In the Shadow of Blackbirds(84)

Mr. Darning set his brown case of photographic plates on a small marble table in the hall and popped open the lid. “Go get yourself comfortable, Miss Black. You’re doing well. I’ve never seen a braver girl.”

“Thank you,” I said, although I didn’t feel brave in the slightest. The vile tastes of poison and blood flowed across my tongue and warned of imminent pain.

I wandered down to the grandfather clock on unsteady legs and stopped for a moment to watch the brass pendulum swing in its hypnotizing rhythm. The second hand journeyed to the bottom of the white moon face, and the gears—those thin cuts of circular metal moving in perfect synchronicity—spun and clicked deep inside the heart of the contraption.

I glanced back at the staircase and longed to hear Stephen ask me again what I saw through my goggles’ lenses. I wanted to tell him a new answer: I see the future, and I know it can all be changed if you stop yourself from heading off to the army when you’re still in school. Don’t run away from your home life just yet. The battles will rob you of your mind, and someone will destroy your body. Your photographs will be lost. You’ll never get to grow up.

I clenched my fists and continued through the house, past the humming staircase.

The washroom consisted of a pull-chain toilet, a white shell sink, and more cedar wall panels that smelled of wood and toxic fumes. Only a sliver of natural light came through a small window near the ceiling, so the room felt dark and crowded and uncomfortable. I removed my mask and splashed cool water over my sweating cheeks and nose. The peaked face staring back at me in the mirror above the sink belonged to a petrified kid, not a confident spirit medium. My skin lacked all color, and my hair seemed darker than usual. I already looked like a black-and-white photograph.

I dried my face on a limp yellow towel that reeked of darkroom chemicals. The noxious air inside the house kept me from inhaling deep enough to calm my racing heart. With my throat dry, I twisted the doorknob and walked across the hallway in my double-reinforced Boy Scout boots that could still help me run at a moment’s notice.

I approached the bottom of the staircase, my pulse beating in the side of my neck. I could feel Stephen there, sitting the same way as when I saw him back in April. My left foot slipped on a polished floorboard, but I righted myself, regained my balance, and inched farther. The bottom step of the staircase came into view, along with a foot in a gray sock. The buzzing of electricity grew so loud my eardrums felt they would burst.

I stepped around the corner and saw him.

Black-red blood still covered his entire face and shirt, so close and clear and grotesque in the daylight. I shut my eyes and gagged.

“Don’t go up there,” he told me. “Get out.”

“You don’t look right.” I braced myself against the wall and tried so hard not to ruin everything by vomiting all over the floor.

“Are you ready?” asked Julius in a voice that buzzed as much as the stairs.

I peeled one eye open and couldn’t see Stephen anymore.

Julius thumped down the staircase in his huge brown shoes. “Mr. Darning just observed me placing his own plates in the camera upstairs. The equipment and lighting are ready.”

“I’m ready, too,” I said in a voice that sounded as if my vocal cords had turned to sandpaper. My head pulsated with pain to the beat of the blood churning through my veins. My body wouldn’t last much longer—if the flu didn’t overtake me, my nerves would. The need to reach Stephen’s bedroom fueled my strength to endure the walk up that staircase.

I’d read about pilots describing a change in air pressure when their planes ascended into the sky. That’s how it felt climbing up to the Emberses’ second story. My stomach rose into my chest the way it did on a Ferris wheel, and the blood vessels in my temples seemed poised to pop. My throat burned hotter. I gripped the rail for support, as my legs melted beneath me.

At the top of the staircase, Julius turned right, toward a bedroom. The broiling air gusting out the opened doorway blew against my face like heat from an oven. The sound of a thousand lightbulbs, restless with electricity, droned within.

“Do you hear the buzzing?” I asked Julius.

“What buzzing?”

I eyed a wooden bed across from the door, below one of three windows that washed the room in an eerie sunlight I’d seen in photographs of empty barns and graveyards.

Mr. Darning waited for us just inside the door, offering me another nod of encouragement. “It’s all right, Miss Black. I’m here.”

Julius entered ahead of me, and I noticed the unsteadiness of his legs, the hesitancy with which he approached his camera. The leather bellows stretched toward the mattress, which was covered in nothing more than a dusty brown blanket. A chill spread from the nape of my neck to the small of my back. That ratty old cloth was probably hiding Stephen’s blood. There was no longer a pillow.

“Well?” Julius steadied himself by holding on to the black box of his camera’s body. “Aren’t you coming in?” His voice squeaked an octave higher than usual. He kept his neck stiff and his eyes alert, searching for something over his shoulder.

I stepped across the threshold of Stephen’s bedroom, which smelled rancid and stale. My legs might as well have been wading through a pool of molasses. The air pushed me backward as if it were alive, forcing me away from that buzzing and angry bed, breathing hot fumes against my face.