Night of the Furies

by David Angsten

  “Need it?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  Of course, I thought. Especially after what had just happened. That killing may have been her first, but very likely it would not be her last. Not if she wanted to get off the island alive.

  I peered into her fiery eyes. Courage is a kind of madness, I thought.

  Shouts reverberated through the cavern, and firelight lit up the darkness behind her.

  “This way!” I whispered, grabbing her wrist.

  WE RAN off into the passage. This time we couldn’t extinguish our torch—we needed its light to escape. Phoebe held it above her head and quickly took the lead. Wearing only her tight-laced sandals, she somehow nimbly navigated the winding, rocky terrain. I followed in her shadow, and several times I tripped, but the Olympian torch-bearing marathon runner never seemed to miss a single step. It must be the kykeon, I thought. The remarkable acuity it lent to the senses. I had often noticed a preternatural athleticism with Phoebe; now she seemed the very incarnation of a sprite.

  We could hear the women racing through the cavern far behind us. Shrieks of joy and laughter, as if they were taking great pleasure in the chase. They, too, were high on the kykeon, and far more potently than Phoebe. At least three drinks to her one. Given the level of hysteria, I wondered if they might have imbibed even more. They had danced themselves into rags. The drug must have touched off an adrenalin boost. How else could they sustain such intensity?

  We came out into another cavern and ran along the wall until we picked up the passage again. This had to be the final stretch, I thought. We’d been through several caverns now; the exit would be close.

  A figure suddenly swept past me in the dark. Swift, silent, animal-like. With a scream she leapt onto Phoebe, and they tumbled hard to the ground. Phoebe’s torch went flying, and the labrys clattered on the rocks. I could hear the two women fighting in the dark, and grabbed the torch to find them.

  They passed through the torchlight, locked together, a twisted coil of animal hide, chiton, and naked flesh. The girl in the deerskin with the shaved head had wrapped herself around Phoebe’s back and was biting her ear. I dropped my thyrsus and the torch, yanked back the woman’s head, and locked my arm around her throat. With a jerk, I wrenched her from Phoebe. The woman and I stumbled back. She elbowed me and twisted free, then swung around and swiftly punted.

  The kick to my groin completely stunned me. Everything in my body seemed to stop. I folded over on top of the pain, and her sandled heel flew up again and struck me in the face. The blow knocked me back, bursting open my lip. As I landed on the ground, I saw Phoebe raise the pinecone thyrsus and swing it like a baseball bat.

  She bashed the freak in the head. The thyrsus cracked in half. The woman spun and landed on the torch, plunging us again into darkness.

  “Jack?”

  I felt Phoebe’s hand on me. “Are you all right?” she whispered as she helped me to my feet. The pain in my groin made me nauseous.

  The girl was stirring. We could hear her moan.

  Phoebe was searching the ground in the dark. She found the backpack and handed it to me, but we couldn’t find the labrys.

  “We’ve got to move,” I said.

  Shouts and squeals reverberated through the tunnel. We could see the distant glow of the approaching Maenad horde.

  The two of us turned from the glow of the torches to face an impenetrable darkness. “We can’t outrun them in the dark,” she said. “How will we defend ourselves?”

  I glanced back again at the advancing mass of Maenads. They would easily overwhelm us. “I don’t know,” I said. I took her hand and began to move forward through the dark, my mind in a race with fear.

  “Look!” Phoebe whispered.

  Far ahead in the blackness of the passage, a light had suddenly appeared. Not the flickering light of a torch, but something steady and strong, like a flashlight or a lantern.

  We continued moving toward it. Slow at first, then faster. The light silhouetted boulders and rocks and helped us make our way. We were nearly at a run when we finally came within reach of it.

  Suddenly, the light disappeared.

  We slowed to a stop at the point where it had vanished. “What happened?” Phoebe asked. We were standing in total darkness again.

  Behind us the horde of Maenads were advancing. We could see their torchlight clearly now, a tiny matchstick army in the dark.

  We turned to face forward again, and realized we were standing at the entrance to yet another spacious cavern. As my eyes adjusted, I made out the silhouette of the round, flat-topped altar and beyond it a pale triangle of moonlight.

  “The entrance!” I said, and grabbed Phoebe’s arm.

  She was staring off to the side. Something had caught her attention. I peered into the dark and saw the figure of a man backing into a crevice.

  “Who are you?” Phoebe whispered.

  The figure receded into the shadows. Not a word came out of the dark.

  I glanced back at the closing horde. “C’mon!” I said. “Hurry!”

  We flew like the proverbial bats out of hell.

  III

  ELEUTHERIA

  20

  PHOEBE AND I pounded down the cliff in the dark. The Bacchae followed some distance behind, shouting and chanting erratically, their meandering torches ablaze on the slope. Our lack of a torch should have slowed our descent—we had nothing but the moon for light—but somehow Phoebe’s heightened instincts kept us on the path.

  When we reached a level stretch over yet another cliff, we paused to catch our breath. Below us the rock wall dropped off steeply, and the monastery hovered like an island in the dark.

  Phoebe looked manic. The side of her head was covered in blood. The bite to her ear had torn the cartilage, and blood had run down her neck to her shoulder and saturated her gown. The abrasion on her leg was bleeding, too, but she didn’t seem to pay it any mind.

  I figured it was the kykeon. Like the ethylene at Delphi, it had an analgesic effect.

  “We’ve got to stop your bleeding,” I said. “Isn’t there a bandage in your pack?”

  Her panting face was wild and fiery, caught in the adrenalin rush. “No time,” she said. “They catch up to us, they’ll throw us off these rocks.” She took off again down the path.

  After this brief moment’s rest, Phoebe moved faster. Even following her footsteps, I had trouble keeping up. Her nimble feet seemed to dance over the stones, her ivory gown flowing behind her. The shimmering view of this fleet-footed fairy, and the constant zigzagging back and forth, began to induce a kind of ambulatory trance, and I felt a peculiar detachment. The danger of the Maenads was real enough, and the threat of a misstep was vivid, but somehow the winding race to escape had begun to feel like a spiraling dream, a descent into some mythical realm, a land of cruel gods and their playthings.

  I kept my eyes on Phoebe. Her hair, the nape of her neck, the stain of blood on her shoulder, the repetitive flash of her scurrying feet. Her body, glimpsed through the moonlit chiton, appeared both angelic and vulnerable. Though she flew down the mountain like some airy woodland nymph, she was mortal and frighteningly fragile. I realized I would do anything to keep her from getting hurt.

  Anything.

  WHEN WE finally spilled out onto the road, it came as a kind of shock. The sudden horizontal flatness and solidity. The utter stillness and quiet. Up the way the monastery stood mutely in the dark. Before it, the car sat waiting, its rear door still hanging open, just the way we’d left it.

  The shouts and screams of the Bacchae had stopped. The mountain had fallen into silence.

  We scanned the cliffs as we hurried to the car. Not a single torch could be seen. “Where the hell are they?” I wondered.

  Phoebe said nothing. She climbed into the backseat through the open door, slammed the door shut, rolled up the window, and pounded down the lock.

  I threw the backpack onto the passenger seat and got in behind the wheel. Phoebe
immediately locked my door and all the other doors in the car. She was panting with fear. She grabbed the backpack and pulled it into the backseat.

  I fumbled with the ring of keys until I found the car key. Inserting it into the ignition, I couldn’t get it to turn. Is it the wrong key! Maybe it’s for a different car. But didn’t I see him put it on the ring?

  I couldn’t seem to focus on what I was doing because I couldn’t stop glancing out the window. The darkness had enveloped us. The light was on inside the car, and all I could see was our reflections.

  The key wouldn’t budge. I checked to make sure the car was in park. I put my foot on the brake. Finally, by turning the wheel a bit, the key suddenly turned, and the engine groaned to life.

  Phoebe buckled her seatbelt. Why did she sit in the back?

  I flipped what I thought was the headlight switch. The wipers started sweeping, scratching dry glass. I shut them off and tried another. The interior light went out. I jumped when I saw something moving in the dark, but it turned out to be Phoebe’s reflection—she was opening her backpack. I tried the next switch.

  The road all the way to the gate lit up. I didn’t see anyone around us.

  The lane was too narrow to turn the car without backing up to the shoulder. I shifted into reverse and threw my elbow over the seat to look out the rear window.

  Phoebe was digging through the pockets of her pack.

  “You okay?” I asked. Her silence was disturbing.

  Intent on her search, she didn’t seem to hear. I backed up to the wall of rock. Then looked down to shift. Accidentally, I over-shifted and dropped it into second. I moved it into drive, then looked back up at the road.

  The headlamps shone across the empty tarmac and out into the sky.

  “I think we’ve got them beat,” I said.

  I turned the wheel and sped off down the road. On one side the cliff wall rose up steeply; the other side dropped into forest. Ahead, the road curved gently, gradually revealing itself.

  I locked my seatbelt. Straightened my back. Adjusted the rearview mirror.

  “There they are!” I said. Phoebe turned to look.

  Ghosts were straggling out onto the road behind us. They looked zombielike and ragged. All their torches were out. They disappeared as we sped around the bend.

  “They must be exhausted,” I said. “They can’t possibly keep up that intensity.”

  In truth, I wasn’t so sure. Phoebe still looked manic. She had gone back to digging in her bag. Obsessive-compulsive behavior, I thought. Another effect of the drug. I kept glancing at the rearview mirror, trying to catch a glimpse of her, hoping to calm her down.

  I smiled reassuringly. “It’s like you said. They are only human.”

  Still absorbed with her backpack, she either didn’t hear me or simply didn’t care.

  “What is it you’re looking for?” I finally asked. The road was dropping down the saddle into the spread of pinewoods.

  Again I thought she didn’t hear me. “Phoebe?”

  Finally, she found what she was looking for and held it up to show me.

  A corkscrew. The folding kind that waiters use.

  “We going to have some wine?” I asked.

  Phoebe wasn’t smiling. She was opening the foil cutter, the short-bladed knife in the corkscrew.

  What in the fuck is she doing?

  “Phoebe…?” For a second, I couldn’t get any words out. “I… don’t think you’ll need that,” I said. “Let’s wait and have champagne.”

  She stared ahead blankly at the windshield, repetitively flicking the blade with her thumb.

  I watched her in the rearview mirror. “Phoebe?”

  “The Furies are coming,” she said.

  “What?”

  “The Furies are coming.” Her voice was flat and strange. Like the voice that came out of her at Delphi.

  “Phoebe. Try to remember: You’ve taken the kykeon. You need to maintain—”

  “The Furies are coming! The Furies are coming! The Furies are coming!”

  She was shouting, her face blanching in terror. I turned to put my hand on her to try to calm her down. She batted it away.

  At the same instant I heard a crack and a thud and a bump of the tires, and I saw out the back window the heap of a body lying on the road.

  I whipped around. The windshield was cracked. Women were running directly at the car. Instinctively, I slammed the brakes and yanked hard on the wheel. The car skidded and the tail spun out, sweeping toward a woman in a ragged chiton.

  Thwump!

  I tried to turn the wheel. Something shattered the passenger window. The car flew off the road and into the ravine. Grass, boulders, trees. We were bouncing so hard I couldn’t see. Then we took a flip into weightlessness. One…Two…

  Just before we struck the tree, I heard Phoebe scream.

  “Jack!”

  TAKE THE plunge into matter, bro’.”

  Dan? Is that you?

  Everything had suddenly come to a stop. I was lying on my back in the Castalian Spring, naked in the freezing water. Beyond the rim of the canyon above, stars burned like distant torches. The hollows in the cliff looked like the gaping eyes of the god.

  Fingers crept around my neck. I seemed unable to move. Hands gripping my wrists and ankles hauled me down into darkness.

  Somewhere, a woman was screaming.

  ICHOKED and sputtered back to consciousness. The car horn was wailing. The window was shattered. Chips of glass glimmered like diamonds.

  White arms were reaching for my hair and my throat. A small, clenched hand was stabbing the arms with the blade of the corkscrew knife.

  People are nicer where I come from.

  My eyes drifted shut.

  THE PRESENCE of your consciousness will influence the event.”

  Dan again.

  We were following him down the Evil Stairway. Phoebe glanced over her shoulder at me. “I think it’s already having an influence,” she said.

  Dan grabbed my face between his hands and peered into my eyes like a laser. “Take the plunge, Jack! The plunge into fucking matter!”

  IAWOKE to a field of diamonds. They came into focus on the ceiling of the car. Plopped in their midst was a large mossy rock that apparently had crashed through the window.

  My head was bent against the ceiling. Bits of glass were stuck to my cheek. The seatbelt cut across my shoulder like a knife. Phoebe’s backpack lay on the ceiling beside the rock, but Phoebe was no longer in the car.

  Shouts and grunts and shrieks were emerging from somewhere nearby in the dark. I smelled the stench of burning oil rising from the engine block.

  The car lay upside down. It had landed against the trunk of a fallen fir tree. The massive, rotting log blocked off all exit from my side of the car. On the other side, both windows had been smashed, and the rear door was open.

  Peering out that door into the dark, I saw a squirming heap of Maenads clinging upside down to the earth like bees on a hanging hive. Phoebe had been dragged out and was being attacked. I could hear her muffled screams from the pile.

  Reaching down into the seat, I managed to press the seatbelt release, and my body crumpled against the ceiling. My head was bleeding, my shoulder was hurt, but miraculously nothing felt broken. I wormed my way across to the rear passenger door, and as I moved past the boulder and the backpack, I realized I was looking at a weapon.

  Alone, the rock would be too unwieldy to handle; effective for a single smash, but useless against the mob. But if I put it inside the pack, I could hold the pack by the handle at the top and swing it at the Maenads like a club. Phoebe’s clothes would soften the blow, so I could knock them away without killing them.

  I opened the pack, rolled the big rock into it, closed it up, and slid out of the car. My head swam dizzily as I stood upright. Blood dripped into my eye. I wiped it away with the back of my hand, taking little chunks of glass with it. Then I grabbed the pack by the handle and started across the slope
.

  The Bacchae were so immersed in their madness they didn’t even see me at first. There were fifteen, maybe twenty women, all piled in a writhing heap, with Phoebe buried under them. These women seemed younger and more energetic than the ones I’d seen in the rearview mirror. They groaned and shrieked and tore at one another as they burrowed their way into the mountain of flesh. Their ivory chitons were ripped and ragged, and many of the women were naked, the mass of their bodies like a single organism—alive, voracious, devouring.

  I felt the welling of a primal rage. A scream erupted from me, a howl that echoed out over the ravine. Several women looked up from the pile; some even backed away, but most were so lost to hysteria they barely took any notice. I was charging across the slope as I howled, swinging the bag with the rock, and when a Maenad with a thyrsus came running at me, the blow from the bag sent her flying. More of them attacked me as I slammed into the pile. I swung the pack in a sweeping circle, and the rock struck their bodies with muffled thumps. Many began moving away, and I briefly caught a glimpse of Phoebe, bloodied and struggling in the middle of the heap.

  Someone behind me grabbed hold of the bag. I turned to see red-haired Thalia with a look of rage on her face. Her gown in front was soaked in blood from the slice of Phoebe’s ax. She pulled at the bag, and when I yanked back, the handle ripped. The bag tore open and the rock fell out. Thalia tossed the pack aside and came charging at me. We both tumbled back into the throbbing mass of flesh. Knees, breasts, buttocks, elbows, hair, hands, eyes. Women kept piling on, all of them biting and clawing me. They tore at my clothes and my skin. They pulled my limbs, twisting joints. I clenched my hands tight into fists to keep them from tearing off fingers.

  Struggling to free myself, I came face-to-face with Phoebe. She was bloodied and weakened and desperate, but her eyes still burned with the madness of the drug. She was caught in their grip and fighting them off. We looked at each other for the briefest moment.

  It was long enough—I knew at once I could not be stopped.

  Something mysterious came over me. Entirely spontaneous and instinctive. It may have been from anger or my protectiveness toward Phoebe, or even from the primal fear of death. I felt a peculiar sensation in my limbs, and became conscious of a sudden flow of energy, as if fire and steam were being breathed into my chest.