Midnight Cry
“All right, here we go,” she said to herself. Her whispers were unheard by the despairing family in the house below her, gathered in huddles around the main bed where Lord Edwin Carlisle Montmoran was soon to die. They were all terribly upset about it, or at least they put on a good show, since they weren’t entire sure how Lord Montmoran had disposed of his affairs. Nobody wanted to be left out due to a lack of appropriately demonstrative mourning.
Up on the roof of the great house, she gathered herself for the duty. It was her first time at it, and she didn’t want to get it wrong. “Especially since Siobhan is watching,” she thought unhappily to herself. Of all the possible choices to be her mentor, of course it was her older sister. Siobhan would take points off if she felt you weren’t in the right key.
The wind began to rise, blowing her white hair wildly about. An unfortunate hazard of the job, she knew, but regrettable: she had spent no little time trying to make it look nice. Well, everything passes, she thought, and decided to keep that thought fixed in her mind as she rose from the roof into the sky.
It was just about time now. The wind rose more and more into a howling gale, a terrible green light flashed and flickered, and below in the bedroom Lord Montmoran gasped through his final moments. “Okay,” she said to herself, “Here we go!”
With that she threw back her head, and let loose with an almighty piercing cry of “WHOOOOONK.”
“Oh, shite,” said the banshee. “Siobhan’s gonna kill me over this.”
This story was written for the Short Story category of the Lunar Awards contest by
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