The Furies

by Katie Lowe

  It was only when she was a few feet away that I realized it was her: this skinny, peroxide-haired thing, skin mottled with the beginnings of a burn. ‘Come on,’ Robin said, grabbing my arm and spinning me round as she passed.

  ‘What the fuck—’

  ‘Just fucking come, will you?’

  I followed as she ran through the streets, jumping over cracks, passing the oddly comforting graffiti that hung above the railway bridge: ‘Everything will be OK’. In the shade, she stopped and leaned against the wall, tendons in her neck fluttering as she ran fingers through a tangled mass of hair.

  I slowed down, stopped, chest pounding. ‘What’s going on?’ I said, once I’d caught my breath.

  She folded her arms around herself as though cold. The bridge rattled overhead, a rolling, syncopated thunder echoing for what seemed like forever, disappearing in an instant. We stood in silence, staring at each other.

  ‘What did you do to your hair?’

  She stared at me, eyebrow raised. ‘Seriously? That’s your big question right now?’

  I shrugged. ‘It looks nice.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She felt around in her pockets, digging out a stick of gum. She tore it in two, offered me a dusty piece.

  ‘Where … Where have you been?’ I said, at last.

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Literally as grounded as it is possible for a person to be. No thanks to you, dickhead.’

  ‘What did I do?’

  She handed me a wrap, powdery white and crushed. I recognized it instantly: the one I’d lost at the fair. ‘Look familiar?’

  I stared at her, blankly. ‘Where did you get that?’

  ‘Mum found it. In her trinket box.’ She snorted. ‘At least when I go through your family’s stuff, I don’t leave proof.’

  ‘Oh my god,’ I said. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Don’t worry. I didn’t tell her it was yours. Not that she believed me, but … Well, whatever. I’m in endless, irrevocable shit. So, thanks, Vivi.’

  I blushed. ‘Fuck,’ I said. ‘I am so sorry.’ I thought of Andy; shuddered at the thought of him, instinctively. And then, of Nicky. Of what I’d done, and what she knew.

  Robin shrugged. ‘It’s fine. Although I’ve been calling you all day. Have you spoken to Alex?’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Seriously – where the fuck have you been?’

  ‘I’ve been sick,’ I said, weakly. ‘I had, like … The flu, or something.’

  ‘Yuck,’ she said, stepping back, making a cross with two fingers. ‘Don’t give it to me.’

  ‘I’m over it, now. But what’s wrong with Alex?’

  ‘She’s fine. But Grace’s dad went mental. Or rather, more mental. She’s only just got out of the hospital.’

  ‘Oh my god.’

  ‘Yeah. She’s living at Alex’s for now. Going over to see her is the only reason my mum’s let me out.’ She looked around, as though imagining herself being watched. ‘Are you okay?’ she said. ‘You look kinda freaked out.’

  ‘I – no,’ I said. ‘I’m fine.’ I steadied myself, one breath at a time. ‘Can I come?’

  ‘Duh. I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Come on.’ She grabbed my arm, and we walked into the sunlight. She rubbed the gooseflesh on my arm, gently; but still, a chill ran heady through my blood.

  The house was deathly quiet, the air thick and musty; I smelled rotting food, a wisp of smoke. ‘How long has your mum been away?’ I asked Alex, as I walked into the kitchen.

  ‘A few weeks,’ she said, sliding takeaway boxes and bottles into a black plastic bag, while Robin tinkered with the old record player, the three of us jumping as it burst into sudden, lively song. I knew the voice, the song: Nina Simone. Mum’s favourite, back when she used to sing along to the radio, dancing with Anna in her arms. I started running the taps, ostensibly to wash the dishes piled on every surface. (Though in truth I was simply looking for some task with which to occupy myself, to escape the need for conversation. For what could I say? What could any of us say, now?) ‘Leave it,’ Alex said, turning abruptly to me. ‘She won’t be back for a while.’

  Chastened, I went into the lounge, light seeping through the closed curtains, examining the heavy books and brass sculptures, masks and trinkets that lined the walls. Once-unfamiliar names now stood out, remembered: histories of great women, goddesses and mortals; tales of haggard witches and high priestesses immortalized in dusky bronze; skulls, pieces of animals dried and dead. I picked up my favourites, one by one: the baby, pierced with iron bolts; the painting of Dagol, a howling beast; a set of teeth, filed to bitter points. A porcelain hand, lined in black ink, offering futures without guarantees.

  We sat in the same formation as we had that first night at Alex’s house, when all was possibility, our friendship a light, gorgeous thing. Now, though, as my friends talked, and laughed, and sipped the sweet champagne Alex had found in the basement (‘Dad’s favourite,’ she’d said, waving two bottles in each hand), I felt weighted down by the force of it. The things we’d done together – the things I had done to them – all, now, a mess, a web from which I couldn’t extricate myself.

  It had all seemed like games, before, when we’d stood in the cove, giggling as we summoned beasts we didn’t quite believe in (or, more accurately, we didn’t believe in our power to invoke). But we’d fallen so far since then, and I, now, was the worst. I’d believed myself betrayed and betrayed them in return. And now there was no way back.

  ‘I can’t believe you didn’t mention it before,’ Robin was saying, as I dragged myself back to the conversation.

  Alex reached across Grace for the bottle, placing a gentle hand on her arm as she did so, whispering something I couldn’t catch. Her make-up clotted thick around a bruise we all pretended not to see. ‘It’s all been arranged over the last couple of days. And anyway, I’m sure you two have plans, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m not pissed because I want an invite – although, also, fuck you,’ Robin said. She took a long sip of her drink, caught my eye. ‘But don’t you think it’ll look suspicious?’

  Alex looked at Robin, an exaggerated confusion on her face. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean disappearing this soon after … You know.’

  She laughed. ‘Oh, shit, of course – taking a holiday. In summer. The classic actions of a homicidal maniac. I’m so glad you thought of that.’ She took a sip of her drink, and sighed. ‘Anyway, nobody’s looking at us. The police found the tape in his office, so that part’s covered, and …’

  ‘Where are you going?’ I said, dazed and heady with the champagne. The three of them turned to me as though they’d forgotten I was there.

  ‘Europe,’ Alex said, flatly. ‘Mum’s doing a research trip, and she’s got a sofa going spare, so … She said we could go along.’

  Robin mimicked her, ‘Europe. Jolly fucking good.’

  ‘She asked! What did you want us to do? Say no? Stay here with you being all—’

  ‘You know what, Alex, go fuck yourself. I don’t—’

  I looked at Grace, who gave a long, shallow sigh. ‘Guys. Can we just … Can we relax a bit?’

  Alex gave a conciliatory smile, looked over at me for support. ‘It’s only six weeks,’ she said. ‘We’ll be back in no time. And then it’ll be September, and we’ll actually have to … Well, pass.’ I flushed, thinking of my grades, which had slipped ever further in the end-of-year exams. I’d been given special dispensation, of course – the Dean’s perceived mark, an imagined victim (though I didn’t have to say this to anyone; the idea seemed to come from those around me, their fears left unsaid). But if I wanted to leave next year, I’d have to work to catch up.

  ‘She’s right,’ I said, Robin rolling her eyes in response. I stood up, wanting to move on – not just from the conversation, but the house, the town, the mess we were in. If they wanted to leave, I couldn’t blame them. I felt the impulse, just the same. ‘Let’s chill out. I’ll get more wine,’ I said, stepping out i
nto the corridor, feeling the thump of my heart, heavy and aching in my chest.

  In the kitchen, I closed my eyes, for a moment, and imagined myself free; pressed my fingernails into scarred palm, and returned, smiling, the wine swilling blood-like into each upheld glass.

  Chapter 16

  In spite of all that came after, the last day of the academic year still fills me with a strange joy, a melancholy somehow bittersweet. It’s in the corridors charged with excitement and anticipation, the leavers’ class on the brink of adulthood, adventures sprawling in front of them. That prickle of sadness, the first bloom of nostalgia; the air saturated with carefully chosen pop songs streaming through the speakers that line the halls as students leave campus for the penultimate time – home, to change for the Summer Ball.

  Perhaps as a distraction from the ever-present shadow of the Dean, and the rumours that hung heavy over Elm Hollow as the term came to a close, the student body was for the first time allowed to vote on the ball’s theme, with sections of the organizing committee campaigning across campus with decadent visuals and props. A stilt walker stalked the Quad shouting ‘Carnival!’ while a group of girls in bodices (handed blankets by disapproving teachers before every class) campaigned for Moulin Rouge; flapper girls danced to Gatsby jazz, while a small minority campaigned enthusiastically for the Gothic, dressed in black, grinning fanged in a lonely corner of the cafeteria. More than once, the sight of these rounding a corner had made my heart lurch, sick; I’d laugh, grimly, after the split-second thrust of horror, the figures unseen remaining infinitely more horrifying.

  When the vote came, however, only a small group of students voted, and each for their own themes. The deciding vote came down to an even split between Masquerade and, simply, ‘White’. The Headmaster, exhausted by the year and with (he felt – the student body inclined to disagree) more pressing matters on his mind, told the girls to work it out between themselves. Thus we ended up with the merging of the two: a White Masquerade ball.

  It seems ridiculous, now, that something so childish could assume such importance – one cannot help, as an adult, but cringe a little in the telling – but, raised on high-school movies of prom queens and kings, of kisses under blooming lights, of music and dancing and the all-pervading nostalgia of adolescence, none of us were entirely immune. Even we had obsessed over masks and dresses – a respite, I suppose, from the horror that seemed to surround us. That seemed, sometimes, to come from within.

  Annabel, in keeping with the theme, had returned to the subject of tragedy for our final class of the year: theatrical masks leering dead-eyed, hung from lamps and propped on books, strung from roof beams, swinging with the brush of bird and bat wings above. She paced the room, a white powder print on her bare arm, nails brittle white: I wondered what she’d been making before class, what plaster of Paris creation she’d been moulding out of view.

  ‘It is the enduring tale of the jealous,’ she said, pointing to the books spread on the table between us, ‘the living force of envy itself. A deadly sin, come to bear on the family of Adam and Eve, whose Original Sin – our mother’s sin, the female weakness – casts its shadow on our culture even now, like something primitive: teeth bared in anger, the shadowed cast of a jawline in a hollow stare. “I will be a restless wanderer on the earth,” Cain says. And in the Tuileries, the stone Cain walks torn with his head in his hands; in Glasgow’s Botanic Gardens, he sits forever in a sculpture named Cain: My Punishment Is Greater Than I Can Bear.

  ‘So says the Bible, and all that follows: envy, the sin against one’s own, the root of all evils.’ She looked at each of us in turn, Robin craned forward, as though leaning into her glow. ‘Still, like all things, the ancients did it better. No: ancient women did it better. The Christian painters of the Renaissance fixated on the tales of men, their revenge noble, powerful, dripping with meaning. And yet no man can outdo Medea – to whom I always seem destined to return,’ she said, smiling, ‘in the art of revenge. She is the spectre that haunts the very image of masculinity, the one who took a bloody blade to the patriarchy itself. She was the only survivor, walking from Athens wearing the blood of her children and – in my imagining, at least – laughing. Laughing, because the worst was done, and she was made divine.

  ‘Is this motherhood?’ she said, and for a moment, our eyes met. ‘Medea, who in the Metamorphoses visits Hecate, the witch goddess, and in Euripides embodies her: she drives into the heart of herself, and emerges changed, the inevitable result of illumination, shadow.’ She sighed. ‘Turning oneself inside out, through screaming pain and fear and horror, is – to many ancient Greeks, at the very least – the pathway into motherhood. For Medea, though, it is the way out. And so she becomes eternal, wearing the blood of her children in her hair.’

  She leaned her elbows on the back of a chair, and a silence fell between us, we four students and our teacher, whose every word meant so much to us (indeed, I still shudder at the memory, the flicker of the eternal that she seemed to be able to conjure with her words). ‘The fact of tragedy, then, is this: we’re doomed to hurt the ones we love, faults amplified from fleeting thought to heinous crime. The deadly sins are just that – our furies turning fate, which in turn begets fury at our fallen condition: each the shadow of the other. And above it all, the light of the moon: the goddesses watch on – Hecate, and her kin, Medea.’

  The bells rang above, and outside cheers echoed from the main building; the four of us sat, still, in silence, a thrill lingering in the air. Annabel smiled, and we stood to be given a brief hug, Annabel’s fingers seeming to take root around our bare arms in the moment she held us. It seemed like a goodbye, though – as we told each other, after Annabel had left – it was only for the summer. How little, then, we knew. How things would change in the coming hours, these brief moments of joy irretrievably, impossibly lost.

  While the first students began to arrive back on campus, the decorators now departed from the Great Hall, the four of us sat in the clock tower, mercifully cool in the dry summer heat. Below, theatrical masks hung between the trees, their eyes lit by fairy lights, sky turning coppery behind. Every one of the buildings around the Quad seemed to glow, the light from the grand arched windows streaming spotlights on the grass. There was, it seemed, a magic to it, a sweetness I hadn’t caught in months – summer flowers, I supposed, though I hoped, still, that perhaps we’d been released from the horror of all that had come before.

  ‘Such a pretty evening,’ Grace said, joining me at the window. She handed me a glass of wine, Robin at last having finally broken into the cabinet (after several months of trying, hairpins and paperclips littered around it on the floor).

  An unspoken truce had settled between us, for the night, at least. All week, four white dresses (handmade by Grace, after a style she’d found in one of the magazines) had hung from the book-cases Alex used as end-tables on either side of her bed. They were simple, elegant, plain – unlike the glittering monstrosities girls showed each other on furtive Polaroids, all hoops and corsets, hideous in their decadence. I smoothed the soft fabric against my skin, joined the other girls.

  ‘Oh my god, listen to this one,’ Robin said, leafing through a yearbook. ‘“When it rains look for rainbows. When it’s dark look for stars.”’

  Alex groaned. ‘That is horrendous.’

  ‘And—’ Robin snorted. ‘And— “I’ll be waiting, everlasting, like the sun.” Isn’t that from a song?’

  ‘Wait – wasn’t yours?’ I said, sitting down beside her. Alex snickered. ‘From a song, I mean.’

  ‘Yeah, but a good song. Imagine wanting your high-school experience to be immortalized by the words of the great poet Sporty Spice.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure they don’t write their songs,’ Alex said, taking the book from Robin. ‘Anyway, the quotes aren’t the best part. I love the “Remember Me” pages. “I’d most like to be remembered for …”’ she said, in a pitch-perfect beauty queen voice.

  ‘“Murdering a teacher
in his own home,”’ Robin laughed. ‘Probably wouldn’t get past the editorial—’

  She stopped, mid-sentence. Alex and Grace stared past us, ashen-faced and open-mouthed. I turned, following their gaze; the door to the little kitchen slightly ajar. ‘Did you just …’ Grace said, looking at Alex. ‘Did you hear something?’

  Alex nodded. Robin looked around at the door, then at me. ‘You’re being paranoid,’ she said, though the words seemed hollow, as though she didn’t believe them herself. ‘There’s nothing there.’

  ‘I didn’t hear anything,’ I added, nervously. ‘Maybe it was a bird.’

  ‘Or a bat,’ Robin said.

  ‘Shhhh.’ Alex stood, slowly, and walked towards the door, Grace two steps behind. She placed a hand on the door, and flung it back, the brass hitting the bookshelves, a porcelain doll falling to the floor with a crack. ‘What the hell—’

  ‘I’m sorry— I’m really, I didn’t mean—’ Nicky stood in the little kitchen, her back pressed against the far wall, already dressed for the ball.

  Alex looked at Robin, eyes flashing with anger. She turned back to Nicky. ‘How did you get up here?’

  ‘I didn’t—’ she began, voice trembling.

  ‘Nicky, how did you—’

  ‘The door … the door wasn’t locked this afternoon. I was just looking—’

  ‘For what?’

  Nicky sighed; closed her eyes for a moment, her composure settling. ‘For whatever you guys were doing up here. I know you’ve been coming up here all year.’

  ‘You nosey bitch,’ Robin said. ‘I fucking knew you were—’

  ‘Robin,’ Alex said, coldly. ‘Calm down.’ She turned to Nicky. ‘Have you been listening?’

  Nicky shook her head. ‘I couldn’t hear anything.’ Alex and Grace exchanged a look.

  ‘Seriously,’ she added. ‘I was just waiting for you to leave so I could go.’

  ‘She’s lying,’ Robin said. ‘Of course she heard—’