by Unknown
The concrete levels of the car park rose before her, everything sodden and dripping with recent rain, the evening already dark. Clouds were rolling in, heavy and thick. It might rain again later. The roads would be slippery. In her mind’s eye she saw a news report, a camera wheeling back and away, the carnage below becoming nothing but toys broken by a child.
She put her hand to her ears, remembering the sound she’d heard earlier. No, it was the pain of the sound. Twice she’d heard it, here in this place.
And twice someone had died.
Eleanor shook the thought away. It didn’t mean anything. She probably hadn’t really heard it at all.
Maybe she should park somewhere else?
She pushed open the door onto the lower level and headed for the lifts. She could see the corner where they stood, the yellow and red pay station crass against its dull greys, masking a shadowed corner where blackness leaked through. The city, she thought. This is the city.
A shape defined itself from those shadows, the brief outline of a hood, the suggestion of a face; it was there for a moment and then gone, melding into the empty space.
She paused, suppressing a shudder, suddenly cold. She should be inside, safe. She should be home. She turned and headed instead for the stairs, knowing it was a long way to the topmost floor, already telling herself it was only for the best; that the exercise would do her good.
***
The woman knelt by the canal, her back bent, the knuckles of her spine visible through the thin gray dress she wore despite the rain falling constantly on her shoulders. Her hair was matted, all colour long since washed away.
She dipped the thing she held into the dirty water. It was made of some slight fabric and it almost vanished as it grew limp, heavy dull water claiming the gauzy material, the small printed flowers swallowed one by one.
Then the scene shrank away, as if Eleanor was receding from it, and she saw the canal bank and the towpath and the girl who stood off to one side, watching her with amusement in her eyes.
The grey-haired woman had seen her too. Eleanor couldn’t see her face because it was covered by the fall of her hair but she was straightening, holding out the sodden garment towards her. Offering it. Eleanor could see now that the fabric was streaked with red, and there were rents in it; the woman’s sharp grey nails slipped through the tears.
Then the woman’s mouth opened and she began to wail, a bright uncanny sound that cut through the air, and Eleanor awoke clutching her hands to her head, her own hair wrapped around her fingers, clawing at it in her haste to expel the noise from her mind.
***
Eleanor woke early, her head aching. Sleep had been shallow, her dreams too vivid. She flicked on the radio and made strong coffee while she booted up her laptop.
She was still half asleep when she tapped the word that was in her mind into the search box and once she had, she stared at it before hitting return. She clicked on a couple of links and new windows appeared, one written right across in a slab of text, the background a fanciful lilac. She tabbed to the other and saw short brief paragraphs, the words incongruous in no-nonsense bullet points. She reached out to shut it down, to close that whole train of thought, and then her eyes fixed on a particular phrase and she paused.
May appear in different forms, it said. Young woman; matron; crone.
Eleanor read on. There was nothing there that could possibly relate to the real world, to the sound she thought she’d heard. Keening, it said. Wailing. It didn’t say piercing: it didn’t say hurt.
Abruptly she shut the window, thinking the whole thing would be gone, but of course the other window was still there, the cursive text against lilac difficult to read. She read a few lines anyway and caught her breath.
. . . Sometimes encountered by a lake or river. Ask the name of the unfortunate whose clothes she washes, and she must answer. You can save the person’s life by bidding her to stop. Have a care, though, not to be seen approaching: she will require you to assist in wringing out the water, and if you fail, the banshee will tear away your arms.
Eleanor blinked. That chimed with something she’d heard. ‘He was ’armless,’ she thought, and laughter rose, pressing at her lips, the pressure building in her throat. For a moment it was as if all sound had ceased; then the alarm in her bedroom began to shrill, time to get up, and she hurried to turn it off.
When she re-entered the kitchen, the news was just beginning on the radio. It was nothing good; another death knell, someone from the city, a girl who had been alive and was now probably dead. She’d gone missing on her way home from work. She was last seen leaving her offices wearing a skirt suit and heels and a flowered gauzy blouse.
***
The sky was heavy, dark and threatening more rain, and the traffic fizzed through it, bright spots of light doing little to lift the gloom. The city spread before her, calling the cars and the workers to it like some drowning siren. She could hear the engines and the horns and the squealing of pained metal and all she could think about was that other sound; the one she couldn’t possibly have heard.
For a moment she thought she did hear it, and it was like the wind when it howled but worse, like the shriek of something dying. She shook her head, remembering the thing she’d seen on her laptop screen: the banshee. But it wasn’t real, there was nowhere left for such things to be. She thought of the shadows in the car park, the shapes they made, the nowhere places; the between places. The thing she thought she’d seen in the hollow by the lifts. And she looked up to see the high silver rails across the back of a pickup, and she stamped on the brakes.
The car slid. She closed her eyes and gripped the wheel, not realising until she opened her eyes that she’d stopped just short of slamming into the vehicle in front. For a moment nothing happened. Then the traffic edged forward and she took a deep breath and released the brake and she moved forward too.
***
The numbers wouldn’t right themselves. When Eleanor looked at them, they danced. This wasn’t how such things were meant to be; they were factual. They were real.
She glanced towards the window. The car park was there, a blank slab of grey against a sky that was struggling, now, to be blue. It seemed like the centre of everything, the well of gravity the city pulled towards.
She stood and went to the window and looked down. The woman was there. It was not the old woman but the girl with the red hair; it was unmistakable even from here. She stood at the edge of the canal, combing it over and over. Her head tilted upward and she thought she saw her smile.
She remembered a red car edging out into the traffic. A young man dead in the canal, bleeding from the roots of his arms. And something else: a young girl twisting so that she could look at Eleanor, so that she could send her a smile on a cold grey morning.
She rushed for the door, Mary looking up in surprise as she went, calling something after her. Eleanor did not care; she didn’t stop. The lift took her down, then she was out of the doors and in the street. She ran towards the turning that led to a bridge and the narrow steps at its side that led onto the tow path. Only then did she slow and walk carefully along the bank.
There was a narrow strip of ground edged by tufts of grass and weeds, crisp packets and the flattened stubs of cigarettes strewn among them. She could hear something, but not the violent sound she’d heard in the car park; this was a soft low singing, sweet and melodic, like a small summertime bird, and beneath that, a rhythmic splashing.
When she drew close she saw it was not the girl at all. It was the crone, her hair once more covering her face, grey and knotted. She was dipping something in the water. Eleanor could not see what it was. Then the woman stopped singing and her head tilted to one side, as if she was listening. Eleanor stopped.
The woman lifted her hands and dark water slid from them. The garment was fine and delicate; she started to unravel it. It was sodden, greyed, streaked with something darker still. She held it out.
Eleanor did not move
or speak. She was trying to think. She could ask the name, couldn’t she? The name of the – unfortunate, that was it. She could—
She might get caught. She closed her eyes. Had she been caught, already?
The woman shook the wet filthy cloth in front of her face. Water dripped from it into the canal. Its surface stirred, as if it bore some slow shifting current which could not find its way out; as if it was lost.
Eleanor opened her mouth – she didn’t know what it was she was going to say, some accusation perhaps, or some cry of her own, but then the woman spoke.
Will you not help me, dear?
Eleanor’s stomach seized. It was as if some roiling black current was there, inside her now, and a sour taste rose in her throat. She looked up to see there were people on the towpath, walking towards them. A couple with a child, swinging her along; Eleanor heard a high childish giggle. There was a man on the opposite banking, pausing as he went by. Ordinary people. Normal people. Not ones who thought and heard and imagined stupid things, mad things.
She looked back at the woman, just a crazy old thing now in her shabby clothes, holding out some rag that Eleanor was supposed to take – what, so that she could kneel in the mud in her suit? She glanced towards the clean glass offices in which she worked. Anyone could be looking out at her, waiting to see what she would do. She imaged Mary leaning on Andrew’s shoulder while they pointed and laughed with disbelief.
She turned and started to walk back the way she had come.
***
She leaned in towards the mirror. Her face was grey and drawn, tension tautening the skin around her eyes. She did not blink.
Ask the name of the unfortunate whose clothes she washes, and she must answer.
She should have asked. She was the only one who’d seen; she might have been the only one who could help.
Yet something else was bothering her about the memory. Not the woman, but what came after; the people walking along the canal. It wasn’t just the thought of being seen staring at the crazy woman; there had been something about them. There was the man – she didn’t think she’d seen him before. But the child – the joy of its swinging, its golden hair, its bright laughter. She hadn’t looked at its face, not really, but she thought if she had, she might have recognised it; she might even have seen her smile.
She leaned in towards the mirror and rested her head against its cool surface. She was back in the office but had not yet returned to her desk. She wasn’t ready; she didn’t want to see them yet, her fellow workers, to face their normality.
At the thought of it she turned and ran for the toilet, throwing up in one long sour stream. She closed her eyes and sank to the floor. She imagined a grey-haired woman slowly turning towards her, pinning her with bright cold eyes.
Will you not help me, dear?
Eleanor let out a moan. It wasn’t the memory of the words; it was the voice in which they’d been spoken. When she remembered that, she knew there was something very wrong with her, even before someone pushed open the door and exclaimed and rushed to see if she was all right. She thought they were speaking to her, asking what was wrong, but all she could hear was the woman; her own laughter blending with Eleanor’s, as cold and empty as the city streets.
***
Eleanor emerged from her room, yawning. She felt brighter, clearer. She hadn’t set the alarm, not after yesterday, when she’d been sent home; but still, the sky was only just beginning to lighten. She could still make it. And if she went in, she could stem any gossip before it took hold; she didn’t want to give it time to fester. She remembered the way Mary had rushed into the toilets to help her and grimaced.
She closed her eyes and allowed herself to conjure an image of the woman by the canal. She was only a little crazy, a vagrant, that was all. Eleanor should never have approached her.
Will you not help me, dear?
It had been her own voice she’d heard. Eleanor’s voice. She shook herself. It was proof; proof that she had lost her grip on reality, just for a moment.
And then she remembered the thing she’d read:
You can save the person’s life by bidding her to stop.
***
The car park was quiet at this time of the morning. Everything was still. Rush hour had been and gone, and Eleanor was trailing. She stepped out of the car. She had chosen her best suit and a flattering blouse, as if making a first impression. She would at least look good when she walked in late.
And she’d managed to find a parking space that was under cover. She walked smartly towards the lifts, her heels tapping, the sound echoing under the low dark roof, its shadowed spaces; and that was when she heard the laugh.
She turned and the girl was there, sitting on the ledge by the outer skin of the building. She was flicking idly through a newspaper. ‘You wouldn’t think,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t think, would you?’
‘Who are you?’ Eleanor asked.
The girl tossed her head, sending waves of colour rippling through her hair. ‘You had your chance,’ she said, and she hopped down and walked away, not towards the lift but to the ramp that led upward to the next level. She was humming under her breath. It sounded musical, almost pleasant; then it faded and Eleanor could not even hear her footsteps.
She shrugged. The girl was nothing to her; she didn’t have to listen. She didn’t have to care. She walked across the blank faceless floor and raised her head and looked at the lifts. Something was standing in the shadows next to them. The dark formless wedge of darkness suddenly took form; then it was gone, so that she wasn’t sure she’d seen it.
She stopped and swallowed, her throat suddenly dry.
Will you not help me, dear?
Suddenly she didn’t care about the office, about what they’d think of her. She stepped away, already reaching for her bag to find her keys. She only wanted to be home again, far away from here. Her breath was coming short and rapid.
Did you see the man?
She stopped. A figure was standing in front of her; not the young girl or her mother, but the crone. Eleanor could just see the dull gleam of a smile through the tangle of her hair.
Eleanor shook her head. She suddenly knew the woman was going to speak to her, and she couldn’t bear the idea; she didn’t want to hear the sound of her own voice coming from those lips. She flailed her hands as if to ward her off, but it was too late; the woman put up her hand and started to pull at her hair, uncovering her face, the face Eleanor had never yet seen.
Eleanor caught the merest glimpse of her eyes, of her own eyes, mirrored back at her, before she started to run. This time, she didn’t see the man. He was only a dark swift figure that bled from the shadows and across the space, reaching for her. He had been waiting for her. He reached for her now, one hand outstretched, the other wrapped tight around the thing he had been keeping in his pocket; and she heard a sharp metallic snick. It echoed against the low roof, from the naked concrete all around, and beneath it was the dogged sound of his breathing, low and heavy and urgent.
She saw only her own face, looking down at her as he moved. Her eyes were steady and they did not look away. There was no warmth in them, and nothing cold; they did not judge. They only saw. And Eleanor knew it was too late to run as the image of herself opened its mouth and the cry of the banshee began to wail across the city.
The Authors
Ben Baldwin is a freelance artist and illustrator who works in a variety of mediums, from photography and digital art to more traditional drawing and painting. His work has been used by the British Fantasy Society, Lethe Press, Crystal Lake Publishing, TTA Press, PS Publishing and Spectral Press amongst others. He has been shortlisted for the 2013 Artist Awards by the BFS and the BSFA. [benbaldwin.co.uk]
James Brogden is a part-time Australian who lives with his wife and two daughters in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, where he teaches English. His stories have appeared in various magazines and anthologies such as the Big Issue, the British Fantasy Society’s Dark Hor
izons, Urban Occult, and the Alchemy Press Book of Ancient Wonders. His new urban fantasy novel Tourmaline was published by Snowbooks in September 2013. [jamesbrogden.blogspot.co.uk]
Born in Singapore but a global citizen, Joyce Chng writes mainly science fiction and YA fiction. She likes steampunk and tales of transformation/ transfiguration. Her fiction has appeared in The Apex Book of World SF II, The Ayam Curtain and Crossed Genres. [awolfstale.wordpress.com]
Zen Cho is a Malaysian writer living in London and a 2013 finalist for the John W Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Her short fiction has appeared most recently in Esquire Malaysia, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, and the Prime Books anthology Bloody Fabulous. [zencho.org]
Graham Edwards is the author of two fantasy trilogies – Dragon-charm and Stone & Sky – as well as a number of novels published under various pseudonyms. His short fiction has appeared in Realms of Fantasy, and The String City Mysteries, a series of fantasy detective novelettes, is available as a range of ebooks. Graham’s new novel, Talus and the Frozen King, will be published by Solaris Books in 2014. [graham-edwards.com]
Jaine Fenn is the author of the Hidden Empire series, far future SF published by Gollancz, which began with Principles of Angels. She also writes short stories in other genres. Back when she had a proper day-job she spent too much time travelling on the Tube and London remains one of her favourite alien worlds. [jainefenn.com]
Kate Griffin is the name under which Catherine Webb writes fantasy books for adults. First published when a teenager, she’s been writing for just long enough to have started to forget her early plots and characters. She likes big cities, urban magic, Thai food and graffiti-spotting. To keep herself occupied between chapters, she works as a theatre lighting designer, in the happy expectation that two artsy careers create a perfectly balanced life. [kategriffin.net]
