The dancing sped up, became more frenzied, more frenetic. Tim was not sure when the movements crossed the border from free form into fanatic;
he knew only that suddenly the women were no longer dancing, no longer celebrating. There was a wildness to their steps, danger in their motions. They seemed mad, almost maniacal, and he was frightened. His erection was gone, and he wished that they were safely back in the car and on their way home.
Now there was laughter behind them as well as in front of them, and it no longer seemed happy or joyous. He turned his head, saw a nude woman dancing in the small clearing where he'd wanted to spread the blanket.
"Let's get out of here," Ann whispered.
He shook his head. Intentionally or unintentionally, these women, whoever they were, had surrounded them. It was now impossible for them to return to the car without being seen.
But why was he so afraid of being seen?
He didn't know. But he was afraid, very afraid, and he wished he'd listened to Ann in the first place and left when they'd first heard the sounds.
He was grabbed from behind.
He tried to scream, but a hand was clamped over his mouth, a filthy hand smelling of wine and woman. He tried to lash out, tried to kick, tried to hit; but whoever was holding him was stronger than he was and held him tightly. He turned his head as far as he could to the left and saw a naked woman carrying Ann into the field. Two more carried him, following.
He couldn't see for a moment, could see only the ground and dirty legs from the angle at which he was carried. Then he was thrown onto the ground. A small branch stabbed his side. He screamed with pain and heard the noise. They were no longer holding his mouth shut. He screamed as loud as he could, "Help!" at first, then just pure sound. Ann was screaming too, and the women still holding his arms and legs turned him so he faced her.
The women were ripping her clothes off, laughing, drinking from a bottle of red wine, the thick liquid spilling down their chins, down their chests, looking like blood.
What the fuck was happening?
He was filled with not only fear but panic--and with the certainty that both he and Ann were not going to get out of this, that they were going to die.
The first woman, the dancer they'd first seen, finished off the wine.
She was on top of Ann, facing backward, bottle in hand. "No!" Ann screamed, real terror in her voice. "No--!"
Her screams were cut off as the woman sat on top of her face and began shoving the thin end of the wine bottle viciously between her legs, in and out, in and out, thrusting with all of the strength in her arm, until the glass was opaque with blood.
"Ann!" Tim cried, but the other women were upon him now, ripping his clothes, pulling his hair. He went down. A finger found his eyeball, pressed in, and, with a stream of hot juices, pulled out. Teeth began ripping skin, rending flesh. Fingers were shoved into his anus, pulling, stretching, ripping. His screams were not even coherent, not even words.
The air was filled with the smell of salt and sex and heavy wine.
And they tore him apart.
It was long past her usual bedtime, but Penelope couldn't sleep. She had always been sensitive to moods, oversensitive perhaps, and the mood when she'd arrived home had been tense. Her mothers seldom argued, and never in front of her, but they did have disagreements, and their differences came out in subtle ways, small changes in familiar rituals, purposeful transgressions of established etiquette. They no doubt thought that they were hiding their problems from her, sparing her, but this clandestine conflict had made her that much more sensitive to small shifts of emotion.
The current fight was big.
Ordinarily there were one or two mothers involved in a dispute, and the others covered for them as best they could, acting as arbitrators, preserving the facade in front of Penelope. But tonight they had all been unusually silent, unusually solemn when she arrived home. All except Mother Margeaux, who, for some strange reason, was not there.
Mother Felice asked Penelope a few perfunctory questions when she walked into the living room, but it was clear that even she was not interested in the answers, and the other mothers sat in obviously expectant silence, waiting for her to leave so they could resume their conversation.
She did leave, going to the bathroom and taking a hot shower, and when she'd gone into the kitchen afterward to get a drink of water, she'd heard her mothers talking in the living room. Their voices were low, cautious, almost conspiratorial, as if they were afraid of being overheard, and the clandestine tone of the conversation caused Penelope to tread softly and to halt in the hallway outside the door, listening.
"She's our daughter," she heard Mother Felice say.
"That doesn't matter anymore." Mother Margaret.
She moved away from the doorway, not wanting to hear any more, her heart pounding, the blood racing through her veins. She hurried up the stairs to her bedroom, closed the door and locked it.
She had not been able to fall asleep since.
Now she reached next to her, felt for her watch on the nightstand, held its vaguely luminescent face next to her eyes.
One o'clock.
She put the watch down, stared up into the blackness. More than anything, she wanted to sneak down the hall to Mother Felice's room, to crawl into her favorite mother's bed the way she used to, to find out what was wrong, what was happening, what they'd been talking about That doesn't matter anymore --but that was not possible. Even though she knew her mother supported her, even though she'd heard her mother defend her, she could not be entirely certain that her mother's sympathies were completely on her side. Mother Felice loved her, yes, but she was one of them too, and perhaps those loyalties were stronger.
One of them.
When had it become that? When had it turned into us versus them!
She wasn't sure. But it was probably something that had been building for a while. She'd noticed, many times before, that although her feelings for Mother Felice had remained constant, she seemed to like her other mothers less and less as she grew older. She had never been sure if that was because she was changing or because they had changed. They had all seemed equally nice to her as a child, she had loved them all, but as she'd grown she'd begun to see the differences between them. And the difference between what they were like and what^ she had thought they were like. Mother Margeaux's strength and focus began to seem bossy to her, her once admirable iron will autocratic and dictatorial. Mother Janine's free spiritedness seemed for a while flighty and irresponsible, then self-destructive, then just plain crazy. Mother Margaret's dispassionate intellectualism became cold, Mother Sheila's single-minded study of the science of the grape annoying and nerdily fanatic.
Maybe it was nothing. Maybe this was something all children went through. Teenage rebellion and all that crap.
Maybe.
But she didn't think so.
The one thing which had not changed was that they all had equal power over her. If there were divisions of labor within the business, a hierarchical order with Mother Margeaux at the top, there was no such structure in their family life. At least not in regard to her. They were all her mothers, and if there were ever conflicting orders or requests or restrictions, it was up to her to resolve them. She had learned early on that it was impossible to pit one mother against another. They always took one another's side.
Which was why she could not ask Mother Felice.
It was Dion's influence too, she thought She had become much more assertive since she'd met him, more willing to stand up for herself and to openly disagree with or disobey her mothers. She saw her life now as he would see it, looked at it as an outsider would, and although she had always done that to a certain extent, it seemed as though now she was able to see, to know, to understand how truly strange her lifestyle was.