Banshee Box Set

by Sara Clancy

  “Do you think these are all of its victims?”

  “No,” Benton answered with certainty. “It had other nests that it needed to abandon.”

  Nicole made a soft sound of understanding but didn’t question how he knew that. He was grateful for that. Right now, he didn’t want to think about how much of this monster would live on, tucked away deep with his brain. He distracted himself by trying to think of something that he could say that would offer some measure of comfort to his friend. But nothing came to mind.

  “Benton?” she asked numbly.

  “Yes.”

  “There’s brains on my shoe.”

  ***

  Sweat plastered the back of her shirt to her skin as she stood up and brushed her hands off on her jeans. For all of their efforts, the pit wasn’t that deep. The small collapsible, camping shovel that she kept in her car for emergencies wasn’t ideal for digging graves in the solid earth. Her shoulders ached as she lifted her hands over her head. Benton, having scrambled out before her, reached down to help her up. They were both too exhausted and sore for the movement to have any dignity in it. Her boots loosened up clumps of earth as she scraped the walls in an attempt to be helpful. Eventually, they managed to get her out of the pit and they trudged the short distance to her jeep.

  She glanced at him. “You look like hell.”

  “I just got back.” The retort came quickly but his weak smirk took longer.

  Spring had to be the worst possible time to try and discreetly bury a body. It was past nine and the sun was only now inching down towards the horizon. The towering grass shone like gold in the dwindling light and offered them a slight amount of cover as they pulled the mangled remains of the monster out from the boot of her jeep. The sudden jerk of weight made her shoulders throb and her fingers clutched to keep her grip on its ankles. Benton had mercifully agreed to take the arms. She wasn’t sure if she could stomach being near its crushed skull. Shuffling back to the pit, Benton seemed desperate for some kind of distraction. “When did you decide you were going to come for me?”

  Nicole grunted as she adjusted her grip. “It was never a question.”

  Just when she was sure she couldn’t go another step, they reached the pit and let the body drop. A puff of dust drifted up on the impact and they both took a moment to catch their breaths. When they were able to straighten, they kicked the body into the hole.

  “Thank you.”

  “Any time you need a serial killing Leanan Sidhe shot up, I’m your girl.”

  “A what?”

  “I’ll explain it later,” she dismissed as they slumped down and began to push the pile of loose earth over the corpse. “You’re a banshee by the way. I figured that out, too.”

  He paused to look at her. “I’m going to have follow-up questions.”

  “I see a lot of research in our futures,” she said instead of admitting that she had pretty much revealed the complete extent of her knowledge.

  She remembered a heartbeat later that the gun and vest had to go in too. They dropped onto the body with a thick thud. It was a lot quicker to fill it back in than it was to dig it up, but still, the sky was ablaze with the final gasps of the sunset when they finished.

  “Are you sure it won’t be found here?” Benton said.

  They had picked one of the paths that delved deeper into the unmapped area, following it until the road ended.

  “Well, this place isn’t supposed to be here, so I think so.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Town history mentioned only eight properties in this area. That basement was of a ninth. There is no record that anything was ever built around here.”

  “Well, someone built there. Why would people remember all the others but forget that one?”

  They slumped against each other, shoulder to shoulder, both the only thing keeping the other upright.

  “I’m starting to think that there’s a lot more to Fort Wayward than I know,” Nicole admitted.

  Silence descended over them until, a peace neither was keen to break until Benton mumbled, “You’re a good friend.”

  Too tired to fully celebrate her victory, she let her head fall onto his shoulder and hummed in agreement. Nicole had forgotten about her mobile phone until it began to announce a Skype call. Fishing it out of her pocket, she checked the caller ID and began to battle her hair into some kind of order.

  “Just let it ring out,” Benton said.

  “It’s Professor Lester.”

  “I don’t know who that is.”

  As she pulled his hood up to hide his blood soaked scalp, she explained what he was calling about and how, if she didn’t answer, he would contact her mother. When they were somewhat presentable, she answered the call and forced a bright smile. Professor Lester’s eyes darted between them, suspicious of their frazzled appearance, but didn’t mention it.

  “You owe me,” Lester growled. “That symbol is from an obscure cult that faded into oblivion around 64 BC. Do you know how hard that is to find?”

  “I really appreciate it,” Nicole smiled.

  Lester rolled his eyes but continued. “I only bothered to get the basics.”

  She made her voice shine with happiness. “Basics are great.”

  He sugared his tea as he continued, “So this cult believed that there was a kind of supernatural lay that rested over the world. When something tied to that world died, it marked the spot, which, in theory, would send other supernatural creatures scattering.”

  “What’s this got to do with the painting on my barn?” Benton asked.

  Lester glared, his mouth scrunching up until Nicole assured him that they wouldn’t interrupt again.

  “As I was saying,” he accentuated. “The problem was, this death was like a controlled burn. It gets rid of creatures for the present. But as soon as it grew back, it lures more critters to the area. And then, of course, predators follow the critters.”

  “They thought that killing a supernatural creature would lure more dangerous supernatural creatures to the area?” Nicole said.

  “Essentially.” He leisurely sipped at his tea, ignoring the impatience of the teenagers. “In keeping with the analogy, the symbol was designed to salt the earth. To stop anything from growing back. No growth, no monsters.”

  “Does it work?” Benton blurted.

  Lester eyed him for a long moment, his brow furrowed. “Do a lot of squiggles help stop mythological creatures from migrating to an area where an imaginary fog was disturbed?” He rolled his eyes. “Sure. Why not? Look, Nicole, I have a class to teach. Good luck with your research.”

  “Can you send through the research you already did?” she hurriedly asked.

  Professor Lester made a noncommittal noise that she chose to assume was agreement. She had just enough time to thank him before the screen went dark. Beside her, Benton heaved a heavy breath and appeared to deflate upon its release.

  “We totally screwed up, didn’t we?” he mumbled.

  “No,” she rushed. “We’ll just put the symbol here. And one in the basement. It will be fine. It’ll all be fine.”

  She felt him watching her and slowly turned to meet his gaze.

  “Do you really believe that?” he asked.

  “Not exactly. But I do believe that we can handle whatever comes our way.”

  A fleeting smile crossed his face and she turned to watch the wind playing with the long grass.

  “The banshee and the neurotic teen,” Benton smiled.

  She gave him a rueful smile. “Best friends.”

  “I never agreed to best.”

  * * *

  Whispering Graves

  Banshee Series Book 2

  Chapter 1

  The small round dining table made it impossible for Benton to ignore the corpse that sat in the chair across from him. Death had claimed its eyes, hiding both the color and pupil under the milky film, but it didn’t weaken the weight of its gaze. Sitting on either side of him, his pa
rents continued their conversation between mouthfuls of the Chinese takeout that had already gone cold and soaked through the paper containers by the time it had arrived. Benton flinched each time their cutlery scraped against their plates. Familiar aromas clung to the warm air of the living room and filled his nose.

  And the corpse kept staring at him.

  “Benton,” his mother said softly.

  Benton didn’t respond. Instead, he kept his eyes locked on his dinner plate, one of the few places he could look where the corpse wasn’t visible. His mother’s perfectly manicured hand crept into his field of vision and tapped the edge of his plate.

  “It’s getting cold, sweetie.”

  He could feel the weight of his father’s gaze as it shifted onto him. And with that, Benton now had the full attention of all three people seated at the round table. Clutching his fork until his fingers lost feeling, Benton forced his eyes up. With his parents sitting on either side of him, there was nothing to disrupt his view from the dead man before him. Sixty years had passed since Oliver Ackerman had been buried in a shallow grave, and only a month since Benton had dug him up.

  It hadn’t been an intentional thing, at least not consciously. Benton and his parents had moved into the house hoping for a fresh start, and on their first night, while sleepwalking, Benton had found the mangled corpse in their barn. The whole event had seemed to fit right in with the long progression of twisted nightmarish happenings that constituted his life. People liked to tell him that it was just bad luck or a coincidence. He knew it wasn’t. He knew that there was something about him that wasn’t quite right.

  But no one ever really believes a teenager when he says that he feels he’s different. It didn’t stop him from feeling it; like an alien body under his skin. Something growing. Something that had strengthened the night he had found Oliver, and evolved the day a demonic spirit had tried to kill him.

  That attack had forever shifted something within Benton, and Oliver had marked the occasion by making his first appearance. He had begun almost timidly. Standing at the foot of Benton’s bed as he slept, or lurking in the shadows only to disappear when Benton turned a light on. He wasn’t so timid anymore. Now he liked to be seen, but only by Benton, and always appearing undeniably dead. Oliver was as bloated and festering as a fresh corpse, nothing like the brittle, discolored remains that had been pulled from the earth. Each time he saw him, Benton could smell the lingering stench of decay. As soon as Benton locked eyes with Oliver from across the table, the scent of rotting meat grew until he gagged.

  “Are you feeling okay?” his mother pressed.

  “Yeah,” Benton said after swallowing down his bile. “I’m fine.”

  His mother talked across him, her attention focused solely on his father. “He looks pale.”

  Benton jumped when his father pressed a hand against his forehead.

  “Relax, Chey, he’s not warm.”

  “Really, I’m fine,” Benton assured as he let his eyes drift back down to his plate. The broken eye contact didn’t distract him from the ghost’s attention. It only intensified it, until Benton could almost taste the putrid smell in the back of his throat. Oliver never took his eyes off of him. “I’m just not that hungry.”

  “Well, you need to eat something,” Cheyanne said. “You can’t keep expecting Constable Rider to pay for your meals.”

  His father scoffed. “Don’t be so dramatic. We let the Constable’s daughter eat our food when she’s over.”

  “It’s hardly the same, Theo,” his mother shot back. “He’s been having at least one meal a day over there. That adds up. We don’t want her thinking that we’re taking advantage of her hospitality.”

  What neither of them was taking into consideration was that Constable Rider’s daughter, Nicole, was a force of nature, like a hurricane of bubbly energy and glitter. When she decided that something was going to happen, she didn’t give up until she made it happen. Whether it was making Benton agree that they were friends, or hunting down and slaughtering a serial killing demon, she put the same amount of energy into both tasks. While Benton had decided that he needed to get out of the house, somewhere far away from his parents, and Oliver, it was Nicole who had declared that he would spend that free time over at her place. And, somewhere along the line, it just sort of happened.

  The stench grew stronger, ripping Benton from the safety of his thoughts and thrusting him back into his meal with the dead. As subtly as he could, he pressed the back of his hand against his nose and breathed through his mouth. He could feel the traces of airborne fat coating his throat and making his eyes water.

  With renewed determination to ignore Oliver, Benton stabbed at a hunk of pork. The crimson sweet and sour sauce swelled around the prongs of his fork. It appeared to thicken as he watched it, darkening until it looked like blood oozing out from the slice of meat. His stomach churned and he forced the morsel off his fork. Instead, he quickly shoved down a bite of honey chicken before Oliver could play any mind tricks with it.

  The mouthful was enough to satisfy his parents and they resumed their previous conversation, chatting happily, unaware of the corpse only inches from their sides. They didn’t see him, didn’t feel the weight of his dead eyes upon them, but they did feel the shift in the air. It was a small comfort to see them shiver and watch as his father went to check the thermostat. But it was still a comfort. It was a slither of proof for Benton that he wasn’t crazy.

  Forcing himself to swallow the mouthful, Benton glanced up at Oliver. He was closer. Sitting perfectly still, his hands on his lap and his spine straight. The specter had drifted forward, entering into the solid wood of the table. Benton’s heart hammered as a cold sweat bristled his skin. He blinked and Oliver was an inch closer. Staring. Silent. Benton lowered his gaze and felt the shift, the press of frigid air against his skin as Oliver drew closer. Benton looked up, and Oliver was halfway through the table. This time, Benton didn’t take his eyes off of the ghost, but he couldn’t quell his need to blink. Each time his eyelids flicked down, Oliver leaped forward until his decomposing face swallowed Benton’s vision. His sunken, cloudy eyes held Benton’s, while the stench of death gushed from him like a physical force. Benton felt drenched in it. His clothes grew heavy with festering vapor and he could almost feel a thick putrid mucus covering his arms and face. Oliver lurched forward again. Close enough now that the decaying flesh of his nose pressed, wet and weeping, against Benton’s own.

  “Benton,” Theodore said from somewhere now unseen. “Eat your dinner.”

  ***

  Nicole shuffled in the driver’s seat of her jeep, tucking in one leg and pressing her side against the back of the seat, making it very clear to Benton that he now had her full attention. The night surrounded the jeep with deep shadows that the weak overhead light could barely fight off. It wasn’t hard to get out of town in a place like Fort Wayward. All you had to do was drive for fifteen minutes, in any direction a dirt road would allow you, and it was as if civilization ceased to exist.

  Benton normally only called her at night when he needed to escape into that kind of oblivion for a bit. His parents were still dead set against him having a driver’s license, and since walking blindly into the dark plains surrounding his ranch house wasn’t the smartest idea, she was his only ticket out. And she was always happy to help. When Benton had hurled himself into her still moving car, she had expected a long tirade about something. He was a fan of suppressing his emotions until they exploded out of him like some kind of verbal volcanic eruption. But he had remained silent for most of their trip and responded to her attempts to start a conversation with the most minimal word usage possible. At his uneasy silence, Nicole had swung the jeep onto a new path, crossing through the lush Alberta plains before climbing up to the tip of a Buffalo Jump.

  There were a few sheer drop-offs scattered around Fort Wayward that had once been used by local First Nations tribes during buffalo hunts. The animals had been coaxed into a stampede and he
rded over the edge to plummet to their deaths, earning the location the title, ‘Buffalo Jumps.’

  Nowadays, they were more commonly used for tourist attractions and for their breathtaking views. It was possible to look for miles in each direction and see nothing but untouched beauty. And at night, with nothing to compete against, the stars seemed like a blanket that covered the world, spread so thickly that they even sparkled along the horizon. Nicole liked that. She adored how the view could make her feel both larger than life and absolutely tiny within the same instant. It always helped her to put things into perspective, and she brought Benton here the first time he had begged her to ‘just drive.’ He hadn’t gushed poetically about the sight, but he had smiled and relaxed into the passenger seat. It had taken her a few extra trips to learn that, for Benton, loose easy smiles were pretty much his version of extravagant praise.

  As they sat, with Benton constantly skimming across the radio stations, Nicole was partly hoping that he was in the mood to discuss the life altering fact that he was a banshee. It had been almost a month since Nicole had been forced to realize how little she actually knew about the world, or even just her own sleepy little corner of it.

  When she had first been told that Santa wasn’t real, Nicole had spent days learning everything she could about where the legend had come from and how it had grown to the point that she had believed in flying reindeers. She had the same impulse now. To throw herself into discovering everything there was to know until she could feel certain of the world again. But she was nowhere near ready to begin researching the monster that had murdered her friend. The wounds were still too raw. She needed time to reconcile what had happened before she faced it again. And she could take as much time as she wanted where that particular monster was concerned. After all, she had chosen the spot for its unmarked grave. It was a patch of earth in the middle of nowhere. No one would ever find it. Only she and Benton knew where it was. So it could wait for her, rotting in the earth as she mourned, and she would study what was left.