Banshee Go Bragh

The gent behind the bar hollered, “Sit anywhere ya please,” but Shannon didn’t hear him — rather, she couldn’t hear him. It wasn’t called ‘The Clangy Clover’ for shits and giggles, but a grouping of drunkies and a roaring fire just beneath a window still being weaved in streaks of rainwater wasn’t the reason why. Shannon couldn’t hear at all. She was deaf, but she didn’t need to be told to ‘sit anywhere she pleased’, she could do that all on her own.
“You’re a yank, ain’t ya?” The gent behind the bar now wasn’t, he was standing beside her at the little booth tucked just beneath the windowsill, aside the fireplace. That fire had caught her attention with all it’s crackling and popping like a tiny fireworks show, and she didn’t look up at him until the menu and napkins slid across her table. She made a face somewhere between a smile and a grimace and motioned with her hand as if she were writing on invisible paper that was floating in the air. The gent was confused at first but reached into his apron and pulled out a measly green pen. She nodded fervently, took it, and on one of the napkins scribbled something. She turned it to face him.
I’m deaf.
The gent raised two brows and nodded down at her, “Can ya read lips?” He said it like a tourist trying to talk to a native outside of their native tongue. Fortunately for him, she nodded.
“By the luck o’ the Irish,” he said, and he pointed over to the sign labeled ‘specials’ and smiled. It certainly was a ‘special’ day for some, that being it was the Feast of Saint Patrick, March 17th, and the list of the day’s options reflected that: corned beef, cabbage, colcannon, boxties, and stew, all of which were typical there, yet for a yank from the states it was just about as festive as having a leprechaun being shoved up your ass.
Shannon took a quick glance at the sign and began jotting, and not a moment later the napkin read, plainly:
Stew.
The gent nodded but before he could turn around, she grabbed the napkin and wrote something else.
No onions.
“We make it in a crock,” he said, “so I can’t go and give ya no onion. Besides, who the feck doesn’t like onion in their stew? That’s a crock.”
She smiled up at him and nodded understandingly.
“Ya still want it?” he asked.
She made a knocking motion with her hand and nodded alongside it, and the gent meandered into the kitchen. Shannon sat silently, cleared her throat after a sharp cough, and looked around the place. Clearly, there was some kind of music playing — she couldn’t damn well hear it, but the fella at the booth behind her was tapping his toe pretty hardily in 6/8 time. She smiled. A couple of guys were clinking their pints at the bar, a bearded one shuffling a deck of cards, and just behind him, a woman danced a soft jig.
“Here’s that stew,” the gent said, setting it just before her at the table, “I tried me damnedest to get a scoop with no onion. Tell me how ya like it.”
She pressed her fingers to her chin and lowered them down at him before lifting the spoon out of the bowl and swallowing a nip. It was nice and warm, much like the place she had found herself in on such a cold, wintry night, and it was rather heavy on the potatoes, yet obviously, she expected as much. She grabbed the pen and napkin and wrote again.
It’s good.
“I thought ya’d like it,” the gent smiled, flashing a set of yellowed teeth. “It’s me Mammy’s re-“
He was about to go on when a single, shrill wail from just beyond the rain-pattered window brought him to silence. It was almost so faint that he couldn’t even hear it, but when the same scream, still muffled by the glass but clearly closer now, rang through the joint again, he froze. And though he could peer out into the night, he couldn’t see anything. Shannon continued to look up at him with bewilderment and lifted both of her hands from her chest; the single, silver spoon dangling from between her thumb and fingers like a cigar.
He looked from beyond the window back down at her but couldn’t speak. His heart, too, was thumping in 6/8 time, and he was about to ask her if she had heard it, but already knew her answer, and a quick glance around the place answered the second question on his mind.
“I-it’s me Mammy’s recipe,” he finished, spitting it out like the plague. He was about to walk away but his knees grew weak, nearly buckling, so he sat down across from her at the booth and dug the scruff of his chin into his knuckles, which were worn and smelled of Guinness. The pub, which only seconds earlier was coddled in the warmth of the crackling fire, was now chilled as the night outside. At least, to him.
Now seated across from the man, Shannon stared the stranger dead in the eyes as she wrote something else on the same dinner napkin, freshly smeared in beer broth and lipstick.
What’s wrong?
The gent shook his head and looked around the place — everyone was going about laughing and drinking and dancing as usual. No one else had heard the scream.
“Shite,” the gent said, hushed under his intoxicated breath. He turned back to face the woman, but his attention was drawn to the large clump of matted hair floating in her stew. Something beneath it was bubbling, and the once gravy-brown color of the broth was now a deep red that reeked like rusted metal. He was about to gag just as the hair began to sink back into the contents of the bowl, and that’s when the ghastly white face of a woman emerged from the bubbling broth, her mouth wide and filled with the same gurgling suds. She was screaming.
The gent was too.
From around the pub, several glances were made in the man’s direction, however considering the occasion, and the reputation of such a place as ‘The Clangy Clover’, a bit of hollering wasn’t going to surprise anyone, aside from maybe a couple of tourists dressed in all green and sticking out like a sore thumb in the opposite corner. Men had been killed for wearing such a shade.
Another glance down at the bowl and the face was gone, replaced once again with the woman’s stew, still steaming. The woman, whom he’d later come to know as Shannon, hadn’t noticed the entire ordeal, though her face was flushed off all its once-inviting, warm color as if she had. She was staring out through the hazy window, and if Irish eyes could smile, hers were most definitely shouting. When he saw that awful expression on her face, the gent lightly grasped her shoulder and she jolted at the touch.
“Gather yourself,” he said. She puffed four rapid breaths, coughed into her sleeve, and placed her hand over her heart until she calmed. “You aight?” She nodded and grabbed the pen.
There’s someone out there.
“Who?” He was staring at her like he was shooting darts. She wrote.
A woman.
“Was she screamin’?” he asked. Shannon swallowed and lifted the pen again, more hesitantly than before.
I don’t know.
“Why?” the gent asked.
She didn’t have a head.
The gent combed his scraggly, gray hair with his hands, which were now trembling. He reached into his apron pocket again, the same one which once housed the little green pen, and pulled out a small bottle of Jameson. He chugged it. Meanwhile, as he did, the woman reached for her spoon — she had well lost her appetite, but she supposed there was some sort of comfort to be found in a hot meal.
“Don’t,” the man said. She couldn’t hear him, so he waved his hands at her, and when they locked eyes he said again, “Don’t.” She grabbed the napkin.
Why?
“Onion,” he croaked, and for a second was relieved by the sound of his own laughter, until it turned into a fit of coughing. She wasn’t laughing, though. And, again, she lifted the napkin.
Why?
The gent sighed, “Why’re ya here?”
Shannon stared at him silently and then lifted the napkin once more. This time, she held it up for longer.
“I can read,” the man said, “I’ll answer that when ya answer me: why’re ya here?”
She took the napkin and, still looking at him, scribbled something.
Looking for someone.
The gent attempted to suck whatever he could from the empty Jameson bottle and was only met with the fumes of a liquor ghost, “Who?” She wrote.
Family.
“You’ve got family in the Emerald Isle? Your clan?”
She wrote again, this time on the back (since the front was nearly covered).
My parents.
“Your parents?” he said, clearing his throat with a chuckle, “What’re they doin’ in Ireland?” She was already answering his question, and as she wrote she nearly choked on her own spit. She was sick, clearly, and that fair skin of hers which he assumed was from Irish blood might’ve been another tell-tale sign of that.
That’s what I’m trying to find out.
The gent nodded and pushed the bowl from between them to the end of the table, glancing out the window again. The rain had stopped, and just before he was about to sigh, a flash of lighting and the immediate crack of thunder rolled through the place, not that it would shut any of the drunkards up, of course.
“You an orphan?” he asked. The woman nodded. “What’s your Christian name?” She flipped over the napkin.
Why?
He stared at her, “I just wanna know,” he finally said. “Then I’ll tell you what I know.” She wrote.
Shannon.
The gent bowed his head, leaned forward, and extended a still-trembling hand, “Daniel O’Brien. Call me Danny.”
She shook it, though somewhat hesitantly, as the man tightly gripped her hand in his. After he rested his arm along the table, he sighed and stroked his chin.
“Y’ever heard of the banshee?” He took the pen and napkin from her and wrote the word down: B-A-N-S-H-E-E. She shook her head and pointed to the word still scribbled on the sheet, just below his.
Why?
“’Cause you fecking asked,” he chuckled, though his voice was robbed of any joy, and again the laughter ended in a harsh swell of hacking. Shannon nodded her head and he continued, “The banshee is an Irish spirit. Me mammy told me the legend when I was a wee little one. She said that the banshee’s scream, if ya heard it, meant one of your clan was gonna die.”
Shannon squinted but didn’t do anything but sit there. She didn’t need to write anything; her face said it all.
“I know,” Danny said, “I know. Stop lookin’ at me like that.”
Shannon blinked, only once. Danny sighed. Then he laughed. It was a hoarse laugh.
“I might be a wee bit drunk,” he said through parted lips, “but I’m not that drunk.”
There was silence between the two of them again, and now it was Shannon who was staring darts into the eyes of Danny. They were reddened eyes, strained, dilated, and bulging with tired veins. He didn’t say a word, yet those eyes spoke a million until it was his turn again.
“How’d ya know your parents were in Donnybrook?”
Shannon turned and peered out the window again, watching as the post-rain fog rolled across the dewy glass. She looked at him and lifted the napkin, pointing to the word he had written: BANSHEE.
“We’ll get back to her,” he nodded, patting the wooden table, and still trembling (but calmer than before), “right now we’re talkin’ ‘bout you.”
Still looking dead at him, Shannon slapped something onto the table between them. She lifted the flat palm of her hand and revealed a box of playing cards, inscribed with the name ‘Emerald Isle’. He lifted the box just as Shannon began jotting something else. His eyes began to swell as, again, he coughed, but that was not the reason why. On the side of the little white-and-green box, a string of letters plainly read, “The Ormond Printing Co. Limited. Dublin. Made in Ireland.”
Before he could comment, Shannon slid the napkin toward him. It said:
This was my father’s deck, a full set except for the three of clubs. It was made here in Dublin. I’d like to finally meet him and my mother. I’m sick.
Danny smiled a shy grin, which was unbefitting of him given his brashness up to that point. He reached into his pocket (not the apron but his actual pants pocket) and pulled something out, smacking it against the table.
He sighed and that timid little smile vanished from his cheeks. He then lifted his trembling hand to reveal a three of clubs.
Shannon instantly slapped him across the face. It was a knee-jerk reaction and was only followed by a sea of tears flowing out of her eyes. Danny was crying too, but that didn’t stop him from speaking his mind; a once-again familiar trait, most befitting of him.
“I deserved that,” he said, “you didn’t, Shanny.”
Shannon, who was still choked up, pointed at the napkin now soaked in her own tears. The word, running with green ink, still read:
Why?
“I ask myself that every night,” Danny said with a sniffle, “if I find an answer, I’ll tell ya.”
Shannon jotted something, biting her lip. She was afraid of the words she was inscribing into that paper.
Where’s Mom?
All Danny could do was shake his head, and she knew right away what he meant, “That was the last time I had heard the banshee. I begged the Lord that I’d never hear her cry again.” After a silent moment, which, mind you, was still just as clangy as the Clover, he lifted the three of clubs and held it, tightly, between his pinchers. His voice was stronger, now.
“Y’ever wonder why it’s called the three of clubs?” he asked, tapping the shape beneath the number with his finger, “that’s a shamrock.”
Shannon didn’t respond. She wanted answers, not more questions. What happened to her mother? Why’d they leave her? Was the banshee going to kill her? And, for some strange reason now, what’s with the three of clubs?
“Pretty funny when something’s hidden in plain sight,” Danny said, lowering his voice to a whisper, even though that didn’t make any difference to his deaf daughter. “In the states, the yanks call it the ‘Lads in Black’ or some shite, here in Erin it’s the ‘Club’ — both ‘cause of this,” he said, tapping the clover shape, “and ‘cause if you tell a soul ‘bout it they’ll club yer ass to death.”
Shannon shook her head in confusion. Danny looked over to the bearded man playing cards beside the bar, and then back to Shannon.
“That’s Connor Ferguson,” he said, “two o’ clubs. I’m three. We aren’t like the yanks,” Danny said, brows furrowed, “’tisn’t a gov’ment job. We’re like a militia against the fair folk.”
Shannon shook her head again. She didn’t understand, but how could she? Danny pounded the table and held two fingers high above his head. Not a moment after did the bearded fella, Connor Ferguson as he called him, clink two, green beers onto the table.
“Who’s the lass, Boy-o?” Connor Ferguson grinned down at her with a smile, but Shannon wasn’t reciprocating it. He swallowed and then turned back to Danny. “Want me to deal ya in, Danny Boy?”
Danny shook his head and Connor, rather confusedly, meandered back to the drunken bunch of gamblers while whistling Danny Boy to himself, taking one last glance over his shoulder at Shannon. His eyes looked familiar, perhaps from a memory that she couldn't remember.
“Your mother, God rest her soul, started this place thirty-five years ago today. Connor was here from the very beginnin’,” Danny said. Shannon continued to wear her confused expression, and Danny chuckled. “What? Ya think I dreamed of being a barter? Not much barterin’ to do when you’re protecting your clan from the fair folk.”
Shannon grabbed the napkin and pen and began scribbling again. Danny tapped it and caught her attention. He pointed to the beer before her.
“Ya better drink up,” he smiled. Shannon continued writing.
Who are the fair folk?
“Feckin’ yanks,” Danny muttered under his breath. “Fair folks are the fae — the fairies.”
Shannon’s eyes lit up.
“Yeah, ya read me lips right. But they ain’t fecking Tinker Bell, Shanny. They’re boggarts, goblins, and…ya…banshees. Now, not all of ‘em is bad. Hell, take our banshee out there for example,” he said, pointing to the window, “she’s what we call an omen. She only tells it as it is. Every clan has one. That’s why, when ya saw her, I knew ya was me own flesh and blood. That’s why no one else seen nor heard her cry.”
Shannon swallowed toughly; it was a hard pill, after all.
“I know ya don’t wanna believe me…believe me, I know. But your mother and I did what we did to protect ya.” Danny’s lip quivered and he bowed his head. “When she told me ‘bout your listenin’” he said, pointing to his ear, “I thought lady luck had stopped smiling on us. We were young and we were scared. I thought your deaf ears were a curse-“
Shannon interrupted him and bitterly wrote, ripping the napkin some in the process:
They are.
Danny shook his head, “You were our greatest blessin’, Shanny — are our greatest blessin’. I’m sorry we were too blind to see it, then. But I see it now-“
Danny’s speech was interrupted by another high-pitched howl from outside. It was even closer than before as if the thing’s lips were now pressed against the window’s foggy glass. He didn’t look. He faced forward, and as he stared at his teary-eyed daughter, she coughed again. Only once, but she coughed hard enough to spit blood onto her sleeve. She wiped it with the napkin. At that moment, Danny’s Irish blood ran icier than it ever had, and immediately he reached out with his old and cold hands and embraced hers. They were cold, too, but full of life.
“Is it bad?” he asked. Shannon nodded without looking up at him and Danny muttered something softly to himself, perhaps a prayer or plea (either to God or the godforsaken banshee) and scooted up in the booth until his gut was pressed against the table. "And this was the first time ya seen her? The banshee?"
Shannon bobbed her head and Danny's lips parted into a smile, but now there was joy in his demeanor.
“I remember when you was three,” he said, his eyes glowing like emeralds, “it was the last week we’d ever seen ya, and all ya wanted was a unicorn,” he chuckled. “Your mother told ya there was no such thing,” he said, reaching into his other pants pocket, “but she was talkin’ a load of blarney.”
Danny lifted his hand and placed a large, golden horseshoe smackdab between them on the table. Shannon stared down at it with bewildered eyes.
“I got this from Scotland. I carry it ‘round with me as a sign o’ good luck,” Danny winked, “but it was always meant for you, Shanny.”
Shannon lifted it to her watery eyes. It was heavy, and it glimmered louder than the fire. Before she could thank him, Danny had already placed another trinket onto the table.
“This is me die,” he said, lifting his fingers and nudging a tiny white cube, dotted with six black dots atop it, toward his daughter. “It was with that die that I won your mother,” he smiled, shrugging, “well, not won but…well, y’know, we were both playin’ Craps for shite…and I tell her ‘Let’s go’, and we did. And that’s how you came along.”
Shannon nodded and picked up the die, rolling it around in the fingers of her hand, holding up the golden horseshoe with the other. Danny, who had grown more somber within an instant, held out his final charm.
“This one’s the most special,” Danny said, lifting up a three-leaf clover; a shamrock, which was creased and wrinkled up and had clearly seen sunnier days, “most feckin’ idiots will tell ya the four-leafers are the lucky ones…but they’re wrong, Shanny.” He held out the tiny, green plant and pointed to one of its droopy petals, “Father…Son…Holy Ghost,” he said, extending it to her, “Patrick rid the Emerald Isle of serpents, and God willin’ we’ll keep the other devils out.”
Shannon took the shamrock in her palm and looked up at her father as a single tear caressed the heat of her face. Danny smiled a toothy grin and, for the last time, whooped a final, bellowing cough from his lungs. He glanced over to the window and noticed the glaring white face of the woman, the same one from the stew, staring back at him. But the banshee wasn’t screaming, not anymore.
Danny looked back over to his daughter, pushed the lonesome three of clubs toward her from his side of the table, and said, tenderly and hushed, “Good luck, Shanny.”
And with that, he keeled over onto the table and died.
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