Banshee

Tales of the Vampire Twilight

(Chapter Eight)

"Banshee"

It is Jason's custom to sleep with the radio on softly, as a kind of buffer against the noises of the city. And so, as his consciousness swam back to the surface from slumber, it seemed at first that the scream was part of a song that was playing. A moment later, though, he sat up bolt upright in his bed, knowing that something terrible has happened.

Jason pulled on his pants and stepped out onto the concrete balcony outside his apartment door, shaken. Although his waking ears had barely registered it, his mind reverberated with the anguished shriek which had roused him. He looked up and down the street from the vantage point of his balcony and it suddenly occurred to him that there was no sign of activity in either direction.

Could no one else have heard the scream? Perhaps he had dreamed it.

He stood several more minutes in the cool night air before his rational mind subdued his terror and disorientation and he stepped back inside to bed.

When Jason stepped out on the balcony in the morning, the scene was wholly different. He stopped dead in his tracks at the sight of a sea of police and paramedic vehicles flashing red and blue. A knot of neighbors stood clustered below.

Jason quickly descended to the street and approached a man he recognized from his building.

"What happened?" Jason asked him.

"Woman got killed, looks like," was the response. "Sometime last night. Front door was forced, that's how the mailman found her."

"Murdered," murmured Jason.

"Looks like."

"Shit...I think I heard it...a scream last night."

"I dunno. I didn't hear nothing." The neighbor turned to another of the crowd. "You hear a scream last night?"

"I didn't hear nothing," was the response.

Across the street and two houses away, the back doors closed on a paramedic ambulance and gradually the participants and the spectators began to go their seperate ways.

That evening the TV news was full of detail. It was a rape and murder, said the talking heads, and, though the police were withholding details, there was said to be mutilation. The victim was a school teacher, working at the High School for the Deaf she had, some years back, herself attended.

Something in the news report unsettled Jason, something he couldn't pin down, try as he might. The 11 o'clock news spelled it out for him.

"Poor Vickie couldn't even call for help," said the blonde reporter, as Jason brushed his teeth at the kitchen sink.

He spat and rushed closer to the TV. The girl was deaf and mute. Jason's head swum with the same confusion he had felt the night before. No scream.

Sleep came slowly for Jason. He left the radio off and brooded as he sank fitfully towards a sleep he never reached.

On the brink of nodding off, Jason was virtually jerked to his feet by the sound of a woman screaming for her life.

This time, Jason knew it was no dream. He didn't even stop to put on his trousers as he jerked open the door to the balcony. As even hurried along the concrete walk to the stairs, he hopped his way into his pants. Barefoot, he raced down to the ground floor and on out into the middle of the empty street. Again, he found nothing but silence.

On the point of calling for help, Jason saw, at the further end of the block, a movement in the shadows. He froze as a figure crossed the street to a car. As the car door swung open Jason realized that whoever it was had not seen him yet. The car was pointed his direction, though, and Jason broke from the middle of the street for cover.

Jason's guts froze with the certainty that this was the killer. His own car was steps away in the carport, concealed from the driver's view. Dare he follow?

As the headlights flared to life down the block, Jason moved to his car, fished the keys from his pocket, and slipped inside. He started the engine just as the other car cruised slowly past his building. Driving without headlights, Jason pulled out of the carport and began to follow.

He was drenched with sweat and his hands were cramped by the time the other car pulled to a stop some twenty blocks away. Jason eased his car to the curb just around the corner from other, but within line of sight. A man got out and walked across the street to an old, stuccoed house and went inside.

Once the man was inside, the tension wracking Jason's body eased. He began to consider the situation. He not only had no proof this man was the killer, he realized now that he didn't know if another crime had been committed tonight. Before he could do anything else, he had to return to his own street and find out.

Jason rounded the corner into his block and determined first to drive by the homes at the far end to look for anything amiss. He didn't have to look hard.

The last house on the side where the man had appeared stood dark with its front door ajar.

Jason swung round the corner onto a cross street and pulled up to the curb. He had to see for himself.

He got out of the car and stepped to the corner, then peered round a hedge into his street. There was no one about.

Resisting the urge to run, he moved toward the house with the open door. The door gaped just far enough for him to slip his head inside without touching it. Just far enough to see the blood.

She was on the floor in the living room, stripped, bound, gagged, butchered. Gagged. Had she had time to scream? Jason knew the answer in his heart; the empty street had told him.

Somehow, he was hearing these cries of death. Somehow.

He found a payphone and called in the anonymous tip which brought the police and the paramedics back to his street.

Jason spent all the next day in an agony of indecision. He had no proof of the involvement of the man he had seen the night before. He hadn't seen him at the house where the killing had taken place. For that matter, he hadn't seen the man's car when he stood on the balcony the night of the previous murder. He knew he had to see the man's house once more.

After midnight, Jason drove the twenty blocks to the house he had seen the man enter the previous night. He parked in the same spot he had the night before and then made his way, casually as he might, toward the house.

There were no lights on.

Jason walked quietly up to the front door, his ears straining for any sign of movement inside. There was none. He stood at the door, knowing he presented a suspicious sight to the neighbors then tried the doorknob.

He could not have said why he went inside. He simply did. He knew, rationally, that he should call the police and take his chances on their opinion of his story. But he knew, more surely, that he wouldn't do that. He needed to enter the house. An answer lay inside.

As he swung the unlocked front door shut behind him and moved into the living room of the darkened house, he knew he was not alone. His eyes strained in the gloom and he breathed not at all.

He saw her in the corner, by the television, motionless, grey. He sensed, more than, saw that she was, indeed, a woman. He could not see her eyes, but he knew that they met his and he knew their sadness.

And, as his windpipe was cut off by the man who slipped up behind him and he felt the knife blade slip into his neck, he sensed as much as saw the figure in the corner open her mouth. And then he heard the scream.

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