“You know the story,” the second kid said. “She’s the one who killed all those girls. Said a banshee did it. By screaming.”
“That’s right,” Rose said. “She could kill you, too.”
“I told you she was crazy,” Soft Eyes said. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
“No way,” OG said, grinning at Rose. “I want to hear this. Tell my friend here about the banshee. It’s Halloween, grandma. I want to hear a scary story.” He held the point of the blade against her cheek.
She could see his life. There had already been violence in it, a lot of it. A string of brutality stretched out before him. She didn’t see his death the way she could with most people. What she saw when she looked into his empty eyes was the death of everyone around him.
“Tell him, or I’ll kill you right here. And no one can stop me. Tell him the same story you told the cops. About the banshee,” OG insisted.
She turned back to the one with the soft eyes. This was the one who would need to understand one day. She swallowed hard.
“Tell him!” OG ordered. “Once upon a time…” he prompted, pressing the knife harder against her skin.
“All right,” Rose said, taking a breath.
“When I was growing up, my Irish grandmother told me there was a sacred oak back in the old country called the Banshee Tree. It was a wild wreck of a thing struck by lightning years earlier.”
Soft Eyes just stared at her.
“Some believed the Gaelic goddess of life and death was imprisoned inside that same tree for many centuries before the storm, tricked by the Christian priests who had come to Ireland to convert the Celtic tribes and would tolerate no gods but their own, and certainly no goddesses. Theirs was the one and only God, they said to justify her capture. Some say it was the Cailleach they imprisoned, but some called her by other names. You see, there were many goddesses who dealt with life and death. The imprisonment changed the nature of the goddess, diminishing her to the size of the fairies who dwelt in the mounds. It was a tragedy of great magnitude.
“But the tree loved the imprisoned goddess and took pity on her. Not yet loyal to the priests who had newly arrived, the tree hatched a plan: to free the captive goddess, the oak tree courted the strike.”
The second kid snorted. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Shut up and she’ll tell you,” OG said.
“The storm that killed that oak was the worst in memory; the scream of the wailing wind circled the town once, twice, and then a third time, terrifying everyone. The lightning bolt vaporized the water in the wood, exploding its limbs and—some say—freeing the captive goddess. But freeing the goddess was the worst thing the tree could have done, for her imprisonment had changed her very nature, turning her from a goddess to a banshee, not the ones you’ve heard about, who only predict death, but one who actually kills.”
“A killer banshee.” The second kid laughed. “Right.”
“I thought a banshee was some kind of ATV,” Soft Eyes said.
“The tree should have left the goddess imprisoned, for freeing it would have consequences far beyond anything the oak could have imagined. The turning had made the goddess hate. Her size was still diminished, and her powers were no longer strong enough to determine life and death. She needed a host. Life no longer interested her; it was only death she craved now. Her sustenance became hate and fear, and where these baser emotions dwelled, the banshee goddess would always find a willing host.
“It was the tree that, perhaps, suffered the most, for it was forced to bear witness to the carnage it had unleashed. After the lightning strike that freed the turned goddess and forevermore, the tree’s sap has run red, as if it were bleeding.”
“Bleeding trees?” the second kid sneered. “Goddesses turning…”
Rose shuddered to remember just how that goddess had turned. That night in 1989, Rose had lost them all to the creature the goddess had become: the banshee. Those young women the banshee killed had been like her own daughters. On that horrible night, after it happened, after the shrieking stopped, the world had quieted and then disappeared. Rose had found herself staring into an eternal emptiness that stretched in every direction and went on forever. When the keening began, Rose had believed that the sound was coming from her own lips. Then she’d seen the tree limbs and branches start to move with the breath of the sound itself, their last leaves burning in the black sky like crackling paper. Then the trees had begun to speak. Come away now, the trees had said. Come away. Their mournful keen had jumped from one tree to another, and Rose had followed. But something had been unleashed by their ritual. What had been meant to consecrate had instead released something else, something that had jumped into Rose.
“You’re out of your mind, old lady,” OG said, enjoying the flash of his knife in the moonlight as he played the blade across her cheek, this time drawing blood.
It was the last thing he saw before the unearthly screeching began.
A still wind is a dangerous wind, for it calls down the banshee.
—ROSE’S Book of Trees
At the station, Rafferty parked in the spot reserved for him. Just a few minutes earlier, as he’d been leaving the wharf, a kid had lobbed an egg at his cruiser. It was a direct hit. The witch on the broomstick was now wearing a frothy yellow-brown beard. A few pieces of shell were stuck to her robe.
“Don’t say a word,” Rafferty said to an officer who was coming down the station stairs looking amused.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Who’ve we got?”
“A few drunks.”
“That’s it?”
“And a couple of bar fights. Nothing much.”
Rafferty went inside and stopped at the front desk, looking at the arrest sheet.
Jay-Jay LaLibertie, the officer manning the desk, was in his midthirties but still had the look of a skinny high school kid. His hair was uncombed, his uniform shirt untucked.
“Messages?” asked Rafferty.
Jay-Jay knocked over his soda as he reached for them, dropping the messages, soaking them. “Sorry, Chief.”
Rafferty grabbed the fallen can, taking a whiff of it before handing it back.
“I’m sober this time, I swear,” Jay-Jay said.
Rafferty sighed as Jay-Jay passed him the soggy pile. The top two were from his wife, Towner. He walked into his office and closed the door. He grabbed a Hershey’s bar out of his desk and unwrapped it, taking a bite. Then he picked up the phone and dialed home. “What’s up?”
“Nothing. Just missing you. When are you coming home?”
“Maybe an hour or so.”
He picked up the cup of cold coffee he’d left on his desk, smelled it, then put it down again. He pushed the speaker button on the phone.