The Ritual

by Adam Nevill

  And he hated himself for being relieved the giant was in a good mood. And he loathed himself for feeling some gratitude towards Loki too; since they dragged him out of the forest, Loki had now saved him from the other two twice.

  But saved me for what?

  He was tired of being helpless. Sick and tired of being sick and tired of this room, and of the stinking box bed in it, which would not dry and now reeked of his own ammonia. He had already been exhausted by his fear and pain and wretchedness before they even found him, and now the thin, indefatigable, but ultimately futile hope that had sustained him since he had awoken in this place was exhausting; the hope that somehow these young people would recognize some common humanity they shared with the dirty wounded man from the forest, and that upon recognizing that he was a good person, they would let him go. Its twin, the pathetic clawing infantile hope that help from the outside world would suddenly materialize way out here, was also exhausting. Hope was now more tiring than anything else. Its perpetual rise and fall through the terrible ache in his head, and its arrival and its disappearance while he passed in and out of consciousness, and while he moved from one strange world to awake in another crueller place, was more painful and more hateful to endure than the sadism of these adolescent bullies.

  He supposed he was near the very end of himself.

  At last. So at last he could stop caring. And before he could start dwelling on what he would miss in his life, and who might miss him back in the world, he now decided, quite calmly, that he just wanted it to end. And to end soon. Perhaps he could even hasten it. He smiled with broken lips.

  ‘Your tattoos are a fucking contradiction, Loki.’ His voice sounded thick, unrecognizable. Blood poured into his throat from the back of his nose and he coughed it onto his chest. Sat up. Spat his mouth empty. Looked at Loki and suddenly hated him so intensely and desperately, that when his loathing abated his mind was clear.

  The giant paused in his expansive grinning. The morbid white face shook itself in mock surprise.

  Luke continued. ‘You despise Christianity. Am I right? Your lot set fire to those old wooden Stave churches. Because you hate God. You have a pentagram on your chest, another one on your shoulder, and an upside-down crucifix on your stomach, should anyone need further proof that you are a devil-worshipping badass motherfucker.’

  Loki laughed, slapped his thighs, then swigged from his drinking horn.

  Luke would not be silenced. ‘Which all implies that you once believed in the devil. In Satan, Loki. But then you also have pagan tattoos. Heathen runes and shit like that. Old Norse runes all over your knuckles, Loki. A Thor’s hammer, I see. Pre-Christian. A different belief system. So I’m guessing that you and Fenris are all about Odin these days. Yeah? Which implies you do not believe in the Christian God, or the devil any more. So vandalizing those churches was a waste of time? Places raised by a depth of belief, centuries ago, that I doubt you can even begin to understand, Loki. I’ve seen them in Norway with my friend Hutch, who was murdered by that atrocity you worship. Those churches are beautiful. Symbols of a more lasting devotion than your fads and your fashions, mate. Because now you’re into something else. But these were places that once gave simple people comfort. It’s your country’s culture, it’s your own history. Sorry to sound like your fucking mom, Loki, but you’re a vandal. A wanker.’

  ‘Luke, I tell you now—’

  ‘So what do you believe in? What really is your fucking point? Why am I here? Because from where I am sitting, I have stopped trying to figure you out. I have no more interest in trying to understand anything about you stupid fucking morons. I don’t think you have a point, Loki. Any of you. You’re just a bunch of little shits that have crossed too many lines. And now you’re so damaged, you don’t even make sense to yourselves. So come on. Do it. Get it over with, you big bastard wanker.’

  Loki raised his large face to look at the ceiling and smiled. Nodded. ‘Now this is just the attitude I am speaking with you about, Luke. That gets you in trouble here. But you know, I like your style. True, you are very er … misunderstanding my beliefs. Which is OK. As you are most probably the blind sheep, like everyone else. So I make allowances for you. Because you are asleep. But soon I think, you will be waking up.’

  Loki rested his long back against the stained wall. He smiled, wistfully, which was immediately at odds with his painted-on grimace, then sighed. ‘You know, Luke. I miss fighting the church. The Christians. At least real Christians have the balls to judge me. You are with us, or you are damned. We learn that from them. It is true. To be absolutist. Fascistic. I like their style.’ He raised his two giant hands and shook his head, as if struck by a sudden revelation. ‘And you are not wrong about some things. To think we burned the oldest churches. I try not to have regrets, Luke, but that is one. I should have torched the new American shit, eh? Scientology or something. It’s even worse brainwashing for very unsophisticated people. But there are places where true and much older devotion exists, Luke. Like here.’

  Loki eased his long body to the floor. Smiled wistfully. ‘I knew about it all my life, you know. I am from near this place. A bit south, in Norway. But close. This is still my true land. And I come back from the world to be here. To get away, you know? To come where there are no fucking Christians, no rules, no social democrats, or humanist bastards.’ He spat, then swigged from his horn. Despite the many competing odours about him in the room, and the state of his nose, Luke could taste the unpleasant yeasty miasma of Loki’s breath, even from where he was slumped inside the box bed.

  ‘We have awoken, Luke. And we want our fellow Vikings to awake too, you know. We show them how. Up here. And with our music. It will be special, Luke. We are working on something very intense, my friend. It will have the voice of the older Gods in it. Arise. Arise it will say.’

  He pointed the horn at Luke. ‘Real magic, you know? That’s why I come. I decide to show the others what real magic is. I brought only the fittest with me, you know? Who have proven themselves to me. Proved they were evil enough. That they were … uncompromising. A word I like when I learn it. They prove they could kill and burn. They who are of blood and soil.’

  Loki suddenly laughed. ‘Maybe too much, eh? Fenris! Not very smart, you think? He was already killing animals when I met him in Oslo, you know? No pets in his town, yeah. I say desecrate that grave, my friend. And he do it. So easy. Churches?’ Loki made a sound of something exploding and shaped the flames in the air with his big hands. ‘Kill a priest I once say when we are drunk.’ Loki nodded, grinning, as if merely recounting some absurd and trivial exploit of rebellion. ‘And he surely did.’

  He straightened his face and adopted a more commanding posture. ‘To be a Viking, you must learn to be truly evil, Luke. Must be able to prove yourself in a blood frenzy. You know, you are very lucky. And I tell you this, because you are the first person to know this about us, who is still alive. Yes? OK, do not answer. But let me convince you.

  ‘We have killed nine people. Including two priests.’ Loki grinned, swigged again from his horn. ‘Not bad, eh? Worst mass murderers that Norway ever has, and they still don’t know it. That is the best part. They don’t expect it to happen in Norway, but we are some of the first ones to wake, you know? Varg and Bard Faust, they were black-metal killers. Revolutionaries. They light the path for us to follow. But we go much further than them.

  ‘And Odin is coming, my friend. Make no mistakes about this. There will be murder. There will be blood sacrifice. We will have our revenge. You will see. You will see.’ He drank some more.

  Sometime during Loki’s confession, Luke lost what had been a sudden hot desire to goad the man. He didn’t really know what he believed about the youths, or even knew to be true any more, but he now doubted that Loki was lying about what the group had done before they arrived here.

  Luke started to laugh. He had to do something; it helped with the fear. Being afraid wasn’t helping him. Hadn’t done so for a long while. The
re was no time for fear now. Fear was useless to him; a repetitive survival instinct when survival was no longer a possibility. It was time for something else altogether.

  Loki glared at him. This was not a reaction he expected, or wanted; Luke could see that. They wanted to be feared, and revered, as all morbid adolescents do.

  ‘What happened, eh? Loki. What happened to that sweet little blond kid that you undoubtedly used to be? I bet you had one of those patterned jumpers too. With reindeers on the front.’

  ‘Better not to make too much of the piss, Luke. You are on the very thin ice already, my good friend.’

  ‘You were a healthy, educated, middle-class kid, Loki. Your country is the envy of the world. Because of your quality of life. What’s your excuse? You were spoilt and bored and angry. And you went too far. Look at you now. An arsonist. Vandal. Kidnapper. A killer. And fuck knows what else.’

  ‘Luke. Luke. Luke. Still you are the sheep. You are sleeping.’

  ‘And your girlfriend was fucked up by something before you met her. She needs medicating, Loki. She’s lost it, mate. I thought I’d been out with some high-maintenance nut jobs, but that fat bitch is in a different league. And maybe Fenris was too far gone too when you met him. Yeah, I think so. They were a couple of misfits who think you’re some kind of messiah. Hardly candidates of the highest calibre for the revolution. What a sad and pointless tale it ultimately is.’

  Loki shook his head, disappointed. ‘Luke. You talk in your sleep.’

  ‘Because I can’t see the bigger picture, Loki. Because you, and Beavis and Buttmunch out there, have embraced sadism and the pitiless murder of innocent people. And I am a sleeping sheep because I fail to see the importance of it. I fail to understand the significance of your actions. Nor will I ever, Loki. When you finally kill me, I … Well, I will be dead and you will be a murderer. That’s all there is to it. It’s pointless. There is nothing magical or special about it. It’s just sordid and wrong and rotten and all fucked up, like you and those dickheads who follow you around with their faces painted like ghosts.’

  ‘Exactly! Now you have hit the nail with the hammer.’ Loki grinned, then stood up and approached the bed. Luke could not help flinching, but hated himself for doing so.

  Loki tilted the horn and poured a long draft of a foul-smelling liquid onto Luke’s mouth. He tasted orange juice, and something like white spirit, or ethanol, and then he was choking.

  Loki reclaimed his seat on the dusty floor. ‘Good, yeah? I think so. Now, you are close to understanding that it is all part of the same thing. It does not matter if we hate Christians, or immigrants, or faggots. That shows we are serious, yes. But you have to look deeper, my friend. Wotan woke in us. And we answered his call. But at the start we were like, er … yes, like the children who want to do something, but don’t know how they do it, so they do something else, yes?’

  ‘No.’

  Loki raised his hands in frustration at the limits of his second language. ‘The devil is a good way to start, Luke. It is the start to be truly evil. To say fuck morals. I am evil. I am a Satanist. I desecrate. I burn. I kill. To separate us from the rest, the sheep. Then, we realize it was Odin who stirs in us. Great Wotan. Ancestral blood is boiling in us. We thought it was the devil, but it is not. It was Odin who wanted us to destroy the fucking Jewish religion and all the Christian bullshit that does not belong here. What has the Middle East got to do with Norway? Or Europe? So fuck it. Fuck the Muslims, fuck the Christians. We should have burned the mosques too. But that will come, I tell you this now. We are Vikings! We have been tricked to sleep in our own ancestral land. But now we are waking. We go on the wild ride for Odin. We burn, we kill, so that we can wake. You see, we wake. It makes a … er … opening. A way in, for older things buried. To begin the new order. To signal other wild rides. You see? Ragnarok is coming, Luke. Soon. So we must begin to desecrate the world.’

  ‘You’re full of shit, Loki.’

  For a long unnerving moment, Loki said nothing, but stared at the window. When he spoke again, the drunken oaf had retreated. The more reflective Loki had returned. ‘I felt drawn out here, Luke. As you all did. For a very special reason. You cannot deny this. It was destiny.’

  ‘We were on holiday, Loki. It had fuck all to do with Wotan or Odin.’

  ‘No, you are wrong.’ He turned his face to Luke. ‘You were drawn into the forest at the same time as us. You came for the terrible ride. You just did not know it. But we are all here for the wild hunt. The true one. The oldest one of all. It needs witnesses. And sacrifice, Luke. So it pulls things in. As it once did. Of all the trails you could walk, you walk in this one. A big mistake, my friend.

  ‘The Christians once stop the sacrifice and the wild rides up here. Long time ago. But the rides never really stop. What was once given up here, a long time ago, just had to be taken instead, you see? And the hunt used to happen at Yuletide, but this year it come early. Which is very bad for you and your friends, I think.’

  Loki slapped his own chest. ‘We come to this place where wild hunts have been seen. Real magic, you know. I know the stories from when I was a boy. Here they worship something that was in these woods before Christ.’ He turned again to glare at Luke. ‘We have nowhere else to go. We burn all our bridges, Luke. Some very angry people are looking for us. But that is destiny. Destiny brings us home. Destiny gave us no choice but to come here. To be true.’

  Luke snorted, then winced because of the pain that dug behind his eyes. He prodded at the tears about his delicate, swollen eyes. ‘It’s not destiny. You’re on the run. And you will be caught. Eventually. And my friends were killed by … something unnatural, I’ll grant you that. But it’s no God.’

  Loki pointed at the floor. ‘You are wrong, my friend. She knows. And she tells us that the old ride has started early. So we go out to see it. She lets us go to see something so old you cannot believe it. A God returning. That is when we find you. There is no one here to give sacrifice any more, Luke. So what is needed is taken now, you know? Just taken. Yeah? Like your friends. You and your friends started it early. But rites should be followed as they once were. She tells us. Something must be given, Luke. Again. To a true God of the North. That is how it once was. How it will be again now we are here. You see? She is too old, my friend. And that is where we come in. To give. Like others once gave. To be a part of something true. Old. Special. To give and be close to a God. The only one worthy of our loyalty. It is the … er … the gesture that counts. Like Christmas, it’s all about giving.’ Loki burst out laughing at his own joke. Luke said nothing.

  ‘Like you will be given. Maybe tonight. We hope anyway. We get much closer. We have contact now. And you are wrong, because our God knows we are here. To do things as they were once done. No one but us would do these things. No one is this uncompromising. And there is no one else up here to do it any more. It is all destiny, Luke. And what we needed to give, also came. You. You came and we came at the same time. A sign.’

  Loki raised his hands to encompass the room, the house, the forest outside. ‘These are the original settlers. The first people. But there were other things here before them. And the settlers paid a tax to the original occupants to remain here. To hunt, trade skins, live in the forest. Long ago. Give the God food and drink and they prosper. Give it animals to rip apart and the forest grows and protects. It is the way of the Old Ones. They have been pushed to the little places, Luke. To the corners. By Christians, and immigrants and social democrats.’ Loki shakes his head, in bitter despair, then looks up. ‘They call it by many names out here. In my family when I was a boy, they call it the Black Yule Goat. But that is not such a good name, I think. But in these woods is a God. A very real God. You can be sure of that. Christians call it a demon. But it is a God. Just not their God.’ He shrugged. ‘This place is sacred. Here there is resurrection. We come to make music of resurrection. To give a sacrifice and to receive blessings. To spread the message. To be in the presence of a God. As o
ur ancestors once were. You, my friend, are privileged. You will see.’

  ‘I’ve seen it.’

  Loki nods his head. ‘I envy you that, my friend. And we will see it too when it come to accept you. Soon. Now we have you, Luke. We have something to give. You see? As it should be. As it was. As Odin wish it. And to us it will come. She promise, Luke. She save you for this. It is the only reason you live a little longer. So you can be our tribute. Our tithe, Luke. Our introduction to the old ways. You are our proof that we are true.’

  ‘It’s no God, Loki. You are wrong. The Christians were probably closer to the truth. Everything you have done has been for nothing. It’s been pointless. Senseless. I’ve seen the temple. It’s in ruins, mate. The old stones? Overgrown. No one to tend the cemetery. This is all forgotten, Loki. It’s over. Died out. There’s only that old woman left. And she can’t have long, mate. And you’re too bored and stupid to hang around here for long. So it’s over. No more worshipping of some old wild, mad beast, or whatever it is. No more sacrifice. No more murder. This thing you call a God has no future.’

  Loki’s eyes were too wide, too bright for his big face. His lips were suddenly trembling with drunken emotion when confronted by Luke’s repeated failure to understand, to acknowledge, to believe.

  ‘And you’ll be in prison, mate,’ Luke continued. ‘At least you’ll be notorious. All that attention seeking will have paid off, eh? I only wish they had the death penalty here. I really do. Because all three of you, and that evil thing out there … you all need putting down. It’s what you deserve.’