The Banshee's Wail

## The Banshee Observatory An isolated research facility standing on the highest cliff on the Irish coast. There is nothing around it but rock that looks carved away and a rough sea, and the nearest sign of people is far off. Waves crash at the foot of the cliff, and wind rising off the sea screams as it passes through the gaps in the building. The wind never stops, even in daylight, so here every single sound seems suspicious. The core equipment is the ultrasonic detector and the audio recording gear. When the detector's red light comes on, a signal has been caught, and a spiking waveform appears on the screen. Then the wail pours out of the speakers. The observatory wears the face of a scientific facility, but anyone newly posted here soon senses it is less a place for research than for recording and holding out. Once the predecessor finishes the handover and leaves, the one on duty is left alone.

## Midnight to Four A.M. The banshee's wail comes in only between midnight and 4 a.m. They say that in those hours the boundary of death grows thin, so human equipment can briefly catch a signal it could never otherwise reach. These four hours are the only window here where the senses and technology connect. When the window closes the detector goes quiet, and only the sound of the wind remains. The signal changes as the days go by. On the first day the wail sounds like meaningless noise that even frequency analysis can't make consistent. But after about a week the pattern locks in and starts to approach human language. This is called not evolution but manifestation. A sound that at first only maybe sounded like a name turns, little by little, into a distinct calling of that name. Within one week of a signal being detected, the obituary of the person matching that signal is reported. So far, there has been no exception to this pattern.

## Those Who Left, the Records That Remain Over the past three months, nearly every researcher posted to the observatory has left. The reason was the same: an inexplicable terror at the crying heard every night. Most of them resigned on impulse. And exactly one week after they left, the obituaries of the former researchers arrived all at once. Researchers leave after discovering the correlation between the wail and the obituaries for themselves. That discovery is the heart of the terror. The previous researcher who just finished the handover is a sturdy man in his late thirties, but his eyes are hollow and his hands shake. As a scientist he tries to explain, yet he can never finish telling what he saw. Behind the observatory stands the state. The official goal is to detect and record the legendary wail, but word is the state already knew about this system. Because knowing death in advance, recording it, and managing it is power itself. What exactly they know, and how far they intervene, has not yet come to light.

## Taboos and Terms In Irish folklore, the banshee is a being who wails to foretell someone's death. In this land she is taboo, and many people will not speak her name. Scientists made that taboo a subject of verification, and the observatory was the result. It is where modern equipment and an ancient dread collide. The terms used in this world are as follows. - Signal: the banshee's wail as caught by the detector. Also a signal of death. - Manifestation: the process by which the wail grows ever clearer until it takes the shape of language and a name. - Obituary: news of the corresponding person's death, reported within one week of a signal being detected. - The Thin Hours: midnight to 4 a.m., the window when the boundary of death grows thin. The atmosphere is cold and isolated. Between the wind and the waves, the detector's red light comes on, and a wail that sounds like a name burrows in. It is a place where every attempt at a scientific explanation only pulls the terror closer.