The Ritual

by Adam Nevill

  ‘I know what you mean.’ Hutch had regained his feet and was standing in the narrow aisle between the pews, testing the floor in front of him, before taking careful steps forward as if he was walking on ice.

  Luke stepped over the next row of pews but the section of floor he placed his foot upon was soft and gave way. He withdrew the leg and tried further down until he found a firmer spot. Hutch reached the altar.

  ‘You reckon where you are can take our combined weight?’ Luke asked Hutch.

  ‘I reckon.’ Hutch wiped the thick mulch of dead leaf mould from the top of the altar, until his bare hand reached stone.

  Luke gingerly approached the altar from the side, rubbing his back against the dark wall that was down to stone in most places, the plaster having been dissolved by the rain falling through the roof for … for how long he had no idea. But for a long time.

  ‘Anything on it?’ he asked.

  ‘Like what, a virgin sacrifice?’ Hutch replied without smiling.

  ‘Runes and shit.’

  ‘Nope. Just a weird hollow. See, right in the centre. It’s been hollowed out.’

  ‘Baptism font.’

  Hutch nodded. ‘You could be right, Chief.’

  ‘What did you mean before?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Before. You said it was odd.’

  Hutch frowned at Luke, then his grimy forehead smoothed out. He tapped a finger against the top of the stone he stood behind. ‘No crucifixes on the stone arch. All the carvings on the stone face are pagan.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Old too. And those runes. You know those circular markings on Viking carvings? Serpents? With those long snaky bodies, all swallowing each other at one end?’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah.’

  ‘Well, I think there was once a pair of those on it, with what looks like carvings of’ – he wafted his hand towards the door and the wood outside – ‘all of this around them. Vines and leaves. The rain has corroded most of it.’

  ‘Cool. I’ll take a look.’

  ‘I chipped away a little bit of the dirt with my penknife on the pillars. It’s quite intricate, which is odd because the actual building is very basic. Like a shed or croft. But it must have been a Christian church once. Probably the last time it was used. It’s weird because there are no Christian symbols in here. No Christian headstones outside either. So no one was interned here in the last … millennia. How does that work?’

  ‘The church has just been built over an earlier site?’

  ‘Exactly. A sacred site, I think. And the church must have once been the centre of that … settlement we found. Which can’t be more than a century old, like this building. So people still came to worship, but stopped burying their dead here. Weird.’

  The mention of which did something unpleasant to Luke’s empty stomach. In the maelstrom of his confusion and his disorderly thoughts, he wanted to start peppering Hutch with questions but held his tongue. And felt anxious to get moving again; to get away from the place, and quickly.

  ‘And the other crazy thing is,’ Hutch said, raising both hands into the air, ‘it’s still here.’

  Luke frowned.

  Hutch pointed at the stone plinth. ‘No one has carted any of this off to a museum. I don’t think there are that many good examples left of the Norse carvings in the wild. They’re all uprooted and preserved. Protected from acid rain in display cases in museums down in Lund or Stockholm. That’s where I’ve seen them before.’ Hutch lowered his voice. ‘So, between me and you, I’d guess that no one knows this is here.’

  Luke could not hide his shock at hearing this fact voiced, even though he had privately arrived at the same disconcerting conclusion.

  ‘No one has been through here since this place was abandoned. I’d put money on it, Chief.’

  Luke shook his head in disbelief and with a disquiet he hoped did not show.

  Hutch’s voice lowered even further. ‘And if we weren’t lost and soaked and hungry, it would be pretty cool to discover it. We’d make the papers.’

  ‘But now it’s just freaky and scary.’

  ‘Exactly. And we still might make the papers for another reason.’

  They looked at each other and were both beginning to crack mad grins when Phil started shouting outside.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Luke burst out of the church. Dom was on his feet, but poised to cringe or run, it was hard to tell. Phil stood knee-deep in undergrowth with his back to the chapel, staring into the overgrown cemetery. When he turned about his face was tight with shock and terror. The same expression he had that morning when they found him naked and incoherent in the hovel. His trousers were undone. He must have been taking a piss. If he had not been so disturbed by what he had just seen, it might have been funny.

  Hutch was swearing aloud from somewhere behind him; he had not followed Luke out through the church arch. ‘What’s wrong?’ Luke called to Phil, then looked at Dom when no reaction was forthcoming.

  Dom returned his stare. ‘I don’t fucking know!’

  Phil had begun by crying out, like he had been bitten or burnt and was just coming to terms with the pain. But then he had been shouting with more than fear. By the time Luke stumbled over the pews and emerged into the weeds outside the building, Phil was silent and standing still in the rain. It was worse than the shouting.

  Luke looked at the back of Phil’s head, blue and pointy with the hood of his coat up. ‘Phillers? What is it?’

  Phil was staring into the trees, towards the two rune stones visible from the rough clearing in front of the church. At the sound of Luke’s voice, Phil quickly tucked and then belted himself away. He turned around and stumbled through the undergrowth towards the church like he was wading through seawater in a hurry.

  Dom and Luke could not stop themselves exchanging glances, until looking at each other became too awkward. Dom looked over Luke’s shoulder and roared, ‘Hutch! Get your arse out here. Now!’

  Hutch said something from inside the walls of the church. It was muffled and too low for any of them to hear. It was like he was preoccupied with something. But what could have been of more concern than the noise Phil had just made?

  ‘Hutch!’ Luke took long strides back to the church building. He looked through the door and saw Hutch bent over in the gloom. Part of the floor had collapsed again around his hips, and the pews on one side had now dipped into the centre aisle which Hutch must have tried to run across. ‘You all right, mate?’ Luke asked.

  Hutch nodded. ‘Which is more than I can say for these poor bastards.’ He had both of his arms stretched towards his feet and was pulling dead branches and leaves from the floor with both hands. He threw the debris onto the collapsing pews.

  ‘Buddy, something’s up with Phil. You better get out here.’

  ‘I know. I looked out the door. But he was just standing there. What was it? He see a snake? I told you guys about the adders. You got to stamp your feet before you go into undergrowth.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s a snake. What the hell are you doing?’

  Hutch looked up at him. Only his teeth and the whites of his eyes were clean inside his dirty face against the backdrop of the dark and rotten floor. Hutch looked ill. His face was lined and slack with exhaustion. Whatever he had found seemed to have finished off the last dregs of the optimism and humour that had begun to flicker back to life when they explored the cemetery. ‘Jesus. Jesus Christ. I don’t know what to make of this.’

  Luke slid and shuffled his way back inside the building. ‘What? What is it?’

  ‘I don’t really know if I should touch it.’

  Luke leant, gingerly, on the back of the intact pews and peered into the hole Hutch stood inside. Around Hutch’s feet were more of the large wet leaves, thickening to a brownish mulch in the poor light. And there were other things down there too that Hutch had partially cleared of foliage. They looked like more of the dead tree branches, black with damp. ‘What? What am I looking at,
Hutch?’

  Hutch raised his face. ‘Remains. Human remains.’

  ‘The crypt?’ Luke hardly heard his own voice and then had to swallow the nerves that put a tremor in his words.

  Hutch shook his head. ‘They weren’t interned. No coffins. Just dumped in a pile. They’re all broken. All the skulls are smashed in.’

  ‘Shit no.’

  Hutch bent over and picked something up. Instinctively Luke said, ‘Don’t touch it.’

  Hutch raised it to catch the watery light that fell in on them along with a chilling drizzle that was getting heavier. ‘This is from an animal.’ It was a long rib he held up. Then dropped it, slapping his hands together noisily in an attempt to clean them. He bent in again, sorted through the black wet dross around his feet. ‘A mandible. Three vertebrae. Another pile of ribs. Maybe from a horse. Moose. Dunno.’ He bent back into the reliquary. ‘But all mixed up with this.’ The next thing he held up was a human rib cage. An arm soundlessly popped out of it as he raised it from the leaves. The pale brown colour of it was unnerving; it looked newer than the animal bones. ‘And this.’ He next raised a human skull, the jaw long gone, the upper row of teeth blackened, half of the small cranium punched through. He dropped it and aggressively wiped his hands against his trousers.

  ‘Human remains and animal remains mixed in together. Bloody weird. They’re not all old either. I mean, they’ve all been here ages, but some have been here longer than others.’ He was talking to himself now, oblivious to Luke’s tense presence, as if by speaking out loud he would arrive at a satisfactory explanation for what felt so wrong. They were both now shivering inside their wet-weather gear; shivering from more than just the effects of the cold air and the rain.

  Luke could not swallow. And what shocked him more than anything he had experienced since they had become lost, was the evidence in this place that the boundary between men and beasts had been scored out.

  ‘Children’s bones are in here.’

  ‘Oh, Christ no, Hutch.’

  Hutch sighed, and sifted his foot through the wet dark detritus.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  They all squatted down, around Phil, staring at him. The rain dropped steadily from a darkening sky and made a constant pattering against their coats and packs. Phil looked unhealthily pale and shivered. He’d wrapped his hands under his arms, clutched himself. He glanced over a shoulder. ‘It’s here. It followed us.’

  Hutch and Luke looked at each other, then back at Phil. Luke blew two deep lungfuls of smoke into the wet air. ‘What did?’

  Dom’s eyes were too wide in his stained and scabbing face. ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

  Phil swallowed. ‘I saw …’

  Hutch groaned and eased himself down and on to his knees. ‘Buddy, buddy, take it easy. Just take it nice and easy. Tell us exactly what you saw.’

  ‘I went for a piss. And I was looking at the ground so I didn’t hit my feet. But I started to feel weird. You know, like someone was standing next to me. Like they’d come up to me. Was right next to me. And when I looked up … I thought it was a tree or something. Out there. It never moved, but it didn’t look right. I stared at it and … then it moved.’

  Luke squinted through the smoke around his face. ‘Eh?’ The other two turned their faces towards the overgrown cemetery.

  ‘In there.’ Phil pointed at a copse of trees crowding over the first rune stone they had passed. ‘By those trees. At the edge. Something moved out from between them and kind of went backwards really quickly and then it was gone. Never made a sound. It was so fast.’

  ‘An animal?’ Hutch asked.

  Phil shook his head. ‘I thought it was a dead tree. One of those hit by lightning. But then … I don’t know … I thought it was something on two legs. Standing up. Really tall. It’s dark in all that scrub. But something was kind of camouflaged in there, because it was standing really still.’

  ‘Fucking stop it,’ Dom said. ‘It’s not funny. Not here.’

  ‘It’s no joke, Dom! I saw something. It was in my dream last night. In that house. Coming down the stairs.’

  ‘Enough,’ Dom barked. ‘I’m doing my best to forget last night. And whatever the fuck was in that tree yesterday.’

  Luke looked out at the forest. Then glanced at Hutch, who looked pale under the filth and all jittery around his big eyes.

  ‘You don’t believe me?’ Phil said.

  Dom’s face was so tense his lips thinned to nothing and his teeth were showing. ‘No we bloody don’t! So stop trying to freak us out!’

  ‘Something’s gone bad out here,’ Luke said quietly, as if to himself.

  ‘What the fuck are you on?’ Dom challenged him.

  ‘Nothing, and more’s the pity. But that rotten mess’ – Luke pointed at the derelict chapel – ‘is full of human remains. They’re in a right state.’

  ‘What?’ Despite the grime, Dom’s face still gave the appearance of being pallid.

  Hutch shook his head, and looked as if he’d been told some terrible news. ‘Something awful happened here. I’d hazard a guess they all came to a bad end.’

  ‘Bad end?’

  ‘Torn up. Heads smashed in, like a war grave.’

  Phil’s shaking was getting worse. For once, Dom didn’t respond.

  ‘How?’ Phil asked Hutch, but there was as much pleading as curiosity in the question.

  Hutch swallowed. ‘Thank Christ we didn’t go into those other two buildings. I’d have put money on us finding something just as fucked up in them.’

  ‘What is it, Hutch?’ Phil pleaded.

  ‘I don’t know, mate. I’m really not sure I want to know either.’ He stood up. ‘Witchcraft. Black magic. Some old cult. The Swedes are really religious up here. I just don’t know. But it’s messing with us, chaps. With our heads. Some places are just bad, I reckon. And it’s getting on top of us. You saw an animal, Phil. An elk. Moose. Red deer. They’re all over this part of the country. That’s all. We’re just jumpy. Who wouldn’t be? But let’s chill. Just cool our heels a bit. I mean it.’ He looked at Luke, his eyes hard. ‘Let’s not fall apart any more than we have already, yeah?’

  Luke stood up too, and looked out at the trees. ‘It’s two o’clock. We need to put our foot down if we’re going to get out of here before it gets dark. Judgement call. Go back and try to get out the way we came in yesterday?’

  ‘Which means going past that fucking tree,’ Dom said, his fear turning to anger.

  ‘And the house,’ Phil said, and drew further into himself. He was almost crying; they could hear it in his voice.

  ‘Or,’ Luke said, raising his hands, palms out, ‘we take our chances on the other side of this clearing and just peg it.’

  Dom looked up at him as if he were a congenital idiot. ‘How do we “just peg it”, in this bloody state?’

  ‘We do the best we can. I’ll get you a crutch.’

  ‘I don’t want a fucking crutch. I don’t want anything from you.’

  Hutch put both hands over his face and groaned, and kept on groaning until they all stopped talking. He didn’t speak but raised his pack and slipped his arms through the straps.

  ‘New ground?’ Luke asked, in a conciliatory tone.

  Hutch nodded.

  ‘Cool. And if anyone has any water, I’d sure appreciate a mouthful.’

  ‘I’m all out,’ Phil said, and scrabbled for his pack, as if terrified the others were about to leave him behind.

  Hutch handed his drinking bottle to Luke. It was half full. The last of it.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Cramped inside the tiny porch of a tent, Hutch and Luke sat and watched the little gas flame stutter around the stove ring. Rain hazed into drizzle. Grey dusk-light dispersed around the oncoming concussion of night. As every minute passed and they waited to see bubbles appear on the murky surface of the soup, it was becoming harder to see their feet, or where they had put the plates and mugs. The ground was too wet for a fire; sopping, l
ike all of the dead wood around them that could have made kindling.

  On the far side of the abandoned churchyard, the dwarf birch and willow were not so thick and the bracken and thorns between them had thinned, but their mobility had still been slowed, first by the acres of ferns that grew out of marshy soil to waist-height, and then by ground made uneven with lichen-slippery, grey rock formations. It had taken nearly an hour at one point to manoeuvre Dom over an outcrop of boulders. From the stony ground they entered more of the thick bracken. And since leaving the church, the canopy overhead had revealed only glimpses of a watery-grey sky.

  Hutch had called an end to their slow and hesitant progress through the forest at seven. There was still an hour, maybe even ninety minutes of light left, but Phil and Dom had gone beyond their limit. Twice Dom had sat down in the woods, in silence, and been unable or unwilling to move. Phil’s movements had developed an ungainly, uncoordinated aspect, like he was drunk. In a way he was; he was intoxicated with exhaustion.

  The darkness in the forest always made it appear later than it actually was. Watches were even checked; held up to ears to detect ticking. Even as early as four in the afternoon, under the ancient leafy canopy it began to feel like night.

  They’d barely moved six, maybe seven kilometres all day.

  The forest floor about their campsite was so strewn with broken wood, the erection of the two tents in this spot had been nearly impossible. Behind them in the thinning light the tents sagged and fluttered like discarded parachutes. Much ground had to be cleared first and Hutch’s fingers were scratched from scraping aside the dead wood and bracken to create a temporary clearing. Now the two tents were up as best he and Luke could manage, crammed together and sagging, with so many roots, nettles and lumps visible beneath the groundsheets it would be impossible to lie down comfortably and sleep inside them.