Shade of Pale (21 page)

“I could have helped Cathy, but I didn't,” he said.

“Listen, Jukes; you can't blame yourself for that. You're not responsible for anyone else in this world but you. That's just the way things are. People are individuals, each one different. You've done all you could over the years to help her and a thousand other people, but you can't solve all the world's problems. It's ludicrous to try.”

He didn't answer.

Fiona spoke more forcefully now. Jukes had yet to see this side of her, and it intrigued him. She was a much stronger, more dynamic person than he'd imagined.

She said, “There's more to the Banshee mythos that you should know. Please listen carefully, because this pertains directly to you: Down through the ages, I've noticed a curious pattern. Every few generations, certain men have seen her and not died. You see, someone had to write the accounts, the witnessings, someone who'd seen her and lived. I realized this after reading several references. I thought,
Who wrote this?
and,
What did they know?
They run through Banshee history like a thread, popping up regularly every hundred years or so. These men were sympathetic, I believe. I get the distinct feeling that they'd somehow helped her, or she helped them. It goes all the way back to Saint Patrick. In other words, once in a great while, a man comes along that she singles out as an empath.”

“An empath? Someone to whom she reaches out? You know, I dreamed something like that … that she asked me to help her, to set her soul free.”

“That makes sense, considering she is a ghost, a trapped soul.”

Jukes shook his head. “I've never heard of a ghost blowing people up or splitting people open. Ghosts can't affect physical reality, can they?”

“This one can. She's not your common garden-variety, haunted-house ghost. The Banshee is complex. Somehow she must be able to channel all the anger, misery, and injustice of her lineage through her and back out into the world in the form of this violent energy. Suffering, or the suffering of women, to be more precise, seems to make her stronger, more focused.”

Jukes heard her but didn't hear her. He put his hands over his eyes and sighed. He was numb. “This is all too fantastic, too hard to believe. It flies in the face of everything I know.” He paused and stared down at his soup bowl for a few seconds, then up into her eyes.

They left the restaurant together, holding hands. Their path took them past Jukes's apartment building. He hesitated.

“Would you like to come up for a minute? We could have a drink or some coffee or something.…”

Fiona smiled. “You don't want to be alone tonight, do you?”

Jukes blushed. “No … I don't.”

It was completely dark when they entered his apartment, and the lights of Manhattan were at full illumination through the window.

The things Fiona had told him were bizarre, far too improbably for his mind to embrace. Yet she'd believed him when he told her he'd seen the Banshee. If she trusted and accepted what he said, why couldn't he believe what she said? The mythos existed; she hadn't made that part up. People had recorded it, believed it, and feared it for centuries. All Fiona had done was make sense of it, and her insight was extraordinary. Why was it so hard for him to believe her and accept it?

He switched on the lights and they stood in the middle of the floor, awkward as two newborn foals.

“Wow, look at this view,” she said, going to the window.

The streets below teemed. The city just kept going, he thought, its gears meshing and grinding like a big, impersonal machine. Lives began and ended, personal empires were destroyed and created, but the city kept on boiling.

“Sometimes I think it looks like an ant colony down there,” Jukes said.

Fiona stood close; her electric proximity tingled his skin. Jukes, too shy to put his arm around her, stammered for something to say.

“Would you like something to drink?” he asked.

She opened her mouth to answer, but in that split second before her moistened tongue could form the words she changed her mind and leaned forward and embraced him.

Jukes stood with his hands at his sides, unable to react. Every one of his senses vibrated. He felt the soft orbs of her breasts against him, smelled the flowery scent of her perfume, and melted. Slowly his arms came up and surrounded her.

He looked into her face and kissed her without thinking.

She returned his kiss the way he'd always fantasized a woman would, with delicate, intelligent passion that made him swell.

“Oh, Fiona … I didn't know if that was the right thing to do.”

She closed her eyes and brought her face to his. “Do it again.”

Their second kiss lingered. Jukes forgot about everything but the reality of her mouth. He wrapped his arms around her tighter and squeezed gently, eagerly. She responded by snuggling deeper into his grasp.

There were no more words. Jukes realized anything said now would only break the magic, so he willed his heart to stop pounding and his hands to not sweat and enjoyed the moment.

They spent the next hour on the couch, quietly and deliberately wrapping their bodies together.

When the time for Fiona's leaving passed and it was obvious that she would stay the night, Jukes led her to his bed.

They undressed awkwardly and slipped between the covers like two young adventurers. Their bodies met and shared warmth, then affection, then passion.

Jukes didn't dare say it, but it was the one great lovemaking of his adult life. He entered her gently, but with all the resolve and commitment of an experienced lover.

With her, he felt no constricting inhibitions, and he grew to know her in ways that were impossible mere minutes before. They made love eagerly, and when he was about to climax, he whispered for her to tell him what to do.

“Come in me,” she said. “It's OK. I want all of you.”

Waves of liquid excitement coursed through him like fire, and he pumped into her the years of frustration and emptiness he'd been holding back. His sweet release spoke volumes.

She accepted it without hesitation and with equal ardor.

When it was over and they lay in each other's arms, Jukes felt like crying. He'd been transfigured. In the warm afterglow of their passion, Jukes lived years.

The sounds of traffic drifted in from below, a Manhattan lullaby, weighing on his eyes.

They slept the sleep of lovers.

They both dreamed of green fields. And a white horse with a beautiful woman rider. Her red hair flowed behind her as she neared.

Jukes recognized her. He could hear her sobbing.

Jukes looked at his hand and saw that it was glowing. His whole body glowed. He was translucent and lighter than air. He thought,
Maybe on this side of the dream, she's real and I'm the ghost
.

This time, instead of fear, Jukes felt compassion for the Banshee. He surprised himself by approaching her boldly.

She dismounted and stood by her horse, the green of her dress morphing with the rich vegetation beneath.

Being in her presence was overwhelming, and Jukes felt the field of energy she radiated. It warmed his skin and bathed his soul.

But something had happened since their last meeting. Jukes had changed. By making love to Fiona he'd opened a door and crossed the threshold into a new experience. He felt strong and confident, infused with life.

Jukes Wahler faced the Banshee now a different man, pure of heart and unafraid.

He studied the breathtaking beauty of her face—it haunted rather than seduced. The exquisite sadness of her expression against the flawless milky angles of her skin mesmerized him. She stood before him more like a goddess than a ghost.

With great effort Jukes forced himself to speak.

“Why are you crying?” he asked.

“Because I can never be free,” the dream voice replied.

“I wish I could help you,” Jukes said. “You seem so infinitely sad.”

The Banshee's face blurred.

“Come; let's walk together,” she said. Her words echoed eerily through the dreamscape. Her soft voice, with its tuneful lilt of Irish brogue, made hymns of the words. Every note resonated in his heart like a melody that made him want to weep.

“Help me, man of the modern world. Free my soul.”

“But how? How can I help you?” he asked.

The pity he felt for her was like a great ocean around his feet, swirling with eddies and currents. His feet began to sink in the sand like when he stood on the beach as a child. The waves licked at his ankles. The wind blew mournfully across a robin's egg blue sky. He heard people sobbing in the distance.

Behind her accent, the Banshee's voice sounded familiar, and he thought for a moment that it was Cathy's voice, then Fiona's, then his mother's. It affected him in conflicting ways, bringing tears one second, joy the next.

It was this constant shifting of emotions, he realized, that seemed to accompany the Banshee and made it so hard to be in her presence.

“Are you suffering?” he asked.

“I suffer for womankind,” she said. “As womankind suffers.”

“Why did you come to me?”

“I come to warn you. Your sister, Cathy, is in great danger. You must save her from the evil man.”

Jukes was galvanized. “Where is she?”

The Banshee shook her head. “I do not see the present; I only see the future and the past. I live outside of the moment. Ask me where she will be.”

“Where will she be?”

“At the turning point, the place of your first failure.”

“Where is that?”

“It's in your past. You will come full circle.”

Jukes wanted to shower her with questions but stopped himself. Her answers were enigmatic.

He saw the Banshee as he had not seen her before, as a force of good.

Then, before his eyes, she began to grow old. Older and older still, until she became a withered old hag. Her beauty was corrupted into ugliness as foul as the grave. Jukes stepped back in horror.

He wanted to run, he wanted to scream, but his body would not obey. The mutant Banshee disappeared.

Jukes began to cry in his sleep.

Fiona awakened with a start, jolted from the same dream into the same reality. She found Jukes awake next to her and moved into his arms. Tenderly he pulled her close.

They were both sobbing.

“Oh my God!” Fiona said. “I dreamt I talked to the Banshee!”

“So did I,” Jukes said, astonished they'd both had the same dream, at the same time.

“It seemed too real, not like a dream at all.”

Jukes felt his face and remembered the time before when he'd dreamed of the Banshee and how it had blurred reality. He wasn't sure then and he wasn't sure now.

“I think it was a dream, but I don't think it was the same kind of dreams we know. This was like being thrust into another dimension.”

Fiona used the sheet to wipe her tears. “Where is this place she said Cathy would be?”

“The place of my first failure … I don't know. Someplace in my past.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The old house smelled of mothballs and disinfectant and something else. Mrs. Willis had failed to answer the door. Padraic O'Connor forced it open and entered, his anxiety growing as he walked further back into the stifling atmosphere of the old lady's house.

An ungodly smell came from the kitchen. O'Connor recognized the unmistakable odor of death.

He found Mrs. Willis facedown on the linoleum floor, stretched out stiff and cold. She'd been dead for several days. He looked around and saw that the ancient texts were still spread out on her kitchen table, the pen still clutched in her skeletal hand.

She'd been working on the final translation when she died. Her handwriting was nearly illegible, but O'Connor could see the columns of Gaelic phrases and their English translations.

He studied the words, trying not to breathe through his nose. He gathered all the papers on the table and stuffed them in a folder.

He couldn't escape the oppressive biosphere of the old lady's house fast enough. As he hurried through the living room to the door, he happened to glance at the old lady's menagerie and noticed something strange—all the glass figurines of animals were shattered. They hadn't fallen off their shelves or been smashed; they stood exactly where they had always been, each one shattered individually in place.

He looked closer and saw that many of the tiny glass legs still seemed to be standing at attention, but the rest of the animals were disintegrated.

O'Connor shivered when he saw those shards of glass.

Only sound waves could have destroyed them so cleanly
, he thought.
Another aspect of the Banshee? Has she been here?

O'Connor hurried back to his hotel room and placed all the materials he'd gathered on the bed. The time had come to pull together all the phases of his plan.

The time is now
.

He carefully unwrapped the metal cylinder and two human skins.

On the streets, later that day, Padraic O'Connor was relentless. He heated up his karmic poker and burned a hole in the side of New York big enough to crawl through. Driven by a new level of apprehension since discovering the old lady dead, he had became obsessed with finding Bobby.

O'Connor had visited three band rehearsal facilities before he found this one, the one with the ska music coming out of the filthy glass warehouse windows. The speeded-up reggae tempo caught his ear like a razor.

He smiled.
This one could be it
.

It was a huge building, almost half the block, made of old brick, divided into a warren of studios. The entrance stood crowded with scruffy musicians, smoking and drinking beer. O'Connor decided to check the rear. He found a locked metal door and a loading dock facing a garbage-strewn alley. He was about to leave when the loading dock opened.

The corrugated garage door raised with a metallic clatter and a man as big as O'Connor stepped out. He stopped when he saw O'Connor.