And oddly sounding like my great-grandmother!
She didn’t need to tell me twice; I couldn’t find Grant or Janice!
I turned to run.
And that was when I saw the Second City Slasher. And knew it was, of course, because I’d been lured into the cemetery by him.
No. Janice’s bass player was a bass player.
I’d known the killer a long time.
Grant looked at me, grinning. “You! All I do is take you down, baby, and I’m serial! Of course, if you’d read up, you’d know I like to play a little, too. And, oh, Kelsey! You and your green eyes and red hair and perfect little everything, always a friend, but the way you looked at me . . . as if you’d never deign to really touch me . . . well, tonight, baby, I’ll be touching you!”
I don’t know what prompted me—shock, fear, or maybe even resignation. If I was going to die, I wasn’t going to go easily.
“Asshole! I can outrun you!”
I turned to run, with my mind functioning wildly. Grant?
I’d always thought of him as a casual friend in a few of my classes. I’d always been nice. No, I’d never thought of him as someone I’d be with, but I’d believed he thought of me as a casual friend, too. He was so young! What had made him . . .
Crazy? A killer?
Again, I’ll never mock idiot heroines in a horror movie again.
Because I tripped. Not my fault, really. It isn’t easy to run through a cemetery with dozens of broken headstones and overgrown brush.
I tripped . . .
And I felt someone touch me.
“Get up, get up, get up, and run, go . . . the cops are coming!”
It was the moonlight, I thought. The moonlight and the grass and bushes. Because I saw a little man at my side. And he looked green.
A leprechaun.
“Up!” he shouted.
I snapped out of my shock or fear or whatever it was, and I stopped wondering about him. Grant was coming. He was near me. I saw, as I rose and started running again, that the little green man was shoving himself against Grant’s legs.
As I ran toward the road, bright lights flashed. I realized police cars were arriving. I collided into an officer and tried to point and explain.
One officer brought me to his car while others rushed into the cemetery.
They caught Grant that night. He had fallen in the cemetery and broken three ribs, keeping him from the ability to run. I only knew that because one of the officers told me. They were kind and wanted me to go to the hospital for a check-up. I was fine, and I wanted to go home and assure my parents I was all right. Janice and Nan were with me in the chaos that followed the fun of Halloween that night.
The police were amazed I’d managed to escape the killer who had planned to trap me. It turned out he’d sent Janice out back, telling her Hank was going to join her there. Then he’d managed to make me believe we were going after our friend.
“How did you know? How did you escape him?” Detective Mayhew, arriving soon after the first officers on the scene, asked me. “We didn’t have anything on him. No prints, no DNA . . . the Chicago River helped him clean up after himself,” he added dryly. “But you! You eluded a man who was stronger and had a knife and . . . well, had been a friend, I understand. He tricked you, but you knew.”
I opened my mouth to reply.
Then I shut it.
I just didn’t have my great-grandmother’s way with a story, or the lovely accent to go with it. And this was Chicago. Lots of people with Irish heritage.
But it just wasn’t Ireland.
I could just imagine their expressions if I told them the truth.
“Oh, I was by an angel—just like a statue in my dad’s family’s plot back in Ireland. I heard a banshee’s voice. I’m sure the banshee was my great-grandmother. I ran, of course. But I tripped. I was helped up by a leprechaun, and the reason Grant tripped and broke his ribs is that the leprechaun ran at his lower legs and tripped him. By then I was running to the road, and I saw the lights from the police cars and rushed to the officers heading into the cemetery.”
No.
Couldn’t say that.
So, I shook my head.
“I admit, he tricked me. I was worried about Janice. But I stopped by an angel . . . and then I saw Grant. And he was standing there with his knife. I guess . . . well, he couldn’t have known I’d be there tonight, but he has had a grudge against me; and I suppose he figured out I’d make a great victim. I think he’d have gone after anyone tonight, though. He wanted to be a serial killer. He didn’t think he could be a serial killer until he’d killed three people.”
“What happens to people?” Mayhew wondered, and I thought he was being reflective. “How does a young man like that become . . . a real monster?”
I shook my head.
“Well, young lady. Thank God you’re all right, and I’m darned grateful for you, too. If you hadn’t been doing all that wailing, the cops wouldn’t have been called.”
“The wailing?” I murmured.
“Sounded like a chorus of banshees!” he said.
I managed to smile.
I hadn’t been screaming! I couldn’t have been wailing—it was almost impossible to wail and run like that at the same time!
Through Detective Mayhew, I had learned what had brought the police. When I was talking to Nan and Janice—and Hank the bassist—later, Janice suggested I’d been screaming and didn’t know it—half of the club had heard the racket coming from the cemetery.
And it must have been a common saying because Janice told me, “Hank and I rushed out—it sounded like a thousand banshees were wailing!”
I smiled weakly.
“I guess I do have a set of lungs.”
“Thank God!” Nan said. “Maybe next Halloween we’ll watch spooky movies!”
The next Halloween, I was married, and I never left my husband’s side.
Years went by, and I never said anything to anyone. Not until my dad was sick, and I sat by his bedside holding his hand, knowing I was going to lose him.
He’d been sleeping. He woke and smiled and reached up and tenderly touched my cheek. He could feel the dampness of my tears.
“Don’t worry; I’ll be fine. Because, of course, I’m Irish.”
He grinned. He was joking, and he wasn’t. And I suddenly found myself telling him what I really believed had happened on that Halloween night when I’d escaped a serial killer—just like my great-grandmother before me.
I waited for him to assure me there had been no leprechaun, and my great-grandmother had not come back as a banshee.
“Some say the ‘luck of the Irish’ is no luck at all,” he told me. “But it’s there! Who can say? Belief is not a bad thing. Most importantly, you believed in your Granny, and she believed in you. Maybe the memory saved you. And maybe, who knows? The banshees were out in force, and a leprechaun decided you were worth saving. We tend to have all kinds of faith, and faith is a beautiful thing to have!” He stopped speaking and squeezed my hand. “Hear that?” he asked.
“I don’t hear anything.”
“Exactly. Don’t you worry. I’m getting well.”
He did get well. And though we didn’t speak of it, I understood.
There was no cry from a banshee.