cold night and the white moon, old time, and her. The wind blew me up the grassy knoll. At the door, I turned. She was still there on the milky road, her shawl straight out on the weather, one hand upraised.
‘Hurry,’ I thought I heard her whisper, ‘tell him he’s needed!’
I rammed the door, slammed into the house, fell across the hall, my heart a bombardment, my image in the great hall mirror a shock of colorless lightning.
John was in the library drinking yet another sherry, and poured me some. ‘Someday,’ he said, ‘you’ll learn to take anything I say with more than a grain of salt. Jesus, look at you! Ice cold. Drink that down. Here’s another to go after it!’
I drank, he poured, I drank. ‘Was it all a joke, then?’
‘What else?’ John laughed, then stopped.
The croon was outside the house again, the merest fingernail of mourn, as the moon scraped down the roof.
‘There’s your banshee,’ I said, looking at my drink, unable to move.
‘Sure, kid, sure, unh-huh,’ said John. ‘Drink your drink, Doug, and I’ll read you that great review of your book from the London Times again.’
‘You burned it, John.’
‘Sure, kid, but I recall it all as if it were this morn. Drink up.’
‘John,’ I said, staring into the fire, looking at the hearth where the ashes of the burned paper blew in a great breath. ‘Does … did … that review really exist?’
‘My God, of course, sure, yes. Actually.…’ Here he paused and gave it great imaginative concern. ‘The Times knew my love for you, Doug, and asked me to review your book.’ John reached his long arm over to refill my glass. ‘I did it. Under an assumed name, of course, now ain’t that swell of me? But I had to be fair, Doug, had to be fair. So I wrote what I truly felt were the good things, the not-so-good things in your book. Criticized it just the way I would when you hand in a lousy screenplay scene and I make you do it over. Now ain’t that A-one double absolutely square of me? Eh?’
He leaned at me. He put his hand on my chin and lifted it and gazed long and sweetly into my eyes.
‘You’re not upset?’
‘No,’ I said, but my voice broke.
‘By God, now, if you aren’t. Sorry. A joke, kid, only a joke.’ And here he gave me a friendly punch on the arm.
Slight as it was, it was a sledgehammer striking home.
‘I wish you hadn’t made it up, the joke, I wish the article was real,’ I said.
‘So do I, kid. You look bad. I—’
The wind moved around the house. The windows stirred and whispered.
Quite suddenly I said, for no reason that I knew:
‘The banshee. It’s out there.’
‘That was a joke, Doug. You got to watch out for me.’
‘No,’ I said, looking at the window. ‘It’s there.’
John laughed. ‘You saw it, did you?’
‘It’s a young and lovely woman with a shawl on a cold night. A young woman with long black hair and great green eyes and a complexion like snow and a proud Phoenician prow of a nose. Sound like anyone you ever in your life knew, John?’
‘Thousands.’ John laughed more quietly now, looking to see the weight of my joke. ‘Hell—’
‘She’s waiting for you,’ I said. ‘Down at the bottom of the drive.’
John glanced, uncertainly, at the window.
‘That was the sound we heard,’ I said. ‘She described you or someone like you. Called you Willy, Will, William. But I knew it was you.’
John mused. ‘Young, you say, and beautiful, and out there right this moment …?’
‘The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.’
‘Not carrying a knife—?’
‘Unarmed.’
John exhaled. ‘Well, then, I think I should just go out there and have a chat with her, eh, don’t you think?’
‘She’s waiting.’
He moved toward the front door.
‘Put on your coat, it’s a cold night,’ I said.
He was putting on his coat when we heard the sound from outside, very clear this time. The wail and then the sob and then the wail.
‘God,’ said John, his hand on the doorknob, not wanting to show the white feather in front of me. ‘She’s really there.’
He forced himself to turn the knob and open the door. The wind sighed in, bringing another faint wail with it.
John stood in the cold weather, peering down that long walk into the dark.
‘Wait!’ I cried, at the last moment.
John waited.
‘There’s one thing I haven’t told you,’ I said. ‘She’s out there, all right. And she’s walking. But … she’s dead.’
‘I’m not afraid,’ said John.
‘No,’ I said, ‘but I am. You’ll never come back. Much as I hate you right now, I can’t let you go. Shut the door, John.’
The sob again, and then the wail.
‘Shut the door.’
I reached over to knock his hand off the brass doorknob, but he held tight, cocked his head, looked at me and sighed.
‘You’re really good, kid. Almost as good as me. I’m putting you in my next film. You’ll be a star.’
Then he turned, stepped out into the cold night, and shut the door, quietly.
I waited until I heard his steps on the gravel path, then locked the door, and hurried through the house, putting out the lights. As I passed through the library, the wind mourned down the chimney and scattered the dark ashes of the London Times across the hearth.
I stood blinking at the ashes for a long moment, then shook myself, ran upstairs two at a time, banged open my tower room door, slammed it, undressed, and was in bed with the covers over my head when a town clock, far away, sounded one in the deep morning.
And my room was so high, so lost in the house and the sky, that no matter who or what tapped or knocked or banged at the door below, whispering and then begging and then screaming—
Who could possibly hear?
