before my departure to the unknown. I will never forget you, Mary Shelley Black.

Yours with all my love,
Stephen

P.S. Don’t ever worry what the boys who don’t appreciate originality think of you. They’re fools.

A DOCTOR SIGNED MY HOSPITAL RELEASE PAPERS THE
same day the war ended: November 11, 1918.

Fireworks whistled and exploded somewhere out in the city, and when I flinched from the commotion, the nurses told me a German delegation had signed the armistice to end the fighting. Faraway battles would stop snatching the minds and lives of our boys and men in the dark bellies of the trenches. The carrion crows would have to fly to other hunting grounds.

During the twenty-four hours before my release, I’d been subjected to oversalted soup, cold fingers and stethoscopes prodding at my skull and chest, eye exams, mental exams, and stiff detectives in dark suits questioning me about Julius and Mr. Darning. The detectives told me Grant and Gracie
were being cooperative about their knowledge of Julius’s whereabouts during the night of Stephen’s death. Yet the men warned there’d be trials and potential ugliness.

“We discovered some grisly photographs in our searches through the two men’s studios,” said the older detective with the least compassionate voice. “The road ahead may be rather upsetting for a sixteen-year-old girl. I’m afraid your delicate female eyes and ears will experience some ugliness.”