The Banshee

By Jackie Kerns
A boy sat slumped over an open book in his lap. His face was pressed against the glass, stinging his cheek with bursts of frost. If was raining. Drops of water slid down the outside of the window like turbulent rivers.

He stirred. His eyes opened slowly, then blinked rapidly. The book in his lap caught his attention. “Haunting Tales of Desperate Souls”. The boy flipped to his favorite story. The story took place in America around the late 1700’s. It was about a banshee who haunted an old Tudor house. A family had just moved into the old house. At night, the ghost would howl and scream, sometimes it would leave deep cuts on the new born baby girl. The story tells that only the youngest boy could see the apparition. Unlike some other horror stories, this one didn’t have a happy ending.

The window seat was the best spot to read the story; it was there that the banshee killed the young boy.

The boy’s eyes scanned each page eagerly, a retracting feeling in his chest at every turn. At last he was at the second to last page; the next would be the page where the boy dies. He stopped reading. The last page of the story was gone. It looked like there shouldn’t be another page, since there were no hints that the page might’ve ripped out.

The wind howled as it picked up speed, sending shivers up and down the boy’s spine. He looked outside at the damp, dark landscape. The twisted pine tree stood outside his window, reaching toward him with is pointed, woody fingers.

His eyes widened as a figure with red eyes appeared on a bough of the tree. It leaped. He screamed. It dug its nails into flesh. Blood spattered everywhere.