Demize

Vignette 1: Memorial

‘Did you ever hear the story of the Banshee Doc?’ Cailleach asks as she stretches across the surgery couch. Dr Gruama peers over his murky, wired spectacles as he fiddles with his scarlet tie. His frosty, sapphire eyes lock onto Cailleach’s slurry covered runners as they dig into the dowdy throw.

‘Folks speak of it in Connemara,’ he replies, ‘a myth to be told from the mountain stills to the cattle sheds.’ ‘Ye talk of her, but ye don’t know her!’ Cailleach cries as she shifts upwards against the cushions. ‘It was told to me by my mammy back in the home house. We had no running water back then, had to make our way down to the lough before the morning sermon and school. Cold it was! The sort of cold that drills into your belly, and back then our bellies were often empty until sundown. Mammy used to tell of her to take my mind off the frost. She said that the banshee was born to a giant and a fae just after the glaciers melted, long ago. In those days the giants ruled Éireann, they were the architects of mountain, valley and forest. Banshee’s early years were carefree, even though she didn’t get the same affection as her brothers, but the fae told her that that was how life was.’

Dr Gruama scribbles some notes as Cailleach speaks, occasionally he glances her way, but mostly he listens.

Cailleach’s voice breaks the rhythm of his pen and worn ticking clock.

‘What changed for the Banshee?’ The doctor asks curiously.

‘How do you know something changed?’

‘You referred to her early years as ‘carefree’ as if contrasting those years to her later life,’ Gruama asserts whilst peering down his educated nose. ‘Her youngest brother drank the juice of the toadstool,’ his patient replies as her eyes fill with prickling tears. ‘His blood grew mushrooms, but no one could see them. Their sap churned inside and slowly he withered, even his hair tumbled from its garden, until one day he vanished. Turned into a stone so he did, and that stone stood by his favourite pine tree.’

Vignette 2: Wailing

Cailleach stands up and stretches, she trundles awkwardly to the sink quite uninvited and pours herself a glass of chalky water.

‘That must have been very hard for the banshee,’ Gruama observes, his throat cracking with the effort and his wizened body stiffening in the chair. Cailleach shrugs as she slumps back down onto the couch, wisps of auburn locks slip into her glass as she glugs at the fluid.

‘Life is hard,’ she mutters. ‘I guess everyone would have been sad, but the giant, he was angry. Maybe it was guilt because the giants were looked up to, but he could not solve the riddle of the toadstool. He would disappear into the mountains for days and nights at a time, when he returned to their thatched home his gait would tread a winding path. The fae was sensitive to the airs, a new scent arose, one of fermented herbs and crop. That was when Banshee first heard the wailing.

It was not crying, not like you would expect from a bairn seeking his milk, no. This was a dreadful sound; fear, dread and sorrow, all rolled into one. Sometimes Banshee would hear the wee folk intruding, shattering glasses, breaking wood. Always when the fae would wail. Long, dark days so they were.’

‘Indeed,’ Gruama mutters. He flicks through a file brimming with notes, ‘during our introductory session you asserted that Banshee was a… ‘superhero,’ though it sounds to me like she is anything but.’ Cailleach twiddles with her hair and sighs,

‘Superheroes are made Doc, not born. Don’t you read the funny papers? Peter Parker was bitten by a spider. The venom caused him to change, very Kafka.’ Gruama raises an eyebrow and Cailleach splits her

lips into a sly smile. ‘I like to read.’

Gruama’s eyes pierce Cailleach’s hazel pools, the clock ticks.

‘Continue, please,’ he coughs.

‘The Banshee’s life changed. School slipped away, the sermons slipped away. The fae disappeared into the shelter of a morose melancholy. Banshee took on the role of mother for an entire winter. Finally, the fae rose from her slumber and the giant disappeared.’ ‘Was there a stone left where he had stood?’ Grauma queries, a knowing eyebrow raising as he speaks. ‘NO!’ Cailleach barks, ‘but the old well by Lough Conn was covered and Banshee and her siblings were told never to venture down that particular path again.’

Vignette 3: Mourning

Cailleach leans down to her feet and unties her laces again before tying them into a tighter knot. ‘Did the banshee start wailing after the giant vanished?’

‘No, but she felt guilty I think.’

‘Why?’

‘She was relieved. There was a time of peace where she would tend the fields and milk the cattle. Even fell in love, she had reached that age I suppose. Blinded by the soft mountain dew and the false adoration in his eyes. He wore a mask; can you imagine Doc? A giant wearing a mask. But it was a subtle one mind. No one saw it, not even Banshee, not with those rosetinted glasses of hers. He picked the mint leaves to mask the aroma of fermented spices and stayed away when the darkness came. It was a hot summer the year she married; the sun’s vicious glow sprayed the fields with a blood-red hue. Once the bells had rung and a new hearth was built did she change.’

Cailleach’s breathing deepens and she takes a moment to stabilise herself. ‘Her pretty frocks were discarded, and she adopted a sombre, ebony attire to match her eyes. Somethings even powder can’t cover. People didn’t speak of it, not back then. Not even now, I guess. The parishes were much like they are today; farms all spread out, no one heard anything with the screeching winds that burst up from the ocean. No one saw anything as they chose not to and although everyone gossiped about the faes and the banshees no one ever mentioned the transgressions of the giants, after all they were revered as architects.’ ‘Did she love him?’ Gruama asks, his curious eyes fixed on his patient.

‘She thought she did at the time, young she was, but not foolish. He walked a crooked path like her father. The giants would meet at the stills, and their roars would be heard across the valleys. Banshee tried her best Doc, honest she did. She tried to be a humble wife, she tried to appease his every whim, but those whims became more aggressive, and other giants

expected the same devout submission from her.’

Cailleach stands, her held slightly raised, and marches to Gruama’s desk lifting up a pencil, ‘that’s when it happened. Something snapped.’ She breaks the implement in two and drops it. ‘Maybe it was wrath, maybe it was excruciating pain. Only Banshee knows how she felt that day if she can even remember. One thing is for sure, another giant was vanquished, and another well was covered. No one asked questions, it wasn’t unusual for giants to travel elsewhere in search of a fine frock. Banshee was already wearing black, and mourning suited her. That night she went to her

brother’s stone by the home house and wailed for the first time.’

Vignette 4: Béar Neidí

‘This could be what we call a ‘trigger’ Cailleach,’ Gruama snorts, ‘the incident that causes a personality or character change.’ Cailleach looks up at him, her chin tilted and her lips momentarily pursed. ‘I don’t know about that Doc, what I do know is Banshee ate from the wild vine and what left her brother’s stone that day was not the creature that came to wail. Under the sun’s disdain she took the blazing red flower and scorched the earth around her marital hearth. Though the black dissipated from her eyes, her costume was literally set in stone, a black cat suit. Her hair changed from red to black and it complimented her. Even her broomstick was black.’

Gruama chuckles under his breath, ‘a few normal traumas and she evolves into a superhero? It all sounds a little far-fetched. This fantasy that you continue to embellish is just that Cailleach, a fantasy to suppress your own problems.’ ‘Doubt it!’ The woman snipes.

‘I shall prove it to you, most superheroes have a sidekick, don’t they? Batman and Robin, Hellboy and Abe, yet this banshee is all alone, and seemingly without purpose.’

‘Doc, I’m no scholar but aren’t you supposed to listen? See if you’re putting words into my mouth aren’t you actively interfering with the narrative, and therefore my perception?’ Gruama chokes on his port and brandy.

‘I am merely trying to ground you Cailleach,’ he huffs.

Chimes ring out as the hour passes. ‘But you are absolutely correct. Banshee had a purpose, and her purpose led to her partner in obliterating crime. Her purpose was engraved on her very soul, save the meek. Protect the innocent. She travelled from parish to parish on her broomstick, they called her a ‘blow in’ or ‘drifter.’ She would stay just long enough to see the injustices, there were still giants to vanquish, and they took on many forms. In their wake came the leprechauns that took the bairns right from their cribs citing some abstract reason mostly blaming the fae’s who did not have a hearth in place. Banshee’s superpower was knowing and seeing. Hearing the cries of the wounded as they melded with the sea’s screams.

It was by the Blarney Stone that she met Béar Neidí, he was a drifter, but had drifted across tide. He did not differentiate between the parishioners who wore green hats and those wore white, nor did he tolerate the architects who created a feudal system between the two. First night became first light, for both of them. There they married, not by pompous ceremony but by the pressing of palm’s blood, and he took the broomstick’s helm.’

Vignette 5: Demize

‘And what of the super villain?’ Gruama asks as he puffs smog over his spectacles and wipes them with a used handkerchief, ‘where is their nemesis? Where is Bane or Scarecrow?’ He slides the glasses back up his nose and squints, ‘surely all superheroes have an archenemy beyond the usual petty crime? Keeping Gotham safe is just a side-story, isn’t it? An undercurrent to the real battle?’ Cailleach grunts. ‘Right again Doc, there is always a villain. Demize, that’s what Béar Neidí and Bansheebear called him. Superheroes yes, imaginative with names, not so much.’

‘Demize, an angel of death, or a demon. No one could say for sure, but his penchant for scarlet suggested the latter. A veritable grim reaper to say the least, no real motive for destroying the faes of the land, I think he just liked the power to watch the light fade from their eyes. Clever too, whatever the contrasts supervillains and superheroes complement each other in intelligence and resolve. Neither can be reasoned with or convinced to stray from their path, and when one is pitted against the other it is a matter of brains over brawn. Demize was perhaps one of the most formidable foes ever encountered in the depths of any page.’

The clock chokes out more arid ticks and Grauma lights his pipe. An air of smoke wisps into the streams of light that seep through the partially closed shutters. ‘How did he destroy the faes?’ He asks his client, slightly intrigued.

‘That was a conundrum, a riddle entwined in an enigma. It was Béar Neidí who first suggested the use of a clever disguise to fool his victims, after all there were never any signs of a struggle, only the crimson hue of his presence and the deep empathy experienced by our intrepid superheroes, both blessed and cursed with the changing mood of sensing and living various states of emotion. Our two bears. I have a riddle for you Doc, you’re in a cabin, both windows face south and a bear walks by. What colour is the bear?’

‘White,’ the doctor chirps as if he has won the Nobel

Prize. ‘It is a polar bear.’

‘Correct,’ Cailleach states, her head held high and her eyes glaring down her nose at him. ‘The two bears fuelled our heroes’ powers, gave them an edge. They could operate at all hours, alert and stealthy. Their ability to read others directing their conjoined gaze. The two were one, and the whole much greater than the sum of its parts.’ The woman smirks, ‘and yet they still had to fight Demize, it is always written that way.

The inevitable must come.’

‘You seem to be uncomfortable Cailleach, you’re fidgeting.

‘Yes, would you mind if I used the bathroom Doc. I have been sitting here for a good while.’

‘Yes of course,’ he flicks a finger towards the door,

‘just inside the entrance hall.’

‘Thanks Doc, won’t be a minute.’

Vignette 6: Tackling the Bear

Gruama jumps as Cailleach returns throwing the door wide and hard so that it shudders against the wall. ‘Do you want to know how Bansheebear and Demize’s

first fight went down?’ ‘Go ahead,’ Gruama growls.

‘The scourging lash of decrepit wind alleviated little as a storm driven cry reverberated soaring to an ascending crescendo atop the summit of winter born mount Croagh Patrick,’ Cailleach leaps to her feet and encircles the doctor as she spills her elaborate and excited rhetoric. ‘Sullen in regard, an uncaring witness to the onslaught of mortal trappings and combat’s strife. Motionless in time, yet ever evolving in an incessant dance of the landscape’s trudge. Winter and its bleak entourage adorned this never watchful audience of stone and bed of ancient woodland. Inaudible applause mocking both combatants. Devoid and unsympathetic to both potential victors, and prospects of the defeated.’ She softens her voice into a cadence.

Gruama shifts uncomfortably as his client rounds on him again,

‘Demize spared little and wasted less on the arbitral rhetoric so often employed by the forebears of his kind. Contented to meat out the brutality of his abhorrence against weeping flesh. Survival was not the hand envisaged this day.

His garments, held together by the crimson veil and signet of the undying Badb Brotherhood. A shrouded menace, garnished with the untethered remnants of feather and bone. Bansheebear’s own sanguineous offerings hidden in blackened leather about her being, standing as a scarlet enhancement to his own vastitudes.

Shunned. Ashamed in banishment; a member of downcast and bereft Brethren, dwindling in number, but never deadened in unsanctified and vengeful resolve. She would pay the price of her unholy birth.

Her mere being an abomination to the unholy sect.

Taloned, unforgiving, and articulated, the weapons used to begin such dispensation; a verdict he deemed worthy. The suffering great. A sentence of attrition, as her body was torn, thrown, and beaten across the iced summit and unforgiving bark of the lowly woodlands.

Savagery given license upon her skin. Slow. Deliberate. Meticulous in malice. Her strikes and parries easily predicted and countered. Yet, no plea for mercy ever given. Little consequence in the mind of Demize. His sermon of hatred for her kind continued. Limp in body…’ Cailleach pauses for effect, ‘not in will, she was alighted and pinned amongst the treetops. The final cadence in carnage to be dispensed. Her as yet, unrealised soul to be banished into the waiting arms of oblivion. Her becoming

reduced to the realms of non-realisation.’

‘Calm yourself Cailleach,’ the doctor urges with a whisper, but she continues to strive forth, ‘The implement untethered from his waste, raptor’s claws, had now served their slow purpose. Slithering about its own coils as the steel whip was readied to decapitate her. Ethereal and elemental, his entity pulsated with the vortices of forgotten and antediluvian magic. The strike would be swift,’ her voice reaches a crescendo before softening, ‘the draw slow. But it never came! Anguish driven on the back of agony had served ill effect to his purpose. Serving only to unlock that which was to be destroyed.

Demize was thrown back in a torrent of reverberation and shearing power, dispersing the reddened cloak and maelstrom of forbidden sorcery that previously engulfed him. He regained his senses only to be met with the absence of her being. In her place,

Bansheebear had left one resounding thought; Demize had failed in a mundane task, punishment from his order, swift. The fledgling Necromancer would suffer for the negligence and afront.’

Vignette 7: Dropping Nouns

Cailleach catches her breath and seats herself in the chair opposite Gruama, her hands folded in her lap, one leg crossed over the other.

‘That is my first edition,’ she quips, ‘of course it is not the last.’

‘It is very… extravagant Cailleach,’ Gruama states, mopping his brow with the over-used handkerchief. ‘Almost surreal, like you have rehearsed it.’ ‘Many times, Doc, many times. Usually whilst looking in the mirror of course, practising my expressions. By the way, most people call me ‘Cal.’’

‘Yes, Cailleach is a most unusual name. I must look up its meaning sometime.’ His eyes shift to the clock, ‘out of curiosity how do Bansheebear and Béar Neidí

defeat their foe?’

Cailleach lets out a thoughtful hum. ‘Problem is Doc I have two endings, all good narratives have two endings, then its down to the audience to decide what is real and what is not. Often the perceived chasm between reality and mythology is negligible. It is all about how the reader interprets the message, does he take things literally, or does he take things metaphorically. Truth be told it doesn’t matter either way as long as the underlying message is clear.’ ‘He?’ Gruama echoes.

‘’He?’

‘Yes, you said ‘he,’ I wonder why you perceive the readership as masculine?’

‘He, she, doesn’t really matter now does it?’ Cailleach diverts. ‘What matters is the fight that followed the first…’ The doctor emits an involuntary eyeroll but allows her to proceed.

‘Peaceful day break touched the pearly grey of mysterious manmade objects, long-lost comrades. A stark contrast to the cloaked figures circling each other along the circumference of the ring. Eyes locked. Purpose set. A confrontation renewed as one advanced on the other. Furious in step and speed, they engaged. No sparing thought to the significance of their battle ground. The only goal, destroy the other at any cost. The monolithic audience of Lough Gur stone observed, silently.’ Cailleach scratches her hairline.

‘Time and history were not diminished as the creature Bansheebear landed the first blow. Her fist, once naïve and untrained, honed to lethal precision and power. Demize, in his pride and vaulted stature, received the onslaught with incredulous revelation. The Abomination had gleaned much since their last encounter. Undying flesh became cast against unforgiving stone. The Necromancer could do little to dissolve the force and fury that she administered. Her advance continued as his own senses fought to regain footing.

Fleeing to regain composure, his spectral form shifted and vanished. Ultimately, it coalesced behind the observant monoliths of rock. Peering for sight of his unforgiving prey, met only by the advancing touch of midsummer’s rays within this druidic arena. She had vanished?!’ Cailleach creeps past the clunking clock.

‘Stressful patience ensues at her notable absence. His anxiety soon rewarded! She appeared behind him. The attempt to take ethereal form only met with the resounding blast of her feral cry. Neolithic stone, once unbreakable; shook, cracked and yielded against the force of her ever rising crescendo. His body, the recipient of her vociferous melody, near broken. How sweet her song had become. How vile his arrogance had grown. Bansheebear’s wail, rivalled only by that of an ancient bear…’

Vignette 8: Anagnorisis

Gruama raises his hand,

‘I have heard enough Cailleach. Let me tell you my interpretation of your story, if you don’t mind?’ ‘Go ahead Doc, I’m all ears,’ his client laughs.

‘The banshee is a symbol, a representation of yourself. Your mother was a fae, in your mind, gentle and sweet. Your father, and other men in your life, appeared to you as giants, strong, aggressive, and latterly drunk, except of course your brother who died of cancer. Stop me if I am wrong…’

‘I’ll wait!’

‘You suspect that your mother killed your abusive father, just as you killed your abusive husband and then fled. Since then, you and your vagrant boyfriend…’

‘Husband!’

‘Boyfriend!! Have travelled from town-to-town concocting elaborate stories for attention, and no doubt, money. You suspect that you both have some underlying condition and have come to me to get back on track. I presume you believe everything that passes between us is confidential?’

‘There are many secrets between a doctor and his patient.’

Gruama fingers through an Irish dictionary, ‘not always Cal, if a life is in danger then the oath does not stand.’

‘I never admitted anything Doc!’ ‘It was implied, and I must take that into consideration.’ He stops on a particular page, ‘Cailleach, Irish for… ‘Witch.’ Just as I suspected, you see yourself as Bansheebear.’ Cailleach remains unmoved, her steely eyes fixed on the doctor. ‘Wow, you read all that into a story told to me by my mother. Guess she must have been psychic?’ ‘I very much doubt that Cal. I presume that’s a pseudonym, after all you can’t risk losing your

anonymity, not with whatever your track record may be.’

‘Mammy named me Cailleach, she told me never to go to the well because the banshee wailed from the

forests on either side.’

Cailleach lights a cigarette and casually reclines in her chair,

‘but tell me Doc, who is Demize?’

‘You mean was?’

‘I mean is. I never said Bansheebear defeated him. They fought across mount and monolith alike, but she never defeated him. Your kryptonite is that you do not listen. You hear but you simply do not listen. No empathy, just words for interpretation. The final battle is always one of wit and intellect, and I never told you how he destroyed the fae, the women he targeted.’

‘Why do you say targeted if he has not been defeated?’ Gruama asks as he fidgets awkwardly in his tightening chair.

‘Why don’t you ask how he kills his victims?’ ‘How?’ Gruama asks, his hand slightly trembling as he relights his pipe.

‘He targets special cases, widows, spinsters, hermits, women who live in isolation, for they shall not be missed. He attends to them in disguise, a kind, caring visitor…’

‘No one suspects him,’ Béar Neidí adds as he opens and steps through the doorway. ‘No one ever suspects Demize. You mentioned Bane, but I’m thinking Doctor Octopus,’ he scratches at the ginger flecks in his black beard. ‘Dr Demize, I like it Bansheebear. No one notices the kindly doctor as he weedles his way in, no one questions the absence of a shadow, and no one notices the fae’s absence for a good while. By that time the Morpheus essence has abandoned her system. Heart failure, or some such poorly examined excuse. No one questions an upstanding giant, an architect of the valley. Gruama, Irish for grim as in the reaper. No one inhibits a doctor in his duties.’

‘And,’ Bansheebear interjects, ‘when the still gets a little hot you simply relocate under another guise.’ Demize lurches towards his medical bag but the younger and stealthier Béar Neidí kicks the weapon from his grasp. Bansheebear stops the ricocheting bag with her foot and throws open the lid, therein lies the Morpheus syringes. She wrenches one from its holding. Béar Neidí grasps Demize in a headlock and Bansheebear injects the Morpheus serum.

Demize awakens. His lower half numb with the frosty kiss of deep waters. He looks up at the encircling brick work. An eclipse steadily morphs into being above, ‘I was wrong about one thing,’ Bansheebear yells down to him, her voice echoing from the deep, inhospitable walls, ‘Bansheebear returned home once more.’ As the lid is heaved across the truth dawns on Demize, he reaches down into the grim waters and wrenches up the cold, piercing stare of a giant. Clutching the skull in his hands he cries,

‘You have not seen the last of me, YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE LAST OF ME! I shall return.’ His voice drops to a whisper as the darkness enshrouds him, ‘I shall return.’

Two beings cloaked in black climb onto a shining ebony Kawasaki. The starter is kicked and the engine hums. Bansheebear places a pair of wired spectacles into the container to her rear. There it sits amongst a collection of items; a monocle, two pipes, a signet ring, a man’s wedding ring, two caps, and her father’s decanter. She slams the lid shut, winds her arms around Béar Neidí and slides her leg over the engraved model name, ‘Broomstick.’ Her hand grips at her hairline and she flicks off the auburn wig revealing a cascade of ebony locks. Béar Neidí looks down at her leg,

‘Broomstick or boomstick baby?’ He quips. The bike lurches forward, the front wheel raises slightly, and as the dusk pulsates with a blood-red hue they vanish into the night.