“That wasn't a wildcat,” she said to Logan. “The banshee has come for Momma. I need to get home as fast as I can.”
The wailing sound rose from the woods again as they drove off. It seemed to come from near the Sullivan place.
The Carter family stood in the yard, watching the truck go down the road.
“What was she talking about?” Clyde asked his mother. “What's a banshee?”
Lindy didn't know much to tell him about it. She knew that the Irish believed it was a sign of death to hear one wail. She knew that the Sullivans were Irish, so maybe the banshee had followed the family to this country. Mrs. Sullivan had talked about it briefly once in a casual conversation.
“I didn't know how much of her story to believe,” Lindy told Clyde, “but she certainly believed it.”
The trip was short, so Logan was back home in a few minutes. They heard the sound once more as he got out of the truck, and then they all went inside for supper.
“Mrs. Sullivan is in bad shape,” Logan told the family as they sat around the supper table. “She sent her thanks for the herbs, though. Maggie was brewing some tea for her when I left. I only stayed a minute to pay my respects since she was so weak, but she said to tell you that she is looking forward to your good chicken soup tomorrow.”
Lindy nodded. Chicken soup was a remedy for just about everything.
The shock the family had felt by the shrieking in the woods subdued the conversation as the Carters ate their supper. Their talk was mostly limited to requests for food to be passed. When they finished, Lindy washed the dishes while the others went into the living room and sat quietly. It was Friday night, and things were usually livelier at the Carters' home. Tonight, though, it was as if they didn't want to do anything to call attention to themselves. Something unknown and sinister was out there in the woods, and they wanted no part of it.
They all went to bed early, each one glancing at Logan to make sure he locked the door. They slept fitfully, waking up when they heard the terrible wailing in the distance. They were relieved to notice that the sound was not close to their house.
The next morning after breakfast, Lindy prepared the chicken soup and got ready to take it to Mrs. Sullivan.
“I'll drive you over,” said Logan. “I don't want you meeting up with that old wildcat.”
“Dad,” said Clyde, “you know that wasn't a wildcat!”
“Well,” said Logan, “whatever it was, your mother doesn't need to meet up with it while she's carrying that chicken soup.”
He and Lindy got in the truck and drove off. The younger children moved closer to Clyde and kept a watchful eye on the woods. No one, including Clyde, wanted to venture too far from the safety of the yard. Finally, they all sat on the porch to wait for their parents to return.
After a while, Logan and Lindy returned with sad news. Mrs. Sullivan had died just before daybreak. It was right after her death that the wailing had stopped.
In the days that followed, the Carters debated whether a wildcat had been in the woods, or whether a banshee had come to take Mrs. Sullivan away to the other side. There was a certain amount of evidence to support both sides, but there was not 100 percent proof for either one.
The Carters never heard the wailing again, so they tried to put the whole thing out of their minds. Sometimes it would come to mind, though, when they were walking through the woods at night, going to the country store, or heading off to visit friends. They all admitted that such thoughts always made them walk a little faster.
The Rock Quarry
The rock quarry was just a few miles down the main road from where we lived. We heard this story as a true happening, but sometimes kids wondered if the old folks made it up to scare them away.
In central Kentucky, an old rock quarry stood abandoned with a few feet of water covering the bottom. Once productive, it was now an empty, eerie-looking place. There were several “No Trespassing” signs around the boundaries, but the site had few visitors now.
Three neighborhood boys, Derek, Aaron, and Donnie, thought the old rock quarry was mysterious and irresistible. They had been told time and again by their parents to stay away from the place because it could be dangerous, but the warnings fell on deaf ears.
“Why do you want to play there?” their parents wanted to know. “There's no fish in the water, so you can't go fishing. And the water is muddy and the bottom has sharp rocks, so you can't go swimming. What's the attraction?”
The truth was that the boys were not interested in fishing or swimming. They were often picked on by the other boys because they liked to read or sit around doing nothing instead of playing sports, and they wanted someplace to get away from the bullies. They liked to sit on the bank at the quarry and throw rocks into the water. They liked to read stories of monsters, so it was easy to imagine that some killer monster lurked in the scum and mud at the bottom of the quarry. They made up stories about the monster to see who could outdo the other in telling about the monster's escapades. They had formed a secret club, called the Monster Hunters, and they thought that the quarry was the perfect place to meet. It was only five miles down the road from where they lived, and they could easily reach it on their bicycles without being detected.