The Ritual (17 page)

Somewhere within the mad euphoria that propelled him out there to stab and hack, to slash, to bellow, to not think or care in the reddish place a man can inhabit, he heard his name being called repeatedly by Dom and Phil. Their voices drew him back into himself and he lost momentum, entertained doubt. But then grew hot with rage again and shouted so he could stay within the place he needed to be in to face anything, anything at all. ‘Come on! Come on!’

He paused and crouched down. Turned about by increments, staring so hard into the lightening forest his forehead throbbed with pressure. He wanted to see it. To suddenly close with it. His teeth ground. ‘Come on!’ Then again with his chin raised and shoulders back, ‘Come on!’

The forest remained still. No bird sang or called. Life paused.

Somewhere to his right a branch snapped and the sound cracked off every trunk for what sounded like miles.

Luke moved to the sound, keeping his head down and shoulders tense. Then found himself rushing at full speed to the place where the silence had been broken. Unthinking, blind with the red maelstrom that foamed and roared in his ears, he leapt over a slippery log and kicked noisily through the bracken. ‘Where are you, bitch?’

He saw nothing. In the distance, their cries rising ever more frantically, Dom and Phil begged him to return to his mind.

‘Come on. Come on and find me,’ he said in a low voice, every word tighter than the last, speaking to the solemn trees and wet verdure, the dead wood and foot-deep leaf mulch, the fungus and thorns, the shadowy air and distant mist atop the green tinted rocks, to all that hid this terrible and unnatural thing. Because only now, like this, could he face whatever it was that could do such things to a man. And at no other time. So this is a place he told himself he must return to; must save some deep part of himself for when the time came to die out here. And it would not be easy for their hunter. He would not go quickly or quietly. He swore this to the oldest forest in Europe.

After a long moment of remaining still, he began to take careful steps back towards the others.

THIRTY-THREE

‘What did you see, Dom? What did you see?’ Luke panted as much as spoke. His whole body shivered as the adrenaline drained from his muscles.

Dom and Phil were wary of him. They stared at the mad stranger with their shocked faces like the people on the underground platform after his fight; those who stared from the open doors of the carriages and through the yellow windows at the maniac who had punched a stranger out cold. Dom and Phil did not know him. How little do we know of anyone, let alone ourselves? Luke thought in the kind of clarity he had experienced no more than a dozen times in his entire life. ‘What came in Dom? What was in your tent?’

Dom shook his head. ‘I don’t fucking know. It was pitch-black.’

‘Think. Was it big? Bulky like a bear? On all fours, like a dog?’

Dom looked bewildered, breathless. He was showing too much of his eyes. ‘Big. Stank. Like, like a wet animal, but worse.’

‘Did it make a sound?’

‘I don’t …’ He screwed up his face and slapped both hands over his ears. ‘Like when a dog gets something in its mouth. Oh, Jesus. Don’t make me … It had him in its mouth.’

Luke nodded, straightened his back. Looked over his shoulder as his chest rose and fell, rose and fell.

‘A bear. It’s a big bear,’ Phil said, his whole face shaking, his red eyes full of water. ‘Big cat. They escape. Private zoos. A … A … Wolf.’

‘We need to know. Need to know as much about it as possible. ’ Luke looked at Dom and then at Phil, lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘It’s been following us all day. It made sure we saw Hutch. Arranged it. Animals … wouldn’t do that.’

‘How?’ Phil asked, his voice like his face, aghast at the dreadful impossibility of it all.

‘It’s hunted us for three days. Maybe as soon as we came into this forest. First day, we were supposed to find that animal in the tree.’ Luke lit a cigarette, his movements slow, incongruously calm and deliberate. ‘And the house. The effigy in the attic. The goddamned church. What you saw in the cemetery. It’s all connected. Somehow.’

Dom and Phil stood close together, their eyes not leaving the forest that stretched forever around them.

‘Come on,’ Dom said, his voice shaking. ‘It’s an animal. A fucking wolf or something. Don’t start with that crazy shit. It’s not the right place or time.’

‘How can a wolf, a bear, a wolverine, whatever, put a body up in a tree like that? Eh? Think, man.’

Dom’s face made it clear how hard he was struggling with the very idea that what they were dealing with was not just beyond their combined imaginations, but also impossible. He looked ill, pale, haggard, and shuffled his good leg a few inches while the other remained bent at the knee, useless. It needed to be raised and straight, Luke thought inappropriately, and stupidly, and emotionlessly at such a time as this.

‘A man. Some kind of maniac,’ Dom said.

‘Possible,’ Luke replied, nodding, hoping. ‘Some Swedish hillbilly with a hard-on for tourists. This shit is supposed to happen all the time, in America, Australia. Not in Sweden, but who knows? Maybe it does. We’ve found a bit of the country not too many people seem to know about. Or if they did, they’re not around now to talk about it. That church was full of dead people. Some of the bones … They weren’t new, but they weren’t that old either.’

‘Sacrifice,’ Phil said in a timid voice.

Luke and Dom looked at him. His pointy blue hood was pulled up again and he stood with his back to them, staring into the trees. Back in the direction Hutch was displayed. From over Phil’s shoulder, Luke could see one of the actual trees they had stumbled away from, and a pale foot was visible through the branches. He thought of his own sudden mad charge into the forest and suddenly felt cold and sick down to the soles of his boots. His balance deserted him for a moment, and he swayed until a shuffle of his feet moored him again.

‘What are you talking about?’ Dom sounded angry.

Luke raised a hand to quieten him; looked at Phil. ‘Go on, mate.’

Phil looked at the ground. ‘I had a dream. In that house. I remember bits of it. There were people in it.’

‘What the fuck are you on about?’ Dom demanded.

‘Dom,’ Luke hissed through his clenched teeth. He turned back to Phil. ‘I had one too.’

Phil swivelled towards Luke sharply and stared at him; the eyes in his red and sweating face were wild and so full of fear it was hard to look into them and impossible to look away.

Luke nodded. ‘Yes, mate. In the dream I was trapped. Out here. Caught up in the trees. With … with that sound. Circling me.’

Dom slid to the ground, his back against a tree, his body slack with despair. He had dreamed too. And Luke wanted to know of what. Wanted every scant clue on offer. Their survival would depend upon it. He’d lived ten years of his life in London amongst people whose entire vocal output was a public relations exercise, who spun the truth of their existences into scenarios designed to provoke envy. People who couldn’t face the idea that things weren’t going right for them. By not speaking of something negative, or allowing themselves to even think about it, the problem no longer existed. He’d once envied them, then felt contemptuous. But he was not like them. In fact, he was their opposite. He’d always analysed the crap in his life forensically. Perhaps the attitude held him back, ruined any chance of real and sustained happiness; this refusal to delude himself. But there was no place for lunatic optimism out here, or denial of the facts, no matter how preposterous they were. Luke found he had almost accepted the situation, and wondered if it was because he always expected the very worst to befall him, all of the time, in every aspect of his life.

‘I was stuck,’ Luke said. ‘And something was hunting me.’ Like a premonition, he wanted to say. ‘It was so real. Vivid, you know? And Hutch. I found him in the attic. Sleep walking. And he’d seen something awful too. Something in a dream.’ Dom was trying not to listen. Luke raised both hands in the air to add emphasis to what he was saying. ‘We all lost it in that place. And were too embarrassed in the light of day to confront it.’ He pointed at Dom. ‘You wouldn’t let us. And you still want to pretend it isn’t happening. Well fuck that shit. We’d better open our eyes to this. Now.’ Luke stared at Phil and nodded at him.

Phil swallowed. Took a breath. ‘They sacrificed people. I think. In that house. To something. A long time ago.’

Luke nodded. ‘When that church was open for business and that cemetery wasn’t so overgrown. The people in that basement were in a really bad way. Murdered.’

Phil raised his face to look at a portion of sky visible through the canopy. ‘They hung them. Strung them up for it. I think it was younger then. But it’s still here. They’re gone. The old people I saw in my dream. Who … fed it. But
it
is still here.’

Dom stared into the trees in silence.

THIRTY-FOUR

‘I’ll never get across it.’ Bright-red skin shone through the patchwork of dirt on Dom’s face. He leaned a shoulder against a tree, angling the crutch into the spongy ground to hold himself upright. The crutch was a discarded tree branch at the right length and thick enough to be sturdy; it even had a V-shape crook to slip under an armpit. A third attempt at a walking aid; the first two having been discarded as ineffective. Luke found them all in the undergrowth after they left the dismal place where Hutch still hung from the trees.

Sat on a broad rock at the edge of the gorge, Luke tossed the tent bag to one side and let the two rucksacks he had been carrying drop to the ground with a smack. Phil came to a standstill behind him, hands on his knees, bowed by exhaustion and disappointment. His breath wheezed through his open mouth.

‘When will we ever get a break?’ Dom said to himself.

‘Take a hit off that inhaler, mate,’ Luke said to Phil, without looking at him. ‘You sound awful.’

Phil rummaged in the pocket of his waterproof.

Clambering in a tight pack, through two miles of undergrowth-tangle on increasingly stony ground that rose uphill, only to emerge through the treeline and be confronted by a valley with steep sides, returned a familiar anxiety to Luke. The notion that had become an idea, and now felt like an acceptance of a fact that they would die out here, threatened to swallow him again.

Dipping away from their feet, large boulders covered the descent into the ravine; the exposed surfaces of the rocks were yellow and pale green with lichen. In the basin of the gorge, a forest of long-stemmed plants with rubbery umbrella-like leaves stretched for thirty metres to the other side, where a rocky ascent waited to take them back onto a swampy soil dense with fir and pine. A strip marsh. Luke checked his watch: 1 p.m.

A soft quiet light fell into the gorge; the most light they had seen falling from the flat grey sky since the cemetery the day before. The rain came down steadily inside the light, chilling the cleaner air. It had a force to its vertical descent and had become increasingly audible against the surrounding rocks. It would become drenching soon; Luke could feel it, could anticipate it now.

Motivated by a fear that would have become group hysteria had they allowed their tired minds to dwell upon it, they had left poor Hutch behind them at eleven and put their heads down and into a slow but consistent progression upwards to this: a gorge, insurmountable in their condition. It stretched out of sight in both directions, until the sudden crevice turned away through the misty trees.

The fact that Hutch was no longer alive –
alive
– had not completely registered with any of them. It could not; their exhaustion forbade it. Luke welcomed the numbness; such an incomprehensible fact had stunned his emotions. But now and again, the full truth would crash back into his thoughts, and those of the others, and someone would sob, or say, ‘Oh, God no,’ to themselves as they all hobbled and staggered through the trees together. It was
inconceivable
. They were living in the inconceivable.

‘Water. And some calories,’ Luke said, hoping to regain some clarity. Dehydration was making his thoughts vague. Ideas came and went, swimming weakly. His lungs were flat, his speech slurring. He was too tired to do much but pant a few words at the others. ‘Take a load off. We’ve earned it. Never mind this bollocks, we’ve made good progress this morning. You’ve done well. Both of you.’

It was the first time he’d really spoken for over an hour. He’d been too tired even to pant monosyllables of encouragement or advice to the others. Carrying the tent, his own rucksack on his back and Dom’s pack strapped to his front, the morning’s hike on rocky terrain had taken him to the end of his endurance and it was only early afternoon. Between the two straps of the packs, his shoulders had been squeezed into terrible aches he could not relieve by repositioning the weight. He’d bitten down on the discomfort and just pushed on until his vision blurred. And yet he had still needed to stop every few minutes when one of the others called out to tell him to ‘hold up’ or ‘slow down’, worried he was pulling too far ahead of them. His neck now throbbed with pain after having to look either side of Dom’s rucksack to see where he was placing his feet. A twisted ankle and they might as well all strip naked and wait for the end.

He hated the lack of mobility, especially with his arms. If they had been attacked precious seconds would have been lost while he struggled out of the straps and loops. And their opponent was fast. Fast and silent, unless it chose to taunt them from a distance.

It could have taken any one of them within the last two hours, and Luke knew it. They’d eventually become too tired to continue the furtive vigilance around whatever they had been crashing and stumbling through. Maybe whatever or whoever it was only killed when it was hungry. The thought made Luke feel sick.

But his carrying of the rucksacks and tent was the only solution to increasing Dom’s speed on his one good leg. His bad knee was tumescent and discoloured. There was no definition at all around the knee cap. The skin under the bandage was tight and hot to the touch. Just looking at it made Luke’s eyes water. To mount even a slight gradient Dom shuffled sideways, using the crutch like an ice axe while dragging his bad leg behind him so as not to place any weight on it at all. The leg needed to be raised and rested, maybe for three or four days before he should move again. The more he stumbled about on the joint the worse it was becoming. All morning Dom’s face had been set in a permanent rictus from the pain and the fear of more pain if he slipped or knocked his knee.