Banquet for the Damned

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Looking up from street level, Dante can see the lights are out in the building directly across from Grey Friars Street. If Eliot was telling the truth, this is Miller's flat. Up on the top floor, above the solicitor's office, he can see what appears to be a residential property with curtains behind the windows. Maybe Miller is asleep.

He approaches the front door and depresses the bell. There is no answer. He thumbs the bell again and leaves the buzzer pushed in. Pressing his ear to the cold glass of one of the little windows at the top of the door, he hears the far-off ring of the bell, reduced to a distant trill, up the stairs and inside the flat. Standing on his toes, he peers through one of the windowpanes in the door. Aided by the light of a street lamp behind him, he can see the outline of a wooden staircase leading upward between white walls, and something else. At the bottom of the stairs, in the small reception, is something long, black and rectangular. Dante squints and tries to make sense of the large, immobile, shadowy thing. It looks like a large box has been pressed against the door.

Turning around, he glances up and down the desolate street which glows under the streetlights. No one is watching him, but the empty street itself strikes him as being in a state of expectation. It is almost as if the wide boulevard of Market Street, with its old buildings and the narrow alleys that lead from it, is waiting, anticipating something. The townsfolk, and the growing student population, are oblivious to what they are walking across or standing upon; but the town itself knows: it has a long memory.

Shrugging off a shiver, Dante peers back through the window. Still no sign of life summoned by the bell. He pulls his penlight torch from the inside pocket of his jacket and shines it into the reception, to get a closer look at the box-thing blocking the stairs. The thin yellow beam hits a padded surface. Moving the beam of light around, Dante begins to see the outline of cushions and the armrests of a couch. Someone has slipped a sofa down the stairs.

Stepping back from the door, Dante stands in the street again, thwarted and confused. Distractedly, he looks back up at the street facing windows of the flat and sees a movement. It comes to him then: the sofa is a barrier. Miller must have barricaded himself into the flat. Dante starts to grin, his face tense. 'Hey!' he shouts up at the window, but there is no further movement. 'Miller! It's all right!' Dante glances around again and makes sure no one is about. The street is still clear. If his St Andrews experience has been anything like Dante's, the man must be terrified. 'Miller! Eliot sent me! It's OK. I'm one of the good guys!'

The curtains twitch and Dante's hopes rise. He can see the outline of a mushroom-shaped head with a white face in the middle, and the glint of round spectacles in it. Dante waves his hands backward and forward, like ground crew landing a plane, and shouts, 'Open the window! I just want to talk!'

There is a long moment of inactivity up in the flat, but the pallid face remains, peering out. Shrugging his shoulders in frustration, Dante shouts, 'Come on man, please. Just let me talk to you! I'm not going until you open the window!' There is the sound of a latch being clicked back, followed by the squeak of a hinge. The end of a long red-brown beard pokes through first.

'Jesus,' Dante says, never having seen such a long protuberance of facial hair.

'No,' a mellow American voice responds, 'and I ain't Moses either.'

After the silence and the dark and the strain of the night and what he's come to realise were Eliot's last moments, he is glad of the opportunity to let go for a moment. He finds himself laughing. It comes on him quickly and his laugh has a wild ring to it. 'How long have you been shut in there? You're starting to look like Ben Gunn.'

There is a flicker of a smile on the small mouth but it quickly straightens. 'Who are you?'

'My name is Dante. I've been Eliot's dupe. It's a long story.' But the edgy moment soon vanishes, and he loses the strength to continue talking. Instead he finds himself confused. He looks at his boots and holds one hand uselessly in the air.

'How do I know I can trust you?' the voice says from above.

Dante can think of nothing to say. Despite the jocular first impression, Hart Miller is frightened. Even in the dark from a distance, his voice sounds strained and slurred and his hair and beard are matted from neglect. Dante drops his hand and forces himself to speak. 'Look, Mr Miller. I've had a terrible… night, week, whatever. In fact my life turned into a nightmare the minute I crossed the county line. Too many shocks for one lifetime, let alone…' He can't finish. It is too hard to keep it all back.

'Amen to that,' Hart says, the voice sympathetic.

He looks up again. 'Eliot said you knew something. So do I, and I need help. I can't stand out here forever.'

'I got time,' Hart says, quietly.

Frustration makes him wave his hands about again. 'I had a friend with me, but he's gone.' Dante's voice starts to break, but he squints as if looking at the sun and swallows. 'He's gone because of Eliot. Because of what he brought here. I don't know how much you know, but we could be all this town's got left.' Dante looks over his shoulder at the dim shop fronts, caged within brown Presbyterian stones. 'And they don't even know it,' he adds, softly, to himself.

When he looks up, the face has disappeared from the window.

There is a new sound, of feet running down the stairs and something heavy being hauled upward.

'Thank you, God,' Dante says. He takes weary steps to the flat door. Through the glass, he can see a shadowy figure, hunched over and tugging the couch to the top of the stairs. Then the chunky figure disappears indoors before reappearing on the stairs. Miller trots down the staircase, but only opens the door a fraction, leaving the latch chain on. 'Stick your hand through,' he says.

'What?'

'Just do it.'

Dante slips his right hand through the aperture. Tentative fingertips press his skin. 'Well you ain't one of the living dead,' Miller says.

'But how do I know you're not in cahoots with the others?'

'Come on. Do I look like one of those… those —' the word still sounds ridiculous even after all he's seen '— witches?'

'Listen, buddy. I've been shut in since midnight yesterday. Before that I was in Edinburgh, trying to get a passport after they turned my pad over. I was going to get on the first plane that'd take me away from this evil place. But I didn't. I'm an idiot. I came back. And I've slept for four hours tops right through, and now I'm forcing myself to stay awake another night. They stole all my stuff. My evidence. Some girl I just don't like the look of, did it. She knows I live here and she's been hanging around. And when I forced Eliot to talk to me, he never mentioned you. For all I know, the whole town's in on this. So what makes you someone I can suddenly trust?'

Dante looks at the sky with exasperation. 'I can't prove shit. I'm tired and my body hurts.'

'You'll have to do better than that. I've half made up my mind to open this door. But whoever is in on this thing, they're worse than Jehovah's Witnesses. They just break in —' there is a pause, and Miller can't support his instinctive attempt at humour '— and I started to see things.'

Dante looks at Hart's blanched face. Suddenly he has an idea. He unzips his jacket, untucks his shirts and shows Hart the bruises and welts across his torso, poking out from beneath the white strappings over his ribs. 'The girl you saw. Her name is Beth. She did this. Beth and the thing that comes with her. Twice they nearly had me. Twice. And I just rescued Eliot from his own home. He told me you were the only one who knew about this. Maybe, I thought, you could help. I understand your caution. Believe me I do. But with or without you, I'm going back to the place it all started, tomorrow. To bring that shit-heap to the ground. I've set my mind on making preparations, and I don't have time to wait. Risks have to be taken. If you're genuine, take one, right now.' Hart Miller continues to scrutinise him closely through the gap in the door. Dante exhales; he bends over and puts his hands on his knees. 'I'm just too fuckin' worn out to cry, sleep, scream or beg. There's nothing else I can say.'

The latch is unhooked.

When he sees the inside of Hart's flat, he can't prevent himself from gawping. 'Jesus, they put the wind up you.' Every wall in the living room has been daubed with chalk markings. There are primitive-looking scratches and runes around the windows, strange geometric shapes with tiny Latin inscriptions in their borders on the kitchen walls, and massive white chalk circles scratched on the floor, where the rugs have been raised and rolled back to the skirting boards.

'Glad you're impressed,' Hart says. 'Been thinking about a second career in decor. The present one's too risky. You should check out the bedroom.' Dante does.

The bed is raised against the window and held in place by a ponderous brown wardrobe. A single green sleeping bag has been laid out with some candles and a bottle of Scotch in the middle of a huge chalk circle. Another smaller circle has been drawn inside the outer one, and then a fine white powder has been sprinkled over the chalk lines of each circle. Dante walks around the outer circle reading the words inside it aloud. 'Agla, Dominus, Adjutor, Meus.'

'Had a problem getting the circumference points equidistant from the centre without a slide rule,' Hart chips in, his hands on his hips now as he admires his own handiwork. His voice has grown more confident. It pleases Dante to see Miller feeling the undisguised relief his company provides. He gets the impression the strange bearded American doesn't get much company.

'This shit work?' Dante says.

'Still breathing, ain't I?'

Dante bends over. 'Looks kind of familiar.'

'Careful, dude!' Hart shrieks, and catches his arm.

'What?' Dante says, and jumps back.

'Don't break the seal. Don't even scuff the lines, man. It's been hell trying to keep that flour together.'

'Flour?'

'Yeah. Babylonian trick, and I got the circle from Eliot's Banquet for the Damned. Read it the other day. He pinched it from the Lemegeton. I went back to the library this morning, when there were loads of people around, to get some information on protection. His book was still about the best, though. Funny, that.'

'Done your homework.'

'What else has a crazy paranoid shut-in got to do, except read freaky books? I got the Banquet second-hand. And this cat over at the library called Rhodes — the only friend I've got left in town — helped me with the rest. Couldn't get any holy water, though, and I wanted to use the Solomon version of the protective circle, but there wasn't room to draw the triangle.'

Dante stares at the enthusing bearded figure and smiles. 'You're fuckin' nuts. But I like your style.'

Blushing, Hart nods. Dante extends his hand. 'Dante Shaw,' he says. Hart shakes it vigorously with a hairy paw.

'Here, help me with the drawbridge,' Hart mutters, and then scurries off to seize the couch. Dante follows and, in minutes, he's been tutored in Hart Miller's carefully practised art of barricading. 'Should be safe till morning,' Hart says, wiping his hands on his greasy combat trousers before padding back up the stairs.

'Hope so,' Dante says. 'I stirred things up tonight.'

Hart turns at the top of the stairs, his face pallid again. 'Think they could crash the party?'

'Fuck!' Dante says.

'What! Don't start shittin' me, buddy, now I locked you in and all.'

'It's all right. Left my knife in the Land Rover. It's useless. But it gives me some peace of mind.' Hart relaxes, and Dante nods at him.

'We still got the circle, though. Right?'

Hart chuckles. 'Time for a drink.'

'Good call,' Dante replies, his voice tired. He thinks of Tom by just saying it. He clears his throat. It all has to be held back until his business with the town is finished. Closing his eyes, he takes a moment.

'You all right?' Hart asks.

Dante nods. 'I have some smoke too.'

Hart smiles. 'Oh man, I could get down on one knee.'

Through his fatigue, which makes him feel oddly warm, Dante entertains a curious vision of the bearded man in a wedding gown. He starts to laugh, and the two scruffy men go and sit on the bare floorboards in the lounge, inside the circle. They trade slugs from a bottle of Scotch, in between handing around the cones that Dante rolls in his lap. Hart makes some peanut butter sandwiches too, which they eat with a hunk of cheese and bacon-flavoured crisps. After wolfing the food down, like convicts suddenly released from a chain gang to a soup tent, they swap their stories.

Afterward, they sit in silence for a long time. Hart looks at a candle flame and Dante at the end of his smoking cigarette. The holes in each other's mysteries have been filled, but enlightenment brings no comfort; each man is left with a growing sense of insignificance before the power of the truth they have uncovered, unwittingly or otherwise, and now oppose, unarmed.

Hart is the first to speak. He sits back and rubs his stomach. 'Don't know what I can say about your friend. And I guess you don't want to be reminded of it either. Maybe he's not…' Dante shakes his head from side to side and Hart lowers his eyes. 'Then I'm sorry for your loss,' Hart says.

'But, dude,' Hart adds, after a short silence they are too tired to feel uncomfortable in. 'We've both been in this town all this time, chasing the same thing, and our paths never crossed. Seems like an injustice.'

'Better late than never,' Dante adds. 'I'm going to sound foolish even saying this, but hooking up with you has given me hope. And that's dangerous.'

'Why?'

'I planned a kind of suicide mission. Arthur and Harry are in danger. I reckon that's what Eliot just said to me. Maybe they've run for it, but I don't think so. I believe they'll go to the same place my friend and your students ended up.' He looks at the floor and stubs out his cigarette in a saucer. 'So I guessed I was on my own. And I've just let the hate and guilt grow with my fear. And I've frightened myself by just giving up on everything. The past, the future. I started to think I could die here. Like the others. And if I did, what would it matter?'

'But now you don't want to die?' Hart says. Dante exhales, noisily. 'Same with me,' Hart says. 'Walked past the bus station twice this morning and watched those lifeboats pull away to Edinburgh airport. Kicked myself for coming back. I should be in Chicago now. And I still think about blowing out of this town like I stole something every five minutes. Something stopped me running, though, and sent me back to the library to learn more.' Hart looks Dante in the eye. 'Until now, I thought there was no one who could help me either, let alone believe what I've read, been told, or plain figured out myself. It means a hell of a lot to have someone here.' Hart sighs and looks around him at the bits of devastation from the break-in, that he never wasted time clearing up. 'My tapes are gone and so are the witnesses. So in the end, I've just sat here, getting liquored, and drawing these stupid-ass diagrams on the walls, wondering what the hell I could do next.' Hart pauses. 'So what do we do? And don't give me any of that A-Team shit.'

Dante smiles, and rubs his back, which has begun to ache again.

'We are going to light a fire, Mr Miller. A big fire.'