Four and Twenty Blackbirds Read Free Page B

people what everyone already assumed, that I was their daughter, and Dave adjusted our bodies into exquisite, astounding compositions of intimacy and danger. He laid us out in silks, in drapes, in only skin.
    Once he sat me on a shelf draped with black velvet and placed two giant wings behind me. He said they were turkey wings; I can't imagine where he got them. Although they were mottled shades of autumn leaves, when photographed in black and white they were dark enough to be the limbs of giant ravens. I leaned back and raised my head, cocking it against one wing as though I were utterly exhausted, worn out from carrying all those dead souls back and forth from the underworld.
    He pressed a button.
    Click. I was in a contest. Then on the cover of a magazine. Then a calendar of my more endearing toddler poses, the less morbid ones that the unwashed masses might purchase as Christmas gifts for teenage girls or middle-aged housewives with nail polish that matched their kitchen curtains.
    But the pictures of Lulu were the ones that made us both stars. Lulu is a goddess to more than just me, you see, and Dave's pictures brought the world to attention. Suddenly, we were rich. We moved up to the mountain with the rest of the rich people, and I started school.
    And I started seeing the dead women.
    And I stabbed my counselor with his own dull knife.
    And I ran away from his office, all the way home, where Lulu was waiting for me.
    She was holding the door open with one hand and the telephone with her other. The phone's pigtail-curled cord barely stretched from the kitchen, where the machine was mounted on the wall. She'd already gotten the call from the principal.
    She stepped aside and let me run past her. I was panting and gasping for air, unable to dash another yard but unwilling to quit trying. In the living room, I did laps around the coffee table while she closed the door and placed the phone back on the receiver. She joined me by standing in the way of my loop, forcing me to stop or run into her.
    She did not raise her voice.
    "What'd you do that for?" she asked. "Why'd you hurt Mr. Schumann's hand?"
    I shivered and shook, though it was warm where I stood, in the patch of sun cast through the huge picture windows. "It was moving. And he wasn't—it wasn't him. It wasn't his hand. It wasn't his hand I wanted to stick!" I hollered. "It wasn't his hand I saw! It was a different one. A little wrinkly one. The one in the book."
    Her eyebrows perked. "What book?"
    "The book I saw. It was old, with old pages all yellow and dusty. And when it fell open, there was the hand stuck to the back cover. It was moving."
    "Moving, huh?"
    "Yeah. And then when I opened my eyes Mr. Schumann was there, with his fat wiggly hands all moving in front of me—and I don't know. I don't know why I did it. I'm really really sorry. I didn't mean to hurt him. He's a big dumb dork, but I didn't mean to hurt him."
    "Come here." She picked me up and sat on the couch, wrapping her strong arms around me, letting my head sink against her breasts like one of the most popular pictures of us together. She leaned her mouth close to my ear and whispered the rest.
    "You see so much you shouldn't, poor baby. Just know this: know that the sisters would not hurt you, and they would help you if they could. They're looking for something they lost, years and years ago, they're not looking to harm you at all. They would never harm you, even if they could—and I figure that they probably can't."
    "But there's this book, Lu. Are they looking for the book?"
    "Good Lord, no, or at least I don't think so. Don't you think any more about that book. Maybe one day you'll outgrow the sight, and you won't see them anymore, but this is our blood, baby. Someday I'll tell you who the women are, and why they follow you with their pleading eyes and reaching hands. You should think of them as your guardian angels, and don't be so afraid. They love you, and so do I. But don't