My childhood swings creak as I make my way past them. I head towards the menacing woods that fence off the yard behind my new home. My parents and I have been living here for just over two weeks and every day since we arrived I have found myself drawn to standing a few feet away from the lip of the woods. For some unknown reason, I am not able to take one step past the first row of trees. I lean forward, dreading that I might hear the straining sound of what must be the wind moving the branches of the towering trees, though my imagination has convinced me that the sound had come from something entirely different. With the sun setting and the night growing eerie I walk briskly back towards the house. Not once do I turn my gaze back towards the woods, as I fear meeting the eyes of something beyond the trees.
Early the next morning I walk across my room past my bedroom window, drying my hair with a towel. Out of the corner of my eye I see a woman wearing a long red dress. I rush to the window and I see the strange woman sitting still in the middle of the yard facing the woods. I quickly get dressed, race down the stairs with my hair still wet and burst out the back door only to find that the woman is gone. I walk back inside with a sinking feeling in my chest. knowing this will not be the last time I see her.
Forgetting about the morning events I walk toward, what I hope is, the student office of my new school. I have been wandering the halls of the large building for several minutes. I walk inside the small room and hand over my papers. I am given a list of classes and times. I then walk down the hall, following the directions I was given by the man behind the desk.
Suddenly my stomach drops, my chest tightens and I can't shake the feeling that the woman in red is back. I stop in the middle of the empty halls with my chin on my chest willing myself to keep on walking. I lift my stare and come face to face with the strange creature, only a few feet away. Now that we are so close I can see that she is as pale as the halls and has hair the colour of fire that flickers as if it was. This woman is not human I think to myself; I try to think of everything I know about mythological creatures, searching for an explanation.
I step forward; she reflects me and takes a step back. As I try to get closer the bell rings and dozens of teenagers spill out of their classrooms. Just as she disappears, the Banshee lets out a shrieking sound that is almost a cry and that makes me need to turn away and cover my ears.
I must be losing my mind I think to myself as I open google on my phone. I'm sitting outside the school as people pass around me to get home. I click on the search bar and type in 'crying woman in red' nothing comes up so I try again 'crying woman mythology', I read through a couple of pages before I come to anything significant. I am confident I have found the right information as I read 'She is an omen of death who wails and shrieks when someone has or is going to die, most often seen wearing red or green and can be heard wailing at or near the scene of the death'. This information did nothing to ease the terror in my mind.
Now that I am home I walk straight through the side gate into the backyard. She is waiting for me there. I walk towards her and she disappears into the thick of the woods. This time I do not falter as I cross the boundary into the woodlands. I hear my name being called and my concentration wavers, I look back and see my mother waving her arm out of the back door calling me back to the house for dinner. I look back into the trees, she is nowhere to be seen so I turn my attention back to the house.
While sitting at the dining table with my parents the feeling returns and she, the banshee, appears at the head of the table. Couldn't they see her? She was sitting right there, why couldn't they see her too? She glares at me with her amber eyes, holding my stare. She slowly tilts her head towards the door and I excuse myself from the table. I make my way up the stairs, locking my bedroom door behind me.
I open my window and see that she is once again staring out into the woods. I climb out the window and down the exterior of the house. Jumping the last two feet. I walk over to her. I am close enough now for the first time to feel the icy chill that radiates from her skin. She slowly strolls forward and I follow. In the silence, I try to recall all I had read about her kind, she is an omen of death with a scream that can shatter glass and is often found wearing red or green, none of this information helpful but it comforts me that I at least know something. She glides over the sticks and leaves making no sound, she finally stops and points into the trees. I walk into the trees looking back every few steps to see her still pointing into the distance, I reach the edge of a bluff looking down at the great distance. I am startled by the sudden presence of the banshee as she appears beside me, she points below to a ledge thirty metres down and I see a boy around my age that has been impaled by a small tree growing from the ledge. She begins to wail again as she looks down at the decaying corpse. I take a step forward nearing closer to the edge to get one more look before I return home to call the police.
The edge begins to crumble and I descend the cliff face, I land on the ledge, the tree piercing through my chest, holding me in place. I know now that the death the banshee was predicting was my own and the boy I saw on the ledge was an echo of my future self.