The Ritual

by Adam Nevill

  The Zippo took its time igniting the pyre. And the pyre had to be relit four times, despite the leaping of the fat hare and Fenris’s excitable shrieking to urge the flames into existence. They were all drunk.

  He watched more of the youths’ drunken dancing. The two men were gulping something from horns fashioned into cups. Moonshine. The ungainly hare fell to its knees twice. Against the windowpane the light and heat from the fire seemed to beat, and push him further back inside the room.

  Tiredness from his exertions made his body suddenly feel old and wretched. He felt faint and nauseous. This was no time to try anything clever.

  He made his way back to the bed. Lay upon the eiderdown, unable to face the urine-damp sheepskins and soiled hay beneath. Closed his eyes, shivered. Tried to make sense of what was happening to him. He found it hard to think clearly now. The gargling vocals and machine-gun drumming beneath his window interfered with his thoughts, and even his breathing. He wanted the silence and darkness of sleep again; felt its presence swaying at the back of his mind.

  The situation was preposterous. But his acceptance of it seemed too easy. Because he was in shock. Maybe still in shock from what had happened to Dom and Phil and Hutch, out there in the forest he could see from his window.

  He wasn’t safe at all, and was still within reach of whatever it was, out there. There had not been enough time to process his predicament, because he had been running for his life, for days, and was broken by it. Then he was here, in this madness. He struggled to connect the two situations.

  He desperately wanted the noise of the youths to cease. He wanted total silence around him. Because noise would carry for miles and miles. It might attract something else to the house.

  But the music played and the drunken youths screamed at the sky. Nothing seemed to tire them. He wondered if they could keep it up all night.

  It. Did they know of it? Had Fenris been making inquiries? But quietly, as if hoping Loki would not overhear? Loki led them. He seemed more intelligent, perhaps benign, though immediately ridiculous. Fenris was an oaf, a noisy adolescent. There was something infuriatingly immature about both of them. Geeky. They were dorks. Compared to what he had encountered out there, he was not afraid of them physically. He analysed this instinct. Yes, he was more wary of their intentions, their motives for keeping him locked inside this room, than afraid of what they could do to him. He guessed, more than decided, that they were exuberant, delinquent, irresponsible, but harmless. And the old woman was an adult, responsible; she had fed him, retied the bandage, stroked his cheek. He remembered the sensation and shivered. Bad things didn’t happen around grandmothers. He just had to relax and wait. The masks had given him a fright, that was all. But then, his well-being did not appear to be their priority. They were oblivious to the state of his broken head. They were having a fucking party. Had they really sent for help? He increasingly felt as if he were the victim of some elaborate practical joke. They were toying with him; they liked to know things that he did not. Pathetic.

  But what to do? To do? To do?

  The maelstrom of noise outside the house continued for so long, his exhaustion and fragility began to put him to sleep in spite of it.

  FIFTY-TWO

  Feet boomed up a staircase beyond the walls of his room; waking him. He sat up and made a feeble sound. The footsteps banged down the corridor outside.

  Luke remained motionless on the bed, closed his eyes to a squint, hoping it might deter another visit.

  It did not.

  Fenris came in through the door, but left it wide open behind him; a long iron key dangled from the outside of the lock. Fenris was holding something in his hands. ‘Luke! Wake up! You have slept for long enough, my friend. You are missing the party! Look. Look here.’

  The bedding dipped sharply near his feet. As Fenris landed on his backside, the impact rolled Luke into the side of the box. He clutched his head. ‘Careful!’ The force of his own voice surprised him.

  ‘Sorry,’ Fenris said, automatically. ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘I think my skull is fractured.’

  ‘Look here.’ Fenris thrust a hand out clutching black-and-white photographs. His breath smelled vile, like spoiled milk, and vomit. Luke winced, drew away from the weaving drunken figure with the painted sweating face.

  ‘The nausea. My headache. I think I have a fracture.’ He was wasting his breath.

  Fenris’s eyes struggled to focus on him. ‘Blood Frenzy,’ he shrieked in an imitation of the screaming vocals on the recording still blasting outside the house. Luke winced; it hurt his ears, his head. He then tried to make himself seem oblivious to the open doorway behind Fenris, but it seemed to call to him. His thoughts fell over each other. Was there a town near the house? How far could he walk? Was that wise when so near the trees at night? Were these even the trees of the same forest they were lost inside, and had died inside?

  ‘Look!’ Fenris was getting annoyed at his failure to examine the photographs. Luke picked them up off the bedclothes.

  Publicity shots of Fenris, Loki and one other man with incredibly long white-blond hair. Poses of shirtless figures holding swords, faces painted, grimacing at the camera. Some were taken of the three figures in the snow. Blackened wintry trees formed a skeletal backdrop to their posturing. In the winter shots they held their instruments. Loki played guitar; it looked like a banjo in his huge long-fingered hands. Fenris held drum sticks. This role seemed to make sense to Luke, as drumming would be the only thing to contain his fidgeting, his energy, and it also produced a lot of noise.

  The third figure he had not seen at the house. He was slender, tall, and boyishly beautiful despite the white face-paint, in turn festooned with thin black cracks. His hair was lustrous, feminine, and his whole demeanour was somehow at odds with the other two musicians. He seemed to command a stillness about him the other two could only mimic. Was he the one who had gone for help?

  They all wore leather trousers, big boots, studded belts. They liked bullets, tattoos, inverted crosses. There were over a dozen photographs, all featuring the same trio making themselves look as ominous, or evil, or hideous, or insane, or imperious as they could manage when shirtless with painted faces. Luke had seen similar before in Kerrang!, Metal Hammer – the magazines they stocked in the shop. He always flicked through them, but it wasn’t his thing. He listened to and avidly collected classic rock, blues, outlaw country, folk, Americana. Always had done. Though he had not taken too much interest in the outré genre of heavy metal, he knew black metal was a Scandinavian thing. Didn’t they burn some churches in the nineties? They were Satanic. It was an underground anti-authoritarian thing. He knew little else, but was pretty sure his ignorance would soon be corrected by Fenris. The thought made him feel more tired than he had imagined it was possible to be. And why they produced such music in the social utopia of Scandinavia puzzled him. Perhaps it was a protest to being the most spoiled people in Europe; an act of rebellion against having everything.

  At the bottom of each photo the logo of Blood Frenzy was printed, as was Nordland Panzergrenadier Records, and a P.O. Box address in Oslo.

  Fenris dropped a CD into Luke’s lap. Then sat back, his arms crossed, his chin raised, his monstrous face grimacing. ‘You have that in your store?’

  The cover artwork featured a wintry northern landscape so dark it was hard to determine much definition. Gassy whitish mist or light trailed from a patch of water in the bottom left-hand corner of the photograph. Or was it a painting? The band’s logo was red and inscribed like streak lightning at the top of the cover.

  Luke turned the case over and saw one of the press shots on the rear, featuring the three figures in the snow, holding broadswords in warrior poses. A track listing was stamped in Germanic writing down the left-hand side. He lacked the energy, interest and inclination to read the song titles. Feeling irritable, sullen, exhausted, he just shrugged and tossed the case back towards Fenris.

  ‘You don’t know!’ Fenr
is lashed out and slapped Luke’s face.

  Luke jolted back and against the end of the bed like he had been electrocuted. They stared at each other. Fenris’s blue eyes had narrowed, darkened. He looked psychotic. Luke swallowed. And then the figure was suddenly smiling again, as if pleased with Luke’s reaction.

  A bully. A pissant little fuck. ‘Don’t fucking touch me again.’

  Fenris made a big deal of looking afraid. ‘Or what will you do to me, Luke of London? Eh? Who work in the CD store, but do not know of the most evil band in the whole world! You must work in a faggot store. Sell music for pussies.’ He laughed loudly at his own wit.

  Luke thought of kicking Fenris in the face, with the heel of his foot, right into his dirty teeth. The disorientating throb of pain between his ears told him that maybe it was not the right moment. But he welcomed again the heat of anger building inside him; he’d had enough of this. ‘We just don’t get much demand for devil-worshipping horse shit.’

  Fenris stopped laughing. Sat bolt upright. The energy of his body changed. Slowly, he moved off the bed, not once breaking his glare from Luke. The youth’s addled face seemed to have reddened under the white paint. He had made Fenris so angry, the youth could barely breathe. When he managed to speak, his voice was low and mean. ‘Devil? The devil? That what you think? Eh? We worship the devil? You don’t know anything! We use the devil only because we hate the Christians. It is Odin who lives in us. It was Odin all along.’

  He clenched both hands into fists. Closed his eyes. Gritted his teeth into a snarl. ‘See how Christians poison us! We can only call things by their names. It is Odin, great Wotan, who mutters in our blood. What Christians say is evil is our religion. We are warriors. Wild, you know! We are open to nature. We feel no pity!’

  ‘Sure. OK.’ Luke did not know what else to say. His entire body tensed. He looked about for the wooden spoon.

  And then Fenris gave it to him, speaking so quickly that Luke only seemed to hear bits of what the drunken youth jabbered at him. It would have all sounded ridiculous, had three of his friends not been killed in the forest. ‘We have no pity for your friends. They were weak, they died. End of the story. Old Gods require blood sacrifice! They are, how you say?’ He paused, sneering, for a few seconds to choose the word. ‘Ruthless! Yes, they are ruthless!’

  Luke slowly moved off the bed. Fenris was unstable, becoming hysterical, a maniac drunk; his whole body was trembling.

  The youth turned his body and followed Luke with his cold blue eyes in that horribly painted face. ‘We ride with Odin. He our guide. He lead us. He lead us through our blood. You cannot believe what is here. What lives here. You cannot believe it.’

  ‘You’d be surprised what I now believe. But chill, yeah?’

  Fenris was not to be calmed. ‘Our blood whispers to burn the church, we burn it. Our blood says kill a faggot … a, a, a immigrant … a drug dealer. We kill them! Our blood says, come home. You are ready for the old one of the forest. God of … of … of your people. You come home. You are ready, because you have proven yourself to be true Oskerai! Who ride wild ’til Ragnarok comes. It is not some fucking devil! Some Christian shit! It is older Gods who speak to us.’ Fenris clutched the knife handle at his belt.

  Luke raised both hands, palm first. ‘Sure. I get it. But I’m tired. I hurt. Please. Just calm the fuck down. Please.’

  But the youth continued to sway towards him, blue eyes bulging in the cracked white face. ‘We are Vikings. And now we rise. Through our blood, and through the soil of the forest, he speaks to us. Same with the Nazis. Wotan came back to them. Even Jung prove this.’ Wild of face, delirious with adolescent passion for his idiot theory, he drew the knife from his belt. Luke’s legs felt like they’d vanished. He shuffled his naked feet so he knew where they were.

  ‘We do something no one else has done. Ever in the history!’

  With the curved blade steely black, brandished and held aloft, Fenris snarled and jabbed it in the direction of the small window of the room. ‘We shit on the Christian altars. No problem. Then we kill faggots like you! No problem. But it’s not new. It’s very much fun I can tell you, to be this evil. But it is not … not … Fuck it! The words, the words! Original! It is not original. But we will be the first leaders of black metal to summon a real God of old. Something you maybe have seen with your own eyes. And will see again, soon. We have prepared ourselves to meet a God. You better do the same, my friend.’

  Luke edged away from the swaying figure, but the corner of the cabinet was soon pressing at his spine.

  Fenris struggled to focus his eyes. ‘In these woods is a real God! Not some Christian shit. Or some fucking devil. This place is sacred. Here there is real resurrection. It is Blood Frenzy who make music of Gods.’

  When the tip of the knife was within a foot of his eyes, Luke swung the jug from behind his head, in an arc, and so quickly he surprised himself. And delivered its heavy wooden base upon the side of Fenris’s skull.

  There was a moment of surprise on the young man’s face. And a terrible hollow-coconut sound echoed inside the room. The figure dropped the knife, took two steps backwards. His eyes closed. He suddenly looked like a child about to cry.

  Luke swung the jug against the side of the man’s head again. It did not break. But thudded, bounced off his skull. Fenris fell sideways, onto his knees. Luke raised the jug a third time.

  But before he could strike again, something heavy and naked moved quickly into the room. He turned his head a fraction. Sucked in his breath.

  The insane face of the mottled hare came at him so fast he gasped. Two chubby fists struck his face. At least three times, before he dropped the jug and managed to seize one of the girl’s wrists. It was doughy in the palm of his rough hand. The hare’s feet stamped and kicked at him. They whirled sideways, like a pair of drunks performing some ludicrous dance.

  He shrieked as her nails raked down his cheek. He thought one of his eyes had been clawed out. Hot salty water blurred his entire vision. Or was it blood?

  There was a long pause when nothing happened, and he was only able to detect a watery outline of the hare, swimming before his eyes. And then a small fist thumped down and into the open wound on his scalp.

  FIFTY-THREE

  Luke came to on a grubby floor, and wondered where he was. Looked up, at where the screaming voice so garbled with rage and grief was issuing from.

  He saw tall Loki clutching the hare to his chest. Holding her back. Back from him.

  Fenris was on his knees, moving groggily towards the door, moaning to himself.

  The girl kept up her shrieking. It was like glass smashing inside his head. Luke tasted blood in his mouth. His head was cold, wet, opened. He touched his face. Then put his fingers in front of his squinting eyes. They were slick, bright red.

  Nothing could stop the girl from screaming and kicking her small fat feet in his direction. Until Loki lifted her from the floor and heaved her away, towards the door. ‘Let me cut him!’ she screamed in English, directing her bristly face at Luke. ‘Let me cut him.’

  Loki shouted at her in Norwegian. But the girl was inconsolable. The glassy eyes of the hare seemed to fix on Luke, where he lay with a face all shiny and hot and wet. ‘Let me cut him, Loki! Let me cut him up, Loki!’

  ‘No! Then there will be nothing left. Think. Think. Think,’ he repeated, though with his accent, it sounded like he was shouting, ‘Sink, sink, sink.’

  Fenris fell to his elbows, placed his head face down on the floor, and started a rhythmic moaning that made him sound like a child. His black hair puddled around his head. Luke stared at the man’s ribs and the bony vertebrae under his blue-white skin. They were children, Luke thought. Kids. Damaged kids.

  The kicking girl grew tired. She struggled less, then relaxed her body and started to sob. ‘I want to. I want to,’ she said.

  ‘Not yet,’ Loki said, and held her very tightly.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  If the hare had picked
up Fenris’s knife, he would be dead. He would have bled out, brightly and hopelessly on the dirty floor of this room. An image flashed into his imagination, of his dirty skin parted into long red mouths. He shut down his eyes and his disordered thoughts upon such a vision.

  The argument still raged below. On the ground floor. Sporadically, Loki’s voice rose out of necessity to force down the cries of the girl. For the first time in a while, Luke could not hear Fenris.

  A chair scraped loudly across a floor, then toppled on to its side. Glass smashed. Upstairs in his little room, Luke flinched.

  He used his forearm to dab at the blood trickling down his forehead. His head was hot and weightless, and there was a swelling behind his eyes. The actual gash didn’t hurt so much any more. But it would do again. Soon. Endorphins had merely surged. Their good work was temporary. It always was.

  The fight made him feel better. Stupidly so, because he had made things much worse for himself. Security would be tightened, grudges had formed, faces would have to be saved, revenge needed to be taken. Inevitable, predictable, childish; the consequences of being human. It was the way of things. The ground rules were just being established between him and them. Every new grouping of people formed a hierarchy. And he was at the bottom of this one; a disempowered witness to their moronic sadism. That was his role.

  ‘How? How?’

  Below, the girl made a chesty groaning sound, like she had screamed and sobbed herself dry. Loki’s voice rumbled. Still no sound from Fenris.

  Luke sat down on the box bed and wished he had water to drink. Strangely, he also hoped he had not hurt Fenris badly. He took no pleasure in the look of animal pain he had caused.

  At last his mind was really beginning to wake itself up. He welcomed this new urgency. Healing needed to be deferred, if that was at all possible. He needed to bite down on the pain and get the fuck out fast.