Night of the Furies Read online

  ALSO BY DAVID ANGSTEN

  DARK GOLD

  NIGHT

  OF THE

  FURIES

  DAVID ANGSTEN

  THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS

  ST. MARTIN’s PRESS NEW YORK

  This is a work of Action. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

  An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

  NIGHT OF THE FURIES. Copyright © 2008 by David Angsten. All rights reserved. Printed

  in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth

  Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.thomasdunnebooks.com

  www.stmartins.com

  Book design by Jonathan Bennett

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Angsten, David.

  Night of the furies / David Angsten.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-312-37370-2 (alk. paper)

  ISBN-10: 0-312-37370-8 (alk. paper)

  1. Erinyes (Greek mythology)—Fiction. 2. Americans—Mexico—Fiction. 3. Cults—

  Greece—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3601.N5545N54 2008

  813’.6—dc22

  2008024876

  First Edition: October 2008

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To my true love, Joanna—

  last of the Eumenides

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  AND

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  IN THE eleventh book of Homer’s Odyssey, the wandering hero Odysseus sets sail on a voyage to the Underworld, the ghostly land of the dead. He travels into a realm of perpetual fog and darkness to seek counsel from the spirit of Tiresias, the famous sightless prophet of Thebes, whose truth-telling wisdom will help guide Odysseus home.

  This dark voyage of Homer’s hero is known as the Nekyia, the “night-sea journey.” The Swiss psychologist Carl Jung saw the Nekyia symbolically as a journey into the unconscious—the source of the creative and instinctual forces of life.

  The unlikely hero of my novel Dark Gold made a voyage along the Mexican coast that was very much like a Nekyia. Miraculously, Jack survived, and—like the lost Odysseus—he’s heading off again on yet another fateful voyage. If you’d like to sail along with him, just continue tacking through these breaking waves of text, and you’ll soon find yourself on the wine-dark Aegran in pursuit of the elusive Aphrodite.

  A warning from the author—I’ve been on this trip before. It’s not for the faint of heart. The ocean’s edge is unexplored, the divine winds must be trusted, and it’s always an uncertainty whether you’ll make it back with the goods.

  Fortunately, we sail with an experienced and highly competent crew. My astute editor, Peter Wolverton, is a helmsman keen on keeping the ship from sailing too close to the wind. Up in the swaying crow’s nest, his agile assistant, Elizabeth Byrne, gives fair shout of distant shores and fast-approaching ships. Keeping us wittily entertained on deck is my literary management team at AEI: the Renaissance Man and gumbo chef, Ken Atchity, a wonderfully wise companion and guide; his vivacious and talented partner, Chi-Li Wong, who prepares stupendous feasts in the galley; and the ship’s armorer, Zen master Michael Kuciak, solemnly keeping the afternoon watch.

  Who’s the pretty lass up in the rigging? It’s the sharp-eyed reader, Jennifer Minar, mending a tear in a topsail. Abaft are buff sailor boys Larry Tracy and Ted Dietlin, busily swabbing the deck. Screenwriter Debrah Neal is plugging holes in the hull, while novelist Roy Freirich squints up through the growing fog to chart a course by the stars.

  Hauled up from the oars below, the beautiful galley slave Joanna, captured daughter of a goddess of the wind, cups her hand to the captain’s ear and whispers hints of changes.

  Bon voyage, dear reader. Your vessel is made of paper, but her keel is sound and swift. You will not be required to go aloft, and you won’t be crammed into a bunk down in steerage; you will be ensconced in your own well-appointed stateroom, with a bright brass lamp, a goose-down bed, and a splendid view of the sea.

  …At least until we run aground on the cloud-wrapped shores of Hades.

  The darkness is well suited to devotion.

  —Euripides, THE BACCHAE

  I

  EROS

  1

  OUR DESCENT down the cliffs began around midnight. Light from the hidden moon stretched across the plain below and reached the Gulf of Corinth where it set the sea aglow. The view had been expansive and exhilarating in daylight; now it seemed treacherous and eerie. The dark wall of the mountain loomed ominously above us and dropped off steeply into shadows deep below.

  We peered down warily into the abyss.

  “Why in the hell are we doing this?” I said.

  The paralyzing view made Phoebe philosophical. “We don’t always know why we do what we do.”

  My genius of a brother sounded positively cheerful. “I think it’s the Fates that have brought us here,” he said. “We have no choice in the matter.”

  He started down the precarious path, hugging the steep wall of stone. For a moment, Phoebe and I watched him. “Sometimes I think Dan really believes that stuff,” I said.

  “He can believe it or not,” Phoebe said. “The truth is we’re free to do as we like.”

  She bravely followed him down the precipice.

  I called after her: “Somebody said your worse troubles begin when you’re free to do as you like!”

  The two of them were fading into the darkness below. I don’t know why, but I followed them.

  IF IT really was the Fates that had brought us to this mountain, it was Dan who had done all the planning. He’d decided his experiment at Delphi should begin with a covert midnight skinny dip, what his girlfriend Phoebe suggestively described as our “nocturnal lustration.” This was to be a ritual bath in the sacred Castalian Spring, the same spring used for purification by the Delphic Oracles of antiquity.

  The spring was hidden beneath towering cliffs on the slope of Mount Parnassus. The cliffs formed the dramatic backdrop to the Sanctuary of Apollo, the cluster of ancient ruins where the Oracle had practiced her mysterious art for a thousand years. Breathing fumes that arose from a crevice in the earth, the priestess, known as the Pythia, would fall into a trance of possession and give voice to the transcendent thoughts of Apollo, the all-knowing god of the sun.

  Today, bathing in the spring is forbidden, and the Temple of Apollo where the Oracle divined has also been deemed off limits. Dan therefore determined that our only chance to perform a proper augury was to sneak into the sanctuary late at night when we’d have the spring and the temple to ourselves. And so we had taken to the heights of Mount Parnassus, hiking all day up the sunny slopes, climbing as far as the Cave of Pan before returning at sundown to the lofty cliffs, where we awaited the cover of darkness.

  Dan now demanded we descend without our flashlights, even though we carried them in our bags. We’d used them in the cave we explored that afternoon. Its enormous cavern had been a favorite site for the worship of Dionysus, Apollo’s half brother, the Greek god of intoxication and sexual revelry. Stalagmite pillars rose from its floor, looking like monstrous phalli. Dan had explained that once a year on a winter’s night, the young women of ancient Delphi would make this same long trek up the mountain in the company of a single male—a youth dressed as Dionysus. In chilly mountain air, carrying torches, beating drums, playing flutes, and singing wildly, the women followed the youth up the cliffs all the way to the infamous cave. There they were said to be possessed by the god and indulged in an orgiastic frenzy.

  As we made our way down
the perilous cliff, this story replayed in my imagination. I began to speculate about our bath.

  Phoebe Auerbach was a liberated Dutch girl who wouldn’t be constrained by the usual inhibitions. Born in conservative Delft, she had been raised in freewheeling Amsterdam, and endlessly educated in America and Europe. She was currently on break from an excavation at a goddess site in Crete. In a postcard he had sent me while visiting the island, Dan had revealed that he met the young archeologist on what he called a naturist beach. He noted that despite their nudity, her behavior had been oddly formal. When Dan casually introduced himself, Phoebe offered him her hand—not for him to shake, he said, but, like a prince, to kiss.

  The twisty route down the slope of the cliff demanded my constant attention, but still I couldn’t seem to stop myself from envisioning Phoebe at the spring.

  We’re free to do as we like…

  She was twenty-four years old, the same age as me, and four years younger than Dan. She was slim and sprightly, with an athletic figure, and boyish blond hair even shorter than my own. Her large eyes were an icy blue, the tops of her cheeks were freckled, and her mouth had a beguiling little curl at the corners as if always on the brink of a grin. Her laugh, which was loud, came easily and often, and made her seem even younger than she looked. She had a slight overbite that plumped her upper lip, and she spoke with a noticeable slurring of her r’s—they sounded more like w’s—an appealing wrinkle of accent in her otherwise “pewfect” English.

  In his postcard, Dan had described her as “brilliant.” While this may well have been true, my impression of her so far brought other words to mind: flighty, flirtatious, beguiling, brash. She had a lightning mind that kept us always on alert, and a tongue she couldn’t seem to keep in check.

  Phoebe followed Dan down the zigzagging path; I followed closely behind her. When she turned and caught me staring at her “pewfect” derriére, I tripped and nearly tumbled on top of her.

  “Whoa!” she cried. She laughed and held me steady.

  Dan called up from below. “You okay?”

  “Fine!” Phoebe shouted.

  Then she turned to me. “Jack’s just having trouble keeping his eyes on the path.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  Her face looked luminous in the starlight. “Well, don’t be too sorry.”

  Dan was climbing back up to us. Phoebe went down to meet him. “Your brother and I were just dancing,” she said.

  “Which of you stumbled? Jack?”

  I walked down to join them. “Your girlfriend saved my life.”

  He peered at me inquisitively.

  “What?” I said.

  Phoebe giggled.

  “You feeling distracted? Unusual thoughts intruding? Images? Voices?”

  I stole a glance at Phoebe. “Nothing unusual. Why?”

  “We’re getting close to the sanctuary,” he said. He peered down the steep rock wall. “Hiking down this cliff at night—like shaving with a razor in the dark. It focuses your awareness. Puts you in the proper state of mind.”

  “You mean, like, terrified?”

  “No,” he said. “Receptive. By holding your attention, it frees the unconscious. Leaves you more…susceptible.”

  Phoebe glanced at me. “Susceptible to what?”

  Dan squinted at the night sky. “Can’t say to what exactly. We’ll have to wait and see.”

  “Susceptible to falling,” I said.

  Phoebe laughed. She stretched up on her toes and gave Dan a kiss, watching me from the corner of her eye. “I’m not sure that Jack’s in the proper state of mind.”

  We cautiously resumed our descent. “You’re the Oracle,” I said. “Dan’s the desperate supplicant. I’m nothing more than an observer—my state of mind is irrelevant.”

  “Don’t be so sure about that,” Dan said. “Remember your quantum physics. The problem of Schrödinger’s cat. There are no observers, only participants. The presence of your consciousness will influence the event.”

  Phoebe glanced over her shoulder at me. “I think it’s already having an influence.”

  “Careful,” I said. “You’re a priestess, remember?”

  She laughed. “And you are—what? Schrödinger’s cat?”

  “Jack has a vital role to play: your interlocutor. The Recorder of the Oracle.”

  I snorted. “The priestess needs a priest?”

  “High priest.” Phoebe giggled. She was growing giddy with exhaustion.

  Dan was undeterred. He had spent the last two years studying ancient Greek religion and had become completely obsessed with the sacred rites and myths. “This path we’re walking on is called the Kakí Skála—the Evil Stairway. Know why? “

  “Because fools like us were forced to climb down it in the dark?”

  “No,” he said. “Because those guilty of sacrilege were thrown off it to their deaths.”

  Phoebe and I looked at each other. I don’t know why, but we laughed.

  THE CASTALIAN Spring lay at the bottom of a lush ravine under steep cliffs that blocked out the moonlight. Just as Dan had predicted, the place was completely deserted. He said there was only one nightwatchman who guarded the holy sites, and he usually stayed in the gatehouse down the road, sipping his bottle of retsina. The sacred spring was fairly secluded; Dan was more worried about getting caught at the far more visible temple. Nevertheless, he warned, we’d need to stay alert, or we’d end up making our appeal to Apollo from the confines of the Delphi jail.

  We climbed over a site fence and walked up the path to a rise of stone steps that led to a rock-hewn pool. It lay at the base of the cliff’s rock wall, which was carved with several shadowy, hollowed-out niches. The spring, we discovered, was barely a trickle of water. The stone pool was not more than a couple feet deep, definitely not large enough for the group dip I’d imagined.

  Dan removed his backpack. “It’s running low,” he said. “They siphon off the water for the town.”

  Modern Delphi lay a mile down the road and was geared entirely to the tourists. Even though we were staying in a hotel there ourselves, I found this vulgar theft of theirs insulting. “Talk about a sacrilege!”

  The three of us stared at the cold, black water. It made a trickling sound.

  Dan informed Phoebe that washing her hair was as far as she needed to go.

  I felt simultaneously relieved and disappointed.

  “Are you sure that’s enough?” she asked.

  “It’s more than adequate,” he said. “Only people who had killed someone were required to take a full bath.”

  He looked at me as he said this. The implication was clear.

  Two years earlier, on a boat off the Mexican coast, I had encountered a deadly sea creature and a couple of drug-running pirates. A number of violent deaths had occurred. Although I thought of my role in the matter as one of self-defense, several people had been wasted, some of them my friends, and all of them largely on account of me.

  From the way Phoebe was avoiding my gaze, it was clear she’d been told the story.

  Dan unzipped his backpack. “I think I’ve got a swimsuit,” he said, “if you don’t want to go in naked.” He pulled out a pair of sun-bleached surfer trunks.

  I gave him a dirty look.

  So this was how it was going to be. They were going to wash their hands of the matter and watch while I took a bath. I suddenly began to wonder if Dan’s promise of a skinny dip had been nothing more than a crass enticement to lure me into his plan. I suspected even Phoebe had been in on it.

  “How do you know she hasn’t killed anyone?”

  “Jack!” She placed the back of her hands on her hips in the classic pose of outrage.

  “I know because I already asked,” Dan said.

  Judging from the glare Phoebe aimed at him, it appeared that he actually had. She huffily glanced back and forth between us. “People are nicer where I come from!”

  “So you’re not going in,” I said to Dan accusingly.

&
nbsp; “No,” he said. “But with her help, I’m going to shave my head.”

  “You’re what?” Phoebe had apparently not been let in on this little part of the program.

  “It’s important to make a sacrifice,” he said. “The Greeks usually slaughtered a goat. Others left votive offerings in those niches in the wall. My offering is my hair.” As we watched him produce various items from his pack—scissors, towel, shaving cream, razor—it became clear he meant to do exactly what he said.

  I didn’t get the connection. “Goat? Hair?”

  “A possession of personal value. I don’t care about goats, but I very much like my hair.”

  “I like it, too,” Phoebe said wistfully.

  He’d been wearing it down to his shoulders for as long as I could remember. “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “Do ut des—‘I give that you may give.’” He was setting up his barber’s chair, a collapsible aluminum tripod stool with a triangular nylon seat.

  I didn’t want to get into which “you” he was referring to—Phoebe? Apollo? The cosmos? My brother liked to call himself a “spiritual atheist.” He didn’t believe in God or the supernatural, but he did believe in a version of what the Greeks had called the Logos, the fundamental, transcendent “mind” behind nature. Contact with this extradimensional intelligence could be obtained in various ways—drumming, chanting, praying, fasting, meditation, ritual, sexual abstinence, sexual indulgence, extreme physical ordeals—but none of these methods of inducing ecstatic trance was as ancient and effective as the use of psychoactive plants. Mushrooms, peyote, ayahuasca, DMT. Dan was a firm believer in the spiritual utility of hallucinogens. It was in fact the subject of his doctoral dissertation.

  Phoebe was having trouble picturing her boyfriend as a baldy. “So it’s kind of like bartering, then—your hair is some sort of payment for prophecy?”