In the Shadow of Blackbirds(75)

I sighed in disbelief and sank my head back down on the pillow. “Then if Stephen’s family had just given him a chance and found him help, he might have eventually recovered, too.”

“His family didn’t kill him.”

“But—”

“No.” She pressed her hand against my back. “He’s dead because he wanted to be dead. There’s nothing you can do for him. I know it sounds cruel, but he chose to leave. And he should stay gone.”


I NAPPED FITFULLY AFTER AUNT EVA STOPPED RUBBING my back and left me alone in the room. I kept dreaming about that bloodstained sky. A gunshot would ring through my head, and the world above me would be splattered in the darkest red. I’d awaken with the sensation of a bird pressing down on my lungs, yet nothing was there but the taste of smoke and copper and Stephen’s photographs staring at me from the wall beyond the foot of my bed.

Those photographs. Mr. Muse and the mysterious I Do Lose Ink.

“I Idle Nooks,” I murmured, trying to decipher the lightning bolt’s anagram to keep my mind from drifting back to blood. “In Kilo Dose. Oilskin Ode … No, that doesn’t sound like a title at all. None of it makes sense. Nothing makes sense. I’ve got to work on my diagram again …”

I’d fall back to sleep, and the nightmare would haunt me again, like a motion picture running on an endless loop.

When darkness swallowed up daylight and I couldn’t stand the thought of any more dreams, I pushed myself upright, lit the oil lamp, and shook the sleep out of my head.

“Think, Shell, think,” I told myself in my own clear voice. “Put together a new set of notes. You can do this.”

I grabbed a fresh sheet of paper from the drawer and went to work.





Saturday, October 19



1. Stephen panicked about an airplane and kicked his mother during my 10:00 a.m. photography appointment.



2. Julius was so worried about Mrs. Embers’s injury that he risked taking her to a hospital during this plague. (I wonder, did he want Stephen to leave the house more than ever after Stephen harmed their mother?)





Sunday, October 20



1. Julius showed up at Grant and Gracie’s house, around 11:00 p.m., saying he had first stopped for a drink after taking the last ferry.



2. Between approximately 11:00 p.m. and the following morning, Julius and Grant presumably visited an opium den.



3. Meanwhile, Mrs. Embers was in her bed in Coronado, having taken a sleeping pill.





Monday, October 21



1. Gracie found Julius lying on her living room floor in the morning.



2. Grant drove Julius home.



3. Julius handed me the “spirit photo” and told us Stephen died a hero’s death.



4. Mrs. Embers screamed Stephen’s name upstairs.





Key Observations/Questions:



1. Did Julius prepare the photo before Stephen’s death, knowing Stephen would either be killed or taken to an asylum after their mother’s injury? Gracie said Julius wanted to start telling people his brother was dead if Stephen got bad enough.



2. Why were Mrs. Embers’s pills so strong that night? Did someone give her an increased dose?



3. What did Mrs. Embers hear or know about a gun and poison? Was she on her pills in her room, or was she there with Stephen?




And at the bottom of the page I wrote the one question I’d been asking all along but still couldn’t completely answer, which frustrated me to no end:

HOW DID STEPHEN EMBERS DIE?





AFTER A SILENT SUPPER OF ONION SOUP WITH AUNT EVA, I returned to my bed and read Stephen’s Verne novels until my eyes no longer stayed open.

I dreamed of the little boys who played on top of the coffins in front of the undertaker’s house. Flies buzzed around their brown caps as they climbed over the foul-smelling caskets and pretended to hunt Germans. This time they sang the nursery rhyme “Sing a Song of Sixpence.”





The king was in the counting house, counting out his money,

The queen was in the parlor, eating bread and honey,

The maid was in the garden, hanging out the clothes,

When down came a blackbird and pecked off her nose.




I jerked awake, paranoid once again that a bird was on my chest, watching me while I slept.

I turned to my side, blinked through the dim glow of my oil lamp’s light and saw nothing but my bedroom, quiet and still. My lungs breathed without the burden of anything squashing the life out of them. Stephen’s photographs hung on the wall across the way, undisturbed.

Yet the air burned with his presence.

I heard a sound—something wet, splashing against my bedsheet behind my back. I clenched my eyelids shut and dreaded flipping over, for I didn’t hear any rain outside my window, and so the ceiling couldn’t have been leaking.

I counted five more drips before Stephen’s beaten-down voice emerged from behind me in the bed. “Please keep me with you. I can’t stand it anymore.”

I kept my eyes closed. “We’ll figure this out soon so you can have some peace. We’re so close now.”