American Banshee

ERIC JAMES STONE

Filiméala finished her keening as “Dapper” Donny O’Grady, head of the O’Grady mob, breathed his last. Leaning over his bed, she planted a kiss on his age-mottled forehead. She was glad he had died peacefully at home rather than in a rain of bullets, like too many of the extended family.

“Right, then, we’re done with that infernal screeching,” said Harry. “Time for you to be on your way.”

Filiméala sat up straight and fixed her gaze on Harry. Even at thirty-five, he still had the air of an impatient six-year-old. She had never been sure whether his nickname “Hair-Trigger” was the result of his impatience or the cause of it. “Show some respect, lad,” she said. “Your father has just passed on. I have sung his soul—”

“Right, right,” Harry said. “My father, may he rest, et cetera. But I’m head of the family now, and there are going to be some changes, starting with you.”

“Me?” Filiméala could not keep the startlement from her voice. She had been with the family O’Grady for over five hundred years, even following some of them to America during the Great Famine—though her spirit still yearned sometimes for the hills of the Old Country. The last major change in her life had been over sixty years ago, when Dapper Donny’s father had convinced her to keen the deaths of all members of the O’Grady mob, even if they were not family by blood. What could Harry want of her?

“Yes, you. My father was one for the old ways, but this is the twenty-first century. We don’t need a banshee shrieking about, frightening the neighbors, whenever someone’s going to die.”

“Bean Sídhe,” Filiméala corrected. “The B is—”

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about. We’re in America, so speak American. But that’s not the point. The point is, you’re a symbol of the past.”

“Your father and grandfather—”

“Are dead. And all you could do was wail about it. Now, if you could actually warn us someone was going to die in time for us to prevent it . . .” He cocked an eyebrow at her.

She shook her head. Harry had never been the brightest fish in the barrel. “That’s just foolishness, lad. If you prevented a man from dying, I would not feel the call to sing his death now, would I?”

Grabbing her by the left wrist, Harry said, “I am head of the family now. You will show me respect.”

She nodded.

He twisted her arm behind her back. “They say if you capture a banshee, she must tell you the name of who is going to die. You must have been giving my father that information, which could still be useful, even if the death can’t be prevented.”

“Rubbish,” Filiméala said. “If it’s obvious who will die, like your father on his deathbed, then I know, just the same as anyone else. But usually I keen the death without knowing whose it is. Who told you such nonsense?”

“I read it on Wikipedia,” Harry said, his voice defensive.

She didn’t use the computer in her room for much more than emailing some of her sister Bean Sídhe back in the Old Country, who were constantly forwarding her chain letters and YouTube clips. The Internet did not seem worthy of trust to her, because she did not understand the magic behind it. Humans were different—willing to rely on magic beyond their mortal comprehension. “I believe I know my own powers better than Wikipedia.”

“Whatever.” Harry released her arm and waved dismissively. “If you can’t make yourself useful, then I see no reason not to replace you.”

“Replace me?” Her voice rose to a squeak, and she struggled to lower its pitch and speak in a reasonable tone. “I have served your family faithfully all these centuries, and now you want to bring in another Bean Sídhe to take my place? I promise you, she can tell you no more than I.”

“Not another banshee,” he said. He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. “The head of one of the Haitian gangs owed me a favor. One of his men voodooed an app for my iPhone that will warn me when an O’Grady is going to die, but since I can set it to play any mp3 I want as the warning, it’s more discreet—and a whole lot easier on the ears.” He grinned at her. “You, my dear, are obsolete.”

Filiméala pulled her gray cloak tight around herself. “If you have no need of me, then I will retire to my room.”

“I don’t think you understand yet,” said Harry. “Get out of my house and don’t come back.”

Filiméala found it hard to breathe, like she had been kicked in the stomach by a stubborn mule. “Where shall I go? What shall I do?”

“This is America, the land of opportunity,” Harry said with a sharky grin. “I’m sure you’ll find something.”

Dapper Donny’s widow, Meara, slipped some paper into Filiméala’s palm as a couple of Harry’s strongmen escorted her to the sidewalk outside the walls of the mansion.

Filiméala had not been outside the walls in decades. She resisted the urge to throw herself against the gates and beg to be allowed back in. She straightened her shoulders and walked away. She would not give Harry the satisfaction of seeing her devastated.

Éire. Back to Éire. That was where she would go, back to the emerald hills of the Old Country, where she would forget all about the family O’Grady and her brief hundred and sixty years in America.

But not by ship this time. With a small shudder she remembered the journey by steamship, all the passengers crowded together in a space hardly big enough to contain them.

No, she would take one of the aeroplanes of which Donny had often spoken. How grand it must be to sail above the clouds, free as a nightingale on the breeze. She would merely have to ignore the fact that she did not understand the magic that held aeroplanes up in the air. Perhaps it was the same magic that had prevented a steamship made of iron from sinking like a stone in the ocean.

But first she must get to the airport. She looked at the papers Meara had given her: several hundred-dollar bills. She hoped it would be enough.

After some frantic waving on her part, an orange-colored taxicab pulled over and she got in.

“Where to?” asked the driver.

“The airport, please,” Filiméala said, faking confidence.

“Which one?”

“Em . . . One with aeroplanes that go to Éire—Ireland?”

“You want JFK?”

She wasn’t sure what that meant, but across the years, Donny had spoken about an American president named JFK, and if she recalled correctly he had been of good Irish stock. Maybe it was a sign she was on the right path.

“Take me to JFK,” she said.

After a terrifying ride filled with unexpected jolts, random noises, and a great deal of cursing in a tongue unknown to Filiméala, the driver pulled to a stop and said, “You probably want Aer Lingus. That’s this terminal.”

She gave him one of her hundred-dollar bills, and he drove away very happily.

It took a quarter of an hour for Filiméala to get to the front of the Aer Lingus line.

“What is your final destination?” asked a pert lass behind the counter.

“I just want to go back to Éire,” Filiméala said.

The lass’s brow furrowed. “You don’t have a ticket?”

“No.” Filiméala dropped the rest of the money Meara had given her on the counter. “Is that enough?”

After counting the money, the lass typed at her keyboard. “You’re in luck. There’s a seat available on our five forty-five flight to Dublin for seven hundred forty dollars. Will that do?”

“Yes.” Filiméala sighed with relief. Everything would be better once she got back to Éire.

“I’ll just need to see your passport,” the lass said.

“Em . . . my what?”

“Your passport.”

“I don’t have one. Can I buy one here?”

The lass got a strange look on her face and excused herself to go talk to an older man.

After several frustrating conversations during which Filiméala was forced to explain over and over to each new person that she came to America years ago without a passport and that all she wanted to do was go back to Éire, they put her in a room to wait for someone from the Irish consulate.

She had a feeling the explanation that she had come across the Atlantic one hundred and sixty years ago was not going to go over well. They would never let her go back to Éire.

A television on the wall cycled through news stories. She let the babble fade into the background as she wallowed in her misery, until she heard a familiar song. She looked up to see on the screen something she had seen on YouTube: a middle-aged woman singing before an audience that went wild with applause. She began to listen to what the newsman was saying.

“While in the past their show has focused on singers under thirty, the producers of American Idol have announced that they would also like to find the American equivalent of Susan Boyle, the forty-eight-year-old Scottish singer who became an overnight Internet sensation. So for all you older singers out there, maybe this is your opportunity to make it big. The open auditions start tomorrow at Giants Stadium.”

Harry had told her this was the land of opportunity. Maybe it was time to stop feeling sorry for herself and start making a new life for herself. If a Scotswoman could become a star, why not an Irishwoman—and one of the Bean Sídhe, no less?

Just as she stood up to walk out, the call of death hit her. Somewhere, five members of the O’Grady mob were about to die.

Harry had dismissed her from her service to the family—there was nothing to bind her to the O’Gradys any longer.

But the call was too strong. Dapper Donny had never been one for mob wars, so she hadn’t sung for more than two deaths at once in decades. Filiméala tried to resist, but her knees buckled. The keening tore at her throat until finally she stopped resisting and let her voice burst forth.

The television screen shattered.

A uniformed man opened the door. “What are you—”

She directed her keening at him, and he grabbed his ears.

Filiméala walked past him and out of the airport terminal. She no longer needed an aeroplane. Her life had a purpose now: to become an American Idol.

• • •

Filiméala could not count how many people were in line to get into Giants Stadium, but surely it was thousands. Some of them even had tents. A lad with a clipboard handed her a sheet of paper with a series of questions to fill out, including date of birth. Filiméala first decided to make her age forty-eight to match this Susan Boyle, then after eyeing the youth of the other contestants, changed it to thirty. She gradually shifted her appearance to be more youthful, turning her silver hair to golden blond and smoothing the wrinkles of her skin. The persona of an old woman had served her well in a culture that valued age, but that time seemed long gone. America valued youth and beauty, and she needed to be more American if she wanted to be an American Idol.

Just to be safe, she de-aged herself down to twenty-five, then twenty.

“Whoa!” said the lad behind her in line. “What happened to the old lady?”

“Em,” Filiméala said, “my grandmother held my place in line until I could get here. You won’t tell anyone?” And she gave him a wink.

“Secret’s safe with me,” he said. “I’m Kip.”

“Filiméala,” she said. The name would have to be thrown out with her age, she realized with regret. “Call me Fi.” And she wrote Fi O’Grady on the form.

After several hours, she and Kip, along with two other aspirants, were ushered into one of several large tents being used for auditions. A gray-haired man sat behind a folding table.

“Okay, let’s hear what you’ve got,” the man said.

Filiméala sang, her voice converting the silly required pop number into a powerful ballad filled with longing and hope. She continued to sing past the specified twenty seconds, filling the tent with her song. As she let the final notes drift away, the man wiped tears from his eyes.

“Wow,” he said. “I can’t wait to see what Simon—”

Filiméala was so caught up in the moment that the call of death caught her completely off guard. The lament for twelve O’Gradys burst forth from her mouth, and everyone in the tent grabbed their ears to seal out the sound, then fled.

Something within her had changed. Filiméala’s keening had never been so powerful before. It was as if she had tapped a new source of power—and unfortunately, she was not used to handling it. Before she could get it under control, the fabric of the tent was torn to shreds, which whirled around her in a tornado of cloth.

Amid the screaming, panicked chaos of thousands of aspiring singers, Filiméala walked out of the stadium.

She would never be an American Idol. But perhaps it was time to show Harry just how useless a Bean Sídhe was.

Harry sat behind the mahogany desk in what had been Dapper Donny’s study. He didn’t look up from the papers he was reading when his men escorted Filiméala in.

She sat in a maroon leather chair and waited.

Without looking up, he said, “Your message said you had found a way to be useful?”

“Yes.” She spoke meekly, like a penitent child.

He looked up, then started as he took in her new appearance. “Like the new look. Maybe I can find a use for you as something other than a banshee.”

Filiméala felt the call of death, and a moment later tinny music began to play in Harry’s pocket. He pulled out his iPhone and stared at it.

Suppressing the desire to keen, she leaned forward. “Does the voodoo in your phone tell you the name of who is going to die?”

“No.”

“I can tell you,” she said, her voice a rough whisper as she held back the song.

He snorted. “You said before that you couldn’t.”

“Things are different now. I think after all these years in America, my Bean Sídhe power is tapping the strength of America, rather than Éire.”

“Right, then,” he said. “Is it one of the O’Malley boys? I sent them to deal with some Italian troublemakers.”

“’Tis neither of the O’Malley boys,” she said. “The name of the one who will die is Harold Standish O’Grady.”

His eyes widened as Filiméala unleashed her full voice. He leaped from his chair and clapped his hands to his ears while screaming an inaudible order to his guards. The force of the song slammed him back against the oak-paneled wall and pinned him there.

The flesh of his face rippled, then piece after piece tore away. The bones of his skull fractured, then refractured again and again until they were ground to powder, held in place only by the standing waves of sound produced by Filiméala’s keening.

She stopped, and the remains of Harry “Hair-Trigger” O’Grady collapsed into a wet heap on the floor.

Filiméala became aware that the guards had their guns pointed at her. They were repeatedly pulling the triggers, resulting in ineffective clicks since they had run out of bullets. Metallic dust lay on the floor a few feet in front of them, remnants of the bullets shattered by her song.

“Now, now, lads,” she said. “I have nothing against you. And if you behave yourselves, it will be a good many years before I sing for your deaths.”

They stopped pulling their triggers but continued staring wide-eyed at her.

She walked around the desk and poked at Harry’s corpse with her toe. “It seems the O’Grady mob lacks a head, and somebody needs to stop the mob war the late Mr. O’Grady began.” In a whisper, she added, “You’re the one who told me this was the land of opportunity.”

Filiméala sat down in what had been Harry’s chair and swiveled to face her guards. “Tell the rest of the clan that I’m in charge now.”

“What should we call you, ma’am?” one of them asked.

“Filiméala O’Grady,” she said. The continuity of the surname was important. But she also needed a nickname, so she added, “The American Banshee.”