Banquet for the Damned

by Adam L. G. Nevill

  Dante nods, still squinting his eyes. 'My ribs. I think they're broken.'

  'Just take it easy then.' Hart looks about the lawn and begins licking his lips. 'I got to think. My lungs are all fucked and I got burned on my neck. Feels bad too.' He looks down at Dante. 'Can you stand up?'

  'Maybe,' Dante says, but feels his face go white under the smudges at just the thought of it.

  Hart stands over Dante. 'Come on, we got to blow, like we started a fire and people died in it. Give me your arms.'

  'Painkillers,' Dante mutters. 'In my jacket pocket. Give me some first. I'll swallow them dry.'

  Gently, Hart removes the bottle from Dante's jacket pocket. He unscrews the lid, takes two himself, and then slips the last three between Dante's cracked lips. 'Thing hit you so hard, buddy, I was sure you were dead. Man, you flew right across the yard.'

  Dante grins through his discomfort. 'Thought it had you in its mouth.'

  Hart closes his eyes and shudders. He points at something white in the grass near the path. 'No, that was her. We were next. Eliot saved us. He was still a link to it. He. . .' Hart pauses. 'He knew it. It was him and Ben Carter. And the thing in that girl.' Hart looks away and blows out a mouthful of air. 'That girl.'

  Dante swallows. 'We had no choice.'

  'I know, I know, I know,' Hart says, softly, keeping his eyes shut for a moment. 'Shit. Let's get you walking,' he then adds, his voice more urgent from his need to be active and not to dwell on what has been done.

  'It's just my head and ribs, I think,' Dante says, as Hart reaches for his arms. 'And some burns.' Hart lifts him slowly from the grass. 'Stop! No, slowly, slowly. Hart, go slow. Jesus, it hurts.' But then he is on his feet, with his right arm held across his ribs and the numb hand hanging loose at his side.

  Hart has a limp from when he dropped from the window. 'We got to go to the hospital.'

  'We need to, but . . .'

  'What?'

  'Maybe we should hold off a while. If we go in stinking of smoke, we could get blamed for the fires in town. There might be nothing left back there. Jesus, it could be really bad. And they know I bought all that fuel from the garage. Should we go to Dundee or something? Say we crashed the car, maybe.'

  Hart looks at the tottering figure before him. 'We'd never make it.

  We got to go to town. Think I'll need grafts on my neck?' Dante looks at the swollen skin on the back of Hart's neck. There are some blisters too. From the light of the fire it looks like bad sunburn. Dante shakes his head, having no idea. 'No, it's just sore.'

  Hart looks up slowly. He grins. 'We're alive, buddy. Don't you know it. We're here.'

  Dante smiles, but suddenly feels a grief so profound, his throat clots and he can't swallow. Hart leaves him standing there, and begins the grisly business of throwing Beth's servants through the front door of the burning cottage. 'They have to go in the house,' Hart says, with a dreamy expression on his face, as he drags something through the grass toward the snap and pop of the fire. 'In there. They have to go back in there.' He is in shock, Dante thinks, and then turns away to face the dark road and the hills beyond it.

  'Then we better split. They'll see the fire from Knoxville,' Hart mutters in a methodical tone of voice, looking over the tops of his glasses as he huffs by, hauling a long and white thing through the grass by its wrist. But Dante can't think anymore about what happens next. Tears fill his eyes. And then his whole body begins to shake.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Sitting on a long beach, in a spot where the sand is soft on the barrier of dunes that protects the golf courses, is a young man with the collar of his jacket zipped up to his neck, and a red scarf pulled around his chin and ears. Even though the sun is bright and yellow there is always a cold wind on this shore, but his long ponytail of black hair shines like a thin snake in the morning light and rests, occasionally twitching in a breeze, all the way down the worn leather of his coat. Hunched over, alone, he looks out at the horizon, and tries to find that quiver of excitement at opportunities awaiting, of sights beginning to unfold in the imagination, that are always engendered when one sees a giant body of water on which solitary ships drift across the horizon. But inside he is still, numbed, and only conscious of the gentle rise and fall of his chest from the shallow breaths that go through him.

  He lights a cigarette slowly, not even looking at the one unbandaged hand that fumbles with a lighter and the red and white packet of smokes. With the cigarette lit, he bends forward, closer to his knees, and if you happened to be walking past him, you would hear him gasp, and in his eyes you would see a glassiness, as if all of his concentration is suddenly focused inward. He inhales smoke and coughs. The cigarette drops from his hand, and for a long while he is occupied with suppressing these coughs and the pain they cause him. After the spluttering stops, he wheezes to get his breath back, and makes no move to retrieve the still-smoking cigarette that lies in the sand at his feet.

  People are dotted about the beach, walking dogs, watching their children, some holding hands. Frequently, they stop and exchange words, and you get a sense that something important has happened here, something significant that makes strangers stop and unite for a moment to discuss a common matter, an affair that has caused surprise and mystery, and horror and grief, in a confusion of equal amounts.

  'They say it's the saboteurs,' a woman in a red coat says to a group of young girls who stop to smile at her little dog. She uses a hand to pat down her white hair, which is picked up and flopped about her head by the wind. 'Even in our town. You girls be careful. Don't be fooled. Things have changed here.' The girls smile awkwardly and walk off. One of them giggles, and the old lady looks sad as her little white dog trots back to her feet, holding a red rubber ball in its mouth. It looks up at her and blinks.

  'He's disappeared,' another stroller says to his wife, who has her arm hooked around his elbow, resting against him as she walks. 'This Coldwell chap. They can't find him. I didn't even know he was here in the first place. A man like that at the university, and we never knew. And to think of what they pulled out of his house.'

  His wife shakes her head and, for a moment, she closes her eyes.

  'All those bodies burned to bits,' he says, and then they turn to each other and stagger a little when a strong gust of wind bashes into them. He puts his hand on his head to stop his hat leaving.

  Down at the shoreside, three young men look for stones flat enough to skim off the sea surface. Their feet splash about on the dark sand, sodden with water, as they wait for the next small wave. 'No, no,' the tallest one shouts at his two friends. All of their faces are lit up with excitement. 'The cottage was arson. The places in town weren't. They don't know how they started. I heard a copper talking. It was only the lecturer's cottage with the bodies in it that was burned deliberately.'

  'Yeah, sorry, that's right. But there's so many versions,' his friend says, and then whips a stone out to sea, which skims in three hops and sinks sideways. 'They're saying it was a cult started by Coldwell. A suicide cult.'

  'I heard that too. It was in the Telegraph,' the third man says, looking at the silhouette of the town, up the beach by the break waters and cliffs, that now seems more interesting to him than it ever did before. 'But that doesn't explain what people reckon they saw in the dorms. Did you read what those second-year girls said in The Independent?' Before his friends can answer, he continues. 'After the fires started, they all saw something run down the Scores. And it wasn't a man, they say.'

  'But that's crap,' the first speaker says. 'There'll be so many stories about the ghost. Loads of people claim they saw it. I even heard this morning that they called a priest out to the boarding school.'

  'Yeah,' the second man says. He nods his head. 'A porter sounded the alarm. After some nun was found with her neck broken, I heard. But they're keeping it quiet because of all the kids that were in there. They saw it happen. It was going for the kids, I heard. I heard that this black thing, or whatever, was trying
to get into their rooms.'

  And then they all fall silent and, to distract themselves, as if uncomfortable with the thought, they look about on the sand for more stones to throw at the sea.

  Back up in the dunes, the long-haired man is coughing again, and his face looks even paler from a distance because of the red scarf he wears. With the bandaged hand, he dabs at his lips and then puts both of his hands under his arms. He left the hospital at first light. He checked himself out, against the wishes of the staff, but left his friend behind. He was too ill to leave. He was still asleep with a plastic mask on his face.

  From behind him, he hears feet scuffing through the sand. Alert to steps and sounds in a way he never was before, he turns his head despite the discomfort it causes him. He frowns. He blinks with disbelief. Recognition dawns across his face and he almost smiles. He swallows, and his jaw trembles from the emotion he appears to suffer.

  'There you are,' a breathless girl says. Her slender body is wrapped up in a green fleece jacket and blue jeans. 'I've been looking everywhere for you. Oh thank God, you're all right, Dante.' She talks quickly as she skids down the sand dunes. 'I got the train up yesterday, when I heard about the fires, and I went to the address you gave me. At the flat. When I saw it all burned out, I panicked. I saw them cleaning it up, and I saw a bit of guitar. I broke down. And this policeman came over and said there were squatters in the flat, but nobody was hurt there. He said they were still looking for them. Then I came here just by chance to get my head together and I saw the Land Rover.'

  In a daze, the young man watches her. She sits down beside him.

  When she sees the look on his face, the bandaged hand, and the way his body is cramped up, she goes quiet. His clothes are filthy and he smells of smoke. 'The fire?' she asks.

  He nods, but doesn't speak.

  'Where's Tom?' she asks. Her voice is quiet, almost a whisper.

  He looks at the sand and shakes his head. Then he covers his eyes by putting the unbandaged hand across his eyebrows. The girl puts her arm around his shoulders and rests her head against his temple. He puts his arm around her waist and begins to whisper in her ear. He whispers something that no one else on the beach or in the town will ever hear.

  The End.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I would like to acknowledge the advice and support I received at the University of St Andrews on the Creative Writing Masters programme in 1997 and 1998. Professor Douglas Dunn, Brian McCabe, Jenny Itzenson and Brian St John made it a rewarding, stimulating and memorable year for me. Dave Addison and Adam Berger from Anthropology were also instrumental in helping me to create the character of Doctor Hart Miller.

  In one respect this novel is as much about the actual town of St Andrews as anything else, a place with a timeless and curious magic all of its own. Throughout, I've tried to do justice to its graces and remain faithful to its topography, though creative licence has been used to alter the locations of some of the schools. And I can assure the reader that neither the cottage of Professor Eliot Coldwell nor the bewitched village of Knoxville exists (at least not at the locations given in the story).

  Witchcraft and Sorcery by John A Rush, Appearances of the Dead by Ronald C Finucane, Witchcraft and Black Magic by the Reverend Montague Summers, The Terror that Comes in the Night by David Hufford, Witchcraft and Magic in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-century Europe by Geoffrey Scarre, Witchcraft in Europe 1100–1700: A Documentary History by Alan C. Kors, The European Witch-craze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth-centuries by H.R. Trevor-Roper, Transition and Revolution by Robert M. Kingdon were essential in my research, but I admit taking great liberties with both European and Scottish history and folklore to suit my own malign purposes. The verse quoted in chapter four is from Aleister Crowley's King Ghost, the lyrics sung by Elaine in Chapter Forty-One are from 'Give Him A Great Big Kiss' by the Shangri-Las, and the quotation in Chapter Twenty-Five is from An Elizabethan Devil-Worshipper's Prayer Book.

  Without the encouragement of the Nevill clan – mother, father, my brother Simon and sister Melissa – I might easily have spent three years doing something else, far less satisfying, than cooking up this Banquet for the Damned. And without the interest, the wit and the wisdom of James Marriott, John Coulthart, Ramsey Campbell, Peter Crowther of PS Publishing, and Nick Gevers, this night terror may never have been shared.

  Penultimately, I'd like to acknowledge the Outsider books and ideas of Colin Wilson not only for the comfort and confirmation they still give me today, but for being the inspiration behind Professor Eliot Coldwell. And, finally, it would be most unwise of me – lest I'm visited by something unpleasant in the night – not to own up to the considerable debt I owe those great masters of terror, Walter de la Mare, M R James and Algernon Blackwood.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Table of Contents

  Praise for Banquet for the Damned

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Acknowledgements