In the Shadow of Blackbirds(64)

I sat on the scratchy needlepoint cushion and attempted to get comfortable. “All right.” I nestled my head against my arms on the table. “Come if you can, but don’t scare me.” I closed my eyes.

At first only the soft whisper of the oil lamp’s flame met my ears—a soothing nothingness. Minutes later an entire brigade of sirens tore through the streets like an invasion of wailing banshees. Their cries made the hairs on the back of my neck bristle. I must have drifted off counting how many ambulances there were—at least four of them—while the oil lamp turned the backs of my eyelids orange.

A dream ran through my head: I lay on my back somewhere outside and watched the blackness of the nighttime sky dissolve into a milky shade of white. A gunshot hurt my ears. Streaks of red splattered across the heavens.

I awoke with a gasp, fear blazing across my tongue and static snapping in my hair. I heard another gasp, and Stephen thrust his arms around my waist and buried his cheek against my stomach as if I were a life preserver, his face pale and damp in the lamplight. He shivered against me.

I wrapped my arms around his head. “Are you all right, Stephen?”

He didn’t answer. He could barely breathe.

“It’s OK. I’m here. You’re safe. It was just a dream.” I lowered my right hand to his shoulder and found the wide cotton strap of the sleeveless undershirt he was always wearing. To soothe him, I ran my fingers down the curve of his bare arm, meeting with cold flesh and scars that reminded me of the barbed-wire wounds on Jones’s hand. I puzzled over Stephen’s lack of a proper shirt. “Where were you when you put on these clothes?”

I bit my lip in anticipation of his answer. The question seemed like a stroke of genius for the five or six seconds after I asked it.

He didn’t respond—he just quaked and panted—so I elaborated. “You’re wearing a sleeveless undershirt, a brown pair of pants that look like civilian trousers, and gray socks without any shoes. Do you remember where you were when you put on this clothing? Do you remember why you’re not wearing a regular shirt?”

He slowed his breathing enough to answer. “No.”

“Are you sure? Please think hard, Stephen. Think back to the moments before the birds arrived. Where were you?”

“I don’t know.” He closed his eyes and tightened his grip around my waist. “I just remember it being hot. There was too much sunlight. Too many windows. I didn’t like wearing sleeves.”

“Were you in a hospital?”

“Maybe. I just …” His eyes opened wide. “Oh …” He exhaled a sigh heavy with remembrance.

My heart raced. “Oh what?”

“I just remembered something.”

“What?”

“I think I hurt her.”

“Her?” I swallowed down my jealousy. “A girl was there?”

“The Huns flew over us. Their planes were practically right on me. The bombs were about to drop. I don’t know why she was there.”

“Who was there?”

“My mother.”

“Your mother?”

“She was reaching over me, and I kicked her so hard she stumbled several feet backward and landed on the ground. I heard her cry out in pain.”

“Your mother was in a hospital with you? Is that what you mean? Or was there a nurse who looked like her?”

“It was her. She said my name.”

“But—that can’t be.” I shook my head.

“She was there. I was panicking about the plane, but she was there, and I hurt her.”

“Wait a second … wait …” The little clock gears inside my head clicked into place. “Oh, God.” My diagram of the events leading up to his death repositioned itself in a brand-new order in my mind. A sentence from Stephen’s letter sitting right there next to me on the bedside table leapt off the page: airplanes buzz over our house and rattle the china cabinet several times a day …

“Oh, my God.”

I remembered back to the day I posed for that second spirit photograph in the Emberses’ house—the biplane soaring over the roof, footsteps scrambling across the room above our heads, dust shaking loose from the beams, Mrs. Embers tearing into the studio, saying, I need your help, Julius. I’m hurt. She had grabbed her stomach as if she had just been kicked, and Julius shouted, Christ! Get them out of here, Gracie.

It wasn’t a ghost that made everyone stare up at the ceiling with whitened faces. A spirit didn’t somehow hurt Mrs. Embers.

It was an eighteen-year-old boy, deep in shock from the war, reacting to a sound that reminded him of battle.

“You were still alive that day.” I grabbed the sides of Stephen’s face. “When Julius took my photograph and Gracie gave me the package, you were living and breathing in the bedroom directly above my head.”

He scowled and shook his head. “I’m still alive, Shell. Stop saying I’m not.”

“You came home, Stephen. You’re not still in the trenches.”

“But the minute you let me go, I’ll be back in the mud and the dark and the shit and the blood. I hear them whispering right now.” He peered over his shoulder. “Don’t you hear them?”

“What are they saying?”

“All sorts of things. One of them wants to know how long it’s going to take.”