Adam Nevill - Banquet for the Damned

Inside the School of Divinity, Janice's office is packed with students.

A pair of harassed administrative assistants fire answers back at the cluster of young people gathered about the desks. Phones ring out at a continuous and annoying pitch. Arthur pushes to the front of the messy queue and asks after Janice. The assistant rolls her eyes and tells him Janice went home sick after lunch. As there isn't time to phone her at home, Arthur leaves the school alone and continues toward the Proctor's office, not pleased with the gurgling sounds issuing from his heart.

Stopping to catch his breath before the Principal's offices where Harry works, Arthur rests between rows of poplar and birch trees stretched before the grey stone wall surrounding the Principal's Gothic palace. He mops his brow and steadies himself. The brief respite of sunlight, creating so much energy in the town, was a passing thing it seems, and now another black sheet of cloud, sodden with rain, approaches from the sea. The weather turned nasty a few days ago, and now it seems the dark skies of winter are determined to perform a coup until the following spring. He can't remember it being this way before.

Students amble up and down the Scores, or recline on the benches and stone steps before the fifteenth-century halls and faculty offices. A car reverses into the last piece of empty curb near the School of Economics. A group of girls, swathed in red wool, disembarks and click-clacks confidently in leather boots toward the nearest computer room, on their way to write e-mails.

Arthur shakes his head. What is he thinking? This is a real world of living, breathing, feeling humanity. The young people are back with their joys and woes. They eat badly and sleep late. They write essays on political relations or construct molecules from plastic beads and rods. They have parties and drink until they are sick, and play practical jokes, and fall asleep in the library. They posture and fight and form relationships and friendships and laugh and find themselves while they are doing this. There is no room in this place for Eliot's old shadows. The macabre is the work of the imagination. Eliot is eccentric. Who knows what facility the mind possesses to tilt the world and distort it — to see what is not there?

'Pain is energy, Arthur. Suffering leaves its own fingerprints. Half seen whorls on the stones we walk. You must have known religious fervour once, Arthur. Didn't you read theology for a while? Use it, man. Revive it. Look through your god and go up your own mountain. Look hard enough and you will see.'

Arthur removes his coat. Harry closes the door and nods toward a chair, both men too distracted for the playful greetings they usually share. 'No Janice?' Harry asks.

'A sudden illness, apparently,' Arthur replies.

Harry shrugs and collapses into his chair. Air rushes from the cushion with a hiss. 'I wanted a word with you, Arthur. By the look on your face, I think you could pre-empt the topic.'

Arthur pushes his hands along the arm of his chair; his dry fingers make a squeaking sound as if they are made of rubber. 'You too have been in receipt of a note.'

Harry nods and tosses an envelope across the desk toward him. The envelope matches his: expensive sky-blue linen paper. Arthur retrieves the note. One of his eyelids starts to twitch as he reads it; he breathes heavily through his nose. Written in the same hand, but a different message: Dies Irae.

'Day of wrath,' Harry says, his grey eyes looking toward the window. 'In May, it was the last thing Eliot said to me, as we pulled Beth out of his cellar.'

Arthur is surprised. 'Really? You never —'

Harry raises a hand. 'Kept it to myself. I thought it was just a part of the usual gibberish he is famous for.'

'That night, do you remember what Beth repeated in the back of your car?'

'She was in shock.'

'Yes, but she said something. And I took it home with me. Up here —' Arthur taps his head '— and made a quick translation. A letter arrived at the Gate, today. It appears Beth wasn't completely out of her wits that night. She wants to remind me of it.' Harry nods, as if graciously accepting bad news. Arthur fishes the note from the pocket of his jacket and slides it across the desk to Harry. 'Look.'

Harry picks up the paper. He unfolds it slowly, reads the note and replaces it on the desk. 'From Caesarius, I think. Eliot was fond of that.'

Arthur nods. 'Amongst other things. The inscription reads: ghosts of my fathers go forth.'

Harry nods, and then places his hands together with the index fingers touching his lower lip, as if in prayer.

'What do they want?' Arthur asks.

'Eliot's trying to frighten us through the girl. Nothing more. These cryptic notes are churlish gestures. For not believing in his little miracles. He's playing a game.' Harry finishes with a sly smile.

Arthur mops his brow with a clean handkerchief. 'Maybe it's not Eliot. I've been giving that night a lot of thought. Something about Beth changed. Fundamentally, she changed. Her character, her attitude. And look at her since. Anyone can see she's different. And the same goes for her relationship with Eliot. It's all wrong. He's frightened of her. Don't you sense it? Think about it.' Arthur closes his eyes and sighs. 'Harry, we should've bloody done something when we had the chance. We swept it under the carpet because we didn't want to understand what they'd been doing out there.'

'Arthur, please. Eliot had been filling her head with his nonsense for months. She had a shock in that cellar. We all did.'

Arthur raises his hands from the arms of his chair in exasperation. 'But she went back to him. Back to that wretched place. Who in their right mind would ever have gone back after what we saw? Not unless they were no longer in control of themselves.'

Harry chuckles. 'Arthur, you have said so yourself: Eliot is a clever mesmer. A trickster. We have to stay rational. It's time to put it all behind us, and not to drop our guard. We don't know what we saw. Beth was a loner. So was Ben. Both perfect for Eliot. Susceptible to him. Whatever he did to their minds, it's on his hands and not ours. And let's not let him do the same to us. Isn't that what we agreed upon?

'With no salary, he will simply have to leave St Andrews. He'll drift away in his own time, and Beth will follow. No more handouts, Arthur. We haven't betrayed Eliot, we've looked out for ourselves. We have acted according to our responsibilities and we have acted correctly.'

Incredulous at Harry's calm, Arthur rises from his chair and begins pacing the floor before Harry's desk. 'He knows where we live. Or he could just turn up at College Gate or right here in your office. There must be something else we can do. To make sure he will go.'

'A contract killer?' the Proctor ventures, before laughing at the quick twitch of shock on Arthur's face.

'How can you joke? I think the students are in danger. What about that arm on the West Sands? What am I to think of that? And it gets worse. The lad Eliot hauled up here from Birmingham to be his assistant — the hairy one — he came to see me today. He said his friend had gone missing. Something happened between them and Eliot. And now his friend…' Arthur pauses. 'What is it?'

Harry straightens in his chair. A frown cuts across his forehead. 'That is why I have called you here, Arthur. There have been inquiries.'

'Inquiries? What kind of inquiries? The police?'

'Not quite. Or should I say, not yet,' Harry replies, spreading his palms in a characteristic appeal for calm. 'Something far worse than the police to be precise. Parents, Arthur. According to Peter in Accommodation, over the last fortnight a number of very concerned parents have been phoning some of the house wardens about their missing children. I expect you people in Welfare will be the next to hear. And as you'd expect, tongues are beginning to wag.'