A Short Story
When the Banshee returns to the village woods and terrifies the villagers with its nightly screams, the cycle of murders start again. Young Sean Collins sets out to find and destroy the menace, but will he succeed when his friends and family turn against him?
Average Reading Time: 16 – 23 minutes (about 5,700 words)
Pact of the Banshee
Chuck Heintzelman
Copyright © 2011 by Chuck Heintzelman
At night, the Banshee cry
Good men go out to die.
Wee-hoo, wee-hoo,
In dirt we lie.– Chorus of Children’s Game
Every able bodied man joined the village elders in the tavern to discuss the Banshee. I stayed near the entrance, anxious to listen, but not wanting to attract attention.
Campbell, the eldest elder and sometimes barber, saw me. He was old and wrinkled and skinny and so tall his neck had a permanent stoop from ducking through doorways. Campbell had been in charge as long as anybody could remember.
He approached me and placed his hand on my shoulder. “Sean Collins, you a wee bit young for the tavern.”
“Aye,” I said, trying not to shudder. “I’ll be fourteen in a fortnight.”
Campbell raised his walking stick, a tall, thin, gnarled piece of ironwood, a reflection of the old man himself. He pointed to the door with it. “Out. This is no time for youth.”
I pulled away from him and leaned against the tavern’s log wall. “So you are goan after the Banshee?”
Campbell’s eyebrows slashed a “v” over his wrinkled face. He gestured at the door with his stick again.
“I have a right,” I said. “Family right.”
He craned his long neck downward so his face were but inches from mine. “Do not make me tell you again, Sean Collins.”
I trudged through the tavern door. Not fair. I weren’t there for ale; I only wanted to hear the men’s plans. I had more right to be there than most the village. Last night the Banshee killed my uncle and when I was four, it killed my dad.
Outside, I looked around, trying to figure a way to eavesdrop. The tavern’s side window.
Campbell stood in the tavern’s doorway, neck hunched down, watching me.
I ignored him and headed along the cobblestone path toward my house. I passed the tavern, the sheriff’s office, and the barbershop before looking back. Campbell no longer watched me. I ducked around the barbershop, going behind the buildings and back to the tavern. I crouched low beneath the tavern’s side window. It was open.
Campbell was speaking. “Nay, we can’t send more than two men into the woods at night. Remember ten years ago?”
“If we scare the demon off, so much the better.” I recognized the voice, Shamus Brennan. The Banshee got his son ten years ago, the night before it got my dad.
“We goan to scare her every night?” Campbell asked.
“If we have to.”
“Aye, but the one night we miss, the one night we grow confident, she will compound our sorrows tenfold. Nay, we must attack in small numbers.”
The crowed murmured and grew silent. I waited.
Campbell thwacked my head with his walking stick. The instant before it connected I looked up and it hit my forehead with a loud “dnckk” sound. Even though I crouched on one knee, I fell to the ground.
Campbell laughed, a surprisingly deep laugh came from his thin frame. “Young Collins. You are as much a mule as your father was.”
I scrambled away from the window, away from his stick. My forehead throbbed.
“Run away, Sean Collins,” Campbell said. “I catch you again I won’t be so gentle.”
I hotfooted it away, back down the cobblestone path, past the sheriff’s office, past the barbershop. Then I stopped. I wasn’t going to let crusty, old Campbell stop me. I owed it to my dad and my uncle to find out the plan against the Banshee and help.
I went behind the buildings again and stopped at the tavern. The window was still open but I couldn’t hear from behind the tavern. If I went round the corner, Campbell might see me. I looked around, trying to figure out how to listen in. A tree grew close to the tavern’s back side.
Nobody in the village had my skill at climbing trees. Most our trees were tall lodge poles, trunks not more than two feet across. They went up thirty, forty feet before any branches. The trees were perfect for buildings, but hard to climb unless you had the knack. By looping your belt around the tree and holding onto each end, you could climb by digging your boots into the trunk and pulling yourself up. Some people put spikes on their boots but I didn’t need spikes. My friends and I once had a contest to see who could climb upside-down. I won, making it almost thirty feet.
I removed my belt and used it to climb twenty feet up the tree, level with the roof’s peak. I couldn’t quite reach the rooftop, so I leapt, landing as softly as I could on the bark shingles. I flattened myself on the roof and listened if anyone had heard me. Undetected, I crept along the roof to above the window. I lay down, head close to the edge, and listened.
“Who will join Doyle tonight?” Campbell asked.
“I’ll go,” said Shamus Brennan.
“Let’s meet back here at nightfall.”
The meeting was breaking up. I moved away from the window and rolled off the side, grabbing the eave with my fingertips. I dangled for a second before letting go and falling five feet to the ground.
~
Just before nightfall, I positioned myself inside the woods, far up in a tree, sitting on a branch and waited. Ryan Doyle and Shamus Brennan would enter the woods near here. Once they passed, I’d follow them and be ready to help with the Banshee. I had my iron dagger, the only thing I had from my dad. Legend said iron weapons could kill a Banshee.
From my perch I could see most the area from the tavern to the woods. Shamus and Ryan came out from the tavern. A group of men gathered around them. There was much hugging, back slapping, and gestures of encouragement. The crowd cheered a “hip, hip, hoorah” before they entered the woods.
Ryan Doyle led the way, carrying a torch in one hand and a large knife in the other. Shamus followed with two long, iron-tipped spears.
The crowd watched the men disappear into the woods and I realized my folly. I couldn’t slide down the tree until the crowd dispersed. I cursed myself and waited for the crowd to leave.
After ten minutes I slid down the tree, keeping the trunk between me and the few stragglers outside the tavern. On the ground, I moved through the woods the same direction the men had headed. The moon, filtered by treetop branches, provided barely enough light to travel.
Shamus and Ryan had a good lead. I moved quickly, sacrificing stealth for speed. They could have turned any direction once they were in the woods. How would I know where they went? I panicked and moved faster, becoming noisier. This was a stupid idea. What if I came upon the Banshee alone? Could I survive with just the knife? Uncle Nolan had been armed with more than a simple iron dagger last night and it hadn’t helped him.
I heard a noise, a “crick.” I froze, not daring to move a muscle, and strained to listen. The noise happened again, the snap of branches breaking, as if somebody moved through a thicket without trying to be silent. I stepped close to a tree and peered around it. Twenty yards in front of me was a glow. I saw two men, the front one carried a torch. Shamus and Ryan.
The men moved across a clearing in the woods.
“Let’s take a break,” Shamus said.
They sat on a stump near the clearing’s center, back to back, watching the woods around them. I stood behind the tree, afraid my slightest movement would cause Shamus to throw a spear.
Why didn’t Campbell allow the men to bring muskets? Maybe he thought repacking the load between shots would take too long. I inched my head around the tree to watch the men and almost cried out at what I saw.
An old woman stood next to the men, all white from hair to feet to tattered dress. She glowed, lit by an otherworldly light, and seemed translucent. The Banshee.
The men rose up from the stump and stood before her, transfixed. One of them—I couldn’t tell who because their backs were to me—fell onto his knees. The other strangled out a scream; it sounded as if his tongue got in the way and only a gargling sound came out.
I couldn’t move, not paralyzed but stunned by the scene before me.
The specter slid to the men and her body expanded, stretching wide, each side moved out and around the men, circling them. The lower part of her body became a tent engulfing the men. I could see the men’s shadows inside her, arms flailing, attempting to claw their way out of their ghostly prison. I heard their muffled screams.
Then Shamus and Ryan fell to the ground and moved no longer.
The horrible apparition had remained motionless through the men’s struggles, keeping them trapped inside, but after the men fell to the ground it floated into the air above them, forming into a giant, hideous face. The face hovered over the men, grinning. I opened my mouth and a scream stuck in my throat.
The horrible face turned and looked directly at me. Quick as a lightning flash, it moved to me and formed itself back into the old woman in the ragged white dress.
Now I was truly unable to move. I tried, but my legs wouldn’t obey.
Her face moved to within inches of mine. “You are not for me.”
She moved even closer. Her lips touched my forehead.
I passed out.
~
I awoke back in the village, at the edge of the woods. Overhead the moon still shined. How did I get here? Did the Banshee bring me? What did she mean I was not for her?
I struggled to my feet, hardly able to believe I was still alive. I should report this to Campbell. As much as I disliked him, he was in charge. Well, Sheriff McGrath was supposed to be in charge but everyone knew Campbell was really in control.
Campbell lived in the biggest house in the village. It was also one of the few buildings made of stone. Most structures were built from the lodge pole pines so plentiful in the woods. I sprinted to the cobblestone path and then toward his house, not stopping until reaching his steps.
On Campbell’s front steps I hesitated, gathering my courage. Campbell was the town’s boogieman, second only to the Banshee. Parents told their children “Better eat your vegetables or I’ll report you to Campbell.” Or “If you don’t stop fooling around and get to sleep, I’ll tell Campbell.”
I knocked on the massive, wooden door. The rap of my knuckles somehow seemed both quiet and loud, quiet against the door of this immense house, and loud against the nighttime quiet of the village.
Immediately, the great door opened and Campbell’s manservant, a short, stout, neckless man named Garth, stepped into the frame. He wore a nightdress and carried a lantern. “Yes?” he asked.
“I must speak to Campbell,” I said.
“Mr. Campbell has retired for the evening. Please come back in the morning.”
Mr. Campbell? I had only heard him referred to as Campbell. I stared at Garth, unsure what to do next.
“It’s okay, Garth.” Campbell stepped around him.
“Camp-uh, Mr. Campbell,” I said. “I was in the woods and saw the Banshee attack Shamus Brennan and Ryan Doyle.”
“Oh dear,” he said. “Do come in Sean Collins. Could I get you something to drink? Hot cocoa perhaps?”
“Nay. I’m good.”
Campbell herded me into a large room with a fireplace. Candles, in holders either side of the door, cast eerie shadows on the walls. Campbell lit a lamp on the table and pulled a chair to the fireplace. “You’re shivering. Sit here and warm up. I’ll be back in a moment.” He left.
I looked around the room, amazed at the lavishness. I had never been in such a fancy place. A giant bookshelf covered an entire wall. Paintings with ornate frames decorated the other walls. Campbell appeared in a series of portraits along one wall, six of them. In each he wore strange clothing. I got up from the chair and examined the paintings.
“Ah,” Campbell said, coming back into the room. “You’re admiring me ancestors.”
Ancestors? I looked at the paintings and back at him. Each portrait looked exactly like him.
“We Campbells have a strong resemblance.”
I would never have guessed the paintings were his ancestors, not him.
“Now,” Campbell said. “Come back to the fireplace. Tell me what you saw.”
I sat back in the chair, feeling the fireplace’s warmth. He sat on the fireplace’s hearth.
I told Campbell about the men and the Banshee, how she had engulfed them, their screams and attempts to escape, before finally falling dead. Of her floating in the air and changing into a giant face as hideous as death itself.
“You are foolish, Sean Collins. Had she seen you, you’d be dead too.”
“She did see me,” I said. “She came close to me and said ‘you are not for me.’ Then I passed out and woke in the village.”
“You are lucky as well as foolish.” He stood and scratched his chin. “Garth,” he called.
The short man appeared and handed Campbell a pipe. Campbell stuck a match on the stone hearth, lit his pipe, and tossed the match into the fireplace. He wandered the room, pulling deeply from his pipe.
“Okay,” Campbell said. “Go home. Go to bed. I will send out a search party at first light.”
I started to argue but a screech cut me short—the wail of the Banshee. A long, low moan which seemed to go on forever, slowly increasing in pitch until the moan became a shriek. The sound gelled my blood. It sounded like a cry of anguish, the result of the most horrible torture imaginable.
Last night the cry had woke me up. I had missed its full intensity.
“Go Sean,” Campbell said. “Nothing you can do here.”
I left Campbell’s house. Outside a crowd had gathered.
“Sean.” Brady Sweeney, my best friend, rushed over. “You hear it?”
“Aye. How could I not? And I saw the demon.”
“For real?”
“Aye,” I said. “I followed Shamus and Ryan and seen it kill them.” I shuddered. “Horrible.”
Brady punched my shoulder. “You’re doing a bonzo.”
“Get off.” I punched him back. “I speak true. I seen the Banshee with me own two eyes.”
Ollie Brennan, Shamus’s brother, stomped over to us. He stood, towering over me for a moment, then grabbed me with his meaty hands. “What you seen boy? Tell me.”
I struggled to free myself.
“Lad, you tell me what you seen or I swear I’ll thrown you down the well. Headfirst.”
I gave up trying to free myself and explained how I had followed the men into the woods, how the Banshee stretched itself around them, trapping them until they died. As I told the tale his grasp loosened. I rubbed my arms where he had held them, already feeling bruises.
“Oh lord,” he said. “You watched and didn’t help?”
Before I could answer the Banshee cried again. Outside, the shriek seemed louder. It came from everywhere at once, as if the entire woods screamed. Some in the crowd gasped. Plymith Brennan, Ollie’s wife, screamed.
What did two Banshee cries in one night mean?
Ollie grabbed my arms again. He started to say something, his mouth working, but no sound came out. He shoved me backward. I crashed into Brady and both of us fell to the ground. By the time I scrambled to my feet, Ollie had run into the woods.
“Ollie, don’t,” Plymith yelled, running after him, but Ollie was gone. She ran to me and pointed. “This is your fault.”
How was this me fault?
Campbell put his arm around Plymith’s shoulder. “Come now dear. You must be goan home. Who’s minding the baby?”
“Crazy,” Brady said.
“Aye,” I said.
“Everyone go home,” Campbell yelled. “Can’t do a thing tonight. We’ll sort this mess in the morning.”
A few people peeled away from the crowd, but most continued discussing the Banshee.
“I said go home,” Campbell said. “Now.”
That ended the discussions. The crowd scattered.
~
Back home I lit a lamp and checked on my mom. She lay in bed, curled up in a fetal position, rocking back and forth. She didn’t even acknowledge the lamp’s light hitting her room. I closed her door and went to my room. I didn’t know how to comfort her.
Mom changed when my dad died. I was too young to recognize it, but she lost all humor. Each year she got worse, sleeping most the time, hardly functioning. She stopped going to church. Pastor Lyons tried to get her to come back but couldn’t. After a few months he stopped trying.
Since the Banshee’s wail last night she hadn’t left her room. I tried bringing her tea and soup, but she didn’t touch them. I needed to find someone to help her tomorrow. Maybe Brady’s mom.
I got in bed, turned off the lamp, and stared at the darkness for a long time before falling asleep.
~
The next morning loud banging on the front door woke me. I dragged myself from bed, pulled on my britches, and answered the door.
Sheriff McGrath stood outside the door, scratching his red beard. “You need to come with me, Sean.”
A few yards past the sheriff a crowd watched me. I stood there not understanding what was happening.
“Go get on a shirt,” Sheriff McGrath said. “Then we’ll go.”
I nodded and went back to my room to fetch a shirt, checking my mom on the way. She had slept through the commotion.
I returned to the sheriff, buttoning my shirt as I went “What’s wrong?”
“We’ll talk at me office. You need someone to look after your mom?”
“No she’s—no.”
Sheriff McGrath grabbed my wrist and led me along the cobblestone path toward his office. He kept a firm grip on me like I was his prisoner. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach.
The crowd followed us, more people joined it as we went. When we reached his office the crowd had doubled in size.
Sheriff McGrath open the door ushered me into his office. He followed. “Have a seat, Sean.” He motioned to the seat alongside his desk and went around to his chair and sat.
“Can you tell me what happened last night?” he said.
I sighed. This is about the Banshee. How stupid to think I had been in trouble. “Well, I overheard Shamus and Ryan were goan after the Banshee. So I followed them and seen it kill them.”
He nodded. “Then what happened?”
“I fainted and woke up at the edge of the woods and ran and told Campbell.”
“Then what?”
“Then we went outside and there was a crowd and the Banshee cried for the second time. What do two cries mean?”
“Keep goan Sean. Tell me what happened.”
“Then Campbell told everyone to go home and—“
“—What about Ollie?”
“Right. Ollie Brennan grabbed me and shoved me around and then he ran into the woods and Plymith was screaming after him something fierce.”
He sat back in his chair, arms across his chest. “I have reports that you and Ollie Brennan were fighting.”
“Nay, sir. It weren’t like that. Ollie was worried about his brother is all.”
Sheriff McGrath studied me. “Then what happened?”
“Then I went home and to bed.”
“Then what?”
“Then nothing till you come around this morn.”
He leaned closer to me, eyes boring into mine. “Sean Collins, where is your iron knife?”
I had forgot about my knife. “I don’t know. Must have dropped it in the woods.”
He focused his eyes on mine. I forced myself to not look away.
“This morning your knife was found in Ollie Brennan’s corpse.”
~
The rest of the morning blurred by. Sheriff McGrath locked me in the cell, people gathered outside the barred window and shouted insults, even my best friend Brady asked why I killed Ollie. At noon Sheriff McGrath brought my mom to see me.
I couldn’t believe he coaxed her from bed.
She stood outside my cell, cheeks stained with tear tracks.
“Mom!” I rushed to the bars, thrust my arms through them to hug her. She came close and put her arms through the bars around me.
“Oh Sean, I’m so sorry.” She sobbed.
“It’s okay mom. I didn’t do it. Things will work out.”
“It’s all me fault.”
“How could it be?”
“First your father, then your uncle and now this. I caused it.”
“Mom—“
“—I broke me vow before you were born. You’re father never knew.”
She pushed away from me, fell to her knees, and lifted her arms up in the air. “Please Lord have pity. Forgive me.”
The sheriff went to her, helping her up. She went limp. “Sorry son,” he said. He picked her up and carried her out.
As if I didn’t have enough to deal with. Now my mom’s sanity, which she barely clung to, had been shattered.
~
I asked Sheriff McGrath about my mom. He told me ladies from the church were tending to her. Pastor Lyons had finally got her back to church.
The day dragged on, each minute in jail seemed an hour. I ignored the jeers from outside my window and eventually the crowd dispersed. Dinner came. Hot, steaming Chili which I forced myself to eat. I asked the sheriff what was going to happen. He said the elders were meeting tonight to decide my fate. I finally fell asleep on the hard cell bunk.
Jangling keys woke me. Campbell opened my cell door. “Quick Sean Collins come.”
I jumped from the bunk, fully awake and alert. Outside my cell window the sky was dusk.
“The council has decided you are to be hung at first light. I argued for your innocence but was overruled. Quick, come the sheriff will be back at any moment.”
I couldn’t believe it. They thought I killed Ollie. How could this happen?
Campbell slapped my face. “Snap out of it lad. You have one chance. Run away to the woods, kill the Banshee, redeem yourself.”
“I didn’t do it.”
“I believe you. Now go.”
What were the chances of killing the Banshee? Almost zero without my knife.
Campbell raised his arm to slap me again.
I cringed. “I’ll go, but how can I kill it?”
He produced the knife my dad had gave me. “An iron blade.”
I grabbed the knife and ran outside.
Men stood in front of the tavern, Sheriff McGrath among them. “Wait,” he yelled.
I ran to the woods, not looking back. Running through the woods in the twilight is dangerous, a sure way to twist an ankle. I slowed down but kept looking over my shoulder. Nobody seemed to be pursuing me.
I kept moving deeper into the woods, climbing over deadfall, going around obstacles too large to climb.
I had to kill the Banshee. Oh lord, the Banshee. So intent had I been on escaping I hadn’t thought about the danger I rushed into. I stopped and looked around, unsure of my location. The best thing to do would be to climb a tree and think things through.
I came to a clearing in the woods with a large stump in the center. The same place Shamus and Ryan had rested. I went to the nearest tree, stuck my knife between my teeth, pulled my belt off, looped it around the tree and climbed. The first branch was thirty feet up. I grabbed it while moving my belt above it and continued climbing, not stopping for another fifteen feet. I stuck my knife into the trunk and looked down. I had an unobstructed view of the clearing.
In the crook where a large branch met the trunk I sat and considered my options. As I saw it my only option was to kill the Banshee. Would I have courage to? Last time I froze. If that happened again I’d be dead.
The Banshee wailed and I almost fell from the tree. I wrapped my arms around the trunk and squeezed my eyes shut. The sound from last night was nothing compared to the current cry. It was as if I were inside the scream. The sound shook me. It shook the tree. After the cry finished I still kept my eyes shut, afraid of what I’d see if I opened them.
I opened one eye, expecting the Banshee’s monstrous face to be floating near me. I was alone. I looked around the clearing. No sign of the Banshee, but on the ground next to the tree lay my knife. The Banshee’s cry had dislodged it.
I needed the knife.
I started climbing down, but before I made it five feet I heard a noise. I stopped, looked around, and listened.
The noise came again, branches cracking in the woods across the clearing.
Campbell came into the clearing. He hobbled to the center stump and climbed onto it, using his walking stick to help push himself up.
Campbell would know what to do. Maybe he could help me kill the Banshee. He really wasn’t a bad man, just old and aloof and dished out discipline so kids feared him.
Below me the Banshee materialized in front of Campbell.
“You’ve already had your three,” Campbell said to the Banshee.
She shook her white head back and forth. “Three souls across three nights is our agreement.” Her voice sounded soft, like a young maiden. Not at all what I expected.
“There is a boy in these woods you can take.”
What? Campbell was offering me to the Banshee?
“I cannot take him,” she said.
“What?” Campbell said. “You’re picky now about who you take? Nay. He is yours.”
She grew ten feet larger in an instant, towering over Campbell. “It is not wise to have that tone with me.” Her voice grew deep and harsh, no longer maiden-like.
Campbell turned his back to her. “I brought you the boy. Me bargain’s complete. You can’t touch me.”
“Is agreed I will not take father and son during the same reaping. At midnight, with no new soul, your agreement ends.”
He whipped back around and pointed his walking stick at her. “You took his father ten years ago.”
“Nay. I took his father two nights ago.”
What? She thinks Uncle Nolan was my dad. That’s why she said ‘you are not for me.’ Was I safe from her?
The branch I stood on cracked, not completely breaking, but alerting them.
Campbell and the Banshee—back to her original size—looked up at me.
If I could climb down fast enough I could get me knife. I whipped my belt around the tree and climbed down. After navigating past the branches I started sliding, using my belt to slow the descent. On the ground I grabbed my knife and spun to face Campbell and the Banshee.
Campbell knocked my knife away with his walking stick. Then his stick swung around and came down on my head. I tried ducking but was too slow. I saw an explosion of light and then darkness.
~
When I came to I was sitting back against the tree, arms backward, and hands tied with my belt. There was no slack.
Campbell hovered over me. The Banshee gone.
“I’m sorry, Sean,” Campbell said. “I didn’t want it to end like this.”
I glared at him.
“I tried pleading with that stupid creature to take you. She won’t. Now I have to take care of you and find someone else to send into the woods before midnight or all is lost.”
As he spoke, I struggled to my feet, standing with my back against the tree trunk, my shoulders and arms wrenched awkwardly behind me.
“Before you kill me,” I said. “Just tell me why.”
“For our village,” he said. “You don’t know what it was like a hundred years ago. Lawlessness, thievery, rape, murder. People out of control.”
“You were alive a hundred years ago?” I asked. I saw my knife sticking out of the stump in the clearing. Too far away to be useful.
“Aye. She clouds the villager’s minds and keeps me alive. I keep the peace. The price to pay is quite small. Three men every ten years. Far more people used to die.”
I had to keep him talking and try to figure a way to escape. “When they find me body they’ll know I didn’t kill Ollie.”
Campbell laughed. “Oh lad. They were coming to release you. The elders unanimously agreed you weren’t guilty. Now, time’s wasting, let’s get this over with.”
I had an idea to escape, but didn’t know if it would work.
“Are you goan to use me own father’s knife to kill me?” I asked.
“Good idea,” he said. “Although, really it was your uncle’s knife.”
He turned and hobbled across the clearing. I waited until he was almost to the stump before moving. I wrenched my hands upward as far as I could reach, ignoring the pain in my shoulder, and gripped the tree trunk between my boots. I had never tried climbing a tree this way before, but it couldn’t be much harder than climbing upside-down. I moved my hands up again, only a few inches, and took all of my weight on my arms and moved my feet up, gripping them together a few inches higher. It felt as if my shoulder would be wrenched from its socket, but I kept at it and moved up a few more inches.
“Hey,” Campbell said.
I redoubled my efforts, moving up the tree like a crazy inchworm, climbing four to six inches with each movement. I was two feet in the air now. I kept at it, not looking at Campbell, knowing at any second he could be upon me.
I felt his hand on my foot and looked down. I had made it six feet into the air. I kicked his hand free and moved a few more inches up. He swung the knife at me, it stuck in the sole of my boot, not injuring me.
As I worked my way up, the tree’s trunk narrowed and my hands became looser. I was nine feet up now, out of reach. I was safe.
I stopped climbing and tried loosening the belt from my hand. My breath came in large gulps. My legs shook from the exertion. The problem was I couldn’t touch my hands together and I couldn’t loosen myself with just one hand. If I could get the knife from my boot to my hand I’d be able to get free.
Campbell’s walking stick crashed into my shin. I yelled out and slid down a foot before my boots caught the trunk. I moved up higher as quick as I could. He hit me again on the foot, knocking the knife loose. In moments I was fifteen feet up, out his walking stick’s reach.
I stopped again to catch my breath. I was safe, but how long could I hang on? My legs were already shaking. I watched Campbell. He picked up the knife and aimed it at me. He threw it and time seemed to slow down.
I watch the knife flip end over end, heading straight for my head. I tried moving out of the way but my body moved too slow. The knife came closer and closer. I shut my eyes and felt a sharp pain on my left ear. I opened my eyes again. The knife had stuck in the trunk next to me head, barely nicking me ear.
I moved up and sideways, inching higher, but moving myself around the trunk so I could get at the knife with my hands. I inched up again and again and felt the knife with the fingertips of my right hand. I pulled the knife free and sawed at the strap. Even though I kept the blade razor sharp, the belt strap was difficult to cut. Partly because of the angle I had on it, and partly because I couldn’t apply much pressure. I kept sawing.
Campbell threw rocks at me. He had moved around the tree so he could hit my face. A jagged rock me smashed my forehead, cutting it, and blood obscured my vision. I was almost blind with the blood when the belt strap came free. I fell from the tree and landed on Campbell.
Somehow I had kept my grip on the knife and when I landed on Campbell, I managed to thrust it into the side of his neck. He thrashed for all of two seconds and then was still.
I rolled off him and lay on my back.
The Banshee appeared. She stood above Campbell and me. I didn’t have the energy to lift a finger and my iron dagger still protruded from Campbell’s neck.
“You have killed him,” she said, her voice quiet and gentle.
“Aye.” I tried lifting my arm, pain shot through my shoulder. It was dislocated and probably broken.
“I must now offer my pact to you.”
To live forever, only having to send three men to slaughter every ten years? I didn’t even hesitate. “Nay. I don’t want it.”
“Thank you,” she said. She bend low and kissed my forehead. Then was gone.
I lay there for a long while before realizing I no longer felt each muscle screaming with pain. I stood and moved my arms around in wide circles. No injuries. She had somehow healed me.
I looked down at Campbell’s body and thought of retrieving my father—my uncle’s knife, but decided to leave it there.
I trudged across the clearing, into the woods, heading toward the village. I had a lot to tell the elders.
~ The End ~
Here’s the journal of how I created the story:
Feb 26 - Spent an hour planning the story. I actually wrote out a brief synopsis, beginning, middle, and end. Then spent 20 minutes writing. Word count: 259 words.
Feb 27 - Didn’t write.
Feb 28 - Spent 30 minutes writing. Word count is now 1,069 (810 new words). Tried closing my eyes a bit while writing, but the writing flowed pretty well without having to close my eyes. Spent 30 minutes creating the cover. I combined a photo of some tall tress with fractal art that looks like a face and ran it through a photoshop filter. I think it looks pretty nifty. Others may think the face is the scribbling of a child 
Mar 1 - 30 minutes. Word count 1,865 (796 new words).
Mar 2 - 20 minutes. Word count 2,399 (534 new words). I’ll probably try writing more later, but running late today.
Mar 3 - 80 minutes editing what I have, made it about halfway through. Word count 2,843 (444 new words).
Mar 4 - 80 minutes finished first edit. Story is about halfway there. Wordcount 2,963 (120 new words).
Mar 5 -140 minutes and finished the first draft. Word count now 6,400 words. That’s 3,437 new words.
Mar 6 - Spent about 5 hours editing. Ughh. Editing always takes me a long time.
Total time to create this was right around 13 hours.