Banshee

A girl misses her recently deceased dog and relies upon an old folklore book to help her make sure Corky is okay wherever his spirit went.

Fresh dirt piles around a four-foot hole in the earth. In goes the shrouded body. In goes the fresh dirt. Tissue douses my tears, but it doesn’t work. My heart speaks to me in a numbing ache�"it pumps, it beats, the rhythm against my chest suggests it thrives�"yet I know better. It lacks.

       Father stands with the shovel lodged into his swollen hands. Boiled hot dogs snake around the scratchy wood, and I see his emotion. It bleeds from blistered palms. His eyes are wax, and I worry Mother’s candle�"a lonesome spirit joining us�"will melt him into dripping piles. 

       Lucy stands one foot to my side, and three inches shorter than me. She looks childish with her red cheeks and puffy eyes�"an extract from a claymation Christmas special. We aren’t as close as distance implies.

       The back of the shovel tucks the earth back into order, and it’s done. A corner of our yard transforms from a broken-down sandbox to a memorial. My skin tingles as I stand there, beside the spot. It’s cold and I suddenly believe in ghosts. One runs up against my back and through the collar of my shirt, and my lungs suck in autumn air. An old birdhouse mounts the wood frames of the sandbox. An old house gets a new resident. Heavy fall my eye lids as I engrave a memory into my brain. I hear a bark and open my eyes, but it was only in my head. Rest in peace, little guy. 


       Hollow days grow into hollow weeks. Grey clouds bog the sky and the sun forgets me. I don’t forget it. Or so I tell myself. 

       The TV stays off. The computer stays off. The phone stays plugged in by the wall, unlooked upon. This is good. Silence breeds with silence. I lay down on my bed and stare at the ceiling. Dried paint reminds me of clouds, only the look-a-likes on my ceiling never change. Above my TV I make out a dragon�"like the human-faced ones from China. Over by my closet there is a blimp, and just above my bed there is a flower. The white paint yields all of these mysteries, but when I tell my sister she squints and shakes her head. The magic doesn’t find her.

       My wind gets darker and I peek out into the backyard. Pine trees freeze in time while the maples go bald. That’s how my Uncle Luddy puts it. In the corner I see the birdhouse that I reimagine to be a doghouse. Ghosts can squeeze into tiny holes. They can fit anywhere, and nowhere all at once. I see a glow. My balled-up hands knead my eyes and I look again. Darkness. 

       Mother announces dinner and a news anchor on TV speaks on low volume while my family speaks not a word. I don’t have anything to say to them. 

       The other day I asked a question. "Do dogs turn into ghosts when they…die?"

       My mother and father looked at each other, subtlety, just with the tips of their eyes, before my father put a hand on my shoulder. It was a heavy hand�"like a bear claw. "They go somewhere else," he told me. "Somewhere far away." 

       I don’t talk anymore. Or at least I try not to. Only for the basic stuff, like food and water. Lucy seems better. She had a sleepover with her friend Allison the other day. She has left behind our dog to his corner. But I can’t. I won’t.

       Grandmother Cathleen lives far away. A place called Ireland. She visited once and I thought she was a monster. Her skin hangs loose like the waddle of a turkey�"only not just at the neck. When a fork is scraped against a plate I hear a little bit of Grandmother Cathleen’s voice in my ears. But she gave me a present. A book. It was a two-hander, loaded with a bunch of stories from across the pond. I used to ask my parents which pond she lived across, but they gave a similar response to when I asked them about dogs. Somewhere far away. 

       I lay in bed at night and read from the book. But mainly I just look at the pictures. One old broomstick of a lady, hair like strings of dust and face as rigid as a lizard’s, sits upon a mouth�"sketched under a stripped tree in the moonlight. Rags cover her body and her hands are disproportionate. Long fingers intertwine and the head bows solemnly, almost as if she is crying. Her mouth hangs open and I hear wailing.

       Banshee, the caption reads. My eyes scroll over the description. A family’s personal escort to the world of the deceased. Above my head an imaginary light bulb buzzes to life, and I look outside. The corner of our yard is dark, but I know there isn’t anything there. Just a family dog under four-feet of soil.

       Two cloudy nights pass by like cars around a race track. My position feels stayed, like an observer in a seat. Lucy smiles when she gets home from school, and I can’t believe it. I feel betrayed, like I’m the only person in my family that remembers what we had. What we lost. But I continue reading about banshees. That old woman in the book erupts from the page every time I look at the sketch. She would know how to find him. She knew the way.

       That night, an impressively stark and chilly one, I sneak outside. The grass is moist and my shoes squeak with every step. In my hands I carry a white wax candle, a match box, a bag of quarters from thirty-five different states, and the book Grandmother Cathleen gave me. When I get to the sandbox, I take the time to look up, and my eyes feed on the moon that hangs in the sky like a supernatural toenail. It feels lucky to me.

       Fire’s a longtime friend of mine. Every Fourth of July I help my dad light the fireworks. Lucy is too scared�"afraid she’ll blow off a finger�"but not me. I light a match from the matchbox, watch the tip peak up and then settle into a steady flame, and lower it beneath the candle. It begins to sweat and drip onto the sandbox frame, and I squish it into place, slowly taking my fingers off to make sure it is independent.

       A smile strikes my face, and I imagine that the moon is a smile back from wherever banshees come from. With a second match I light the candlewick�"it takes a second to catch�"and the flame wavers in the gentle breath of night. The birdhouse is lifeless to my left, and I try not to look into the hole for fear of what I might see. On my knees the dirt transfers wetness to me, but I don’t mind. I close my eyes with the book opened to the page of the banshee for support, and focus my energy on the idea of an old woman, ugly, but knowing of the world of the dead. 

       "Banshee, if you are out there, please come to me," I say to the darkness. "I lost my dog, Corky, and I miss him. I don’t know where he is and…I ask for your help."

       I think about this a little longer and add, "please." 

       When I open my eyes there is nothing. The clock ticks in my brain and I look around, patiently. Hopefully. The earth of my dog remains undisturbed and flat, but in the far corner there is a small mound. Banshees like mounds according to my book�"except the book called them tumuli. But it was such a puny mound. Doubts ripped into me, and my chest was squeezed by emotion.

       A tear slides down my cheek and I don’t wipe it away. I let it go all the way to my chin and feel it dangle there like a liquid icicle. Then it drops.

       For a moment I wonder why I am making such a weird noise�"like the singing of a musical note, only it is raw and sustained unevenly. I put my hand over my mouth and realize no air escapes me. I tremble as my gaze finds the little woman sitting on the little mound. Draped it patches of black and grey that is wrinkled like dried seaweed, and elderly in design, with thin white hair curling down past the shoulders and deep set eyes too dark to make out, the banshee wails. My body pulses like I’ve had four cans of cola in a minute and my mouth falls open in surprise. At first I can’t believe what I’m seeing. I look back at my house nervously, but the lights are all off. The banshee points to me in mid wail. Grandmother Cathleen and forks scratching plates have no comparison to the noise the banshee emits from its mouth. She looks like a corpse, and smells like one too. Rank and foul odors burn my nostrils, but I refrain from plugging my nose, or my ears. I do not want to disrespect her.

       The banshee’s finger stays on me, and I’m frightened. Hi…I lost my dog Corky a while ago and I…was just wondering if you could show me where he went�"so that I know he is okay.

       Carefully, I lift the bag of coins and slide them over the wood frame toward the banshee. I’ve been collecting these for a while. I hope they work as payment.

       It stares at me, and then its finger sways over to the birdhouse. 

       I look at it, and see from within the hole a dim blue light, like a television in a dark room. A sinking, oozy feeling lathers my body, as I move closer to the hole. Quickly I search the banshee, wondering if I should trust it. All it pays me back with are cries of sorrow and despair. 

       When my eye matches up with the entrance to the birdhouse, my breathe stops. A warmth contaminates my insides, and a weight is released from my shoulders. The candle blows out, and the bird house goes black once more. I retreat from it and look up, but the banshee was gone too. 

       "Honey, what in God’s name is going on up there?" My mother asks me from the sliding glass door. I pry the candle off the sandbox, the match box, and Grandmother Cathleen’s story book and run back to the house. 

       "Mom! Mom! I saw Corky! I saw him!" Blood flows excitedly in my limbs and I pause before my mother with a wide smile. "He’s okay!"

       Mother’s eyebrows bend down and her mouth coils doubtfully. My excitement fades. "Honey, that’s not…possible. What are you doing up there with all of this stuff?"

       Not possible? I don’t believe it. I know what I saw, it happened.

       Mother brought me inside and that was that. Bedtime.

       For a long time I lay in the dark, on my cloud-like bed, and wonder if it was all in my head. But then I remember the coins I had offered the banshee. I open my door quick enough to stop it from creaking and tiptoe down the stairs. I pass through the kitchen and through the sliding glass door and walk barefoot back to the corner of our yard. My feet are cold and prickly by the time I reach the sandbox. I search and search for the pouch of coins, but they are gone. Water floods my eyes and I smile.