Adam Nevill - The Ritual

Momentarily, Luke looked grateful; at least he always appreciated how much thought went into where Hutch took them. Because he always invested himself wholly into anything he organized. Always wanted his companions to see something wonderful. It was his fault they were lost. But even though they were lost, he reminded himself, at least they were stranded inside something so few people, even most Swedes, would ever see. Something this old and undisturbed. He thought of reminding Dom of this, then decided against it. Because it no longer served as a source of compensation for him either, if he were honest with himself.

‘It’s on all of the trees.’ They heard Phil’s voice, coming to them across the small clearing about the black hovel they were still trying to escape from. It had been twenty minutes since they had dressed in their grubby, smoky clothes and packed up. ‘Goes in a circle. Round the house.’

Luke, Hutch and Dom all turned to look at Phil on the far northern side of the clearing. He was standing near the thin track that wound outwards into the darkness. They all exchanged glances with tight-lipped faces.

‘What’s that, mate?’ Hutch called out.

‘On the old ones. The ones with the dead branches.’

‘What’s he going on about?’ Dom asked.

Hutch shrugged. ‘Guy’s really shaken up.’

‘You think he’s lost it?’

‘I think we all did last night. If Luke hadn’t woken me up, I’d still be up in that attic. Kneeling before the goat.’

Laughter burst from Luke. It sounded too high in the still air and in the enclosure of the trees around the hovel. It sounded inappropriate, like laughing out loud in church.

Hutch smiled. ‘Jesus, boys. How are we going to P.R. this when we get home?’

Dom slapped the back of Hutch’s head, his face expanding into a tight and forced grin. ‘We gotta get there first, you useless Yorkshire bastard. Never mind virgin forests and Ice Age fungus. I want to put me feet back on concrete.’

Hutch side-stepped the second swat. ‘Come on. Let’s go see what the fat man wants.’

‘What is it, mate?’ Hutch asked Phil, who was leaning forward with one dirty hand spread on the dark bark of a thick tree trunk. Phil hadn’t said much to anyone since they woke him, and he’d shrugged off any attempt to speak of how he came to be naked in that tiny sordid space that they had all used as a urinal at some point the night before, except for Luke who had gone outside. Luke, Hutch and Dom were all too tired and shaken to talk of their own experiences in any detail either, each acknowledging in an unspoken way it was the sort of thing you only discussed once you were at a safe distance from the source. But the night seemed to have affected Phil worse than the others.

‘Here. See it? And it’s on all of the other trees on this side.’ Where the bark had been sheared away or smoothed down in a band about the tree at waist-height, Phil’s red fingers pointed at a series of marks or scratches, cut deep into the wood, which had then darkened with age but not become entirely invisible.

Hutch bent over and traced a finger around the marks.

‘What is it?’ Luke asked.

Dom sighed with irritation and looked up at the sky.

‘Runes,’ Hutch said. ‘Remember those runes on the stones we saw in Gammelstad?’ He glanced over his shoulder at Dom and Phil. ‘Me and Luke saw some in Skansen and Lund too, a couple of years back.’

‘No way,’ Phil said, his face stricken, as if this observation by Hutch was evidence to him of something far worse than their current dilemma.

‘Yes way. Good spot, Phillers. I bet these are real old too. Vikings used them about a thousand years ago.’

‘They can’t be that old,’ Luke said, leaning down beside Hutch.

‘No shit. But someone still knew how to use them after the Vikings.’

Luke placed an index finger on one. ‘Looks like a B. The trees get how old?’

‘This is a Scots pine. A big one too. Dead as a door nail, but they can live for about six hundred years.’

Dom threw both hands into the air, his waterproof swishing as he moved. ‘OK. OK. So what’s the plan, Time Team? I’d say runes on old bastard trees are at the bastard bottom on our list of priorities, boys.’

Hutch and Luke moved away from the tree.

‘It’s all wrong,’ Phil said to himself. ‘Wrong.’

‘Yessum,’ Hutch said. Then looked at the sky, so pale and white, the sun itself could have been white. Rain began to patter against their coats and rucksacks. ‘Great.’

From the breast pocket of his coat, Hutch pulled out the plastic wallet with condensation on it. The map was sealed inside. He knelt down and removed the map from its sheath. He unfolded it by one half and put the compass against it. ‘Chaps. I reckon we’re about here. A fair way inside the tip of this band of woodland. I was trying to get us down to here yesterday, so we can pick up the Käppoape trail. A morning’s walk on that and we’d be beside the Stora Luleälven River. Following that east to Skaite for a few hours would put us by the overnight cabins there. And a branch office for the Environment Protection Board. But we can’t make it any further south through the scrub here. This place is so old, if there was ever another path going south out of this clearing, it’s gone now. And if the undergrowth doesn’t clear up, there is still the best part of a day between us and the end of the forest.’

‘So what?’ Dom said.

Hutch wrinkled his eyes and gritted his teeth in a wince. ‘Well, we can’t risk following that track north.’

Phil said nothing. He stood apart from them and stared at the house.

‘Hang on. Hang on. Gimme the map,’ Dom demanded.

Hutch pulled it away from Dom’s grasp. ‘What are you going to do with it hobble-horse?’

‘Let me see, you Yorkshire ring-piece.’ Dom snatched the map from Hutch’s hands and then held it a few feet from his face.

Luke hung his head and pulled his fingers down his cheeks. ‘Maybe we should go back the way we came in.’

Dom shook his head. ‘No. If we go back the way we came in, it’ll take a whole day just to get back to where we started from yesterday at noon.’

‘As long as we don’t get lost again,’ Luke said. No one else took him up on the observation. Hutch and Dom stared at each other with tense faces.

Dom’s jaw trembled. ‘And then another day to get back to the STF cabin we left two days ago!’

‘Agreed,’ Hutch said to Dom. ‘Or the same amount of time again to get to Porjus on your bad leg. So I think we should see where the track we used to get here goes, in the opposite direction. Then see if we can cut down south from it at some point.’

Dom frowned. ‘Well, it ran from west to east in a straight line. It’ll take us straight back out west. What’s west?’

‘Norway,’ Luke said.

Dom slapped the map down against his thighs. ‘We need to get south, H, to come out on the other side of this blasted heath.’

‘You don’t say. But we can’t get through, dufus. There is no way we can move south from here. And we’ve enough food for one more day, tops. Considering how many calories we’re going to be expending walking on this terrain today, we’ll need every crumb of it. For argument’s sake, if it takes us all day to get out, we’ll have to camp tonight above the river. Tomorrow, on the outside of the blasted heath, our army will be marching on an empty stomach for about half a day. And that’s the worst-case scenario we are facing. So there is no need to panic, but we have to make the right choice now. No indecision. I’m confident that if we just retrace the path it’ll lead us, more or less, above a good point to make an exit. With any luck, the trail might naturally turn south at some point. Skaite can’t be that far. A day, day and a half tops at a very limited pace.’