In the Shadow of Blackbirds(73)
“I’m positive. Grant and Julius were in San Diego.”
“They couldn’t have gone to Coronado after you went to bed?”
“No. The ferries were closed for the night, and the drive around the bay is too long and risky in the dark. The peninsula leading to Coronado is just a thin strip of land.” She wiped her tears again and knocked her wig off center. “The police confirmed it was a suicide, but Julius paid them to keep quiet so he could keep insisting Stephen had been in France the whole time. The undertakers were so overwhelmed by the number of funerals for flu victims that we delayed his burial by more than a week. That allowed Julius time to tell people we were waiting for Stephen’s body to come home. It was all so horrifying.” Gracie balled her cloth between her hands. “To lose a loved one at such a young age is unthinkable, but then to have to lie about the circumstances and watch his mother go out of her mind with grief … I don’t know what to do, Mary Shelley. Is Stephen here yet? Will he speak to me and forgive me for going along with the war hero charade?”
I closed my eyes and drew in a deep breath of the smoke working its way into my lungs and under my skin. An exhausting weight curled around my back and pressed against my spine.
“Stephen,” I whispered to him, feeling my aunt’s fingers pull away from my shoulders. “I know this all must be disturbing for you, but now you know what really happened. Is there anything else you need us to do to help you rest? Is there anything you want me to tell your cousin before—”
Rage singed my tongue. Without warning, violent tremors seized my torso and legs, and the window behind me rattled in response to my movements. Every object hanging on the walls—from the cuckoo clock to the spice rack—soon clanked and shuddered and sounded like a living creature struggling to break free from its nails, and there was nothing I could do to stop the shaking.
Gracie whimpered. “Stephen?”
“I don’t believe it,” he growled, so close to me—so very, very close. “And I know exactly why my mother’s talking about poison.” His anger churned in my veins, and his voice took on a raspy tone that didn’t even sound like him. “The blackbirds pour it down my throat.”
“Stop it, Mary Shelley,” begged Aunt Eva.
“Stephen?” asked Gracie. “Stephen, I’m so sorry we couldn’t help you. I’m so sorry.”
“Tell her, Shell,” said Stephen over the cacophony of rumbling glass and gas pipes groaning at their seams. “Tell her I didn’t kill myself. Tell her someone pours poison down my throat. They’re killing me. They won’t stop killing me.”
The window cracked, shocking me out of my convulsions.
The shaking stopped.
The room fell silent.
Aunt Eva thumped against the floor. Gracie’s skin turned a seasick green, and she swayed like she’d also faint at any minute. She gripped the table’s edge and lowered her forehead to the surface to keep from toppling over.
I didn’t blame either of them. I nearly fell unconscious myself.
For Stephen’s voice hadn’t burned against my ear or emerged from the air a few feet away from my head. His shouts weren’t something for me alone to hear in the private confines of my brain.
His voice—his actual deep voice—came directly from my mouth.
I WAITED ON THE COLD FLOOR OUTSIDE AUNT EVA’S ROOM with my face pressed into my sweating palms. Gracie had helped revive my aunt and steer her to bed, but after that she simply shut down, as if someone had closed up shop inside of her. She wandered from our house with an empty stare.
Waves of dizziness threatened to knock me over, but I kept my wits about me and tried to fit Gracie’s account of suicide into Stephen’s blackbirds story. Did he shoot himself because he was convinced birds from the battlefields had followed him home to haunt him? If that was the case, why did both Stephen and Mrs. Embers insist poison played a role?
“What if his mother killed him to put him out of his misery?” I asked myself aloud.
The echo of my theory banged around my brain until a vein in my forehead pulsated. I fidgeted with guilt for even considering the possibility. But, still … what if Mrs. Embers didn’t want her son to suffer? Perhaps that’s why she had to be taken away after his death. Maybe Stephen’s mind transformed his mother into a monstrous creature to protect him from the truth.
A HAND NUDGED THE BACK OF MY ARM. “WHO ARE YOU right now?”
I blinked away my drowsiness and found my aunt standing over me with her crucifix in her hands like a baseball bat. The lengthening shadows of late afternoon stretched outside her bedroom door behind her.
“You’re not going to hit me with that, are you?” I asked.
“Are you Mary Shelley?”
“Yes, it’s me. Please put that down.”
Her arms relaxed around the cross, but her face remained tense. “I don’t want you out here.”
“Do you feel better?”
“Go to your room and lie down. I’m fetching a glass of water for myself. I’ll bring one to you in a moment.”
“All right. Thank you.”
I made my way to my room and flopped facedown on the mattress.
Aunt Eva went downstairs and made a commotion in the kitchen, slamming cupboard doors and yelling about the crack in the window. She thumped back up and plunked herself down on my bed with enough force to rock me back and forth. “Don’t ever talk like him again.” She set a glass of sloshing water on the table beside me.