Adam Nevill - The Ritual

The rain came down in silvery spikes. The jagged pieces of exposed sky he could see through the upper reaches of the wet spruce bordering and overhanging the clearing were bleak and dark with rain. A bit of white sky was all you got up here at about 5 a.m., then it just went grey. The path was somewhere beneath the undergrowth. It must have been, because it had once led to a building.

Luke stood still and stared across the clearing at what presented itself to him on the other side. A church. And what he had just crawled through was a cemetery. A very old one too if the graves had been marked by standing stones.

None of them said anything when Luke reappeared, without his rucksack. He’d been careless rushing back to find them; a deep scratch was hot and inflamed down his left cheek. It had bled along his jaw line and coagulated. And he was unaware that the tree branch that had lashed into his mouth had cut his top lip and painted his teeth with a scarlet film. Dom and Hutch just stared at his wild eyes, breathless attempts to speak, and at his wet and cut face.

On his way back from the cemetery, he had been gripped with an urgency that made him feel hot and loose and angry inside. He’d begun punching branches that hung across his return path; had even stopped to smash flat some small toadstools. Because getting back to the others had been harder than his leaving of them, as if the forest forbade it. He was reminded of his dream and was not grateful at all for the recollection. He’d stopped a dozen times and unhooked the sharp ends of broken branches from his jacket. It was now torn under one arm. He could not remember the undergrowth being that bad coming the other way. The constant hampering and snagging of the foliage, and his uncoordinated stumbling through it, made him hot and dizzy with a rage familiar to him, and always unhealthy. He had cursed the wood, cursed Hutch, cursed Dom, cursed this world and his reduced position in it. He’d boiled. And every step of the way back to the others, his thoughts had been dark with the image of the decrepit broken church in the dismal wet world.

And when he found them again, he could not believe how slowly the other three had been moving, how little ground they had covered since he had been away. He felt as if he’d had to retrace his steps all the way back to the same place where he had left them.

Luke straightened up from where he had been bent over to catch his breath. ‘I thought I’d lost you.’

‘What happened?’ Hutch asked.

‘Eh?’

‘Your gear? Where is it?’

‘I dumped it. Was slowing me down.’

Dom looked at Hutch and frowned, as if this act of madness confirmed a belief he had long held about Luke. ‘What the fuck you going to sleep in then?’

‘Not permanently. Just so’s I could get back to you guys faster.’

‘Why?’ Hutch said, with a nonchalance that annoyed Luke. ‘You find something?’

‘Because …’

‘Because what?’ Dom asked.

What the hell was wrong with them, ambling down the path like this? Dom and Hutch had been smiling about something when he reappeared. He even thought he had heard them laughing from a distance. ‘Are you even taking this seriously? ’ he asked and immediately wished he hadn’t when he saw Dom and Hutch’s surprised faces. Phil stood behind them. He had more colour in his cheeks now, but looked at Luke with a mixture of disappointment and caution. The hood of his coat was half off his head and made him look ridiculous.

‘’Course we are, you silly arse,’ Dom barked. ‘Think I’m enjoying this?’

Hutch said, ‘Dom,’ quietly. But there was something in that rebuke, something about Dom’s flat, stolid, scowling face; and something in Hutch’s supporting grin, that made Luke think his vision had lightened, as if the terrible pressure of rage that suddenly filled his body again had forced the darkness out of his eyes. He felt weightless and could hear nothing but a hot rushing through his ears. His voice seemed to originate from somewhere outside of his head. He didn’t recognize himself in his own voice, as if it was a recording played back to him, to his embarrassment. ‘You call me that again and I’ll put you on your fucking arse.’

He watched his own progress, as if disembodied, as he walked three steps up to Dom, whose face went pale and stiff as if he’d been forced to look at something unpleasant.

A remote part of Luke remained conscious of what the other bigger part of himself was now doing on instinct. It was the rage he brought back to them from the trees; the endless wet trees that would never let them go. And it demanded an eruption from him. ‘Did you hear me, bitch?’ he shouted into Dom’s face and watched a droplet of froth from his own shouting mouth hit Dom’s cheekbone.

‘Luke!’ Hutch shouted from beside him. ‘Woah!’

But he was not to be brought out of this trembling mad place until something snapped him out of it. With both hands, he shoved Dom backwards, hard. Dom lost his balance and dropped his weight onto his bad knee and then fell sideways into the undergrowth. Something swished behind Luke and hard fingers clamped around his biceps. He was pulled back and away from Dom, his feet clearing the ground at one point. All the strength seemed to leave his body for a moment. He scrabbled to find his feet when Hutch let him go a few feet down the trail.

‘You fuck!’ Dom struggled to his feet; all chubby arse, shirt pulled out, and clumsy stiff movements. Then Dom was coming at him, the limp gone. Hutch was knocked aside. The whites of Dom’s eyes were going pink to red. His freckled knuckles moved slowly then made a wet slap sound against Luke’s mouth that he felt like a push, not a blow, but it made his top lip instantly go numb. Is that it, he thought. Is that all a punch feels like?

They seemed to stare at each other for a long time, until the idea that he had been struck mingled with the supporting notion that this was a contact that stated he should just continue to accept Dom’s jibes, criticisms, bullish rants, and his disregard for anything Luke had said since they had met the night before the trip. But this role assigned to him in their little group hierarchy was not one he would accept any longer.

When he swung his fist from the left, he’d taken his arm back enough to make his shoulder go tight, lock and then release his hand like a spring. Dom’s arm didn’t rise quickly enough to defer the strike, and Luke’s knuckles impacted with a loud smack under Dom’s right eye.

Dom’s head snapped back, and his expression was one of bewilderment and distaste. Luke’s second fist came in from the other side. He watched his own arm, in its wet khaki sleeve, whip about quickly to make his hard fist strike Dom again, this time on the jaw. He had been aiming for the jaw.

Dom went down quickly, and didn’t get his arms out to break his fall, because his hands were still clutching at his face.

Hutch and Phil took a step away from Luke, almost cowering. They looked at him like he was a dangerous stranger. They were shocked. Frightened of him. But he wanted to keep on punching. He wished Dom had not gone down so fast. Then he could feel the satisfaction of hitting his face really hard again, and again, with clenched fists.

It had not hurt his hands at all and the sudden release of energy, twinned with Dom’s fall, gave him a sudden lunatic rush of euphoria. His body seemed to re-form itself again into a tight, stable and defined frame; his whited-out vision rushed back into his head, and returned to full colour; his hearing cleared as if a blockage of warm bath water had just drained out. He realized he was panting so hard he had started to wheeze.

Dom sat up with his legs splayed and his head dipped over his chest. Both of his hands were clutched around his mouth. No one could see his face.