The Furies

by Katie Lowe

  Autumn

  Chapter 18

  The rain beats at the boards of the pier, and I stand, elbows damp against the icy railing. Down into the green-blue water, mossy steps disappear into oblivion below; farther out, the boats bob restlessly in the wind. It’s early enough for me to be alone; a Sunday, the church bells ringing over the rise, the faint cut of dead fish carving the air, darkly.

  There are ghosts everywhere, in this town, little end of the earth I can never leave. I’m older, now, but still, by all accounts, young; skin still lineless and faint-pored, hands still warm and soft, though my nails are bitten down to reddening tips, blackened with ink and dirt. I fantasize, on these mornings, of walking down those steps, finding the point at which the darkness swells and the world above disappears: like Persephone walking willingly under, at once towards and away from the things that she loves, though she, like all of us, knows better.

  But – as with all that’s come before – I fall short. I cannot; Eliot’s eternal footman snickers, and I am, indeed, afraid. And in the room the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo.

  I spit and turn and walk away.

  When autumn came, bringing with it the smell of decay and sickness in the air, I went back to Elm Hollow; back to where I’d left her, alone, watching two sunrises before she was found. I sat on a grassy ridge, the wych elm’s roots having left tails in the dirt, creeping across from one side of the Quad to the other. The Headmaster could never have envisioned it clawing so deep, taking so much of the earth along with it; the tearing up had split the grounds like a carcass, carved crosswise and around. The clock faces, too, remained dark, and for his efforts, and those of the janitorial staff, nobody seemed able to open the door at the foot of the Campanile. I sipped a coffee, smoked; saw two legs standing beside me, followed them up. Nicky.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, unsmiling.

  ‘Hi,’ I said, the same.

  She lowered herself down beside me, pressing her heels into the dirt. ‘Sorry about Robin.’ I stared at her, blankly. ‘No, really,’ she said. ‘She was … She was cool.’

  ‘I’m sure she’d appreciate that.’

  We sat in strained silence a while, watching as the groundsmen pressed saplings into the earth, the leaves falling from the old trees behind them.

  ‘You didn’t tell,’ I said, at last. ‘After the ball. You didn’t tell anyone about us.’

  She looked at me, eyes cold. ‘I did,’ she said. ‘But they didn’t believe me. They said I was crying wolf.’ There was a note of hurt in this last phrase, though she tried not to show it, and I – a kindness I supposed she deserved, after everything – didn’t acknowledge the crack in her tone.

  ‘Who did you tell?’

  ‘Ms Goldsmith. She took me to the Head’s office.’ She sighed. ‘I missed the ball.’

  I knew, then, I wouldn’t find Annabel. I imagined a kind of trade, a sacrifice. ‘We can’t be having rumours like this,’ he’d say, pig eyes misty with satisfaction, moustache twitching as he finally forced her out. ‘I’m afraid I can’t condone these extra classes. No more of this, next year.’ She’d nod, no doubt, her silence more penetrating than words; I saw her gathering her things, a flurry of wrath in the tower, and leaving Elm Hollow, without pausing to look back.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, numbly.

  She said nothing; looked up at the tower, clock faces dark and unlit. I wondered if she’d tried the door, as I had; found the locks changed, as I had, too. ‘I’m sorry too,’ she said, faintly. ‘I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.’

  I looked at her, sunlight tearing white through the blocks behind. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It was my fault. What happened with Emily. I wanted her spot in the Advanced Class. My mum was in it, the same year Alex’s mum was – and Annabel, too. She said if I didn’t get in, I’d never “achieve my potential”.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘So I asked Annabel, but she said there wasn’t room.’

  I stared at her, trying to piece the fragments together. ‘Nicky, what are you—’

  ‘So I went up to my mum’s attic, and I found the book. The book of rites. And … Well, I did one. And it worked. Emily disappeared, so there was room in the society. But then you …’ She sighed; twisted her skirt between finger and thumb. ‘Whatever. Judging by what happened I was probably better off out of it.’

  ‘What … What one did you do?’

  ‘A poppet spell. With a little doll. I buried it under the wych elm.’ She paused, looked at the space where the tree had been, and sighed. ‘It’s probably gone now.’ She climbed to her feet, brushing dirt from the backs of her legs. ‘Anyway, I guess we’re kind of in the same boat. So … I’m sorry. I hope it gets easier.’

  I said nothing as she walked away, tripping across the Quad, the sunlight bright and clear, leaves red and gold in the light. The new students gathered in shy groups, separating themselves into clusters that would soon fracture and split, as we had done; would merge into new groups, new friendships, new betrayals. I never imagined a year could be so long.

  And then, more years, each a little longer than the last.

  I finished my studies at the local university, shadows of Tom and Andy climbing up the walls, on the rare occasions I could be coaxed into attending a party in the old dorm tower. Qualified, sent an application to Elm Hollow, offered to work for free if there wasn’t an opening. Did work for free, for two years, until a position finally opened. Worked, taught, attended parent-teacher meetings, felt jealous of them all. Became the Dean of Students. Saw his body, sometimes, slumped lifeless against this door, every door that stuck.

  But his was not the only ghost. I heard Robin’s voice everywhere, saw her in the spaces between, loping along beside new students, new lives. I read chemistry textbooks, clawed through dull papers on toxicity, history books listing infamous poisonings; now, with the internet ubiquitous, I search every night for new publications with even the briefest reference to nightshade, and its harmful effects. Because the horror of nightshade is in the purging effects, and the quantity Robin had taken – smoked, not consumed – seemed too little to have caused her death. Her heart had simply stopped, with no other side effects. She had died, impossibly, perfect.

  Eventually, I persuaded myself – as one does, in adulthood, when the imagination fades, and life is lived only according to what’s real – that perhaps it hadn’t been as I’d thought. I couldn’t shake off the Dean’s murder; that much was true – but I’d got away with it (as far as one can be said to ‘get away with’ such a thing, the nightmares and shadows never quite disappearing from view). This much could be left in the past. And the rest – could it be coincidence? A trick of fate, perhaps, that Tom had died the night we’d performed the rite; Robin’s heart, for her part, worn down by excess and simply giving out – a tragedy, yes, but one I couldn’t have done anything to prevent. Even Nicky’s story, now, of the poppet spell on Emily Frost, seemed a kind of delusion. I’d seen Nicky since, a mother herself: a major player in some internet business I didn’t understand. She couldn’t have done such a thing. It was impossible, childish: absurd.

  Funny, how adulthood allows lies like this to become real: an all-but-gymnastic feat of thinking. But it’s easier, is it not, to believe?

  As I sat in my office – the Dean’s office, still, in my mind – I looked out at the fresh-cut grass, where students sat laughing, texting, reading in the light. A knock at the door; the school secretary peered through the crack, the same wary expression as ever. She’d never quite forgiven me, though for what I wasn’t sure – some rudeness, when I was a student, perhaps; a look, a sigh, a groan. ‘Phone call,’ she said, abruptly.

  ‘Put it through,’ I said.

  ‘Transfer system is down,’ she replied, half-turned to walk away. ‘You can take it in the main office, if you want.’

  I stepped into the glassy office, archaic printer scratching and whirring in the background, a fan rattling by my side. ‘Hello?’ I said, clutching
the receiver close.

  It was a call I’d been expecting for some time. My mother was dead. A fall down the stairs, a broken neck. I was surprised only at the way she’d gone, having braced myself for the likely possibility of some long, painful death: cirrhosis of the liver, a cancer, perhaps, fast-moving if she was lucky. I met with the lawyer two days later – a squat, bald man, single frayed thread on his sleeve irritating me, somehow, throughout our conversation – and he handed over the keys to the house, which I’d left after finishing school and, aside from the occasional polite but brief visits, never returned to.

  It was a ghost house, now, Mum having spent the last two decades living among the shored-up ruins of her married life, never touching the objects left by my father, my sister, or – I was oddly touched to discover – by me.

  I sat a while in my old room, staring at the posters fading yellow, the wallpaper peeling, a black smudge of damp across the corner, mould crawling out. Neon bracelets on a ceramic arm; coursework abandoned as I left for university. Robin’s note: ‘See you in class. Love you.’ A photo of the four of us, the Polaroid curling, stained by sunlight. Alex’s lips on Grace’s forehead, Robin’s hand in mine, the two of us laughing, wildly alive.

  I flicked the light off, closed the door behind me, imagined them gone. Black bin liners in the kitchen, all memories destroyed.

  I peered into my mother’s room, briefly – a mess, predictably, loose bottles scattered, clothes crumpled on the floor, the smell of bedsheets unchanged for months, if not years, a tang in the air. In the hall, a framed family photo, the four of us laughing, wearing sombreros in front of a ride at some long-closed theme park. My sister, eyes shut tight against the bright sunlight, clutching a lollipop in the shape of Mickey Mouse. Her room, I thought. I’m going to have to empty her room.

  I stood by the door for several minutes before I entered, checking my phone compulsively, as though expecting a call (though I couldn’t remember the last time my phone had rung; my only alerts ever emails alerting me to publications I’d set keywords for – ‘Elm Hollow murder’, ‘nightshade toxicity’, and other fragments never solved).

  The smell was overwhelming, a sickening, filthy rot, like a pond sick with decay. I retched, ran to the window, and opened it wide, gasping for air; leaned out, breathing heavily, until the air thinned. Dust covered every surface, everything pink under grey. I’d teased her about it, the day she died. Pink is for babies, I’d said, as we climbed into the car, the last words she’d hear me say.

  Beside the bed, the source of the smell: the algae-covered ruins of a fish tank. I remembered them, though their names had long escaped me. One gold, one black; the diligence with which she’d fed them, day in, day out, and watched my dad clean the tank with eyes wide, protective. She’d collected endless trinkets, some of which stood dry beside it, leaving room for the fish: a roundabout, a slide, a cottage, windows lit yellow, a comforting glow.

  I leaned in, peering through the grey water, thick with decay, smelling of death. The water moved, a little, what lay beneath obscured at first, then clear. In the water, perched on the playground swing, sat Sindy, her hair peeling away, still white blonde under green rot. I stepped back from the tank, feeling a thread stick to my palm: a hair, caught on the rim of the tank, red-tipped with dye, twenty years later. Robin’s hair, caught on the doll; I imagined her leaving it behind, a smile on her face as she dropped the doll into the water, imagining Nicky submerged: drowned in daylight.

  Sweat pooled on the back of my neck, in the cracks of my palms; I threw up, hot and sour, in the bin beside the bed.

  After the pier, I return to Elm Hollow, my choice made at last.

  I remove the stone at the foot of the Campanile, and take the tower key, just as Robin taught me to. As the lift’s out of use, I climb the stairs, slowly, cursing my weak joints, the weight I gained after she died, and have been gaining every year since; my body turning back into my own, its softness a comfort. I push the door, and find it undisturbed but for the creep of nature. The carpet matted with eggshells, nest pieces, dust, black with shit. Two decades’ worth of filth, of creatures taking over, burrowing into books, leaving damp trails across the furniture. The air rattling with crawling things, wings fluttering above.

  I’ve seen Annabel since, her name attached to various boarding schools in Switzerland, France, and Rome, though she’s as invisible as it’s possible to be in a world now almost entirely online: her faculty photograph is always the same, the arches of Elm Hollow looming above. I imagine her, now, the same as she always was; wonder whether she’s aged, as I have. Feels older, as I do.

  I’ve seen the girls, too, though they’d curse me for it. Both wearing pseudonyms that don’t quite fit, Alex now a lawyer, Grace a writer, recognizable in pictures I’ve found online, their eyes still just the same. Neither called or wrote, though I imagine they watch me too, from a distance. I wonder if they feel the same weary ring in their chests when they see my face; the same sadness of what we might have been, or done.

  I think of them as I sweep the floors, scrub dust from the clock faces; clear the tower of its sickly-sweet decay. I light a fire, watching spiders scatter manically from the wood, and see the bats swing leisurely above, fur-cheeked and toothy, Robin’s halfway smile. I shoo a pigeon from the armchair, and sit, eyes closed, imagining them here.

  Tomorrow, I will choose my four: the next four, after us. I’ll do it in her name – Robin’s name – and the names of all those who’ve come before.

  And I’ll teach them all I know, all my predecessors have known – the power of angry women, the fates we hold and furies we possess. I’ll let them stretch their wings and claw at the eyes of those who stare; teach them to burn with righteous fire and cleanse the world with learning. I’ll teach them beauty, revenge, madness, and death, and if they burn it all, and start again, the more the better. For they’ll be fearless, becoming bold, just as Annabel wanted for me. For the four of us, though we’re split apart; for the Fates’ thread still remains.

  ‘No matter what,’ Robin said, that last night, while the cool air sang and we danced in white, ‘we’ll always be together.’ The scar in my palm burns, and I look down from the tower, a shadow rocking on the swing.

  ‘And when the end of the world comes, we’ll be here,’ she said, and we danced, and I smile, now, knowing she was right.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks are owed to so many people for helping to make this book what it is.

  To my incredible agent, Juliet Mushens, whose belief in these four wicked girls gave them life, and made them real.

  To my editor – and, I am lucky to say, my friend – Natasha Bardon, whose vision and love for this book gave it magic beyond anything I could have crafted alone.

  To the team at HarperFiction, including Jack, Jaime, Fleur, Hannah, and Fionnuala, as well as my copy editor, Verity, and my proofreader, Linda. Your passion and talent for what you do is awe-inspiring.

  And to Micaela Alcaino, for the cover. It is a thing of beauty. I can only hope the words inside live up to it.

  To the many authors and scholars upon whose work I have drawn to varying degrees as part of the ‘syllabus’ of this book. Much is pulled from a variety of online resources, often without citations – so to those unnamed: thank you for your generosity with your knowledge and learning. I hope I’ve used it well.

  And, of course, to the teachers who inspired the book – for better, and for worse.

  To the powerful women I am privileged to know, and blessed to call my friends: Caroline Magennis, Natalie Houlding, Mallory Brand, Laura Bligh, and Emma Maisey. Without you, I would fail more, and laugh less. The girls in this book are yours.

  To the accidental patrons of the arts at Mash, a team I am lucky to call both colleagues and friends: Chris Wareham, Phil Edelston, Davinia Day, Lynn Booth, Jennie Tubbritt, and the rest of the team, both in the office and the field.

  And, to my family.

  To Jim Lowe, with w
hom I could happily talk into the early hours, forever. Your constant support, enthusiasm and inspiration made this book what it is. Without you, I wouldn’t be a writer.

  To Cathrine Lowe, whose love and strength I am grateful for every day, and who made me the woman I am. Without you, I wouldn’t be a reader.

  And to my sister, Becky. I’m so proud to know you, and so grateful to have your music and laughter in my life.

  Finally, to girls everywhere. You are more powerful than you think.

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