The Furies

by Katie Lowe

  ‘Oh my god,’ she said. She turned it over, looked again. ‘That’s so weird.’

  Robin, rooting through a cabinet of dusty spirit bottles and faded books, turned and looked at us. ‘What’s weird?’

  ‘Annabel. Look,’ Grace said. ‘They must be, what – university students?’

  ‘I didn’t know they were friends,’ I said.

  Robin snorted. ‘Have you seen the way they look at each other? She practically bares her teeth. We’re probably doing her a favour getting rid of him, too.’

  The words seemed to hang in the air a moment and burst. It was the first time any of us had referred to what we intended to do in anything but the most euphemistic of terms.

  ‘I’m going to find a hairbrush,’ I said, after a moment, hoping the girls wouldn’t notice the thin band of sweat forming on my forehead, grateful to the darkness for disguising the whiteness I felt in my skin, the chill of it; the nauseating thrill.

  ‘Don’t be long,’ Alex said, glancing at the ticking clock on the mantelpiece, an hour, still, behind.

  I stepped out into the windowless hall, feeling my way to the stairs. My fingers touched the flocked wallpaper, ringed with damp, and coats hung lifeless, smelling faintly of wood smoke and dank, dried sweat. My fingers caught on a door handle, and I wondered briefly about prints, evidence, proof we’d been here. I blinked the thoughts away (Too late, I told myself, nervously) and peered inside.

  I felt around for a light switch, and the room burst into a blazing light. A bulb swung uncovered from the ceiling, slick with dust. Not a bathroom, as I’d hoped, but the garage, turned into what looked like a makeshift study. Among the petrol cans and scattered tools, a desk covered in papers, with a typewriter in the middle, paper still clipped upright. I scanned the rest of the room: suitcase, golf clubs, broken bookshelves; fetid hanging baskets, waxy blue blocks of rat poison, an empty cage.

  I stepped inside and closed the door. Silent but for the hum of the breeze at the garage door, and cold, the sweat pinching now at my skin. I wiped my palms on my shirt, and plucked a piece of paper from the desk.

  ‘Dear Mr Holmsworth,’ the letter began. ‘Thank you for your submission titled The Witches of Elm Hollow: Myths and Murders, 1604–1984. While your proposal is an interesting one, the content seems to me rather too academic for a mainstream audience. I appreciate you taking the time to submit, however, and wish you luck in finding a suitable publisher for your book.’

  I turned it over, found another. ‘While your research offers an interesting premise, it seems to me unlikely to be taken seriously among the research community – perhaps it might make for a better novel than a monograph?’ And another: ‘One cannot help but feel that the last “mystery” being over a decade old diminishes the relevance of this submission. With this investigation closed long since (with no signs of reopening), it does feel rather like an (admittedly understandable) personal cause, which would struggle to find an audience in the current, somewhat saturated, market.’

  Another ripple of laughter echoed from the living room, abruptly hushed. I put the letters back, carefully, roughly as I’d found them, and picked up the heavier stack that sat beside the typewriter, scrawled upon with notes in the Dean’s handwriting, his distinctive green ink.

  A car purred to a stop outside and sputtered out. I froze. Was that his car? It couldn’t be; he wasn’t due home for an hour, at least. Classes hadn’t finished yet. He should be at school.

  I slammed my hand against the light switch and pressed my back against the door, still clutching the papers in my trembling hands. Slowly, I sat down on the floor, a move more automatic than considered, as though I could make myself so small that I’d disappear. I’d done this often, as a child, lurking in corners of the house, my parents pretending not to see me, curled small between bookcases and table legs. Anna learning to walk had brought this to an end; she’d been incapable of seeing me without squealing my name, or wriggling free from whichever adult she was with to wrap tiny fingers around my hands and tug at my hair.

  The front door opened, the click of locks thunderous in the silence, the slam a death; the hall light switched on, a seam splitting the pitch black of the garage. The pages in front of me glowed white, text smudged by nervous hands: The Witches of Elm Hollow: A History of Murders from Margaret Boucher to Emily Frost.

  The footsteps grew closer and paused. Shoes thumped, one, then another, on the other side of the wall. A rustle of jackets as he hung up his coat. My heart, pounding, willing him to walk away, thinking of the girls in the living room opposite. Go upstairs, I willed him, as though I could push him away with my thoughts. Go upstairs, and we’ll leave, and you’ll never know we were here.

  It’s possible the silence wasn’t as long as it seemed. It’s possible, too, that it was longer. I remember – or, at least, I think I remember – holding my breath for the duration of it, though in memory doing so for so long seems impossible. Still, in that moment, it seemed endless. I felt sick, gripped with sweat and fear. I stared down at the page in my hands. ‘The things these girls are capable of are almost impossible to comprehend …’ it said, the words swimming, floating above the page.

  I thought I heard a lighter step; a rustle beyond the door as the Dean turned around. ‘That they would murder one of their own,’ I read, before my neck snapped back against the door, a thud and crack breaking on the other side. ‘I may be ridiculed for the suggestion,’ it said, as the cold sound of steel breaking flesh tore through the air; a moan followed, indecipherable, neither male, nor female, nor recognizably human at all.

  ‘I write this, now, with no small conviction – though no proof – that they will kill again. That they may, indeed, have already done so.’ I felt a sticky warmth gathering beneath me, a seam of blood, black in the darkness, seeping in under the door, which rattled as a hand beat against it, each thud a little weaker than the last.

  ‘And yet no one would believe me if I told them. A centuries-long pattern of deaths, at the hands of those too young and innocent for any rational authority to suspect.’

  Alex’s laugh tore through the silence, shook me from my position, frozen, on the garage floor. I stood, wiping a bloody palm on my jeans, cursing at the telltale stain.

  ‘Violet?’ Robin said, softly. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m in here,’ I hissed back, a flicker of nerves in my voice. ‘In the garage.’ I stuffed the papers into a box on the shelf beside the door, and turned the handle, a slow click.

  The Dean’s hand dropped through the gap with a thud, and I lurched back, gripping the shelves to steady myself, unable to pull my eyes away from the fingers ringed with blackening blood. I remembered the bird, the night of the rite: remembered being surprised that such a little thing could contain so much blood. Now, on the other side of the door, a grown man: a river, I imagined, an ocean. I stood frozen, for a moment, and closed my eyes, as though by not seeing, I could make it go away.

  The door creaked open a little more, my breath growing shallow with fear, heart thudding in my chest. ‘Violet,’ Robin said, again. ‘It’s okay. Come out.’

  It’s okay? I thought, clawing for breath, fingers white around the steel bars of the shelves. I looked around, searching for some way out that wouldn’t force me to face the body, the horror of what they’d – we’d – done; but the garage door had no inner handle, accessible only from outside. I grabbed a Stanley knife – blade rusted, half-blunt with age – and slipped it into my pocket. I wouldn’t use it, I knew that much – but its presence was a small yet desperately needed comfort.

  Don’t look down, I told myself, as I stepped towards the door. If I could just look away, I wouldn’t have to face it: wouldn’t be trailed by the memory as I slept, greeted by the dead eyes on waking. But the sight of the girls, standing opposite, staring wild-eyed and slick with blood, was an image equal in horror – their hair in dank, dripping strands, clothes shining adamantine, glossy black. Robin looked smaller than ever, drown
ed and wretched. Only Grace looked at me, with a glance almost apologetic, for a moment; a lick of blood rolled down from her brow to her eye, and she wiped it, coolly, with her sleeve. Behind, the spray tore a streak across the walls, seeping into the flocked wallpaper in seashell shapes.

  Alex looked up, as though only now realizing I was there. She frowned. ‘I thought you were in the bathroom.’

  ‘I heard him coming … So I hid. But then the door …’ I gestured to the body, still not looking down. I couldn’t; couldn’t face the thing I thought I knew, now. That the girls hadn’t wanted to kill him because he’d killed Emily Frost. They’d killed him because he knew that they had.

  ‘Is he dead?’ I said, uselessly; I knew he was (of course he was), but the words slipped out before I could catch them.

  ‘I think so.’ She looked at me, the pause hanging heavy between us. ‘He came for us. Fuck.’ She gave a slow, thin sigh through her teeth. ‘What a psycho.’

  There wasn’t time, I thought. He didn’t know you were there.

  ‘He would’ve killed us,’ she said, still staring at me. ‘We could’ve died.’

  The silence swelled; I realized their eyes were on me, all of them. Saw the blade of the knife shaking slightly in Alex’s hand, the light skittering on the wall. They were waiting for me to speak, to say something: but the words simply weren’t there.

  Alex looked at Robin, then back at me. ‘Can you check his pulse?’ she said, eyes flashing in the dim light, the barest glint of a smile.

  I felt my stomach roll over, chest tighten. I couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t bring myself to see what they’d done. ‘I … I can’t,’ I stuttered, the shame, even then, a sickness.

  ‘Go on,’ she said, with a bitter laugh ‘I mean, really, it’s the least you can do.’

  I knew what she was doing; what the three of them were doing, now, as I looked to Robin for support, and she looked away, avoiding my eye. They were making me complicit. (Though as I write this, now, I realize that I already was, most likely – in the eyes of the law – party to a murder, premeditated and cold. That I’d imagined his death might come about in a different way – through occult spells, ancient magic – would, to any reasonable jury, be immaterial in determining my guilt.)

  I closed my eyes, steeled myself, drew breath. One thing at a time seemed the only way, the cruel fact of the body too much to take in at once.

  Eyes still open, wide with shock, blood rolling upwards from neck, to ear, to matted hair. A wound so deep as to be black inside, a rictus grin, bloodstained teeth and chapped lips. Arms raised in a defensive pose, scattered with bloody seams. The carpet turning black, a tannin, urine smell. I was embarrassed for him, being seen like this. I wondered if his last thoughts had been of fear, or whether there’d been a flicker of shame at this final indignity.

  I reached gingerly for his wrist, the absurdity of the situation rising, adrift. Except for a primary-school class on the human body, I’d never felt a pulse for proof of life. Even then, it was only my own – and so disgusted was I at the mechanical pump at my wrist that I’d held my breath and willed it to stop, horrified to find it only thudding louder in my ears. I spent the night awake, listening, feeling my insides beat against my skin.

  As my fingers touched his wrist (still warm, something I remember being surprised at, though only a few minutes had passed) a clatter from the kitchen broke through the silence. Grace pitched backwards, gripping the doorframe; Robin stared at me, eyes somehow pleading, while Alex remained perfectly still. There was a soft thud, a rustling. A high-pitched miaow.

  ‘Poppet,’ I said, as a fat, round-faced cat loped in. (Pets do look like their owners, I thought, bitterly.) He circled Alex’s feet, then Grace’s, in search of affection, apparently uninterested in the body on the hallway floor.

  Robin laughed, nervously. ‘I think I just had a heart attack.’

  Alex shot her a look. ‘Shhh.’

  ‘He’s dead,’ I said – choking, almost, on the words, too loud, too real, the crush of flesh still on my fingertips. (I still feel it now, sometimes, the memory making it impossible for me to eat meat without wincing. A small inconvenience, I suppose, but one no one ever mentions in romanticized accounts of murder – that vegetarian food is largely tasteless, and dry.)

  ‘Alex,’ I said, after a moment. ‘What do we do now?’

  She looked at Grace. ‘I … I don’t know.’

  ‘What do you mean you don’t know?’ I said, my voice shrill, arched.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, meeting my eyes with a cold glare. ‘Just … Just shut up a minute and let me think.’

  I looked to Robin, who shrugged and glanced down at the body. The horror I’d seen in her eyes moments before had faded and their usual light, although faint, was unmistakably creeping back. I followed her stare, and it was true: it seemed the longer we stood around it, the more faint the sense of horror became. Poppet sauntered over, tentatively licked at the pool of blood; finding it appealing, he continued, the scratch of his tongue the only sound. Disgust rose, then faded again.

  ‘We could make it look like an accident,’ Grace said, wiping at a smudged fingerprint on the doorframe with her sleeve. ‘A fire, maybe?’ The three of us stared at her, blankly. She shrugged. ‘Alright, fine. You think of something, then.’

  We stood, silent, looking at each other, all searching for a better idea.

  ‘Okay,’ Alex said, finally. ‘Grace is right.’ She pointed into the living room. ‘There’s a fireplace in there. We’ll start it, and make it look like it got out of hand.’

  Poppet’s eyes flashed, as though catching a shadow. The smell of the body, the dampness underfoot, rose as the air grew thin, humid and tense. I shook my head. Alex turned, followed by Grace. Robin was standing still behind them, skin a deathly white.

  I willed her to follow the girls – to leave me alone, just for a moment, so I could take the Dean’s book from the garage and stuff it into my bag. Had I imagined the words, misread them somehow? Or was he telling the truth – that the girls had killed Emily Frost themselves, all the while performing their grief to teachers, parents … to me?

  ‘Come on,’ Robin said, turning to leave. I hesitated, for a moment, and she looked back at me. ‘It’s going to be okay,’ she said, reaching for my hand. ‘Don’t freak out. It’s fine.’

  Tentatively stepping over the body (watched warily by Poppet, who trailed after us, several feet behind), I followed her into the dark room. She looked back, and I met her eye for a split second before I realized what she was checking: that the body hadn’t moved, clinging desperately to life. Made nervous by the thought, I did the same, struck by the uncanny stillness, the broad-shouldered body bereft of life and blood.

  Alex and Grace were hunched by the fireplace, whispers undercut by the tearing of papers being ripped from books. Robin reached into the cabinet and handed me a whisky bottle, gummy with age. ‘Not much here,’ she said, turning to Alex.

  I saw my chance. ‘I think I saw a petrol can in the garage.’

  ‘No way,’ Alex said. ‘If they find petrol on anything, it won’t look like an accident.’ She paused. ‘The oven’s gas, right?’

  We worked silently, seagulls yowling overhead, Poppet perched on the sofa, a listless paw draped off to one side. Twice, I ranged towards the hallway door, thoughts of the Dean’s words rising over and over in my mind. Each time, however, I felt myself watched, and wound back.

  Alex wiped her hands on her jeans, dried blood dusting around her. ‘I suppose we’d better change,’ she said, with a grim laugh.

  ‘He’s got a daughter,’ I said. ‘Her room’s upstairs. The first door.’

  Alex looked at Robin, a split-second glance. They knew something was wrong, but not what. ‘Can you go and get us some clothes?’ she said, sweetly. ‘You’re the only one who’s got clean shoes.’

  You could take yours off, I thought, bitterly, but said nothing; I turned back into the hallway, feeling their eye
s on me as I passed the body, glancing down so as not to step in the black pool around it. My arms and legs felt weighted, leaden, as I climbed the stairs, not touching the bannister (though I’d touched it before, I was certain – when the murder we’d planned had been one that wouldn’t leave prints). I felt sick, every cell trembling at the top of the stairs. I sat on the edge of Sophie’s bed, pressing my forehead to my knees. It’s impossible, I told myself. They wouldn’t kill Emily. She was Robin’s best friend.

  And then – possessively at first, trailed by a creeping dread: I’m Robin’s best friend.

  And, desperately as I wanted to believe that they’d never hurt her – couldn’t possibly have killed their friend, no matter what – the body in the hallway, the girls’ bloodstained hands, my bloodstained hands, served as both rebuttal and rebuke. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, I thought, straightening up, hands digging into the edge of the bed. Another body, another death – another murder, more real than the others, the proof seeping into our skin and becoming part of us. Us, as a unit, whole.

  Unless, I thought, they kill me too.

  ‘What the hell are you doing up there?’ Robin hissed, from the foot of the stairs.

  ‘Coming!’ I shouted back, abruptly hushed. Poppet – finally realizing something was amiss – began to miaow, a steady, plaintive sound, followed by a thud, a screech, and a hiss. As I entered the living room, I saw him crouched in a corner, tail swinging hypnotically back and forth, watching the girls with wide, yellow eyes.

  Alex saw me looking and laughed. ‘If you’re about to give a lecture on animal cruelty …’

  ‘I’m not,’ I said, handing her a pile of clothes and unzipping my jeans. I slid into a pair of tracksuit bottoms, buttons cold against my calves, the fabric straining at my thighs; Sophie was at least one, maybe two sizes smaller than I was, and tall.

  Robin grinned, watching me struggle. ‘Nice poppers.’

  ‘Fuck off,’ I said, blushing.

  While the others changed, rinsing blood down the kitchen sink and whispering words I strained to hear, I stood at the window, peering through a penny-width gap. It was getting dark, the sky blazing red and gold. My heart tumbled in my chest, every sound making me flinch; a car passed, and I stepped back, stumbling into the dining table. A glass tipped over the edge and smashed on the edge of the chair.