Banshee Read online

  “Murdered?” Janice asked, horrified.

  “Oh, yeah. Her throat was slashed,” Grant said.

  “And another,” Nan murmured. “How horrible.”

  “My God! There was a note written on a wall downtown in blood!” Grant said, looking up at us with his face twisted into a mask of horror.

  “And they just found it?” I asked.

  “I don’t know when they found it,” he murmured, frowning as he kept reading the newest information on his phone. “I believe the lab just verified what the police believed.” He looked up at us again, shaking his head. “Number three awaits—and then I’m serial!”

  “What does that mean?” Janice asked.

  “I think the police and the FBI consider a man—or woman—a serial killer after they’ve killed three people,” I told her. I wasn’t sure. I knew what I thought I knew from watching cop and FBI shows on television.

  I pulled out my phone then and read as quickly as I could. “Apparently, he stalked both his victims, picking up the first after she was working late and there was no one around, and seizing his second when she went out to buy ice cream alone late at night.”

  “So, Halloween isn’t going to be his thing,” Janice murmured. “Thankfully! Way too many people around.”

  “Right,” Grant agreed. “So!” He put his phone down and faked a shiver. “Let’s focus on Halloween creepy instead. There’s a fine-looking zombie over there I should talk to. And hey, ladies! Catch the tall mummy with the bright blue eyes. Hm.”

  Nan laughed softly. “Maybe I’ll go for the mummy. Kelsey just got engaged, and Janice is after Hank, the bass player. Excuse me, all!”

  She went off. Nan was good. Even as a fairy godmother, she was an exceptionally pretty girl. She had enormous dark eyes, generous lips, and perfect cheekbones.

  We watched and laughed as she pretended to trip into the mummy.

  The mummy appeared happy to help her gain her balance. They were soon dancing.

  We switched around tables again, having a nice time catching up with old friends. We seemed to have many old friends there. The old local crowd from Northwestern seemed to be in full swing.

  It was about thirty minutes later when Nan stopped by the table where I was sitting and touched me on the shoulder.

  “Have you seen Janice?” she asked me.

  “Um—no. Not in a bit.”

  “I’m getting worried.”

  “Ask the bass player—Hank.”

  “They’re on break and I can’t find him, either!”

  “Well, then . . .”

  It seemed evident. Janice was with the bass player.

  Nan moved on; I answered something about being a teacher when a friend asked, but I was distracted. I saw Hank moving across the room.

  He wasn’t with Janice.

  I made a sweep around the room and found Grant.

  “Have you seen Janice?” I asked him.

  “The door . . . I saw her go out. And that musician is gone again now, too! I don’t think it’s romantic. And maybe . . . well, she was also talking to someone by the old hearse thing with the skeleton in it,” he said.

  He was distracted, too. He headed for the door.

  I hurried after him, but he was outside, crossing the street, suddenly running, and calling Janice’s name.

  What I did wasn’t smart. Retrospect is great, but at that moment, I wasn’t thinking serial killer—I was just thinking my friend had gone off with someone and might be in trouble.

  Then I couldn’t help but wonder.

  Could the cool musician want to be a serial killer?

  I will never mock heroines who behave stupidly in horror movies again.

  I leapt the small stone wall and raced into the cemetery, calling Janice’s name, running by broken stones, little dog statues, a Masonic obelisk, and two vaults. Then I stopped.

  I was face to face with a large, weeping angel. Her wings were down, her head was low, and her arms were outstretched, as if she welcomed the departed.

  I was listening for Grant or for Janice.

  But I heard the voice. It was melodic and a bit like a sob.

  It was the angel giving me the creeps, I thought. So much like the one at the family plot in Ireland!

  “Please, luv, get out—get out, now. Run!”

  I know I heard the voice. A banshee’s voice?

  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.

  When his time was coming, we would hear it.

  When Halloween came around again, my son and daughter and husband dressed up as superheroes.

  I was in a sweeping gray outfit I hoped was ethereal and aesthetic.

  “A banshee!” Mark said.

  I laughed and kissed him. We’d all decided not to be monsters that year, but rather those we admired the most.

  And for me . . .

  That was the banshee.

  “Happy Halloween!”

  About The Author

  Heather Graham

  New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, Heather Graham, majored in theater arts at the University of South Florida. After a stint of several years in dinner theater, back-up vocals, and bartending, she stayed home after the birth of her third child and began to write. Her first book was with Dell, and since then, she has written over two hundred novels and novellas including category, suspense, historical romance, vampire fiction, time travel, occult, sci-fi, young adult, and Christmas family fare.

  She is pleased to have been published in approximately twenty-five languages. She has written over 200 novels and has 60 million books in print. Heather has been honored with awards from booksellers and writers’ organizations for excellence in her work, and she was proud to be a recipient of the Silver Bullet from Thriller Writers and was awarded the prestigious Thriller Master Award in 2016. She is also a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from RWA. Heather has had books selected for the Doubleday Book Club and the Literary Guild, and has been quoted, interviewed, or featured in such publications as The Nation, Redbook, Mystery Book Club, People and USA Today and appeared on many newscasts including Today, Entertainment Tonight and local television.

  Heather loves travel and anything that has to do with the water, and is a certified scuba diver. She also loves ballroom dancing. Each year she hosts a Vampire Ball and Dinner theater raising money for the Pediatric Aids Society and in 2006 she hosted the first Writers for New Orleans Workshop to benefit the stricken Gulf Region. She is also the founder of “The Slush Pile Players,” presenting something that’s “almost like entertainment” for various conferences and benefits. Married since high school graduation and the mother of five, her greatest love in life remains her family, but she also believes her career has been an incredible gift, and she is grateful every day to be doing something that she loves so very much for a living.

  Books By This Author

  Dreaming Death

  Ever since she was a child, Stacey Hanson has had strange dreams—and sometimes they come true. Her skills and experience led her straight to the FBI’s Krewe of Hunters. Now a serial killer is stalking Washington, DC, and people are scared. And it will be Stacey’s first case.

  Special Agent Keenan Wallace isn’t exactly thrilled to be teamed up with a rookie, but they’re going to have to get past their mutual friction if they want to stop a brutal killer. The victims are all vulnerable women, though the clues lead to suspects from DC’s powerful elite. Stacey can’t escape her nightly visions, but in trying to prevent them from occurring in real life, she might come face-to-face with a nightmare.

  Deadly Touch

  SHE KNOWS WHERE TO FIND THE BODY

  When Raina Hamish tries on a dress in a Miami boutique, she has a terrifyingly accurate vision of a murdered corpse in the murky shadows of the Everglades. She wants to help, but who would believe her when she can hardly believe herself?

  Special Agent Axel Tiger has returned to Florida to help hunt a serial killer, but the investigation doesn’t have much to go on. Raina’s vision is their best chance to uncover more. Axel’s experience with the FBI’s elite paranormal team will nurture Raina’s abilities, and she may be able to help save a life—but it puts her directly in the crosshairs of a killer who is closer than they would ever suspect.

  Seeing Darkness

  She’s being murdered.

  It was supposed to be a fun girls’ weekend in Salem, but when a past-life regression session instead sends a terrifying vision of murder to Kylie Connelly, she’s shaken and doesn’t know what to think. Worse, later she identifies the attacker from her vision: he’s a prominent local politician.

  Special Agent Jon Dickson of the FBI’s Krewe of Hunters is on the trail of a suspected serial killer based on the
scantest of clues and unreliable witness testimony. When he realizes Kylie’s vision might be his best lead, he must gain her trust and get close enough to guide her new talent. Though she doubts herself, the danger Kylie sees is all too real—and the pair will have to navigate a murderer’s twisted passions and deceptions to stop the killer from claiming another victim.