Halloween Tale - The Wailing Banshees

The Wailing Banshees
Copyright C. Curcio October 26, 2005

Garrison Fletcher idly glanced out his carriage window. Whether his surroundings were beautiful or dreary, it made no difference to him. He was as a ghost in his own life, merely existing, but not truly alive. He was a man of means, more wealthy than he needed to be, and on this last day in October of 1863, he was traveling the Irish countryside, engaged in the pursuit of making even more money. He didn't really enjoy his wealth. No friends shared in his bounty nor had he a lover to lavish gifts upon. His was a solitary existence. His greatest joy was taking advantage of someone else's misfortune. To utterly destroy a competitor's business and profit by its demise, or to cause, through his own machinations, the suffering, ruination and even death itself of others, was among his greatest delights.

But this soul-less man did have another weakness. I'm not speaking of his penchant for cruelty. I'm referring to fear. He was given to morbid thoughts. The one that his mind grabbed hold of and would not let go was the idea that he would be a victim of premature burial. That he would perhaps fall prey to some sort of sleeping sickness and his vital signs become so weak, a doctor would pronounce him dead, and he would be entombed by mistake. No one was privy to the details as to why he was thus afflicted with this dread, and there was no loved one to console him and tell him it was only his own wild imaginings. He only had his own counsel to consider.

He'd been traveling all day, and still hadnâ??t reached his ultimate destination, but evening had arrived, and it was too dark to go on. As much as he hated the idea, he would have to spend the night in an inn at the next town. He felt safe in London, with its familiar sights and sounds and smells. It was there he lived, but it was not truly a home. Here in this backward country, everything was too friendly, too quiet, too untouched by modernization. But he was tired and ravenously hungry, so there was nothing else for it, and resigned himself to his fate.

Mr. and Mrs. Murphy were good and kind people, who ran The Wailing Banshees Inn. As it happened, they had but one room available, and expressed relief on his behalf that he would not be out on this night of all nights - Halloween, when the veil is lifted between the worlds of the living and the dead. Fletcher decided that they were simpletons, and wanted nothing to do with their company. They invited him to have supper with them and the other guests, but he declined and chose instead to dine in his room. He barely tasted his food as he looked over the important documents for tomorrow's meeting.

It began as a very small sound, from far away; he barely noticed it at first. But then it got louder - and closer. What was making that hellish noise? It sounded inhuman. It was then that his dark disposition took hold. It couldn't be the wind blowing through hollow trees. It had to be a demonic, shrieking presence. Howling hags -harbingers of death. That is what he told himself. And the scratching at the window was not breeze tossed leaves swirling against it, but a fiend with long claws, demanding entrance within. Those werenâ??t merely shadows cast by flickering candlelight, but monstrous demons, come to tear him apart and devour him.

And now - there! There before him, in the gloom of his room was the embodiment of evil: a moldering cadaver, malevolent with intent. A nightmarish horror. A thrill of such coldness and fear pierced Garrison Fletcher to the marrow. The screaming sound outside his window was deafening. His body could not contain the overwhelming terror, and he fell into a faint.

The next morning the innkeepers, having heard the Banshees wailing in the night, found him collapsed before the large mirror opposite his bed. He was without discernible signs of life, and so they called for the local undertaker. He was buried post haste, with no one in attendance to mourn his passing, no one aggrieved to see him gone. He would later awaken to find himself trapped within a coffin with nothing to keep him company but the utter darkness, the thudding of his own heart, and the worms that would eventually consume his corpse. He would be there until he was truly dead and his soul whisked away to the nether regions by those even crueler and more heartless than he. Only then would he truly be home.