Could that be what was going on here?
Penelope didn't think so. Whatever unnaturalness was at the root of all this, it was nothing new, nothing alien, nothing from the outside.
It came from her mothers.
"Leave him alone!" she screamed.
Mother Janine looked over at her, laughed manically. "He's got a nice dick here! Get it while it's hot!"
Mother Felice slapped her face.
The others laughed. Mother Janine laughed too, but she reached out and grabbed a handful of the wine-stained tunic that Mother Felice was still wearing and ripped it off.
Mother Sheila picked up a handful of blood and fat and threw it at Mother Felice.
"Stop it!" Penelope screamed. She looked from one mother to another. She was scared and confused, and she wanted more than anything else to run, to escape, to get as far away from here as quickly as possible. But where would she run to? Where would she go? The police? That's where she should go, she knew. Two policemen were dead and eviscerated, killed by her mothers. And! God knew how many other people they'd murdered.
Her father.
But she could not bring herself to turn traitor, to turn her mothers in.
She wanted to stop them, maybe even wanted to kill them, but at the same time she wanted to protect them from anyone else who might try to intervene.
Whatever happened, it had to stay within the family.
Which meant that if someone was going to do something, it would have to be her.
Her mothers were still playing in the blood, and all of her instincts were telling her to get out of here, to flee the meadow, to get back to lights, streets, buildings, cars, civilization, to save herself.
Everything she'd ever learned, thought, or believed was telling her to get help. But she realized that she could not do that. Not to her mothers.
Besides, she couldn't leave Dion.
Dion.
He was screaming, fighting, struggling against the drunken women holding him down and smearing him with blood. As Mother Felice broke away from the others and started toward her across the meadow, she could see Mother Janine stroking his penis, massaging it with blood.
He was hard.
Penelope felt sickened. She walked toward Mother Felice. The two of them stopped less than a foot from each other. Her mother smiled, and there was both sadness and triumph in the look. "So now you know," her mother said.
"Know what?"
"What we are. What you are."
She was even more confused than before. And more frightened. What she was?
She suddenly realized that she was not as shocked by all of this as she should have been, not as disgusted as she would have expected to be. It was horrifying, yes, and obviously disgusting, but her reactions were intellectual, not emotional, a recognition of the response the scene would have provoked in other people, not the response that was actually evoked within her. She was reacting to this the way she thought she should react, not the way she really felt.
The fear was definitely there, but it was not a physical fear, not a fear of what might happen to her. It was more a fear of recognition, a realization that these were her mothers and that she was their daughter, that she was one of them.
Anger. That was her overriding emotion. Anger at what they were doing to Dion, at what they were putting him through. It was a focused anger, though, a localized anger, and she wondered if she would have reacted this way rf it had been someone else. Did she even give a damn about the dead policemen?
No.
It was only because it was Dion.
She smelled the wine, smelled the blood, and the mingled scent appealed to her.
She looked at her mother. "What are we?"
"Maenads," her mother said.
Maenads. She knew the word. The madwomen who had worshiped Dionysus in Greek mythology. Women crazed with wine and sexual ecstacy, responsible for brutally killing Pentheus and ripping Orpheus limb from limb in a wild orgy of blood. Representatives of chaos in the otherwise orderly world of the Greek gods. The dark side of ancient religion.
But maenads weren't real. They were mythological figures. Fictional characters.
Weren't they?
"We have always existed," Mother Felice said gently, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. Penelope was acutely aware of the fact that her mother was naked, of the fact that the blood on her smelled sweet and fresh and good. "But people have forgotten us. They have forgotten the old gods."
"No one's forgotten anything," Penelope said. "They--"
"They call it mythology."
Penelope said nothing.
"These are not fairy stories or fantasies. This is not the way primitive people attempted to explain things they did not understand." Her mother touched a finger to the blc between her breasts, lifted it to her mouth. "This is truth."
Behind her mother, Dion screamed, a piercing cry somehow metamorphosed into loud, sustained laughter.
"What are you doing to him?" Penelope demanded.
"Restoring Him." Her mother's voice was low, worshipful, filled with awe. "Calling Him back."
Penelope felt cold. "He?"
"Dionysus."
Again, she was not surprised. She should have been., The idea that her mothers, were rubbing blood all over her ; boyfriend in order to turn him into a Greek god was not: something she could have come up with in a million 5 years. But the events here had taken on a life of their own, and things were flowing together, coalescing, in a way that seemed inevitable, almost natural, and she could only stand by and watch as they unfolded.
"We worshiped Him in the old days," her mother said. "There were no prophets or ministers then, but we served that function. We praised Him.
And He rewarded us." Again, she touched a finger to the blood, brought it to her mouth. "He gave us wine and sex and violence. He participated in our kills, in our celebrations, and everyone was happy.
"The gods were our contemporaries in those days. It was not like Judaism or Christianity or any of these modern faiths. Our religion wasn't made up of stories from the distant past. It was a living religion, and we coexisted with our gods. They took an interest in our lives. They came down from Olympus to be with us, to comingle with us." Her voice faded, and behind her, Penelope heard Dion laughing.
"Then why did your gods disappear?"
"People stopped believing."
"So?"
Mother Felice smiled gently at Penelope. "Remember when you were little and we took you to San Francisco to see Peter Pan! Remember that part where Tinker Bell was dying and the audience was supposed to shout that they believed in her? You were shouting for all you were worth. You wanted so badly to save her life."
Penelope nodded. "I remember."
"Well, gods are like Tinker Bell. They don't need food for nourishment.
They need belief. It's what feeds them, what gives them power. Without it, they ... they fade away."
It was so strange, Penelope thought. So insane. This rational conversation about the irrational, references to her childhood and popular culture used in an attempt to explain ancient evil.
Ancient evil.
Was that what mis was? It was a cliched phrase, a staple of bad horror novels and worse horror films, conjuring up images of vengeful Indian demons and cursed land. But it applied. The events her mother was talking about had taken place centuries ago. The religion to which her mothers subscribed predated Christianity by a thousand years.
"The gods faded away, but we did not. Our survival, unlike theirs, did not depend on belief. We were flesh and blood. But we were also more than human. He had bestowed upon us a gift of divinity, and we continued our rituals, or celebrations, knowing that He would return to us eventually.
"
"The gods will be borne of men,' " she recited. " 'As they went so shall they come. To take again their rightful place on mighty Olympus." "