Night of the Furies Read online

  “It’s not a negotiation, Phoebe. It’s an encounter with the divine.” He continued rummaging through his backpack. “Socrates said true prophecy required the complete loss of human control, the total abandonment of the individual self to a higher, transcendent power.”

  Maybe the look of the black water was giving her cold feet. “I don’t know,” she said. “This is all beginning to feel a little crazy.”

  “It is a little crazy,” he said. “That’s the essence of ancient Mystery religion. It goes beyond understanding. Beyond the rational mind. The first Oracles were simple peasant girls from Delphi, virgins recruited by the priests. Divination doesn’t require intellectual understanding. The less you think about it, the better off you’ll be.”

  “How do I not think about it?” she asked.

  “Keep it simple and follow the protocol: We cleanse ourselves in the spring. We make the sacrifice. Then we go to the Temple of Apollo and seek the advice of the god.”

  “Leave your brains behind?” I said.

  “Leave your skepticism. Free yourself from doubt. Enter the temple with a pure heart. The process only works if you approach it with sincerity.” He glanced up from his unpacking. “Suspend your disbelief, Jack. Think that might be possible?”

  “You’ve given me plenty of practice,” I said.

  “Good,” he said, and once again held up the swimsuit. “Want this?”

  I stood tall. “Absolutely not. I’m going in with complete sincerity.”

  THINGS WERE not working out the way I had imagined, a fact that was true of my life to that point. I had dropped out of graduate school after only one semester, and ended up teaching English to immigrants for nearly a year and a half. Then I took off to travel the world again, to pick up on the journey that had been curtailed in Mexico, only this time I was going it alone.

  It was isolation and seclusion I sought, with time to read and reflect, so the first few months were spent in Tahiti, in a rented shack on the island of Moorea. When the boundaries of the tiny island began to feel constraining, I moved on to bigger islands—Fiji, New Zealand, the continent of Australia. Finally, having depleted my cash, I moved to Tokyo, where I taught English to Japanese businessmen for a six-month stretch, a job I had set up before I left the States. When that was through I traveled again, first to Thailand, then to India, then to Istanbul, and finally into Europe.

  I had turned into a version of the wandering soul my brother used to be. Now he was firmly ensconced in the academic world, working on his doctoral dissertation, and I was leading the life of the vagabond, roaming the world on my own.

  I was staying at a cheap little pensione in Rome and working as a freelance tour guide, when out of the blue I got a call from Dan. Our mother back in Hinsdale had given him my number, and when he asked me if I’d like to come and visit him in Athens, I suspected it was she who put him up to it. She who had once been so worried about Dan was now more concerned about me. It was I, after all, who had lost my friends, and who seemed to have lost my way.

  PHOEBE WAS behind me, cutting off Dan’s long blond locks and collecting them into a pile. I tried not to think of her watching me. She hadn’t said a word when I’d taken off my clothes. Perhaps a guy’s nudity was nothing unusual for a “naturist” like herself. It had been slightly humiliating to undress in front of them while they remained fully clothed, but the boldness of the act seemed to feed on itself; it infused me with defiant vigor.

  All that disappeared as I stepped out into the water. The mountain spring was freezing—fed no doubt by melting snows high up on Parnassus. It sucked the breath right out of me. My bare feet and ankles turned immediately to ice. My penis shriveled to nothing. I shuddered. In the hot sun, this spring would be cool and refreshing; now it was excruciating torture.

  I carefully advanced across the slippery stone that formed the spring’s shallow basin. My arms were held straight out from my sides, and my head was bent to watch what my feet were doing, like the old Greek we had watched dancing alone in an empty taverna in Athens.

  That dance was sincere, I thought. The essence of sincerity.

  Leave your skepticism…Suspend your disbelief.

  When I reached the deepest part of the spring—it leveled off at my knees—I bit the bullet and slowly lowered my body into the water.

  The pain was greater than I thought I could bear. It commanded my entire attention. I lay back slowly until my ears went underwater. My mind seemed to be screaming. My body felt on fire.

  I was convinced I would pass out.

  Yet something was happening behind the pain: a whispered voice emerging. My voice. Reciting a rhyme. Words amid the screaming:

  Let this wash away my sins,

  Purify my heart.

  Give my life a new beginning,

  Show me where to start.

  I don’t know where this ditty came from. The longing of my soul? The inspiration of Apollo? When the words went away, there was nothing but the cold. I was floating on my back in the water. The hollow niches in the wall above me looked like howling mouths. My arms and legs were spread out stiff, my breath was barely moving. I lay there staring through the crack of the gorge to the swath of stars in the sky. The cold and the stars were a single thing, there was no break between them. They were all a part of the frozen scream I seemed to be locked inside of.

  Everything had suddenly stopped.

  At that moment, fused with the cold, something jolted me.

  A pair of hands grabbed my wrists. Others grabbed my ankles. Fingers clenched around my neck and yanked me under—

  Terrified, I jerked upright, spurting a mouthful of water. For a moment I couldn’t see.

  Choking, dizzy, I quickly scanned around me. There was no one else in the spring.

  Dan and Phoebe were still on the rocks, she still shearing his hair.

  “You all right?” Phoebe asked. Her voice sounded far away—water in my ears. The two of them were staring.

  I stood cautiously, searching the water around me. My heart was still banging in my chest. “There was someone…something in the water,” I said. My head was spinning.

  Dan brushed aside Phoebe’s hands and rose up from his stool. “Someone?” he asked.

  I stood naked in the middle of the spring, dripping wet, shivering, my hands clasped over my privates. “Yeah…they…they grabbed me.”

  Dan’s eyes scanned the water.

  Phoebe laughed. “Naiads,” she said.

  Dan moved closer, staring at the spring.

  I asked him, “What are Naiads?”

  He looked at me as I rubbed my wrists. “Water nymphs,” he said.

  “What, they live in the spring?”

  Again Phoebe laughed. “They live in your imagination!”

  I looked at my wrists. There weren’t any marks. “Scared the hell out of me,” I said. I realized I was angry. My trembling body felt strangely warm.

  Dan searched my eyes. He didn’t seem to like what he saw.

  “You’d better come out of the water,” he said.

  2

  EVEN AFTER I had dried off and climbed back into my clothes, the chill I had felt stayed with me. So did the feeling of that inexplicable grip. As I prepared to shave off the remainder of Dan’s hair, I noticed that my hands were still trembling.

  “How can they be in my imagination if I’d never even heard of them before?”

  “I don’t know,” Dan said. He was sitting on his tripod, immobile as the Buddha.

  I drew the razor across his lathered scalp, leaving a track of skin. “I know it’s ridiculous,” I said. “But it really felt like something grabbed me.”

  Dan didn’t say anything. Just sat there like a rock.

  He was watching Phoebe as she stepped up to the water. The Pythia had decided it was time for her “lustration.”

  She had borrowed Dan’s towel, and she placed it, folded, under her knees as she knelt at the edge of the spring. She was wearing khaki shorts and a sle
eveless denim shirt, but had taken off her hiking boots and set them on the rocks, and she tucked her bare feet underneath her. Then she removed the watch from her wrist and, twisting slightly in her kneeling position, strapped it to a belt loop at her hip.

  As she did this, she glanced at us. A perfectly innocent glance, I suppose, but it struck me as utterly seductive.

  I cleared my throat. “You say these Naiads are the offspring of a god. That makes them some kind of spirits, right? Just another loony Greek myth.”

  “A very old myth,” Dan said. “Much older than the Greeks. Springs have always had their resident divinities.”

  This was certainly understandable, I thought. Cold, thirst-quenching, life-giving water sprouting like a miracle from the dry, rocky earth—what god-fearing goatherd wouldn’t see that as divine?

  I cut another track down Dan’s soapy scalp. Somewhere an owl softly hooted.

  With her arms propped at the water’s edge, Phoebe lowered her face toward the surface of the spring. She took a short drink, noisily sucking the water. Then she raised her dripping face and for a long moment stared unblinking at the pond.

  I stopped what I was doing. Dan remained silent. Had she seen something there, hidden in the spring, or was she caught by her own reflection? We watched her and waited, and neither of us spoke. There was something magical about her, kneeling by this primeval pool in the dark. Her pale arms and face, ghostly in the starlight, reflected on the undulating mirror of the pond. An aura of stillness surrounded her. Along with the unceasing trickle of the spring, we could hear the sporadic flutter of wings echo off the rocky walls above us. The place was suffused with an atmosphere of time-lessness, with Phoebe the beating heart of it, as if she were some living token of its past.

  At last she cupped her hands and splashed water into her hair. She did this until it was sopping wet. Then she paused again, staring at the water. Her snowy mop, now slicked to her scalp, tapered to a forelock that dripped into the pond. She remained in that position for another long moment, staring again into the water.

  Perhaps she too was struggling to suspend her disbelief. Dan had not told me what her superstitions were, or even if she had any. Until now I had assumed she was another godless European. She had been dismissive of my little episode with the “Naiads” and seemed free of any piousness or reverence. In the few days I had known her, the only thing she showed any serious interest in were the physical remains of the distant past: temples, statues, ruins. She was a trained archeologist, after all; she knew as well as anyone the transience of beliefs.

  As I continued denuding Dan’s head, another rhyme came to me unbidden. This time I spoke it out loud:

  Abode of gods, whose shrines no longer burn.

  Even gods must yield—religions take their turn.

  I remembered this from a book I had found in Dan’s Athens apartment. “Who did that come from?” I asked him.

  “Byron,” he said. “Funny you should bring him up.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he took the plunge in this very same spring. Poets have been coming here at least since Roman times. They believe the waters inspire the Muse.”

  “Really,” I said. “I think I’m beginning to believe it my—”

  Something suddenly flew out of the darkness, winging past us. Instinctively, we ducked, and I felt a flutter of air at my ear.

  As quick as it came it was gone.

  “What the hell was that?”

  Dan didn’t answer. The two of us scanned the treetops, then searched the ominous cliffs. I thought of the owl heard earlier, but this had been fast and furious. Even Dan had been startled.

  Although the moon was hidden by the high canyon walls, its cold light shone on the upper cliffs, and between them the sky was awash with stars. Against this pale backdrop, I began to pick out flitting black flecks, like broken bits of black sky whirling through the air.

  There must have been a hundred of them.

  “Bats,” Dan said at last.

  “Yeah,” I said. “A whole swarm of them.”

  “I wonder what it means,” Dan said.

  Everything had to have a meaning with him. “It means you’re going batty,” I said. My neck hurt from staring at the sky for so long. I looked down at the razor I was holding in my hand. A three-bladed disposable that Dan had kept too long. In the mix of foam and hair that had collected on the blades, I noticed a swirl of something darker.

  Blood.

  “Shit. I think I cut your scalp.”

  It was a small cut, fortunately, on a bony bump at the back of his head, but still it bled like crazy. I pressed my palm against it.

  Dan had been prepared for this inevitability. While continuing to stare stonily at the pond, he slipped two fingers into his shirt pocket and pulled out a Band-Aid for me.

  I carefully applied it to the cut. When I finished, I picked up the razor again and glanced out toward the pond.

  Phoebe had vanished.

  “What happened?”

  I glanced around us. The pines stood silent. The cliffs lay bare. There was no sign of her anywhere in the darkness of the ravine. I stepped away from Dan and moved closer to the spring. Her shorts and denim shirt lay piled beside her boots at the water’s edge. Moving closer, I glimpsed the milky satin of her panties in the pile.

  I stopped. The black water in the pool was undulating.

  Behind me, Dan remained seated, watching silently.

  I stared into the water and began to discern her body under the surface. She was lying on her back, still as stone. Her eyes were open.

  “Phoebe!”

  I was about to jump into the spring when her face emerged from the water. She took in a deep breath, filling her lungs. Her eyes regained focus, and when she saw me standing there, she sat up with a splash.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  She nodded rapidly, but didn’t speak. She seemed both calm and excited. Her hair was dripping into her face, and water gleamed on her skin. I noticed the pretty peaks of her breasts were erect with jutting nipples. When she saw how embarrassed seeing her made me, she crossed her arms demurely.

  I glanced back at Dan. He seemed to be patiently waiting for me to finish his ridiculous haircut.

  “You must be freezing,” I said to Phoebe.

  Again she nodded, yes. I was unused to her silence. It seemed the appalling cold of the spring had taken away her tongue.

  I picked the towel up off the rocks and held it out to her. She didn’t reach to take it, and I realized, after an awkward moment, she was waiting for me to leave.

  I set the towel beside the pond and headed back to Dan.

  His eyes were on me as I approached. I tried to avoid his gaze. “That girl is as crazy as you are,” I said.

  “Crazier,” he replied. While I had been staring at flying bats and tending his bleeding cut, he must have been watching his girl undress and enter the frigid water.

  I picked up the razorblade and resumed my task.

  “Be careful,” he warned as I set to work on the second half of his head.

  Phoebe was climbing out of the water, lifting the towel to her face.

  “No problem,” I assured him, though my hands were beginning to shake.

  She turned her naked backside to us and dried herself in front. The momentary glimpse I took was branded on my brain.

  Dan had not said a word.

  I focused again on the shaving. Nice and easy, I told myself, dragging the razor across his scalp. Slow and steady. Breathe.

  From the corner of my eye I saw Phoebe bend to towel her luscious legs. Even the Buddha beneath my blade appeared to grow more tense. Again I stole a glance.

  She will never leave my mind, I thought. Never leave my mind.

  “Jack?” My brother was losing patience.

  “Right,” I said. I went back to the shaving and did not peek again.

  PHOEBE WALKED up, fully dressed, drying her hair with the towel. When she laid e
yes on Dan’s shaved head, her expression seemed torn between disgust and disbelief. “You look like a boiled egg,” she said.

  I took it as an insult to my delicate work, having carefully removed every whisker. “I thought people were nicer where you come from.”

  Dan rose up, palming his naked scalp. “Are we feeling purified, Phoebe?”

  “I don’t know how I feel,” she said, hugging herself. Her toweled hair stuck out in all directions, like she’d just pulled her finger out of a socket.

  I held up my plastic razor. “You think maybe going bald would help?”

  She no longer seemed in the mood for a laugh. Instead, she asked Dan a question. “Why do they call it the Castalian Spring?”

  Dan was gathering up his shorn blond locks. “It’s named after the nymph, Castalia,” he said. “The story goes that when Apollo pursued her, she dove into the spring and disappeared.”

  Phoebe stared sadly at the water. “It’s like the story of Daphne, then.”

  “Very similar,” Dan said, heading around the pond.

  “Another nymph?” I asked.

  “Apollo’s true love,” Phoebe said.

  We watched Dan place his offering of hair into one of the hollowed-out niches.

  “He have any better luck with her?” I asked.

  “No,” Phoebe said. “Daphne ran away, too, and—”

  Dan turned from the limestone wall with a look of alarm on his face.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  His index finger went to his lips. The two of us stared at him in silence. He was listening for something.

  Bats fluttered overhead. The spring continued its gurgling. For the first time I noticed, back in the trees, the pulsing drone of cicadas.

  Then we heard a man’s loud voice. Something shouted in Greek. It seemed to have come from the path to the road.

  Dan came splashing around the rim of the pond. “Hurry!” he whispered.

  We quickly gathered our belongings. Dan stuffed his barber tools back into his pack and grabbed his tripod stool. We climbed over the site fence and ran off to hide among the pines.