Chapter 1 - Eliora
When people see me, they scream, but never louder than I.
They pray to the almighty God that they never will witness my haunting and that they never will have to hear my wails of death. If it were all up to me, even I would banish myself into the fiery hell and burn in a way that when the potent fire finally died out, there would not even be a speck of dust left to authenticate my existence, but evidently, the wishes we wish on dandelions do nothing but cause an allergic reaction.
Some may mistake me for an exhilarating young female, with stormy gray eyes and alluring oreo brown hair. It isn’t until they come closer that they see the tatters on my smokey grey dress and the bloody tears that my eyes regularly shed, that they begin to run in the opposite direction. Of course, by that time, their fate of death is too significant to be overlooked. This is the part where they plead and beg and cry for mercy, quoting that they would lie, cheat, beg, and scratch all the thorns off roses if I would just grant them their lives. When I wouldn’t, or more accurately, couldn’t, they would call me a monster full of sinfulness. If only they ever looked a little closer.
I didn’t want to be the thing who vanquished the life out of people I didn’t even know, but that’s what I was created to do. When I was murdered, a great curse was cast upon me, making me the strongest creature in the world and yet damaged beyond repair. Letting me walk and see and feel as though I was alive albeit being dead. It was such a curse that not even the cruelest of the cruelest deserved, but that’s what a curse is- living without hope and never dying. the worst part of it all though wasn’t their pleas, which broke me, or my screams, which killed them; it was the fact that at the very same time, both them, human, and I, monster, were craving a destiny we couldn’t have.
It is no secret that I am the banshee lurking through the woods with a lost heart and no place to begin searching for it.
Today was January twenty-third. Or at least I think so. My feet were bare, but not cold, and the ends of my hair had bits of remaining frost trapped in it from the night. My eyes were crying blood, but my visage was lax, emotionless. I was long past emotion, but two hundred and eighty years of unwanted tasks could do that to you. However, my tears will dry, and pain always drowns, and the world continues to spin on its axis whether I am happy or not. I had taken a life yesterday, and there was no doubt that I would be taking one today. Another person’s soul would be plucked from their hands against their own will. Their being would be ripped from their families, and their name would be nothing more than a distant and painful memory to a selected few people. If they were lucky, perhaps their tombstone wouldn’t even crumble.
My throat ached, but I hardly took notice of it. Screaming each night to the point where it causes death to the victims exhausts the vocal cords in a way that not any paranormal healer could fix, but the pain was my only constant; A reminder that my shadow wasn’t the only thing keeping me company. There once was a time when I had not yet grown accustomed to the pain, and my hands would grasp at my throat in an attempt to protect it from any harm; just like a mother bear protecting her cubs. I used to believe that the agony was worse torture than being a banshee itself, but that was like saying that the making of a bomb was worse than the actual explosion.
I wiped the side of my right thumb across my cheekbones, smearing the bloody tears all over my face as I picked myself up from my spot against a tree. I knew the temperature was well below negative, but there wasn’t a single goose-bump on my arm. A puff of smoke didn’t even appear in front of my mouth when I let out a sigh.
“Caleb Egan...” The name seared across my mind as a shooting star would charge through a night sky. I briefly shut my eyes and scrunched up my face in sorrow, as that would be the name of the man I would kill tonight. Like a soldier from a long-lost war, I turned slowly but surely in the direction where I would find Caleb Egan. Even after two hundred and eighty years of executing the same routine, I still wasn’t sure how I knew the exact direction of my next victim. I guess it’s because I don’t know where I’m going, so it doesn’t matter which course I chose. I head South- East, the feeling of rightness overpowering me. Caleb Egan. I liked that name in a way I couldn’t explain, the same way Alfred Wegener couldn’t explain continental drift.
The name made me smile in a way that it steadied and stirred me all at once, and that made me afraid. In fact, within a matter of minutes, I was so afraid that even though I knew I was the hunter in these woods, I felt like the prey, and I didn’t even know why.
Weaving through the trees like I do every other day, I let the ground bite my feet and the wind scratch my skin. The thin trees and the fog were a haunting sight, even to me, and I found myself closing my eyes every so often to block out the howls of the viscose wolves who would later claim the moon tonight. Wow. Is this what omnipotence was supposed to feel like?
