Still David watched the scene through confused eyes, his face splattered with dirt and blood. Father Ahern looked up at the specter encircled by hundreds of grayish blurs in the rising cloud.
“What you see is the spirit of Isabel Shea and the souls stolen from the Book of Life; souls not judged by the Almighty. They will spend eternity searching for peace due to Satan’s damnation of this town, including us David. We are of Wexford heritage. We have the bloodline of those before us.”
David gulped hard, trying to bring moisture to a parched throat, causing his voice to become barely audible. His lip quivered as he spoke.
“How do you…know all these things?”
“I suffer as you and the others have, David.” Father Ahern placed a reassuring hand on David’s shoulder. “But my memory will not be tarnished nor removed. I will recall the events, register the dead, and monitor the moments of discovery that will return Wexford to its beginnings. There we will regroup and with the same results, find ourselves once more in search of the evil that has permeated this town. And again, as I have numerous other times, will take you by the arm and lead you toward the light.”
David turned his head, gazing around the bank of the river and the field across the water. Both were dark except for the dancing shadows caused by the burning patrol car.
“The light…?”
Father Ahern made the sign of the cross with his good arm while watching the swirling mass of opaque wisps of smoke twitching alongside the form of the Banshee. “Still un-judged and still seeking release unto heaven or hell.”
He sighed heavily then stood. His body was tired, his mind exhausted, but he knew his duties. He looked down at David. His forehead was bleeding and the blast had splattered dirt over his body. The priest held out his hand to him.
“Come, we must go, it is time.”
“Go…go where?” David asked almost comatose. “I…I don’t understand…you will remember but I won’t, what does that mean?”
Father Ahern grinned at David’s innocence and ignorance. He put his hand under David’s arm and helped him to stand. He wobbled for a moment then regained his balance.
“We all hold a subdued sense of guilt.” The priest took hold of David’s elbow, leading him gently back toward the town. “And are in need of punishment for believing in our hearts that destroying evil in the name of our Lord was justified. We suffer because we blundered, we blundered when we murdered in his name, and it was not righteous. The witch seeks her vengeance and it has been granted…Come, David.”
David was not sure of the priest’s words or their meaning but strolled with him along the riverbank. His head throbbed and ears still reverberated from the blast. He looked once again at the fog-like figure floating above the smoldering patrol car and burning grave. He thought he saw a grin within the dark mass of evil, and then his eyes rolled back into his head, releasing him from the pain.
Chapter Twenty-One
Full Circle
David’s mind swirled like water spinning in a basin before plunging down the drain. Darkness at first, hot and damp, not like the depth of a coal mine but darkness containing no odor, colorless, formless and rising from a bottomless abyss–then the light.
Not transforming gradually, this was sudden; a burst of light, like a blinding star, into his subconscious. Then a blur appeared behind the brightness. It came, disappeared, and then returned. He felt vibrations on his eardrums that were muttered unrecognizable noise. They turned into sound and words, slow and slurred, but words.
Occasionally something shook him from side to side. It was the blurred form again. His ears pounded with sound. Ever so slowly, his eyes opened, allowing the irises to accept, diffuse the light, and focus vision. The form before him came into view. A man in uniform shook David’s arm while words came from his mouth, still undistinguishable.
His memory also awakened and thoughts of the Banshee, the explosion, the town, all came flooding back like a tidal wave. A uniform in front of him, the police…he awoke startled and confused.
“You all right, pal?” asked the bus driver.
David scanned the empty bus parked by the curb. He noticed the stores and people walking along the sidewalk.
“Where am I?” he asked, feeling his head. The cut received from driving the patrol car across the field like a lunatic was gone.
The abrasions that covered his arms and legs, received from escaping the beast along the heights, were gone. The tee shirt he made a sling for Father Ahern’s broken arm was under his shirt, clean and in one piece.
“Wexford,” the driver replied, leaving the bus and stepping onto the sidewalk. He opened the luggage compartment under the row of tinted windows.
David stood and supported himself by holding onto the high back of the chairs walking cautiously to the door where the sun warmed his face. It was all too familiar.
The driver held out a canvas travel bag. “Here you are, sir.”
“What’s this?” David opened the bag and peered inside at the sampling of his clothing and toiletries.
“Your bag, sir...”
David looked as if the driver had handed him a sack full of rattlesnakes. “Are you sure this is mine?”
The driver motioned with a wave of his hand for David to see for himself. The luggage compartment under the bus was empty. “You’re the only passenger and there are no more bags.”
David glanced into the empty space. He could not recall packing the bag or giving it to the driver when boarding, where and whenever that was.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” the driver asked, standing beside the bus door.
“Yeah, I’m fine, just fine.”
The driver shrugged and stepped back into the bus, taking his seat behind the wheel. The door closed with a hiss. The air brakes released then David ran to the bus door and knocked loudly over the vehicles noise. The driver looked at him but did not open the door.
“Where did this trip originate?” David called out. The driver’s response was barely audible over the vehicle’s accelerating motor. His mouth formed a word then the sound of his voice blended with the movement of his mouth. David read his lips but vaguely heard the name.
Limbo
The vehicle moved past in a gust of fumes until it was gone. He was more confused than ever, his mind a whirlwind of activity blowing images of places, people, and things through a vortex of disorder. He shook his head and rubbed his eyes. Weariness was setting in.
Across the street, the pigeons scattered from the statue of Major Whiting and flew to the roof of the building David stood by. A group of boys began a baseball game in the field while another piloted a high flying kite. A young girl sat near the kite flyer brushing her dolls hair. The theme music from All in the Family drifted from the television in Kelly’s Bar. Again, David felt a tingle of recollection.
He thought of Father Ahern’s explanation of Isabel’s spirit and the stolen souls of her victims, the guilt Wexford was to share, the punishment it was to endure. He envisioned the priest beside him on the bank of the river in awe of the evil form that emerged from the destroyed grave.
David remembered walking with the priest toward a light…the Alpha-Omega, the beginning and the end, the Creator who placed their souls into a middle dimension where they would dwell until judgment. Placed within an astral plane like a holding pen for divine justice where they relive their untimely demise and recreate their folly. They entered from the darkness into a burning brilliance, relieving them of all emotion and devoid of a memory of a life past or a future promised.
Father Ahern had taught David of the accounting of transgressions committed by mortals. Sins by those who believe their acts justified when performed in the name of God, thus insuring tranquility amongst society. Justification of an immoral act committed in the name of the Lord is sin shaped by fear an
d disillusionment, causing men to destroy the Creator’s miracle of life.
Murder in his name does not fare well with Heaven’s hierarchy
Perdition fell on the town of Wexford, including every soul since the frigid night of Isabel’s execution. They were not called for. It was not their time. The angel of death had no instructions from the keeper of the Book of Life as to the disposition of their souls. They wait judgment to the satisfaction of the fallen angel, Lucifer.
The offended would be appeased, souls punished and vengeance fulfilled. Angels, as well as demons, must be content with the retribution. Those punished for their indiscretion must await final deliberation in the middle world of Limbo where souls remain between heaven and hell until their eternal sentence had gone full circle, repeating the folly of their demise through recreating, revisiting, but not remembering, their existence.
The plight of the Wexford damned will continue and the purge of David’s memory began. All recollections of the past deteriorated leaving only blurry images of parents with predestined lineage. Images dissolved, turning into sand. David tried to hold onto something but it was futile. Everything was to be removed–his Uncle, Nancy, her mother, the Chief, Isabel–faster and faster it was all tossed aside like week old garbage while he walked to Kelly’s.
* * * *
Again, the apparition was in her bed, and again Joanne looked into the empty holes where eyes had been, recognizing the image of the person that once was. The spirit materialized almost on cue, as it had since she last saw him, the last time she had slept with her husband before he boarded the bus…that goddamn bus and the accident that took her beloved husband of one year, the father of children she would not have with him.
Joanne was still confused as to his instantaneous urge to visit his Uncle in Wexford. What compelled him to leave work, his home and his wife? It was the last time she saw him, here next to her. Her hands once again became clammy and shook, clasped together in front of her trembling lips. Her eyes opened wide in fright. Even though it was the same vision night after night, it was none-the-less horrendous to see.
A flash of retreating lightning illuminated the bedroom long enough to outline the naked body of her deceased husband atop the sheets, in advanced decomposition. The flesh clung to his skeletal structure in splotches of black decay, the grayish skull almost completely visible with hollow eyes and nostril, and the empty hole where a mouth had been.
Joanne recalled when the incidences first occurred, not long after his death. Then he appeared as the last time she had seen him, but as the visitations continued, and time moved on, his form began to disintegrate.
She tried to watch and make mental notes for her shrink, who would certainly ask more questions. His demeanor, any voice contact, any attempt to touch her. What had she eaten before bed? Had any medications induced the apparition to appear or had she ingested alcohol?
Joanne was tired of the questions and tired of the weekly visits to the health center. Her family meant well, they were there for her when the tragedy struck. They comforted her in her loss, even convinced her to seek counseling but it was not working.
The vision returned nightly and whatever she did, whatever guidelines and procedures the therapist recommended, it simply was not working. It all seemed futile and she was tired of finding the thing, next to her every night. She tried, as she had before, to look at the hideous figure and find answers for the questions.
The phantom reached for her and then it happened, as it had every night for the past five years since the accident…the ghostly apparition dissolved and disappeared from her bed. Joanne struggled to bring her hands from her face. She fell to her knees as thunder rolled across the storm-filled sky and lightning filled the room. She shouted his name.
“David!”
* * * *
The specter walked in the warmth of a new day toward Kelly’s Bar and Grille. A smile opened on the apparition’s distorted face, enjoying the scent of the freshly cut grass, clean air and the sounds of children at play. Things were as they should be…for now.
About the Author:
Henry P. Gravelle has also penned The Bamboo Heart, Pug, The Fort Providence Watch, Apple Hill and Hobo, along with two short story collections, Ollie-Ollie Oxen Free and Epitaph. Film Rights for both novellas - Gunner’s Rift and The Igloo Boys are under option.
His stories have appeared in numerous print and Ezine publications. He attended Northeastern University in Boston and currently resides along the south shore of Massachusetts.
Visit his website at: http://www.henrygravelle.com
More books by Henry P. Gravelle:
The Fort Providence Watch
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When she’s wrongly blamed for a rash of ritualistic murders committed by a satanic cult, she knows she can’t hide any longer. She’s the one the cult’s after. More than that, she’s the only one who can stop them and prove her innocence. In doing this, she’s drawn back in time by the ghost of the malevolent witch, Rachel Coxe, who was drowned for practicing black magic in the 17th century. Now, as Amanda tries to rehabilitate Rachel’s reputation in an effort to save lives, as well as her own, she has to rely on a sister’s love and magical knowledge, and a powerful sect of witches called the Guardians, to help her get home safely.
The Banshee Page 12