In the Shadow of Blackbirds(67)

SOMEONE WAS KNOCKING ON A DOOR.

I opened my eyes and stared up at the crisscrossing white beams of Aunt Eva’s living room ceiling. The batiste fabric of my nightgown clung to my legs and stomach like a film. My sweat smelled of onions. My head, thick with sleep, felt disoriented by the morning sunlight as well as the fact that I was lying on the floor in the middle of a room.

The flu, I thought. Did I just have a flu fever?

I sprang up to my elbows and checked for blue-black feet.

The toes wiggling beyond the hem of my nightclothes were still their normal shade of pasty Oregon white. Plus I sweated instead of shivered, and people with the flu always shivered like they were freezing from the inside out.

Not the flu. It wasn’t a fever dream that lay with me in my bed the night before and urged me to go downstairs to kill a bird. Not at all.

Another five-beat knock came from the back of the house, sounding like someone was at the kitchen door. I wobbled up to my feet and lurched past the empty space where Oberon’s cage used to sit.

Through the kitchen window I could see a masked girl with red braids. She stood beside a wooden pull wagon full of food crates and looked harmless enough, so I opened the door.

She leapt back when she saw me. “Oh no! Do you have the flu?”

“No.” I wiped damp hair off my cheek. “What I have isn’t contagious.”

“Oh.” With a worried brow, the girl pulled a crate stuffed with golden onions off her wagon. “Mrs. Ottinger orders her groceries to be delivered every Saturday morning. You need to tell her we could only give her one dozen onions instead of two because there’s a shortage.”

“All right.” I glanced over my shoulder for signs of my missing aunt, but I neither heard nor saw any trace of her.

The girl set the box of onions at my feet, then pulled out a larger crate packed with carrots, potatoes, string beans, apples, and eggs.

“Do you need me to pay you now?” I asked.

“Mrs. Ottinger usually pays on credit. But with everyone getting sick …”

“All right. I’ll get you some cash.” I remembered seeing Aunt Eva fetch taxi money from a Gibson’s Cough Lozenge tin kept on top of the icebox, so I paid the girl her two dollars and sixty-three cents and brought the crates inside.

The girl went on her way to the tune of squeaky wagon axles that needed a good oiling. I would have helped her out by liquefying some soap and slicking up the metal if I didn’t need to hunt down my aunt. It was Saturday, so Aunt Eva wouldn’t have been at work. Normally she was up long before I was—and I doubted she would’ve left me lying on the living room floor.

“Aunt Eva?”

My voice bounced off the ceiling of the empty house. No one responded.

I sprinted upstairs.

“Aunt Eva?” I crashed open her door, and she screamed from her bed, clutching a two-foot-tall crucifix that looked like some medieval relic. Garlic and onions rolled off her pillow and bounced across the floor.

“Stay away from me!” she cried.

“I’m sorry, Aunt Eva.”

“Sorry’s not good enough. What type of person crouches in the dark in the middle of the night, scissors in hand, yelling about killing a poor, innocent bird?”

“Where is Oberon?” I entered her room.

“Don’t come near me!” She scooted against her headboard with wild eyes.

“It’s just me now. Everything’s fine.”

“Everything is not fine.”

“Where’s Oberon?”

“I set him free before you could hurt him.” Two loud coughs shook her chest, then transformed into a fit of hysterical tears. “The poor thing’s wings were clipped, so I don’t know how far he made it. Hopefully, far enough that he’ll never come back here again.”

“I’m so sorry—”

“Your voice sounded like yours, but those words coming out of your mouth …” She sniffed and sobbed. “I hid all the scissors and knives in the house, and then I tried calling my minister, but his whole family is sick. His wife referred me to another minister, but he was sick, too. The doctors wouldn’t come, because they’re too busy, and even that Mr. Darning wasn’t answering his telephone.” She hugged her crucifix against her cheek and wept thick tears across the tarnished gold. “We’re all alone. It’s just you and me and that lunatic boy.”

“Don’t say that about him.”

“What do you expect me to say? If he truly returned to this earth as a spirit, why are you letting him near you? Why aren’t you sending him away?”

“I can’t.”

“Try.”

“Even if I tell him to leave me alone,” I said, wringing my hands and venturing closer to her, “I know in my heart he’ll keep reliving his death until he understands who or what hurt him. It’s terrifying him and infuriating him.”

“There’s no possible way you can learn that information.”

“Yes, there is. He was still alive when Julius took my last picture, Aunt Eva. Those noises coming from upstairs—that force that hurt Mrs. Embers—that was him. I bet they were hiding him up in his room.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Wait right here. I want to show you something.”