Night of the Furies

by David Angsten

  The Oracle had been born.

  I glanced back at Dan, who was still absorbed in his meditation. In the moonlight, his bald head glowed like a light bulb.

  Phoebe noticed it, too. “He’s reaching enlightenment,” she said.

  I laughed. “Maybe the vapors are working.”

  “No,” she said. “Not anymore.”

  The cleft in the earth, the opening to Gaia, had vanished long ago, most likely as a result of the frequent earthquakes that shook this unstable region. A French team excavating the site in 1893 found no telltale crevice, and for the next hundred years, most archeologists dismissed the “vapor theory” as nothing more than a myth. But the theory was verified in 2003, when a team of scientists published their discovery that two seismic fault lines intersected directly beneath the Temple of Apollo, and that the faults were riddled with ventlike fissures. In crust deposits on the chamber’s foundation stones, they found traces of an intoxicating gas called ethylene. Their evidence showed that ethylene and other hydrocarbon gases had traveled up to the surface via bubbling springs and vapors from bituminous limestone beds deep inside the earth.

  Whether it was the sweet breath of Gaia or Apollo’s narcotic pneuma, apparently the stories of the intoxicating fumes were true.

  This discovery had ignited my brother’s curiosity. He immediately began making plans to put the vapor theory to the test—and not just anywhere, but in the very same spot where the Oracle for a thousand years had gotten high with her god. The ethylene wasn’t a problem, he said. That could be supplied. All that was required was a proper question, a question of suitable significance.

  It was several years before that question finally presented itself. Dan refused to tell us what it was, saying he didn’t want to screw up the protocol.

  I asked Phoebe if she had any idea.

  “No,” she said. “But we’re about to find out.” She nodded toward the adyton.

  Dan was climbing out of the chamber. He waved to us to join him.

  “How was your med?” Phoebe asked.

  “Wonderful,” he said. The look on his face reminded me of how Phoebe had looked when she arose from the spring—somehow both strangely calm and excited. He glanced behind him, down the Sacred Way. “We’d better get on with it,” he said. “You guys ready? Jack?”

  I shrugged.

  “Phoebe?”

  She was patting her hair into place as if preparing for a date. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

  4

  DAN PULLED from his pack a small, cylindrical metal tank with a pressure gauge under the valve at the top. From her pack, Phoebe withdrew a tightly wound coil of plastic tubing. Dan connected the tubing to the tank.

  “No lighters, no matches, not even a flashlight,” he said. “Nothing that might cause a spark.”

  Until the 1970s, ethylene had been widely used as a surgical anesthetic. Its tendency to explode, however, had brought its use to a stop.

  Dan carried the tank back across the foundation stones, past the luminous columns, and down the entry ramp to the ground in front of the temple. There he set the tank down, lodging it snugly in place. This would be his base of operation, well beyond the range of the fumes. He wanted to be sure one of us stayed sober in case things got out of hand.

  He walked back up the ramp toward us, unrolling the plastic tubing behind him. It stretched out in a springy spiral over the broad foundation, and when he reached us, he asked me to hold the remaining coil while he climbed down into the chamber. From there, he took the tubing and stretched it down to the center of the floor, where he lodged the open end in the crack between two blocks.

  He set the tripod seat directly over it. “The Pythia sat on a three-legged tripod, something like this, only made of bronze. The tripod was placed directly over the crevice, so the fumes would envelope the priestess.”

  Phoebe glanced at me, caught my eye, held it for a moment. That one brief look spoke volumes. Please pay attention, Jack. You have to take care of me. Your brother, you know, is insane.

  She climbed down into the chamber. Dan took her hand and led her to the tripod. She paused there and gave him a look similar to the one she’d given me, as if trying to remember why on earth she’d allowed herself to trust him.

  Finally, she sat on her tripod throne. Dutiful Queen of the Nymphs.

  Dan crouched down and checked the tube, made sure it wasn’t kinked and the upturned end was open. Then he gently held her hands and spoke to her softly. “I’m going to start out very slow,” he said. “Just breathe normally. Gradually I’ll increase the level of the gas. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes to begin to have an effect. Jack will keep an eye on you. You’ll experience a slight loss of physical sensation, then a mild euphoria—it’s very pleasant, really. As you know, I’ve tried it myself, and I assure you it’s completely benign.”

  Phoebe nodded silently.

  Dan’s words may have been comforting, but I knew they weren’t entirely true. Back at his apartment in Athens, I had read the writings of the ancient authors who reported on the Pythia’s trance. While most described her as mellow and passive, many accounts told of her unpredictability, from wailing in rapture to flat-out fainting—and the occasional violent frenzy.

  Dan rose to his feet and climbed out of the chamber. As he picked up his pack, he nodded for me to follow him. We passed through the columns and walked down the ramp to the waiting ethylene tank.

  Dan put down his bag. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll be right here. If anything starts to go wrong, let me know and I’ll stop the gas. The effects wear off very quickly.”

  I suddenly felt unprepared. “How will I know if it’s going wrong? How will I know she’s all right?”

  “You’ll know,” he said. “Just pay attention to her breathing. Give her three minutes before you ask the question. And don’t get too close to the adyton. The fumes will be heavily concentrated there. You’ve got to try to keep a clear head.”

  Suddenly his job looked easy. “Why don’t you deal with her, and I’ll do this?”

  “No,” he said sternly. “The supplicant is never witness to the trance. That’s the role of the priest. My unconscious wishes could influence her reply. “

  “Priest?”

  “Relax. What you have to do is very simple. Just ask her the question and write down her reply. Write down everything she says. Here.” He unzipped a pocket of his pack and pulled out a pencil and a small notebook.

  I took it from him. “How will I know when to ask her the question?”

  “Just wait until she’s in her trance.”

  “How will I know that?”

  “You’ll know. The gas works fast. It should take just a couple of minutes.”

  I looked back down the Sacred Way toward the entrance to the sanctuary. Dan glanced back there, too. All we could see in the darkness were the glowing, ghostly ruins.

  “I’ll keep an eye out for the guard,” he said. “Try not to worry about him; he’s not going anywhere. Besides, he’s too fat to catch us.”

  “Hope you’re right.” I peered across the temple floor to the adyton.Phoebe wasn’t visible from where we were standing—she sat too low in the chamber. It really would be up to me to make sure she was safe.

  I looked Dan in the eye. “You sure you know what you’re doing?”

  “Of course not,” he said. “That’s the whole point.”

  I rolled my eyes, then turned and headed back toward Phoebe.

  “Jack?”

  I turned. Dan was holding up a small, folded piece of paper. “Forgetting something?”

  “Oh.” I walked back and reached to take it from him.

  Dan pulled it away. “Do not read it until you read it to her.”

  “Part of the protocol?”

  “The divine protocol.”

  I slipped the folded paper into the notebook and headed back to Phoebe.

  For some rea
son, the sanctuary seemed quieter all of a sudden. Walking across the foundation, I heard no cicadas, no fluttering bats, no owls hooting, nothing but the sound of my own careful steps. We were completely alone on this slope of Mount Parnassus, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how very dangerous our little experiment could be.

  Ethylene was a potent anesthetic. According to Dan, even a mere whiff of the gas could induce a numbing euphoria. Heavier doses produced total insensibility to pain. Unlike narcotics, however, ethylene worked its magic without causing drowsiness or even dulling consciousness. Under its influence, a person remained alert and aloof in a state of disembodied bliss. Afterward, there were few, if any, side effects—perhaps slight nausea or headache—and little or nothing of the experience would be remembered.

  Anesthesiologists occasionally reported confused, combative, even violent behavior, but the bigger danger was that ethylene gas in high concentrations could reduce the amount of oxygen in the air, leading to a total loss of consciousness. Indeed, the ancients told of several Oracles, perhaps overcome by an excess of fumes, who died in the midst of their rapture.

  Phoebe had been informed of these perils and yet still had volunteered. I wasn’t sure whether it was her own curiosity or her affection for Dan that enticed her. Who knows why people do what they do? She may have volunteered on a whim.

  “You sure you want to go through with this, Phoebe?” I was standing on the ledge of the adyton. In the slanted moonlight her head was all I could see, floating below me in a pool of darkness.

  She raised her eyes to mine. “If some hayseed peasant virgin could do it, why the heck shouldn’t I?”

  With these bold words, my concern for her vanished. “Okay, Miss Pythia. Prepare for liftoff.” I waved to Dan.

  Dan waved back in acknowledgment. Then I saw him crouch down to turn the valve on the tank. I set the bevel on my wristwatch.

  Seconds passed. No hiss. No fog. No telltale odor.

  Thirty seconds. Still nothing. Phoebe remained completely immobile.

  A minute. She seemed to sway slightly as she took in a deep breath.

  At a minute twenty seconds, the odor finally reached me. It smelled like ripe fruit or wilting flowers.

  “You okay, Phoebe?” I backed up a bit.

  “Fine,” she said faintly.

  The sweet odor grew more intense. I pulled up the neck of my T-shirt and tried to breathe through the cloth.

  Phoebe’s head was moving now, swaying very gently, as if to the tune of some internal melody.

  I checked my watch: Two minutes had passed. One more to go.

  The smell of the ethylene came through my shirt. I couldn’t help breathing it, and began to fear it might be too strong, especially down in the chamber.

  “You okay?”

  Phoebe moaned. A soft moan, barely audible, with a tone of complete relaxation. I took it as a yes and waited.

  The minute hand crawled around the dial of my watch. It seemed to be taking forever, and gave me the strange sensation that I was slipping into a dream. As happens when you stare at anything for long, the watch began to look unfamiliar, as if I had never seen it before. The dial was black, the numerals white. I noticed tiny sparks of light streaking across the crystal. I held my wrist steady and focused on the lights, and realized they were stars reflecting on the glass. The stars appeared quite clear and close, as if they had somehow been captured.

  Phoebe moaned again.

  I peered down at her blond head floating in the darkness. “You okay?”

  She looked up at me with her mouth hanging open. “I think I’m turning into a tree!”

  Am I supposed to write that down? I didn’t even ask Dan’s question—did I? I glanced at the notebook in my hand, still unopened.

  Phoebe started laughing. “I can’t help it—my brain made me do it!” She kept on laughing to the point of convulsion, and soon she was bent over laughing so hard that no sound escaped from her mouth.

  I peered back through the pillars toward Dan, hoping he’d offer some help.

  He didn’t budge. His alabaster head looked like some lifeless part of the ruins.

  Phoebe’s laughter finally faded, and she looked at me again, her eyes now filled with pity, or maybe disappointment. “Nothing lasts forever.”

  “No,” I said, speaking through my shirt. “Thank God for that.”

  She smiled. My anxiety suddenly dissipated. I felt extremely relaxed.

  Phoebe seemed to acknowledge this. “You know I know it’s a dream.”

  I lowered the shirt from my face. The sweet odor of a thousand flowers filled my empty body. There was nothing to fear anymore.

  Phoebe was talking to the wall. “All the same the belly knows! All the way down to your toes!” Again she reeled with laughter.

  I checked my watch and was shocked: Five full minutes had passed!

  Quickly I opened my little notebook—and the folded paper dropped out and disappeared into the adyton.

  “Bring your pillow!” Phoebe cried.

  Peering into the darkness, I couldn’t see the paper. I set my little notebook down carefully on the ledge. To filter the heady fumes, I stripped off my T-shirt, rolled it up halfway, and tied it across my face like a mask. Then I started down into the chamber.

  My body felt slightly numb, my airy limbs tingly and strange. I seemed to move too slowly, as if I’d lost my will. Lowering down, my foot slipped. I fell in a dream to the floor of the chamber, and felt my finger break.

  No—it was only the pencil.

  On my hands and knees in the pit of the adyton, I searched for the paper and the broken stub. The darkness felt like a tactile substance, my fingers roaming through it—bare stone, tufts of grass, invisible, fragile flowers. Phoebe sat with her back to me, her voice softly moaning, her blond head like the moon. The pungent scent of ethylene fumes filled the inky space.

  The pencil stub suddenly appeared out of nowhere, a tiny broken yellow shaft buried in the blackness. I reached to take it, and noticed something tucked between my outstretched fingers: the folded piece of paper. Somehow it had found its way back into my hand.

  It was time to ask the Pythia Dan’s secret question.

  I gathered all my strength of will and forced myself to stand. My head emerged from the pit, and I took in the open expanse of the temple stretching out around me. The pillars were etched in moonlight, but I couldn’t see beyond them from my lowly point of view. Dan was out of sight.

  No matter, I thought. The task at hand is mine—I, the noble priest of the Oracle.

  Phoebe sat before me, slumped in the tripod seat, her head tilted forward with her chin on her chest. I noticed her hair was still damp, and saw between the furrowed locks the white skin of her scalp. The nape of her neck looked livid, too, with a dark mole under her collar. She seemed to be breathing normally.

  I lifted her face to the moonlight. Her eyes slowly opened, and when she saw me staring down, she sighed, softly moaning.

  “It’s getting hard to be someone,” she said.

  No longer did I have trouble understanding what she meant. I nodded in agreement. “It all works out,” I assured her. Her pupils were widely dilated, a vast black hole in a halo of blue. She didn’t blink, and her gaping eyes seemed to capture mine, the way I had captured the stars on my watch, so close and clear though a billion miles away. If you stare at anything long enough…Her live, liquid eyes now looked beautiful and strange: internal, perfect organs so nakedly exposed, like tiny selves in embryo revealed beneath their lids. These eyeballs stared at mine the same way mine stared at hers. It seemed a kind of miracle, that these living worlds of matter could reach across the void of space and somehow make connection, confirming our existence like reflections in a mirror.

  E. Is. I am. We are.

  Phoebe was falling deep into her trance. I could see it coming over her like an overwhelming thought, her attention turning inward, her eyelids drifting shut. She remained still and silent, face tilted to
the moon. Standing bare-chested in my T-shirt mask, I loomed over her like some predatory bandit.

  I pulled the mask down off my face and unfolded Dan’s piece of paper. He had handwritten a single question in pencil. I read the question aloud to the Pythia:

  How can I find the secret of the Eleusinian Mysteries?

  The question was completely foreign to me. I had no idea what it meant.

  Phoebe did not respond at first. She remained in her silence with her eyes still closed. I wondered if she had heard me all right, or whether she could hear me at all. It was perfectly quiet in the chamber, and I had only been a foot or two away when I spoke, but the trance she was in seemed impenetrable; nothing at all registered on her face. Her breathing, I noticed, remained steady and calm.

  I pulled the mask back up over my face and waited.

  How much time passed, I couldn’t say. I was more than a little under the influence myself, and a dreamlike euphoria still filled me. So much so that I didn’t even notice when she finally opened her eyes. I just suddenly realized she was staring at me.

  The stare seemed to reach deep inside me. After a long and unnerving silence, words came out of her mouth, spoken in a voice I had never heard her use before—sexless, guttural, emotionless.

  “Aphrodite leads the way to Dionysus,” she said. “Dionysus leads the way to Eleusis.”

  I grabbed the notepad and scribbled down her words: Aphrodite leads the way to Dionysus. Dionysus leads the way to Eleusis. Then I looked back at her and waited for more.

  Nothing came. Her eyes closed and she fell back into silence.

  I looked at the words I had written on the page. I knew Aphrodite was the goddess of love, Dionysus lord of ecstasy and madness. But the words meant nothing more to me than had Dan’s mysterious question.

  What were the Eleusinian Mysteries? I seemed to have heard of them somewhere before, but couldn’t remember.

  Once again Phoebe’s eyes opened. They focused sharply on mine. Never had they looked so alert and alight, filled with the living fire of consciousness. Her face seemed to glow like the marble in the moonlight, and she appeared more beautiful than I’d ever seen her before. Her lips, moist and slightly parted, were plump and shapely. The skin of her face was taut and flawless, framed by the damp-curled locks of her hair. The freckles on her cheeks had faded, washed away by the eerie light, but her fine dark lashes clearly outlined her eyes, and her brows looked brushed and elegant.