Adam Nevill - Banquet for the Damned

'Cool,' Dante says, only half listening. 'There's no one around. Would they be inside directing their energies, or whatever they are? Or would they have to go out someplace to do it?'

Hart sighs. 'They gotta be in there, man. The whole coven. Only way to raise hell elsewhere.'

Dante nods, and then spits at the earth.

'What we do now?' Hart asks.

'Pass the stuff through. Then crawl after it, real slow.'

With his back to the hedge, Dante smokes half a Marlboro inside cupped hands that shake about the Zippo flame, while his mind does loops and circles, trying to think of fresh strategies and double-guess any potential for disaster. Now they are out in the cold, under the stars and moon, the entire venture begins to reek of the absurd. He wants to rely on his wits, but finds himself belittled by the thought of their cardboard boxes stacked up against a hedge. Too much planning only creates a mire of obstacles and indecision in his mind.

But regardless of whether the place is occupied or not, they will have to get inside and burn the cottage from there. And if anything is waiting in the dark for them, they will have to get in close with it and use the axe. The shakes take hold of Dante's legs and arms. Being so near the cottage makes him remember his last visit. He can almost smell the kitchen with its damp and rot stink. But his thoughts of the paintings are the worst.

If the witches can start fires and storms with their minds, what can he and Hart do with a supermarket box of whisky and milk bottles filled with leaded petrol? He thinks of running. It feels like his clothes are soaking. He touches his thigh. His jeans are damp from the grass, that's all. Then he swallows and stands up at the sound of Hart wriggling the boxes through the hedge. Between the wheezes he makes to regain his breath, Dante hears Hart's anxious voice set at a whisper as he comes through. 'Any sign of life?' He bends down so Hart can see his face, and shakes his head, too afraid now to even whisper. When Hart's bulbous shape squeezes itself noisily through the tunnel, pushing the cardboard boxes through before his body, Dante cringes at the noise and reaches into the hedge to pull the boxes free. Sticks snap and leaves scratch Hart's khaki jacket as he follows. In his mind he begins to recite, Come on, come on, come on , until Hart is clear of the hedge and crouching beside him, out of breath.

Dante stays silent, and motions to Hart to follow him to the back door of the cottage. Carrying a box each, with the axe and crowbar hanging over the crook of their elbows, they creep to the back door. Dante drops to his knees under the kitchen window. Hart kneels and stiffens against him. Flashing his torch over the lock reveals it to be broken. Splintered wood erupts from the frame after his previous visit with the screwdriver. Tentatively, Dante reaches out and presses the door. It moves an inch, and then becomes stuck against something inside the kitchen. He guesses the occupants have lodged something against the door from the inside.

Standing up, but bidding Hart stay put with a down stroke of his hand, Dante edges his face around the window frame and shines a torch beam through the bottom pane of glass. In the murk, the torch reveals part of a messy table top, littered with something he cannot see clearly due to the grime on both sides of the windowpane. But the table itself looks solid and heavy, and he remembers seeing the type of table he associates with farmhouses on his last visit to the cottage. 'Hart, we'll have to put our shoulders against the door and push it in. There's a table or something holding it closed. That's all.'

'What then?' Hart's voice is a whisper, followed by an audible swallow.

Wide-eyed, Dante wipes his mouth. 'We go in quiet. Real quiet, and we soak the place. All through the ground floor. Do as much as we can until they hear us. I reckon they're in the basement. That's where everything starts out here. Then we light it up. They'll be scared of fire. Beth is. I remember her face in St Mary's Court when I lit a fag. And there's loads of newspaper and wood inside. It'll all go up.' Hart nods. His eyes are fixed on the boxes while his lips move, in the way mouths move when someone repeats the same thing to reassure themselves. 'But we got to be quiet. Really quiet,' Dante whispers. Hart nods.

They move the boxes clear of the weed-covered garden path, place the tools on the ground near the boxes, and then put their shoulders to the door. It bends in the middle with a woody groan, but the table doesn't budge. They change positions, with Hart pressing the lower half and middle of the door with his shoulder and Dante pushing the top half with his outspread hands. Slowly, and with a scraping sound they cringe at, the door moves inward with a jerk. A thin black space appears as the portal widens. For a moment, they stop pushing, each reluctant to be too close to the space they have created.

'Can you feel it?' Hart mutters. Dante nods, and remembers the story told to him by Harry and Arthur. A perceptible iciness slips through the gap they have created, as if unnatural currents and draughts are at work inside the building.

'Come on,' Dante says through clenched teeth, and they double their efforts to widen the gap until it is big enough for one man to squeeze through sideways. Outside in the dark, shivering from the drop in temperature that suddenly engulfs them, they pause again, as if by the side of cold water they must plunge into.

'I'll go first,' Dante says. Quickly, he picks up the axe and his torch and then squeezes his body between the door and the frame, leaving Hart on the outside, standing with the crowbar clutched across his chest.

For a few seconds that pass quickly on account of an overwhelming attack of nerves, a feeling that he will jump through the ceiling at the first creak of a floorboard nearby, Dante's torch beam flicks the ceiling and walls, looking for the door that leads from the kitchen to the rest of the property. It is shut. His presence of mind stretches far enough to make sure he is alone in the kitchen, and that it is still sealed from the rest of the house, but it reaches no further, and he is capable of no other thought when the light from his torch shines upon the table they have partially shoved to one side. Something has recently eaten.

'Oh God,' is all he says, before lurching backward and hitting the sink unit. He squeezes the axe handle until his hand is tight and completely white. He points the torch down and away from the table top, but on the floor are scraps, fallen from the table, on which a man lies flayed. Indelibly imprinted on his mind, even once his eyes are squeezed shut and covered by a hand, is the streaky white and red mess that was once the university Hebdomidar. When Dante imagines raking hands and dipping mouths, made wet by their food, he says, 'No,' and shakes his head from side to side. But the image of the exposed ribs and, above them, the eyes still open in agony and shock, he cannot banish. It is as if the bulky remains of Arthur Spencer have been left as a message to intruders.

'Dante, Dante,' Hart whispers through the door. 'Say something.'

Feeling the air cloud in a freezing vapour around his face, Dante is unable to answer. A second torch beam is clicked on and shines through the gap against the side of his face. Dante turns and looks into the light Hart has shone on him. He cannot see Hart through the brightness, but the shock on his face must register instantly with the American. 'Jesus,' Hart says. 'What is it? What is it? What is it?' Uselessly, Dante shakes his head. 'I'm coming in,' Hart says. Holding his torch and crowbar, Hart squeezes through the gap. As he is thicker than Dante, the table moves again from the force of his roundness against the door, and for a moment the Hebdomidar trembles on the table, as if stirring in his sleep.