The ushers retreat, and the congregation rises for another song. Under cover of the movement, I stagger from the pew, lurch to the doors, and haul one open just wide enough for me to slip out. Stars wink in front of my eyes as I hold my breath, one hand clamped tightly over my mouth.
I waited too long.
Fuck my life.
I’m running down the steps, across the parking lot. My temples are tightening, throbbing. Tiny, sharp pains in my eyes tell me the blood vessels are bursting.
Just a little farther.
I crash through the trees, shedding my white sweater on the brambles, tilting and stumbling on the rough ground in my strappy sandals. Tears leak from my eyes in copious streams.
Can’t hold it back any longer. Have to let it out, let it out,let me out—
I open my mouth, and the monster screams.
4
Cathy
Death is the great horror of the world, the one inescapable truth. No matter how much life we experience, how many kisses we give or hugs we receive, no matter how carefully or callously we treat our bodies, no matter how delightful or dour we are, we all end the same way: leaking bowels, stiffening flesh. Blank, jellied eyes. Mouths mouths mouths gaping, sagging, jaws loose and lolling—that’s why the undertakers sew them up, little stitches so no one can see. I wish someone would stitch me up—force my jaw shut and run a thread through my lips, heedless of the blood dripping from the holes. Just stitch me up, seal me tight, stop the screaming, the screaming—
I can see the dead man, clearer than I see the trees through which I’m staggering. He’s slumped on the floor of his kitchen. It’s Mr. O’Brien this time, a hefty guy with a heart problem and a penchant for overindulging in high-cholesterol foods. Even when I don’t know the person I’m mourning, their name echoes in my head…sometimes right away, when I first start feeling restless, and sometimes much later.
Adam O’Brien, Adam O’Brientolls in my mind like a funeralbell. His family has lived in the area for generations. He stayed home from church today. Wasn’t feeling well. Now he’s dying of a heart attack, and I must mourn him. I must wail for the house of O’Brien, cry for the people he leaves behind.
When I get the first twinges of sadness, the first vision of the face, or the first sound of the name, I’m supposed to go wander the property of the person doomed to die, mourning in advance, warning the family before the actual death—but I can’t allow myself to do that. I’d get arrested, locked up in some mental health facility.
If I could warn them, if I could fulfill that part of my role like I’m supposed to, these episodes would be over faster. But since I have to stay far away, the fits last longer, and they’re way more violent. I’m constantly pulled toward the person’s house or site of death, and I must consciously keep steering myself in another direction or holding myself in one place.
I know where Mr. O’Brien is. I can feel the line connecting me to his body, a burning, poisonous barbwire tightening between us, and as it tightens, the barbs lacerate my heart. A groan quakes through me, bone deep, ravaging my throat, tearing at my lungs.
Ihaveto walk that way. I have to. Ineedto. But Ican’t. I can’t let anyone see me like this.
Throwing both arms around a tree, I hold on as tight as I can, and I scream against the trunk, the edges of my teeth scraping the bark. I have to try to muffle the sounds. I’m not far enough from the church yet. Thankfully there are a few loud sopranos among the congregation, so I doubt anyone heard me. But I must get control before Pastor Linton starts preaching—or at least get farther away.
My body jerks, pulled toward the dying man. The anguish, the need to race through the woods and get to his family, to give voice to their sorrow—it’s more intense than usual. He has many peoplewho love him. I’m supposed to carry their grief, to make it easier for them to bear the loss and move on.
The spirit of the banshee is a primal instinct, too archaic to understand that things have changed, that I live in Wicklow, South Carolina, that we don’t mourn the same way nowadays. We hide our grief in bathrooms or beds, curled up in a ball under the showerhead, or alone in a car while rain pounds the windshield.
Grief is naked, obscene. Grief reminds us of the wretched truth that death is crawling ever nearer to us, grinning with crooked teeth, salivating for us, gibbering with eagerness, yearning to drag us down.
Pain in my hand pulls me out of my clouded swirl of dark thoughts. My nails are clawing through the bark in an effort to keep me in place, and the first nail of my left hand is starting to rip from its bed.
“Fuck!” It’s a roar and a scream, an ugly, unearthly bellow. Releasing the tree, I bend double, pressing my hands on either side of my face. Tears drip from my lips and chin—my nose is a mucus-y mess. I curl deeper in on myself, my stomach hardening with the strain as my body readies for another scream.
A deep male voice, tight and concerned: “Earnshaw?”
Oh no. Oh shit… Did he follow me?
“What’s wrong?” Heathcliff’s boots stop in front of me, and his big hand curls around my shoulder. “Are you in pain? You need me to call 911?”
“No!” I bark, huffing through a spasm of grief. “Noooo…” The second time it’s a wail, a keening note of utter desperation and unspeakable emptiness.
In the brief moments after the wail, I manage words. “You…can’t…stop this. I just…have to…endure it. Go, please.”
“You need a doctor.”
My face crumples, another flood of tears gushing from my eyes. I’m too fragile to lie to him right now. I just need him to understand what he probably suspects anyway. “This isn’t medical. It’s fucking supernatural. Now go away. I have to move. I have to…”
