"Oh shit!" Liz said. "What the hell is that?"
"That's the voice of the banshee," he said. People were hurrying from the streets now, trying to lose themselves inside or behind buildings in the hope that the wail would not find them there. They were crying, but their sobs were merely human. "Let's go," he said.
"Out there? Into that?"
"It's what we came for. Easier to find it if we can hear it crying. Once it falls silent, it'll be just another shadow."
Liz frowned across the front seat at Hellboy, then reached out for his hand. She closed her fingers around two of the big fingers on his right hand, squeezed, and he loved her then because he knew there was no awkwardness in the gesture, He smiled, nodded. Then they left; the Humvee, and the banshee's wail rose to a piercing shriek.
Liz covered her ears. Hellboy bit his lip. They crossed the street together, not needing to look out for cars because no one was driving here anymore. Those who were still in their cars were covering their ears, burying their heads in their hands, or shouting in an effort to drown out the dreadful noise.
"Why isn't someone doing anything about this?" Liz shouted.
"We are," Hellboy said. "Someone in the know at the NYPD called the Bureau a day ago, and I guess we just put them on hold for a while."
They walked into the park. Hellboy turned his head left and right to try to make out where the banshee shriek emanated from, but echoes confounded him. Liz held on to his arm, cringing toward the ground as they walked. Darkness nestled beneath the trees and strove to reach out against the streetlights, and it felt as though they were leaving the whole city behind them. Hellboy had been in Central Park once before, and it had felt like a whole new world within a world, a place totally separate from Manhattan. Now, as the darkness was split by the wails and the lights of the city receded behind them, he was more nervous than ever about what they would find.
They passed a fenced baseball area, and more fencing enclosing a basketball court and a kids' play area. The pale concrete path curved away from them, catching some of the sparse starlight and showing them the way.
The wail died down into a moan. She's giving birth to pain, a woman in Ireland had told Hellboy the last time he'd heard a banshee. She's pregnant with agony, and it births itself, so it's never ending for that poor spirit.
"This way," he said. Liz let go of his arm and walked beside him, slightly more relaxed now that the screaming had died down. They still heard groans and sobs, and at every corner Hellboy expected to come across the banshee. The sounds were so intimate, so close, that he thought perhaps it was following them, drifting through the shadows beneath the trees, and teasing them for sport. It was crying from the left, sobbing from the right, and all the time its weeping abraded his ears.
"Damn, it sounds pissed," Liz said.
"It's not a happy bunny, that's for sure."
They walked on, passing the shadows of rocks hunched down like cowering beasts. When the angle was right they could make out splashes of graffiti on the stone, exhorting love and hate and the wonder of drugs. They kept to the path, steering deeper into the park. The sobs of the banshee surrounded them, neither drawing them in nor pushing them away, and Hellboy wondered whether it even knew that they were there. It would soon. He planned on tracking it, holding it down — he had charms and trinkets in his belt pouches that would aid him in that — and quizzing it about why it was here, where it had come from. It would not be easy. And it would not be nice, putting this wretched spirit through more pain and uncertainty. But the banshee's was a small part in a much larger play. Hellboy needed to see the whole act.
Something flitted past them in the dark. Both Hellboy and Liz spun around and looked the way they had come, but there were only motionless shadows behind them. The wailing continued, though it had not seemed to grow any closer.
"What was that?" Liz said.