Banshee

Do you know what the most horrible sound in the world is? It is your mother wailing, waking you at five a.m. Snatches of conversation cutting into your room, hacking into your fogged over brain, and forcing you to pay attention to something that you are not ready for.

“I just never thought it’d happen so soon!” she cries.

People never think that, you think as you roll over in bed, trying to find a more comfortable position. Whatever it is, people never think that.

You wonder if something has happened to your grandfather, who was rushed to Immediate Care last Saturday with a high fever. (It turned out to be strep throat.) Or maybe something has happened to your father, who has a growth on his lung three and a half centimeters wide. But it couldn’t be your father. He is the recipient of the wail. You can feel him in the hallway right outside your bedroom door, holding your mother as her cries pierce the cradling darkness.

You hear your cat in the kitchen as she demands the attention of the conveniently awake humans. Your mother moves back and forth through the kitchen (where has your father gone?) and her footsteps are loud, without direction. Are the lights on? You can’t tell. You squint at the red 5:09 on the clock radio. The cat’s meowing is getting frantic.

“Damn cat,” your mother mutters.

Don’t take it out on my cat, you think and wish the animal was in bed with you. But if you call to her, they’ll hear you and know that you are awake. You don’t want to be awake yet.

You hear the shower on the other side of the kitchen turn on. You know it’s your mother because she is the only one that showers in that bathroom. Your father is probably back in bed. The dog is with him and the cat is still in the kitchen. She probably wants milk.

After the shower is shut off, you hear your mother pick up the phone and punch more than seven digits (who knew a cordless phone could be so loud?) and you guess that she has called your uncle, her older brother. He is going to shower and then he’ll come right down. He’ll be two hours (your other uncle lives much closer than two hours). Your mother hangs up and makes her way back to the bedrooms. The dog’s collar chinks as he raises his head to her and you hear the faint screech of wire hangers as they are shoved out of the way in the closet just on the other side of your wall. It sounds like a fork scraping against a plate or chalk against a blackboard.

You think about your uncles – your mother’s brothers – and then about your own brother, probably asleep in bed with his girlfriend in their apartment across town. It’s probably quiet there. There has been no wail to wake them – nothing to disrupt their dreams.

Your father asks, “What do you want me to do?”

“I don’t know,” your mother answers.

Their silence is heavy and you imagine them in the darkness. Your father is laying in bed, perhaps propped up on one elbow, and your mother stands beside the bed, head bowed. Maybe there are tears in her red eyes. They then discuss calling your brother and in your mind you beg them not to. They’re sleeping, let them dream a little longer. Don’t disturb their peace. Your father says he’ll call in the morning (isn’t it already morning?) and you hope you can trust him.

You still don’t know why what’s going on is going on, but you want to record what’s happening. It’s too dark to see, though. There is a light on in the hallway, but it won’t last. They’ll turn it out on you. There is a flashlight next to the bed which you use as gentle illumination when you wake in the middle of the night – or sometimes morning – and need to write down the dream from which you’ve just emerged. How many stories have come from dreams?

The hallway light goes out as your mother leaves. You hear the garage door open and the car withdraw. The light of the alarm clock mocks you. It isn’t bright enough to write by. You’ve tried before. Your left hand itches for the flashlight, but you haven’t heard the master bedroom’s door close and the light might be seen through the crack in your door. You could get up and close your door (left open for the cat), but surely the sound would attract attention. You don’t want to risk it.

Your mother must have fed the dog before she left. You can hear him chomping and scraping the bowl with his teeth in an attempt to devour every last crumb. You imagine your father in the room next to you. You’re both lying in darkness.

The phone rings and you doubt he’ll get it, but he surprises you by rising and going after it. He pats the dog and opens the sliding glass door to let him out. The phone only rang once, but he got up anyway. He never answers the phone.

The dog barks and runs back and forth in the yard. (Your parents call this scaring away the monsters.) Your father clears his throat. Will he call your brother? You hear him flip on the outside light (even light switches are noisy). He must be standing at the door watching the dog, who quiets down a little. Would he notice the flashlight?

As you lie there, you think wouldn’t it be great if there were a machine that could automatically write down every thought that you have? You imagine it to be like a typewriter punching out every fragment your mind produces, typos and all. As the page ends, it is pulled away by an invisible hand and falls to the floor as another magically takes its place. The process repeats itself and soon the pages begin to pile up on your bedroom floor. They start in the center of the room and spill over to the bed, a sea of wasted paper collecting in your room, soon to block the door.

The sliding door opens again and the dog’s collar rattles as he shakes the snow from his head. You wait a moment for your father to settle and decide to risk a bit of light. You hear your Timex ticking on your nightstand and wonder if its Indiglo will be enough. You pull your notebook and watch from your bedside and hold them against your chest as you feel around for a pen. Pressing on the Indiglo, you hold it close to the paper and try to find a blank page. There are no lines on the paper in the soft green glow and as you begin to scratch out all you can remember (it’s amazing how soon things fade) you hope you can read everything in the morning. Are you going to even want to read it?

When everything is out, you look down at the page unable to see it. You replace the pen, notebook, and watch. The clock in the dining room chimes the three-quarter hour and you follow its song in your head as you roll over onto your back. You wonder if you can fall asleep now that everything has settled down. You imagine your father has returned to bed and the dog is with him, curled at the foot of the bed on his blanket. Now that no one is up, the cat has stopped her cry for milk. The ticking on the nightstand has disappeared. You want to sleep, but you are afraid to dream and you wonder, what kind of dreams will be brought on by a silence more terrible than a banshee’s cry?