To the left at the end of the passage, the open door of the captain’s cabin is visible. Inside, the sofa beside the coffee table and the two easy chairs sit expectant but empty. The office furniture and shelves reveal no disarray. But set upon the broad desk are three long wooden crates. The tops have been levered off, and the packing straw that was once inside is now littered about the table’s surface and the carpeted floor. Mingled with the straw is a plethora of dried flower petals.
Upon a tablecloth spread on the floor before the captain’s desk, two small forms have been laid out. They lie side by side. They are the size of five-year-old children and blackened by age, not unlike the preserved forms of ancient peoples, protected behind glass in museums of antiquities. They appear to be shrivelled and contorted. Vestiges of a fibrous binding have fused with their petrified flesh and obscured their arms, if they have such limbs. The two small figures are primarily distinguished by the irregular shape and silhouette of their skulls. Their heads appear oversized, and the swollenness of the crania contributes to the leathery ghastliness of their grimacing faces. The rear of each head is fanned by an incomplete mane of spikes, while the front of each head elongates and protrudes into a snout. The desiccated figures have had their lower limbs bound tightly together to create a suggestion of long and curling tails.
Inside the second crate lies a large black stone, crudely hollowed out in the middle. The dull and chipped appearance of the block also suggests great age. A modern addition has been made, or offered, to the hollow within the stone: a single human foot. The shoe around the disarticulated extremity matches the footwear inside the shower cubicle of the crew member’s cabin.
The contents of the third crate have barely been disturbed. In there lie several artefacts that resemble jagged flints, or the surviving blades of old weapons or knives of which the handles are missing. The implements are hand-forged from a stone as black as the basin that has become a receptacle for a human foot.
Pictures of a ship and framed maps have been removed from the widest wall, and upon this wall a marker pen has been used to depict the outlines of two snouted or trumpeting figures that are attached by what appear to be long, entwined tails. The imagery is crude and childlike, but the silhouettes are similar to the embalmed remains laid out upon the tablecloth.
Below the two figures are imprecise sticklike figures that appear to cavort in emulation of the much larger and snouted characters. Set atop some kind of uneven pyramid shape, another group of human figures have been excitedly and messily drawn with spikes protruding from their heads or headdresses. Between the crowned forms another, plainer figure has been held aloft and bleeds from the torso into a waiting receptacle. Detail has been included to indicate that the sacrificed figure’s feet have been removed and its legs bound.
The mess of human leavings that led here departs from the captain’s cabin and rises up a staircase to the deck above and into an unlit canteen.
Light falls into this room from the corridor, and in the half-light two long tables, and one smaller table for the officers, are revealed. Upon the two larger crew tables long reddish shapes lie glistening: some twelve bodies dwindling into darkness as they stretch away from the door. As if they have been unzipped across the front, what was once inside each of the men has now been gathered and piled upon chairs where the same men once sat and ate. Their feet, some bare, some still inside shoes, have been amputated and are set in a messy pile at the head of the two tables.
The far end of the cafeteria is barely touched by the residual light. Presented to no living audience, perversely and inappropriately and yet in a grimly touching fashion, two misshapen shadows flicker and leap upon the dim wall as if in joyous reunion. They wheel about each other, ferociously, but not without grace. They are attached, it seems, by two long, spiny tails.
Back outside and on deck, it can be seen that the ship continues to meander, dazed with desolation and weariness, perhaps punchdrunk from the shock of what has occurred below deck.
The bow momentarily rises up the small hillside of a wave and, just once, almost expectantly, looks towards the distant harbour to which the vessel has slowly drifted all night since changing its course.
On shore, and across the surrounding basin of treeless land, the lights of a small harbour town are white pinpricks, desperate to be counted in this black storm. Here and there, the harbour lights define the uneven silhouettes of small buildings, suggesting stone façades in which glass shimmers to form an unwitting beacon for what exists out here upon these waves.
Oblivious to anything but its own lurching and clanking, the ship rolls on the swell, inexorably drifting on the current that picked up its steel bulk the day before and now slowly propels the hull, though perhaps not as purposelessly as first appeared, towards the shore.
At the prow, having first bound himself tight to the railing with rope, a solitary and unclothed figure nods a bowed head towards the land. The pale flesh of the rotund torso is whipped and occasionally drenched by sea spray, but still bears the ruddy impressions of bestial deeds that were both boisterous and thorough. From navel to sternum, the curious figurehead is blackly open, or has been opened, to the elements. The implement used to carve such crude entrances to the heart is long gone, perhaps dropped from stained and curling fingers into the obsidian whirling and clashing of the monumental ocean far below.
As if to emulate a king, where the scalp has been carved away, a crude series of spikes, fashioned from nails, have been hammered into a pattern resembling a spine or fin across the top of the dead man’s skull. Both of his feet are missing and his legs have been bound with twine into a single, gruesome tail.
Publication History
‘The Angels of London’ originally appeared in Terror Tales of London, edited by Paul Finch (Gray Friar, 2013).
‘Always in Our Hearts’ originally appeared in End of the Road, edited by Jonathan Oliver (Solaris, 2013).
‘Hippocampus’ originally appeared in Terror Tales of the Sea, edited by Paul Finch (Gray Friar, 2015).
More Horror Fiction from Adam L. G. Nevill
Available in print and eBook at major book retailers.
SOME WILL NOT SLEEP
SELECTED HORRORS
A bestial face appears at windows in the night.
In the big white house on the hill angels are said to appear.
A forgotten tenant in an isolated building becomes addicted to milk.
A strange goddess is worshipped by a home-invading disciple.
The least remembered gods still haunt the oldest forests.
Cannibalism occurs in high society at the end of the world.
The sainted undead follow their prophet to the Great Dead Sea.
A confused and vengeful presence occupies the home of a first-time buyer . . .
In ghastly harmony with the nightmarish visions of the award-winning writer’s novels, these stories blend a lifelong appreciation of horror culture with the grotesque fascinations and childlike terrors that are the author’s own. Adam L. G. Nevill’s best early horror stories are collected here for the first time.
Limited edition signed hardback and the Ritual Limited Black Metal Tee are available from www.adamlgnevill.com - ISBN: 978-0-9954630-0-4
Novels
BANQUET FOR THE DAMNED
Few believed Professor Coldwell could commune with spirits. But in Scot-land’s oldest university town something has passed from darkness into light. Now, the young are being haunted by night terrors and those who are visited disappear. This is certainly not a place for outsiders, especially at night. So what chance do a rootless musician and burned-out explorer have of surviv-ing their entanglement with an ageless supernatural evil and the ruthless cult that worships it? A chilling occult thriller from award-winning author Adam Nevill, Banquet for the Damned is both a homage to the great age of British ghost stories and a pacey modern thriller.
APARTMENT 16
Some doors are better left closed . . .
A young American woman, Apryl, arrives at Barrington House. She’s been left an apartment by her mysterious Great Aunt Lillian, who died in strange circumstances. Rumours claim Lillian was mad. But her diary sug-gests she was implicated in a horrific and inexplicable event decades before.
Determined to learn something of this eccentric woman, Apryl begins to unravel the hidden story of Barrington House. She discovers that a transforming force still inhabits the building. And the doorway to Apartment 16 is a gateway to something altogether more terrifying . . .
THE RITUAL
When four old university friends set off into the Scandinavian wilderness of the Arctic Circle, they aim to briefly escape the problems of their lives and reconnect with one another. But when Luke, the only man still single and living a precarious existence, finds he has little left in common with his well-heeled friends, tensions rise. With limited experience between them, a shortcut meant to ease their hike turns into a nightmare scenario that could cost them their lives. Lost, hungry and surrounded by forest untouched for millennia, Luke figures things couldn’t possibly get any worse. But then they stumble across an old habitation. Ancient artefacts decorate the walls and there are bones scattered upon the floors. The residue of old rites and pagan sacrifice for something that still exists in the forest. Something responsible for the bestial presence that follows their every step. And as the four friends stagger in the direction of salvation, they learn that death doesn’t come easy among these ancient trees . . .
Winner of the August Derleth Award for Best Horror Novel and voted Best in Category: Horror by R.U.S.A.
To be released as a major motion picture in October 2017
LAST DAYS
Last Days is a Blair Witch style novel in which a documentary film-maker undertakes the investigation of a dangerous cult―with creepy consequences.
When guerrilla documentary maker Kyle Freeman is asked to shoot a film on the notorious cult known as the Temple of the Last Days, it appears his prayers have been answered. The cult became a worldwide phenomenon in 1975 when there was a massacre including the death of its infamous leader, Sister Katherine. Kyle’s brief is to explore the paranormal myths surrounding an organisation that became a testament to paranoia, murderous rage and occult rituals. The shoot’s locations take him to the cult’s first temple in London, an abandoned farm in France and a derelict copper mine in the Arizonan desert where the Temple of the Last Days met its bloody end. But when he interviews those involved in the case, those who haven’t broken silence in decades, a series of uncanny events plague the shoots. Troubling out-of-body experiences, nocturnal visitations, the sudden demise of their interviewees and the discovery of ghastly artefacts in their room make Kyle question what exactly it is the cult managed to awaken – and what is its interest in him?
Winner of the August Derleth Award for Best Horror Novel and voted Best in Category: Horror by R.U.S.A.
HOUSE OF SMALL SHADOWS
Catherine’s last job ended badly. Corporate bullying at a top TV network saw her fired and forced to leave London, but she was determined to get her life back. A new job and a few therapists later, things look much brighter. Especially when a challenging new project presents itself – to catalogue the late M. H. Mason’s wildly eccentric cache of antique dolls and puppets. Rarest of all, she’ll get to examine his elaborate displays of posed, costumed and preserved animals, depicting bloody scenes from the Great War. Catherine can’t believe her luck when Mason’s elderly niece invites her to stay at Red House itself, where she maintains the collection until his niece exposes her to the dark message behind her uncle’s ‘art’. Catherine tries to concentrate on the job, but Mason’s damaged visions begin to raise dark shadows from her own past. Shadows she’d hoped therapy had finally erased. Soon the barriers between reality, sanity and memory start to merge and some truths seem too terrible to be real . . .
NO ONE GETS OUT ALIVE
Darkness lives within . . .
Cash-strapped, working for agencies and living in shared accommodation, Stephanie Booth feels she can fall no further. So when she takes a new room at the right price, she believes her luck has finally turned. But 82 Edgware Road is not what it appears to be.
It’s not only the eerie atmosphere of the vast, neglected house, or the disturbing attitude of her new landlord, Knacker McGuire, that makes her un-easy – it’s the whispers behind the fireplace, the scratching beneath floors, the footsteps in the dark and the young women weeping in neighbouring rooms. And when Knacker’s cousin Fergal arrives, the danger goes vertical. It’s clear that something very bad has happened in this house. And something even worse is happening now. Stephanie has to find a way out, before whatever’s going on in the house finds her first.
Winner of the August Derleth Award for Best Horror Novel.
LOST GIRL
It’s 2053 and climate change has left billions homeless and starving – easy prey for the pandemics that sweep across the globe, scything through the refugee populations. Easy prey, too, for the violent gangs and people-smugglers who thrive in the crumbling world where ‘King Death’ reigns supreme.
The father’s world went to hell two years ago. His four-year-old daughter was snatched from his garden when he should have been watching. The moments before her disappearance play in a perpetual loop in his mind. But the police aren’t interested; amidst floods, hurricanes and global chaos, who cares about one more missing child? Now it’s all down to him to find her . . .
UNDER A WATCHFUL EYE
Seb Logan is being watched. He just doesn’t know by whom.
When the sudden appearance of a dark figure shatters his idyllic coastal life, he soon realizes that the murky past he thought he’d left behind has far from forgotten him. What’s more unsettling is the strange atmosphere that engulfs him at every sighting, plunging his mind into a terrifying paranoia.
To be a victim without knowing the tormentor. To be despised without knowing the offence caused. To be seen by what nobody else can see. These are the thoughts which plague his every waking moment.
Imprisoned by despair, Seb fears his stalker is not working alone, but rather is involved in a wider conspiracy that threatens everything he has worked for. For there are doors in this world that open into unknown places with their own rules. Places used by the worse kind of people to achieve their own ends. And once his investigation leads him to stray across the line and into mortal danger he risks becoming another fatality in a long line of victims . . .
Author Biography
Adam L.G. Nevill was born in Birmingham, England, in 1969 and grew up in England and New Zealand. He is the author of the horror novels Banquet for the Damned, Apartment 16, The Ritual, Last Days, House of Small Shadows, No One Gets Out Alive, Lost Girl, and Under a Watchful Eye. He has two collections of short stories: Some Will Not Sleep and Hasty for the Dark.
His novels, The Ritual, Last Days and No One Gets Out Alive were the winners of The August Derleth Award for Best Horror Novel. The Ritual and Last Days were also awarded Best in Category: Horror, by R.U.S.A. Several of his novels are currently in development for film and television, and in 2016 Imaginarium adapted The Ritual into a feature film.
Adam lives in Devon, England. More information about the author and his books is available at: www.adamlgnevill.com
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