Shade of Pale

by Kihn, Greg;

  “You’ll what? You’ll what, Bobby? What will you do? Kill me?”

  Bobby exploded at her and she jumped away. He lunged again but misjudged the distance between them in the half-light. He tripped and fell, cursing, into a blanket of pine needles.

  Cathy snatched up a stick, a piece of deadwood. It seemed frail and puny in her hands, and she tried not to visualize it breaking like balsa wood over his head.

  Bobby scrambled to his feet and faced her. He had a crazed look in his eye and another one of those deadly half-smiles on his face. He laughed. “You’re gonna fight me with that? You gotta be kiddin’. I’ll shove that thing down your throat!”

  Cathy held the stick up and waved it in his direction. “Try it! I don’t care what happens as long as I make a stand. I’ve got nothing to lose anymore.”

  Bobby charged her and she swung the stick.

  It cracked over his head, breaking in half. Bobby grunted and dropped to one knee. But instead of staying down, he shook his head and stood. He had a trickle of blood on his forehead.

  Cathy pointed what was left of the stick at him. “I saw the pictures! I know about the dead girls! At first I couldn’t believe that my Bobby, my own boyfriend, was a murderer. I thought maybe somebody else took them, or maybe they were fakes, but now that I see what kind of person you really are … I know it was you.”

  Ignoring the stick, Bobby slapped her hard across the face. “You’ll pay for that,” he sneered. The blow knocked Cathy sideways to the ground, and she put her hand out to break the fall.

  At the moment his slap made contact with her, a sharp cry rang out, loud and agonizing, from somewhere in the woods behind them. The sound was unnaturally shrill, as if whatever made it felt Cathy’s pain at the exact moment of impact.

  Bobby looked up in alarm, expecting to see some kind of wild beast sprint into the clearing. The cry hung in the air, echoing across the lake.

  All the ambient sounds of nature, from the insects to the wind, ceased abruptly. In the supernatural vacuum that followed, Bobby’s breathing seemed to thunder from his nostrils.

  “What the hell was that?” Bobby said.

  Cathy shivered. She’d never felt more fear than this. At that moment, facing the raging bull, alone in the night against Bobby, and with that ungodly sound still echoing in her head, Cathy’s mind stopped reasoning.

  She’d reached the point of complete sensory overload. She stopped thinking about everything. All she could do now was react. Self-preservation willed her new strength.

  She leaped to her feet, like a sprinter from the starting block, and ran. She pumped her legs with all her might, supplying surprising power to her first stride. It carried her clear of the lunging Bobby.

  On the unstable carpet of pine needles he lost his footing momentarily. As Bobby faltered, Cathy escaped into the woods.

  Bobby ran after her, the breeze picking up suddenly as he navigated between the trees. The wind swished through the boughs, creaking the branches, and made odd moaning sounds.

  But then another sound grew out of the wind—a ghostly wail that sent shivers down Cathy’s back. It rose and fell, like a group of old women keening for the dead.

  Cathy ran in the direction of the lake. It shimmered between the trees with the iridescent reflection of the moon, beckoning her.

  Once she reached the lake, she could follow it to the cabin, and Jukes.

  Jukes and Fiona looked up when they heard the unearthly sound.

  “Oh, God! Jukes, what is it?”

  Jukes lay shivering on the bed, huddled in blankets. His eyes snapped open when he heard it. They listened as a sound unlike anything they’d ever heard rose and fell in the sky somewhere outside their cabin. It started something like the sound of a cat in heat, then rose to a wolf howl, then continued to climb and change timbre until it reached a screaming crescendo of operatic proportions. It seemed, at its peak, to come from all directions, as if the very air molecules were resonating sympathetically.

  “It’s the Banshee …,” whispered Jukes. “She’s here.”

  Fiona blanched and her eyes watered. Her mouth hung open to speak, but no words came.

  Jukes Wahler took a deep breath. “Sit me up,” he said.

  “What? Sit you up? Is that what you said?”

  Jukes nodded. “Come on; hurry.”

  Fiona’s hands reached out and stopped. “I can’t; you’re in shock. You’ll kill yourself.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Fiona, help me up. Please.”

  Against her better judgment, she helped him into a sitting position.

  “Something’s happening out there,” he said.

  Fiona looked at him, on the verge of tears. “Jukes, I’m afraid. Please don’t say you want to go outside. I don’t want to hear that.”

  Jukes shook his head. “If Bobby’s here at the lake, then Cathy probably is, too. We can’t stay here.”

  “It’s too dangerous, Jukes.”

  “You realize if Tom doesn’t make it, or if there’s a problem, we still have to get out of here and find a hospital on our own. You can drive. I’ll navigate.”

  Fiona wrung her hands. The look of consternation on her face seemed almost beautiful to Jukes.

  Bobby chased Cathy along the lake shore. With his long legs and demonic energy, he gained ground quickly in the open space. They sprinted past the dark cabins, past the boat docks, and across occasional stretches of imported beach sand.

  Cathy panicked when she ventured a look over her shoulder. Bobby would catch up in a minute or two.

  With bursting lungs and burning legs, Cathy ran through the limits of her pain. Knowing she would rather die than submit to Bobby again, she made a personal vow to fight to the end.

  Bobby howled like an animal behind her, closing fast.

  O’Connor used his night-vision goggles to thread a path to the lake. Through the infrared lenses he spotted two bodies running along the water’s edge. They were coming toward him.

  He quickly moved into position behind a tree next to a sagging wooden boat dock.

  The sound was all around him now, louder than he’d ever heard. Realizing it would get louder, O’Connor inserted his earplugs.

  He chambered a round in his .45 automatic, checked the ammo clip, and crouched behind a lone tree near the water’s edge. He could see them clearly now in his goggles.

  It was Cathy Wahler, running for her life.

  On her heels was Bobby Sudden.

  O’Connor slung the cylinder off his back and wedged it between his legs. He aimed his gun in the direction they were coming and waited.

  Fiona started Jukes’s car, then went back into the cabin to help him out.

  The sound that had come and gone earlier now returned. An eerie wailing, longer notes this time, and louder.

  Fiona spoke nervously, trying to keep Jukes’s mind occupied. “Nothing like sound waves to scare the hell out of you. Some sound frequencies can go right to the neurocenter of the brain and trigger involuntary reactions. That’s why your skin crawls at certain sounds, like fingernails on a chalkboard. But what we heard earlier was like a combination of everything that ever put me on edge. I swear, in that last crescendo, I thought I heard a baby crying.”

  “It’s the song of the Banshee,” Jukes said. “You’re listening to the sound of death.”

  Fiona put Jukes’s arm across her shoulders and walked him toward the door. He winced but gamely kept moving, concentrating on each step.

  “I’m getting weak. Whatever you do, don’t stop moving forward. Just get me into the car, please.”

  Fiona put up a brave front, even smiled. “Sure, honey. Nothing to it.”

  The wailing modulated to another crescendo, so loud this time it shook the windows. The cabin vibrated as if a tornado were circling it.

  “Hurry!” Jukes shouted into the fury.

  The song of the Banshee suddenly rose an octave. The swooping, impossible sound waves jarred them. A piercing high note s
hattered all the glass in the house. The windows exploded inward with the force of a cannon.

  Fiona screamed.

  Bobby Sudden caught Cathy at the end of a mad dash and tackled her from behind. She went down hard on her hands and knees.

  The wailing swelled to a roar.

  At first they both ignored it, but that became impossible. The sound swirled around them like a sonic hurricane. It was pure sound, without any discernible source, coming from all directions.

  The pitch began to rise The next series of notes hit every frequency the human brain reacts to—a baby crying, a lover’s moan, a woman screaming in pain, a police siren, and, finally, an all-out shriek that shook the trees. It blocked out every other sound or thought.

  Bobby struggled with Cathy, rolling along the ground near the water’s edge. She fought tenaciously, but Bobby soon had her on her back.

  With the terrible sound bearing down on him, Bobby slammed Cathy’s head against the ground. He grabbed a handful of hair and pounded it down again. Had they not been this close to the water, where the earth was soft, he would have fractured her skull. As it was, Cathy grunted and lost consciousness.

  Bobby felt her go limp beneath him.

  The sound roared like a jet engine.

  As he stood and brushed himself off, Bobby noticed a woman standing on the dock. The sudden realization that she was there jolted him, as if he had entered a dark room and turned on the light, only to find someone standing there.

  Bobby recoiled.

  It was the woman he’d seen in the alley the night he killed Dolly, the one who had pointed to him from the movie screen.

  “Oh, shit!” he shouted. All sound seemed to escape his mouth before the words were formed, swept up into the raging storm of noise.

  She was illuminated clearly in the dark, her skin luminescent. She stood there silent and pale, while Bobby’s breath came in ragged, inaudible gasps.

  “Who are you?” he shouted at her. “What do you want?”

  The woman combed her hair slowly, her mouth open as if she was singing. Bobby tried to pull himself away and run, but now, with the sound of her wailing penetrating his skin, he felt strangely drawn to her.

  Bobby’s memory began to dissolve. He tried to concentrate on escaping, but he could feel his mind draining away like sand through dirty fingers.

  He visualized his motorcycle and pictured himself roaring down the dirt road to freedom, away from all this crazy shit.

  The more he thought about it, the more he couldn’t remember, and the more blank spaces his memory held. In a few more seconds, he wouldn’t be able to recall his own name. The data was being sucked out of him, leaving him an intellectual husk.

  The repetitive motion of her hand slowly stroking down with the comb through her crimson locks hypnotized him.

  Pinkish tears, large and compelling, formed in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks with exquisite slowness. She was painfully beautiful to Bobby, and suddenly he could think of nothing else but going to her.

  He found himself taking step after step toward her. He reached out in her direction and stumbled over Cathy’s body.

  He fell, then got to his knees and looked up at the mystery goddess, tears blurring his vision.

  Suddenly, the sound storm stopped. The frogs and crickets fell silent. The wind stilled. The trees, restless a few minutes ago, stood straight and stiff. The air seemed unnaturally heavy.

  Bobby couldn’t take his eyes off her; he felt her image burning into his mind like a radioactive memory, erasing all else. His pupils were sensitive to the light radiating from her skin; he had to shield his eyes.

  She glowed brighter now, more ghostly.

  A whiter shade of pale.

  The light seemed to be coming from under her skin. She shimmered like a fluorescent tube.

  Bobby began his rapture.

  Jukes and Fiona looked down at the lake in awe. The Banshee glowed in the darkness by the water’s edge like an archangel. Her ghostly light illuminated a circle that encompassed the entire dock area.

  And there was Bobby Sudden, on his knees, reaching up to her.

  The sound that had been a hurricane a few moments before had stopped suddenly and given way to a preternatural silence that seemed deafening by contrast.

  “Oh, my God,” Jukes whispered. “That boat dock, the hill … It’s the same place the bully challenged me when I was a kid. It hasn’t changed. Bobby’s kneeling at the exact spot.”

  Fiona pointed to the left. “Look! Isn’t that Cathy?”

  Before Jukes could say anything to stop her, Fiona ran down the hill to Cathy’s side. Jukes watched as she knelt by Cathy’s side.

  “She’s alive!” Fiona shouted.

  In the stillness of the moment, the words reverberated Jukes’s heart like a church bell.

  The Banshee pointed at Bobby and began her final song. Her mouth opened, and the most ungodly, mournful sound that Jukes had ever heard came out. Different from the shrieking hurricane that had preceded it, which sounded like a choir of anguished voices, this was a solo. One single, mournful voice rising in the night, expressive in a way a group can never be.

  The tone was something no human voice could ever hope to create: part wolf howl, part siren, part screaming baby, part Jimi Hendrix guitar squeal, it floated upward with hair-standing, alien dissonance.

  “Banshee,” whispered Jukes, though none could hear. “You came back.”

  The Banshee’s head turned and she looked at Jukes. It didn’t actually turn; it rotated unnaturally, swiveling on her neck like a doll’s head. Her face vibrated, changing expressions faster than the eye could follow.

  Jukes saw the look in her eyes and felt a stab in his heart. In that brief second when their eyes met, just like the first time he saw her through the window of the delicatessen, Jukes felt some understanding pass between them.

  He realized instantly that she would destroy Bobby. He also understood she had a soul full of torment so vast she could never express it to any living creature. Jukes felt the weight of her burden in his heart and sensed the undying passion for revenge she’d held inside for centuries.

  He looked inside her.

  It was there, in the dark ocean of the Banshee’s soul, that he saw himself.

  Himself!

  Jukes shuddered against the night. His damaged hand was swollen and screamed with pain, but somehow, in the Banshee’s presence, it didn’t matter anymore. Nothing mattered.

  Numbed, he stood there gaping at the grievous angel, with a mind anesthetized by what it had witnessed.

  Jukes struggled to concentrate, but the great and shocking revelation lingered. He had seen himself in her.

  The sound of her solo wailing penetrated the woods like a beacon. A song of terrible, destructive beauty began.

  The Banshee turned her attention back to Bobby.

  Her mouth opened wider. The notes of the song she sang became impossibly high and dissonant. It broke the threshold of pain, vibrating his eardrums violently. Bobby Sudden put his hands to his head and screamed, but no one heard.

  Jukes also brought his own hands up. He wondered how long the sound would continue and how high it would modulate before it damaged his brain. Surely it would make them deaf. Or kill them.

  Jukes wondered if anyone had ever heard the song of the Banshee and lived.

  Then, he saw something that made his heart stop beating. It disturbed him in a way that nothing ever had.

  The Banshee changed.

  It happened quickly, in the space of a heartbeat. But to Jukes it seemed much longer, now that time had become distorted. He watched as she mutated before his eyes and all the while the ungodly sound increased.

  Her young, pale face stretched, aging incredibly in a matter of seconds, like rubber—a latex contortion of pain and sorrow. Her skin became wrinkled and her eyes seemed to protrude from her eye sockets.

  Her head swelled, the space between the eyes increased, and the entire grotesqu
e visage appeared to pulse as it expanded. She seemed to be changing not only on the outside but on the inside as well. Jukes sensed the storm clouds gathering across her soul.

  The song had become pure vibration, a powerful, immobilizing ringing in their ears.

  They were all locked in a moment that couldn’t be. Impossible, yet it was happening.

  A vortex of energy swirled around them, emanating from the Banshee. It sucked them in, pulling at their bodies and souls.

  The Banshee was now a monstrous hag, like Medusa of mythology, something so hideous, to look upon it meant death.

  Her head tilted back; her mouth opened wider than human skin and jawbone could stretch. Her song jumped another octave.

  Her shriek filled the valley like a jet engine.

  The trees shook and bowed to the sound. Animals fled for miles around. All around the lake the eerie siren soared and peaked. The Banshee, her transformation complete, stood before Bobby a heinous, wailing specter, calling out for justice from beyond the grave.

  Her mournful cry intermingled with a new sound, far off in the distance, the sound of approaching police sirens. The combination of the two created a skin-crawling dissonance that echoed across the still water like some nightmare electronic effect.

  The avenging angel focused on Bobby. His eyes rolled back into his head until only the conjunctiva showed. He slapped his hands to his ears in a futile effort to block out the sound.

  Blood ran from his nose, his eyes, and his gaping mouth. His tongue bulged, the soft tissue there splitting open. The vibrations shook him to the bone, rattling his flesh, vibrating his very atoms to the point of combustion.

  The otherworldly nature of the sound penetrated everything, distorting the laws of nature. Jukes and Fiona, now trying to protect their ears, were miraculously not affected by the higher frequencies that threatened to destroy Bobby.

  It was like standing next to a tornado intent on destroying the house next door yet leaving your home untouched.

  The Banshee directed her song in a concentrated beam at Bobby Sudden.

  The hands on Bobby’s ears began to move. They inched across his face like fleshy spiders, working their way into his mouth.