Deadly Curiosities by Gail Z. Martin

of the bedroom furniture gave up any secrets to my touch, so I turned my attention to the decorations. The still life paintings had no resonance at all, nor did the silver bowl on the mantel or the elegant hurricane lamp. But the pair of silver picture frames drew me, filling me with a sadness beyond words even before I touched them.
    A handsome young man and pretty young woman looked back at me from the photographs. I guessed that they were in their late teens or early twenties. They looked happy and full of life, dressed in their best finery.
    “I’m going to sit down,” I announced. “I think this is going to be intense.” I settled into one of the chairs by the fireplace, and Teag brought the frames to me. Mustering my courage, I let him place the frames on my open palms.
    Black despair washed over me, unreasoning and limitless. The world around me dimmed. Nothing intruded on the grief. Voices called to me, but I could barely hear them. If I were still breathing and my heart still beat, it happened without my knowing it. I felt as dead as my babies, as cold as their pale skin, lifeless as their still bodies.
My babies? A rational corner of my mind argued, but I was too far gone to notice. If the grief of the old woman in the dining room had driven her to suicide, this overwhelming sorrow led to madness. Dimly, I heard a woman screaming as the picture frame tumbled from my hands…
    “Cassidy! Cassidy, snap out of it!” Teag’s voice sounded from a long way away. In my grief, I lacked the power follow it. I was being swept away on a dark, cold tide that was sure to draw me under.
    Icy water hit my face and I came up sputtering. “What the hell was that?” I asked, coming back to myself in a rush.
    “Sorry,” Anthony said, giving me his most endearing smile. “You were screaming. It seemed like the fastest way to bring you back.”
    I shook my hair like a wet dog and looked down at my damp shirt. Anthony handed me a towel, and I dried off, trying to regain a shred of my dignity. “Well, I was right. It was intense,” I said ruefully.
    “I think I’ve found something,” Anthony said. He was kneeling beside where the pair of picture frames had fallen. The shock had broken the glass, and knocked the backing off the frames. I winced, sorry that I had damaged the antique. But Anthony’s attention was on something behind the pictures, and I watched as he gingerly teased out two completely different photographs underneath the frame’s backing.
    “That might explain it,” Teag said, coming around to stand behind Anthony and looking down on the new photos.
    “Let me see!” I said, turning in my chair. Anthony ducked, remaining beyond my reach.
    “No way! I’ll hold them up for you, but I’m not handing them over,” he said.
    I caught my breath. “Those are death pictures,” I said softly. I stared at the antique prints. In the years after the Civil War, when photography was still new, family pictures were an expensive luxury.
    Sometimes, the only photo that might be taken was after death. Ghoulish as the thought was to modern sensibilities, Victorians did not find the idea shocking or disturbing, and a whole photographic specialty sprang up to give bereaved families a memento of their lost loved ones.
    Memento mori.
    The photos that had fallen out were of the same man and woman I had seen in the frames, perhaps a little older, wearing the same clothing, but with a crucial difference. They were posed in lifelike positions, seated upright in high backed chairs, eyes open and hands clasped on their laps. A second look revealed an unnatural stiffness in the limbs, and that the ‘eyes’ had been painted onto closed eyelids. They were very definitely dead.
    I swallowed hard. Was it a mother’s grief I felt? It was clear to me that the deaths of these two young people had caused a third tragedy, the complete breakdown of someone who loved them more than life itself.
    “We don’t have to finish this all in