Mo Hayder: Ritual

Flea's mouth moved against the rough fabric, a word coming out: 'Mum?' It sounded so far off, her own voice — as if it was coming from a distant hill — but Jill Marley heard it. She turned, looking into the trees questioningly, not quite seeing her daughter. Her expression was unmistakably sad — Flea could tell from the straight set to her mouth, the reflection in her eyes.

'Oh, Mum.' Her throat tightened. She reached up a hand to touch the image. 'Mum? What is it?'

Jill stared into the trees. Then, slowly, cautiously, because still she couldn't see her daughter, she began to speak. Flea knew what she was saying was very important, and she strained forward to listen, but at that moment the image faded and Flea was back where she remembered being before, on the sofa, the fabric against her cheek and nothing left of the hallucination but the notion, so clear it was like the wind or the swell of the sea, that the words Mum had been about to say were: 'You looked in the wrong place. We went the other way.'

We went the other way.

Lying on the sofa, the late sun streaming through the gaps in the shutters on to her red eyelids, she knew, without having to question it, that her mother could only have been talking about one thing.

She was talking about the accident.

25 November

Turns out not to be a blow-job that Skinny's after. Turns out he's got other things on his mind.

He takes Mossy to a small car park next to a row of garages and they get into a beat-up old Peugeot where Skinny gives him a hit of gear so good it makes him want to cry.

'Let me put this on?' Skinny asks, after a while, when he can see the H is working on Mossy. He holds up an eye mask, the sort you see them wearing in ads for long-haul airlines. 'I'm going to take you somewhere — take you to meet someone who can help you. But him want you to wear this thing. Him not want you see where him live. What do you want? Do you want to wear it or not?'

Mossy takes it from Skinny and dangles it from his finger, smiling at it. One thing everyone always says about Mossy is that he's not afraid to take a chance. 'Someone's going to «help» me?'

'Yes. What you want? Money? Or more H? Plenty good H, eh?'

Mossy has this picture suddenly, of being driven off to a wasteland and having a bullet in the back of his head. Then he thinks about money, and the suicidal part of him thinks, What the fuck? He snaps the mask round his head and lies back in the seat. 'Go on, then,' he says, still smiling. 'Start the show.'

There's a few moments' silence, and he wonders whether to take the mask off, then the car shifts and the door opens and slams and the other door opens and he realizes Skinny has got out of the front and into the back with him. 'Hey? What're you doing?' But he feels Skinny's hands on his face, he can feel the calloused fingertips like they're made out of hemp rope, and the fingers smoothing the mask down, holding it tight. He doesn't reach up to stop Skinny. He just waits in the silence, and there they sit until he hears footsteps and someone else gets into the car. The chassis shifts and groans and someone's adjusting the front seat, but no one speaks. Then the car engine fires and Mossy licks his lips. The adventure is about to start.

'Bring it on,' he goes, laughing. 'Bring it on.'

It's like being in one of those gangsterland New York movies, the sort Ray Liotta'd be in, and Mossy wonders seriously once or twice if his number's up. Even with the smack his head is keen enough to feel out the little details. The scent of aftershave — that comes from the driver, not the little black guy who sits next to him holding the mask in place, and smells of something different, something bitter, like roots or soil.

They bump along and he can hear other cars, buses, motorbikes passing them in both directions. He can hear the indicator clicking, but still no one speaks. He's lost track of where they're going and when they pull up and pitch him gently out on to cold ground his heart speeds up. This is it? The end?

But it isn't. There's a bit of walking and a voice from somewhere: a bloke, but he can't really hear what he says because it's not a local accent. Then Mossy hears a key in a door and he's led into a building — he can feel the change of temperature. It's warm in here with carpet underfoot and it smells worse than the car. It smells like the old crackhouse that started up last year on the estate, a bastard of a place it was, with people in there half dead — once someone completely dead and in a weird shape, bent over a table with his drawers down and everyone whispered how he was being fucked when his heart suddenly decided to stop, and everyone bet there was some frightened old John somewhere out in the city waiting for the filth to knock on the door. Somewhere a TV's playing. Mossy's guided round furniture, and then there's a long corridor, and Skinny's still guiding him, with the driver walking in front. There's the sound of a door being opened, a curtain being pulled back and keys, heavy and metal like a gaoler's keys, and a rusty squeak of a gate opening. But this time Mossy balks.

He pulls back, suddenly unsure. 'Nah. Don't like this.'

'It's OK, son,' goes a voice he hasn't heard before. The driver? 'D'you want us to take you back?'

Already Mossy can feel that the hit's got to its best. There's that faint sinking of something in the back of his neck that's telling him the turning-point isn't far. That in a few hours he'll be back in the agonies, wanting to die.

'You've got something for me? There'd better be something for me.'

'Come through,' goes the voice. 'You can see it. As soon as you step through.'

There's a bitter taste in his mouth, but he steps through anyway. He has to lift his feet because the opening is smaller than a normal door and he wonders what the fuck sort of a place he's in. Behind him he hears the door being locked and again he pulls a little, but he can feel Skinny's small scratchy hands on his arms, leading him, pushing him forward. The air's better in here, just a faint smell of burning and damp, but better than it was in the other place.

'Here,' goes Skinny. 'We's here.' And he pushes him down on to a seat.

Mossy gropes for the mask and drags it off. He blinks. They're on their own, no driver, in a room with no daylight coming in — the only light is a lopsided standard lamp next to the sofa — and a three-bar electric fire plugged into an extension lead that trails off into the darkness. There's old wallpaper on the walls, but it's been scribbled on like this is where kids have been living and someone's pinned up teenagers' magazine posters of Russell Crowe in Gladiator , Brad Pitt in Troy — another one of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones wearing shades, the words Protecting the World From the Scum of the Universe blazing above them. Mossy shuffles his feet. The carpet is worn out, a sort of sickly purple colour, you can see the foam backing in places, and in the corner a ghetto-blaster, a kettle, a box of tea-bags and a packet of sugar.

'Where's this place to, then?' He turns to look over his shoulder. There's a little corridor with a window behind them, but the glass is broken and it's covered with a grille, 'SITEX' stamped on it like the stuff the council used to cover up the ones in the crackhouse after the dead body on the table. It feels like someone's started to convert this place into something then got bored, because bare wires are poking out of the plaster in places and holes are bashed in walls and Mossy knows that the only way out is through the gate they just came through. 'This where you live then, is it?'

'Yes'm,' goes Skinny. He's standing at a wooden unit that's been torn out of a nameless kitchen and stranded here in this fuck-awful place. 'I live here. This be my home.' He gets something out of the drawer and brings it to Mossy, whose heart jumps. He knows what's in it even before Skinny opens it. He can feel his legs and stomach go a bit fluid.