The Last Banshee

A haunting shriek echoed across the valley; reverberating against hills and forests of pine. It was sometimes a high pitched sound, like that of a shrieking barn owl. Other times locals said, it sounded like a wail; like the sound of humanity’s grief encapsulated and released from some tiny phantom frame.

No one knew why she came or why she stayed. It could be reasoned that poverty left her with little choice or perhaps she enjoyed the picturesque blue of mountains that surrounded her tiny cabin in the woods.

She was a maker, an artist of sorts if you will. The woods afforded her a peace that the dying cities could not. Is it possible that she knew? Indeed, she did know much more than the townsfolk ever cared to say. It was better for them to think of her as some mad creature plagued by grief and heartache, then to swallow the truth of a thousand broken shards of glass, glass that once formed and housed a multitude of living souls; vessels of earthen clay.

I had listened for years to the gossip and the whispered tales that the townies usually discussed over their morning coffee and traditional breakfasts: greasy fried eggs, toast, sausage and heaping slabs of bacon. However there was something peculiar about this particular day. I could not put my finger on it but the feeling lingered, persistent, swimming around in the murky subconscious of my mind. I took a seat at my usual corner booth where I could enjoy the warmth of sun that poured in from the little diner’s window, uninterrupted. I often stopped here on particularly long trips to re-caffeinate and listen to the familiar banter from the locals.

Upon arriving, I had somehow failed to notice that the locals weren’t their usual chit chatty selves. In fact, as I took in the scene before me, it would seem that some of them had turned as pale as the sheets that swayed in their back yards, hung up to dry with homemade wooden pins on crudely constructed clothes lines. I wondered to myself, what in the world it could be that had caused this sudden and inexplicable silence.

It was then that I saw her.

I knew it must be her by the way she glided past; almost as if her dainty, phantom feet barely touched the earth on which she walked. She carried with her a leather bound book of some sort and an aura of mystique, perhaps something other worldly that I could not quite put my finger on. From the the townie tales, I had pictured a woman much older, perhaps with the look of a leathery skinned crone. Suffice it to say, it was something of a surprise to find, the screaming banshee was no crone at all. In fact, she was rather beautiful in her own odd and alluring way. I could see that she was out of place in this tiny town. And yet, there was something about her stride that gave me the impression she did not care much about the latter.

I rather abruptly drank down the last bitter sip of my morning coffee, settled my tab and walked briskly to the diner’s lot. I must confess that my curiosity had gotten the better of me on this particular day. Doing my best to appear as aloof as possible, I glanced in the direction towards which the infamous “banshee” of local legend was heading just mere minutes ago. I scanned the street, the sidewalk and a nearby lot, mostly vacant at this hour. I then chuckled at myself for the sudden fool hearted inquisitiveness that had caused me to forgo breakfast in lieu of some vainly imagined mystery. A mystery conjured up by locals, who more than likely, considered most anything outside of their hum drum routine to be something worthy of haunted lore.

Amused at myself that I had given way to the sensationalism, I turned to leave. It was in that moment that I heard it; a sound like no other. The tiny hairs at the nape of my neck suddenly stood on end. Odd enough, it was not by any real fear or terror that I was stricken. No. This was something primordial.

I was suddenly seized by the realization that there was a giant lump of grief I had unknowingly tucked away in the far corners of my stubborn old heart. All of the moments that I had not taken the time to mourn the losses and the heartbreaks came barreling down in one swift blow; a hammer upon my heart. I fumbled clumsily for my keys, tears now clouding my grey eyes; the shedding of a lifetime of hidden pain.

I can not say with surety how long it was that I sat there sobbing in my car on that strange and fateful day. I can not say where that mysterious “banshee” had floated away to. In fact, I never returned. What I can say is that maybe true healing comes in the most mysterious of ways;

maybe through lore, or through mystics, maybe through holy books, or even phantoms or monsters.

But it was on that day, that my own came through the wailing of a woman they called the banshee. The haunting sound of grief unfiltered had caused my own to come bursting forth like a dam. And it was on that day that I cried the tears of a stubborn old man, a sojourner, a wordsmith, a loner and how, I can not rightfully say,

but I was undoubtedly and most mysteriously changed.