Wild Ride: The Mythology
Some of you may be wondering about the whole demons-in-southern-Ohio thing. Mab certainly wondered:
Cindy came back, and Mab said, “Do you still have your laptop under the counter?”
“Yep.” Cindy pulled it out and handed it over.
Mab opened Cindy’s browser and typed in “Vanth”, hit the URL for the Wikipedia and read out loud, “’Vanth is a female demon in the Etruscan underworld.’”
“Good to know.”
“Vanth is the name on the Fortunetelling Machine.” Mab told her and read the rest of the entry while Cindy slapped her waffles and love potion together. Then she pushed the laptop around so Cindy could read for herself. She picked up her spoon and tasted the pink ice cream, momentarily distracted from demon lore. “Strawberries, passion fruit, and . . . ?”
“Honey, vanilla, and cinnamon,” Cindy said, squinting at the screen as she skimmed the article. “Maybe she’s a demon oracle. Oh. No, she’s not. But this says she’s benevolent. She even has a boyfriend. A demon named Kharos.” Her face changed.
“What?” Mab said around a mouthful of waffle.
“He’s a bastard. The Etruscan Devil.”
“I’ll tell her he’s no good for her.” Mab cut into her waffle again
“You talk to her?”
Mab nodded, swiveling the computer back around to her with one hand while she scooped waffle and cream with the other. “She talks back. With cards.” She looked up at Cindy.
“Cards,” Cindy said. “The machine talks to you with cards.”
“Old fortunes. Like these.” Mab reached in the side pocket of her bag where she’d stashed the cards, but they weren’t there. “I had cards.” She put down her fork and went through the other pockets, but still no cards. “Who took my cards?”
“I didn’t see any cards,” Cindy said, clearly trying to follow.
Mab dropped her bag to the floor. “Am I losing my mind?”
“No, but something’s going on.” Cindy leaned against the back counter. “Cards, heart attacks, robot clowns. Maybe we’re being haunted by Etruscan demons.”
“In southern Ohio,” Mab said. “I don’t think so.” She forked another piece of waffle and then stopped, remembering Ethan the day before. “Wait a minute. Ethan mentioned somebody . . .”
She pulled the laptop closer and typed “Fufluns” into the browser, hit the first URL, and read, “‘In Etruscan mythology, Fufluns was a god of happiness and growth in all things. He later appears as an underworld demon, supplanted in the pantheon by Bacchus and Dionysus.’ Fun guy. Except for the demon part.”
“FunFun?”
“Fufluns. Another Etruscan demon.” She closed her browser. “The whole Etruscan thing . . .” She shook her head. “I don’t get any of this.”
Here’s your explanation, Mab:
Back in 300 B.C., give or take a couple of centuries, the Etruscans believed that when they died they went to a hell that . . . well, let the Dictionnaire des Religions (Dictionary of Religions) spell it out:
“The extreme care that the Etruscans took of their dead is explained by their conception of the nether regions. Like the Babylonians, they considered these to be places of torture and despair for the manes [spirits of the dead]. The only relief for them could come from propitiatory offerings made by their descendants.” Another reference work declares: “Etruscan tombs show scenes of horror that inspired Christian paintings of hell.”
This Etruscan hell was presided over by Charun/Kharos, a real devil of an underworld god, and his consort Vanth, who was benevolent and loving, a guide and comfort to the dead. Who knows what brought these two crazy kids together, but we (aka Crusie & Mayer) have figured out what extended their infernal little family: the Etruscans were absorbed by the Romans and three of their gods were supplanted. One was Selvans, the god of borders who became Kharos’s right hand man, a kind of a demonic bodyguard with the body of a god and the brains of a kumquat; another was Turan/Tura the goddess of love who became an underworld fury in the form of a beautiful mermaid who punished unfaithful lovers; and the third was Fufluns who got elbowed out of his job as the Etruscan god of wine and happiness by Bacchus. The five were captured by Roman priests and imprisoned in chalices in a kind of Reduction In Force of redundant deities, Fufluns inadvertently joining them because he was making love with Tura at the time and got swept up in the net with the rest. Needless to say, this didn’t make any of the five less demonically angry, especially since they weren’t your run-of-the-mill demons but Untouchables, demi-gods who could never be exorcised only imprisoned. And imprisoned in Italy they were for centuries until they arrived in an amusement park in southern Ohio. . .
Oh, let Glenda explain it:
“Dreamland is a prison for five dangerous demons, the Untouchables: Kharos, Vanth, Selvans, Tura, and Fufluns. Forget bell, book, and candle; forget holy water; forget anything that sends them screaming back to the hell—the only thing that can be done with these demons is to hold them. That’s why the park was built. On an island in a river because demons can’t cross running water. With us to guard the cells, maintain the park, and keep the world safe. We hold the Untouchables here in their chalice cells, inside their iron statues, and hell is not opened up on earth.”
“Hell,” Ethan said, skeptical.
“They feed on emotional pain,” Glenda said. “They create it wherever they go and then harvest it, using humans as cattle, feasting on their hopelessness and depression and despair. The last time all five of them got out, an entire town in Italy was wiped out; some disappeared, some went mad and murdered their neighbors, others killed themselves. The Untouchables were moving on to other towns when the Guardia finally recaptured them. We can’t let them get out again.”
“When was this?” Ethan said. “I mean, were the records--”
“1890.” Glenda nodded to the others. “There are five Untouchables and five Guardia. The Guardia are sworn to defeat the demons and support each other, bonded until death. Young Fred is the Trickster, I’m the Sorceress, Delpha’s the Seer, and Gus is the Keeper. And you are the Hunter.”
“Really?” Young Fred looked at Ethan with a mixture of respect and pity. “Sorry, dude.”
Ethan frowned at Young Fred in disbelief. He was a wiseass but he hadn’t seemed nuts. “You believe this stuff?”
“It’s true,” Young Fred said. “We’re as trapped as the demons. We’re stuck here for eternity.”
Ethan nodded. They were all crazy. “So you have this . . . club,” he began carefully.
“The Guardia,” Glenda said. “For twenty-five hundred years, the Guardia held the Untouchables in Italy until 1925 when a betrayer sold the five chalices that held them to an idiot American art collector. The Guardia followed the chalices here in time to save the collector from one of the demons. The collector built the park here on a place of power and gave it to the Guardia to keep the world safe, and we’ve been here ever since. When one of us dies, another is called to take his or her place. That’s why you came home. You were called. On the 29th of July when Hank died.”
Ethan took a deep breath. His headache was getting worse.
Glenda snapped her lighter and drew on the cigarette until the end glowed red. “The Untouchables will make their move on Halloween at midnight, All Saint’s Eve, when the borders between the earth and the underworld grow thin and their powers grow stronger. If all five get out, they will have their full strength and can assume their true forms, and then . . .”
And then they get out.
Wild Ride. It’s a hell of a story. Enjoy the funnel cake.
NOTE FROM CRUSIE & MAYER: Any resemblance between this myth and actual Etruscan and Roman mythology is deliberate but not factual. That is, we made most of this stuff up. Don’t use it in your history term paper.