Banquet for the Damned

by Adam L. G. Nevill

  'Sure, never doubted it for a minute. It's you I worry about.'

  'I was only thinking out loud.'

  'Yeah, well no more of it. We are going to be in St Andrews. Man, that's in another country. In a different dimension. Just think of the ocean and the beach. There's a ruined castle, and all those cute student chicks. It's going to be so cool.'

  Dante nods his head in approval and opens a packet of chocolate buttons while gripping the steering wheel with his knees. They pass a can of Cherry Coke between them and Tom lights another cigarette before leaning across to place it on Dante's bottom lip. 'Cheers,' Dante says, and relaxes into his seat, daring to steer the Wagon with one hand. 'There's something I'm curious about, Tom.'

  'Oh shit. What are you, a homo?'

  'No,' he replies, smiling, and flicks his fringe out of his eyes. 'But don't knock it until you've tried it.' Tom's mirth hisses between his teeth and stabs through the cigarette smoke that gathers around his face. Killing his smile, Dante says, 'We tell each other everything, right?'

  'Right,' Tom says, frowning.

  'Well, there's one thing that doesn't sit right with me. We've been incurable romantics since school. Always looking for the Muse.'

  'Fussy means less and settling is forbidden, or so we used to say.'

  'You used to say. I never had the bone structure to be so arrogant.'

  Tom chuckles.

  'But you had her,' Dante says.

  'Who?'

  'Don't give me that who crap. You had Imogen. You should have dropped me like a hot coal and lived happily ever after.'

  'You're so sweet on her. You should have gone out with her,' Tom says, quietly. He looks away and out of the window and Dante cannot see his face.

  He grips the steering wheel tighter than he needs to. He clears his throat. 'I'm being objective. Come on, I have some integrity. I would never have fooled around with her.'

  'That was low.'

  Dante changes gear down to third to round a tight corner. The face of Punky, their last and best drummer, enters both minds. Tom split the band apart by sleeping with Punky's girlfriend – and it was the best line-up they'd ever managed to assemble. 'Tom, I'm not having a go, believe me, but Imogen is a doll. So why are you sitting next to me in the War Wagon, driving four hundred miles away from perfection?'

  'Long story. I really don't feel up to talking about it.'

  'Come on. She loved you, man. You had the greatest times. I always envied you her. I admit it.' Dante clears his throat again. This is further than he's ever gone toward the mystery of Tom leaving Imogen. Their umbilical bond, their empathy, seems to have frozen somewhere by the hand-brake.

  'Drop it, Dante,' Tom says after a long silence. 'Just accept that it wasn't right and I should be on the road with you. You'd be lost without me.' He feels the knuckles in Tom's hand press against his shoulder, providing a friendly nudge.

  For over an hour, no one speaks.

  When Dante next checks his watch it has gone four in the afternoon and the sun shows no signs of abating. It flows into the Land Rover cabin, warms his face and glints off the dusty instrument panel. Inside, he feels his muscles relax and even the engine, humming in fourth gear, seems to mellow in sympathy with him. They rumble through villages built out of stone, and thread between the small hills, the name of St Andrews now appearing on every directional board they pass. And for a moment, just before Tom turns the stereo on to play The Black Crowes, Dante senses something grow inside him. It is the same sensation he experiences when the right combination of chords for a song flows through his fingers, and the hair stands up on the back of his neck. It makes him a little dizzy. This is why he is going to St Andrews: to unleash this inspiration, and to pay homage to the man who awoke it.

  'The sea! Straight to the sea! See that, it says "West Sands". Let's go.'

  'Sure,' Dante says, steering the Land Rover around a small traffic island as he tries to adjust to the sudden vision of old buildings, the rows of trees, and the swept streets.

  Above the town the sun smoulders towards dusk. Beyond the spires the sky is purple, tangerine, lemon, and rippled with sparse dark clouds. Mediaeval and Victorian buildings, all neatly aligned, huddle on the hills and cliffs above the green expanse of golf course, the winter-blue of infinite sea, and the wide sands that divide them.

  'Beautiful.'

  'End of the rainbow.'

  Dante steers the Land Rover down a narrow street toward the golf links. On their right, a long wall of distinguished hotels snakes up a hill; to the left, small shop fronts peek between more of the stately hotels. Straight ahead, over the grimy bonnet, the sea is as flat as a mill pond and stretches down the coast until the West Sands become a yellow ribbon leading to a conifer forest.

  Dante pulls the Land Rover around the bends in the road, his eyes wide with excitement and wonder. He hits two sets of speed bumps and spreads a landslide of luggage toward the War Wagon's rear doors.

  'Careful, buddy,' Tom warns. 'The guitars.'

  'Sorry.'

  'Those doors will hold, won't they?' Tom asks, reluctantly taking his eyes from the view.

  Dante grins. 'Hope so. If they don't, we'll look like a Hercules dropping aid boxes over Rwanda.'

  Tom laughs. 'Imagine that, picking leather jackets and guitars off the road. What would the locals think?'

  'That hell had come to St Andrews.'

  They chuckle and punch each other's fists.

  Slowly, Dante eases the hot Land Rover into a carpark between the old course and the sand dunes. Tom rapidly chews his aniseed gum. 'Look at the place. Fucking look at it. It's magic. Our album will be so cool. I can feel it.'

  They clamber down from the wagon and stretch their cramped bodies; kick their legs out and then rub stiff knees. Tom stares at the sky and groans, digging his open palms into the small of his back, attempting to massage some feeling into his lower vertebrae. He squints at the horizon. 'To the sea.'

  Hobbling together out of the car park, they cross a small road parallel to the dunes. They stumble down to the sand and suck draughts of salty air into their lungs. Tom sparks up the last two cigarettes. He slides his Zippo flame across the shorn ends, until they glow red and release the scent of toasted tobacco to mingle with the briny air. A jog revives their limbs and carries them across the flat sand to the shoreline where they stand and marvel at the water that froths around their weathered biker boots.

  'What's that?' Tom asks, breaking Dante's trance, and he points down the beach. A solitary police car is parked on the sand and two officers, stripped to their white shirts, stumble about in the distance. Patrol car lights flare an electric-blue, piercing the hues of summer twilight like an acetylene flame.

  'Let's go look.'

  As they move down the beach toward the commotion, they hear someone crying. A woman. An elderly woman in a tweed skirt and brown pullover, who pulls at the leash of her yapping Jack Russell terrier to keep him away from the policemen. Other people stand back, exchanging glances. Their faces are pallid with shock. Behind Dante and Tom, the urgent wail of an ambulance splinters the air. They turn their heads and see an emergency vehicle drive down a stone jetty and begin to rumble and shake across the sand.

  'Someone's drowned,' Tom suggests, his face stiffening with concern.

  'Maybe,' Dante replies, squinting through his contact lenses as he searches for the macabre details he doesn't want to see, but cannot stop looking for.

  They come to a standstill, about twenty feet from the commotion, wincing at the sound of the distressed woman. One of the officers opens the rear door of the patrol car and helps the woman and her dog inside. Then he walks back to the red thing on the sand.

  'What is it?' Dante asks.

  'Shit,' Tom replies, wiping his hand across his eyes.

  'What? I can't see. These damn lenses are useless.' The ambulance passes, its tyres sinking through the damp sand. Its siren deafens them. Tom shouts something, but Dante doesn't hear him. 'What is
it?' he repeats, just as the ambulance kills the siren.

  'An arm!' Tom yells, his voice bringing a fresh surge of woe from the woman in the police car.

  'It's an arm,' Tom repeats, his voice subdued. 'A human arm.'

  Two paramedics slip past the policemen and cover the red thing on the beach with a rubber sheet.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Thin unseen hands paw her body. Just like the night before. Until long fingers grip her shoulders and yank her upright in bed. Then her face is touched by something sharp before her limp shape is thrown down to the mattress, so it can clamber upon her. Rustling, as if spidery limbs are being drawn in, it perches upon her chest. Before lowering its face. To whisper.

  Punched from sleep, Kerry's long blue eyes open. Pebbles of sweat cool on her forehead.

  Only the dream. She exhales. It's over now, it's gone.

  Should have gone to sleep on my front. I'm sure I went to sleep on my front. But understands the bad dream came back to turn her over.

  Out of dream-time, Kerry glances around her dark room, cocooned within the sturdy walls of St Salvator's Hall of Residence. Moonlight filters through the thin curtains and transforms her quiet chamber into smudges and silhouettes. She swallows to calm her staccato breaths, and the waking moment brings tears to her eyes and a shudder beneath her ribs, as if she's just climbed out of cold water to seek a towel. There is an urge to cry, to call Sarah in from next door so she can cling to her neighbour's gown in these first moments of waking. But beside the window she sees the outline of a Sheryl Crow poster and above her desk Brad Pitt hides in shadow, with his shirt off, square jaw clenched and strong hands still. Familiar things kill her desire to cry. This is Kerry's real world in real time, and safe from nightmare.

  Smiling through her tears, she hears the little ticks from the Homer Simpson alarm clock. At nine in the morning he'll shout 'Doh!' and she'll phone home. Her thesis is nearly finished and she's ready for her dad's comfy arms and her mom's raised eyebrow. Back to Kent, back home and away from the nightmares. Relief makes it possible for Kerry to almost smell dad's pipe-smoke, to hear her little sister's piano, Jasper barking in the conservatory, and her grandmother cackling before the television. She can even hear . . .

  Something moving.

  No God, please.

  A sniff and then a rustle out there in her room.

  Please, please, please, no more. She's awake. It can't continue.

  The sounds are coming from the dark annexe by the en-suite bathroom. Something is on all fours as it pads through the murk of night. She can hear it feeling its way about the floor, as if blind but intent on being close to her.

  Kerry tries to move her head and sit up. No use. A familiar tingling, a paralysis, fastens her down beneath disturbed sheets still damp with sweat. Her legs and arms are immobile, useless. Not wanting to see, Kerry closes her eyes. Muscles twitch in her face and then crease. Panic surges through her body and she wants to beg, plead, and then scream, to bring the world to her door.

  But maybe if she doesn't struggle and stays quiet it won't find her.

  A lump gathers in her throat. A swollen clot of fear, because she can sense it emerging from around the corner to turn its face toward her. She holds her breath, her stiff body shivers and a deep silence engulfs space and time. There is no sound or movement for a moment, just the dark room and the waiting she must endure inside it.

  And then the touch. It has reached out.

  Something dry and sharp presses into her cheek. A spider web of icy tingles spreads up from her shoulders and sparks inside her neck. Hair follicles prickle on her scalp and her blonde hair stiffens against the pillow. It's freezing now and the sheets feel like tissue paper. Stillness roars. She gasps. Keeping her eyes shut tight, she tries to scream but everything swirls inside, voiceless and adrift. A sudden thought demands annihilation to end the delay. The sharp thing then scratches down and across her face and pushes at her lips. A bitter taste seeps into her mouth and spreads to her sinuses, leaving a taint of blackened antiquity. There is a sudden hiss and a gust of air teases the feathery hair around her ear. A presence hovers above her face. It has risen to stare.

  Suddenly, her throat feels naked and exposed, and she tries to push her chin down to protect the soft cartilage and intricate pipes in her neck – the flesh she imagines being smashed flat or squeezed until it cracks – but lowering her jaw is impossible.

  Little pin-pricks of red light flash beneath her eyelids. She thinks she will faint. Or is this shock?

  A weight spreads across her chest, and her small breasts are flattened. Long frozen fingers clench around her biceps and pin her to the bed. A face she cannot see nears, to hover no more than an inch from her own. The image of a thing old and bestial and terribly thin bores through her failing mind. The salvation of darkness claims her.

  The cold that numbs her feet and spears her ankle bones wakes Kerry. She's outside and it's still night. There is a sound of water, swelling and lapping around stone. Peering down, she sees her long white feet, oddly luminous against a black surround. Before her stands a small tower with an iron ladder clinging to it. To her right she hears the power of the sea, rushing in to froth around the pier.

  The pier. I'm on the pier. And right down at the end, so far from the shore, with her arms wrapped around her chest. It's freezing and her skin shivers beneath the thin T-shirt and underwear she wears to bed. Stepping from one foot to the other, she tries to make sense of her situation and turns around to see the lights glimmer in the harbour and around the cathedral walls that loom upward to craggy demolished towers and holed façades.

  Am I drunk? Am I mad?

  And just as she remembers the thing in her room, sitting on her chest, something scrabbles across the wall by the little black tower. She staggers backward, her foot slips and the night sky whirls above her. The sound of the inky sea, heaving down below, becomes deafening.

  She shrieks, regains her balance and then hops forward, away from the edge. She looks to the pier wall on the other side, more than a metre thick and raised four feet off the promenade. A memory of edging along it on her first day at university, four years before as a fresher, spills into her mind. She sees herself hugging the wall with friends who giggle, terrified of the unprotected edge so close to her with the sea below it. It had been a dizzy, spinning fear back then, that secretly demanded she hurl herself off and down to the clashing waves.

  Must be a dog, she tries to convince herself. A big dog and it's gone away now. Go home, run home, get Sarah. But something is still moving up there. It crawls forward on its front, indistinct but for its length, pressed into the stone.

  Kerry begins to sob. She remembers the smell and movements of the thing that groped around her bed and paralysed her muscles. Instinctively, her hands fly up and cover her nose and mouth. It was there in her room, and now it has brought her down to the pier. She will die. It will take her to the edge of the pier and bite her, throw her off, leap after her and hold her head under the cold water. Already, she can feel her lungs screaming, the briny freeze in her mouth, and the long fingers capping her skull and ready to push down.

  Kerry screams. In her mind, she can see her own face: a wrinkled tomato-face. What Dad used to call it whenever she had a tantrum as a child. Now she has it again, on her own, down on the pier. Instinct tells her to fall to the floor, to grip the polished stone, worn by pilgrims' sandals, to hold on with all her might and save herself from the edge and the waves that will smash. If it kills her on the pier, she won't have to go over the side and see it follow.

  The thing hisses. It scuttles like a crab. The head is dark but something glints inside the oval of its coverings. Images of yellowed ivory and black lips flash through Kerry's mind. Running away is impossible. She knows she lacks the strength, and it's so fast up there, skittering about, before it tenses and makes ready to leap.