The Banshee's walk m-5

by Frank Tuttle

  I chewed a mouthful of sweet potatoes and studied the map I’d made.

  My hand-drawn map of the Werewilk grounds was hardly to scale, but the marks I’d drawn didn’t suggest even a hint of a pattern. If someone was trying to define a property line, they needed fancy eyeglasses. It appeared the stakes were being placed with all the methodical precision of a child’s game of Kick the Wagon.

  I swallowed.

  “Now I’m going to ask a question none of you probably want to answer. If you’d rather catch me alone later, that’s fine. I won’t name names, and you have my word on that.”

  Lady Werewilk lifted an eyebrow, but didn’t say a word.

  “It’s possible some of you may have been approached by whomever is putting out these stakes. Maybe they wanted information. Maybe they wanted a blind eye turned here or there. Maybe they even offered payment. Maybe you even took it. But I’m telling you now that if someone grabs this House you’ll all likely be turned out. So unless they paid you enough to set you up for life, you’d be better off coming to me. Like I said, I won’t name any names.”

  Lady Werewilk stabbed a fork into something so hard people started. I grinned.

  “Anyone have anything to say?”

  Silence all around.

  I shrugged. I hadn’t been expected anything. At least not right under the Lady’s nose.

  “Fine. I thank you for your time and your cooperation. My partner and I are going to poke around for a time. If anyone wants to talk, I won’t be hard to find.”

  Nods, and a few mutterings. Marlo and the staff, sensing business was done, set about mopping sweat with fancy napkins and eating everything in sight. The artists rose and departed in groups of twos and threes, taking most of the beer with them and stuffing their pockets with rolls and slabs of corn bread.

  Talk was sparse. I ate my fill, and then some, while I watched people watch me. The heat kept anyone from lingering too long. Last to go were Singh and Milton, who was led out by hand. He placed his feet oddly, haltingly, moving like a very young child or a very old man. After they were gone, I sat sweating across an empty table from Lady Werewilk.

  The blast from the fire still hadn’t raised a sweat on the woman.

  “I never particularly liked Weexil,” she said, toying with her food. “Had he not always returned from his buying trips with money left over, I’d have let him go months ago.”

  “Money left over? Large sums?”

  She shrugged. “Large enough to make keeping him viable, despite his disruptive influence,” she replied. “Is that significant?”

  It was my turn to shrug. “Might be. Might not. Did he keep receipts? Do you know where he shopped?”

  “Marlo would know. I’ll have him come round and speak to you about it.”

  Marlo, again.

  “I thought Marlo ran the stables. He handles the money too?”

  She smiled. “Marlo does what I tell him, though he’d deny that with his last breath. Singh used to handle the money, but Milton needs him all the time now. And gruff as Marlo is, he has a good head for figures, and he’s honest.”

  I nodded. Sweat dripped off my nose. “How do you stand it?” I asked. “You must be half-baked by now.”

  Lady Werewilk laughed. “I’m going to let you in on a little secret, Mr. Markhat. The spot on which this chair sits is hexed. I feel nothing from the flames.” She pushed her chair back, rose, took a single step to her right.

  I watched the heat wash over her. She immediately began to sweat.

  “House lore claims my great-great grandfather, five times removed, had this charm set beneath the foundation. His reasons for doing so are lost. But my father, and his father, and his father before him all knew of it, and all used it for the same purpose I did tonight.”

  “To show the help who’s boss?”

  She fanned herself and moved quickly away from the fire, coming toward me in the process.

  “The Lord of Werewilk’s legendary ability to sit close to that inferno and not sweat hasn’t been seen here in years,” she said. “I thought tonight it might inspire some honesty.”

  I grinned. She moved to stand at my side. The heat raised her perfume, and brought a hint of color to her cheeks, and I might have been inspired to say something far too honest had not Gertriss charged in. She had some color in her cheeks too, but the set of her jaw and the way her hands were clenched into fists made her agitation all too obvious.

  “Weexil’s lady love?” I asked.

  Gertriss nodded, moved to stand with Lady Werewilk and I. I caught her eyeing the ravaged table, and felt a pang of guilt that she’d missed supper.

  “She was,” said Gertriss. “Had been, the whole time he was here. Love at first sight. Songs under the moonlight.” She gave Lady Werewilk an accusing eye. “The locks on both barns need to be replaced. They weren’t the only ones disturbing your hay.”

  I didn’t need a catfight, so I chimed in before Lady Werewilk could do more than inflate.

  “She shoved his things in the oven? Was there a note?”

  “She did, and there was. She burned it too. I love you, but I have to go. I’ll never forget you, but you should forget me. And there’s more.”

  She was grim-faced. I didn’t think I’d have to guess more than once.

  “She’s with child.”

  “She thinks so. I think it’s too early to tell, but she’s convinced.”

  “Had she told Weexil?”

  “She hadn’t told him outright, but she’d hinted. She thinks that’s why he left.”

  I cussed. Because if Weexil was just a rake who’d fled at the first sign of fatherhood, then he wasn’t a link to the crossbow on the road or the stakes in the yard.

  Gertriss gave me a look that said she didn’t like me very much right then.

  Lady Werewilk sighed. “I suppose this-event was inevitable,” she said. “Still, I had hoped it wouldn’t be Serris. She has a rare talent.”

  “Seems all your artists have a rare talent,” I said. “Isn’t that unusual, Lady Werewilk? So many absolute geniuses, all here at once?”

  “You’ve seen their work?”

  “I’ve seen a few. All were marvelous.”

  She beamed.

  Screams broke out from down the hall. Screams and shouts, though I couldn’t make any sense of the shouting.

  I was already at the door when Marlo charged through it. “Lady,” he boomed, ignoring me completely. “It’s Serris. She’s on the roof.”

  Lady Werewilk blinked. “On the roof?”

  I put myself between Marlo and the lady. “Show me. Right now.”

  “Go,” said Lady Werewilk.

  Marlo turned and charged. Gertriss and I followed, clambering up the stairs, darting down twisting halls, shouldering our way through thirty assorted artists, and finally bursting up into the attic via a narrow spiral stair and a warped trap door.

  The attic was finished, in at least there were plain plank floors and even plaster on the walls. Junk haunted the corners-crates and chests and old saddles and old tools.

  There was a lamp burning in the middle of the floor. Blankets and empty bottles littered the place, evidence of many a late-night tryst. Moonlight streamed through a panel in the wall that was open and creaking in a breeze-a panel that opened into nothing but a few inches of ledge and the long, deadly drop beyond it.

  I cussed. That wasn’t a door, never had been. Some impatient carpenter a hundred years ago had just sawed a hole in the wall and stuck a crude hinged cover over it, making an opening a kid might fit through, probably to scurry up on the slate roof and replace a few broken tiles.

  I cussed him for not nailing the damned thing shut and plastering it over fifty years before my parents were born.

  I raced to it and dropped to my knees and exhaled, hoping I could get at least my shoulders through.

  My head fit, and part of one shoulder, but that was it.

  I could see her legs. Serris was barefoot and
wearing a nightgown, and I could hear her crying. Her toes hung over the narrow ledge, and I heard her fingernails scratching on the slate roof tiles at her back, and I knew that even if she didn’t jump in the next few minutes she’d probably lose her balance and fall.

  She painted her toenails the same shade of red as Darla used.

  “Say something,” hissed Gertriss.

  “Miss,” I said. “Please come back inside.”

  She was sobbing so hard I couldn’t make out her reply beyond “no”.

  Mama, I thought, where are you when I need you?

  The girl’s feet shifted and jerked, whether from nearly slipping or working up the courage for a jump I couldn’t tell.

  “Tell her he ain’t worth it,” whispered Gertriss. “Tell her something, dammit!”

  “Miss. Please. It’ll all seem better in the morning. I promise it will.”

  Gertriss punched me in the back. I heard the girl on the ledge take in a long, deep breath.

  “I don’t care to live,” she whispered. “Not anymore. Not now.”

  “You mean that, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” She spat the word. Her legs began to tremble. “I mean it.”

  “We’re probably sixty feet off the ground,” I said, keeping my tone casual. “You’ve chosen a good spot. It’s high enough to kill you, all right. Trouble is, Miss, it won’t kill you all at once.”

  Gertriss grabbed my right arm and yanked. “Mister Markhat,” she whispered. “What the hell are you doing?”

  She said it loud enough that I figured Serris heard.

  “I’m just explaining a few things about falls to Miss Eaves. I once saw a Troll fling a man named Other Albert off a cliff about this high. Other Albert landed on sand. But even that broke him up inside. Took Other Albert all night to die, hacking up blood the whole time, when he wasn’t screaming.” I kept my tone cheerful, as though I was retelling a favorite Yule story. “If Miss Eaves decides to die like this, fine, but I think she should have all the facts before she jumps, don’t you?”

  Miss Eaves didn’t speak. I thought I could detect a lessening in the volume and intensity of the sobbing.

  “Sixty feet. It’ll take a while to fall that far, Miss. Long enough to count to five or six. Long enough to feel death coming. Long enough to realize what you’ve done. Maybe long enough to change your mind. But that’s the thing about jumping off roofs. There’s no changing your mind, once you take that leap. You’ll fall, and you’ll hit, and you’ll die. Bleeding out your mouth and your nose and your ears. And screaming, of course. Just like Other Albert. ”

  “He left me,” she said. “He left me.”

  “I know he did. And I’m sorry for that, I really am. And maybe right now you honestly don’t want to live, and I’m sorry for that too. But, Miss, it’s one thing to wish you could make the pain go away. It’s another to fall sixty feet. I know. I’ve seen. Come back inside.”

  Serris quit bawling. Her feet stopped shifting, her toes curled uselessly around the ledge, and at last she spoke to me, in a very faint whisper.

  “I can’t get back,” she said. “I’ll never make it back.”

  “You don’t have to move at all,” I said. “Just be still. Take a deep breath. We’re going to come get you. Don’t look down. You hear me? Be still.”

  She didn’t answer.

  I popped out of the hole and back into the attic.

  “Rope.” And hurry, I added, silently. She’s not going to last.

  Marlo appeared, lunging out of the trap-door, a coiled rope already in his hand. I could have hugged his grizzled ugly face.

  “You are never going to fit through there,” said Gertriss.

  I was ready with half a dozen useless arguments, but they died on my lips. She was right. Too many years of good beer and Pinford ham sandwiches had passed.

  I handed her the rope. She took it, tied a competent sliding loop in the end of it, was kneeling at the opening when we all heard the howl.

  It was a woman. A woman screaming. I was sure for a single awful second that Serris had fallen, or jumped. But the sound of it rose up and up and grew in volume until it rang like a Church bell through the attic.

  It came from outside, from inside, from far away, from a lover’s place right by your ear. And it sounded loud and high when it should have died and it went on long after human lungs should have been emptied of air and it sounded louder than thunder, louder than any blast of magic, louder than Other Albert’s most desperate agonized cry.

  Gertriss was pale. Pale and shaking and saying something urgent, though her words were lost. She put the free end of the rope in my hands and, when I just stood there gaping, she slapped me hard across my wounded face and she wrapped the rope around my waist.

  I came out of it enough to take the rope and brace myself, and then Gertriss kicked off her shoes and darted through the open panel and out into the night.

  The rope jerked and dragged and went taut. I had just enough time to grab it hard with both hands when Gertriss came flying back inside and I was yanked off my feet and we wound up in a tangle on the floor, being dragged by the rope, which suddenly bore a young artist’s worth of weight bolstered by a short fall’s determined momentum.

  Hands fell on me, as Marlo and Lady Werewilk yanked and pulled and cussed.

  The scream died, cut off as suddenly as it began.

  My ears rang. Gertriss and Marlo and Lady Werewilk all spoke, but I could hear nothing, and from their expressions I could tell they were experiencing the same sudden deafness.

  Still, we managed to all take hold of the rope and pull, which brought the limp Miss Eaves finally up to and then through the open roof access panel.

  The rope was looped under her arms. We scratched her up a bit dragging her back inside, and she lost a lock of golden hair in the corner of the opening, but she was breathing. I let Gertriss and Lady Werewilk adjust her flimsy nightgown while Marlo and I averted our eyes and collapsed against the wall.

  “And that there is what we call a banshee,” were the first words I was able to hear, spoken by Marlo.

  If Lady Werewilk heard she pretended not to.

  Serris began to stir.

  “She all right?” I shouted.

  Gertriss nodded, spoke words I still couldn’t quite hear.

  I shouted. “That was damned brave of you.”

  “Grave for who?”

  “Never mind,” I yelled. I rose, forgot to duck, banged my head on the low ceiling.

  “I’m going outside,” I said.

  “You’re a damn fool,” opined Marlo, who then surprised me. “I’ll go too.”

  Serris came to her senses and erupted into shrieks and cries. I still wasn’t catching every word, but I gathered she’d seen something out there, and I had a good idea what it was.

  Gertriss held Serris close and began to rock her. Before I’d managed to turn away she went quiet.

  “Don’t waste your time, Mr. Markhat,” said Gertriss. “It’s gone.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.” She murmured something to Serris. “We both saw it leave.”

  The girl started shaking again.

  “We can talk downstairs,” I said. “Lady Werewilk? Can you arrange for someone to stay with Serris tonight?”

  “She won’t be left alone, I assure you,” said Lady Werewilk. She moved to stand by Serris and Gertriss, leaned down, and laid a hand awkwardly on Serris’ shoulder.

  “There, there,” she said. I gathered Lady Werewilk’s stock of comforting truisms designed for hysterical teenage mothers-to-be was nearly as limited as my own. “Everything will be all right. There’s no reason you can’t be an artist and a mother.”

  Which nearly resulted in a fresh round of renewed bawling, an event avoided only by fervent whispering from Gertriss and her insistence that we leave the attic at once.

  The banshee’s howl had scattered the artists and staff. They were beginning to creep back up the stairs
, though. Most were brandishing walking sticks or chunks of firewood, so I called out before we descended lest some nervous pre-War abstract impressionist decide to wax heroic.

  Serris and Gertriss were quickly mobbed by artists, who cooed and wooed at the same time and generally embarrassed the poor girl to death.

  “All right,” I shouted over the din. “The young lady is fine. The sound you heard came from outside. No, I don’t know what made it. No, we didn’t see anything. You, you, and you-” I pointed at random, picking out the three largest male painters who weren’t wobbling. “-get downstairs. See that the doors are locked. All the doors. Right now, son.”

  I said the last in an Army bark perfected during my eight years in the War. Earnest young men darted for the stairs.

  Gertriss chuckled despite herself.

  “You’d make a fine pig-herder,” she said.

  “Great. Let’s get out of here and buy a herd of swine.”

  “Be a might safer.” Gertriss let Serris go into the hands of a trio of female artists, who covered Serris in a blanket and made what I assumed were the appropriate noises of commiseration and encouragement.

  Marlo appeared at my side. His face was grim. “Need to get a few things. Meet you at the front door.”

  And he lumbered away, bowling over artists as he went.

  Lady Werewilk and Gertriss raised eyebrows. I suppose Lady Werewilk hadn’t heard Marlo and I plan our expedition.

  Both began to question the wisdom of proceeding outdoors. I raised my own eyebrow at Lady Werewilk, who had not very long ago cast scorn on the very idea that banshees walked her woods.

  “You’ve got the whole estate cooped up in here. Unless you want start assigning them bedrooms, we’ve got to make sure it’s safe for them to go home,” I said, resorting to practicality. “Marlo and I are going door-to-door before anyone leaves. Lock your doors behind us. We’ll need torches.”

  Inspiration struck.

  “I’ll be right back. Have the torches ready.”

  I hit the stairs, huffing and puffing. Gertriss caught up to me easily, her face set in the same expression of unshakable pig-headedness Mama wore when she got her dander up.

  “Don’t even bother, Mr. Markhat,” she said. “I promised Mama I’d keep an eye on you.”