Adam Nevill - Banquet for the Damned

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.'

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.

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.'