“I know,” the second kid said.
“I don’t want to kill anyone.” Rose hoped she wouldn’t have to. She thought of Olivia, Susan, and Cheryl.
“She’s crazy,” the third kid said. “Let’s go.”
Rose liked this one. His eyes were still soft. She spoke directly to him. “It’s her you have to be afraid of. Not me.”
“Who?” Soft Eyes asked, looking around.
She turned back to OG. “She could kill you right now and no one could stop her.”
“Did you hear that? She said she could kill me.” OG pulled a knife out of his pocket. “Seems like I’m the one holding the blade tonight. Be afraid, grandma. Be very afraid.” With a quick slash, he drew the dull side of the blade across her neck.
Rose scrambled to her feet.
“I didn’t say you could leave,” OG said.
“He did.” Soft Eyes turned to the second kid. “He told her to go.”
“Well, I didn’t,” OG said. “Sit back down.” He pushed hard, slamming her back against the tree, knocking the wind out of her.
“You’re the one who needs to sit down,” Rose choked. “If you don’t, you’re going to die.”
OG laughed. “How’s that?”
“You’re in mortal danger. From the banshee.”
“The What-she? Bee-she?” Soft Eyes said.
“You know the story,” the second kid said. “She’s the one who killed all those girls. Said a banshee did it. By screaming.”
“That’s right,” Rose said. “She could kill you, too.”
“I told you she was crazy,” Soft Eyes said. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
“No way,” OG said, grinning at Rose. “I want to hear this. Tell my friend here about the banshee. It’s Halloween, grandma. I want to hear a scary story.” He held the point of the blade against her cheek.
She could see his life. There had already been violence in it, a lot of it. A string of brutality stretched out before him. She didn’t see his death the way she could with most people. What she saw when she looked into his empty eyes was the death of everyone around him.
“Tell him, or I’ll kill you right here. And no one can stop me. Tell him the same story you told the cops. About the banshee,” OG insisted.
She turned back to the one with the soft eyes. This was the one who would need to understand one day. She swallowed hard.
“Tell him!” OG ordered. “Once upon a time…” he prompted, pressing the knife harder against her skin.
“All right,” Rose said, taking a breath.
“When I was growing up, my Irish grandmother told me there was a sacred oak back in the old country called the Banshee Tree. It was a wild wreck of a thing struck by lightning years earlier.”
Soft Eyes just stared at her.
“Some believed the Gaelic goddess of life and death was imprisoned inside that same tree for many centuries before the storm, tricked by the Christian priests who had come to Ireland to convert the Celtic tribes and would tolerate no gods but their own, and certainly no goddesses. Theirs was the one and only God, they said to justify her capture. Some say it was the Cailleach they imprisoned, but some called her by other names. You see, there were many goddesses who dealt with life and death. The imprisonment changed the nature of the goddess, diminishing her to the size of the fairies who dwelt in the mounds. It was a tragedy of great magnitude.
“But the tree loved the imprisoned goddess and took pity on her. Not yet loyal to the priests who had newly arrived, the tree hatched a plan: to free the captive goddess, the oak tree courted the strike.”
The second kid snorted. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Shut up and she’ll tell you,” OG said.
“The storm that killed that oak was the worst in memory; the scream of the wailing wind circled the town once, twice, and then a third time, terrifying everyone. The lightning bolt vaporized the water in the wood, exploding its limbs and—some say—freeing the captive goddess. But freeing the goddess was the worst thing the tree could have done, for her imprisonment had changed her very nature, turning her from a goddess to a banshee, not the ones you’ve heard about, who only predict death, but one who actually kills.”
“A killer banshee.” The second kid laughed. “Right.”
“I thought a banshee was some kind of ATV,” Soft Eyes said.
“The tree should have left the goddess imprisoned, for freeing it would have consequences far beyond anything the oak could have imagined. The turning had made the goddess hate. Her size was still diminished, and her powers were no longer strong enough to determine life and death. She needed a host. Life no longer interested her; it was only death she craved now. Her sustenance became hate and fear, and where these baser emotions dwelled, the banshee goddess would always find a willing host.
“It was the tree that, perhaps, suffered the most, for it was forced to bear witness to the carnage it had unleashed. After the lightning strike that freed the turned goddess and forevermore, the tree’s sap has run red, as if it were bleeding.”
“Bleeding trees?” the second kid sneered. “Goddesses turning…”
Rose shuddered to remember just how that goddess had turned. That night in 1989, Rose had lost them all to the creature the goddess had become: the banshee. Those young women the banshee killed had been like her own daughters. On that horrible night, after it happened, after the shrieking stopped, the world had quieted and then disappeared. Rose had found herself staring into an eternal emptiness that stretched in every direction and went on forever. When the keening began, Rose had believed that the sound was coming from her own lips. Then she’d seen the tree limbs and branches start to move with the breath of the sound itself, their last leaves burning in the black sky like crackling paper. Then the trees had begun to speak. Come away now, the trees had said. Come away. Their mournful keen had jumped from one tree to another, and Rose had followed. But something had been unleashed by their ritual. What had been meant to consecrate had instead released something else, something that had jumped into Rose.
“You’re out of your mind, old lady,” OG said, enjoying the flash of his knife in the moonlight as he played the blade across her cheek, this time drawing blood.
It was the last thing he saw before the unearthly screeching began.
A still wind is a dangerous wind, for it calls down the banshee.
—ROSE’S Book of Trees
At the station, Rafferty parked in the spot reserved for him. Just a few minutes earlier, as he’d been leaving the wharf, a kid had lobbed an egg at his cruiser. It was a direct hit. The witch on the broomstick was now wearing a frothy yellow-brown beard. A few pieces of shell were stuck to her robe.
“Don’t say a word,” Rafferty said to an officer who was coming down the station stairs looking amused.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Who’ve we got?”
“A few drunks.”
“That’s it?”
“And a couple of bar fights. Nothing much.”
Rafferty went inside and stopped at the front desk, looking at the arrest sheet.
Jay-Jay LaLibertie, the officer manning the desk, was in his midthirties but still had the look of a skinny high school kid. His hair was uncombed, his uniform shirt untucked.
“Messages?” asked Rafferty.
Jay-Jay knocked over his soda as he reached for them, dropping the messages, soaking them. “Sorry, Chief.”
Rafferty grabbed the fallen can, taking a whiff of it before handing it back.
“I’m sober this time, I swear,” Jay-Jay said.
Rafferty sighed as Jay-Jay passed him the soggy pile. The top two were from his wife, Towner. He walked into his office and closed the door. He grabbed a Hershey’s bar out of his desk and unwrapped it, taking a bite. Then he picked up the phone and dialed home. “What’s up?”
“Nothing. Just missing you. When are you coming home?”
“Maybe an hour or so
.”
He picked up the cup of cold coffee he’d left on his desk, smelled it, then put it down again. He pushed the speaker button on the phone.
“So, how many strays have you taken in so far?” he asked.
Every Halloween, Towner kept an eye out for girls who were too drunk to get home after the fireworks. She knew only too well the kind of trouble young girls can get into, and she made it her business to help. “Strays” were always welcome in their home. Rafferty liked this about his wife. Truth be told, he liked just about everything about her. He’d almost lost her once, and it was something he couldn’t bear to think about. “How many?” he asked again, aware that she was avoiding his question.
She just laughed.
“Be careful,” he said. “I don’t want to find one of them in bed with us.”
“Oh God, I’d forgotten that! Remember her—”
Jay-Jay rushed in without knocking. “We’ve got a murder! Over on Gallows Hill!”
“You sure you haven’t been drinking?” Rafferty said before he could stop himself.
“What’s going on?” Towner’s voice over the phone sounded worried. “Is that Jay-Jay?”
Rafferty took her off speaker.
“I swear! It’s true. A kid is dead. Porter was over on Pope Street, and he took the suspect into custody,” Jay-Jay insisted. “The kid’s friends are saying the old lady killed him—”
“I’ll call you back.” Rafferty hung up, turning to Jay-Jay. “Slow down. Tell me what happened. Who’s dead?”
“Billy Barnes! And his two friends are saying she killed him.”
“Who is she?”
“That old homeless woman—the one who calls herself a banshee.”
“Rose Whelan?” What the hell? He’d just been thinking about Rose. Now Rafferty could hear the chaos erupting out in the hallway.
“Porter arrested her?”
“Yup. Mirandized her and everything. They’re putting the old lady in the holding cell right now. She’s flailing around, looks like she’s fighting with something none of us can see. You have to go look. It’s spooky.”
Rafferty was out the door and down the corridor before Jay-Jay had a chance to catch up.
“What the hell’s going on?” Rafferty demanded of Porter, a heavyset man in his midforties. This is all happening too fast. “You know you don’t just go ahead and arrest someone.”
“She wrote a confession,” Porter said. “Signed it and everything.” He handed Rafferty a piece of paper. It said: Tell Rafferty I killed the kid. I had to do it. He was turning.
Rafferty recognized the writing. And he was pretty sure the confession was written on a page ripped from Rose’s journal. He’d seen the journal a few times, leather-bound with unusual handmade paper. The only things he’d seen in the book before were random drawings of trees.
“What the hell does that mean? Did she say anything?”
Porter shrugged. “She kept mumbling something in the car,” he said. “It was kind of hard to make out what she was saying.”
“Tell me,” Rafferty said.
“Something about the lesser of two evils.”
Rafferty stared at Porter. “She said that?”
“That’s what it sounded like.”
“She has a nasty cut,” Jay-Jay said to Rafferty. “We need to get someone in there to clean it up.”
Two of the other officers who’d been watching the scene in the holding cell stepped back.
Rafferty looked inside: Rose was seated on the cot, and she seemed calm. She had a bloody gash on her cheek. Jay-Jay, who’d made the suggestion, took a step back. “I’m not going near her.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Rafferty took the first aid kit down from where it hung on the wall by the exit door and let himself into the cell. “Rose,” he said, kneeling next to her. “You’re okay. We’ve got you now.” He reached out to touch her arm, and Rose pulled back as if stung. “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s just me, Rose. It’s Rafferty. You know me.”
The sound started as a low growl. It was so soft that Rafferty wasn’t certain he was really hearing it until the pitch raised and grew in volume. All at once it was a shrieking that bounced off the cinder-block walls and caused the officers on the other side of the bars to cover their ears.
“Jesus Christ,” said Jay-Jay. “Get out of there!”
Rafferty backed out of the cell quickly, unnerved. “Okay, Rose,” he said, once he was outside. “I’ll leave you alone for now.”
“Stay outside,” Rafferty instructed one of the officers. He assigned a guard to the cell. “Don’t get too close,” he warned, but he needn’t have bothered. The officer stood as far from the cell as he could while still remaining in the corridor.
“Where are the witnesses?” Rafferty asked.
Porter spoke up. “They’re down the hall. They had plenty to say on Gallows Hill, but now they insist they won’t talk without a lawyer.”
“Of course they won’t.” Rafferty sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “Back to the desk, Jay-Jay.” Rafferty headed quickly to his office and closed the door. He picked up the phone and dialed Zee Finch, the psychiatrist who had been treating Rose on and off for years. He hated to call her at home.
“This is Zee,” she answered, sounding groggy.
“Sorry to bother you this late,” Rafferty said. “We’ve got a problem.”
Zee listened as Rafferty explained what he knew so far.
“Oh God, here we go again,” she said, when he was finished. “Let me get dressed. I’ll be right down.”
“Thank you.” Rafferty hung up, then dialed again, this time calling Barry Marcus, a defense attorney who he knew did pro-bono work.
“Rose Whelan, huh?” Barry said. He hadn’t been asleep. “What’s she accused of this time?”
“Killing Billy Barnes.”
“Billy Barnes?” repeated Barry. “Well, that’s unfortunate…”
“Depends on how you look at it,” Rafferty said. He knew Barry well enough to be honest. No one in Salem thought Billy Barnes was anything but trouble. But he was connected. His great-aunt, Helen, was one of Salem’s most influential citizens.
“Are you the arresting officer?” Barry asked.
“What do you think?”
“I’m guessing no. So who was it?”
“Porter.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
Porter had a habit of arresting first and asking questions later, something that had gotten him into trouble more than once.
“What did the witnesses say?”
“I haven’t questioned them yet. They’ve asked for a lawyer. Which means they think they’re going to be charged with something.”
“Are they?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Fax me the police report.” Barry sighed. “I’ll be over in the morning. Meanwhile, don’t let Rose talk to anyone. Let’s not have a repeat of what happened last time.”
“Agreed.” Rafferty hung up, thinking about the ’89 murders, Salem’s most famous cold case. Rose Whelan had always been unofficially blamed for the killings, despite what he’d heard was an overwhelming lack of hard evidence. What they did have was “no truth, only speculation,” which, as he’d seen with Actor Bob tonight, was dramatized and exaggerated by the locals for the tourist dollars. The facts were different and even more inconclusive: Three young women had been killed. It had been a bloodbath; the women’s throats were slit, and they quickly bled out. One of the women, an albino, had hair and some skin taken from her body. A child and Rose herself had been the only survivors. It had all happened almost five years before Rafferty came to Salem. He’d wanted to reopen the case, but there had always been something more pressing to take care of in this city: drugs, street crime, domestic violence, all real and current. And then there was Halloween, which lasted longer and longer each year.
“Strange things happen here on Halloween,” his predecessor, Tom Dayle, had told him
as he handed him a few of the cold-case folders. The one they called the “Goddess Murders” had been at the bottom of the pile.
Rafferty had already heard the rumors about Dayle. Four years away from a full pension, the detective had suffered a mental breakdown, which had put him on medical leave for more than four years. The cops were whispering that it was the unsolved case that had sent him over the edge.
“The rest of the evidence is in storage,” Dayle told him. “I wouldn’t bother. There’s nothing there.” After reviewing current cases with Rafferty for one afternoon, he took disability retirement. Not for the breakdown, officially, but for “severe arthritis in his knees.” Same money, better story.
Rafferty had heard a lot of stories around town about the case, random details that piqued his interest. Even now, twenty-five years after it happened, people were still talking about it, especially when it came to Rose Whelan. Now, twenty years into his own tenure, Rafferty would have to take a closer look. He threw out the rest of the Hershey’s bar, got himself a fresh cup of coffee, and tried to recall what he knew about the case.
He’d never understood why the town believed Rose Whelan was the perpetrator and not another victim. He’d gotten to know her over the years, thinking, at first, that she was one of Towner’s “strays.” But Rose Whelan was far more than that. She had been a scholar, with specialties in both mythology and colonial history, particularly the Salem witch trials. When he’d questioned her once about the juxtaposition of two such seeming opposites, she’d dismissed him as if the connection was obvious. “To understand what happened with the Puritans in Salem, you must first understand the Pagan religions they so feared. To the Puritans, the Catholic acceptance of established Pagan feasts and holidays was just like summoning the devil.”
But everything had changed for Rose with the murders of the three young women in 1989. She had been severely traumatized by the event, and because of her mental state and her presence on the hill that night, suspicions had begun to point in her direction. After all, the young women lived at her home. According to what Rafferty had heard, Rose had disapproved of their behavior and given them several chances to change it, then finally asked them to leave. He’d heard the ritual they had been performing the night they were killed was a last gathering, fulfilling some kind of promise the women had made to Rose, some condition of their living arrangements with her.
The Fifth Petal Page 3