Adam Nevill - Banquet for the Damned

There is more movement in the remnants of the hallowed walls — a flit from shadow to shadow. Something is leap-frogging over the smooth stones and then darting left and right as it draws closer. Once more her instincts beg her to flee, but she realises she'll have to cover the thin gravel path, one hundred feet long, to reach the gate and the safety it promises. And it's so far away and she's never been good at running. Sobs rear up inside her and tears smudge her vision.

Don't panic. Don't panic. Don't panic. Run!

Pointed stones stab into the soft palms of her feet, so she screws her toes up and runs awkwardly on the balls of her heels, moving her arms in flutters to sustain a balance. She tries to keep her vision steady and focused on the gate, on sanctuary, but something pulls her eyes to the side — the left side, where the remains of the cathedral glower and seem to raise their last standing stones like arms above wailing faces. Something is keeping pace with her, crouched over but moving as if it glides. Every step she takes brings it closer in an effortless streak to the apex of an invisible triangle where their paths will meet. But she tries, she really tries to reach the gate despite the cuts on her feet. An attempt at escape is better than facing it back amongst the stones and shadows.

Screaming, Maria flings an arm out when it comes for her. It sweeps forward like a black sheet blown by the wind, across the jumble of stone and the milky patches of grass. And it comes so fast. She tries to pull her body into a tight defensive ball, and she wants her eyes to remain shut, but, at the last moment, as it moves into its embrace, she can't help looking and she finally sees the hungry thing's face.

'Shit!'

'Jesus, did you hear that?' Dante shouts, sitting bolt upright in the chair that has cuddled him into a stupor.

Tom is already on his feet, eyes wide. 'That was a scream. God, that freaked me.'

'Was it real or someone mucking about?'

At the banality of his friend's question, Tom raises both eyebrows. The awful wail, resounding with distress and terror, could not have been the result of play-acting.

'We should go and look outside.'

'Yeah, right,' Tom answers.

'Where did it come from?'

'Over there,' he says, pointing over Dante's shoulder toward the wall separating them from the neighbour's house.

'What's over there?'

'The coastal path, that runs between the cliffs and the cathedral.'

They look at each other for a long time, both minds locked in persuasive theories concerning foxes, rare Scottish nocturnal birds, and the habits of drunken students. An image of a severed arm drifts into both minds. No one would want to go toward the cathedral or pier after hearing that noise, not on their second day in town, and not after such a trying one.

Slowly, Dante and Tom reclaim their seats.

The golf ball lands on the road between the Links and the West Sands, bounces twice, and then disappears without a sound into the dunes. Colin McAllister raises his face to the early-morning sky and shouts, 'Jesus wept!

Walking slowly in the direction of the vanished ball, he bites down on the rage threatening to break from him, a rage capable of destroying his expensive equipment. At first light, he ventured onto the Old Course alone to practise through nine holes: nine holes he should have mastered long ago. But today, like too many others lately, just as he is about to swing, a single thought will jostle into his mind and distract him. The feeling and not thinking technique collapses and the resulting strokes send ball after ball shooting off at infuriating curves to fall at random destinations. A miserable chain of inept shots has already ruined the morning.

And it started as such a fine day too: the sky already blue, winter kept waiting, the neatly shorn grass with its sweet smell, thick and bouncy beneath his shoes, and bird song. A quick round of golf, a good breakfast at the club, and then a morning paper: that was the plan.

With his shoulders hunched and his stare locked on the dunes bordering the beach, Colin makes his way across the narrow strip of tarmac dividing the Old Course from the sea. Between his gloved fingers, a golf club hangs limp and trails behind his body like an unwanted toy. As he crosses the road, the spikes of his shoes grate on the stones, and when he climbs over a wooden stile to gain access to the beach, not only do his checked trousers flap irritatingly around his thin ankles, but he becomes conscious of the label in his red pullover scratching at his neck. It will be one of those special days reserved for the retired — a conspiracy of petty trifles and constant pains in the joints, reducing optimism to ashes. There are too many days like this.

'Relax,' the doctor said during his last blood-pressure check-up at the Memorial Hospital. 'Get some exercise and fresh air. Take up a sport, but nothing too strenuous'. He remembers looking forward to his retirement for over twenty years. But taking up golf is emotionally and financially the single biggest mistake he has made since leaving the company.

Hacking at the long grass in the dunes with his custom-made iron, he begins the search for the ball. The club should have been covered and put back with the others — its material value exceeds even that of his new 'wood' — but it has let him down, failing to live up to its graphite-and-alloy promise. Churlishly, he believes this alternative use of the club as a strimmer will register as punishment inside its gleaming but treacherous shaft.

When his arm begins to twinge, he stops the flailing and lowers his head. When he opens his eyes, the uneven and spiky grasses swim beneath his feet. Pain runs from his left shoulder to his elbow and something tightens inside his chest — something he cannot rub better. Prickles spread across his scalp, killing the warmth beneath his hat. Brief recollections of his first heart attack dry his mouth and his thoughts slide toward panic. He doesn't want to be suffocated by agony and fear again, to lose his dignity by groping around on all fours trying to find the breath for a scream, when his mouth becomes nothing more than a silent, sucking hole.

Concentrating on the white toes of his new golf shoes, he tries to calm down, and pats his trouser pocket for the reassuring rattle of the bottle of angina pills. Slowly, the pain dims from his arms and the steel band relaxes its tourniquet from around the hard pipes of his heart. In silence, he makes a solemn oath to see the doctor in the afternoon.

He feels the sweat dry between his shoulders and under his hat. Cold now, he begins to wander around in hesitant circles, breathing through his nose. The movement helps and warmth returns to his skin as his heart kick-starts his circulation back into motion. In his mind, he sees his heart as a small lump of gristle, its stiff valves barely able to open so the thin blood can pass through and sustain the rest of his meagre frame. 'Damn you', he says to the failing organ, allowing a spurt of relief to reactivate his determination to find the ball. No, a golf ball won't kill him. The brief spasm has passed. Just got too excited, that was all — something to be avoided at all costs, the doctor said. But the golf ball will be found. It means nothing as a physical entity, but he will seek it on the principle that trifles cannot be allowed to undermine a man. Some sense of order has to be maintained or you may as well be dead. The ball is there to entertain and relax him, not to defy him. It must know its place. Even if it takes all day, he will find the ball. Maybe when it is back in his hand he'll spit on it for nearly killing him before throwing it away, to show the bloody thing he's beaten it but cared not a jot for it. Madness, his wife would think, but she doesn't understand.