Pandaemonium (31 page)

‘I’d better go and check.’

‘More likely somebody dropping a bottle outside. Just stay put - it won’t be the last tonight, and we can put the kids on clean-up duty in the morning, when they can actually see what they’re doing.’

‘Yeah, okay,’ Blake agrees. ‘It didn’t sound like a bottle to me, though.’

They hear some screams, muted slightly by the music from the dining room, but audible nonetheless.

Blake looks concerned. Hasn’t spent quite enough time around kids, then. If you reacted to every shriek, thinking it was a scream of distress, you’d never be at peace.

Kane sighs, Blake once again very effectively hot-wiring his conscience.

‘Should probably check it out,’ he says, getting up. ‘About time we relieved the others anyway.’

As he opens the door, a female voice echoes down the corridor, and Kane feels every hair on his flesh prick up in response.

‘That
was
a scream.’

He looks down.

‘Oh God, I’m sorry,’ he says.

The jay is done and disposed of, the remains of the roach ground into the frozen-hard earth. No danger of conflagration, but better watch they don’t trip over a lawnmower or walk into a big steaming pile of freshly laid cowshite.

Theresa stumbles a little, causing their wee chain to halt and disconnecting Yvonne’s fingers from Beansy’s. Beansy jogs ahead a wee touch, making it to the door first and sliding the heavy wooden crossbeam out of one of its joists. One side of the door swings open slightly. Theresa releases her fingers from Marky’s collar and steps unsteadily into the gap, where she stops with a shudder.

Must have seen something she doesn’t fancy. Maybe there
is
a big steaming pile of freshly laid cowshite. But then she jerks her head back and stretches, as if on tiptoes, except that when Beansy happens to glance down, he sees that her feet aren’t touching the ground. The lassie is fucking levitating. Mental.

‘Check oot David Blaine,’ Marky says. ‘How are you doing that?’

She rises higher, just a few inches, then Beansy hears this bubbling noise, followed by a dripping. Something’s running off her feet on to the ground. Something dark.

She begins to turn in mid-air. That’s when Beansy sees that she’s got a pitchfork driven through her stomach and is being pivoted on it by . . .

‘God in Govan.’

The light is very dim inside the barn, spilling in through high windows and the open door, but it’s enough to make out what is holding the pitchfork: to see it from head to . . . tail.

Horned head. Pointed tail.

With a sudden swing of two powerful arms, it hefts the pitchfork from side to side, whiplashing Theresa off her impalement, then drives the fork through Marky as he stands there, helplessly gawping.

Beansy, instantly sobered, slams the door closed with his shoulder and pulls the crossbeam back down on to both its joists. The blood-soaked points of the pitchfork splinter through the door as he does so, the nearest spike stopped a centimetre from his eye.

He throws himself back, lands sprawling on the hard earth, then scrambles to his feet, grabs Yvonne by the waist and drags her off, running.

‘Fuck me. Fuck me. Fuck me.’

‘Oh Jesus. Theresa. What was that?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know. But I’m no’ slagging Marilyn Manson ever again.’

Marky enjoys a moment’s hope that it has abandoned its weapon. Then he sees the demon stride towards the far wall, upon which hangs another pitchfork, a spade, a rake, a hoe, an edging tool, a fire-axe, a baling hook and a chainsaw.

‘No, no,’ she gasps, her legs thrashing as her feet seek better purchase to wriggle free and push past him.

‘Gillian,’ Kane says more firmly, taking her chin in his hands and raising her face so that she will look at him. That’s when he sees that her face is spattered with blood. Her eyes are like headlights, stretched wide and flitting restlessly, unable to focus on any single thing, almost like they’re attempting to escape from her head and flee on their own.

‘Jesus, what happened?’

She’s still struggling. Blake puts an arm around her, starts talking softly just so that she’ll hear his voice.

‘Gillian, it’s Mr Kane and Father Blake. It’s all right now, you just need to catch your breath, then you can talk to us.’

Kane hears more footsteps in the corridor, turns to see Heather walking briskly towards them.

‘Just calm down,’ Blake continues. ‘Breathe slowly.’

Gillian’s eyes focus on each of them just long enough to convey that she thinks they’re insane.

‘Let me go. Let me go.’

‘It’s all right. You’re all right. Just breathe—’

‘It’s not all right,’ she shouts, her limbs suddenly still. ‘It’s coming. It’ll kill us all.’

Kane, Blake and Heather look at each other. Kane’s thinking booze and teen hysteria, but there’s the blood.

‘What’s coming, Gillian?’ Blake asks.

‘The Devil. We’ve got to run. Let me go. Let me go.’

With this last, Gillian’s voice crumbles into sobbing and her legs give too, like an act of exhausted, hopeless surrender. She clings on to Kane, crying and trembling. Definitely teen hysteria.

Heather steps in, putting an arm around her and tugging her gently away from Kane.

‘Come on with me, we’ll get you a seat,’ Heather says.

Gillian lets go of Kane, leaning into Heather now for support. Then she suddenly shoves Heather aside and bolts down the hall towards reception.

‘I’ll go after her,’ Heather says. ‘What do you think?’

‘Prank gone wrong? Bang on the head?’ Kane replies. ‘We’ll check out the dorms.’

Sendak looks to Heather quizzically over the approaching Gillian’s head. Heather gestures to him to grab her.

‘Hey, hey hey, let’s just settle it down,’ Sendak says, intercepting her before she can reach the party, then forcibly escorting her back towards Heather.

‘You’ve got to let me go. We’ve all got to get out or we’re all dead. It’s inside. It’s coming.’

‘What’s coming?’

‘The devil. The devil is here.’

‘She’s hysterical,’ Heather says redundantly, as Sendak sits Gillian down on one of the armchairs, crouching in front of her so that she can’t run.

‘What about the blood?’ Sendak asks. ‘Are you hurt?’

Gillian begins shaking her head, more than merely by way of answering the question. It is increasingly trance-like, catatonic, saying no to absolutely everything that is currently assailing her.

Sendak examines her, running a hand over her scalp and down her face, smearing the blood on her forehead.

‘I can’t find any injuries. Whose blood is this?’ he asks.

Still she shakes her head.

He takes hold of her face, his powerful fingers firmly cupping her chin, forcing her to look at him.

‘Gillian, I need to know: whose blood is this?’

She can’t shake her head any more, but Heather can still see the word ‘no’ repeating on a loop in Gillian’s eyes. She knows but she will not, cannot say.

‘Father Blake and Mr Kane have—’ Heather begins, but is halted by a shuddering crash and a shower of glass as one of the huge windows is shattered only feet away.

Lying on the floor, sticky and glistening amid the thousands of tiny blinking fragments, is Dazza’s head.

Heather stares at it, the enormity of its consequences too great for what she is seeing to quite add up. She looks instead to Gillian, who she now understands to be a few chapters ahead. Gillian is balled up, trembling and jerking.

‘I take it that answers my question, at least,’ mutters Sendak, getting to his feet, but the loop playing in Gillian’s eyes hasn’t altered. She shakes her head again, more slowly and pronounced than before, and manages a single whispered issue, the only word she can say, and in answer to Sendak, the only word that can make this worse.

Radar spots a couple of figures in silhouette, identifiable as Deso and Fizzy via their naked torsos. He bops his way over, passing Adnan and Cam, still forming a tidy wee foursome with Marianne and the new Goth version of Deborah, who is kind of an emo in reverse as she seems to have learned how to smile since undergoing her makeover. He feels a wee pang of what-might-have-been over the fact that his pals appear to have scored while he was alone at the controls, but he wouldn’t trade it for the time he’s had; and besides, the night’s still young.

He reaches them just in time for another round of the chorus. Looks like he’s seeing double, though: there appears to be another skin-headed figure in silhouette behind Fizzy, steam rising from the bloke despite being well inside the door.

Then Fizzy moves his head aside just enough for Radar to see that his doppelgänger has horns, and a face like he’s been dooking for chips. Fizzy clocks Radar’s look of alarm. He turns around but doesn’t seem remotely perturbed by what confronts him.

‘Nae luck, Beansy,’ Fizzy says. ‘You shot your load last night. You’re never getting us twice with the same—’

A taloned hand silences Fizzy by clutching his neck, then lifts him bodily off the floor before repeatedly driving a knife deep into his stomach.

Radar watches this like it’s happening behind glass. The music seems to fade out, the image to retreat. There’s folk still dancing just behind where Fizzy is being gutted, oblivious through facing away, unsighted by the dry ice or, in the case of Jason and Samantha, steadfastly ignoring whatever immature high jinks their classmates are up to. Then there’s this eruption of blood from Fizzy’s mouth that arcs across the room, spraying clothes, hair and faces. At first they assume it’s Deso and Fizzy firing more water about the place. A number of irritated faces turn around, intending to tell whoever it was to fuck off.

They’re not telling this to fuck off.

Radar’s glass wall shatters as the air fills with screams. The music floods back into his ears and the hall floods with panic as everyone tries to flee. Not all of them make it.