Adam Nevill - Banquet for the Damned

Wiping his nose, which drips with a milky sweat, Dante places the plastic cup before Eliot. With a shaky hand, Eliot cradles the cup from the desk to his mouth and gulps at the water. When it is gone, he drops the cup on the floor. Turning in his chair, Eliot fights with the curtains and unlatches a window. The curtains sway and Dante is instantly glad of the cool breeze that slips through. Muttering, Eliot pulls the curtain aside to illumine the stranger in his study. With Dante suddenly swathed in white sunlight, Eliot makes no effort to speak or move. Breathing heavily, he just stares at Dante, his weathered face etched with surprise, or is it disappointment?

Swaying from side to side, with the fever now coating his entire upper body with sweat, Dante leans against the desk. 'We need to talk. About Beth.'

'Not now.'

'Yes,' he says. 'I'm worried.'

Eliot stares at him. Yes: it is dismay he can read in Eliot's expression. 'Is there a problem?' he asks, looking nervous, or agitated.

'Maybe.'

'I only asked you to spend time with a beautiful woman. Do you like girls, Dante?' The voice is stronger now, bassy and verging on impatience, as his worn face begins to clear of its initial bewilderment.

'That's not the point. Is she all right? I mean, does she need help?'

Eliot slouches in his chair. After a moment of silence he begins to laugh derisively, and his pointy body shakes beneath the greasy shirt and loose tie. Tottering on the spot and wiping the sweat off his top lip, Dante flushes hot, but not from the fever. 'Sit down and have a drink,' Eliot says, with what appears to be amused despair, which makes Dante feel ridiculous. But of more concern than the impression he is making with Eliot is the illness, and he begins to wonder if he'll even make it back to the flat without fainting in the street. Nausea forms a slick in his belly.

'Sit down before you fall down,' Eliot says, in a voice that seems to be travelling to him from a great distance. Briefly, Dante's vision breaks up into white pinheads of light. A fresh convulsion lurches in his stomach. He claps a hand over his mouth and runs to the bathroom.

Gripping the cold porcelain of the toilet bowl, he vomits. Gasping for air, fearing suffocation, and aware of his disgrace, Dante presses his forehead against the rim of the bowl and spits a bitter residue off his bottom lip. His stomach, now empty, still insists on contracting to release a series of dry belches up through his body.

Moving across to the sink, he dunks his head under a stream of cold water and splashes it down the back of his neck. It runs under his shirt and freezes against his spine. Feeling a little better, but astonished at the sudden attack of nausea, he drinks from the cold tap and yanks a dozen paper towels from the dispenser to mop his face.

When Dante re-enters the study, too delicate to feel shame, the window is wide open and the curtains are drawn, halfway across the rail. The whisky bottle is uncapped on the littered desk and he can smell fresh alcohol fumes. There is another spasm in Dante's stomach but nothing follows through. 'Came down with something last night. And these dreams I get… I need to go home.'

Eliot just stares at him, but if Dante isn't mistaken, the man now looks alarmed. Pushing himself away from the chair that he holds to support his weight, Dante turns back toward the door. Every careful step sends a shudder of agony through his head.

'Beth is a strange one,' Eliot says, his voice uncertain. 'Maybe she's hasty. It'll be good… for all of us, if you accept her.'

'She was not alone last night,' Dante mumbles over his shoulder, wanting nothing more than to reach the door. 'I could swear she brought something… someone with her. She made me feel strange. She made me sick.' When he turns in the doorway, he doubts whether he is making any sense, but some part of him still hopes for a response.

Eliot's face is ashen. With his eyes downcast, the man reaches for a glass of whisky, his scarred hand unsteady.

Another ripple of nausea passes through Dante. His skin goes cold all over. As he crosses the threshold of Eliot's study, he thinks of hospital. The room now seems to darken again as if something has moved in front of the sun. He cannot remember ever feeling so weak and now the desk seems so far away too. As he tries to focus on the distant figure of Eliot behind the desk, the light snaps out in his mind.

How he has come to be slumped against the secretary's door is a mystery, but now someone is speaking into his ear. They are shaking one of his shoulders too and holding the rim of a mug to his lips. He guzzles the water, having lost so much fluid with the sweats, and thinks he'll die without the mugful of liquid in his stomach. Gradually, his vision clears and he stares up at Janice Summers. She is crouched over him, her handsome face stricken with worry, and she holds a hand against his forehead. The palm feels cool. He reaches for the hand. In his delirium, it flatters him and pleases him that she would care. An enemy.

'You're not well. You should go home. You are not to come here. Do you hear me?' She speaks quickly, her lipstick-tinged breath especially sharp in his nose. When he tries to move, every joint screams along his back.

'Can I get you a cab?' she asks.

Dante shakes his head and forces himself to his feet. His head weighs nothing and a river of perspiration turns cold between his shoulder blades. 'I'm going home,' he says, and moves away from Janice.

By the time he reaches the flat, the worst of the nausea has mercifully passed. Fresh air and sunlight revive him enough to get through the front door. Stripping his leather jacket and damp shirt off, he stumbles to his room. 'Tom!' he shouts, and then flops onto his bed. He pulls the duvet around his shivering skin. Tom appears in the doorway, as Dante kicks his boots off beneath the sheets. 'I'm sick.'

'No shit,' Tom says. 'You looked pasty this morning. What is it?'

he asks, unwilling to come into the room.

'Virus. I felt bad last night and again this morning. But over there, at the school, it was crazy. I puked. I'm getting these attacks.'

'Settle in,' Tom says, and inches away from the door. 'I'll get you some juice.'

Dante buries himself beneath the coverings. And when Tom returns with a glass of orange juice, Dante is asleep.

It is like spending your last ten-spot on lottery tickets and hoping for the billion-to-one odds of winning the jackpot. Within minutes of cracking open the first book at the university library, Hart is overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of occult history before him. The futility of the venture strikes him immediately.

In the deserted divinity and theology section a surprising number of tiered columns, each packed with hardcover tomes, are concerned with the question of witchcraft in the British Isles. Seated near to this ocean of information, he is walled inside a cubicle with his first, cursory selection of books. He sits near a window on the second floor, overlooking the gardens below and the West Sands in the distance. But the view does nothing to ease his mind. He is living amongst the shadows of centuries of occult lore: book after book filled with stories and records and allegations of witchcraft, possession, diabolism, and the inevitable persecution in Scotland.

As he reads, he slurps Scotch from a ceramic hip flask, which he bought from the Rainbow Tribe on the final Grateful Dead tour, and begins to wonder which seat Mike Bowen was frozen into. Looking around every few minutes, Hart makes sure the two students in nearby study booths are still there. It is only mid-morning, and Mike may have been paralysed at night, but an instinct for self-preservation will not allow him to relax.