The Banshee's Walk by Frank Tuttle

boughs seemed unlikely. But what else could she have seen?
    Her Sight. A trick of her Sight. I decided to ask her about that, and right on cue water splashed beyond the door and she spoke.
    “She was there, Mr. Markhat. It weren’t no trick of my Sight. There was a woman sitting up there in a big old oak.”
    I rose. I paced. It’s a bad habit, but having somewhere bigger than my tiny office to pace was just too much of a temptation.
    “Maybe she was picking apples.”
    “It was an oak tree, Mr. Markhat. She wasn’t picking anything. She was watching us. She didn’t think she’d be seen.”
    The dogs had seen. So had Scatter and Lank. And all their reactions to seeing the woman had been to run.
    “What did she look like, Gertriss? Why did the dogs spook, and the kids run?”
    I could tell by the sounds that Gertriss was trying to figure out how to make the tub drain. Finally, there came a gurgling gush of water.
    “She was maybe as tall as Mama, but thin, Mr. Markhat.” Glassware tinkled. “Thin like a bird. Wild hair. She was—well, nude, mostly.”
    I grinned, hearing the obvious blush in her voice.
    “Starkers and up a tree. You’d have thought Scatter and Lank would still be rooted to the spot. But they ran, Gertriss. Tell me why.”
    Gertriss hesitated. That bothered me. I can’t have my eyes and ears editing their truths. Not at one out of every five crowns.
    “Spill it, Gertriss. I’m the boss, remember?”
    She sighed. I could hear a brush being drawn through her hair.
    “She was wearing spider webs, Mr. Markhat. And not many of them. Just dirty spider webs, wrapped around her—her, um, body.”
    “Go on.”
    “She was pale. Deadly pale. Her fingers were long—too long. But her eyes—they were big, too big. And dark and …” she trailed off, looking for words.
    “Scary?” I suggested. “Eldritch? Foreboding? Inflamed?”
    Clothes rustled. Shadows flew beneath her door. Finally, Gertriss herself emerged.
    I’d have to start watching my reactions to Gertriss. Darla would not approve of how my jaw tended to go slack and my eyes fixed themselves on places that were not on the approved list of viewing sites for semi-attached males.
    “They weren’t normal eyes, Mr. Markhat.” She breezed past me, all soap and fresh linen, and sat in the chair across from me. The thick bathrobe, twin to the one hanging in my closet, left her legs bare well above her knees. I shifted my gaze north and forced my mind heavenward.
    “Not normal how, Gertriss?” Inspiration struck. “Look, I know Mama has told you a lot of things about me. One being that I’m pigheaded about accepting advice based on Hog Sight. Maybe that’s true, and maybe it isn’t. But I am asking. And I do want to know.”
    Bingo. Gertriss beamed.
    Everyone likes to think their opinions are sought after.
    “She saw right inside you, when she looked, Mr. Markhat. More than that, when I saw her, she knew it, somehow, and when she looked at me, she…was getting in my head.” She shook her head and shivered, not from any chill in the room. “I know what that sounds like. But it happened. She has something like Sight, but different. Stronger. Older.”
    I nodded. “Did you get a sense she wanted to hurt you?”
    Gertriss shook her head. “I couldn’t make no sense—I couldn’t make any sense out of what I felt,” she said. “Just…one minute, she was way off up in that tree. The next, her face was right in mine.”
    “No wonder Scatter and Lank took off.”
    Gertriss nodded. “No wonder.”
    “All right. So we’ve got a scary witch-woman watching us from the trees. We’ve got equally scary men with crossbows trying to pin us to the trees. And in a little while we’ll sit down to dinner with forty-six strangers and ask them all kinds of rude questions. Then we’ll spend the night watching the haunted forest for signs of mysterious land surveyors. Still glad you got the job?”
    Gertriss managed a laugh. “Beats hog farming.