THE KEENING:
The patriarch of an old irish family is dying -- or so it seems, from the family banshee's wails. He himself seems healthy, & does not believe that the rest of the family hears the wails -- which the family takes as evidence that he is the one who will die, since a family banshee can only be heard by members of the family whose death is not imminent. So, his two estranged sons are brought home, in preparation for one of them to take the inheritance. It is then discovered that the banshee is, in fact, a local keener -- a human professional mourner who has been paid by the patriarch to impersonate a banshee so that his sons would be brought home, as part of a test to determine if one of them is (as he suspects) illegitimate, the product of his late wife's affair (which she confessed to him on her death bed). The keener, apprehended, stays with the family during the storm that has just begun -- so they can keep an eye on her -- but the banshee wails continue that night, and the patriarch is found murdered in his bed the next morning. Our protagonist, the younger brother and second to arrive, suspects his elder brother -- a suspicion shared by the keener, with whom he has become romantically entangled after a series of encounters. The wailing is reported by the rest of the family the next night too, except the two brothers, neither of whom hear anything. In the dead of night, the keener kills the elder brother & her paramour finds her washing her bloody clothes by the river in the rain: she expected the two of them to get married, and was trying to protect the inheritance from a usurper from outside the bloodline proper. That night, for the first time, he hears the banshee wail -- and nobody else does, save the keener.
