Good evening, it's Spooky Boo Rhodes from Sandcastle, California. I hope you had a wonderful St. Patrick's Day and you were out drinking green stuff and eating your corned beef and cabbage. For Sandcastle, we always have a big party here celebrating the fae, the leprechauns, and the pooka as well as the Irish Catholic and the Shamrocks. Back in the day, the High King of Ireland Brian Boru who, according to our ancestry file, is supposedly one of my relatives, tamed the pooka by creating a special bridle that used three hairs of the Pooka's tail. But more on that later. Tonight we have other tales of Irish lore for you!
The story Irish Locket can be found in my collection of horror stories in paperback and Kindle or a signed copy of the paperback by visiting www.scarystorytime.com/sandcastle.
Now let's begin...
Banshee Go Braghby MakRalston
The gent behind the bar hollered, “Sit anywhere ya please,” but Shannon didn’t hear him — rather, she couldn’t hear him. It wasn’t called ‘The Clangy Clover’ for shits and giggles, but a grouping of drunkies and a roaring fire just beneath a window still being weaved in streaks of rainwater wasn’t the reason why. Shannon couldn’t hear at all. She was deaf, but she didn’t need to be told to ‘sit anywhere she pleased’, she could do that all on her own.
“You’re a yank, ain’t ya?” The gent behind the bar now wasn’t, he was standing beside her at the little booth tucked just beneath the windowsill, aside the fireplace. That fire had caught her attention with all it’s crackling and popping like a tiny fireworks show, and she didn’t look up at him until the menu and napkins slid across her table. She made a face somewhere between a smile and a grimace and motioned with her hand as if she were writing on invisible paper that was floating in the air. The gent was confused at first but reached into his apron and pulled out a measly green pen. She nodded fervently, took it, and on one of the napkins scribbled something. She turned it to face him.
I’m deaf.
The gent raised two brows and nodded down at her, “Can ya read lips?” He said it like a tourist trying to talk to a native outside of their native tongue. Fortunately for him, she nodded.
“By the luck o’ the Irish,” he said, and he pointed over to the sign labeled ‘specials’ and smiled. It certainly was a ‘special’ day for some, that being it was the Feast of Saint Patrick, March 17th, and the list of the day’s options reflected that: corned beef, cabbage, colcannon, boxties, and stew, all of which were typical there, yet for a yank from the states it was just about as festive as having a leprechaun being shoved up your ass.
Shannon took a quick glance at the sign and began jotting, and not a moment later the napkin read, plainly:
Stew.
The gent nodded but before he could turn around, she grabbed the napkin and wrote something else.
No onions.
“We make it in a crock,” he said, “so I can’t go and give ya no onion. Besides, who the feck doesn’t like onion in their stew? That’s a crock.”
She smiled up at him and nodded understandingly.
“Ya still want it?” he asked.
She made a knocking motion with her hand and nodded alongside it, and the gent meandered into the kitchen. Shannon sat silently, cleared her throat after a sharp cough, and looked around the place. Clearly, there was some kind of music playing — she couldn’t damn well hear it, but the fella at the booth behind her was tapping his toe pretty hardily in 6/8 time. She smiled. A couple of guys were clinking their pints at the bar, a bearded one shuffling a deck of cards, and just behind him, a woman danced a soft jig.
“Here’s that stew,” the gent said, setting it just before her at the table, “I tried me damnedest to get a scoop with no onion. Tell me how ya like it.”
She pressed her fingers to her chin and lowered them down at him before lifting the spoon out of the bowl and swallowing a nip. It was nice and warm, much like the place she had found herself in on such a cold, wintry night, and it was rather heavy on the potatoes, yet obviously, she expected as much. She grabbed the pen and napkin and wrote again.
It’s good.
“I thought ya’d like it,” the gent smiled, flashing a set of yellowed teeth. “It’s me Mammy’s re-“
He was about to go on when a single, shrill wail from just beyond the rain-pattered window brought him to silence. It was almost so faint that he couldn’t even hear it, but when the same scream, still muffled by the glass but clearly closer now, rang through the joint again, he froze. And though he could peer out into the night, he couldn’t see anything. Shannon continued to look up at him with bewilderment and lifted both of her hands from her chest; the single, silver spoon dangling from between her thumb and fingers like a cigar.
He looked from beyond the window back down at her but couldn’t speak. His heart, too, was thumping in 6/8 time, and he was about to ask her if she had heard it, but already knew her answer, and a quick glance around the place answered the second question on his mind.
“I-it’s me Mammy’s recipe,” he finished, spitting it out like the plague. He was about to walk away but his knees grew weak, nearly buckling, so he sat down across from her at the booth and dug the scruff of his chin into his knuckles, which were worn and smelled of Guinness. The pub, which only seconds earlier was coddled in the warmth of the crackling fire, was now chilled as the night outside. At least, to him.
Now seated across from the man, Shannon stared the stranger dead in the eyes as she wrote something else on the same dinner napkin, freshly smeared in beer broth and lipstick.
What’s wrong?
The gent shook his head and looked around the place — everyone was going about laughing and drinking and dancing as usual. No one else had heard the scream.
“Shite,” the gent said, hushed under his intoxicated breath. He turned back to face the woman, but his attention was drawn to the large clump of matted hair floating in her stew. Something beneath it was bubbling, and the once-gravy-brown color of the broth was now a deep red that reeked like rusted metal. He was about to gag just as the hair began to sink back into the contents of the bowl, and that’s when the ghastly white face of a woman emerged from the bubbling broth, her mouth wide and filled with the same gurgling suds. She was screaming.
The gent was too.
From around the pub, several glances were made in the man’s direction, however considering the occasion, and the reputation of such a place as ‘The Clangy Clover’, a bit of hollering wasn’t going to surprise anyone, aside from maybe a couple of tourists dressed in all green and sticking out like a sore thumb in the opposite corner. Men had been killed for wearing such a shade.
Another glance down at the bowl and the face was gone, replaced once again with the woman’s stew, still steaming. The woman, whom he’d later come to know as Shannon, hadn’t noticed the entire ordeal, though her face was flushed off all its once-inviting, warm color as if she had. She was staring out through the hazy window, and if Irish eyes could smile, hers were most definitely shouting. When he saw that awful expression on her face, the gent lightly grasped her shoulder and she jolted at the touch.
“Gather yourself,” he said. She puffed four rapid breaths, coughed into her sleeve, and placed her hand over her heart until she calmed. “You aight?” She nodded and grabbed the pen.
There’s someone out there.
“Who?” He was staring at her like he was shooting darts. She wrote.
A woman.
“Was she screamin’?” he asked. Shannon swallowed and lifted the pen again, more hesitantly than before.
I don’t know.
“Why?” the gent asked.
The Headless Banshee.jpgShe didn’t have a head.
The gent combed his scraggly, gray hair with his hands, which were now trembling. He reached into his apron pocket again, the same one which once housed the little green pen, and pulled out a small bottle of Jameson. He chugged it. Meanwhile, as he did, the woman reached for her spoon — she had well lost her appetite, but she supposed there was some sort of comfort to be found in a hot meal.
“Don’t,” the man said. She couldn’t hear him, so he waved his hands at her, and when they locked eyes he said again, “Don’t.” She grabbed the napkin.
Why?
“Onion,” he croaked, and for a second was relieved by the sound of his own laughter, until it turned into a fit of coughing. She wasn’t laughing, though. And, again, she lifted the napkin.
Why?
The gent sighed, “Why’re ya here?”
Shannon stared at him silently and then lifted the napkin once more. This time, she held it up for longer.
“I can read,” the man said, “I’ll answer that when ya answer me: why’re ya here?”
She took the napkin and, still looking at him, scribbled something.
Looking for someone.
The gent attempted to suck whatever he could from the empty Jameson bottle and was only met with the fumes of a liquor ghost, “Who?” She wrote.
Family.
“You’ve got family in the Emerald Isle? Your clan?”
She wrote again, this time on the back (since the front was nearly covered).
My parents.
“Your parents?” he said, clearing his throat with a chuckle, “What’re they doin’ in Ireland?” She was already answering his question, and as she wrote she nearly choked on her own spit. She was sick, clearly, and that fair skin of hers which he assumed was from Irish blood might’ve been another tell-tale sign of that.
That’s what I’m trying to find out.
The gent nodded and pushed the bowl from between them to the end of the table, glancing out the window again. The rain had stopped, and just before he was about to sigh, a flash of lighting and the immediate crack of thunder rolled through the place, not that it would shut any of
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The original Spooky Boo's Scary Story Time telling spooky, scary stories since 2016. Here you'll find true scary stories, fiction stories, urban legends, creepypasta, and other tall tales from the darkest corners of the internet.
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