Adam Nevill - Banquet for the Damned

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.

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 gone 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.