Adam Nevill - The Ritual

It wasn’t. When he tried to hop, he crashed to the floor, onto his shoulder. He spat and cursed into the wooden floorboards. Then waited for the sweats to stop and for the footsteps to bang up those old stairs and to rush to his room.

No one came. He wriggled his toes. They weren’t coming off just yet. He grinned into the dust.

On his side, entirely naked, he shuffled across to the window. Then raised himself, by pushing the back of his shoulders up and against the wall. Eventually upright, and dirtied again, he turned himself about and peered out of the window.

Blood Frenzy had been busy. Another great pyre had been assembled about twenty feet from the treeline, and positioned much further away from the house than before. Surtr shoved smaller branches of kindling into the base of the structure. The red plastic can of fuel stood at her feet. And a hole had been dug a short distance from the pyre. Foundations, for the large cross that had been roughly cobbled together from two thick planks of aged wood.

Fenris and Loki began positioning the top of the cross inside this hole that had been cut into the turf. They were inserting the crucifix upside down.

Fenris called out to Surtr, who smiled back at him with her hideously painted face. She had added more blood around the nose and mouth than usual. She was also naked again, and her long black hair was lank about her creamy shoulders. She picked up a little silver digital camera from the grass and came across to take photos of Loki and Fenris, as they posed beside the inverted crucifix. It was all still a bit of a game to them. A lack of solemnity at his demise made Luke suddenly and briefly and absurdly angry.

And then he felt so weakened by the sight of that forlorn black cross, standing at a slight tilt under the low dark sky, that he sank to the floor and began to rock himself from side to side.

When they took him from the room, he was entirely naked save for the bindings at his wrists and ankles. They were clumsy and drunk; they were stupefying.

He did not struggle as Loki and Fenris squeezed him through the narrow passageway and down the cramped and unstable staircase, because he did not want them to drop him. Being three feet from the hard ground with no arms and legs at his disposal, to stick out and break a fall upon all of the sharp wooden edges and corners, made him nervous.

It was only when they took him outside, into the cold damp air, and under that sky dimming from grey to black, that he fought. Inside the little clearing of grass and within the pointy shadow of the old black house, he pulled his legs back suddenly using his hips, and broke them from Fenris’s arms, which were supporting him like a heavy roll of carpet against his side. And then Luke twisted around within Loki’s long white arms, so he was suddenly facing the earth before he was dropped to the moist grass.

He broke his fall with his knees, then tried to stand and fell immediately over, onto his side. In the cold wet grass, he paused to consider his next move.

Fenris issued his long thin laugh into the darkening air.

‘Where will you go, Luke?’ Loki said, wheezing but wistful.

The great fire cracked and spat and leapt out its orange tongues so high at the sky. Showers of sparks and porous sheets of leaf drifted up in hot draughts, twisted, and extinguished themselves in glowing red sparks.

The violent music played. The sound was dulled through the earth, but still enough of the cacophony spluttered and crackled out there and into the cold sunless forest, so that whatever crawled this terrible black earth, would know it was dealing with Blood Frenzy this night.

The rifle leant against the porch railing, perhaps as insurance in case Odin failed to discriminate between sacrifice and chosen one. In the shadows of the porch, sat upon a little wooden chair, the old woman watched Luke, her black eyes glinting at the end of the firelight that beat gently against her expressionless face.

To get him on that cross they’d have to cut the nylon from his wrists; and that would be his last chance. He heaved as much air into his lungs as he could and shuddered right down to his joints. Tried not to let urine stream down his legs. And failed; it spouted warm, like life, out of him, over him.

The dark crucifix looked thin, insubstantial. He wondered if it could hold his weight, and imagined the farce and banality of his own death upon an upside-down crucifix that would not stay upright.

‘Oh God,’ he said, and could not prevent himself making this exclamation of alarm, when he thought of long nails and a mallet; of Fenris’s spindly tattooed arms swinging the hammer in the dying light.

But beside the crucifix, he saw coils of old fibrous rope, thin as a washing line, and prayed they were for his wrists and ankles.

Against the dimming trees, as the light drew back like a tide across the ancient roots and bracken of the forest, the sign of the inverted cross now looked too basic, and mock sinister; a prop in a bad horror film with no budget and a cast of overacting amateurs in face-paint. It was uninspiring and unimpressive, like a place or artefact that had acquired an undeserved cult status, and always disappointed whenever it was actually revealed. What a way to die. It should have been funny, but was just dismal and depressing instead.

‘Now, Luke. You can run nowhere,’ Loki said, his breathing returning to normal. ‘We keep your feet tied. So there is no way you get away from this. If you struggle too much, we have to … er …’

‘Knock you the fuck out!’ Fenris shrieked.

‘More or less,’ Loki said in agreement. ‘But what I can do for you is give you a last drink, my friend.’

The drinking horn was freed from behind Loki’s silver bullet belt and then upended over his face. Luke welcomed its sour chemical burn inside his mouth and throat and stomach. He moved his chin to guide that brackish stream into his gullet. Then it made him want to throw up, before spreading a generous warmth through his gut. It made him dizzy too; like it was the first strong drink he had ever swallowed. It was neat alcohol cut with sweetened orange juice, and brewed in buckets by the desperate. He rolled onto his side and coughed some of it back out of his throat and mouth.

Blood Frenzy had also made a special effort tonight for a special occasion; it was not often they made the acquaintance of an ancient deity of the woods. Loki and Fenris had adorned themselves with a plethora of chains about their waists, and thickened their pale arms with studded armbands to their shoulders; their biceps bristled with actual nails. Each of them wore the band’s own shirt, featuring the gloomy lake and spiky red writing. Their faces were freshly decorated and thickened with white paint. Eye sockets were blacked out and long imperious grimaces had been effected through their artificially downturned mouths. Only Surtr remained naked. She had no tattoos on her short plump body, but her labia were encrusted with silver piercings.

With the sole of his boot, Fenris rolled Luke onto his back. Loki grabbed Luke’s ankles and pulled him across the wet grass, to the foot of their crucifix.

It may have looked insubstantial, but it took the total strength of both young men to lever the wooden cross back out of the hole and to then begin lowering it earthward; at least they knew enough to sink deep foundations.

Fenris caught his eye as he watched them slowly work the crucifix back towards the ground. ‘Nice touch, eh? Old-school black metal!’

When the crucifix was no more than a few feet from the ground, they let it fall with a whump onto the grass beside him, ready for his binding to it. Then they used their hands to roll his body over and over, before Fenris seized his ankles and moved them to the foot of the long upright plank.