Adam Nevill: The Ritual

‘Stop! Stop it!’ he told the dominant voice inside his mind. You got this far. You did what you had to do to get this far.

Took a breath. Looked down to his right. Slowly raised the rifle butt from out of a tear in the vinyl seat cushion. Wound the passenger-side window all the way up to shut and seal himself from the cold wet breath of the forest and the trees that were too unnervingly close. Took another big deep steadying lungful.

Restarted the engine. Out of instinct, he checked the rear-view mirror. Squinted. Had a long dark branch fallen across the back of the truck’s flatbed? Yes, and now it felt like the rear wheels had lowered slightly, or sunk into the clay.

He caught his breath.

Yanked his head around.

Looked through the glass panel behind his head.

And saw the end of a black shape step off the rear of the vehicle.

And vanish into the trees.

But it had left something behind.

Luke looked into the flatbed. Surtr stared back at him. Pale-blue eyes wide in surprise, lipless mouth open, as if to say, Remember me?

Beneath her breasts, her rib cage had been torn asunder like a cardboard box. She had red-whitish flesh wings attached to an all too visible spinal column. She was all gone, down to her dark, sopping abdomen, but sat upright, her inert body resting against the tail gate of the truck. An inconceivable strength had done that to sinew, muscle and bone; literally torn her body wide open.

I’m still here , it was telling him. Still with you, every inch of the way .

Clumsily, he snatched up the rifle, but the dimensions of the cabin prevented him from moving the long firearm around. The engine cut out.

‘Stop!’ he cried at himself. What did it matter, which way the gun was pointing? The rifle was next to useless inside the cabin; could not be manoeuvred at all. What he needed was speed.

He turned the key over hard, so the starter motor squealed. The cabin shook as the engine came back to reluctant life again. He went from first to third gear in seconds and threw his feet from accelerator to brake, accelerator to brake, while tossing the steering wheel and the truck from side to side, down the track. Beneath the metal floor he felt the tyres grip and slip and fight to stay aiming straight ahead and away from this place.

He flushed hot and cold, twice nearly crashing the vehicle off the road and into the trees. No seatbelt. ‘Stupid bastard!’ In his rear-view mirror, Surtr lolled and shook, bumped and banged, but would not take her eyes from him.

And then, suddenly, something moved behind her.

Only sporadically did the white-grey light break through the canopy of foliage over the rutted road, and shine steely through the tree branches that desired, and were designed, to smother the track into oblivion. But over the lolling pale head of his passenger in the rear, he saw something running quickly on all fours, behind the truck. But only briefly, for no more than a moment; no longer than it took him to say, ‘Oh God.’

He checked the road in front of the bonnet, then looked into the mirror again. Behind the vehicle, a lanky darkness rose to full height and stepped away into the jumping shadows at the side of the track in the time it took to blink an eye. The figure had been at least twenty yards behind his rear bumper, but tall on those black legs, thin as stilts, that bent the wrong way at the knee joint.

He hurriedly turned the headlights on, then switched them to full beam; the sudden strobe of white light was an instant comfort inside the cocoon of rain-heavy leaves that now draped themselves across the windscreen like the flabby hands of protesters, attempting to slow down a diplomat’s car driving through a crowd.

It had been running down the road behind him, was keeping up. A thing dark. Thin rear legs. No tail. A brief ripple of light across a flank tooled with muscle. ‘Jesus fucking Christ!’

He was doing thirty miles an hour when he smacked his head against the steel underside of the cabin roof and was forced to brake, to slow down. One eye shut from the pain; an old wound up there had reopened or just set fire to itself again.

Crawling, skidding; he spent more time looking into the rear-view mirror, than he did over the wet white bonnet.

Which is why he did an emergency stop when something darted across the front of the vehicle. His breastbone hit the steering wheel and set the horn blasting; his forehead banged, slapped, then pressed flat, against the cold inside of the windscreen.

For a while he did not know which way he was facing, until his senses landed safely and reorientated his spatial awareness. He pulled himself back hard into his seat.

As he lowered his eyes, he caught the last of something moving; close to the ground, slipping into the trees. It was a thing both lean and brawny.

Had he not stopped he would have hit it. ‘Fuck!’

The engine had stalled again, and if it stalled once more he swore he would get out of the cabin and put a bullet through the bonnet of the spluttering shuddering mess of a truck.

He got it started again as the panic made his jaw shake as if he were suddenly freezing.

Were the rear wheels now stuck in a rut though? The truck would only now move in increments, as if the handbrake was still on. The engine whined and steamed. Then the whole vehicle jolted forward, almost pitching him off the road.

Something had been holding the truck again, from behind.

Luke glanced at the rear-view mirror. A black shape suddenly flared up, and reared away as if on long quivering stilts.

And then it was on the roof. Clambering and all about the windows on every side. He heard himself scream. The dim light dimmed.

The banging of hammers upon the roof; the ricochets of bone feet on metal smarted inside his tender ears. A pink-teated underside of a great belly across the windscreen, black-haired and doggish. Hint of an amber eye the size of an apple to his right.

He looked at the eye.

Saw a great mouth opening instead. Black gums, and yellow canines the length of middle fingers. Breath condensed on the glass, then it was gone.

And so was he, with the accelerator plugged to the metal floor, and his thoughts reeling round and round in a terrible whirlpooling skull-wind, and the branches of trees grooved the side panels, and twigs scratched at the glass like they had claws of their own and wanted to shell him like an oyster.

Bang! Bang! Bang! The hooves of horses across a metal sheet, as something stamped upon the cabin roof again, then ran across the flatbed and vanished, taking poor Surtr with it, like her remains were the remnants of a disembowelled doll, held by one ankle.

Luke was still screaming when the truck veered from one side of the road to the other, entering the forest a few feet on either side of the track. A headlamp went smash. The bumper tore off, and the wheels went over it with a crumple he felt more than heard.

He stamped on the brake to regain control of the vehicle. The truck slid. Came to a jolting stop that put his forehead into the windscreen again.

He sat back, gaping. He’d got the vehicle wedged at an angle, diagonally across the track. Up ahead, the tunnel of overhanging forest narrowed, and completely shut off the light.

Reverse. First gear. Reverse. First gear … A ten-point turn before he stopped counting and began whimpering.

He thought of getting out and using the rifle. Then was certain, again, that he should just put the end of the barrel inside his mouth and end the delay of his demise. It was inevitable.

Fear and big white eyes inside a suit of dirty skin: that’s all he was now.

His arms and legs were shaking. He watched his knee for no longer than a second but its palsy alarmed him. His hands and feet were all pins and needles, until he made his limbs work again by scrabbling for the knife between his legs where it had jumped from the dash. He gripped the knife handle between the palm of his right hand and the outside of the steering wheel. The blade was dull, thick with blood at its base. Its presence inside the cabin made him feel strength in the form of a thin wire of tension within the bones of his forearms.