Adam Nevill - The Ritual

He turned around and stared at the wall of dark wood they had just walked out of. Beside the silvery rain falling past the trees and the chaos of bracken between the thick trunks, nothing moved. But the terrific sound of strong fresh wood being snapped still rang through his ears. A trace of an echo, like the hollow sound made by a stone bouncing off tree trunks, seemed to pass away, deep into the forest.

What could possibly have broken a tree like that? Somewhere inside there, not too far back, he could almost see the pale sappy fibres and spikes breaking from the bark of a thick limb. Ripped from a blackened trunk like an arm from a torso.

Swallowing, and suddenly feeling weaker and more insignificant than he could ever remember, Luke couldn’t move. Pulse up between his ears, he stood still, disorientated with fear, like he was waiting for something to smash out of the wood and rush towards him. He briefly imagined a terrific rage and strength, a terrible intent, out there. Imagined it until he almost accepted it.

Thunder rolled across the sky, over the treetops and into the wet murk above the house. The sound of the rain against the wood changed from a pattering to a sky-fall of stones.

‘Buddy!’ It was Hutch. ‘Get in here. You have to see this.’

Luke snapped out of his trance. Wondered at himself. Exhaustion overwhelmed you. Played tricks with your mind. The dark trees they had been amongst all afternoon and evening had left a stain inside him; a taint upon every thought and feeling if he allowed his mind to drift.

He needed to keep active. Focused. He moved to the door. Just inside the frame he could see Hutch’s pale face peering out. He’d taken his hat off.

‘Did you hear that?’

Hutch looked at the sky. ‘I know. Thunder and a cloud burst. We couldn’t have found this place any sooner. I think a storm would’ve finished off the fatties. We’d have been forced to lose them.’

‘Piss off, Yorkshire!’ Dom called from inside the dark hovel.

Despite his unease, Luke couldn’t stop the nervous giggle that came down his nose. Stupidly, he was smiling too. Hutch turned around to go back inside the house, where torch beams flashed across indistinct walls.

‘No. Not that. The trees. In the trees. Did you not hear it?’

But Hutch wasn’t listening. He was back inside with the other two. ‘What you got there, Domja?’

Luke heard Dom say, ‘More of that evil Christian shit.’ He took one look back at the woods then passed through the doorway to join the others.

It was impossible to tell how long the place had been uninhabited. Or what kind of people once lived there.

Uncovered by yellow torchlight, that struggled to reach far into the cramped hovel, the first thing Luke noticed were the skulls. And then the crucifixes.

From small birds to what could have been squirrels and stoats, small mottled heads had been fixed with rusted nails to the timber walls of the large room on the ground floor. Larger skulls of lynx and deer and elk had mostly fallen from the walls and cracked against the floorboards. One or two still grinned from near the low ceiling, where their porous bones managed to hang on.

Between the skulls still mounted upon the walls were at least a dozen crosses. By the look of them, though no one looked for too long, they had been handcrafted from bundles of twigs tied with twine, and were mostly tilting now, or even hanging upside down. From the ceiling beams that brushed the tops of their uncovered heads, two empty and corroded oil lamps creaked irritably on their hooks if touched.

Under the floor, mice scampered. In this place they sounded angry at being disturbed, though something far too confident and unafraid was also suggested in their rustlings.

Hutch came back from an annex joined to the main room. ‘Tools and stuff. A nasty-looking scythe in there. I’d hazard a guess this place could be a hundred years old.’ He went to the little iron stove in the hearth. He patted his dirty hands around its round belly. ‘Bugger’s rusted shut, but it feels dry-ish.’

Phil was testing the sawbuck table, which creaked under the pressure of his two hands pressing down. Dom had claimed the one seat — a crudely fashioned wooden stool at the head of the table — and was wincing as he tried to remove his boots. ‘Hutch. Get your mittens on these. I can’t undo the laces. I’m actually scared to see what’s inside. And my knee feels like a water-skin full of nails. I want the magic spray you had this morning. Then you can get the fire going.’

From where he was crouching, Hutch grimaced at Dom over his shoulder. ‘I’m seriously thinking of leaving you here in the morning.’

Around them the house creaked and shifted like a wooden ship trapped in the ice. ‘Is this even safe?’ Phil asked.

Hutch swore at the stove. And then, without moving his head, he said to Phil, ‘I wouldn’t put it to the test.’

Luke flashed his torch over the walls and ceiling again. He was the tallest of the four and as he warned himself to watch the low beams, he cracked the side of his head against one of the iron lamps.

Phil, Dom and Hutch laughed. ‘You all right, mate?’ Hutch then asked as an afterthought. ‘That sounded nasty.’

‘Fine.’ Luke shone his torch at the narrow staircase that led to the second storey. ‘Anyone been up there yet?’

‘With this knee,’ Dom said, ‘I’m not moving again until Hutch fetches help and the Swedish air force lands a helicopter in the garden. Ain’t that right, you hopeless Yorkshire arse? And you can use that map to get the fire going for all the use it’s been.’

At this, they all laughed. Even Luke who couldn’t help himself, or stop himself from warming to Dom all over again. He was being too sensitive. It was the dreadful forest and the desperate walking. His thighs still seemed to be moving as if they continued to clamber up and down rocky slopes and stretch over deadwood. They were just tired. That was all. ‘I don’t want to sound like a fool—’

‘That could be a challenge,’ Dom muttered, as he removed his second boot. ‘Where’s the spray, Hutch?’

Luke looked at Dom. ‘Piss off.’ Then turned to Hutch. ‘But I definitely heard something out there. In the trees.’

Dom grimaced at him. ‘Don’t start with that crap. Things are bad enough in here without you giving me the shits.’

‘I’m not messing around. It was like …’ He couldn’t describe it. ‘A crash.’

No one was listening.

‘I want new feet.’ Phil stood up in his socks. ‘Think I might go and check out the bedrooms.’

‘I’ll take the one with the en suite,’ Hutch said. He was digging at the door of the stove with the penknife he had bought in Stockholm from the outdoor adventure store. Like everything else in the country, it hadn’t been cheap. Luke bought one too because he liked the idea of having a knife in the wilderness. Dom dismissed them as being too expensive and said he would use Hutch’s if he needed it. Phil lost his knife on the first day. He’d left it at the first campsite.

Outside, the thunder ground iron hulls against granite. A vivid flash of lightning followed and seemed far too close to the house. It lit up the dusty wooden floor by the open door.

Phil paused on the first of the stairs on his way up, and fingered a dark crucifix. As if to himself, he said, ‘You’d think they’d make you feel safe. But they don’t.’

Phil came down the stairs so quickly it sounded like a fall. If the bangs of his feet didn’t get their attention, his gasps for air did.

Downstairs, three pairs of eyes went round and white. Three torch beams flashed to the foot of the staircase.