The Ritual

by Adam Nevill

  Phil’s feet were bare and glistening with antiseptic. Dom’s swollen knee was raised and supported under Hutch’s rucksack. All of their thighs were stiff with slowly pumping aches and their lungs were flat with exhaustion. A coma of tiredness had swept through all of them the minute their sleeping bags were unrolled. Luke had never felt so beaten. Had not known it was possible to become so heavy in body and so listless. He could take about one more day of this. Phil and Dom looked like this had been their last.

  Enough food for one more day outdoors remained. And only a tea-coloured trickle was left in the small whiskey bottle Dom had lugged around since leaving Gällivare. It was to have been a treat, opened beside some lake of an astonishing Nordic blue, around an open fire, with the sky turning pink as the darkness of night approached. That had been the plan.

  Luke watched Hutch push the last leg of the stool through the door of the iron stove they were huddled around. A shower of sparks erupted inside as he rooted the ancient wooden spoke around the hearth. They coughed in the acrid smoke that belched out. The chimney was almost totally closed. Smouldering remnants of the seat formed the base to the red ashes inside the little oven that only heated part of the ground floor, before the draughts from the door and between the floorboards took over with a night chill, a tang of damp earth, and the ferment of rotten wood.

  Phil and Dom had smashed the stool to firewood earlier, against Luke’s wishes. Aren’t we in enough trouble? And he’d been unable to watch Hutch start the fire using four of the crucifixes as tinder. By not watching Hutch snap and twist them into small bundles, he quietly hoped he was exempt from the further misfortune this act of desecration might evoke.

  Hutch frowned at Dom, then leaned back against his friend’s knees. ‘Go easy on the sauce Domja. It’s got to go four ways. That’s your last tot. I’ve barely had a mouthful.’

  Phil smiled to himself. ‘We should save one last swig for when we leave the forest.’

  ‘I’d see it off tonight. It’s the worst thing you can drink if you’re wet and cold.’ Hutch seemed to stop himself from saying anything further, as if what he had suggested might befall them the following day.

  Sitting and leaning forward on top of their unrolled sleeping bags, which in turn were placed on their foam mats on the filthy floor of the hovel, they consumed the hot red air that belched from the tiny door. Even when they got too close and it burned their faces and seared their heavy eyes, they welcomed it. It was the first heat they had felt in two whole days.

  Above the stove, hung from a tent’s guy rope fixed between four of the nails that had once held animal skulls in place, sodden clothes gradually steamed and smoked dry in the darkness: four bedraggled fleeces and four pairs of grimy trousers. Their waterproof coats were hanging behind them on the nails of the far wall. Everything else gone damp inside their packs, was haphazardly suspended from other nails about the room. Dom had taken all of the skulls and crucifixes down. Something else that made Luke uneasy. Though he wasn’t sure why.

  He felt the warmth of the whiskey rise from his belly and numb his mind. It was worn out anyway and grateful for this cushion of temporary oblivion, or at least the promise of it.

  In the swimming gloom where the backdrop of ancient blackened timbers disappeared beyond the reassuring glow of the flames, Luke was struck by the wear on the three faces around him, lit up by the reddish flicker. His own must look the same.

  Patches of Dom’s unshaven jaw shone silver in the glow from the fire. He was going grey. Even his fringe was salt and pepper now. Deep shadows gathered under his eyes too. They looked too old for his face. He had three kids to look after, and a big mortgage to pay. He’d not mentioned anything in any detail about his current circumstances, but said, ‘Great. Never been better,’ when Luke asked him ‘How’s things?’ during the small talk of that first evening together in London. But the absence of specifics might be the clue. Other than a brief conversation about schools he exchanged with Phil on their first afternoon in Stockholm, Dom had not mentioned Gayle, his wife, once: the bone-thin and unhappy woman Luke had met for the first time at Hutch’s wedding.

  Something was up. He could feel it. Dom had been blind drunk the day Hutch got married, and the night before they left for Sweden, again in Stockholm, and then in Gällivare before the hike. In fact, at any opportunity he coerced the others to start drinking heavily. Something Luke didn’t have the wallet for in London, let alone Sweden. He barely scraped enough together to cover his share of the walking holiday, and secretly suspected Hutch suggested camping in the first place so he could be included in the reunion. But despite his bluster and boisterous approach to everything, Dom was acutely sensitive. Luke wasn’t fooled. He remembered how quickly he fell to pieces after romantic setbacks when they were students. All living together at number 3, Hazelwell Terrace in Birmingham. The best days of his life. Of all their lives, he liked to think.

  And before this trip, he couldn’t ever remember Phil’s face looking anything other than pink and shiny, like it had just been scrubbed. But his cheeks looked jowly now and his usually florid face was blackened with dirt. An inflamed scratch arched above an eyebrow. Occasionally Phil would reach up and touch it with a neat fingernail. His white-blond mop of hair had lost its boyish lustre too. It was still thick, but had plastered itself to his scalp with sweat and rain and not revived itself indoors. Around his mouth and eyes, Luke noted the deep lines that looked like slices cut into fresh pastry.

  It had taken Phil most of the evening to warm up when they met in London. He’d shown up with a long face and a voice both deep and muttery. He’d hardly spoken until they were all drunk at around ten. But it had been his girth – the middle-aged spread – that had given Luke a brief shock when seeing him at Hutch’s wedding for the first time in twelve months. It was something he still had not got used to when they all hooked up in London before the trip. Stretching his blue work shirt taut, Phil’s hairy white stomach had been visible. And his arse looked bulbous enough to suggest the feminine. They were all supposed to have exercised before the trip. Phil and Dom hadn’t made any effort at all.

  But Phil had really let himself go. Once the biggest peacock of them all, the man’s style had completely gone now. His jeans were pulled far too high these days and his socks were visible to the anklebone. He didn’t care any more. But why? Phil was loaded. Had made a killing as a property developer in West London. He’d won the career lottery, so why the long face? His wife, Michelle, that was why. Luke was certain. Michelle was nuts. They all knew it.

  She’d been high-maintenance when Phil met her in their final year at university. Great-looking but difficult. Eating disorders, a maniac pissed, and violently jealous. Luke remembered her as a tall, difficult creature with long bony feet and hands. What had Phil been thinking? But he’d still gone ahead and married her after graduation. And now they had two daughters and a big house in Wimbledon. Private-school fees, two cars to run, an apartment in Cyprus, practically a second mortgage in council tax, and according to Hutch they hated each other.

  Luke had never been to their house. Never been invited in the ten years he’d lived in London. Michelle didn’t like him. Didn’t like what he represented, or so he assumed. Single and still living like a student; a man with no clear goals or purpose as she perceived him; a dreamer; a loser. Everything Phil’s wife despised, but maybe feared too as a source of temptation to her husband. Some of her disapproval must have rubbed off on Phil. He was harder on Luke’s lifestyle, and more disparaging about his patchy work history than the others. Phil always made a point of making him feel small when money was involved. He’d been listening to his wife too much. A hypocritical stance it was anyway, as Phil never stood his round, or chipped in for cab fare whenever they met. He’d even stiffed them on three rounds in Sweden since they arrived. The other two didn’t seem to notice, or if they did they weren’t bothered. But it stung him. With all his money Phil still wouldn’t buy his mates a drink, and seemed to
take every opportunity to joke about Luke’s parlous finances.

  Or did Phil know that Luke had slept with Michelle, a year before he met Phil? In fact, he seemed to remember introducing them to each other. But he’d been intimate with the girl who was now Phil’s wife. And decided against seeing her again the morning after the Easter Ball. Sixteen years ago, but he could still recall her hissing beneath him, like a cat, not to mention the way she rolled her eyes back until they were white when she came. Shamefully, after he ejaculated, he had not only struggled to find anything to like about her, but realized he actually disliked her.

  Only Hutch still seemed to be in great shape and he was the eldest. He climbed, scuba-dived on sunken wrecks in the North Sea, and mountain-biked everywhere back home. He was ranked nationally in the Masters mountain-biking league and ran his own bike shop out of Helmsley. Last year he’d run the Paris marathon.

  But even though he’d found his friends shelter, built them a fire, and promised to lead them out of this godforsaken place by noon the following day, Luke could tell Hutch was troubled. He’d kept up the banter and camaraderie since they returned from the room upstairs. Made sure his humour and enthusiasm for adventure and adversity rubbed off on nervous Luke and the two fat men. But if Luke wasn’t mistaken, Hutch was anxious. If not afraid. And that worried Luke more than his own suspicions of the house and forest.

  Phil shuffled about on his sleeping bag. ‘I’m so tired I can’t see straight, but I don’t imagine I’ll get a minute’s sleep here. My arse is already bruised.’

  ‘There’s a bed upstairs if you want it, Phil,’ Hutch suggested, then took a sip from his mug.

  To which they all grunted their approval at the display of sick humour.

  Dom stared into the fire. ‘Do you think anyone will believe us? About this?’

  ‘I have photos,’ Hutch said. ‘Got a smoke on ya, Lukers?’

  ‘Not of the thing in the tree,’ Dom said with such a serious facial expression, Luke began to laugh as he lengthened an arm with a cigarette pinched between two fingers. Which set Phil off too, chortling and wheezing.

  Hutch smiled and accepted the cigarette from Luke. ‘We can go back in the morning if you like.’ He winked. ‘I’m sure your kids would like to see it from all angles.’

  ‘You could frame it,’ Phil said, his face relaxing into a smirk and his eyes twinkling by the light of the red flames.

  ‘Do you think it’s connected to here?’ Luke looked at the floor as he asked all of them the question.

  ‘I’m trying not to connect the two,’ Phil said. ‘Especially as we have to spend the night in one of the places under consideration. ’

  As they all laughed at this, Luke suddenly felt his body suffuse with a warmth of good feeling for his friends. Maybe even love. He winced at his vow to never see Phil again, and at his outburst at Dom. It was just the situation. It had made them all emotional, irrational.

  ‘What do you think?’ Dom asked.

  Luke looked up at him, his eyes narrowed to meet what he felt was a sarcastic challenge.

  Dom smiled. ‘No messing. What do you really think?’

  Luke shrugged and raised his eyebrows. ‘I don’t know. I mean, I cannot think of any reasonable explanation as to how an animal, completely eviscerated, because that’s what it was …’ The three faces around him grew grim, so he altered the tone of his voice and made it sound more confidential and lighter, ‘Got to be hanging from a tree. So high up. I don’t know anything about this area, or the wilderness of Sweden, other than what I’ve read online, or in the travel guide. H is the expert there.’

  Hutch sighed. ‘I wouldn’t say expert.’

  Dom rubbed his hands up and down Hutch’s head from both sides. ‘Neither would I. Yorkshire bastard.’

  ‘But,’ Luke said. ‘Don’t you have the feeling …’

  ‘What?’ Dom asked.

  ‘That it’s all just wrong.’

  Phil laughed. ‘No shit, Sherlock.’

  ‘Just imagine you weren’t lost and were just walking through this wood, on a day trip.’

  Dom burped. ‘A nice, but cruel idea at this point in time.’

  ‘It would strike you as wrong. It would make you uneasy. Don’t you think?’ Luke noticed Hutch was watching him intently as he spoke, but couldn’t read his expression. ‘The actual environment. The trees. The darkness. It’s not like any forest I’ve ever been inside, and I’ve been in a few. I’ve been camping with H in Wales, in Scotland and Norway. And nothing has ever felt like this. The other forest we saw the first day up here wasn’t the same either. Wasn’t so … rotten. And lightless.’

  The others all watched him in silence.

  ‘Apparently we’re all programmed at a primal level, in the reptilian brain, to fear the woods. But it’s more than that. I’ve felt, since we entered this forest, that this fear isn’t unjustified. ’ Luke took a final long pull on his cigarette and then threw the butt through the tiny door of the stove.

  ‘Shot,’ Hutch said.

  ‘Shot,’ Dom murmured.

  ‘Shot,’ Phil said through a yawn.

  Luke leaned back onto the palms of his hands and his head was immediately swathed in the colder air that pooled beyond their tight circle about the stove. He looked up at the ceiling. ‘And now this. The forest made these people crazy. Because I don’t think people are supposed to come here.’

  ‘And usually they don’t,’ Dom murmured, his eyes closed. ‘That’s why there’s no paths, aye Yorkshire?’

  Hutch sighed and rubbed at his filthy face. ‘I have to say, I’ve never seen anything like it before. It just suddenly changed. It wasn’t dense enough at first to ward you off. But then it just kind of swallowed us and there was no going back the way we came in.’ He yawned. ‘And I really don’t want to be here any more.’

  ‘That’s good to know. Thanks for sharing.’ Dom pushed Hutch off his legs and stretched his body out lengthways, in readiness for sleep.

  ‘The blasted heath,’ Luke said, smiling. ‘The cursed wood.’

  Phil stood up. ‘I need a piss.’ He stumbled away, his feet booming on the floor. He disappeared into the annex where the rusty tools were stored.

  ‘No. Please,’ Luke said, more horrified than he sounded.

  ‘Phillers, you weasel,’ Hutch cried out, through his giggles.

  ‘Outside for a shit,’ Dom added.

  ‘I’m not taking a shit,’ Phil said, his voice muffled in the darkness. ‘Yet.’

  Hutch and Dom exploded into laughter.

  Luke shook his head, fighting a smile that ached around his mouth. ‘I cannot believe you are my friends. Burning furniture and crucifixes, and now pissing indoors. Totally unacceptable behaviour for fathers and husbands.’

  Dom sat up to unzip his sleeping bag. ‘Tell me where you’ve done it. I need to go too. We might as well piss on the same spot.’

  When Phil and Dom were lying down inside their sleeping bags, Dom snoring within minutes, Phil wheezy but motionless, Luke remained awake and propped up on one elbow inside his own sleeping bag. Hutch lay concealed in a funnel of red nylon that tapered down to his feet, but stared wide-eyed at the fire he’d replenished with as much dry wood as he could shave from the walls before they all turned in.

  ‘H?’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘Forgive me for speaking out loud, but what is the plan?’

  Hutch turned his head and grinned. ‘Haven’t got a clue.’

  Luke laughed quietly. ‘It’s not been without merit. This trip. We can dine out on it for years. This place is off the scale.’

  ‘Which is no exaggeration. But if the sun had been shining and it hadn’t been raining, I have to ask myself if it would look half as terrifying as it does.’

  Luke nodded. ‘I still think it would.’

  Hutch yawned around a smile. ‘Me too.’

  Bunching up his last set of unworn and dry clothes inside his pack, Luke fashioned a pillow behind his head. He trie
d to shuffle closer to the stove without disturbing Phil, but ended up in a foetal position. ‘I had this freaky idea earlier. When we were upstairs.’ Luke knew the idea would be unwelcome to the ears of anyone still awake, but could not stop himself thinking out loud. ‘If that thing upstairs was a representation of the thing that threw the carcass into the tree.’

  ‘I heard that,’ Phil said, sleepily.

  Hutch sniggered. ‘It was a shocker to be sure. But we all know,’ he winked at Luke, ‘that things like that don’t exist. More’s the pity. But it’s amazing what mountaineers think they’ve seen when they’re oxygen deprived. And sailors lost at sea. Exhausted soldiers. Same deal. We become detached from the familiar and our ancestral imagination tries to work shit out. Isolation. Long winter darkness. That’s what did this.’ He looked at the ceiling. ‘Someone lost their mind for sure out here.’

  ‘Think I would too. This place has put an end to my long-held fantasy about living alone, in a cabin in the woods. But the thing in the tree …’

  Hutch yawned, his eyes half closed. ‘Animal. We’re not wildlife experts. For all we know, it is something bears do. Larder or something, like you suggested. Anyway, I better turn in. We can embellish to our heart’s content once we’re in that tourist hut by the river tomorrow.’

  Luke nodded. ‘Sure. Sweet dreams.’

  TWELVE

  Sticks. Spiking cheeks. Looking for eyes. Poking the throat. Sticks. Bristling phalanxes needling from branches and erupting from the ground. Sticks everywhere.