In the Shadow of Blackbirds(31)

AUNT EVA TRUDGED THROUGH THE FRONT DOOR SOME time after her whistling cuckoo announced ten o’clock. She slouched at the kitchen table as though her back ached, and her eyelids drooped, so I served her leftover soup and sat with her for five minutes, never mentioning the bird or the uneasy feeling that had settled over her living room.

“Are you all right, Mary Shelley?” she asked in a voice beaten down by fatigue.

“As right as I can be.”

“Go up to bed. Put today behind you.”

I nodded and pushed myself up from the chair.

Pots clattered in the sink from her cleaning up in the kitchen while I wandered down the hall and up the groaning staircase.

I stepped across the threshold into my bedroom. The air didn’t feel right at all.

The first objects that drew my attention were Stephen’s photographs, and I remembered something I had once read: according to everything from Christian lore to Slavic legend, butterflies symbolized the flight of the soul from the body. I felt I was looking at pictures representing him and me—the butterfly and the lightning bolt. The lost soul and the girl who toyed with electricity.

A movement in the corner of my eye distracted me.

Uncle Wilfred’s compass.

I crept closer to my bedside table and lit the oil lamp’s wick with a match. The compass’s needle spun in every direction.

“I’m going to turn off the gas after I change into my nightclothes,” said Aunt Eva, giving me a start as she padded across the hall behind me to her bedroom. “Good night.”

I blew out the match. “Good night.”

I stared at the compass for ten more minutes. It never settled down.

Close to eleven o’clock, I changed into my nightgown and crawled under my blankets, keeping the oil lamp lit beside me. The pine dresser and wardrobe looked calm and homey, but still the strange energy hummed around me. The flames of my lamp grew restless, casting shifting shadows that leapt across the wall. I held my breath in anticipation and fear, reminding myself to breathe when I felt dizzy, and it must have been well past midnight before I finally fell asleep.

I awoke, curled on my side and facing the wall, as the downstairs cuckoo announced three o’clock. The muted glow of the oil lamp still illuminated my golden wallpaper, but the blackness of night crowded around me as if it were a living creature. The scent of burning fireworks scorched my nostrils. A coppery taste lined my tongue and caused the fillings in my teeth to ache, while my heartbeat echoed inside the mattress, pounding like a second heart.

Someone was with me.

I’d experienced that sensation before, in the dark, fresh out of a nightmare—the belief that something was staring at me from across the room in the shadows of my furniture. In the past, the stranger always ended up being a doll or a chair reflecting moonlight. But this time I was positive someone would be there if I checked.

Just turn around and look, I told myself. My breaths came out as shallow flutters of air against my pillowcase, and I could have sworn I heard that needle spinning around in the compass.

Just look.

I inhaled as quietly as possible, not wanting to disturb the room. I squeezed my eyes shut and counted silently to three.

One.

Two.

Three.

I flipped myself over. Opened my eyes. And found Stephen next to my bed.





BEFORE I HAD TIME TO FIGURE OUT HOW I SHOULD respond to his presence, he was gone. He jerked back, as if someone had yanked him by the collar of the white undershirt he wore, and disappeared.

The buzzing energy in the room died down. The compass began following my movements again. Stephen’s photographs remained on the wall—motionless, untouched.

I trembled under my sheets, overwhelmed by a barrage of emotions—terror, shock, amazement, concern, elation, love—and unsure what I should do next. My lips tried to form Stephen’s name, but they shook too much to function. My arms and legs couldn’t move. Black and gold spots buzzed in front of my eyes. I panted until I must have passed out, for I didn’t remember a single other thing about the night besides a dream.

A nightmare about a bloodstained sky.


A MASKED FACE SHONE IN THE LIGHT OF A CANDLE IN MY doorway.

I gasped and sat upright.

“What’s wrong?” Aunt Eva, not a spirit, came toward me. “What is it?”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“Are you sick?”

“No.” I looked around the room for signs of Stephen in the weak light.

“What is it, Mary Shelley?” She brought the candle closer to my face. “You’re so pale. You look like you’ve seen a—”

We locked eyes. Her face blanched. The word she didn’t speak seemed to hover in the air between us: ghost.

“I …” I searched my brain for a new subject, unwilling to let the conversation veer anywhere near Julius’s conception of spirits when I was grappling to understand my own. “Is it morning now? Are you heading to work?”

She drew the candle away from my face. “Yes, and I want you to stay inside all day. You’ve been out of this house too many times since you’ve been here. Don’t open the windows.”

“Are you sure you don’t have any books left in the house besides the dictionary? I really need to read.”

“That’s all I have besides cookbooks. I had to get rid of all the Swiss and German texts I used in my translation work. Even Wilfred’s family Bible was in German.”