Banquet for the Damned

by Adam L. G. Nevill

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  It is the middle of the night and Dante still watches him, the figure all hunched up on the couch in the dark, covered with a blanket from his feet to his neck. At least he's stopped shaking. It made Dante uncomfortable watching him in that state. After they climbed out of the Land Rover and went inside the flat it was the only thing that made him realise Eliot was conscious.

  Outside, it has stopped raining, and if you listen carefully in the silence of the room you can hear the sea across the road, at the bottom of the cliffs.

  Dante pours another two drinks, watching the whisky splash about in the bottom of the glasses. Eliot sucks in his breath. Without moving his head, Dante looks up. A voice comes from the figure under the tartan blanket. It sounds like he says, 'The American'. And then Eliot goes still under the blanket as if he has died. Dante wants him to repeat what he just said, but hasn't the strength to ask. Even the cold of early morning does not affect him. He can feel nothing. It is as if his head is a block of wood and nothing will ever move inside it again.

  After a time he stands up and turns on a wall light and then uses the dimmer switch, so they will not have to see each other's eyes. Then he checks the thermostat and turns the dial until he hears a click followed by the distant whoosh, hidden behind walls, as the boiler comes on. It seems ridiculous to turn the heating on now. He should have done it hours ago. Can warmth make a difference to either man after what they've seen?

  He sits down again and reaches for his drink. Now, with the wall light barely on, it is as if they are in an unlit room and only see the dim things around them by the light that creeps in from a neighbour's house. He looks at the silhouette of the two guitars by the patio doors and it seems he has only ever played them in another life. A little shiver passes up the back of his neck and his forearms turn to goosebumps. He feels as if he should sneeze and then the shudder is gone and the strange sensation passes as the warm air begins to cover him. He can feel it moving over his skin. He feels grateful for the warmth, but guilty too, as if he does not deserve to be comfortable. Behind the walls, there is a sound like water trickling. Eliot does not move.

  Slowly, so as not to make a sound, Dante leans back in the chair and closes his eyes. Everything is warm and red under his eyelids and inside he is empty. It is as if a big knot, that could not be untied, has been cut out. All his thoughts and worries are not there when he closes his eyes. And for a time he does not have to think of the man who murdered his friend. To even have the word 'murder' in your experience . . . For years he thought his life was hard. But when it comes to it, the past wasn't even preparation. He always lived in another world, a world that never had that word in it.

  A voice comes from across the room. Eliot is mumbling.

  Dante listens but never moves. Eliot stares into his lap and is holding his glass of whisky with both hands. The glass is nearly full. But Eliot is talking to someone else in the room, so it is like sitting on public transport opposite an old man whose mind has gone. 'Agrippa was followed by two black dogs for the rest of his life,' Eliot says. Through the darkness, Dante suspects the old man is smiling to himself. 'They saw something at Boleskin too, that they would never talk about. Ever. Not even Aleister. That's not far away. It's on the shore of the loch. I think it was the Dark Man too. And it followed him also. You always have it.'

  It is a jumble of things that he speaks of, but in it, Dante is hearing things that make him feel cold again. He lights a cigarette, forgetting when it was he last smoked. He hopes it will make everything normal again. It doesn't.

  Even though it is dark, Dante can tell that some colour has returned to Eliot's face. It seems to have become animated as he stares at the wall above Dante. He wants to look up too, but is afraid to move in case Eliot stops talking. It is like waiting in a zoo for a rare bird to come outside of its secret nest to peck near the glass.

  'Fasting,' Eliot says to the wall. Dante strains his ears and holds his breath. 'A greater period of fasting and the calling of the right names. Maybe I did nothing more. The ceremony is foolish. It happens in spite of it. They were here all along. And when you invite a guest inside, by being in the right state, and believing they could come, and by saying the right name, who is to say they will ever leave?'

  Eliot goes quiet and for a while the only noise he makes is a slurping sound at the whisky before a nasty coughing erupts from him – followed by a rattle inside his parchment chest. 'They were here,' Eliot says. 'Before I knew who they were. They were in him and the girl before I knew it. Yes, the boy lived here. I think it was always too late for them. She saw her dead father in her dreams. That's how he came to her. And Ben dreamed of a woman.'

  Dante pulls his shoulders in and holds his hands together. He takes his feet off the floor. This is something Eliot has said to himself over and over again, like a man who is unable to apologise, but who will mumble and then vanish into the deepest silences to look for a way of forgiving himself. It doesn't feel as if Eliot is making a confession, but rather that Dante is being paid back a debt, grudgingly, by the old and broken thing under the blanket. Then Eliot makes a wheezing sound and coughs again. Something gathers in his mouth and Dante hears him swallow it. It sounds like he is dying.

  'In the meetings it went through the group and touched them. It marked them for later. I never knew.'

  Dante closes his eyes.

  Eliot's voice softens. 'The boy knew. And he knew I could do nothing to stop it. That it could get into any circle. He knew what was coming. So he put himself away. Did himself in.' Eliot exhales for what seems like a long time, as if he is being punctured by just a thought. 'And with the Brown Man come others, from the time before when the nights here were just the same as they are now. The speaking of the tongues comes from the last ones who served him. The last hunters. But there are things worse than the hunt. The eating . . .' Eliot pauses and swallows more of the whisky from the glass trembling in his hand. 'I used to laugh at the men who wrote about the eating of horrible meats. But who can say how old it all is? Older than the Greeks. Gods are only renamed. They can still be called by the old names.' And then Eliot starts to sniff. He raises a hand that looks too big for his thin arm and puts it against his forehead, as if shielding his eyes from the sun. Inside his eye sockets he places a finger and thumb, and as he stoppers the tears, it looks like he is pushing his eyes into his head.

  When Dante clears his throat of a bubble, the sound seems to fill the room. 'Stop,' he says, but feels he cannot direct the word at Eliot. It is lost in the stillness. It has all come rushing back to him, and he recalls the paintings, exhibited in his memory, and he remembers the dresser made from dark wood in her room, with the mirror that seemed to be alive. And on the dresser he saw the hair of his brother, and knows one end of it would have been wet had he touched it. 'No,' he says, and squeezes his eyes shut, and puts his head down until all of these things have gone away for a while so he can feel numb again.

  And then Eliot takes his hand away from his face and looks down from the wall. He looks right at Dante and seems to have straightened whatever inside him is twisted. 'She'll come here for me. And you are marked also. You have only delayed things. And when the right number have been taken, things will change here. This place is already damned.'

  'What can I do? Tell me,' Dante says. He sits forward, more tired than he has ever been, drained until he is empty, but aware he won't sleep this night. 'You must know what can be done.'

  'Nothing,' Eliot says, automatically and so decisively Dante feels something shrivel inside himself.

  'They shouldn't be here. They can't stay here. There are laws that keep things apart, and that keep time going, so the past can't come back –'

  'But they are here, and they walk. And it spread so fast. And others came to her and joined her. They were all tainted with what should never have been able to do more than break a glass, or tilt a painting, or predict a death rightly, if asked. But they are here. And not just in dre
ams, they took shape right in this time, in this here and now, in this plane, and have begun to occupy their old places. I've seen them everywhere.' Eliot pauses and sighs. His voice falls to barely a whisper. 'Once I tried to smother her in sleep. In case it was the bond between them that was used to bring the dark through. But I could not do it. She is protected. He came alive in the very air.'

  Now Eliot looks agitated; he moves his thin legs from under the blanket and places his feet on the floor. His face is grey, as if his despair is so great he is already dead. 'Can I have your belt?' Eliot then asks, the way a child asks for comfort. For a moment Dante's vision dissolves into little spots of light and then the room judders slightly at the periphery of his vision. He can't move. He feels trapped, and then, idiotically, a yawn comes over him. He shakes his head. 'But we have to,' Eliot says, his face almost smiling because it cannot react appropriately to the enormity of what he is actually suggesting: that they should put an end to themselves.

  'There is another way,' Dante says, feeling reckless and not even believing what he says too quickly, as he thinks of driving very fast and putting up with anything in any other place so long as he isn't here. And then he thinks that if he hears much more, his mind will stop working and will never be able to respond to anything again. But he knows that would be a luxury, because those hunted can suffer forever. He is short of breath and pushes his heels down hard on the floor. He tries to stand up twice but can't. There is a huge pressure inside him again. 'When will it come?' he blurts out, in a strained voice, as if it's escaping from under a heavy lid.

  'There is business tonight,' Eliot says, in a matter-of-fact way. Then he stops talking and looks at the floor. 'Oh God, oh God, oh God,' he says, not to Dante. 'I can't even warn them. Who would listen now?'

  'Tomorrow,' Dante whispers, but the last syllable is squashed flat inside his throat. He swallows. 'It'll come for me tomorrow then?'

  'For certain,' Eliot says, still staring into space. Dante stands up and moves so that he can feel his legs again.

  'Could I get out of the town?' he asks, and then hates himself for thinking of running.

  Eliot looks at him, and seems to be weighing him up. When he speaks his voice is deep. It has a kind of dignity, the way it was the first time they met. 'And one day, a stranger will walk past you and look you in the eye and say something to you. They could be smiling, but it will be a promise. And when you hear the words and see their eyes you will know it could be the end of you at any time. The end of you that you choose with your fears: a knife, a glass in your throat, a burning at the side of a road in a car, a drowning in a sea you can't swim out of. If you have no preferences for the way you die, they can take a child you love –'

  'No,' Dante says aloud. He stops moving and sits down. He knows his face is white because his whole head has gone cold. It feels frozen.

  'You are marked. Now, your belt,' Eliot asks, in a soft but insistent voice. 'I won't do it in front of you. I want to be back with my books. Please. I can't ask again. It has to be now.'

  Too stiff inside to think about what he is doing, Dante unbuckles his belt. Eliot looks away, as if made uncomfortable by a vulgar act. Dante stretches his arm out, holding the belt loosely, feeling the warmth on the inside of the leather from where it has been around his waist. It is taken quickly from Dante's hand. Their fingers never touch.

  'I won't do it,' Dante then says, and backs away from Eliot as if the man is holding a dangerous snake.

  'I understand,' Eliot says, impatient. 'Maybe you haven't seen it all yet, but I have.' Eliot stands up, holding the blanket across himself. 'I was locked in with it, and . . .' He stops talking and starts to shake. He closes his eyes and Dante can see the concentration on his haggard face as he tries to control himself. Then he opens his eyes and is restless, eager to get his business over with. 'Do you have a coat? I know where I can get clothes.'

  'Tom,' Dante says. A thought of his friend comes to him suddenly, as they talk so reasonably about the way for a man to die. But that is all he can say. He is unable to think of or attach a sentence to the name.

  Eliot points at Dante and appears angry. 'Promises were made that I couldn't keep. Offerings were the only things that counted once they were here. I've given enough, friends and strangers. At first to keep it in check and finally because they made me. Now I have to go.'

  'You led my friend to his death,' Dante says, still not able to believe that the idea of Tom can be associated with anything so final. An end. And why is he not angry? Why can he only feel pity and revulsion for this man, but no rage? Is it grief, or confusion from the most impossible things having occurred so quickly in his life, that gets in the way of his anger?

  Eliot whispers, 'He was to be shared. To be here for those that came up. You too. And who can tell who is right for them and who is not? Whom they will take? And who can use reason with such a god?'

  'You're a bastard,' Dante hears himself say.

  Eliot looks up with an expression on his face that Dante has never seen before. It looks like surprise. 'If it would help, you can finish this business between us. I would let you.'

  It is as if a close friend has made an awkward and unexpected pass. Dante feels an overpowering aversion and stares at Eliot, hard. 'Be grateful I'm not like that. Because it would be my right to make it uncomfortable for you.'

  Eliot looks down. 'I know,' he says.

  But Dante's fire has not waned. 'Before you do it, Eliot, think of what you've done. So even when you're gone you'll have no peace.' Eliot's face blanches and he looks ready to sit down again, already beginning to shake. But he has enough presence of mind to look to the lounge door and know he will have to leave, wrapped in a blanket, utterly reduced and impoverished in the world he has used and then corrupted.

  'There was an American here,' he says, after taking a deep breath.

  'He came to see me a few days ago. He knew about things. He lives on Market Street. In an upstairs room. Right across the road from Grey Friars Street. His name is Miller something. That's all I remember. And it might not be enough because I heard talking down the stairs the other day. They went for him. But she came back angry, so maybe he escaped, or maybe he was just no good.' In the dark, Dante can see he's screwed up his face as if in anticipation of a blow. 'Both of you are marked,' he adds, almost under his breath. 'If he's not gone yet, you will have each other. I can tell you nothing else. There are no answers. It just comes down to you finishing me, or for me to do it myself. I'm sorry.' And then he is gone. He walks swiftly from the lounge, through the hallway, and out the door of the flat.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Looking up from street level, Dante can see the lights are out in the building directly across from Grey Friars Street. If Eliot was telling the truth, this is Miller's flat. Up on the top floor, above the solicitor's office, he can see what appears to be a residential property with curtains behind the windows. Maybe Miller is asleep.

  He approaches the front door and depresses the bell. There is no answer. He thumbs the bell again and leaves the buzzer pushed in. Pressing his ear to the cold glass of one of the little windows at the top of the door, he hears the far-off ring of the bell, reduced to a distant trill, up the stairs and inside the flat. Standing on his toes, he peers through one of the windowpanes in the door. Aided by the light of a street lamp behind him, he can see the outline of a wooden staircase leading upward between white walls, and something else. At the bottom of the stairs, in the small reception, is something long, black and rectangular. Dante squints and tries to make sense of the large, immobile, shadowy thing. It looks like a large box has been pressed against the door.

  Turning around, he glances up and down the desolate street which glows under the streetlights. No one is watching him, but the empty street itself strikes him as being in a state of expectation. It is almost as if the wide boulevard of Market Street, with its old buildings and the narrow alleys that lead from it, is waiting, anticipating something. The townsfo
lk, and the growing student population, are oblivious to what they are walking across or standing upon; but the town itself knows: it has a long memory.

  Shrugging off a shiver, Dante peers back through the window. Still no sign of life summoned by the bell. He pulls his penlight torch from the inside pocket of his jacket and shines it into the reception, to get a closer look at the box-thing blocking the stairs. The thin yellow beam hits a padded surface. Moving the beam of light around, Dante begins to see the outline of cushions and the armrests of a couch. Someone has slipped a sofa down the stairs.