Banshee

I woke up to screaming. No, not to screaming, but the depthless silence that oozed in after a scream, a silence that still vibrates slightly with the loss of the high, mournful sound of an agonized wail.

Before me, my breath came out in white puffs - my bedroom window was open, the pale grey curtains dancing on the breeze, as if the bird-pattern stitched on to them had taken flight. The cold from outside had crept into the room and sunk deep into my bones; I felt brittle as I pushed back my blankets and went to the window, intending to pull the panels on either side in as tight as I could and double check the lock. The wood creaked underneath my hands, the glass quivering, but neither panel moved.

My spine shivered unconsciously, the hair along my arms standing up as the very air seemed to still, just for a moment.

There she stood; Atop the hill, past the thicket of trees that made up my back yard, she loomed, backed by the moon. I couldn’t make out anything detailed, save for the tatters in the long, greenish cloak around her shoulders, pulled up over her face to obscure any discernible features. Honestly, there was no possible way I could know a thing about this creature, know that it was even a woman, but something about her plucked at the back of my mind, informed me of things I didn’t know. She seemed to be staring at me from the darkness of her hood, keeping my feet stuck to the cold wooden floorboards of my room. There was something I didn’t know, that she was attempting to tell me.

A wet, raspy cough from down the wall spooked me out of the daze. I jumped, and blinked, and she was gone. Or, perhaps, she had disappeared a long time ago and I just hadn’t noticed. Whatever it was, auntie Jane was awake and I promised to always bring her water if I heard that she needed it.

“Auntie?” She was rolled onto her side, blood on her lips and fingers. “Oh, auntie.”

“Don’t call for anyone,” She rasped, pushing herself up, “Just come here, Henry.” I brought her the water, watching her take a small drink and spit it back out into the cup, pinked with her blood. She held still as I braided back her thick red hair to keep it from her eyes; the sickness may have taken a lot from my aunt, but it hadn’t quite ever reached her hair. She was notoriously proud of that.

“Let me call mom and dad,” I begged.

“No,” Stubborn, even at the end. “No, you’re the only one who I want here,” Her hands had lost all strength, but she tried her hardest to take my hand and squeeze it. I kneeled beside her bed, looked up at the pale green eyes, wet from incessant coughing.

“Is there anything you want?” She smiled; in the moonlight, she looked half mad, with the blood on her teeth.

“Let me tell you one last story,” The last one; why hadn’t I made her tell me more when I a kid? Auntie Jane cleared her throat, hacking up more blood into her hand. I reached for something, anything to clear it away with, but she simply laid it back into her lap atop the sheets she’d spent the last six month in. “When I was four years old, your grandfather passed away. Did you know I sat with him while it happened?” I knew that grandfather had been a veteran of some far off war, that mom wore one of his claddagh rings and that Auntie Jane had his red hair. I knew he died of some past wound that had festered when no one was looking. “I woke up in the early hours of the morning, just as the sun was rising, to the sound of a scream.”

“Auntie-”

“Shh, let me finish.” Her smiled was sad, “It was the saddest sound I had ever heard. It made me want to cry. For a while, I just listened, until something compelled me to go to my parents room. Father wasn’t doing well, and mother was already awake. We watched over him, watched him pray for forgiveness for a thousand sins before the night vanished, and took him along with it.

“For the next week, every night, I listened to the wailing. It almost sounded like singing some days, in the old tongue.” Auntie Jane turned her face towards the window, eyes crinkling at the edges, “It was mourning father. I knew that, at least--” Her coughing returned, tenfold, worse than I had ever heard it. I jumped up, helped her lay back and sat on the edge of her bed as she caught her breath. “I wondered if she would mourn for me too. Open the window, won’t you, Henry?”

“It’s too cold, Auntie, I can’t.”

“Open it, boy. I want to hear her cry for me.” How could I deny a dying woman?

A cold breeze accompanied the opening window; on it, a song was carried. I could feel it more than hear it, feel the sadness that clung to it. Tears rose in my eyes as I turned back to Jane. She held out her hand weakly.

“Stay with me?”

“Of course!”

“Mourn me for as long as you hear her sing... But not after,” A calm seemed to settle over her, her creaking joints relaxing to the music. A smile settled along her mouth, “A family banshee... who would’ve guessed us Bryne’s would have our own.”

Auntie Jayne’s funeral was beautiful. White flowers and black clothes surrounded me. My mother wept softly to my right, my father held my left hand. After a week, I no longer heard the singing, the wailing, outside of my window. I stopped mourning, as I watched them lower my aunt into the ground.