Strange Perceptions (21 page)

The rest of the morning blurred by. Sheriff McGrath locked me in the cell, people gathered outside the barred window and shouted insults, even my best friend Brady asked why I killed Ollie. At noon Sheriff McGrath brought my mom to see me.

I couldn’t believe he coaxed her from bed.

She stood outside my cell, cheeks stained with tear tracks.

“Mom!” I rushed to the bars, thrust my arms through them to hug her. She came close and put her arms through the bars around me.

“Oh Sean, I’m so sorry.” She sobbed.

“It’s okay mom. I didn’t do it. Things will work out.”

“It’s all me fault.”

“How could it be?”

“First your father, then your uncle and now this. I caused it.”

“Mom—”

“—I broke me vow before you were born. You’re father never knew.”

She pushed away from me, fell to her knees, and lifted her arms up in the air. “Please Lord have pity. Forgive me.”

The sheriff went to her, helping her up. She went limp. “Sorry son,” he said. He picked her up and carried her out.

As if I didn’t have enough to deal with. Now my mom’s sanity, which she barely clung to, had been shattered.

I asked Sheriff McGrath about my mom. He told me ladies from the church were tending to her. Pastor Lyons had finally got her back to church.

The day dragged on, each minute in jail seemed an hour. I ignored the jeers from outside my window and eventually the crowd dispersed. Dinner came. Hot, steaming Chili which I forced myself to eat. I asked the sheriff what was going to happen. He said the elders were meeting tonight to decide my fate. I finally fell asleep on the hard cell bunk.

Jangling keys woke me. Campbell opened my cell door. “Quick Sean Collins come.”

I jumped from the bunk, fully awake and alert. Outside my cell window the sky was dusk.

“The council has decided you are to be hung at first light. I argued for your innocence but was overruled. Quick, come the sheriff will be back at any moment.”

I couldn’t believe it. They thought I killed Ollie. How could this happen?

Campbell slapped my face. “Snap out of it lad. You have one chance. Run away to the woods, kill the Banshee, redeem yourself.”

“I didn’t do it.”

“I believe you. Now go.”

What were the chances of killing the Banshee? Almost zero without my knife.

Campbell raised his arm to slap me again.

I cringed. “I’ll go, but how can I kill it?”

He produced the knife my dad had gave me. “An iron blade.”

I grabbed the knife and ran outside.

Men stood in front of the tavern, Sheriff McGrath among them. “Wait,” he yelled.

I ran to the woods, not looking back. Running through the woods in the twilight is dangerous, a sure way to twist an ankle. I slowed down but kept looking over my shoulder. Nobody seemed to be pursuing me.

I kept moving deeper into the woods, climbing over deadfall, going around obstacles too large to climb.

I had to kill the Banshee. Oh lord, the Banshee. So intent had I been on escaping I hadn’t thought about the danger I rushed into. I stopped and looked around, unsure of my location. The best thing to do would be to climb a tree and think things through.

I came to a clearing in the woods with a large stump in the center. The same place Shamus and Ryan had rested. I went to the nearest tree, stuck my knife between my teeth, pulled my belt off, looped it around the tree and climbed. The first branch was thirty feet up. I grabbed it while moving my belt above it and continued climbing, not stopping for another fifteen feet. I stuck my knife into the trunk and looked down. I had an unobstructed view of the clearing.

In the crook where a large branch met the trunk I sat and considered my options. As I saw it my only option was to kill the Banshee. Would I have courage to? Last time I froze. If that happened again I’d be dead.

The Banshee wailed and I almost fell from the tree. I wrapped my arms around the trunk and squeezed my eyes shut. The sound from last night was nothing compared to the current cry. It was as if I were inside the scream. The sound shook me. It shook the tree. After the cry finished I still kept my eyes shut, afraid of what I’d see if I opened them.

I opened one eye, expecting the Banshee’s monstrous face to be floating near me. I was alone. I looked around the clearing. No sign of the Banshee, but on the ground next to the tree lay my knife. The Banshee’s cry had dislodged it.

I needed the knife.

I started climbing down, but before I made it five feet I heard a noise. I stopped, looked around, and listened.

The noise came again, branches cracking in the woods across the clearing.

Campbell came into the clearing. He hobbled to the center stump and climbed onto it, using his walking stick to help push himself up.

Campbell would know what to do. Maybe he could help me kill the Banshee. He really wasn’t a bad man, just old and aloof and dished out discipline so kids feared him.

Below me the Banshee materialized in front of Campbell.

“You’ve already had your three,” Campbell said to the Banshee.

She shook her white head back and forth. “Three souls across three nights is our agreement.” Her voice sounded soft, like a young maiden. Not at all what I expected.

“There is a boy in these woods you can take.”

What? Campbell was offering me to the Banshee?

“I cannot take him,” she said.

“What?” Campbell said. “You’re picky now about who you take? Nay. He is yours.”

She grew ten feet larger in an instant, towering over Campbell. “It is not wise to have that tone with me.” Her voice grew deep and harsh, no longer maiden-like.

Campbell turned his back to her. “I brought you the boy. Me bargain’s complete. You can’t touch me.”

“Is agreed I will not take father and son during the same reaping. At midnight, with no new soul, your agreement ends.”

He whipped back around and pointed his walking stick at her. “You took his father ten years ago.”

“Nay. I took his father two nights ago.”

What? She thinks Uncle Nolan was my dad. That’s why she said ‘you are not for me.’ Was I safe from her?

The branch I stood on cracked, not completely breaking, but alerting them.

Campbell and the Banshee—back to her original size—looked up at me.

If I could climb down fast enough I could get me knife. I whipped my belt around the tree and climbed down. After navigating past the branches I started sliding, using my belt to slow the descent. On the ground I grabbed my knife and spun to face Campbell and the Banshee.

Campbell knocked my knife away with his walking stick. Then his stick swung around and came down on my head. I tried ducking but was too slow. I saw an explosion of light and then darkness.

When I came to I was sitting back against the tree, arms backward, and hands tied with my belt. There was no slack.

Campbell hovered over me. The Banshee gone.

“I’m sorry, Sean,” Campbell said. “I didn’t want it to end like this.”

I glared at him.

“I tried pleading with that stupid creature to take you. She won’t. Now I have to take care of you and find someone else to send into the woods before midnight or all is lost.”

As he spoke, I struggled to my feet, standing with my back against the tree trunk, my shoulders and arms wrenched awkwardly behind me.

“Before you kill me,” I said. “Just tell me why.”

“For our village,” he said. “You don’t know what it was like a hundred years ago. Lawlessness, thievery, rape, murder. People out of control.”

“You were alive a hundred years ago?” I asked. I saw my knife sticking out of the stump in the clearing. Too far away to be useful.

“Aye. She clouds the villager’s minds and keeps me alive. I keep the peace. The price to pay is quite small. Three men every ten years. Far more people used to die.”

I had to keep him talking and try to figure a way to escape. “When they find me body they’ll know I didn’t kill Ollie.”

Campbell laughed. “Oh lad. They were coming to release you. The elders unanimously agreed you weren’t guilty. Now, time’s wasting, let’s get this over with.”

I had an idea to escape, but didn’t know if it would work.

“Are you goan to use me own father’s knife to kill me?” I asked.

“Good idea,” he said. “Although, really it was your uncle’s knife.”

He turned and hobbled across the clearing. I waited until he was almost to the stump before moving. I wrenched my hands upward as far as I could reach, ignoring the pain in my shoulder, and gripped the tree trunk between my boots. I had never tried climbing a tree this way before, but it couldn’t be much harder than climbing upside-down. I moved my hands up again, only a few inches, and took all of my weight on my arms and moved my feet up, gripping them together a few inches higher. It felt as if my shoulder would be wrenched from its socket, but I kept at it and moved up a few more inches.

“Hey,” Campbell said.

I redoubled my efforts, moving up the tree like a crazy inchworm, climbing four to six inches with each movement. I was two feet in the air now. I kept at it, not looking at Campbell, knowing at any second he could be upon me.

I felt his hand on my foot and looked down. I had made it six feet into the air. I kicked his hand free and moved a few more inches up. He swung the knife at me, it stuck in the sole of my boot, not injuring me.

As I worked my way up, the tree’s trunk narrowed and my hands became looser. I was nine feet up now, out of reach. I was safe.

I stopped climbing and tried loosening the belt from my hand. My breath came in large gulps. My legs shook from the exertion. The problem was I couldn’t touch my hands together and I couldn’t loosen myself with just one hand. If I could get the knife from my boot to my hand I’d be able to get free.

Campbell’s walking stick crashed into my shin. I yelled out and slid down a foot before my boots caught the trunk. I moved up higher as quick as I could. He hit me again on the foot, knocking the knife loose. In moments I was fifteen feet up, out his walking stick’s reach.

I stopped again to catch my breath. I was safe, but how long could I hang on? My legs were already shaking. I watched Campbell. He picked up the knife and aimed it at me. He threw it and time seemed to slow down.

I watch the knife flip end over end, heading straight for my head. I tried moving out of the way but my body moved too slow. The knife came closer and closer. I shut my eyes and felt a sharp pain on my left ear. I opened my eyes again. The knife had stuck in the trunk next to me head, barely nicking me ear.

I moved up and sideways, inching higher, but moving myself around the trunk so I could get at the knife with my hands. I inched up again and again and felt the knife with the fingertips of my right hand. I pulled the knife free and sawed at the strap. Even though I kept the blade razor sharp, the belt strap was difficult to cut. Partly because of the angle I had on it, and partly because I couldn’t apply much pressure. I kept sawing.

Campbell threw rocks at me. He had moved around the tree so he could hit my face. A jagged rock me smashed my forehead, cutting it, and blood obscured my vision. I was almost blind with the blood when the belt strap came free. I fell from the tree and landed on Campbell.

Somehow I had kept my grip on the knife and when I landed on Campbell, I managed to thrust it into the side of his neck. He thrashed for all of two seconds and then was still.

I rolled off him and lay on my back.

The Banshee appeared. She stood above Campbell and me. I didn’t have the energy to lift a finger and my iron dagger still protruded from Campbell’s neck.

“You have killed him,” she said, her voice quiet and gentle.

“Aye.” I tried lifting my arm, pain shot through my shoulder. It was dislocated and probably broken.

“I must now offer my pact to you.”

To live forever, only having to send three men to slaughter every ten years? I didn’t even hesitate. “Nay. I don’t want it.”

“Thank you,” she said. She bend low and kissed my forehead. Then was gone.

I lay there for a long while before realizing I no longer felt each muscle screaming with pain. I stood and moved my arms around in wide circles. No injuries. She had somehow healed me.