In the Shadow of Blackbirds(87)

“He wanted to shoot them?” asked Mr. Darning.

“Did you hear what she just said, Darning? ‘As good as dead.’ That’s what you kept calling him that night.”

“Perhaps you should stop damaging your brain with illegal substances, Julius.” Mr. Darning ducked his head under the black cloth behind the camera. “I certainly wasn’t anywhere near your brother when he was in the throes of his neuroses.”

“Get me off this bed before it happens again.” I squirmed to escape Julius’s grip. “I can taste the poison and the smoke from the flash. Don’t make me repeat that.”

“Let’s take another photograph before she gets up,” said Mr. Darning. “I’ve got this new plate ready to go.”

“Would you stop taking photographs?” shouted Julius. “Get out from under that cloth and stop treating my house like a laboratory. I’m sick of your morbid psychical research haunting me each night. I’m sick of listening to my brother’s bed shaking up here because of you.”

Mr. Darning’s face reemerged. “Keep your mouth shut, Julius.”

“I sometimes hated Stephen, but he was my brother. I never would have done anything so twisted if I’d been in my right mind. You became obsessed with death after your girlfriend died.”

“Stop putting ideas into Miss Black’s head.”

“She already has the ideas in her head. She knows who was in his room, Darning. Didn’t you hear her? She felt you poisoning him.”

Mr. Darning left the camera and grabbed my shoulder. “Tell me exactly what you think you saw, Mary Shelley. No one’s going to hurt you if you tell me the truth. Who did those blackbirds look like?”

“Stephen!” I cried out. “Stephen Embers, where are you?”

“Don’t bring him here right now.” Julius covered my mouth with his hand, but I sunk my teeth into his flesh and freed my lips.

“It wasn’t otherworldly creatures who tortured you.” I twisted and tried to get away. “It was two desperate men trying to win a contest. It’s in my notes from the library—they’re always desperate.”

“Quiet!” Mr. Darning shoved me by my shoulders down to the scratchy brown blanket. “Just settle down. No one did anything wrong.”

“Why did you have to treat him like he was nothing? He was a person—not an experiment.”

“Boys in Stephen’s condition are better off dead, Miss Black.”

“That’s not for you to decide.”

Mr. Darning pinched my nostrils shut and forced my jaw closed with his free hand. My eyes bulged. My lungs fought to find oxygen. I scraped my nails into his hands, but he only clamped down harder. I kicked my legs and pounded on his knuckles.

“Are you killing her?” asked Julius in a panic.

“She’ll tell someone. Why did you have to blabber about everything? She’s a nice girl.”

“I don’t want another kid dying in here.”

“Well, I don’t want to go to jail. I don’t deserve to waste away behind bars for your goddamned lunatic of a brother who ruined our experiment.”

The flashlamp exploded.

An eruption of smoke and light attacked the room with the violence of shells blasting in Stephen’s war zone.

Mr. Darning jumped off me and gaped at the Cyclops lens staring us down through the dissipating cloud of white. The flashlamp’s fiery aftermath—the same burning air Stephen carried with him to his death—invaded my nostrils and lungs.

Julius stumbled toward the camera. “How did that go off by itself?” He covered the lens, as if he could hide everything they’d done by screwing the round cap into place. “What just happened, Mary Shelley?”

I struggled to find my voice through gasps of air. “You wanted me to bring Stephen for a photograph”—I pushed myself to my elbows—“and he came.”

The air boiled with rage, and the panes of all three windows shuddered in their frames with a fury that took away my breath. Mr. Darning froze. Julius peered at the restless glass with eyes large and black. I scanned the bedroom to see if Stephen stood anywhere against the wood panels, but I saw only faded rectangles where his pictures used to hang. His anger heightened all around us. The room felt ready to implode.

Somebody pulled me off the mattress and dragged me under the bed, where I buried my face in my arms just moments before the windows shattered with a crash that rang in my ears. Shards of glass skidded across the floor and nipped my hands, and the men cried out in pain. They dropped to the floor with an impact that jolted my elbows.

Then silence.

I lay there beneath the bed, terror-stricken, shaking, my ears still ringing, but the air around me lightened a hundredfold. The bedroom’s toxic taste dissolved with the gentleness of cool milk tempering the bitterness of a cup of tea. I realized someone was holding me under the bed, keeping his arm around me, imparting warmth and a feeling of safety to my trembling body. “Grab the photographic plate that shows him trying to kill you,” whispered Stephen near my ear. “Tuck it inside that satchel lying next to you and run.”

I lifted my head and found, to my right, the silhouette of Stephen’s old leather camera satchel caked in dust. I managed to get the tan strap over my shoulder in the cramped space beneath the bed and crawled out, careful not to cut myself on the battlefield of broken glass.