Night of the Furies

by David Angsten

  Curiously, behind him, the caryatids were pouring ashes from the fire back into their now empty baskets. Billowing clouds of fine powder were rising up into the air.

  The Maenads, meanwhile, carried on their manic dance. Their chitons had been reduced to rags, and many of the women ran naked. They flung their hair as if struck by a wind, and tossed their heads back, exposing swollen, bulging throats. They whirled and shouted and laughed. One lifted a snake up over her face and fed it into her gown. Several of the women collapsed in a faint as they reached the limit of exhaustion.

  I spotted the boy approaching the altar. He was wearing what looked like an animal skin, and he carried a double-bladed labrys, a bronze ax like the one found with Dan when his boat washed up on the beach. Behind him walked a woman with the amphora in her arms, the vessel that had held the kykeon. A second woman carried the twin-faced chalice. They joined Dionysus at the altar.

  The masked god was performing the ash ritual there, reaching down to the edge of the fire to scoop ashes into his cupped hands and pour them into the baskets. He repeated this several times. Finally, he picked up a torch from the blaze and led his entourage into the crowd.

  Bacchantes swirled around him like a cyclone around its center. It was obvious they’d already partaken of the drink. I wondered if Dionysus was leaving them.

  Suddenly, I realized he was walking toward me.

  I ducked behind the rock. For a moment I considered making a break for the passage. But something held me back. Something that bothered me. Something about Dionysus.

  Slowly I rose up from my hiding place. He was leading his entourage directly to me, as if he had known all along I was there.

  The dancing Bacchae followed him.

  I stepped out from behind the rock and stood there waiting for them. My eyes zeroed in on the man in the mask.

  I realized I knew who he was.

  19

  THE PIPES and drumming had come to a stop. The Maenads swarmed around me. There had to be fifty women, every age and size and shape. Strands of ivy hung from their hair. Their chitons were ripped and ragged. Their flesh was soiled with soot and ash, their faces tracked with tears. Many wielded pinecone thryses, others held torches above their heads and rattled tambourines. They closed in, breathless, eyes and mouths agape. A volatile horde of hysterics.

  I backed against the wall. My arms and legs were trembling. My heart climbed into my throat.

  Insane little giggles erupted. Heads jerked like the jinxing bird.

  Andreas Vassilos stepped forward and removed his metal mask. The policeman’s long hair fell to his shoulders. On his face he had that strange look, the same as when he had offered me the aphrodisiac. An eerie grin, a hint of daring.

  The two women filled the chalice with the purplish kykeon and carefully handed it to him. He gave them his torch and held the chalice out to me.

  “The blood of Dionysus. In the name of the Lord of Liberation, I offer you…your freedom. “

  My freedom?

  I looked at the chalice, then at him. I knew that he had to be high on the stuff. He must have just imbibed it. His mouth was drawn, his teeth were bared. His eyes were black and glassy, with a flinty flicker of light from his torch. He looked eager, excited, infused with vigor. Ready for the plunge into matter.

  Around me all the faces were filled with this look, this feverish anticipation. Tall Thalia with her long red hair, her eyes wide and fiery. Voluptuous Aglaia of the shiny black curls, her pearl chiton in tatters. The mischievous Euphrosyne, brazenly naked, looking keen and flushed. Marina, Irene, the women from the yacht—all the bloody Maenad sisters were here, all except—

  “Please,” said Vassilos, holding out the chalice, waiting for me to take it.

  Again I looked at the inky fluid trembling in the cup. My legs were shaking. My heart was banging. Fear fluttered through me like a madly brewing storm.

  The fever of the women was infectious. I felt the heat from their crackling torches, smelled the sweat of their skin. Their eyes, their flesh seemed to quiver. Lured by the animal intensity of their passion, I felt a strange impulse to give myself over, to throw my body to the wolves. There was a kind of freedom in the madness of it. A liberating desire for destruction.

  This time it was I who’d be the stand-in for their god. The bread of their unholy communion.

  My eyes turned to Vassilos. The aquiline nose. The red-veined eyes. The splotchy, sagging face. He had the look of an aging blue-blood, a patrician who had fallen into decadence and decline.

  Suddenly it came to me: I knew who he was. “You’re descended from the family of that girl. The one that found the buried statue.”

  Vassilos drew back the chalice and slowly straightened his spine. “The Eumolpidae,” he said proudly. “My blood is the blood of ancient Greece. Descended from the kings of Eleusis.”

  All at once it fell into place. The Eumolpidae. The family that held the secret of the Eleusinian Mysteries. The priests who mixed the formula of the kykeon.

  “How did you come to be here?” I asked.

  “The Mysteries were outlawed by the Christian emperor. The family fled to this island. The island of our ancestors.”

  I looked over the panting faces of the Bacchantes. If Vassilos had actually descended from this family, it was likely that these women had descended from it, too. But why were they killing people?

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “The Eleusinian Mysteries honored Demeter and Persephone. I was told they were a celebration of love. Your ritual… it’s all about sex and death.”

  “We worship the son of Persephone, the Divine Child of the Underworld, the Lord of Liberation. It better suits our purposes.”

  “Your purposes? What purposes?”

  I glanced at the women around me. They were slowly crowding closer.

  “You’re nothing but murderers,” I said.

  Vassilos silently grinned to himself, then lowered his eyes to the kykeon. “I offer you heaven,” he said. “But you are not worthy.”

  With a gesture he summoned the boy, who promptly emerged from the crowd behind him. The boy was still draped in what looked to be the hide of a deer and carried the double-bladed labrys. Vassilos took the ax from him, exchanging it for the chalice.

  The boy stepped back. Vassilos replaced the mask on his face. Then he held the ax out between his hands and lifted it into the air.

  The drum began pounding, and the Maenads started toward me, their faces aglow in the firelight. Thalia, the Mother Abbess, was fervently leading the way.

  I prepared to lunge through them and fight my way out. I decided to go directly at Thalia.

  “Wait!”

  It was Phoebe’s voice. Coming from out of the crowd.

  I spotted her weaving her way through the throng, carrying aloft her thyrsus. She emerged to stand beside me, holding the stick like a staff.

  I stared at her in shock.

  Phoebe had cast off her clothes and rucksack and was wearing her sandals and a white chiton. She had blended seamlessly into the crowd in order to hide herself.

  Now she stood boldly before them. Her cheek was streaked with scratch marks, and her throat looked red and raw, as if it had been throttled. I noticed blood splattered on the shoulder of her gown, and wondered if she had injured her head.

  She seemed unnaturally calm.

  “I will drink the libation,” she announced. “Blood of the Lord Dionysus.”

  Vassilos stared from behind his mask.

  I watched her, stunned. “Phoebe?”

  She glanced at me, her eyes fierce. She looked completely determined.

  Vassilos stepped forward, ax in hand. He lifted his mask, and his head twisted slightly in doubt as he peered into Phoebe’s eyes.

  She stared back without flinching.

  I shook my head in disbelief. “Don’t do it, Phoebe.”

  She glared at me. “I must.” Again she looked at Vassilos.

  “To choose this cours
e is wise,” he said. He threw me a sideways glance. “It is better to come willing into heaven.”

  Again with a gesture he summoned the boy.

  Impassive, angelic, the boy stepped forward and held out the chalice. Vassilos took it and offered it to Phoebe.

  “Your freedom,” he declared.

  For a moment, she stared at the cup. Then she turned to me and held out the thyrsus.

  I looked into her eyes. Hard as diamonds. It was obvious there was nothing I could say to change her mind. I thought about grabbing her arm and running, but how would I drag her out of the cave and fight off the horde of women? Reluctantly, I took the stick from her. Then I stood there, helplessly, a witness to the rite.

  She reached for the cup with both hands. It seemed to me they were trembling. For the first time I thought she must be afraid. She took hold of the twin-faced chalice and held it under her gaze, peering in wonder at the brimming elixir. The inky purple liquid reflected the flames, and its strange light seemed to dance on her face, as if it were hypnotizing her.

  Vassilos, the Bacchantes, all of us stood watching, waiting for the virgin Maenad to drink.

  Phoebe raised the cup to her lips. Her eyelids fell closed as she slowly tilted the glinting chalice, filling her mouth with the kykeon.

  She lowered the cup, and, staring forward, swallowed the elixir in a single gulp.

  I thought of the way I had felt when I drank it: the explosion in the mouth, the complex fusion of flavors, the warm rush of steam through my limbs, the sudden surge of energy, the intense heightening of awareness. I watched as all these sensations now progressively passed through Phoebe. At first she seemed inwardly focused, as if following its flow through her body. Then, after a moment, her eyes lifted, and she looked at the silver chalice in her hands.

  Glistening, ancient, beautiful.

  She turned her gaze on Vassilos, then upon me, then at all the faces around her. Her eyes seemed to burn with sharpness and intensity. That total awareness of the physical world and a vision of unbounded possibility.

  I was watching a transformation. From woman into Maenad. One more sip and she’d be right where I had been—beyond the point of return.

  “Phoebe. Please.”

  She looked at me. Her eyes were fierce. She turned to the chalice and raised it to her lips. Again she took a drink of the elixir.

  Vassilos watched her with a devil’s delight. The smile of death on his face.

  Until Phoebe suddenly leapt forward and spewed the fluid in his eyes.

  Vassilos’s hands shot to his face, and Phoebe went charging into him. They crashed together into the mass of women. Screams and shouts erupted.

  I rushed in after them, but stopped as the Bacchae began suddenly backing away. It was Phoebe, emerging with the bronze ax, swinging it to fend them off. Vassilos lay blinded on the ground behind her, trying to clear his eyes. His neck had been cut and was bleeding, and his robe had been ripped aside, revealing his disheveled uniform underneath. Thalia quickly attended to him.

  “Catch!” Phoebe tossed me something glinting, jangling. I grabbed it out of the air.

  The Sheriff’s key ring. She’d ripped it off his belt. I looked at her in amazement, then jammed the keys in my pocket.

  The Maenads circled.

  I joined with Phoebe, and we faced them back-to-back, I with the thyrsus, she with her ax.

  Thalia was bent over Vassilos, her long hair hiding her face. She rose to her feet with a torch in her hand and turned to us in fury.

  The Mother let loose with a blood-curdling scream.

  The sound went through us like shrapnel. We stood there frozen, shuddering. Other Bacchantes joined in Thalia’s cry, and the howl of their chorus grew louder and louder, resounding through the vast expanse of the cave, building to a deafening roar. Soon all were shrieking at the top of their lungs—a single, terrifying wail.

  The sound brought my heart to a stop.

  Thalia started toward us with her torch. Others fell in behind. Her mouth was drawn, her teeth bared, her face contorted with rage. She rose to her full height and lifted her arms, ready to pounce on Phoebe.

  Phoebe let rip with a scream of her own. A primal, cringe-inducing screech. In a fit of madness, she swung her ax at the Maenad—a perfect, sweeping, horizontal arc razoring Thalia’s gown.

  Thalia’s mouth went slack. She stumbled to a stop and stood gaping at her belly. A thin red line slowly seeped through her chiton. She touched her fingers into the blood, and dropped her torch to the ground. Her stunned gaze rose in confusion to Phoebe.

  The Bacchae hesitated.

  Phoebe raised her ax and peered into their faces. She had a lunatic look in her eyes.

  “Back off, you bitches!” she hollered. “Get out of our fucking way!”

  The Maenads cowered, momentarily confused. They glanced at Thalia, bent and bleeding, and at Vassilos lying on the ground.

  I cautiously picked up Thalia’s torch, then fell in beside Phoebe. Holding our thyrsus and ax at the ready, we started toward the passage I’d come in through.

  Miraculously, as we moved toward them, the crowd of women parted. We walked slowly forward with our weapons raised, watching for the one who would attack. My torchlight fell on their faces in the dark. They looked fascinated and fearful and desirous all at once. A woman I’d seen earlier wildly tossing her head was staring at us now through the locks of her hair as if she were peering through a jungle. Irene stood gaping with a snake around her neck, its flicking tongue at her ear. Another familiar woman, strong-limbed but small, wore a thick crown of ivy on her shaved head, and on her body a fawn skin like the boy. She held a reed flute in her hand, and her face was streaked with ash. Aglaia emerged in the rags of her chiton, one breast dangling in the open like a fruit. She had a strange look on her face, and I wondered what she might be thinking, if she was even thinking at all.

  A man’s shout echoed through the cavern, and we turned to see Vassilos hobbling up behind us, rousing the Bacchae to join him. He was clutching his neck to keep it from bleeding. Thalia was walking beside him, holding her bleeding gut.

  The Bacchae began to follow.

  Phoebe and I took off. We burst past the remaining women in our way, and Phoebe started toward a low-ceilinged passage.

  “This way!” I said, pulling her back toward the corridor I had entered from.

  “No—here!” she insisted. She disappeared into the dark. Assuming she knew something I didn’t know—and having no time to argue—I raced in after her.

  The passage had a low, slanted ceiling that forced us to run in a crouch. I kept thinking it would open up, but it narrowed rather than widened. Eventually we were scurrying through a tunnel-like tube, twisty and tight as the gut of a snake and unnervingly claustrophobic. Soon we were crawling on our hands and knees. I figured this was why she’d insisted on this route—so Vassilos wouldn’t be able to follow.

  It seemed to have worked. I kept glancing behind us, but couldn’t see anyone coming. Crawling with the torch in front of me, I had to stay far enough behind Phoebe so I wouldn’t burn her feet. I had seen the blood on her shoulder; now I saw blood on her leg as well.

  “Phoebe, what happened to you? Are you all right?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Phoebe?”

  She kept crawling ahead as fast as she could. We crawled on for another twenty yards until the passage finally opened into a low-ceilinged cavern. It was different from any I’d been in before, a forest of spiky stalagmites that made it nearly impossible to move.

  Phoebe took the torch from my hand and searched into a shadowy crevice to the side.

  “What are you looking for?” I asked, following her in.

  Again, she didn’t answer.

  “Phoebe, are you sure—?”

  She stepped over something on the ground, and when I lowered the torch to see it, my heart leapt into my throat.

  The white corpse of a naked woman lay stretched along the
ground. She had short black hair, a narrow face, and long, spindly arms and legs. She lay twisted, half on her side and half on her back, with her head cast to the side, exposing beneath a wreath of ivy a wash of blood at her temple. The body appeared to have been dragged into the crevice and abandoned.

  A foot away from her face lay the murder weapon—a rock, glistening with blood. The Maenad had been smashed in the head.

  Phoebe’s backpack lay where she’d left it, stashed at the rear of the crevice. Her clothes had been hastily stuffed into it. She slung the pack over her shoulder, then stepped back over the corpse to me.

  For a moment she paused and looked into my eyes. Again, I noticed the splattered blood on the shoulder of her chiton.

  “Are you all right?”

  Her diamond eyes were hard to read. In the darkness and the firelight, they had a strange sparkle to them. It could have been a glimmer of guilt or fear, but it seemed to have a touch of madness.

  She moved past me without saying a word.

  I followed her.

  She led us through the forest of rock, weaving this way and that. I quickly lost my sense of direction. Finally, we emerged into a large open space with a high, slanted ceiling, and I realized it was the same cavern where the pack of wild Maenads had attacked us.

  It was clear to me now what had happened to Phoebe. She had fled into this forest of stalagmites, pursued by one of the crazies. She’d been attacked, strangled. In defense, she had grabbed a rock and struck the woman in the head.

  The blow had killed her. The deed had probably occurred in the dark.

  Phoebe must have heard the singing and the drums through the tunnel. She had changed into the woman’s chiton and crawled through until she saw their light. There she had slipped unnoticed into the group. When she saw that I was about to be attacked, she had acted decisively to save me.

  “Phoebe. Wait.”

  We were crossing the cavern, heading for the exit. She stopped and turned to me.

  “Why did you drink it?” I asked. “Why did you actually drink the kykeon?”

  Her eyes had that look, that strange, burning glimmer. “Because I knew I was going to need it,” she said.