The Furies

by Katie Lowe

  ‘So is the lady of the house here tonight?’ Robin said.

  ‘God, no,’ Alex said, rolling her eyes. ‘she won’t be back for a while. She’s in the States, doing some research thing, I think.’

  ‘Swish,’ Robin said. ‘So we’ve got the place to ourselves?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Alex said. ‘The bitch next door is popping by to check on things from time to time, but she’s out tonight, so the coast is clear. I know for a fact she steals a bottle of this every time she drops by – so by my logic, the more I drink, the more likely my mom is to notice and can her for it.’

  ‘We’d be honoured to assist in your noble mission, in that case,’ Robin said, taking a long gulp, a kiss of red staining her chapped bottom lip.

  ‘Thanks, Robin,’ Alex replied, raising her glass. ‘You’re a true friend.’

  ‘Come on.’ Robin grabbed my arm as she stood. ‘Let me give you the tour.’

  I followed her through the kitchen, to the dining room, all white and gold, with chandeliers that rang lightly as we opened the door. ‘Wow,’ I said again, unable to contain my envy.

  ‘This is nothing.’ Robin pushed a heavy, wooden door and felt around for a light. ‘Look at this,’ she said, as a row of lamps burst into life. I followed her as she stepped forward into a cavernous room filled floor-to-ceiling with books and sculptures; huge, brightly-coloured paintings hung on each side of a fireplace whose mantelpiece sat just above my eye level. ‘This is what they call an office,’ she said, turning to me. ‘Can you even imagine?’

  She wandered around the shelves, plucking out objects and turning their faces to the light, examining them as though searching for clues. I did the same, imitating her casual wanderings, as I peered at the broad, breathless brush-strokes of a painting of a woman holding a child high, the two of them screaming with laughter and joy.

  ‘What did you say her mum did?’

  ‘She’s some kind of researcher. She wrote a book on the occult a few years ago – real creepy, ghosty stuff. Not that there’s any money in that, apparently, but it’s not like they need it. Their money is ancient,’ she said, picking a glass butterfly from its perch and placing it in her palm, where it glittered in the light.

  I said nothing, turning to look at the heavy books that lined the shelves. The Mystic Rituals of Ancient Greece, read one; Daemonology, read another.

  ‘Hey,’ Alex said, peering around the door, Robin and I frozen, caught in the act. ‘Shall we order a pizza?’

  ‘Oh, Alex, you’re not going to make us burnt slop again? Shame.’

  ‘If you don’t want any, that’s fine,’ Alex replied, abruptly.

  ‘I’m just messing with you. Come on, Violet. Let’s go make the most of our host’s most impeccable hospitality.’ Placing the book back on the shelf, I followed Alex and Robin into a dimly lit, cosy lounge, where the fire crackled and hissed as the wind roared outside. Grace sat under a thick, fur blanket, stretched out on an ancient leather sofa, her pale skin given an apricot warmth by the fire’s golden glow. I curled into an armchair, resting a stiff cushion on my knees, the room yet to shake off the cold outside.

  ‘More wine?’ Alex said, handing me the bottle.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, though I was already feeling the effects of my first glass, the wine potent, my drunkenness syrupy, mellow.

  Robin sat on the floor by my knees, her hair falling around my feet. She reached an arm up, without looking back, and I passed her the bottle. She shook it, holding it up to the light. ‘Alex! Bring more wine!’ she shouted. Grace shot Robin a warning look, and I felt my own cheeks grow hot.

  We sat in silence, listening to the rumble of the wind outside, Alex’s muffled voice in the kitchen as she ordered food.

  ‘So this project,’ Robin said, as Alex returned, tucking herself into the blanket by Grace’s side. ‘We’re meant to be researching what, exactly?’

  Alex looked at Grace, who shifted onto her elbow. ‘Did you do any of the reading?’ she said. ‘Any of you?’ she added, looking at Alex, who gave a sheepish smile.

  ‘Well, shucks, Grace, I didn’t think I’d need to,’ Robin said, grinning. ‘I knew you’d do it for me.’

  Grace sighed, a put-upon sigh that suggested she didn’t really mind (secretly, I told myself, she quite enjoyed her role as the responsible one, the girl who saved us all). ‘The gist is that Mirandola says there are two types of magic, but one’s bad, and the other’s good.’

  ‘Like black magic and white magic?’ Alex offered.

  ‘Kind of,’ she said. ‘But this is a high-minded Renaissance philosophical guy, so it’s a little more … Hang on.’ She leaned over the back of the sofa and pulled the book out of her satchel. Her shirt rose up a little, revealing a glimpse of a bruise blooming on her waist. The shock of it chilled me: the remembering. We didn’t talk about it, so it wasn’t happening: our denial a collusion. And yet, occasionally, in unexpected moments, the truth of it revealed itself – a hideous cruelty, a violence on her skin.

  Robin looked up at me; she hadn’t noticed. ‘Oooh, a bedtime story. Yay.’

  ‘Here it is,’ Grace said, having either not heard Robin’s comment or chosen to ignore it. ‘“Magic has two forms, blah blah blah …” Ah. “One consists wholly in the operations and powers of demons, and consequently, this appears to me, as God is my witness—”’

  ‘I’ll never go hungry again?’ Robin said, rolling her eyes.

  ‘Shut up,’ Alex snapped, following Grace’s fingers, underlining the words as she read.

  ‘“As God is my witness, an execrable and monstrous thing. The other proves, when thoroughly investigated, to be nothing else but the highest realization of natural philosophy.”’ She looked at us, shyly, and went on. ‘He goes on a bit, but then he says: “The practitioner of the first always tries to conceal his addiction, because it always rebounds to shame and reproach, while the cultivation of the second, both in antiquity and at almost all periods, has been the source of the highest renown and glory in the field of learning.”’

  ‘What a nerd,’ Robin scoffed. ‘Him, I mean. Not you.’

  ‘So what I think Annabel wants is examples of the second,’ Grace went on. ‘Which seems kind of easy, since he basically reels them off in here.’

  ‘Great,’ Alex said. ‘Mum’s bound to have loads on that.’ The gate buzzed, and she stood up. ‘I’ll go get the pizza. You guys pick a film.’

  ‘Or …’ Robin said, grinning.

  ‘Pick a film,’ Alex called back from the hall.

  I paused, for a moment, cursing myself for my curiosity, my eagerness to please: finally, I asked the question I knew she was waiting for. ‘Or what?’

  Robin pointed at the rows of books on the shelves, the endless trinkets and toys. ‘Or, we could do something actually fun.’

  ‘I’m tired,’ Grace said, glancing nervously at the door. ‘I’d rather watch a movie.’

  ‘What, are you scared?’

  ‘No, but—’

  The front door slammed shut, and the three of us flinched; the footsteps that thudded down the hall had an urgent rhythm. ‘Robin,’ Alex said, appearing in the doorway. ‘You promised you wouldn’t start this again.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I said, helplessly.

  Alex sighed. ‘She—’

  ‘She?’ Robin said, with mock outrage. There was a glint in her eyes as she winked at me, willing me to play along.

  ‘Last time Robin was here,’ Alex went on, ‘she spent all night going on about doing one of the rituals from Mum’s books. And apparently she’s going to do it again.’

  I looked at Alex; then at Robin, and Grace. ‘Like … Like Bloody Mary, or something?’

  Robin scoffed. ‘What are you, twelve?’

  ‘Exactly like Bloody Mary,’ Alex said. ‘A stupid, childish game.’

  Robin glanced at me, with a look of despair, and shrugged. I rolled my eyes, the look an imitation of hers, and wondered, as I did it, why I had; hoped, ner
vously, that the others hadn’t seen.

  The girls began to argue again, though the tone lightened, their usual chatter resumed. Robin and Grace stood at the cabinet stacked with VHS tapes (concealed behind a wide, painted screen – these apparently not in keeping with the room’s elegant decor).

  I was a little jealous of the way the girls seemed entirely at home here, intimately aware of the order of things, yet oblivious and accustomed to their luxury. Their sisterly bickering over what to watch (‘You always pick that.’ ‘Because it’s good!’) made me smile, matching my expressions to theirs as I hovered behind.

  In the end, it didn’t matter what they chose (though it came down to two Hammer horrors – one zombies, one vampires, neither name of which I can recall). After a slice of pizza (just one, though I was hungry – I’d heard Robin’s jibes about a girl at least two dress sizes smaller than me, a fact she seemed braced to raise at any moment) and another glass of wine, I felt myself sliding into a heady daze, eyelids heavy and thick, and leaned back into the enveloping wings of the armchair.

  When I woke, wrapped once again in my tattered fur coat, the house was silent, the fire no more than a few dull embers glowing red in the dark. On the TV, a thick white line shuddered down the screen, strobing the room.

  I blinked away sleep, and tried to remember where I was, and why I was alone. I stood, blinking, beside a case of herbs, dried crystals and silvery powders. Arnold Hill, 1969, a silver plaque read at its base. The glass bottles, no taller than my thumb, were fat and round, cork stoppered and tempting. I plucked one from the bottom shelf. Water Hemlock (Cicuta maculata), it read, in faded, black ink. I put it back, pulled another: Oleander (Nerium oleander). As I placed the bottle back in its slot, my eye caught on a half-filled jar, dried leaves, at the back of the case. I leaned in, plucked it out. Deadly Nightshade (Atropa belladonna). It reminded me of some long-forgotten joke – a thing Robin would like, I thought. In a single movement, I slipped it into my pocket.

  The floor was bitterly cold on my feet, ice-like and brittle. I walked out of the room, now empty and lifeless, the plush carpet in the hallway a kind relief. I whispered a tentative ‘hello?’ into the darkness. At the end of the corridor, Robin peered around a doorway. She beckoned, and I followed, rubbing sleep from my eyes.

  ‘What are you …?’ I whispered, gripping the door with one hand. I was a little unsteady on my feet; remembered the warm stupor of the wine.

  ‘Looking for something,’ she said, matter-of-factly.

  ‘I need some water,’ I sighed.

  She pointed behind me. ‘Third door on the right. Meet me in the “office” when you’re done.’

  When I returned – after multiple wrong turns, the house winding and cavernous, seeming to grow in the dark – Robin was sat with her feet on the desk, a large book open on her lap.

  I sat on the edge of the desk. ‘What’s this?’

  She reached for my glass and took a long sip. ‘An execrable and monstrous thing,’ she said, grinning. ‘Want to help?’

  I said nothing.

  ‘Come on,’ Robin said, reaching for my sleeve. ‘Look at this and then tell me you don’t.’

  I leaned over the desk chair, aware of my breath shifting strands of her hair. It was an ancient book, the pages painted in vivid colours, edges coated in crisp gold leaf. ‘Wow,’ I said, running my fingers along the page. I sighed and stood upright. ‘What about the others?’

  ‘Trust me, they don’t want to be disturbed. Alone time, you know.’

  I didn’t; I hadn’t. I thought of Grace’s legs thrown over Alex’s knees as they sat together on the sofa; the way their hands seemed to touch, lightly, fingers intertwined.

  ‘I … Okay, no. I mean, fine. Didn’t realize they were—’

  ‘Well, they’re not super public about it, I guess. Anyway, I want to do this with just you. It’s a bonding ritual. For best friends.’ She reached for my fingers, pressed them down on the book. ‘It’s like extra credit, too. Annabel would be so proud.’

  I picked up a silver snuff-box from the desk, pretending not to care – to be thinking it over, weighing it up. On some level, I knew what she was doing. I was being told what I wanted to hear. And yet, still … It didn’t matter. I wanted it to be true. That was almost enough. Emily, her shadow lingering over us, Robin’s last best friend – my doppelgänger, as Nicky seemed determined to remind me at every opportunity – was a constant presence, to whom I felt myself constantly compared. Best friends, Robin had said, eyes wide in the dark, breath hot with wine and anticipation, and I thought, to my shame, I’ve won.

  ‘Fine,’ I said, at last.

  ‘I love you.’ In a split second, she was up – placing the book on the table and whirling round the shelves, pulling trinkets and candles and gathering them in her arms. ‘Bring the book,’ she said, and I followed her back to the living room, where the darkness was deep and still.

  She sat on the rug, beside the low coffee table, still littered with pizza boxes and empty bottles, the brittle shards of a broken glass glinting as she lit three tall tapers and placed them in the elaborate candelabra she had taken from the office. She opened a wooden box, and placed five stones on the floor, and sprinkled some silvery dust from the tin I’d been examining, carefully outlining the circle.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, patting the floor beside her.

  I pulled a cushion off the sofa and gingerly lowered myself to the floor, facing Robin, the candles flickering between us.

  ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘Shhhh … All will be revealed.’ She crossed her legs, opened the book, and flicked through its heavy pages with licked fingers, until she found the page she was looking for. ‘Abracadabra,’ she said, grinning.

  I looked down at the items between us, and inhaled, slowly. The wind picked up, raindrops thudding at the window, and I waited, endlessly. She plopped the book on the floor with a thud, and smiled. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘So … What do we do?’

  ‘Did I not just tell you to shhh?’ she said, not looking up. ‘I wondered why Annabel talks more slowly when you’re around. Now I get it.’

  I blushed. I’d seen the girls shuffle in their seats as Annabel went back over things they’d learned before; the way they looked at each other, brief frustrations flickering between them. The way Robin always pulled out her sketchbook and drew, the paper tilted slightly towards Annabel, as though attempting to pull her attentions away.

  In those moments, when Annabel was talking to me alone, I felt my nerve endings flicker, the hairs on my arms creep slowly to attention; felt Robin’s eyes turn dark, a jealousy simmering in the air.

  She cleared her throat, and took my hands in hers. ‘Okay, so: close your eyes.’

  I closed them, briefly, and opened them again to see her staring at me, smiling. ‘I knew you’d do that,’ she said. ‘Keep them closed. Don’t open them until we’re done.’

  ‘Fine,’ I sighed. I was still fuzzy from the wine, and felt a mild headache gathering behind my eyes.

  She squeezed my fingers tight as she began to read from the book. ‘“Goddess Hecate, we come to you as your willing daughters, and ask of you your benevolence.”’ I felt a flush of goosebumps on my arms. A warning crack of thunder echoed outside.

  ‘“Goddess of the moon, we come to you with our hands open and hearts yours, in the golden light of your mother’s sky. Goddess of crossroads, we come to you open to the possibilities that you may open to us, the roads we tread not only ours, but yours, and our hearts given over to your immortal power.”’ She let go of one of my hands and placed it, palm up, on my knee. ‘“Goddess of darkness, we trust in your light, and ask you to guide us through the depths of night, when the stars fall crumbling at your sides. Goddess of witchcraft, of spells, and sorcery, grant us the knowledge of magic, and the strength of your heart. Goddess, we come to you, your daughters, giving to you our willing blood.”’

  I felt a sharp pain drive through my palm, and pulled my hand
away, opening my eyes. I was bleeding, a thick, red welt drawn down the centre of my palm; I looked at Robin, horrified, as she dragged a thin, gnarled knife down her own palm, and pressed it to mine, squeezing my hand.

  ‘What the hell?’ I shouted, trying to pull away.

  ‘Shhhhh,’ she whispered. She looked at me, her face serious for a moment, and then laughed. ‘Come on. Like you’d have let me do that if you’d known it was coming.’

  ‘That hurt.’ She had my hand still in her grip, thick, warm blood pooling between our palms. ‘Let go.’

  ‘Wait,’ she said, grabbing the dregs of a bottle from the table. She took a sip, and passed it to me. ‘Toast our union.’

  ‘No way,’ I said, wriggling my hand, surprised at the force of her grip.

  ‘I’m serious, come on,’ she said, waving the bottle at me. Realizing it was the only way out, I snatched it, and drained the last of it.

  ‘There,’ I said, slamming it down on the table. ‘Now let go.’ Released from her grip, my palm burned, dripping loud splashes of blood on the floor below. I held it to my mouth to stop the flow, blood salty and warm on my lips.

  Robin snorted. ‘Your face is an absolute picture.’

  I staggered to my feet, woozy from the pain. ‘Fuck you,’ I said, walking across the tiles, through to the bathroom, my bleeding hand wrapped in my sweatshirt, so as not to drip blood on the creamy carpet. I locked the door, and ran my hand under the tap, an inky red staining the bowl.

  ‘What the hell,’ I whispered, staring numbly down at my hand. My heart was pounding, furiously, in my ears, my skin prickling with the shock, and a dim, dizzying nausea seemed to swell from my gut, making me rattle with a sudden sweat. I closed the toilet lid, and sat down, unsteadily, hand still draped over the sink.

  I heard a faint knock at the door. ‘Are you okay?’ Robin whispered. I said nothing, remained still, holding my breath. Another knock, and another. ‘Fuck you, then,’ Robin hissed, and padded back down the hall.

  There I remained, until the steady drip of blood slowed to a stop. The dizziness was overwhelming, nauseating. I remembered the hiss of tearing skin, and winced, burning with anger. How could she? I thought, bitterly turning the ritual over in my mind. And it didn’t even do anything.