Banshee Box Set

by Sara Clancy

  The drugs that still pulsed within him weren’t enough to compete with the muscles from the many years of baseball practice. He dropped, hurling himself into a slide, ignoring the pits of his skin that the uneven concrete roughly scraped at, as he slipped through the nearest open window. But his aim was off, his motions sloppy, and he smacked against the sides of the window as he fell through. He was still reeling from the blows as he dropped a short distance and crashed onto a metal surface. The impact sent a snap of pain through him, followed quickly by another as he toppled off and smacked against the unforgiving concrete slab of the floor.

  Every molecule of air rushed out of his lungs in a single pained grunt. His limbs flopped uselessly over the floor, as if his primal instinct was physically searching for the air that had left him. Lights danced and swirled before his eyes, burning and blurring his vision. His back arched as his lungs forced themselves to work once again, and he used the momentum to roll onto his side. He clawed at the floor, focusing all of his efforts into getting back on his feet. It was only after that task was accomplished that he bothered to start looking for an exit.

  An icy feeling filled him as he took in the stainless steel that made up the room. The walls on either side of him were lined with small, square, freezer-like doors, their polished surface reflecting the light that crept in through the windows behind him, and a silver colored table sat in the middle of the room that made his stomach plummet. He was in the town morgue.

  With a soft, raspy gasp, the rows of freezer doors began to open. Layers of thick fog trailed out of them, falling like waterfalls to pool across the floor. The more that was released, the more he could get a glimpse of the bodies that lay in the freezers. Benton stepped forward on wobbly legs but was too late. He could hear the horse closing in. Each sharp clack echoed through the only door, the only exit out of the room. He was trapped.

  Benton turned and tried to scramble back up onto the table he had banged against. The sharp crack of the whip made him stop. His knees jerked and his feet toppled back to the floor. Gripping the table edge tightly, he glanced back over his shoulder. The once empty threshold was now filled with the horseman. And it no longer gave him the mercy of not being forced to see it.

  With black, rotted blood bubbling out of its severed neck, the stench of rancid meat polluted the air and made bile burn at the back of his throat. The slabs squished as it stalked closer. Each footfall shook the building and jolted the table he was holding on to. Benton couldn’t take his eyes off the whip as it curled and twisted. He flinched and its hand snapped out, sending the spinal cord crashing into the freezer doors, leaving deep grooves within the surface. Benton threw himself back but had nowhere to go.

  Like a snake striking, the whip snapped towards his head. Benton tossed himself to the side, feeling the breeze the chain of bones created as they streaked past an inch away from his back. The edge of the whip bore down on the table Benton had abandoned, slicing through the space he had just stood in, crumbling the metal. Benton flung himself to the ground and slid across the floor until he slammed into the table in the middle of the room. The horseman whirled, pulling the whip out of the dent it had created, the bones clanking together as it rose, preparing for the next strike.

  A scream ripped from Benton’s core. The sound split him in two, carving a wide path from the very depths of his soul and out of his physical form; tangible and incorporeal at the same time. Within the same moment, the scream filled him to his breaking point while emptying him completely. The horseman shuddered under the sound as fractures began to split its body. Light poured through the hairline cracks and the horseman retreated slightly, thrashing as if it had lost all sense of equilibrium.

  But the disorientation didn’t last long. It lunged forward, the skeletal whip cracking as it raced towards him again. Benton rolled. The air stirred as the bones crashed down into the concrete where he once lay. Hunks of stone exploded, the broken shards cutting into the tender skin of his face and neck. Benton struggled onto all fours and desperately evaded the next strike as he tried to force his banshee wail into existence. He had never been able to force it before, never tried to, and his screams remained simply shrieks of fear; human and pitiful.

  He sprinted for the door but the whip was swift to cut him off. Shrinking back, his arms raised to protect himself from the hurdling shrapnel, Benton noticed the first traces of the whispering voices. They came from all around, carried through the air itself, accumulating together to gather strength. The sound boiled against his brain like acid. He clamped his hands over his ears, but he couldn’t keep the sound out. It filled him up until it felt like the plates of his skull were beginning to break apart. Benton tried for the door again, but the horseman kept him trapped, its otherworldly voice forming into recognizable sounds, developing into words, slowly merging into the beginnings of his name.

  Bending under the sound, he clawed at his ears, his nails raking across the damaged skin around his temples. His fear rushed up to meet the clarifying voice and broke out of his throat in a high-pitched wail. The metal doors violently shook, as fluorescent lights flared and began to strobe. The horsemen took one step back and swung the whip out. Benton snapped his hand up, managing to protect his face. His forearm absorbed the strength of the blow but couldn’t break the momentum. The long string of vertebrae went over his arm and wrapped around his neck. With a sharp yank, Benton was pulled off of his feet. His hip collided with the table, but the force didn’t relent.

  Dragged up onto the surface, the cool steel pressing against his back, Benton clawed at the whip as it tightened around his neck. The pieces twisted tighter at his every touch, squeezing his windpipe until it choked off his scream and his breath. He slipped his fingers under the band and pushed up with all of the strength he had. It stopped the advancement, but that didn’t let him regain what he had lost. His feet slipped and smacked against the tabletop, now as useless as his hands, to help him find any escape.

  His chest swelled with the scream he couldn’t bring to life. It ignited within his ribcage like wildfire, scorching him from the inside out, boiling and blistering the tender flesh of his lungs while it charred his bones. The horseman loomed over him, its dark hand appearing within the corner of Benton’s blurring vision. The first touch burned like dry ice, freezing his skin, making it as frail as frost. The whispers came back, battling the fire within him for dominance over his mind.

  A beam of blinding light streaked across the body of the horseman. Its hand pulled back and it whirled around, revealing Nicole to Benton’s wavering gaze. Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped as she tilted her face up. The terror that surged into her gaze made it clear that the horseman had decided to reveal itself to her. She was, for the first time, seeing it in all of its grotesque glory. But instead of running, Nicole clenched her jaw and struck out towards it with the long gold chain she held tightly in her hands.

  The connected gold chains were thin and sliced across the horseman’s chest like a blade, releasing a blazing light as the gold itself began to glow. Benton heard Dorothy before he saw her. The constable stormed across the room, gun trained on the horseman, her conviction narrowing, her eyes steady while fear tightened the lines of her face. But she didn’t have a clear shot when Nicole struck out again. The whip loosened with the blow, just enough to allow a thin trail of air to slip down his throat.

  Benton snapped himself up, yanking the whip loose, coaxing the small hunks of bone out of the ridges they had imprinted into his skin. The horseman turned back instantly. It rushed towards him, needing only one hand to pin Benton down against the cold slab. Unable to fight against the bulk, twice the size of his own, he continued to rip at the whip, keeping the end from the horseman’s seeking grasp. Finally, the whip went lax enough that he was able to breathe in heaving gasps of air through his battered, aching throat. The horseman gave up on trying to grab the whip back, and instead clamped his hand around Benton’s neck in a crushing grip, making the bones dig into h
is throat.

  Nicole was just as unrelenting in her own attacks, lashing at its back with the golden chain, each strike making the horseman shatter and break apart. Thin trails of damage wrapped around its torso and light poured from the wounds like solar flares. Squinting against the blinding blaze that cut across the horseman’s stomach, Benton reached out with trembling fingers, clawing over the raw slabs of meat of the horseman’s clothes. His fingertips found the thin chain of gold and he seized it. Nicole pulled at the other end and the chain cut into both his fingers and the horseman.

  Dorothy shot twice. The sudden shooting sound rolled and echoed over itself, spurred on by the hollow metal that lined the walls. The horseman flinched back with both of the shots, but it wasn’t enough to make it retreat. It used its grip to slam Benton down against the metal slab. Benton's vision blurred. His face grew hot and swollen. The unheard scream ripped apart his insides as the horseman clenched his throat. Benton yanked the chain, forcing it deeper into the horseman’s body. Hunks of cold, damp flesh ripped free from the horseman and dropped down onto his skin, slicking a path across over his body as they dripped to the floor.

  The small links of the chain wrapped around his hand began to glow with a gilded radiance. It outshone the breaks forming within the horseman and warmed his skin where it touched. With the triple assault, the horseman couldn’t keep its stone-like hold on Benton, and he was able to choke down a breath again. He latched his hands on both the whip and the chain, drawing the horseman closer as he opened his mouth. The volcano that had filled his body erupted out in an air cracking shriek.

  The metal doors of the morgue's freezers were torn from their hinges, the windows shattered, the overhead lights exploded like a hailstorm of fractured glass and fiery sparks. The horseman rattled. The gold chain cut into him like a pristine blade, slicing him apart, splitting him like wood. Broken hunks of flesh fell apart like wet rubble. With a last shudder, the horseman burst, raining rancid blood and oozing organs over every inch of the room.

  Benton gagged and wrenched as the sludge filled his mouth. Rolling onto his side, he spat the substance out onto the already slick table top. The blood soaked into every inch of his thin clothes, creating a chilled, chunky blanket over him as he hurled the contents of his stomach onto the hunks of flesh by his face.

  “Benton!” Nicole shrieked, as she rushed to his side.

  He could feel her gently untangling the gold chain from his hand. The soft touch combined with her constant calling of his name worked to ease his nerves. As his adrenaline seeped away, the pain of his hand rushed forward to fill the gap. He whimpered and pulled at the spinal whip from around his neck with desperate yanks. She didn’t help him, but instead settled for a comforting rub on his arm.

  “It’s okay. You’re okay. I think the Dullahan is dead.”

  Benton coughed out another mouthful of blood as he finally managed to pull the whip free and toss it weakly across the room.

  “What the hell is a Dullahan?” he rasped.

  She rubbed his back as he tumbled into a coughing fit, trying to clear his abused windpipe.

  “I looked it up on mom’s phone on the way over,” Nicole said with far more pride than Benton could handle right now. But his laugh only resulted in another series of ragged coughs. “Its intolerance to gold was the last bit I needed to find it, well, as near as I could figure. It’s from an Irish legend. They have some screwed up legends when you think about it.”

  He tried to catch his breath, but all he could smell was the blood that was smoldering the room. A sharp cry came out of him as he pressed his hand against the slab and forced himself up. It would have been near impossible to actually get up if Nicole and Dorothy hadn’t come to his aid. With his vision blurred, he winced when he finally caught sight of them both, covered in the slop of entrails and blood.

  “Are you okay?” Nicole asked. “I mean, as much as you can be right now. How’s your hand? Are you still high?”

  “Nicole,” his desperate whine came out with a graveled edged, broken and rough and painful to force out. It was quickly met with another fit of coughs.

  “Right, we’ll talk later. Just focus on breathing,” Nicole said, once again rubbing his back in soothing but ineffectual circles.

  Not able to meet Dorothy’s shell-shocked expression, he glanced around the blood-soaked room. “People would have heard the shots,” he whispered carefully. “How are we going to clean this up?”

  The women looked at each other before surveying the room themselves.

  “What is he talking about?” Dorothy asked.

  “He’s a creature of Irish mythology, not deaf,” Nicole whispered back before she turned to Benton, “but she does have a point, buddy.”

  Benton sputtered before he could answer, “The blood.”

  Again, the Riders exchanged a confused glance, hunks of flesh dripping from their hair.

  “What blood?” they asked in unison.

  ***

  Benton was still marveling at Dorothy’s powers of persuasion when the morning began to turn the sky pink. Caught in the moment, the best lie he could think of was that he became disorientated after a nightmare. After all, he had just stumbled across a pit full of dead people and was too traumatized to even remember how he had burnt his hand. It was flimsy at best, but as soon as Constable Dorothy Rider took hold of it, she managed to work it into something that sounded completely reasonable. He didn’t know how she managed to explain away the gunshots. That was a conversation held far away from any prying ears and teenagers. For his part, the hardest thing had been trying to keep from vomiting. The entrails had clung to him, dripped from him, and he had stopped himself from begging for a shower.

  His parents had just been happy that he wasn’t a suspect. Their reaction had been swift and along the lines that Benton had expected. The stream of questions had easily shifted to warnings and then to complete denial. He had nodded along and said what they needed to hear. At first he had resented when they had decided that the waiting room, or their more comfortable home, was now out of the question and had set up camp in his hospital room. But, as midnight had crept closer and he still wasn’t able to sleep, the situation was growing on him. They had both fallen asleep, and the steady undertone of their breathing was relaxing. It wasn’t uncommon for them to circle the wagon and try to separate him from the outside world. But tonight, for some reason that he couldn’t place, their presence didn’t feel suffocating. He actually felt protected. Snuggled down under the sheets, with a pillow cradled against his chest and his arms propped up above him, Benton had drifted on a haze of painkillers and contentment. Right up until the moment Nicole popped up in his window.

  At first, he had been sure that she was just a figment of his imagination. After all, she had spent a great deal of time waving her arms about, with a really weird amount of energy. He wasn’t sure how long he had just stared at her in confusion before he had realized that she was beckoning him over. Sluggish and slow, he tiptoed out of the bed as quietly as possible. The distance between the bed and the window didn’t look that far, but it felt like a mile as he slowly edged his way across it. With every step, he was sure that his parents would wake up and start on a new series of questions that he didn’t know the answers to now. But they hadn’t, much to his bafflement, and he had finally completed his journey without incident. He didn’t have time to feel proud of himself as Nicole had practically pulled him outside. From there it had been a short shuffle to Dorothy’s waiting car. He had been vaguely aware that it should have felt like a very long trip, but time wasn’t exactly moving at a steady, predictable pace anymore.

  Sitting in the backseat, he blinked owlishly until he was able to focus. Still, Dorothy’s voice sounded weird and distorted, and he was confused as to why he could taste the stench that wafted off the woman. She fell silent, staring at him as the horseman’s congealed blood dripped from her chin. After a long silence and a meaningful glare from the Constable, Benton�
�s eyebrows inched up his forehead.

  “You said something, didn’t you?” he asked. The rough scratch of his voice startled him as the painful scrape of the words made him wince.

  Dorothy scowled. “Yes. I did. I asked you a direct question.”

  He blinked slowly. “Did I answer?”

  “He’s on painkillers, mom,” Nicole cut in.

  Benton jerked to the side. While he remembered following Nicole and her climbing in the car behind him, he had honestly forgotten that she was there. Although her blood-drenched presence did explain why the stench was so bad.

  Nicole didn’t take her eyes off her mother. “Can’t this wait until the morning?”

  “I’ve got a basement full of dead bodies, you were almost killed, and I just shot a man who didn’t have a head but was still alive. No, this can’t wait.”

  “What was the question?” Benton asked as he struggled to keep his head up.

  Dorothy spoke again and he watched her mouth with the sum total of his focus.

  “Okay,” he said. “One more time, but stop making your voice do that echo thingy.”

  Dorothy clenched her jaw but finally spoke clearly, “What happened to your attacker?”

  Benton pressed his knuckles together before arching his hands in opposite directions, twirling his fingers as he mimicked the sound of an explosion. He thought he was amazingly accurate, but Dorothy didn’t look impressed.