The Ritual

by Adam Nevill

  Disappointed, he looked at the white truck. Went to it. Through the passenger window, he saw sweet wrappers in the foot wells, a discarded book of maps written in Swedish. A right-hand drive. Opened the door. The smell of rubber, oil, wet metal, old cigarette smoke hit him. Scents of the old world; the world this vehicle could take him back to. It was filthy inside. Dirt was compacted into the mats and the seats; the floor of the cabin was bare metal. The rubber pads were gone from the pedals; upholstery was split on the long bench seat. A bright turquoise fishing lure hung from the rear-view mirror. In the flatbed an open bag of tools, empty red plastic fuel containers, a dozen crushed beer cans. It was not their vehicle. It had brought them here, but they had taken it from someone, somewhere else.

  Luke put the gun down. Then leant inside the truck cabin and touched the steering column, put his finger tips on to the slot for the ignition key, hoping. Empty.

  Keys, keys, fucking keys.

  He decided there and then to just get the hell out, and fast. He turned and walked gingerly back towards the house, one hand clamped upon the movements of the new mouth in his hip.

  Stopped. Turned around and went back for the gun that he had left on the grass. ‘Fuck.’ He wasn’t thinking straight. Was dizzy with hunger and burning with thirst; faint from the excitement that kept draining out of him, before being suddenly invigorated back through him from his exhausted glands, over and over and over again. His thighs felt so heavy. Shadows flickered at the sides of his vision. He spat, carried on.

  The old woman was gone when he arrived back inside the kitchen. He called out. ‘Hello. Hello.’ But no one answered or came.

  There were no taps, no sink; the house had never been plumbed. But he found six one-litre water bottles that had been reused to bring water to the house from the well he still had not seen. He uncapped one bottle; belted the warmish water inside him until a crippling stitch made him stop, bend over and gasp.

  There was a pantry. Dark and brown and cool inside. A chunk of black bread he snapped from the hard loaf and crammed it to his mouth. Sucked it more than chewed it. Coarse against his tongue, it tasted of blood. There was a salted joint of meat in there; two sacks of beets; jars full of pickles and preserves lined four long shelves; dusty cooking apples; salt. Turnips, carrots, ancient coffee. But nothing to go. Blood Frenzy must have arrived empty-handed; these were her meagre provisions. They’d come to the end of the earth for this. Later, he could eat later. When he was gone.

  Keys, keys, fucking keys.

  He went up the stairs slowly, backwards, trying to keep the chewing mouth in his hip closed. He needed to wash it, bind it. At the top of the staircase, he turned himself around. Sent the barrel of the gun into the murk first and followed it with his body. He wondered if Surtr could have come back inside the house and crept up here. He dismissed the idea, but felt tense and brittle, like he would shatter at the first sound of her still being around.

  Down the corridor. A peek into the first room. Two sleeping bags on the floor. One blue, one yellow. Loki and Surtr’s room. Clothes strewn everywhere. Untidy, dirty, angry people. He went inside, looking for Loki’s jacket. Then turned and gasped. Nearly shot from the hip, when he saw the three animal masks they had worn that first day. All three were lined up and staring from a wooden sawbuck table that looked as if the Vikings had made it. Did they bring the animal heads here, or had they come with the room?

  A miasma of sweat and hair grease wafted off their clothing. In the mess on the floor he found a leather biker jacket. It was riddled with spikes around the shoulders; riveted with steel at the waistline and elbows. Celtic Frost, Satyricon, Gorgoroth, Behemoth, Ov Hell, Mayhem, Blood Frenzy, painted carefully in white paint on the back panel. Inside a pocket, a jingle-jangle. Six keys, attached to an inverted steel crucifix: what else?

  For some reason Luke zipped the pocket closed after extracting the keys, then asked himself, ‘Why?’ Shook his head. It was like walking through treacle now. Was the house so hot? He could only remember being cold in here before. The building listed like a boat in a squall. The rifle was so heavy; the barrel banged against things. He swore at it. His face was burning, wet.

  Back outside in the corridor, he glanced past his old room and at the little door that led to the attic staircase. Listened. A voice. He frowned. Moved down to the door, but it grew faint. He looked at the ceiling. Realized the voice was not coming from up there, but from outside. Someone was singing.

  He went back into Loki and Surtr’s room and peered down through the dirty glass of the window. Nothing out back in the orchard. He paused, listened again. It was coming from the other side of the house. Unable to bear going back inside the room they had kept him locked inside, he descended the stairs, breathless, dazed, his wounds burning but wet.

  In the hallway, he raised the rifle butt to his shoulder and walked at the front door. The parlour door was still closed; the kitchen, he saw after a quick sweep with his jerky eyes, was empty. Back door was still open.

  He stepped over Loki, looked outside.

  The little old woman stood by the site of the second fire, just beyond the radius of scorched grass. A tiny figure dressed in black to her neck, facing the trees, indifferent to the motionless body of Fenris on her lawn. For such a small person, her voice carried. The wailing that came out of her was almost Arabic in intonation, but then Luke thought of North American Indians too. And whatever she sang lilted up and down in the singsong cadences of Swedish. She clapped out a beat with her little hands. What she sang was simple, repetitive, like a nursery rhyme. The same few lines, going up and down, over and over. He began to recognize one word. ‘Moder.’

  She called it out again, and again, at the end of the third line of the three-line verse: ‘Moder.’

  Mother.

  ‘No,’ he said to himself. ‘Please no.’

  The realization came quick and cold like the contents of a pail of freezing water thrown straight into his face. He swung his head like a tired horse, and knew that no man should be made to witness such things. Was he in hell? Had he died in that forest with his friends, and now this was an endless narrative of atrocity in an afterlife he stumbled about in?

  He looped the keyring around his little finger, took aim with the rifle. ‘Ma’am! I said no!’

  She sang like a child, like a little girl, and raised her thin dusty arms into the air. She looked at the sky and called the old name.

  When the time comes, will you sing with us?

  He had suspected once or twice that she had been using him, but he had not dared acknowledge it. It seemed too improbable, too incongruous for such a small freakish lady who made stew and clomped about the hovel in her homespun gown. But she had used him. Yes, to get the unwanted guests out of her house, to have her uninvited visitors bleed out on the lawn. They came and they invited themselves inside and made demands and would not leave. She was old and she wanted help ridding her home of the rodents. Fenris was a weasel and she wanted his neck wrung like a dish cloth; he had seen it in her black eyes. So she let him remain alive for a while, so Blood Frenzy thought they were in charge and that she was working for them, serving their purpose up here; but then she let the sacrifice be free to accomplish some chores for her. He’d survived the forest and Blood Frenzy because he had work to do for her; he was the angry one, the violent one. In the party of four that came through here to die, he was the man not so different to the youths with the painted faces, the man who could be useful, for a while. He had always felt his fate out here was predetermined. That he had a purpose. And this was it.

  She’d played him from day one, but he was still to be given, and taken away out there, to the rocks and boughs and waters and the ways of prehistory. Now his job was done, the little old child was calling mother home. Because he was still a sacrifice. And he was even dressed for it. She had laid out the robe and crown for him to wear.

  ‘God no.’

  He aimed the shaky rifle sight between the shoulder b
lades of that tiny figure. And let the sights twitch and hover about the target.

  All of these things should not be. He thought of Hutch, pale and bedraggled and naked and hanging between spruce branches. He remembered Dom’s arms about his own shoulders not long before he too was opened and emptied like a rabbit by a hunter. He thought of poor Phil, all tatty and looted, the hood of his waterproof still up and keeping his pale face dry in death. And he remembered the sound of thin brown bodies, twitching in the darkness of an attic that should not exist. He bit down on horror. Clenched his jaw against the horror of it all. And squeezed the trigger.

  Like a hand shoving her in the back, the little old lady made a surprised sound like all the air had been pushed out of her in one go. And up she went, off her feet, then came immediately straight down, onto her face. She never moved again. He’d shot out her tiny heart.

  The world went silent and still. The whole forest held its breath. The sky paused in its gaseous swirling. The birds closed their beaks and the animals lay down their heads.

  Luke walked across to her and looked down.

  The hem of her dusty dress was hiked up to her bony knees. Unclothed, her legs were thin and covered in coarse white hair. The skin through the hair was pinkish. Her legs bent the wrong way at the knee joints. At the end of her goatish legs were little white hooves. Her tiny loud feet.

  SIXTY-SIX

  Luke rested on his shins, the rifle across his naked thighs, and closed his eyes. He knelt in the grass between Fenris and the old lady.

  Could he get up again? He would have to; he needed clothes, more water. A bandage too, or anything soft and clean to wrap around his hip and plug his chest. He was sure the cuts were widening as he moved and breathed. His left arm was going stiff and he could barely raise it above his waist. He was slowing down, he was coming to a stop. He blew his lungs empty. A cigarette would probably kill him, but he would kill for one right now.

  He turned his head and looked back at the house, at the peaked pointy roof. He wasn’t finished here. He stood up, wincing. The giving and the taking had to stop. The door had to be closed. Loki had known about this place; others might do too. The barrier between the world and another much older place was much thinner here than elsewhere; things came and went. He understood that.

  His friends had been slaughtered like game in season, like livestock. They had been hunted, swiftly despatched, field-dressed, and then displayed in the trees. An account had to be settled. For them. He’d do anything for them now.

  Why had the old woman not called it home to clean out her trespassers? Luke closed his eyes. His skin shivered. His head hurt as it wondered. There was no one to tell him anything. Not out here. He just guessed and flinched like a small animal.

  Because of the rifle. And sheath knives. Because it could be hurt. She was protecting it. Her mother. And protecting the old family upstairs. It required an inside job and he was the man on the inside. Maybe.

  But he did know that some species should become extinct. Luke opened his eyes.

  Moder’s rule and her pitiful congregation had to end. She was an isolated God; the last black goat of the woods. What he guessed was her youngest and most presentable daughter did her best to keep it all going up here. Maybe she was the girl left behind to look after mother. He did not know; he was guessing again. But it just all needed to stop. No more sons and fathers and friends should hang from trees. Not that, ever.

  Luke walked back to the house; every muscle and sinew ached from a bruising so deep he doubted he could ever be fixed. The horizon of treetops juddered in his vision. Somehow the sky was all white now too, but he was grateful for the rain. It came down cold and hard. Was never far away up here. Just changed places with the snow. Over and over, forever.

  He looked at Fenris. Reached down, gripped the sticky handle of the Swiss Army knife and yanked it out. Fenris sat up, head lolling, like Luke was leading him by a hand, then dropped back down to the blood and the soil. Luke stabbed the blade into the turf twice to clean it.

  On the porch, he put down the rifle and the knife and took off the little white dress. Dropped it over Loki’s terrible face. But left the crown of dead flowers on his head; it seemed to be holding his thoughts together. And then he looked down the hallway to the staircase.

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  Through the door at the end of the corridor on the first storey, and up into the attic he went on feet so slow and clumsy they must have all heard him coming. Up there, in the warm dusty timeless darkness, they knew he was coming for them.

  And into the lightless place at the top of the house, he crept and fumbled about, naked and bloodied as a newborn. He had no light; couldn’t get it together enough downstairs to find an oil lantern and matches. But he went on memory to the places where he remembered the little figures to be sitting. And now he was up there, he found they were all too old and too weak to do anything but mutter.

  The rain struck the roof and was amplified inside the attic space. Still, he could hear them all about him. Their voices were rustles, sometimes scratchy like the voices in old radios dimmed to a murmur. And they were not laughing now. They sounded confused, like elderly people who had awoken in beds and forgotten where they were.

  He went in low, head down, ears cocked to their sounds. At the far end of the room, he knelt down. Laid the rifle upon the floor. Then fumbled his hands around the two little chairs, patting his shaking hands over their robes, dry as old bread, then over brittle limbs no thicker than woodwind instruments, until he found the first small head.

  ‘You killed them amongst the stones,’ he whispered. ‘Yes, you showed me. Carried them out in wagons to die.’

  He placed his finger atop the slowly moving skull, raised the knife up high, and then brought the blade down.

  Through it went, through skin no stiffer than yellowing paper, and through an avian skull thin as eggshell, and into what remained of a living organ. Old magic may have kept it living, but new steel ended its long and miserable existence; a life that may well have begun when those great trees out there were mere saplings.

  The other seated figure rustled in the darkness and tried to bite his fingers. He heard its dry jaw clacking.

  ‘I saw your old house. I was there. You used to string them up over a basin. You showed me. Did you suckle your God on blood?’

  The second figure was a woman, he sensed, though it was pitch-black in the attic, and they were so old when he had first seen them he could not really be sure. But he found himself amazed at just how accurate his instincts could be when he had nothing else to go on.

  When his fingers found her in the dark, he heard her cartilage beak creak open again, then felt the snap of dry gums upon a finger joint. It did not hurt, but he had to stifle a scream all the same. She resisted to the last, like a dying insect with its stinger raised at a bird’s sharp face.

  He despatched the second fossil swiftly, struck it hard with the knife held like a dagger, and caved in half of its skull while throttling its wizened neck at the same time. He felt the head collapse to dust. Breathed some of it in, coughed, spat.

  He stood up, and where they rattled and muttered against the walls, on either side of the little throne room, he felt for their sharp-featured faces, their old dry heads, their desiccated grinning, and he punched the knife through them. Through them all. One by one. Broke every head to dust. Until nothing whispered or shook within its mooring any longer.

  Once he had finished with them, he bent over and retrieved the rifle. And while turning his thoughts to finding clothes, far out in the woods he heard a sound so terrible, he lost his balance and sat his bare buttocks down in the hot darkness of the attic.

  The dreadful bullock bark. The devil-dog yipping.

  The wet sky, the aged trunks of sleeping trees, the cold unfeeling earth, functioned as an acoustic chamber, and within that space the oldest and most poignant sound of anguish pierced him, and every living thing within earshot, to the marrow. A mother’s
cry.

  Moments later, he heard Surtr too. She unleashed a scream and he knew she had met a sudden and painful end in the claws or teeth of something much greater than herself. Moder was coming home now. Drawn by the loss of her own.

  Luke scrabbled and half fell down the attic stairs. He ran into Loki and Surtr’s old room and peered out at the trees. Little of the sun was showing itself, and seemed to grow afraid and moved back behind the low grey clouds.

  Again, the bullock cough. He could not see her, but knew she was much closer now. Somewhere nearby, Moder’s black flanks were shuddering with emotion, and the yipping that came out of her trembled. She was crazed with rage. Blind. Intent.

  Truck. Truck. Fucking truck.

  Knife in one hand, rifle in the other, naked and begrimed, he ran down the stairs on skittish feet and staggered into the kitchen. Peered out through the window.

  The tiny body of the old woman was gone from the grass.

  He briefly thought of putting the rifle barrel inside his mouth and then a big toe inside the trigger guard.

  The old black presence was invisible but immense; it reared up and covered the house, inflicted so much pressure upon his thoughts they hardened into diamonds of a terror that was total, mindless, pure and complete. He gaped, he pissed down his dirty legs. One arm started to shake so badly, the other had to come around and hold it steady. He made a groaning noise that just did not sound like anything that had ever come out of his mouth before.

  Truck.

  He shuddered across to the table, hyperventilating, shaking to the black soles of his Neanderthal feet.

  Too many things; not enough hands. Rifle. Knife. Keys.

  He put the keys into his mouth, bit down on all the screams that wanted to come out. His teeth oozed around the metal keyring like butter.

  Rifle out before him, the stock banged hard into his shoulder, his saliva dripping all over the keyring, the knife in the palm of the hand that held the rifle barrel steady, he walked back into the silvery morning of the old world, naked.