The Original Short Story…

As promised, here’s what started the idea of a full-length novel. I would welcome comments along this journey, but please be kind… I’m sensitive…

Song of the Banshee

“You will with the Banshee chat, and find her good at heart” –W.B. Yeats

MaiEveen was your average spirit, Banshee by trade. She thoroughly enjoys her work and finds the folktales about her kind amusing, but misleading. A Banshee doesn’t just herald a death; actually, a Banshee’s primary job is to lead the family she’s assigned toward happiness. She is actually a very happy spirit and loves to join in her family’s joys and celebrations. She feels rewarded when she helps ease pain or sorrow, only feeling sorrow herself when the Celtic Goddess Morrigan presents her with a red letter, the Caoineadh.

In Irish folklore, Banshees take the form of a beautiful young woman, a dowager, or an old hag. In reality, Banshees can take on any form necessary to do their job: a stranger with a quick smile and kind greeting, a flower that has broken though a crack in a concrete slab or even a cool breeze to refresh a warm summer afternoon. They can and will do anything to help their charges find peace in life and afterlife.

MaiEveen’s family is now named Kavanagh. Unknown to them, they are directly descended from one of the oldest Celtic families straight from the ancient Milesian Clan. She is very proud to have this important assignment, although it had been anything but easy. This branch of the family is located in a distant land called Los Angeles, which is far from the Kavanagh’s clan home on the shore of Lough Neagh,  not only in geography but also in the basic philosophy of life.

The people of Lough Neagh are happy and friendly. They talk slowly and walk even slower. Theirs is a quiet, ordered life which is the polar opposite from the urban sprawl of Southern California. This City of the Angels is fast, loose and seemingly on the verge of a social meltdown due to the increasing use of recreational drugs and casual sex and violence. MaiEveen has her hands full trying to keep her family happy and at peace in this chaotic culture.

Edmond and Carolann Kavanagh pride themselves in having a modern family. Edmond is an attorney who has finally gotten his name on the door. He is rarely at home, dividing most of his time between the courthouse and a local motel with his newest paralegal, Missy Treacher.

Carolann refers to herself as a domestic goddess, a term she once heard on television that made her laugh. She would definitely be surprised to find out that several of her ancestors were actual fairies and one of them made the marks to become a fairy goddess, but that’s a story for another time.

The Kavanaghs have two children; John-Paul is sixteen years and Kathlyn, fourteen.  Carolann said that Katie doesn’t have to look for a party, parties find her, which gives her mother increasing anxiety. Despite Katie’s young age, she donns ripped jeans, a spaghetti strap top and high heels whenever she goes out, looking at least five years older. John-Paul is the opposite; he is kind, quiet and thoughtful. Of him, Carolann has no real concern, calling him her “Zen-child.” Although Katie constantly gives her mother reason to worry, MaiEveen sees disturbing signs with young John-Paul.

On one particular autumn afternoon, Carolann tried to gain an insight to her painfully adolescent son.

“How’s school today?”

“Okay.”

“Didn’t you have a meeting about the homecoming dance this morning?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, how did it go?”

“Okay” said John-Paul as he ambled up the stairs to his room.

“Nice talking to you, let’s do it again real soon, okay?” Carolann heard only a Humumph come from the top of the stairs.

MaiEveen caused a commercial that Carolann particularly liked to break into her “afternoon stories”, it was that old ad with a group of teenagers on a hill singing about wanting to teach the world to sing with Coca-Cola. “I bet those kids talk to their mothers” Carolann mused. “Well, at least he isn’t into drugs or sex.”

Oddly enough, even though he isn’t actually into drugs and sex, John-Paul thought an awful lot about it. All of his friends boast about the scores they hit and the girls they have. “What’s wrong with me”, he wondered. “Nothing is wrong with you, you’re just sixteen”, MaiEveen tried to say through a bird chirping happily on his window ledge. He ignored it. He plugs in his ipod and let The Killers drown out the noise of that damn bird. He stretches out on his unmade bed and wonders where his life is going. “Nowhere” he answers himself sullenly, “Who would even notice if I disappeared. I’m just wasting the air I breathe.” He then falls into a miserable sleep.

John-Paul can’t see what MaiEveen can. A dark spirit had entered his bedroom, drawn by his teenage despair, feeding on it. It changes into a human form as a beautiful young woman. MaiEveen knows exactly what this demon is. It’s what used to be called a Demon Bride, a spirit that is both mezmerizingly beautiful and horrifically evil who seduces an agonizing mortal and gives a kiss that steals his soul. Haunted by his fatal mistake, he turns into a lunatic and dies a long, humiliating death.

“Well, I’ll have none of that” said MaiEveen to the creature. As she tries to block the monster as it bends down to kiss the willing boy, the worst thing possible happens. The Caoineadh, a red letter, gently, but purposefully, floats down from the ceiling. Goddess Morrigan has called John-Paul to the good people. It’s MaiEveen’s order to let it all happen and afterward escort John-Paul to his final destination.

“Noooo!” cries MaiEveen.

“Noooo!” she cries even louder, so loud that Carolann notices the sound.

“Noooo!” louder still.

“What is that?” asks Katie at cheerleading practice.

“Noooo!” cries a distraught MaiEveen. Edmond looks up from his client, a gangster named Spike from South Central.

“Do you hear that?”

“What?”

“That sound, like the whistle of a distant train. Do you hear it?” asks Edmond of the gangster.

“I don’t know man, but whatever you got, you got to share it.”

Again, like an echo, traveling away into the distance, “Noooo!”