Adam Nevill: The Ritual

Hutch’s eyes narrowed; they were pale green with long inky lashes and almost too pretty for a man. He took a deep breath, but didn’t look at Dom. He spoke as if he hadn’t heard his friend. ‘It’s got a chimney. Looks solid enough. We can get a fire going. We’ll be as warm as toast in no time.’ Hutch walked to the small porch, built around a door so black it lacked all definition within the front of the house.

‘Hutch. I don’t know. Better not,’ Luke said. This wasn’t right. Neither the house nor breaking into it. ‘Let’s get moving. It won’t be dark until eight. We’ve got another hour and could be out of the forest by then.’

Around Luke the tension from Dom and Phil gathered until it felt like it was squeezing him to a standstill. Phil turned his bulk quickly with a rustle of wet blue Gore-Tex. His doughy face was dark red. ‘What’s wrong with you, Luke? You want to go back into that? Don’t be a stupid arse.’

Dom joined in. As he spoke a drop of spit hit Luke’s cheek. ‘I can’t walk any more. It’s all right for you, your knee isn’t the size of a rugby ball. You’re as bad as the Yorkshire twat who got us into this.’

Luke went dizzy and hot. They would be forced to stay here for a night because Phil was so fat his feet were ruined merely by walking outdoors. His feet were ruined the first morning. That’s when he started bitching about them. Even in London he drove everywhere. He’d lived there fifteen years and never used the Underground once. How was that possible? Dom was no better. He looked about fifty these days, not thirty-four. And every time he swore, it made Luke grind his teeth. Dom was a marketing director for a big bank with a mouth like a hooligan; what had gone wrong? He used to be a superb fast bowler who came close to county cricket, a guy who travelled across South America, and a friend you could stay up with all night, smoking joints. Now he was one of these married men with children, and a forty-six-inch waist, dressed from head to toe in Officers Club casuals, who tutted and sniggered and dismissed him whenever he mentioned some new girl he’d been seeing, or a crazy bar he’d visited back in London.

He recalled his shock when he’d struggled to continue a conversation with either Dom or Phil on the first day of the reunion, when they all met in London the night before the flight. They had laughed at his shared flat in Finsbury Park before they and Hutch fell to the usual banter, as if the three of them had been seeing each other every week for the last fifteen years. Perhaps they had. Right from the start he’d felt left out. A lump formed in his throat.

Hutch must have seen his face. ‘Chieftain,’ he said, and winked at Luke, conspiratorially, like a grown-up coming to the rescue of a boy being picked on in a playground. It just made Luke’s face flush hotter, but his anger immediately switched to himself and against his own poisonous thoughts. Hutch followed the wink with a warm smile. ‘I don’t think we have much choice, buddy. We have to get dry. We’ll never do it in a tent. We’ve been pissed on all day.’

‘Knock knock, we’re coming in,’ Phil called out and joined Hutch before the front door with more purpose than he’d shown all day while floundering and wheezing in the undergrowth. Suddenly, Luke couldn’t stop himself glaring, all over again, at Phil’s rounded shoulders and pointy head in the blue hood. He actually hated the sight of him right now, so he made a decision: once he was back in London, he’d even avoid their one drink a year.

‘You can stay outside with the wolf that gave that moose a good seeing-to,’ Dom said with a half-smile on his face.

Luke refused to meet Dom’s eye, but found his voice; a tight, aggressive, sarcastic thing that slightly shocked him when he heard it come out of his own mouth. But he didn’t care what he said, just wanted the others to know how he was feeling. ‘Or we could feed you and your useless knee to him, and while he’s busy stoving you in, we’ll head to Skaite.’

Dom paused as he walked after Hutch and Phil. Disappointment and surprise softened his features for a moment before anger tightened them. ‘Spoken with all the petulance of arrested development. Stay outside you silly arse and you can freeze to death. Who’s going to miss you but some tart. This is for bloody real, if you hadn’t noticed. I’d like to get home in one piece. People depend on me back there.’

Hutch snapped away from the door again, realizing the irritation behind him had turned to provocation. ‘Time gentlemen, please. If you don’t cool it, I’ll fetch me a long piece of green cedar and stripe your arses.’

Phil burst into his dirty laugh that sounded unpleasant near the house, but didn’t bother to turn around. He banged and pushed at the door.

Too angry to move or breathe, Luke stared ahead, meeting no one’s eye. As if the exchange had meant nothing to him, Dom followed Hutch back to the house. He even laughed. ‘You’d enjoy that. Beating the buttocks of a fine young man in the woods.’

‘I would. And I wouldn’t check my swing either. You’d get it backhand.’

‘There’s no lock. But it’s stuck,’ Phil said.

Hutch removed his pack. ‘Not for long. Step aside.’

Luke took the cigarette packet from the side pocket of his wet combat trousers. His hands were shaking. This was not the time to be analysing the situation, but he couldn’t help it. Could not stop himself thinking about the four of them. Because the trip had been such a disappointment. Not because of the weather; he’d have come out here even if he had known it would rain every day. He had been so excited about hanging out with them all again and looked forward to it for the six months following Hutch’s wedding, when the idea was first mooted. But the trip had been so wretched because he recognized so little of the others now. Which made him wonder if he had ever really known them at all. Fifteen years was a long time, but part of him had still clung to the notion that they were his best friends.

But he was truly on his own out here. They had nothing in common any more.

Once the door was open, Dom, Phil and Hutch rooted through their packs for torches. Nothing could be seen through the space Hutch had created by directing the stamping sole of his boot around the iron door handle.

With each bang of Hutch’s foot on the shuddering wood, Luke had winced. The idea of it opening made him nervous. Reluctance to join the others at the door was worsened by his sulking after the confrontation with Dom, which now made him feel foolish, again. But he was also ashamed by this vandalism. He remained in the paddock in the rain while the others crowded around the door egging each other on.

Like the other three, he was dead on his feet. And wet and hungry and thoroughly miserable. He just wanted it all to end — the tortuous walking, the rain, the dark unpleasant forest — but they should not be reduced to this: breaking into private property. A place that just wasn’t right. And had they really thought it through? This was a place no more than a few miles from the carcass in the tree. Something they could make no sense of, but should get as far away from as possible before nightfall.

Everyone’s judgement was impaired. Nothing said or done now could be trusted. But somehow it wouldn’t be forgotten or forgiven.

Slowly, Luke walked towards the black house. To the sound of their voices. The others were inside now, all talking at the same time. Someone was laughing. Phil. Luke threw his cigarette into the weeds and considered joining them and forcing himself back into the camaraderie.

A crash erupted behind him. A tremendous splintering of wood. From out of the trees.