The Ritual

by Adam Nevill

  Hutch smiled. ‘Jesus, boys. How are we going to P.R. this when we get home?’

  Dom slapped the back of Hutch’s head, his face expanding into a tight and forced grin. ‘We gotta get there first, you useless Yorkshire bastard. Never mind virgin forests and Ice Age fungus. I want to put me feet back on concrete.’

  Hutch side-stepped the second swat. ‘Come on. Let’s go see what the fat man wants.’

  SEVENTEEN

  ‘What is it, mate?’ Hutch asked Phil, who was leaning forward with one dirty hand spread on the dark bark of a thick tree trunk. Phil hadn’t said much to anyone since they woke him, and he’d shrugged off any attempt to speak of how he came to be naked in that tiny sordid space that they had all used as a urinal at some point the night before, except for Luke who had gone outside. Luke, Hutch and Dom were all too tired and shaken to talk of their own experiences in any detail either, each acknowledging in an unspoken way it was the sort of thing you only discussed once you were at a safe distance from the source. But the night seemed to have affected Phil worse than the others.

  ‘Here. See it? And it’s on all of the other trees on this side.’ Where the bark had been sheared away or smoothed down in a band about the tree at waist-height, Phil’s red fingers pointed at a series of marks or scratches, cut deep into the wood, which had then darkened with age but not become entirely invisible.

  Hutch bent over and traced a finger around the marks.

  ‘What is it?’ Luke asked.

  Dom sighed with irritation and looked up at the sky.

  ‘Runes,’ Hutch said. ‘Remember those runes on the stones we saw in Gammelstad?’ He glanced over his shoulder at Dom and Phil. ‘Me and Luke saw some in Skansen and Lund too, a couple of years back.’

  ‘No way,’ Phil said, his face stricken, as if this observation by Hutch was evidence to him of something far worse than their current dilemma.

  ‘Yes way. Good spot, Phillers. I bet these are real old too. Vikings used them about a thousand years ago.’

  ‘They can’t be that old,’ Luke said, leaning down beside Hutch.

  ‘No shit. But someone still knew how to use them after the Vikings.’

  Luke placed an index finger on one. ‘Looks like a B. The trees get how old?’

  ‘This is a Scots pine. A big one too. Dead as a door nail, but they can live for about six hundred years.’

  Dom threw both hands into the air, his waterproof swishing as he moved. ‘OK. OK. So what’s the plan, Time Team? I’d say runes on old bastard trees are at the bastard bottom on our list of priorities, boys.’

  Hutch and Luke moved away from the tree.

  ‘It’s all wrong,’ Phil said to himself. ‘Wrong.’

  ‘Yessum,’ Hutch said. Then looked at the sky, so pale and white, the sun itself could have been white. Rain began to patter against their coats and rucksacks. ‘Great.’

  From the breast pocket of his coat, Hutch pulled out the plastic wallet with condensation on it. The map was sealed inside. He knelt down and removed the map from its sheath. He unfolded it by one half and put the compass against it. ‘Chaps. I reckon we’re about here. A fair way inside the tip of this band of woodland. I was trying to get us down to here yesterday, so we can pick up the Käppoape trail. A morning’s walk on that and we’d be beside the Stora Luleälven River. Following that east to Skaite for a few hours would put us by the overnight cabins there. And a branch office for the Environment Protection Board. But we can’t make it any further south through the scrub here. This place is so old, if there was ever another path going south out of this clearing, it’s gone now. And if the undergrowth doesn’t clear up, there is still the best part of a day between us and the end of the forest.’

  ‘So what?’ Dom said.

  Hutch wrinkled his eyes and gritted his teeth in a wince. ‘Well, we can’t risk following that track north.’

  Phil said nothing. He stood apart from them and stared at the house.

  ‘Hang on. Hang on. Gimme the map,’ Dom demanded.

  Hutch pulled it away from Dom’s grasp. ‘What are you going to do with it hobble-horse?’

  ‘Let me see, you Yorkshire ring-piece.’ Dom snatched the map from Hutch’s hands and then held it a few feet from his face.

  Luke hung his head and pulled his fingers down his cheeks. ‘Maybe we should go back the way we came in.’

  Dom shook his head. ‘No. If we go back the way we came in, it’ll take a whole day just to get back to where we started from yesterday at noon.’

  ‘As long as we don’t get lost again,’ Luke said. No one else took him up on the observation. Hutch and Dom stared at each other with tense faces.

  Dom’s jaw trembled. ‘And then another day to get back to the STF cabin we left two days ago!’

  ‘Agreed,’ Hutch said to Dom. ‘Or the same amount of time again to get to Porjus on your bad leg. So I think we should see where the track we used to get here goes, in the opposite direction. Then see if we can cut down south from it at some point.’

  Dom frowned. ‘Well, it ran from west to east in a straight line. It’ll take us straight back out west. What’s west?’

  ‘Norway,’ Luke said.

  Dom slapped the map down against his thighs. ‘We need to get south, H, to come out on the other side of this blasted heath.’

  ‘You don’t say. But we can’t get through, dufus. There is no way we can move south from here. And we’ve enough food for one more day, tops. Considering how many calories we’re going to be expending walking on this terrain today, we’ll need every crumb of it. For argument’s sake, if it takes us all day to get out, we’ll have to camp tonight above the river. Tomorrow, on the outside of the blasted heath, our army will be marching on an empty stomach for about half a day. And that’s the worst-case scenario we are facing. So there is no need to panic, but we have to make the right choice now. No indecision. I’m confident that if we just retrace the path it’ll lead us, more or less, above a good point to make an exit. With any luck, the trail might naturally turn south at some point. Skaite can’t be that far. A day, day and a half tops at a very limited pace.’

  Luke lit another cigarette. ‘We cannot … cannot risk staying lost in this wood for much longer, H.’

  ‘Spark us one up, mate,’ Hutch said. Luke placed his cigarette between Hutch’s lips. He took another out of the packet for himself. Hutch squinted through the smoke at Luke. ‘The trail must go somewhere. It was cut out of this wood a long time ago. We didn’t follow it from its source, we just kind of happened across it yesterday and followed it east. We originally came in on the far westerly side of a narrow band of forest. I brought us east to correct our position. Out west it gets really thick again. About thirty kilometres deep, I’d say. But if we stay on the track we came in on for as long as we dare, we’ll move faster and avoid all of the fallen logs and shit that made Domja bitch like a baby yesterday. If we can then cut south at some point, we could be out by late afternoon.’

  ‘But then …’ Luke rested the tip of his tongue between his teeth.

  Hutch looked at him, surprised Luke would object to his idea, again. ‘What?’ He heard the irritation hardening his tone.

  ‘That’s if the woods south of the track clear up at all. And following the track further west will mean new ground again. The unknown. Going somewhere else in this wood that might not be an exit. Our precise downfall yesterday.’

  ‘Why would you make a track that just endlessly snaked around inside a wood?’ Hutch asked. ‘It has to be the vestige of a way in and out. There’s no sensible alternative, Chief.’

  ‘I think there is. It’s total ball-ache, but we go back in the direction we came in, then try and pick up from where we crashed through yesterday. Or take that track north and hope it leads to the top edge of the forest.’

  ‘Oh, fuck off!’ Dom cried out. ‘We’ve been through this! We’d have another day walking across those pissing boulders to get to where we started from. Or another day’s
walk to Porjus in the opposite direction.’

  ‘But we know the way we came in leads out of here for certain. This path might just stop two miles deeper inside this shit. Or run in a straight line to Norway. As soon as we put one foot on it, it’s already leading us in totally the wrong direction.’

  Hutch blew out another geyser of grey smoke, and winced. ‘We got so turned around in there, mate. I honestly cannot say whether we will pick up our tracks again. And these two won’t make it back through that crap. We have to stay on the level as much as possible. Phil, how’re your feets?’

  ‘Not good,’ he said, without turning his head. He’d put his hood up.

  ‘Fucking fucked up is what they are, like my knee,’ Dom snapped.

  Luke turned to face Dom. ‘Well, if you’d hit the gym like we agreed, Dom.’

  ‘Oh, listen to the gentleman of leisure. I’ve got three kids, mate. Try hitting the gym when you work sixty hours a week and have a family to support.’

  Hutch raised both hands. ‘Boys. Boys. We’re wasting time here and we’re getting pissed on. At least on the path we’ll have a bit of purpose. If it goes nowhere, we make a judgement call. And either break south through the crap again or we try and find our way back the way we came in yesterday, like Luke says. But that’s got to be a last resort, considering the condition some of us are in and how difficult it is to even move across that terrain.’

  Phil finally spoke, but kept his back to them. ‘The last thing we want is to be in here again at night.’

  EIGHTEEN

  The very thought of which was exactly why Hutch could not prevent the unnaturally vivid images of the dream from recurring as he walked slowly away from the hovel, with one of Dom’s arms around his shoulders. He’d never sleep walked in his life before.

  He could still visualize the details of the dream as if it were a film he had seen the previous evening in a cinema. His mind clawed through the dim and grubby recollections for some kind of sign; some sense that would explain exactly why he had risen from his sleeping bag and climbed the stairs to the attic and then been found kneeling before a hideous rotten effigy.

  Two figures had been standing beside him in the dark downstairs of the house. That was how the dream began. Old faces with dirty teeth told him to climb the stairs. Had told him that someone was waiting. Don’t keep him waiting, they had said. Your clothes are in the fire.

  And up he had gone. Up, up, up the black wooden stairs. He desperately didn’t want to climb them, but the will of the dream would permit no turning around or going back down. He’d tried to stop his ascent, but remembered going numb and being unable to breathe. So up he went. And to think he had even been physically climbing the stairs at the same time.

  ‘Not so fast, H!’ Dom called out beside him.

  ‘Mmm? Sorry.’ Hutch slowed down.

  His feet had been bare, the soles black with the filth on the old wooden stairs. Hands out, he’d steadied himself against the dark wood that had felt wet underfoot. He was naked. His body thin and pale and shivery; he’d felt like a little boy tottering for his bath. Yes, he had been smaller, and younger in the dream. He’d desperately wanted to be covered, protected.

  There were no windows in the house, just a faint reddish light coming down from up there. Around the corner of the staircase he’d then staggered into the attic, and opened his mouth to call for help. But no sound had come out of his mouth. There was no air inside him, like he was winded.

  Inside the red place he’d kept his head down and his eyes fixed on his dirty feet. Dirty and wet. Wet from the piss that had tickled warm against his thighs and dripped down his calves.

  He’d tried not to look up, because something was in there with him. Snorting with excitement because it could smell his piss and fear.

  Bones. There were bones on the floor. They made it all worse. Especially the ones with the grey bits attached. And some of the little bodies had gone so black he could not tell what they had once been. On the stained planks he’d stepped around the bones, but some had still crunched under his blackened soles and slid around his grimy toes. The bones got bigger as he moved closer to the snorting sound.

  And then he could smell it. Dung in straw, cattle sweat and sulphur stink; it made his eyes water. A goaty breath panted over his head and bare chest and made him cough. The taint had still been inside his mouth when Luke woke him.

  In the dream, the knocking began when he smelled it. Near him. Sounded like wood banging against wood. In front of him. And he could not prevent a peek at what made the hollow knocking noise.

  Black hooves. Once again they reared up in his mind. Big and sharp with yellowish bone at the tip. Wide as a horse’s feet, snapping down against the wooden box it sat inside. Banged them with excitement it did. The black rim of the wooden box was chipped and grooved.

  Its glee grew as his soft white body came closer. So close. Coming out of a big head he had heard wet snorts and deep whinnies. Clack, clack, snap went its hot mouth with the yellow teeth inside, like a trap.

  Before him, below him, cut smooth into the front of the box had been a small circular gap to rest his throat. So that his head would hang into the unbreatheable musk of devil and animal. His head was to hang below its teat-pocked belly, pinkish under the longer black hairs. Then those hooves would smash down like a hammer onto a dinner plate.

  Bits of skull littered the dirty straw between the black stick legs of the thing. The forelegs were long and down they came again and again to make the imbecile rhythm of hoof on wood.

  Its body had been so tall, like it had long outgrown its little cradle. And he knew the horns on the terrible head were scratching the beam in the middle of the ceiling.

  And over he had gone against his will. Into the blinding stink, and the sound of his own cries were obscured by the knocking. Speeding up. Drumming with no rhythm on the scarred black wood. He still seemed to hear the echoes of it now, which is why he could not stop his hands from shaking.

  Into the worn circular slot, in the front of the little box, he’d rested his throat. And up, up, up went the thin black forelegs. Up towards the ceiling together. And paused for half a second before they came back down. So fast.

  And then Luke had been beside him, shaking him, waking him.

  ‘Look! Through there. And there. Two of them!’ Luke’s voice broke his reverie. Hutch looked up and squinted at where Luke crouched down, further along the trail, pointing off into the trees.

  Hutch’s stomach contracted.

  NINETEEN

  They had been travelling for two hours westward on the increasingly overgrown track when Luke noticed the two buildings engulfed by the undergrowth.

  When no one answered him, he turned his head and looked at the other three coming up the narrow trail, their elbows out, fending back the stiff wet branches that hung from the enclosing treeline and draped belligerently across most of the open space. Dom and Phil were both limping. Hutch was hanging back to help Dom over the fallen logs that had begun to present themselves with an alarming frequency beyond the place they had joined the trail the night before.

  Luke walked point all morning. It was better to go first; you would be the one to see the way out and by walking out front, all the time yearning for the trees to clear and for a vista of escape to present itself, you were better motivated to keep going.

  ‘Look!’ Luke called louder this time to be heard over the din of rain scattering through the canopy of leaves above them. He pointed in the direction of the dark sides of two indistinct buildings.

  The wooden planks of the visible walls bulged with damp and were black up to the dim windows; though it was hard to tell if they were shuttered or not. A suggestion of a stone chimney jutted from the end of one building before becoming obscured by a mesh of foliage.

  ‘What’s that, Chief?’ Hutch called back. ‘A nice little café?’

  ‘Or some big bastard wolverine,’ Dom added.

  Luke waited for the others to dra
w level with him. ‘Another two houses.’

  Hutch was breathing hard from supporting Dom’s weight over the last fallen log. He looked at where Luke was pointing.

  Between their position and the two buildings, grew a thick bed of nettles with black thorny stems. Above the nettles the bare branches of dwarf birches and willows formed a twenty-metre portcullis of criss-crossing sticks, choking the spaces between the larger trees. It was impenetrable.

  ‘Just keep moving,’ Dom said. ‘Don’t know what’s inside them.’

  Luke nodded. ‘I genuinely hate to think. Wonder why they’re here.’

  Hutch rested a hand on Luke’s shoulder. ‘Bum a fag off you?’

  ‘Sure.’ Luke reached for the side pocket on his waterproof trousers.

  Hutch put the cigarette between his lips. ‘Must be an abandoned settlement.’

  ‘Where more of them mad fuckers lived,’ Dom said.

  ‘No one’s been here for a while.’ Hutch looked down at his feet. ‘This track must have joined them up with the other place. See this’ – he prodded his foot under a blanket of bracken and lifted it – ‘ruts from a cart wheel under there. You can still see them at the sides of the track.’

  Luke rose back to his full height. A knee joint cracked. He visualized the unwelcoming interior of the two buildings; wet, lightless, spoiled with rot and animal spore. He imagined the despair they would feel in the comfortless air, in the desolate age of the place.

  ‘How’s it looking ahead?’ Hutch asked, breaking Luke’s absorption that made his thoughts sluggish.

  ‘More of the same,’ he said.

  Hutch moaned and rubbed his hands over his face. ‘We’re not making great progress guys.’

  ‘Piss off,’ Dom said. Bent double, he pushed at the sides of his injured knee with both filthy hands. Raising the foot off the ground like a lame horse, he grimaced. Phil said nothing, but stood and stared in the direction of the abandoned buildings.