Banquet for the Damned by Adam Nevill

mouth of the open gate, Dante turns his head to follow a quick movement behind the first-floor office window, and sees the stiff shape of Janice Summers fold away from sight. Immediately, an odd smile appears on Eliot's mouth, as if he knows she is on lookout, but the smile is not warm. Instead, it seems full of delight; a revelling in something unpleasant. 'Don't worry about her, Dante,' Eliot says, looking across the road at the ruined castle. 'She is a silly and vain creature, if not a beautiful one.'
Eliot moves to the other side of the road, neglecting to watch for approaching cars. Something reminiscent of Tom: the careless assurance that a higher force has blessed him at birth and will endeavour to preserve him, forever. Eliot then peers through the spiked fence, encircling the landlocked side of the castle, and surveys the battered stone with its gaping rends and stubborn peaks.
'Great castle,' Dante mutters.
While flicking a finger across the bars of the fence, Eliot cuts him short. 'Not a castle, Dante. A bishop's palace and the home of many an atrocity. The good Christians hanged and burned each other here over pitiful interpretations of the scriptures. It was Catholic to begin with before a Protestant infestation.'
'You're not keen on Christians then.'
Eliot snorts. 'Interesting rituals, but full of weeds. The whole faith. Hypocrisy and superstition, ceremony and apparatus. What use are they?' Unsure whether he should answer, Dante stays quiet, suspecting his silence interests Eliot more than his opinions. 'You shall find out more about true mystics,' Eliot adds, and bows his head away from Dante's eager eyes.
'Like the Moslem Sufis,' he ventures. 'Brahmins, Taoists and Buddhists. I especially like that part in Banquet . And what you said about higher magic.'
With his back to Dante, Eliot speaks over his shoulder. 'What an apostle you would have made. Be patient, though. There will be time enough for talk on these matters.'
'Sure,' Dante replies, crestfallen and hoping to crack the code on when to talk and when to listen.
'Have you been on the pier yet?' Eliot asks, turning his tired face to the sea.
'Yes, this morning.'
'Fair in summer, Dante. But you should see it in the wet season.'
Dante nods, trying to assume a serious posture. What was the 'wet season'? Winter? He did not entirely like the way Eliot had emphasised those words, widening his mouth to issue them, with the first flicker of anything resembling real emotion on his face. 'The wet season?' he probes, fishing a Marlboro packet out of his jacket pocket, which Eliot refuses with a leisurely waft of a hand.
'This little picturesque town can become quite dramatic in the wet season. You should come here at night, when the sea is enraged. I often used to. I felt close to something powerful.' This is more like it, more in line with what he enjoyed in Banquet about the godlike and visionary quality inside man. The 'wet season'. He begins to like the sound of it; a song title maybe.
As they stroll down the empty pier, Eliot squints up at the sun, and begins to rub his cheeks and the contours of his weathered face. He looks like he hasn't been sleeping well, and Dante realises it will take time to accustom himself to the man's enigma. Thinkers can be strange creatures after all, he decides, and a man like Eliot, who has done and seen so much out of the ordinary, is bound to be a little weird.
He wanders to the end of the pier, in silence beside Eliot, and stands before the small tower and ladder that rise from the wall to overlook the harbour. 'Beautiful day,' he says finally, to break another long silence, but Eliot doesn't reply and remains preoccupied. Dante sits down and fishes for another cigarette.
'Don't be alarmed by me,' Eliot eventually says, staring at the sky. 'By my moods. I am quite a chameleon they say.' He turns and looks down at Dante, who tries to smile. 'What an expressive face you have.'
'Heart on my sleeve.'
'A virtue. The last remnant of