The Furies

by Katie Lowe

  I took another sip of coffee, long cold. Poured the contents in the grass, crushed the polystyrene cup, and threw it into the tracks. In the distance, a train rolled towards us with a steady thunder. Robin went on sketching, and I watched as it passed, one empty carriage after another, windows gold in the dim light.

  She’d been unusually quiet since we’d found the tape, her silence bristling, an almost-physical presence (as though Emily had inserted herself between us, I thought, jealously). I played with a cat’s cradle I’d found abandoned on the beach; wound it around my fingers until the feeling had stopped, and I felt the electric throb and twitch of nerves when the blood rushed back.

  There was a rustle of branches, and a snap of twigs underfoot. Alex and Grace emerged from the woods, sitting on either side of us without a word. We looked out at the town in the distance, lights turning the sky the colour of poison; Alex cleared her throat, and glanced across me at Robin, still absorbed in her sketch.

  ‘What happened?’ she said, finally. Robin didn’t react, though her pencil scratched a little harder on the page. Alex looked at me, a brief flash of irritation on her face.

  ‘We found a tape,’ I said. ‘Of the Dean. He was talking to Emily, asking her to do something.’

  Alex arched her brow. ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know. She wouldn’t do it. She said whatever it was, “was inappropriate”.’

  Alex looked at Grace. ‘That’s all it says?’

  ‘The tape stops after that. There’s nothing else on either side.’

  The girls fell silent, looking out on to the tracks. Alex put her knuckle between her teeth and bit down, leaving pointed rings in flesh. I’d seen her do this, deep in thought, and every time I winced.

  ‘How did you get it?’ she said, watching a hawk swoop above the churchyard. ‘The tape. Where was it?’

  ‘He was giving her a lift home,’ Robin said, without looking up. ‘In his car.’

  Alex glanced at Grace again, her eyes narrowed.

  ‘I was on campus late,’ I said. ‘I didn’t want—’

  ‘Why?’ Alex said. There was a biting tone to her voice that made me blush. I’d heard her use it on the girls who stared at us, or lurked on nearby tables, hoping to catch some sliver of gossip. I felt myself shrink, just as I’d seen them do. ‘Why were you there so late?’

  ‘I’ve been doing a research project with him. As an extracurricular. I … I needed a reference.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For uni.’

  She scoffed. ‘And you didn’t think Annabel’s would be enough? A recommendation from her can get you in pretty much anywhere you want.’

  ‘I didn’t … I didn’t know that.’

  Alex sighed, muttered something under her breath. She looked out into the field, as though steeling herself to be calm. ‘So what are you researching?’ she said, at last.

  I dug my nails into my palm. ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘I don’t know – does it?’

  Robin’s pencil snapped against the page. ‘Christ, Alex,’ she spat. ‘This is hardly the point. Emily was scared. Scared of him. That’s why we’re here. Not because Violet’s a fucking nerd.’

  ‘I just don’t understand why she’s …’ Alex groaned through gritted teeth. ‘Fine. Forget it.’

  Grace looked at me, lashes low and heavy. ‘How sure are you?’

  ‘Completely, 100% sure,’ Robin said, before I could answer. She lit a cigarette and the air briefly lit with a sulphur tang; she took a drag and handed it to me.

  ‘Should we … Should we call the police?’ I ventured, nervously.

  Alex snorted, and plucked the cigarette from my fingers as I raised it to my lips. ‘No,’ she said, flatly. ‘I don’t think that would do any good.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Does he say, “I’m going to kill you, Emily Frost”?’

  ‘No, bu—’

  ‘Then they’ll dismiss it. Look at us,’ she said, with a pointed glance at me, then Robin. ‘They’ll just think we’re trying to cause trouble. They already think we’re up to something, no thanks to you.’

  Robin flinched. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘I just think maybe swanning around with pupils like saucers while you’re meant to be grieving your best friend is—’

  ‘Meant to be?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘No, Alex, I don’t. Please enlighten me.’ Robin’s hands were shaking; I reached over and squeezed her fingers.

  Alex sighed, catching my eye briefly before turning to Grace, who shook her head. ‘Forget it,’ she said, finally. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just really … I’m tired.’

  The hawk finally caught something, swooping into the graveyard with a sudden, sharp drop; it rose again, clutching what looked like a rat, tail curling as the body writhed, whipping through the black air.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ I said, helplessly. I think we all knew; though perhaps it’s hindsight that makes me want to imagine that, for a brief moment, we shared the same thought. That there was only one thing we could do.

  The girls looked at each other, and sighed. Grace shook her head, lowered her eyes. Robin began to sketch again, and we sat in silence, waiting for the sun to rise.

  For the rest of the week, I skipped school, intercepting messages from the Dean on the answering machine until I cut the tape, his voice unsettling in his ‘concerns about your welfare’ and ‘urgent’ need to see me. I waited for nightfall, when Robin would appear at my window, pebbles splintering the already-cracked glass, each time a little disappointed as it stayed intact.

  She brought with her a variety of ‘borrowed things’, her compulsion to steal apparently multiplied by the fact of Emily’s death – tattered issues of Vogue stolen from Alex, faces lopped out with sewing shears; a heady bundle of dried sage, bound in purple string. A silver watch, source unknown; an ancient book of matches, Marilyn Monroe pouting on the front.

  And yet she hadn’t succeeded in getting what we needed: a hair, a fingernail, some piece of him to help us perform the rite. She’d been to his office, feigning tears (she laughed about this as she told me; a nervous response, I supposed). But there was nothing: she’d even kicked over the contents of his bin in the hope of finding a used tissue, all to no avail.

  To make matters worse, perhaps as a result of my confinement, I’d begun to have second thoughts. I listened to the tape, endlessly whirring back, the words seared into my mind: I heard frustration in Emily’s words, and a wavering. But what I couldn’t hear was fear, the ‘terror’ Robin had caught in Emily’s tone. You didn’t know her, I told myself. You wouldn’t know what she’d sound like scared. But still I listened, again and again, as though it might reveal itself on the fifteenth listen, or the twentieth.

  This, too, was compounded by my own doubts about the Dean. He’d seemed so utterly, almost irritatingly nice. I thought about the news reports, the absolute horror of Emily’s death, the violence of it unfolding in increments, details slipped into interviews and statements from newsreaders and police. Fifteen stab wounds, they’d said. A broken wrist, squeezed so hard the bones snapped. Cuts to her throat, clawed in – most likely while she was still alive. Could he really be capable of a thing like that?

  But then, too, the way he’d reached for my hand, and squeezed; the tap on the shoulder when he might have said my name. The way he lingered, a little, as he said it, as though thinking it over, attaching to it some meaning I couldn’t quite grasp. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d been fooled by male intentions; indeed, it wasn’t the last. Perhaps I was too naive, too inexperienced, to know man from beast. Perhaps the girls were right.

  Robin sat on my bed, eyes watchful, occasionally disappearing into herself mid-sentence, rattling a stick of rock along her teeth and laughing as the sound made me shudder. ‘You’re such a wuss,’ she said, grinning.

  ‘Fuck off,’ I said, lying back on the bed and closing my eyes.
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br />   She leaned over, elbows bending the mattress; I could smell the strawberry flavour on her breath. ‘Are you scared of doing it again?’

  ‘Doing what?’ I knew, of course, what she meant; wanted a moment to gauge the right response. I opened my eyes, saw hers bright and unwavering above.

  ‘The rite,’ she said. ‘Duh.’

  ‘No,’ I said, coolly.

  ‘Well, I am.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she sighed, rolling onto her back. ‘I still don’t think I’m totally over the last one.’

  ‘That was ages ago.’ It was my turn to sit, to lean over her. She held the rock in the air, and I took it.

  ‘I know. But still …’ She trailed off. I knew what she meant, though pride stopped me from saying so. It was the inescapable guilt, the feeling – no matter how vehemently you told yourself it was all in your mind, the product of an overactive imagination – of being watched. The hand on the shoulder, the claw to the rib. Once summoned, the Furies – or, at least, the idea of them, their elongated shadows – were more difficult to send away.

  ‘Are you sure we ought to …?’ I said, softly.

  ‘Yeah,’ she replied, feeling for the light beside the bed. She flicked it off, and I lay back, still clutching the rock, sticky with spit.

  I closed my eyes, lids aching with sleep. I felt her arm soften against mine. She always slept like that – flat on her back, with an almost vampiric stillness. Sometimes, when I woke up beside her, I’d hold my palm a few millimetres above her mouth, feeling for breath. When I couldn’t feel it, I’d rest my hand, just for a moment, relieved to find her skin still warm. When she drew breath, I pulled away, pretending to sleep, holding my own breath still – a little pinch of irritation catching at my throat as she fell immediately back to sleep, my concern for her not reflected back.

  She took a deep breath, as though about to speak; a heavy knock broke the silence, ringing through the house. I sat upright, heart thrumming, dull ache in my throat. Imagined police, the frog-eyed woman who’d asked again and again if I remembered what happened that day in my dad’s car, if I could help them see; pictured her face, disappointed, uncovering proof of our plans. ‘You’re a survivor,’ she’d said, squeezing my wrist. ‘You’re a brave, sweet girl.’

  I turned to Robin, who shrugged. ‘Go see,’ she whispered. I stepped into the hallway and down the stairs, Mum staring blankly into the rolling light of the VCR. ‘I’ll get it,’ I said, though she didn’t react. I wondered if she’d heard the knock at all.

  Through the riddled pane of glass, I could see a broad shadow. I stepped towards it through the dark, squinting. It knocked again, and I flinched, gripping the sideboard with both hands. I heard a shuffling above, and saw Robin emerge at the top of the stairs, peering through the wooden bars.

  ‘Violet?’ I recognized the voice immediately. It was the Dean, his voice weary and dull. ‘Mrs Taylor?’ I glanced at Robin, who ran a hand down her throat. ‘I’m worried about you,’ he said. ‘We haven’t seen you in days. I just want to check you’re okay.’ I felt a flash of nerves, a pang of doubt. How could he have murdered Emily Frost? This shy, awkward, lumbering man – could he really be a killer?

  But why come over this late? I thought, nervously. There’s no good reason to come have this conversation in the middle of the night.

  He leaned forward, peered through the glass, breath misting the pane with a cloud of silver. Finally, after what felt like minutes, he turned and walked away. I climbed the stairs, limbs dragging as though weighed down with stones, and closed the bedroom door. Robin sat cross-legged on the bed, skin pale and damp with sweat. ‘That was close,’ she said, a half-laugh breaking as she spoke.

  I pulled out the desk chair and sat, elbows on knees; ran my hands through my hair, chipped nails catching tangles. ‘Do you …’ I began, looking up. ‘Do you really think he did it?’

  She narrowed her eyes. ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘I … I don’t know.’

  She sighed, leaned back against the headboard. ‘Alex said you’d chicken out.’

  ‘I’m not—’

  ‘And she said you’d defend him.’

  ‘Robin—’

  She looked up, her glare vicious. ‘No. Violet, it’s his fault she’s dead. We can’t just …’ Head in hands, nails clawing brow; a shudder. ‘We can’t let him get away with it.’

  I closed my eyes. There was a hollowness to the scene, the words taken straight from a film – all crimes and revenge, knives and claws and screams. It seemed altogether unreal, a hallucination. Was it really possible he could have killed her? I thought back to the tape: the rattle of the reception grate, the knowledge that the two of them were alone. The night I’d been alone with him in his office; the look in his eyes when he saw my fear, his power reflected back. ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Fine. We won’t.’

  I flicked off the light and rolled into bed. Outside, a car rattled into life, headlights streaming fingers through the room, Robin’s hands gripping my arm tight as she slept.

  As the sun rose, turning the room silvery, she rolled over, cold hands against the exposed strip of flesh across my stomach. ‘Are you coming to Nicky’s party?’

  ‘… You hate Nicky.’

  She grinned. ‘All the more reason to go.’ She tapped her nose, conspiratorially.

  ‘But what about the Dean? What about—’

  ‘Drop it, Violet.’

  I closed my eyes, still half-asleep, opened them abruptly as she pressed her elbow into my hip. I winced as she looked down at the skin, the nub of bone that had only appeared in the last few weeks; she smiled, rubbed the spot with her thumb, and I relented. ‘When is it?’

  ‘Tonight.’

  ‘I’m not supposed to be leaving the house,’ I said: a pout, my quarantine having been, after all, Robin’s idea.

  She snorted. ‘You think the Dean’s going to be at Nicky’s house party? Get real.’

  ‘Then why are we going?’

  I stretched, back arching; felt myself watched, her eyes creeping over me. ‘Alright,’ I said, after a pause. It seemed the thinner I got, the more approving her looks, pointing out the shadow of bones, gaps between thighs and ribs. It had seemed to me – of course – that I looked even more like Emily now than I had before; but, too, saw the girls in magazines, and saw that she was right, we women, turning deathly, pretty as mannequins.

  She grinned, and rolled out of bed, peeling a tie from her hair and shaking it out. She turned to me as she assembled herself, ready to leave, shirt smoothed flat, tie edged halfway up, earrings popped in. ‘By the way,’ she said, pulling a file from her bag and throwing it on the bed. ‘Annabel said just because you’re sick doesn’t mean you get to skip the reading.’ I blushed, imagining Annabel knew, somehow, what we were doing – knew too that I wasn’t sick, though I’d spent the last three days at home, watching daytime TV and—

  ‘You’re welcome,’ Robin said, interrupting my thoughts.

  ‘Sorry.’

  She gave a half-smile I couldn’t read; in the split second I’d forgotten her, she’d disappeared to me. ‘Right,’ she said, slinging her backpack over her shoulder. ‘I’m outta here. Later?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, rolling up to sit. ‘Let me check the coast is clear.’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘It’s fine. A tenner says your Mum’s unconscious.’ She gave a brief wave and slipped out of the door before I could retort, a little burned by her words – a sudden protectiveness, a guilt for being so cruel, Robin’s words a reflection of my own. I remained still until the front door slammed shut, my window rattling a little, and leapt up to shout after her. But when I looked outside, she was running; seconds later, she was out of sight.

  I slumped back onto the bed, knees to my chest, the dust hanging in the air, held captive by the sunlight. The file sat unopened at my feet; I prodded it with my toes, as though expecting it to burst into flame. I heard the TV flicker into life downstairs, Mum presuma
bly having woken at the slamming of the door; winced again at Robin’s cruelty. I pulled the file towards me, and opened it, gingerly.

  Pinned to the topmost sheet was a folded piece of paper, pinned together with a clip. I peeled it open and saw Annabel’s distinctive script. ‘This may be of interest,’ it said, simply. ‘Please ensure you read it.’ Underneath, a caricature, added by Robin (the strokes undoubtedly hers, sharp scratches of ink). I felt a flash of anger at the fact she’d read the note intended only for me and spoiled it – imagined her hands sticky and childish, grasping. I turned it over, searching for some other sign – a get well message, perhaps, or an inducement to come back soon – but found nothing. Outside, a child laughed as a car sped by, stopped, abruptly, before driving on. I turned back to my work.

  ‘In 1484, Heinrich Kramer made one of the earliest attempts at prosecuting women accused of witchcraft,’ the paper began. ‘He was quickly dismissed by the local bishop as “senile and crazy”, and was expelled from the city of Innsbruck. By way of revenge, he wrote the Malleus Maleficarum, a text which would go on to become the most influential book on witchcraft in the Western world and would result in the murder of thousands of women across Europe and beyond.’ I read on, the essay a detailed history of the trials that followed; the spread, infection of minds with ideas of folk magic and petty slights. I pictured Margaret Boucher, swallowed by flames, and felt a bitter rush of anger, the murder brutal and cruel.

  ‘The damage one man can do,’ the paper ended. ‘The bitterness of the bruised ego, the cold-blooded wrath of a man scorned: the repercussions impossible to overstate. One can only hope that, as a culture, we have left such things behind, and yet–’

  I turned the page, rapt, but found it blank. ‘You should draw your own conclusions,’ Annabel had said, once, leaning forwards in the tattered chair. ‘You should apply these lessons to your own lives and think – always – for yourselves.’

  I had expected Nicky’s house to possess the same grandeur and ancient richness as Alex’s, a kind of understated, assured wealth. The reality, however, was quite different, the house white and gleaming, surrounded by sweeping lawns and silver birch, walls of panelled glass streaming bright across the stone-flagged terrace, pool glistening in the red evening light as people swam. ‘New money,’ Robin said, bitterly, and I wondered, again, what she thought of my house, what she thought of me. I shook it off, as Nicky bounded across the lawn.