The Furies

by Katie Lowe

  I shook my head. ‘Do you really think we should run away?’

  She turned to me. ‘Unless you’ve got a better idea. I mean, Nicky’s going to tell someone what we did – if she hasn’t already. And Annabel hates us, so that’s—’

  ‘She doesn’t hate us.’

  ‘Did you see the way she looked at us? I’d be surprised if she doesn’t try to get us kicked out next year.’ She took a sip of wine, dug the bottle into the grass. ‘I’ve never seen her that angry. Ever.’

  ‘She’ll get over it.’

  Robin shrugged. ‘And you know Alex and Grace aren’t coming back. Not if the shit hits the fan.’

  ‘They will.’

  ‘They won’t. They’re probably cancelling their return tickets as we speak.’

  I reached for the wine. ‘Alright, fine,’ I said. ‘Fine. We can go wherever you want. How about Paris?’ She rolled her eyes. ‘I’m serious. Bring your guitar. We’ll form a travelling band, except I can’t sing. But I’ll hold out the hat for people to throw pennies in.’

  Robin laughed. ‘La Vie Bohème,’ she said. ‘We’ll get discovered on the streets by the owner of some backstreet jazz club. You’ll learn the sax and we’ll take up residence in a glamorous little apartment upstairs.’

  ‘Done.’ I didn’t believe it; nor, I think, did she. It was playacting, fantasy, childish games. In the light of day, we’d find a way out. But right now, in the moonlight, the grass growing dewy and sweet-smelling, make-believe would be enough to sustain us.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, standing up, legs all tendon and bone beneath her dress. I reached a hand towards her, and brushed at the dead grass that stuck to her legs, leaving crosses in her skin. ‘Let’s make the most of this dump before we go.’

  She ran towards the playground, moonlight dripping through the swings’ thick chains, and I followed, and we laughed at the world as we spun circles through the pitch-dark night. Behind, the clock faces turned dark, and time, to us, was lost.

  Summer

  Chapter 17

  Owl wings cracked above like a gunshot, worms rolling in the earth beneath me, shifting roots. I opened my eyes, and the moon swelled, wet with dew, stars scattered like ashes in the peach-flesh morning sky. My head ached. I put my cold, wet palms to my face, smelled sweat, felt my jaw ice-cold and hopelessly clenched. The night came back in smudged memories, a shallow blur – dusty pills, spitting phrases from half-remembered spells as a summer storm gathered and drenched us.

  I reached an arm to one side, feeling for Robin, finding only grass. The world rocked, turned liquid as I sat up and called her name. ‘Robin?’ I said, voice cracked, throat rattling with smoke and spit. I coughed, spat metallic in the grass, crushed a daisy with my fingers, called again. ‘Robin?’

  The first splinter of sun split above the trees, the sky split, too, by the fading stream of a jet; birds chirped and clicked above the school buildings, bricks crisp and cool in the slanted morning light. I stood, slowly, staggering up, my bones straw, muscles holding water, and turned around to see the figure swinging gently on the breeze, hands gripping chains, ankles crossed above the tarmac, a white, discarded shoe, toenails painted turquoise green.

  ‘Robin,’ I said. ‘Robin?’ Funny, now, how many times I said her name, perhaps the only word I spoke that day, would’ve spoken forever: Robin, Robin, Robin. I walked towards her, cartilage crackling, calves thick with pin-pricks, dew licking at my ankles. My jacket crumpled, discarded on the ground; I picked it up, and laid it on my knees as I sat on the swing beside her.

  ‘Robin,’ I said, her head turned a little away, eyelids low, lashes sleek with dew.

  ‘Robin,’ I said, a hand on her arm, finding it cold, doll-plastic, down velvet under palm. I squeezed, pinched her, slapped bare skin, burrowed fingers into thigh, nails leaving dunes.

  ‘Robin,’ I said, again, the last time, my words useless, her name dried out, abandoned. I stepped back, leaned in once again, grabbed her shoulders, knelt at her feet, plucked the burned end of a joint from beneath a shard of broken glass, and knew what I had done.

  I put my hand in my jacket pocket, glass biting at my fingers, and squeezed it tight into my fist, drawing blood. I looked up at Robin’s white face, lips chapped, blue pooling in the flesh, the grey shadows carving cheeks, and pulled out the fragments of the nightshade jar, one by one, the clear bag torn through. I felt the leaves mingling, sticking to my bleeding hand, and knew that I had killed her, poison pinched between her fingers, rolled in paper, burned red in the black night.

  There were many things I could have done, but didn’t. I could have called an ambulance, parents, police. I could have called Alex, or Grace, or Annabel, and begged them to help. I could have confessed, told the truth of what happened, the lurid truth of the girl on the swing.

  But I did none of these things.

  I sat at her feet, watching, willing her to breathe.

  I stood, muttered her name, willed again, clawed at the details of her. The powder-blue blush beneath her fingernails. The albumen sheen of her eyes. The cool, damp recess of her mouth, tongue still soft, the scrape of teeth on probing thumb.

  I wondered when they’d find her, and how, and the thought of her slumped, fallen back into the grass as her body softened, seemed sickly, grotesque, wrong. I unhooked the clasp of her bracelet and wrapped it around the left chain, where her hand gripped a little less tight; I unhooked my own, and tied it to the right, and begged her to stay, just as she was, as beautiful as she’d ever want to be.

  And then, after all this, I went home. Took the same shuddering bus, walked the same streets; smoked a cigarette under the mermaid, bought another pack from the corner shop. Waved to Mrs Mitchell, with her little, barking dog; walked away as she slammed the door. Went inside, made a cup of tea, passed Mum, sighing in her sleep; climbed the stairs, clicked the door, locked it shut.

  I lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling, seeing her in the shadows as I blinked, trying to keep from closing my eyes, when she would open hers, pupils rolled back, lost to skull. What would follow seemed inevitable: the shock of the news, the TV’s endless scroll; the knock at the door, policemen asking questions to which they well knew the answers. I was the last person in her company. Where had I been at this hour, that hour? What time had I left her? Was she alive or dead?

  They would test her blood, and find the nightshade that still rolled in the cracks of my pockets, burning my skin as I brushed it with fingertips, a vicious sting under each nail. They would ask me where I’d found it, or figure it out themselves after speaking to Alex, who would tell them (of course she would tell them) that it had been stolen, pulled from the deck while she slept. Robin and I were the only suspects, and I the last alive: a tale that told itself.

  I saw this, saw it clearly and whole, fate’s golden thread, and did nothing. Watched the clock tick, watched as day unfolded its colours, gold, red, grey, blue, black, until the inevitable knock at my door finally came.

  ‘Violet?’ my mum said, knocking softly, turning the handle, finding it locked. ‘Can I talk to you?’

  ‘I’m sleeping,’ I said, heart swallowed, sick.

  ‘Just for a minute. You can go back to sleep right after.’

  I reached over and unlocked the door. She looked older, now, skin cracked and sallow, as though the flow of her tears had worn rivulets into her skin.

  ‘Darling, there’s something on the news I think you should see.’

  I closed my eyes, held my breath in my throat. I knew what was happening, though I still hoped she might not have seen the link. Had I ever told her about Robin? Had I mentioned her name? Or did she think I’d be interested purely because it was a girl from my school, on the grounds of the school itself?

  ‘Come on,’ she said, hand skeletal on my arm, her veins blue ribbons under gristled skin. ‘It’s hard to explain.’

  I willed my hands not to shake, the nausea to fade, praying for a moment of relief I knew I did not deserve; sat
in Dad’s abandoned chair, and gripped my knees as she flicked the channel back to the news. I looked past the TV, at the chipped MDF stand built back to front, the duct tape peeling, gathering dust. I drew breath, and focused.

  ‘SECOND MURDER IN QUIET SEASIDE TOWN,’ the banner read, as a doll-faced woman mouthed silently into the screen, the studio bright and blue behind her. My heart paced wildly, that old, sickly thrill: I was transfixed. Would I see her there, on the screen? Would they show what I had done?

  The camera cut to men in white suits, climbing from a police van, poring through hedges, crouched low on the ground; it showed stock footage of the town, brighter than reality, perfect as the postcards sold by the sea.

  ‘We now go live to the scene,’ a voice said, loudly, as the volume clicked back on. I closed my eyes.

  ‘Violet,’ my mother said, and I opened them, clenching fists. On the screen, the front door of Grace’s house, window smashed; policeman walking down the steps, ashen, horror ill concealed. I leaned over my knees, felt my throat clench as though gripped, vice-tight.

  Dressed in black, eyes wide with excitement, hair smooth, shining, unreal, the reporter spoke directly to the camera, eyes fixed on me. ‘The victim was found with fatal injuries at home this morning. Neighbours called the police complaining of what was described as dogs howling from inside the house, disturbing the peace on this quiet, suburban street.’

  I turned away. ‘She’s not …’ I began, words failing. Grace’s bruises, smudges under powder. All of us knew that things could get worse. Would get worse. And yet it was easier, more tactful, we told ourselves, to ignore them. To give her privacy. To let her deal with it in her own way. We were all, in this way, complicit.

  ‘Police described the scene inside the house as “disturbing”,’ the reporter went on, ‘the victim having been dismembered in what appears to be one of the most gruesome murders ever to happen in this town, which is known more for its history of—’ She paused, looked aside; the camera cut to a pale, middle-aged officer, his skin slick with sweat, a faint grey tinge to his skin.

  He cleared his throat. Flashes popped; microphones bobbed below. ‘This morning, at around five o’clock a.m., we were called to this location to investigate what appeared to be a domestic disturbance. Officers were dispatched and on entering the property were shocked to discover this gruesome crime, which will no doubt strike at the heart of our peaceful community.’ He tapped his forehead with a handkerchief, grey with wear. ‘We urge residents in the area to remain calm. We will be doing everything in our power to apprehend the killer, and will be investigating all lines of inquiry.’

  He took a deep breath, a slight shudder in his chest. ‘We can now confirm the victim is one Martin Holloway, aged 55, the homeowner at this property …’

  I leaned back, swallowed a hot sting of vomit. Closed my eyes again, felt the edge of the cushion bury into the base of my skull, tried to make sense of the words.

  ‘Though of course we cannot confirm this at this early stage in our investigation, this does appear to have been some kind of ritual killing. We are concerned at this point in time for the whereabouts of Mr Holloway’s daughter, Grace, aged seventeen, who has not been seen since last night. We have not ruled out the possibility of abduction, and will not do so until we have confirmed Miss Holloway is safe. Grace, if you are watching this, please make contact with local police as soon as you can.’

  I knew she hadn’t been kidnapped. Of course she hadn’t.

  ‘They’d never get away with it,’ she’d said, in hushed conversation with Alex, thinking me asleep. ‘They would, if they picked the right moment,’ Alex had replied, as though imagining themselves characters in a play, cast in some absurd scenario. And, as it would turn out, they did. As, to my shame, did I.

  It was another twenty-four hours until they found Robin. She was still sitting on the swing, hair now damp with dew, fingers stiffened tight around the chains. The caretaker, returning for a misplaced set of keys, found her as he drove into the school, at the top of the hill; had he not come back, she might have stayed there all summer, swaying in the breeze as her skin peeled back, flesh sunk, bones cracked. I often wonder, even now: Would I have saved her that indignity, at least? One might like to think so, but in truth, it seems unlikely.

  The phone rang, still placed at the top of the stairs. I let it ring, until I couldn’t stand the noise; picked up, spat a ‘What?’ into the receiver.

  ‘Violet Taylor?’ the voice said. The reporter from before.

  ‘What?’ I said again.

  ‘It’s Daniel Mitchell, from the Evening News. We’ve spoken before. I was wondering if I could talk to you about your friend – Miss Adams?’

  I felt a flicker of recognition, some memory come to life. The voice connected with eyes peering through a white window, posters on the wall. ‘What did you say your name was?’

  ‘Daniel Mitchell. From the Evening—’

  ‘Wait – Danny Mitchell? As in, Danny Mitchell who lives next door?’

  He stuttered, caught. ‘My grandma lives next door to you, I believe. I don’t live there any more.’

  ‘You believe? What the fuck are you doing, Danny?’

  ‘I’m a reporter. At the Evening—’

  ‘The Evening News, yeah, I know. But Christ, aren’t you, like, twelve?’

  ‘I’m eighteen. It’s … it’s an internship.’

  I laughed, coldly, realizing my mistake. Of course he’d known about my dad. He’d lived next door the whole time. ‘Jesus, Danny.’

  ‘Daniel,’ he said, coldly. ‘They’ve said if it goes well they’ll keep me on.’

  ‘Well, good luck. Don’t call me again.’ I slammed the phone down, pulled the cord from the wall; went back to bed, restless and burning.

  The media frenzy escalated, reaching a pitch; I saw the sketch of her silhouette, photos of her face in every newspaper, her gap-toothed smile on the evening news, unavoidable. ‘Tragic Loss of a Young Scholar’, one headline read. ‘Second Death at Exclusive Girls’ School’, another. ‘Mystery Surrounds the Girl on the Swing’, another still, and I sat, awaiting my fate.

  But the police, stunned by the impact of not one but two mysterious deaths, in addition to the still-unsolved murder of Emily Frost, did only the most basic investigation into what had killed Robin. Inadequately trained and unused to such pressures, this was as much as they were equipped to handle. They sent for basic toxicology tests, Robin’s returning with the presence of drugs found, though in non-lethal amounts. Non-lethal, but enough: enough for the media narrative surrounding her death to twist, just a little, to a tale of doomed youth. No longer was she a promising, talented student, an artist with the world at her feet. Now she was a so-called ‘wild child’, not wholly committed to her work – Nicky’s face peering sadly from the television, telling the world of the ways she’d tried to save her friend, to make her get help, to ‘find another path’. Robin, tragic Robin: a preventable death, a lesson learned.

  ‘Robin Adams, student at the prestigious Elm Hollow Academy, was known to be involved in the use and supply of certain recreational drugs, despite her friends’ and family’s repeated efforts to keep her on the straight and narrow.’ This became her lede, an introduction that gave the police reason to shrug it off, to go through the motions and confirm their simple explanation for her death. They stood in front of flashing cameras, insisted they would investigate every possibility, made grand statements for newscasters visiting from London and beyond. But when the interest dissipated, as it always does, their ‘tireless’ work stopped, and her death was ruled misadventure, cause unknown. I suppose in this respect, at least, they were right.

  They focused instead on the Holloway murder, making ominous statements, suggesting some depraved cult murderer roaming the streets. But this they revised, too, when it transpired Mr Holloway was often involved in bar fights, and owed a not-insignificant sum of money to creditors across the town. His death, then, became explainable;
Grace’s disappearance not a kidnapping, but a flight. She had run from the horrors of her own home (Nicky and her cohorts once again confirming lewd details of hospital visits and bruised wrists), choosing the safety of anonymity over the broken love of a bad father. Alex’s mother spoke on her behalf, and confirmed police had taken no action on numerous occasions, including the day when we’d seen them at the house, and let our madness do the rest. She refused to let anyone speak to the girls directly; helped them disappear, escape the media frenzy, the mess that they had made.

  But I knew. Knew every detail before it was released (local police pathetically gossipy, sloppy with details, leaking ever more sickening details to the local press, wild with delight). He’d been stabbed, repeatedly, in the chest and neck, as he lay asleep on the sofa. First cut to the jugular, familiar from Robin’s sketchbook, annotated in a girlish hand. I saw Alex holding the knife high, decisively, the force of the cut brutal, spurting thick. Recognized it, saw his wide-eyed fear. This time, though, they’d gone a step further. The page we’d glossed over fearfully in the book: the sacrificial rite.

  He’d been dragged, writhing, to the floor (the blood sprayed and spread across the tiles confirming that the first blow was not fatal, at least at first), bound at the wrists and feet. I saw Grace, trembling as she saw the hands that had beaten her so many times now tied with piano wire, wearing through the skin; saw Alex’s smile, a comfort, a reassurance, that old familiar look they seemed to share.

  ‘Torture,’ the papers described it: Flesh burned with scalding water, needle-thin lacerations in the blisters, cut deep. Fingers severed, one by one, wadded with bathroom towels, to stem the blood and prolong the pain. Skin nicked and peeled away, Grace’s delicate hands flaying, flesh under fingernails. They’d known exactly what to do.

  Not that I said a word. For who would I tell? Who would believe me? Two teenage girls, murdering a fat, lumbering bastard of a man? Unimaginable. Unreal. Some things simply cannot be believed. Even when you know they’re true.