Jack was in Kerry enjoying his annual holiday.
As the day bled into a soft Irish dusk, Jack began to have second thoughts about his decision to go hiking in the hills of County Kerry by himself. Every sound, once familiar, was now filtered through the old tales his Granny used to tell by the turf fire when he was younger. His logical mind was losing ground to a deeper, more superstitious part of himself.
At first, it was just the wind—a harmless whisper sliding through the gorse and tall grass. But as the shadows lengthened and the purple heather turned to black, the whisper grew teeth. It became the soft, relentless padding of unseen footsteps, but also something more: a faint, rhythmic rustle, like the dragging of old shrouds. It put Jack in mind of the Sluagh Sí, the host of the unforgiven dead, said to fly in from the west to carry away the souls of the dying.
He increased his pace, the name of the phenomenon uncoiling in his mind like a cold mist.
Then came a single crack of a twig, sharp as a gunshot in the quiet. Jack’s mind, armed with his Granny’s stories, offered explanations he didn’t want: a púca shapeshifter, or worse, the two small eyes he imagined glinting from the hedgerow—first gold, then red, then a sickly, unearthly green.
A low moan drifted across the valley as the wind funnelled through a rocky pass. It wasn’t the wind to Jack anymore. His imagination, steeped in lore, filled the gaps effortlessly. It was a woman. She was keening. The sound was too melodic, too full of a deliberate, ancient grief to be anything but the Banshee. It seemed to wrap around his name, pulling it into her lament, a lost voice carried from a place the living didn’t go.
He tried humming a Pogues tune to drown it out, but the melody shook with his uneven breath.
By the time he reached the fork in the path, night had fallen completely. The landscape had become a giant inkblot, shapes shifting as his torch flickered. Jack’s terror now had a specific form. He didn’t just imagine tall figures; he imagined the funeral procession of the Sluagh Sí—pale, wraith-like forms gliding just beyond his torch’s reach, carrying an empty shroud meant for a soul not yet collected. Each time he blinked, they seemed to drift a little closer, their silent march steady and inescapable.
“Get a grip, ya eejit,” he whispered to himself, the familiar Irish chastisement doing little to steady the quiver in his voice.
Finally, he crested the last hill, and the sight below washed his fears clean: the warm, electric glow of Killarney, tiny and comforting, a defiant scatter of golden light pushing back against the ancient dark.
With every step toward home, the imagined horrors melted back into the rational world. The phantom footsteps became the wind again. The glowing eyes became dew on leaves catching a distant light. The Banshee’s keen returned to the low, familiar sigh of the countryside settling into night.
By the time Jack reached his cottage door, he managed a shaky laugh. He wasn’t in danger. He wasn’t being shadowed by the Host. He wasn’t being called by a death omen.
He’d simply spent too much time alone with the one creature capable of conjuring the old world from the shadows—
His own mind, stocked from childhood with the ghosts of Ireland.
And as he closed the door behind him, the bolt sliding home with a comforting thunk, Jack promised himself one thing:
Next time, he’d bring a friend.
Or at the very least…
a bigger torch, and a flask of whiskey strong enough to quiet both the wind— and his Granny’s stories.
