Adam Nevill - The Ritual

Luke lit another cigarette. ‘We cannot … cannot risk staying lost in this wood for much longer, H.’

‘Spark us one up, mate,’ Hutch said. Luke placed his cigarette between Hutch’s lips. He took another out of the packet for himself. Hutch squinted through the smoke at Luke. ‘The trail must go somewhere. It was cut out of this wood a long time ago. We didn’t follow it from its source, we just kind of happened across it yesterday and followed it east. We originally came in on the far westerly side of a narrow band of forest. I brought us east to correct our position. Out west it gets really thick again. About thirty kilometres deep, I’d say. But if we stay on the track we came in on for as long as we dare, we’ll move faster and avoid all of the fallen logs and shit that made Domja bitch like a baby yesterday. If we can then cut south at some point, we could be out by late afternoon.’

‘But then …’ Luke rested the tip of his tongue between his teeth.

Hutch looked at him, surprised Luke would object to his idea, again. ‘What?’ He heard the irritation hardening his tone.

‘That’s if the woods south of the track clear up at all. And following the track further west will mean new ground again. The unknown. Going somewhere else in this wood that might not be an exit. Our precise downfall yesterday.’

‘Why would you make a track that just endlessly snaked around inside a wood?’ Hutch asked. ‘It has to be the vestige of a way in and out. There’s no sensible alternative, Chief.’

‘I think there is. It’s total ball-ache, but we go back in the direction we came in, then try and pick up from where we crashed through yesterday. Or take that track north and hope it leads to the top edge of the forest.’

‘Oh, fuck off!’ Dom cried out. ‘We’ve been through this! We’d have another day walking across those pissing boulders to get to where we started from. Or another day’s walk to Porjus in the opposite direction.’

‘But we know the way we came in leads out of here for certain. This path might just stop two miles deeper inside this shit. Or run in a straight line to Norway. As soon as we put one foot on it, it’s already leading us in totally the wrong direction.’

Hutch blew out another geyser of grey smoke, and winced. ‘We got so turned around in there, mate. I honestly cannot say whether we will pick up our tracks again. And these two won’t make it back through that crap. We have to stay on the level as much as possible. Phil, how’re your feets?’

‘Not good,’ he said, without turning his head. He’d put his hood up.

‘Fucking fucked up is what they are, like my knee,’ Dom snapped.

Luke turned to face Dom. ‘Well, if you’d hit the gym like we agreed, Dom.’

‘Oh, listen to the gentleman of leisure. I’ve got three kids, mate. Try hitting the gym when you work sixty hours a week and have a family to support.’

Hutch raised both hands. ‘Boys. Boys. We’re wasting time here and we’re getting pissed on. At least on the path we’ll have a bit of purpose. If it goes nowhere, we make a judgement call. And either break south through the crap again or we try and find our way back the way we came in yesterday, like Luke says. But that’s got to be a last resort, considering the condition some of us are in and how difficult it is to even move across that terrain.’

Phil finally spoke, but kept his back to them. ‘The last thing we want is to be in here again at night.’

The very thought of which was exactly why Hutch could not prevent the unnaturally vivid images of the dream from recurring as he walked slowly away from the hovel, with one of Dom’s arms around his shoulders. He’d never sleep walked in his life before.

He could still visualize the details of the dream as if it were a film he had seen the previous evening in a cinema. His mind clawed through the dim and grubby recollections for some kind of sign; some sense that would explain exactly why he had risen from his sleeping bag and climbed the stairs to the attic and then been found kneeling before a hideous rotten effigy.

Two figures had been standing beside him in the dark downstairs of the house. That was how the dream began. Old faces with dirty teeth told him to climb the stairs. Had told him that someone was waiting. Don’t keep him waiting , they had said. Your clothes are in the fire.

And up he had gone. Up, up, up the black wooden stairs. He desperately didn’t want to climb them, but the will of the dream would permit no turning around or going back down. He’d tried to stop his ascent, but remembered going numb and being unable to breathe. So up he went. And to think he had even been physically climbing the stairs at the same time.

‘Not so fast, H!’ Dom called out beside him.

‘Mmm? Sorry.’ Hutch slowed down.

His feet had been bare, the soles black with the filth on the old wooden stairs. Hands out, he’d steadied himself against the dark wood that had felt wet underfoot. He was naked. His body thin and pale and shivery; he’d felt like a little boy tottering for his bath. Yes, he had been smaller, and younger in the dream. He’d desperately wanted to be covered, protected.

There were no windows in the house, just a faint reddish light coming down from up there . Around the corner of the staircase he’d then staggered into the attic, and opened his mouth to call for help. But no sound had come out of his mouth. There was no air inside him, like he was winded.

Inside the red place he’d kept his head down and his eyes fixed on his dirty feet. Dirty and wet. Wet from the piss that had tickled warm against his thighs and dripped down his calves.

He’d tried not to look up, because something was in there with him. Snorting with excitement because it could smell his piss and fear.

Bones. There were bones on the floor. They made it all worse. Especially the ones with the grey bits attached. And some of the little bodies had gone so black he could not tell what they had once been. On the stained planks he’d stepped around the bones, but some had still crunched under his blackened soles and slid around his grimy toes. The bones got bigger as he moved closer to the snorting sound.

And then he could smell it . Dung in straw, cattle sweat and sulphur stink; it made his eyes water. A goaty breath panted over his head and bare chest and made him cough. The taint had still been inside his mouth when Luke woke him.

In the dream, the knocking began when he smelled it . Near him. Sounded like wood banging against wood. In front of him. And he could not prevent a peek at what made the hollow knocking noise.

Black hooves. Once again they reared up in his mind. Big and sharp with yellowish bone at the tip. Wide as a horse’s feet, snapping down against the wooden box it sat inside. Banged them with excitement it did. The black rim of the wooden box was chipped and grooved.

Its glee grew as his soft white body came closer. So close. Coming out of a big head he had heard wet snorts and deep whinnies. Clack, clack, snap went its hot mouth with the yellow teeth inside, like a trap.

Before him, below him, cut smooth into the front of the box had been a small circular gap to rest his throat. So that his head would hang into the unbreatheable musk of devil and animal. His head was to hang below its teat-pocked belly, pinkish under the longer black hairs. Then those hooves would smash down like a hammer onto a dinner plate.

Bits of skull littered the dirty straw between the black stick legs of the thing. The forelegs were long and down they came again and again to make the imbecile rhythm of hoof on wood.

Its body had been so tall, like it had long outgrown its little cradle. And he knew the horns on the terrible head were scratching the beam in the middle of the ceiling.