It had become a game to the local teens.
“Let’s go annoy the crazy lady!”
Everyone said Killarney House was haunted. Since their coming to America, since they’d constructed the house, every member of the O’Hurlahee family had died there, their deaths foretold by the wailing Banshee that had followed them from their native Ireland. The all heard the Banshee before they died, so the story went.
In the ten years since she’d bought the house, Frances hadn’t seen—or heard—any ghost.
She had seen plenty of annoying teenagers, though.
She’d chase them away; they’d come back. She’d turn the garden hose on them; they filmed her with their cellphones.
“You’re making it worse,” friends told her. “Putting on a show for them.”
“Horseshit!” Frances always replied.
Tonight a carload of the brats sat parked across the street, honking their horn to torment her, calling her name. Frances tried to ignore it but at last her nerves gave out. She seized a frying pan from its peg on the wall and charged out the front door. She’d show them.
“Here she comes!”
“Get out of here!” Frances charged into the street.
Then she heard it. Her bone marrow turned to ice. The screech of the Banshee.
It sounded just like the squealing of tires.
“Look out!” the brats shouted, too late.
Frances didn’t feel the impact.
The Banshee had announced another death at Killarney House.
