Banquet for the Damned

by Adam L. G. Nevill

  'To leave your dirty dishes for someone else to clean is . . . is . . . It's immoral. It suggests a sense of superiority. You are deliberately coercing someone else to clean up your mess. Someone you consider inferior,' Jason mutters to himself as he walks. His head is down between his shoulders, and his eyes look no further than the pieces of smeared, broken and unwashed evidence revolving through his mind. It's an obsession; a neurosis. It has taken over his life. How many hours have been wasted in one year with these constant speculations about Rick and the true extent of his inconsideration? It eats into everything: his relationship with Julie, his thesis, his sleep. Everything has suffered. He hates going home.

  Jason turns into the Strathkinness High Road and swallows. The countdown to confrontation has begun. Between the small trees and occasional car, the wide sprawl of grey barrack-like flats becomes visible: Fife Park.

  Jason jumps over the tiny perimeter wall and then takes a shortcut across the grass to the flats. The entire settlement looks deserted. Besides himself, Rick, and half a dozen postgrads locked in over the summer, Fife Park emptied back in May. Even the warden has gone on holiday – which is particularly trying because Rick has yanked the door off the oven and broken the seal on the fridge. Life in the flat resembles camping; he's been eating off camping equipment, and his diet has been restricted to freeze-dried foodstuffs and food in tins – all stashed away in his room so Rick cannot pillage the stocks.

  He has to confront him tonight. The walk has sobered him slightly, but if he does not pursue the issue now then the prevailing sense of injustice, and the sheer loathing he has developed for this individual, will haunt him for the rest of his life. This demon must be exorcised.

  Jason stops walking when he hears a scream. It seems to shoot like a bullet from a building near the carpark, and then ricochets off every window and grey wall in the little lanes that run between the flats. The scream starts off somewhere near a second soprano and rises higher, as if the vocal chords responsible are being stretched taut. Taking his hands out of his pockets, he tries to determine from where the sound has originated. It's hard to tell; the echo obscures it.

  Hesitantly, he walks down a path between two aisles of the small triangular-roofed buildings to where his flat is perched, on the end of a row, before the carpark and rubbish skips.

  Did anybody else hear the scream? Is anybody else in Fife Park tonight? He is apprehensive and a little annoyed; the scream has interfered with the concentration of his thoughts and anger – it has taken a lot of beer to prepare for this final showdown.

  Jason crosses the square front lawn before his front door, and peers through the grimy kitchen windows next to it. Television is switched off. No one in. He steps over the rusty bicycle, left chained to a bush by a previous tenant, and hops over three stuffed bin bags outside the front door. He tries the door handle. It's unlocked, so Rick may have come home – although he does have a habit of going out and leaving the front door unlocked.

  Jason walks into the reception. The lights are out in the hall and on the staircase. The familiar smells of damp old newspaper, and the blocked sink in the kitchen, engulf him. He flicks the light on and notices that the coat pegs, just inside the door, are empty. A scruffy denim jacket with a wool lining is usually a sure sign that the wastrel is in. Rick must still be out then, and he has left the door unlocked.

  'Bastard,' Jason says, and wonders whether he should go back outside, while it's still light, and investigate the scream. He supposes he should; it might be a girl in trouble. If it proves to be a false alarm, he can then return to the kitchen and start loading up a bag with dirty dishes, destined for Rick's bed.

  But just as he's about to leave the flat, Jason hears something else, a dull thumping sound. He hears it coming through the ceiling. He strains his ears and looks up in the hall. The ceiling is stained with brown rings. But there is no sound now. He purses his lips. The walls are thin; sometimes you can hear the neighbours' every footfall. But the flat next door is vacant; the tenants left months ago, and the sound definitely originated from upstairs in his flat. He remembers locking his bedroom door earlier, and the other two rooms on his floor are empty. Rick's room is downstairs; if Rick is home then he has no right being up on the first floor. Maybe it's an intruder. Standing absolutely still, he waits downstairs, and listens to the ticking sound that comes out of the hall light.

  There it is again: a muffled suggestion of something being moved across the floor upstairs. It could be a bed or something. But who would want to steal Fife Park furniture? Jason tries to quell his anxiety. He takes a deep breath and ascends the stairs. Has that bastard Rick broken into his room looking for food or tobacco?

  The sounds continue sporadically, issuing through the wall opposite the tiled staircase he climbs. Jason reaches the first-floor landing, stands outside the stinking toilet, and looks across to the heavy wooden fire door. He visualises the plain walls of the corridor and the three bedrooms beyond the door – two empty, the third his own. The muted sounds seem to be emanating from the end room, where Ivan used to live, beside the attic space. Dare he go through the fire door?

  Suddenly Jason has a new theory, and he exhales with relief; it must be Rick in the loft, amongst all of those boxes. Maybe he's packing, planning to go home. Feeling calmer, he's suddenly annoyed with himself for being so jumpy. He opens the fire door and enters the upstairs hallway, which is dark.

  Jason feels his body stiffen again. Surely Rick would have turned the hall light on in order to pack and then carry out the boxes from the loft? He flicks the light on and waits for it to sputter into life. 'Rick!' he shouts at the attic door.

  The thumping sounds stop.

  'Rick! What the fuck are you doing in there?' he shouts, trying to incite confidence by raising his voice.

  No answer. Just a faint shuffling sound.

  'Shit,' Jason mutters, and looks behind him at the fire door.

  Deciding against flight, he then rushes along the hall and fumbles with his keys, before he finds the right one and unlocks his own door. He sneaks into his room and looks about for the cricket bat. He'll need a weapon.

  Jason returns to the hall with his Duncan Fearnley, size six, clutched between rigid fingers. He remembers the light switch in the attic is just inside the door. He'll fling the door open, knock the light on, and confront the thief. He holds the door handle. He pauses for a moment. He yanks it open.

  Pitch black in there: just a hint of sloping roof timber and a new smell, mingling with the dust and woody-loft tang. Something smells raw, and above it, hanging in the warm roofy air, Jason can smell something rotten. He slaps a hand around for the light switch, and picks up splinters in his palm from a wooden beam. His fingers scrape against brickwork and then find the small plastic square of the light fitting. He flicks the light switch down.

  Among the breeze blocks and insulating foam and before the padded water tank, Jason sees his roommate. Or, at least, the remains of him. The hand closest to Jason's foot is waxy and pale. The fingers are bent in toward the palm. There is a foot too, still inside a wet boot, and the dark bulk of a torso near it, stripped of shirt and wiped red.

  The room seems to spin. Then his vision telescopes. The ceiling rushes at him and then falls away; the walls lift upward and then judder back down. In the half-focus of his shock, he sees the head: eyelids closed, mouth shut, the back of the skull moist.

  Empty cardboard boxes, stacked neatly in the far corner of the attic, suddenly tumble forward and bounce over wretched Rick, making some of the separated bits twitch. The beating of Jason's heart pauses. And what comes through the scattered boxes and over his streaky flatmate threatens to shut his mind down, forever.

  Instinct only allows him to pause in the attic for a second, but that is long enough for Jason to see something feeding. Its teeth are obscured by what looks like a pale fragment of cloth, flapping like a rag in a dog's mouth, but the eyes, yellow above wet bone, brand themselves into his soul. He fal
ls backward through the attic doorway.

  How he makes it down the hall to his room will remain a blur in his memory, but somehow he manages to turn from the makeshift abattoir and crawl back to his haven. He vomits beer and chips through his nose and mouth, and it splashes across his legs. Once inside his room, he collapses against the door and locks it from the inside.

  Then the shaking begins – in his legs, under his ribs, and along his jaw. Unable to feel his feet, he stumbles across his room and prepares to drop from the window. It is a miracle he screams but once, and only when something begins to paw at the outside of his bedroom door.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Hart arrives at Fife Park on foot – puffing and sweating after the walk from town. A solitary police car passes him as it leaves the main drive to join the Strathkinness High Road. Through the windscreen he notices the two young officers staring at him. 'Who is that crazy guy with the beard?' Hart whispers, and indulges himself with a chuckle.

  He enters the shabby residential development and wanders through the cluster of buildings, looking for numbers on the peeling doors of the flats. He presumes they are arranged sequentially, and looks for 37, where Rick lives. The student did not show for his ten o'clock interview, but had seemed pretty keen to meet with Hart when he phoned the day before. Unwilling to delay any longer in contacting the young man, Hart set out for Fife Park just after ten, a little angry with himself for not insisting on seeing Rick right away. Not only should he have a third interview recorded – more ammunition for his case – but after the vanishing of Mike Bowen and Maria, nothing can now be left to chance. If something has happened to the kid he'll never forgive himself. He makes another quick resolution to lay off the booze and chides himself further, when he remembers the two glasses of whisky he needed to just get started that morning. 'Who am I, Aerosmith?' he says to himself with a scowl.

  If he cannot persuade the students who called him to leave St Andrews, the least he can do is keep an eye on them. It is too early to go to the college authorities. He needs more proof on tape: frightened voices, unusual narratives of disordered sleep, similar dream experiences, a connection, a case.

  Despite the blue of the late-summer sky, Fife Park has a grim feel to it. Neatly cut grass on every lawn, and the swept concrete slabs of the paths, only serve to make it look like an institution. A boot camp or low-security prison. The linked flats could be empty birdhouses with their pointed roofs and drab grey sidings, or a temporary mockup of a town designed for nuclear testing. He's seen similar in Nevada.

  Spotting the warden's hut, he ambles up a path to the front door. A CLOSED sign has been hung behind the wire-strengthened glass, but he knocks anyway. There is no answer, but he hears the sound of a car door slam on the other side of the warden's hut. He makes his way toward the noise. In the carpark that opens out before him, he sees a young blond man hastily packing an ageing Volkswagen Golf. 'Hey now,' Hart says, smiling.

  The man pauses – the muscles in his arms strain around a television set. He stares at Hart for a moment and then looks away, continuing in his attempts to squash the TV set down and amongst the softer bags he has crammed into the boot of the car. If they ain't laughing at my beard, they're ignoring me. 'Forget to pay the rent?'

  Hart says.

  'What?' the student asks. His face is red from the battle with the television set; a rivulet of sweat trickles from his temple and through his sideburns, making them dark and shiny wet.

  'Nothing. It's just you being in a real hurry an' all.' The young man carries on with his packing. 'I'm looking for number 37.'

  Immediately, the young man stops forcing the television into the car, which has begun to rock from side to side from his efforts. He turns to face Hart. 'Do I know you?'

  'No. But I need to find number 37, because one of the guys who lives there didn't show up for an interview this morning. That's all.

  Don't fret. I'm no cop. With hair like this I wouldn't even make undercover.' The man's young face never moves. 'Can you tell me where number 37 is?' Hart insists, speaking slowly.

  The student appears to be in a daze. Hart walks away, shaking his head, when the young man finally speaks. 'I live in 37.'

  Turning around, Hart's brows rise above his glasses. 'You do?

  That's great. Don't look so worried. I ain't no bailiff, brother. Your TV set is safe.'

  'Who do you want?' the student asks, ignoring another attempt at humour.

  'Rick . . .' Hart flicks open the top pocket of his denim jacket to find the surname on his notepad, but the man's reaction to the mention of Rick stops his fumbling. He slams the hatchback door shut and then slumps against his car, with both of his feet stuck out as if to prevent himself from sliding down to the tarmac. He covers his face with his hands and rubs his eyes. 'You all right?' Hart asks.

  Nodding, the student pulls his dirty fingers down his face, slowly.

  'You Rick?' Hart presses.

  'No.'

  'Do you know where I can find him?'

  'You don't. Nobody does.'

  'Mind telling me why?'

  'Are you a tutor?' the student asks, now staring at Hart with an intensity that makes him feel uncomfortable.

  'No. I'm an anthropologist. Just visiting. And Rick was going to help me with my book.'

  Shaking his head, the young man begins to grin, and then laugh as if he has nothing to laugh at but the hopelessness of everything. 'Rick was an anthropological curiosity all right. What's the book about, autistics, or socially dysfunctional rich kids?'

  'Things that go bump in the night, actually,' Hart replies with a smile, trying to relax the kid. But the smile shrinks from his hairy cheeks when the student's face blanches. 'I think you better tell me what's going down at 37,' Hart says.

  The man nods a reluctant assent. He motions for Hart to follow him.

  * * *

  'Rick's dead,' the student, who nervously introduced himself as Jason, tells Hart once they are seated in the scrubbed and meticulously clean kitchen.

  Hart puts his cup of coffee back on the table. 'Dead?'

  Jason nods. 'I saw him last night. What was left of him in the loft space. I called the police early this morning.'

  'Why not last night?'

  Jason raises his frightened eyes. 'After what I saw upstairs, there was no way on this earth that I was leaving my room until daylight. And I had to be sure it had gone. It was outside my room. After it killed Rick. So then I was going to jump from the window, but I heard it go down the stairs. Then it would have been outside the flat, so I stayed put, in my room until first light.' The way Jason, in all sincerity, is referring to this other party, shrivels Hart's balls. 'I called the police this morning from the phone by the common room, and they came right away. But it was all gone from the attic where I saw him. There was nothing there. I don't know how. There must have been stains.' Jason swallows. He seems to be on the verge of tears. 'Then they opened Rick's room and found some acid in one of his drawers and accused me of wasting their time. They were really on edge. Nearly bloody arrested me. They asked me loads of questions. I think they put me down as some kind of idiot suffering from hallucinations. Then they just sat in their car, for ages, and watched me pack. They said it was the second prank call they had received in a week.'

  Hart leans forward. 'The second?'

  'Yeah. Some golfer was found in shock on the beach and claimed to have seen something down there. He'd had a heart attack and a stroke, but the fuzz didn't find a thing. They reckon people are freaking out because of that body part they found washed ashore.'

  'Jesus,' Hart whispers. He slumps into his plastic chair.

  'And now they reckon that everybody is claiming to have seen a body. But I did. I know I did. I don't take drugs. I know what I saw and it made me puke.'

  'You saw Rick?

  Jason nods.

  'This was last night?'