Adam Nevill - Banquet for the Damned

Wide-eyed with emotion, he remains still, and watches the property from his corner, looking for the next hiding place like a mountaineer peering up to see a crack or ledge in which to place his chalky fingers. A stone wall protects the cottage from the road, and scruffy hedges grow down both sides where lines of poplars and thorn bushes bend out of the privet, offering shelter from the winds and concealing the two barren fields beyond. The rear of the property is lost to him.

Screwing up his eyes, Dante examines the outside of the cottage. There are two storeys with sightless windows, glazed and set back inside grey brick. From the sides, it is protected completely from an outer view, and any inspection from the front is partially obscured by the wall. Subtly and in a disorderly fashion, it is as if the building has been shaped into a hideout that no one would suspect of foul deeds because no one can see it. But now he is on the inside, he must be certain he is not seen from those blank windows. Looking for a way in will follow.

Through a tiny chink in what may be curtains on the top floor, he thinks there is a slither of reddish light, but beside that, if indeed it is a light, the building suggests total abandonment. Squinting, he peers across the silhouette of the gables and chimney breast, and then down the walls. At the sides of the building, two narrow grass paths, obscured by the overhang of privet and tree limb, lead away to shadow. The rear garden?

Clinging to the trench of night at the base of the tree row, he moves down to the side of the cottage to check the back, raising his knees high above the wet grass as if wading through murky water. Then along the length of the cottage, between the treeline and house, he moves slowly through a funnel of total dark with one hand placed against the stone wall of the cottage for support, while his other arm knocks wet tree branches from his face.

From out of the shadow, he emerges, grateful, his heart pounding up around his ears, and sees the rear garden: long, devoid of flowerbed and tree, covered with long grass and a seemingly impenetrable tangle of weed that concludes in what appears to be a high, though sagging, wooden fence. There is little beyond other than a field or rocky meadow leading to foothills, dotted with sleeping sheep. Long ago, precautions were taken against the curious.

With his senses keener, Dante drops to a squat and surveys the back of the house. There is a single large back door in a solid stone frame and five windows around it: two to the side, and three on the upper storey, before the steep roof, made from grey slate, makes its conical ascent into the elements. Is Tom somewhere under that roof? Can anyone live here? But it is the thought of what else could be in there that keeps him in the cold shadows of the garden.

Trying to establish entry will be difficult without a crowbar. How do burglars do it? They force windows or break them. Can he risk the noise if someone is inside?

In a renewed effort to focus his courage, he imagines crashing the lock in and booting the front door aside. But what then? Will Beth leap on him and smash him like a toy against a wall? Or will the other one be waiting, like a guardian, to tear an arm off? Every faded bruise and scratch on his body suddenly sings out in a tiny shrill voice of its own. Are keen eyes looking out too, up there right now, behind those dark panels of glass, watching him? Or can they sense him? If they come to him in dreams, are they not able to feel his presence, now he is so close?

The sound of a car and the dim pattern of headlights down one side of the house makes his head turn in one direction, his stomach in another. A car pulls up in the lane at the front of the cottage; a door opens, then closes, and is followed by the sound of tipped heels on a slabstone path.

Edging forward and trying to stifle his ragged breath, Dante moves back into the dark at the side of the cottage, back through the tight tunnel of dankness and tugging sticks, and on toward the front, one careful step at a time. Maybe Tom is with them, the visitors, or owners, or worse.

Someone is knocking the front door now. When he draws level with the corner of the front wall, he crouches down, below eye-level, and steals a quick glimpse around the cold brickwork before pulling his face back into the dark. A woman is out front, crouched down on her knees in the weeds before the door, with her scarfed-head bowed. She is wearing an overcoat, but is too short to be Beth. Mystified, he looks again.

At the front of the house a door is opened, followed by the clatter of a latch, and then what sounds like a low mutter of awe from the kneeling woman. Then there is silence. A dark arm stretches out from the doorway. It touches the woman's scarfed head, tenderly, as if stroking an obedient pet.

What little edgy strength has been in his body seeps away, draining from his legs like the water of a bath he's suddenly stood up in, to pass from his feet into the cold earth. One of his eyebrows twitches and for an insane moment he thinks of rushing forward, knife drawn, to do his work — the town's work. Reaching inside his jacket, he places the pads of his fingers on the knife handle.

The kneeling woman rises to her feet; a joint cracks, the skirt swishes. The woman then shuffles to the side of the path, and from the doorway steps someone tall and covered in black to their feet. It is Beth. Slowly, Dante pulls his head back from the corner, and presses his body into the wall.

He hears the front door close, followed by the sound of their heels, kicking and scraping down the weed-choked path. Then there is the grind of the garden gate being opened. Peering back to the front of the property, he can also see the headlights of a car shining over the wall and into the corner of the garden where he first crouched. He draws the knife from the inside of his jacket. It takes a second for the pain to register, and he hisses more from shock than from the slice he has cut, carelessly, against the flesh beside his armpit. Down by the gate, Beth immediately pauses. She turns around and looks back to the cottage.

There is a pale suggestion of her face angled in his direction. As if smelling his blood, she has become still, one hand on the gate, the other lost inside the folds of her coat. Dante stiffens; not even the blink of an eye will he allow himself. For a moment the whitish oval of her head seems to be confronting him from afar. The other woman comes back to where Beth stands, but keeps a respectful distance behind her. Then Beth raises her face, slightly, as if to afford the thin nose an opportunity to sniff at the night air. He thinks of her bony fingers becoming vices on his arms and the sound of his lips being torn once her mouth is upon him. Giddy now, convinced she has sensed him, he wonders in a moment of madness if he should scream, or will it be better to run to them and fall down where he can plead for her to make it quick?

Then, at last, when he feels dizzy from holding in his breath, knowing that even a faint exhalation might give him up, Beth turns her head away from the house and walks, out of sight, to the car. The scarfed woman follows Beth in a haste he thinks obsequious.

Dante exhales. Something heavy and cold drops through his body, to leave a hollow which fills with a sudden tumble of emotion. An overwhelming desire to shout for his friend dies to a whimper in his mouth. Tears fill his eyes and something wet drips from the end of his nose. His fingers tighten on the knife handle. Fear is replaced by anger. Bitter tears are close.

The engine of the car starts and the light from the headlamps arcs over the hedge and wall with white light. Dante wipes his eyes. The car drives past the front of the property. Its roar fades to a distant hum. Unable to dissolve the lump in his throat, he steps from the shadows and wanders onto the front lawn. He listens to the sound of the engine diminish into silence. Seeping through his jeans and against his buttocks comes the damp of the air, and he turns his attention to the cottage. Dante walks to the front door and kicks it. Wood booms; the door shudders in its frame. If it opens, he will rush whoever stands in his way.