Banquet for the Damned

by Adam L. G. Nevill

  To escape the voice, and the sight of crawling Beth, Dante falls against and then through the first door he can find amidst the smoke of the landing, hauling Hart's smoking bulk on top of him. And there, on the rough carpet in the darkness, he rolls his friend around the floor, only stopping to swat at the last few flames that rear up from his jeans, burning the hair and skin off one shin bone. From his hand, the blood continues to pour, but at a faster rate now the gash has widened. Choking for air, his breath wheezing horribly as if he's been gassed, Hart struggles to his hands and knees. Dante runs to the door and slams it fast on the slowly moving thing that crawls after them, looking for a sanctuary from the smoke. Her hands scrape pitifully against the door. In between the sobs passing through a body traumatised by agony, from which it seems evil has at last been driven, he can hear her trying to speak. Dante tears his scarf away from his mouth and retches down his shirt, the terror of suffocation greater than it has ever been.

  'God, we did that to a girl,' Hart says, when he finds his voice. 'Jesus, Dante. We did that to a girl.'

  Dante can only look about himself, bewildered, his head feeling like the aftermath of an explosion, dazed and strangely vacant and unable to pull all of the bits together to form a reaction, a word, an emotion. And perhaps it is better that his mind remains fractured and that he never comprehends the full horror of what lies smouldering and whimpering on the landing beyond the door, because the night has still not found its end.

  Despite the roaring pyre in the foundations of the house, and the swaying light it reflects up the stairs and through the thin curtains of the room in which their seared and hot lungs splutter and taste winter fire, its smoke thick from damp kindling, each man feels a darkness descend over the cottage and then creep through the very air. The night comes alive again, but not with the wind or the babble of voices from unseen mouths. It comes alive with the presence of a god.

  Below in the house, something cracks and then falls, and seems to go on falling for a long time. Smoke pours under the door of their room. Beth has fallen silent; the scratching sounds have ceased. 'We got to get out,' Hart says from where he crouches on the floor in the murk of smoke and no light. Dante runs from the door, aware of the thinning of their air, alert to the only means of escape. He moves to the solitary window frame, where a band of silvery light parts the curtains. He yanks them off the rail and, without looking out, immediately steps back from the window as if he is afraid of being seen. In the traces of light from the moon and stars, he can see the smoke pooling in the top half of the room. Soon it will fill every space and then pour from the window. Their eyes smart and water. All over their patched and sore skin is a film of soot and grease and sweat.

  On the floor before him, he can see the shape of Hart's head in the thin, cloudy light; it has a misshapen outline from where the fire has burned into his hair. His glasses glint for a moment and then the head bows. 'We got to get out, Dante. I need help. Too much smoke.' His voice is dry and hoarse.

  But how can he tell Hart about what is waiting for them down there?

  A woman screams from outside the cottage. The sound splits their ears. The shriek rockets skyward and then suddenly stops. They look at each other with blackened faces. 'It's down there,' Dante says, quietly. Hart remains perfectly still. Dante looks through the window at the front of the property. 'It's here, Hart,' he says in a whisper, and then looks away, but what he sees remains deeply imprinted in his thoughts.

  One of the witches who escaped from the cellar did finally manage to break open the front door of the cottage, bathing the front lawn and garden path with orange light, around which thick shadows now spring forward and then retreat to the rhythm of the flames beating inside the cottage. In the movement of light outside, Dante has caught a glimpse of what became of her, down in the long grass. Her pale body lies still now, and it is mostly dark where her head once was.

  And something impossibly tall but wasted has now risen onto its hind legs on the grass, in the middle of the garden, to sway about as if bemused by the fire in the place it came out of and returned to when called. It lopes about the grass, an appalling thing in rags, its long shadow cast across the road and into the fields. It seems to know no allegiance now to those who summoned it forth and directed its activities with their ceremony and trance. One lies dead, and the second witch, partially burned, crawls through the front door and, despite the smash of things downstairs and the collapse of wood turning to charcoal, Dante can hear her coughing and pleading with it for mercy.

  Hart can too. 'I can't look, Dante. I can't see it. Not yet.' Dante stays quiet. Unable to stop himself from looking again, his eyes fix on the grim events occurring on the lawn. And what he sees makes the skin shrink all over his head, even under his hair, and something goes pop and then sizzles in his ears. 'God,' he says, when the thing rushes for her as she tries to crawl away, slow in the long grass, her naked body stiff with the pain from so many burns. It swats at her. There is a 'thocking' sound and her body leaves the earth only to land soundlessly over twenty feet away. She lies on her back, not moving, only moaning. Her eyes are still open and she watches the dark thing traverse the ground to her. Spare in limb but graceful in motion, it covers her up and becomes immediately active.

  Dante turns away and leans against the wall. His body, curiously, feels weightless. Her cries out there are faint and brief, stifled perhaps by the breaking and cutting of her parts as it goes about her like a big crow on bread cast out on a lawn. Dante looks at Hart, somehow shutting out the sounds of its business down there. Hart has covered his mouth with the stretched neck of his jumper and has begun to cough again, with a muffled sound, as if he is coughing to himself in the way people talk to themselves. 'It's time, Hart. We can't stay in the smoke any longer.' Hart nods. He never even looks at Dante, or speaks, perhaps understanding but made silent by what he has not seen but can hear down on the lawn. 'It doesn't care now, Hart. Without Beth, it's gone wild.'

  Hart stands up, delicately balanced on his feet like an invalid rising from a wheelchair. Without looking out at what they will have to face, they briefly put their arms around each other's shoulders, and then move apart. Dante pulls at the window, and it squeals upward through the runners in the frame, until there is a gap wide enough for them to jump through. He hasn't realised how much smoke is in the room until it begins to drift under the raised window and into the cold air, where it disperses. Dante raises a leg to swing over the sill, when Hart puts a firm hand on his chest. 'I've taken in too much smoke,' he says, his voice hoarse and whispery. 'I won't get far. Let me go first. When you hit the ground, run.'

  Dante shakes his head, feeling cold all over and sick inside that it has come to this, that there is no mercy or justice in the world, no well-earned escape. But before he can react, Hart drops both of his hands to the sill, swings a leg through the window, and then lazily rolls his body out. There is a hand on the ledge, the gingery hairs singed down to stubs, and then it vanishes, dropping away with the rest of him.

  With the axe, crowbar and torches lost somewhere below in the burning house, Dante follows unarmed, taking in another mouthful of smoke through the scarf, which stings his gums. Feet first, his eyes streaming with tears, he falls for a long time before his boots hit the earth. Immediately he rolls sideways to break his fall.

  When he opens his eyes, his ears alert to every sound, the world is a blur. He wipes at his eyes, and the glowing garden comes into partial focus, its edges and lines still hazy from his tears. 'Hart!' he cries out, and then, coughing, struggles to his hands and knees. He feels the grass cold in his palms, until the shooting pain of a thousand pins in his feet consumes him. He falls to his elbows. 'Hart!' he shouts again, staying still because the agony in him will not let him move. There is no answer.

  'Jesus, no,' he says, suddenly aware of something crawling so fast in front of him that no man could outrun it, even with it so close to the ground like that. Straight across the indistinct and glowering gras
ses it goes, moving spidery and bare-boned on the soft ground, with something hanging from its jaws. 'You bastard,' Dante cries out, getting to his feet, more grief than anger in his words. 'You son of a bitch.' He takes two steps toward where it now pauses and trembles on the garden path, the vague impression of sockets and forehead turned to him. It rises. In the flapping of its surround, the shanks tense.

  There is an explosion from within the house. A wave of heat hits Dante's back and pushes him tumbling forward. Fire snaps from the upstairs windows. At the back of the cottage a window shatters. Orange sparks fall through the obsidian air and are doused in the long grass by his boots. The Brown Man retreats from the glare and the heat.

  But only for a moment. When the fire ebbs behind Dante, and the shadows in the garden lengthen once again, and the lash of the flames pauses, it moves forward, discarding the reddish bits that swing from its wet mouth. For the third time in his recent life, the Brown Man comes to claim Dante, and very quickly too. And it could be either a leg or an arm wrapped in winding that moves first with a feline tread, but then more of these steps follow, as if it is an animal that walks on four legs, until, suddenly, it is close enough for him to smell it. He flinches away with one hand held out, as if to fend it off.

  The sweep of brown rags, with the black and yellow ivory in it, and a pocked forehead emerging, turns the world to wind. Everything slows down in those final moments and Dante thinks, this is me dying. It rears up before him, making him feel so light and so small, and then it falls at him. An arm swings fast, with longish finger-things cupped, quicker than a boom across the deck of a racing yacht, to smash him like a box of eggs. There is a clack of bone; air is punched from his body; the sight in his eyes remains in the place his body departs. Sky, earth, sky, earth, rolling around him in an upside-down world; and then a scream louder than amplified feedback pops his hearing and leaves a whine behind in his head. Everything goes black.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  It is a hand on his shoulder that shakes him awake. Gently at first, but then the touch becomes vigorous. Although the impression of the fingers cupping his arm, and the softness of the palm of the hand, register in his concussed mind, he wants to stay in the warm and reddish peace that pulls like a deep sleep. But a sharp pain makes him recover – a severe stab of heat through his ribs on the left side, making his body suddenly feel as fragile as the thinnest glass. He takes a series of hurried but shallow breaths and opens his eyes. At first he thinks he is blind, but realises the dark and the damp all about is only flattened grass where he lies face-down in the turf.

  Then he remembers how he came to be here. He gasps. Grass slips into his mouth. And all about him is the glow of heat from a big fire, keeping him warm and strangely comfortable on the ground. Flames rush upward and whoop through the cottage, close to him. The sound is loud and angry, and he smells smoke. It makes him cough, which hurts his ribs even more. The hand shakes him again. 'Dante, Dante, Dante,' someone says. Urgently spoken, with an American accent, the tone of voice makes it immediately clear to him that he is not out of danger. 'Dante, Dante, you're breathing. You gotta wake up.' It is Hart, and he is wheezing as he speaks. He sounds asthmatic.

  Wanting to cry out with elation that his friend is still alive, but too scared to move quickly in case his entire body erupts in agony, Dante moves his head very slowly. His face drags through the damp grass. His head feels heavy, and he moans because his whole neck hurts too. Imagining his body is contorted, for a few seconds he is unable to feel his legs and is sure his feet are somewhere up above his head. Pulling his fingers into the palms of his hands makes him aware of where his arms are, and the sense of where the rest of his body is quickly follows. Carefully, he rolls onto his right side.

  Hart smiles, his small face reddish in the firelight. Half of his beard has been trimmed away by flames, and the frames of his glasses look orange, as if they are molten. It is only the reflection of light, he realises. But then Hart turns his face, quickly, and looks away from the house, at the front garden.

  Dante hears another voice too. It is raised and desperate and the words are slurred. What little he can hear shocks him. He recognises the voice.

  'Eliot,' Dante says, and tries to shuffle around to look in the same direction as Hart. He groans, and has to close his eyes for a moment. Ribs again. Other parts of him fill with sensation too. One of his hands is numb save for a throb. A shinbone smarts and makes him think of cold water. And he has a severe headache. It starts behind the skin of his entire face, like a thin layer of gum pain, and then stretches to the back of his skull, where there is a pain so great he has to squint to see straight.

  The wizened shape of a man is moving around the lawn. He staggers in circles and almost falls. His clothes are dark. The creased trousers and grey overcoat look as if they are wet with something. 'He showed up,' Hart whispers, his voice tense. 'After it knocked you across the yard. I reckon he followed us out here.'

  'Where is it?' Dante says quickly, but sees it before Hart says, 'Over there,' nodding toward the far corner of the paddock garden. 'What's happening?' he mutters, with one eye closed on the pain.

  Hart coughs into the back of his hand. 'Eliot just came through the gate after we dropped out the window. He called it off you. It moved when he called it. Look, it's confused. It's not that smart, Dante. It's like an animal. Like a child even.'

  Dante can see no more of it than what appears as a large shadow as it moves against the front wall of the garden. It is as if it can blend into the dark and become invisible when it chooses, and it seems anxious to be away from the house now. Not so quick or savage anymore, it appears to be baffled.

  Tensing the muscles in his thighs and mercifully feeling no pain in his legs, Dante moves them behind his body and sits up, supported by his right arm. Every rib down his left side feels as if it is broken and poking into his organs. He thinks of a sausage on a wooden toothpick and moans.

  'You can't stay here,' Eliot roars. In one hand he holds a bottle. Bowing his head to cough after his outburst, he looks exhausted, like a man all bent up and breathless after running a marathon. The shadow watches Eliot, but draws closer to him. It seems as if Eliot is unaware of its crafty swaying, which gradually moves it along the wall toward him. 'She's gone now. There's no one to speak to you. You're lost. She's gone back . . . ' Eliot's voice becomes gruff, and there is a loud crackle inside the cottage. Dante strains his ears, trying to catch Eliot's words, but he can only hear fragments. 'I'm the last,' Eliot shouts, and then laughs like a hysteric. 'I couldn't do it with a belt, but I'll go in there.' Eliot jabs a hand at the house.

  And then everything seems to speed up around Hart and Dante. Eliot dips his head and, with a burst of concentration, which they can see on his face when he passes them, he runs at a speed neither thinks him still capable of, straight at the burning wreck of the cottage. Recoiling in horror and shock, Hart says, 'Jesus, no.' Dante stays quiet.

  It is as if his own shadow chases him when the thing by the wall leaps up and then pursues Eliot through the grass. But he must have soaked himself in something flammable. At the point where he is still three feet from the front door – from which a plume of black smoke funnels out, lit with orange sparks – he stops to allow his clothes to catch alight. Then, suddenly, his head is masked with a yellow and blue fire that runs up his face and streams from the back of his scalp. Headfirst, he launches himself across the threshold of the burning doorway, without even putting out his hands to break the fall. And when he falls inside, Dante and Hart hear nothing, as if he's landed on something soft.

  The shadow scuttles in after him. It never slows down, until it too vanishes inside the great oven of stone and cinders. And before Hart and Dante can comprehend what they have seen, the brown thing runs back out of the burning cottage, dragging a limp shape behind it. Chased by flames and smoking white inside its folds and wraps, it moves at an incredible speed across the grass and then up and over the garden wall, until it is gon
e from sight. They hear nothing more and, with a sense of relief that in itself exhausts each of them, they see no more of it either, nor the blackened and twitching thing it carries, held by a foot.

  Still too scared to move in case his spine is injured, Dante lies on the grass and looks at Hart, who sits cross-legged beside him, wiping at his mouth and wheezing. Neither speaks for a long time. Part of them expects a return of the horror, for the night never to end until their hearts cease to beat. In the unreality of the night, in the intensity of its every second, they just stay huddled together, beside the burning cottage. Plumes of black smoke pour from the windows of the upper storey, and in the roof black timbers can now be seen peeking through the smoking tiles that cling to and then occasionally drop from them. From inside the building crackles, snaps and gusts of fire can be heard, and now the trees on the boundary of the property, closest to the house, are beginning to smoulder also. It is the sight of burning hedgerow that makes Hart speak. Wincing, the grease and soot stretching wide across his small mouth and incomplete beard, he says, 'It's gone now. We should move.'