The Ritual

by Adam Nevill

  ‘Why is it that any woman I go out with is a scabby tart? Whereas the uptight bitches you got shacked up with are somehow what … desirable? Respectable?’

  Hutch was shaking his head, but it was too hard to tell in the gloom if he was smiling or nervous. ‘Fellas, you’re all getting way out of line here.’

  But no one was listening to Hutch. Even he was irritating Luke now, trying to protect Dom as usual. Always babying him. Did they know how they looked together? ‘Money,’ Luke continued. ‘That’s the only worth anyone has, is it? What they earn?’

  ‘Well it’s a start and better than nothing.’

  ‘The only criteria with which you judge anyone these days. What they own, acquire, have. What a sad fucker you turned into. And don’t pretend you’re happy, mate. Don’t kid yourself because I am not fooled. I saw you at Hutch’s wedding. How many arguments did you have with Gayle?’ He glared at Phil. ‘And you with Michelle? Eh? She had a face on all day, like a bulldog chewing on a wasp. I’d have got shot of the pair of them years ago. Put them out with the fucking bin bags. Let alone married them. I mean, what were you thinking? I’d rather be on the street than have to look at one of their miserable faces for a single night.’

  Hutch reached out and grabbed Luke’s calf muscle hard. ‘Luke. Luke. Luke. Too far. Too far.’ Then Hutch stood up quickly and said to them all, ‘Fellas, I’m done with you all. Remind me to never ever set foot in a room again when you’re together. Like we don’t have enough to deal with. I mean, men, get real. We’re in some pretty deep shit right now.’ He stalked away, into the treeline to urinate.

  ‘And whose fucking fault is that?’ Dom shouted after him.

  Luke still didn’t feel that he had finished, or had said anything right. ‘Once we get out of here, we go our separate ways.’

  ‘Well, as far as you are concerned, yes. I won’t be looking you up again. You can be sure of that,’ Dom said and laughed, a note of triumph in his voice, that made Luke fondly recall smacking his face with both fists.

  ‘Fine by me.’

  ‘We only went camping because you’re so skint. Me and Phillers and H wanted to go somewhere warm, but you couldn’t afford it. We were thinking Egypt for some Red Sea diving. So this is what happens when you compromise for a free spirit, who lives by his own rules. Who ended up selling CDs for a living and is always skint.’ Dom raised the zipper on the tent flap.

  Luke sat still and tried to regulate his breathing. The rage was strangling him again. When he felt like this, he wondered if, one day, he might actually kill someone.

  ‘Best thing for you to do now,’ he said to the closed door of the tent, ‘is to think of how you are going to get your fat useless arse out of this place tomorrow. Because I won’t be here when you wake up.’

  ‘Piss off.’

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Phil and Dom were both snoring inside the tents. Phil sounded like an engine, inhuman. It was not a noise Luke could get used to. He and Hutch could hear them as they sat opposite each other in silence, more coffee brewing in the pot between them. As long as they could find water, coffee was the item they had plenty of. They smoked and stared at the little blue ring of fire on the stove. It was the only thing that offered any comfort in a forest that had become as lightless as an ocean floor. The darkness became disorientating if you looked into it and tried to make sense of anything that suggested itself. Rain pattered about them.

  Luke had shrunk inside himself and was accompanied by familiar thoughts. Why did some people have everything: careers, money, love, children, and some nothing? He’d not even come close to those things.

  Or had he? Again, he revisited the unresolved questions of his existence. If he’d married one of those girls he’d chucked one year after meeting them in his twenties, like Helen or Lorraine or Mel, would he now be just like Dom, or Phil or Hutch?

  And the full gravity of the last few years came pressing upon him again, even here, in this place, in these circumstances, after all he’d been through he still wasn’t free of himself; whenever he stopped and rested, when the external distractions abated, he always felt worn out, so tired by his life; was forced to acknowledge that he had achieved nothing for his pains, his transience, his changes of direction, or lack of direction, his misfires and mistakes. And he admitted to himself that he had always coveted his friends’ families, homes, careers, their seemingly contented lives. Without such, it came to dawn on him a few years ago, you could not even begin to hope to be accepted. Not really; not in this world when you were well past thirty. But he’d always hated himself too, for craving what Hutch, Phil and Dom had; those impenetrable worlds that so many took for granted; he loathed himself for desiring acceptance, when he also knew how thwarted every job and relationship made him feel. But still, he craved it all. It was at the heart of his unhappiness, his despair. He would probably die incomplete, undecided, and disappointed.

  ‘Buddy. There’s something I never told you.’ Hutch kept his voice low, but it was tense, as if he were about to make a difficult confession. Luke looked at Hutch’s face. Light from the flames caught his eyes and jaw, but little else. It was hard to even recognize Hutch from what Luke could see of his face inside the hood and tight woollen beanie hat. He guessed Hutch was going to tell him about something he had found in the church or the hovel. Something he had kept from the others. Either that, or he had made a miscalculation about where they were on the map.

  Luke braced himself. ‘Give it to me straight. Part of tonight’s theme. Instead of sniping and crap. I’m sick of it.’

  ‘I noticed.’

  ‘You think I went too far?’

  ‘Off the scale. You’re full of surprises, Chief. I think they were taken aback by how pissed off you are.’

  Luke felt the first embers of shame, then took control of himself. ‘No. I didn’t overreact. No. I had to get it out.’

  ‘Clearly.’

  ‘You just stay on that fence. You’ve had your moments too. I never noticed anyone stamping on your nads when you were in a slump. Why should it be different for me? I won’t stand for it.’

  Hutch never spoke for a while. Then said, ‘Luke, I’d say you’ve burnt out a few fuses in London. The ones you can’t replace. Done it myself. When I was a benefits adviser. Remember?’

  Instead of snapping back with some instinctive defence, he nodded. ‘I’m not in a good place right now. To be honest, I’ve just about had enough, mate. Of everything.’

  ‘But try and target the rage at the right cause, aye?’

  ‘I get so angry. I reckon I might be a psychopath or something. ’ Luke said this with a face as straight as the belief that issued the statement.

  Hutch laughed.

  ‘I mean it. This morning. With Dom. It’s not the first time. I did it on the tube going to work.’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘About two months back. Some tosser just pushed onto the carriage before I could get out. You know, they have this announcement, about letting people off first. And there’s another one about moving right down inside the carriages. It makes no difference. No one listens. Anyway, I threw down. Pulled this twat off the train by his neck and laid him out. On the platform. In front of about three hundred people. I didn’t care. Just wanted the arsehole to know that you do not push onto a train when someone is trying to get off.’

  ‘You get arrested?’

  ‘I pegged it.’

  ‘You’re kidding me?’

  Luke shook his head. ‘I’ve got to get out. It’s driving me nuts. There are no fuses left in my box. It’s burnt out, melted plastic and wires, mate. That’s me. I’ve had a dozen confrontations so far this year. In public. Other stuff too.’ He stopped himself, spat into the darkness. ‘I’m just so angry. All the time now. You ever felt like that?’

  ‘Can’t say I have.’

  ‘It’s just me, me, bloody me all the time. You know? All around me. I wanted it to stop out here. Just for a bit.’

  ‘It’s
why I live in the country. Cities don’t work.’

  ‘I think you’re right.’

  ‘I knows it. Devon calling. Time to go home, Chief.’

  Luke nodded, and felt his stare lengthen into nowhere.

  Hutch brought him back. ‘Anyway. I was going to tell you something. And this goes no further.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The reason why I was trying to stop you ripping into the fat men about their wives. And this is something I hope will act as a deterrent to future hostilities.’

  ‘Go on.’

  Hutch took a long pull on his cigarette and then threw it away. A trail of orange sparks marked its descent into the darkness. ‘Michelle kicked Phil out.’

  ‘No shit.’

  Hutch nodded. ‘He’s had to move into a flat. She’s got the girls and is going for the house too. The complete shakedown.’

  ‘Why?’

  Hutch looked over his shoulder at the tent that contained Phil. When Phil’s snoring ended a pause of silence, he turned back to Luke. ‘She never liked him. You know that. But he was loaded. Bank of mom and dad, then the property business. That was the only reason she was ever interested in him. Though things aren’t so peachy on that front either. His company’s been fisted by the recession. Property. No one will buy the luxury flats his company built. He’s got massive, and I mean massive, debts. It was all based on loans and borrowing. They’ve nothing to pay the banks back with. And soon as it all wobbled, Michelle was off. He’s lost the place in Cyprus too. Bankrupt.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘That’s one word for it. And Domja is in the same boat, give or take a few million.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ssh.’ Hutch looked at both tents again. ‘Separated.’

  ‘For real?’

  Hutch nodded, reached for the pot. ‘Pass your bucket.’

  Luke handed him his empty mug.

  Hutch concentrated as he poured the coffee from the pot. ‘Since before my wedding. They weren’t even technically together that day. Gayle’s been really depressed for years. Self-image issues. Post-natal stuff after Molly, their last kid. Who knows? And sometime last year she just stopped functioning. And you know what a handful their youngest is, asthma, A.D.D., now they think it’s autism. The works. Plus Dom’s got the bullet from work. Marketing in a financial services industry. First out. His whole shtick has been flushed.’

  ‘So what’s he doing?’

  ‘Looking after the kids, getting pissed, and chasing tail with very little success. Gayle’s at her mum’s. Heavily medicated. ’

  Luke put his face in his hands and groaned. ‘Shit.’

  ‘And he’s come all the way out to Sweden to get pissed on, lost, and to cap it all you give him not one shoeing, but two. So that’s why they’re both a bit wound-up and spiky and probably not that agreeable to being reminded about how a man without responsibility lives it up.’

  ‘Why the fuck didn’t you tell me, H?’

  ‘They didn’t want it to intrude on the holiday. Just wanted a total break from it and if you knew, there would have been too many explanations and a whole bunch of soul searching.’

  Luke felt his body go cold, from his scalp to the soles of his feet. He shuddered. Felt self-loathing fill him up. ‘God, I am a cunt.’

  ‘You weren’t to know.’

  ‘If you don’t have your mates at times like this.’

  ‘Chief, you’ve hardly been close. You’ve been off their radar for years.’

  ‘I knew something was up. Knew it. I should have guessed. Jesus, I am so selfish. So self-involved. I can’t see past my own bullshit—’

  He was interrupted by a crash. Out there, somewhere in the length and breadth of the countless trees and the oceans of invisible ruin and tangle, a great bow or strong limb had been snapped in half. The sounds of its breaking seemed to shoot in so many directions, it became impossible to guess where the sound originated.

  ‘Jesus. That freaked me.’

  Hutch exhaled noisily. ‘Me too.’

  ‘I heard it before. Outside the hovel.’

  ‘Just falling wood.’

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘Diseased branches get waterlogged and just break off.’

  But the next series of noises they heard were not caused by a tree, nor could they be passed off as being similar to anything they had heard before in this forest, or in any other forest. It was a mixture of a bovine cough and a jackal’s bark, but one so deep and powerful it suggested a chest more expansive and a mouth wider than either of those comparisons. Bestial. Ferocious. To be avoided. Then it was repeated. Downwind of them, about twenty metres deep. But not preceded or followed by the sound of movement.

  It was definitely animal, something big, but Luke knew how the dark obscured or amplified nocturnal sounds. Even a small toad could seem gigantic and be heard for miles; a bird call could be mistaken for a human scream, and a mammal’s sudden mating cry might even have words inside it. There were no predators they need be afraid of out here, he reminded himself. Plenty of wildlife for sure, but unless they stepped onto an adder or crossed the path of a wolverine with young, they would be fine. They had checked. It was just a case of city ears not accustomed to the cries of the night out here in the wild. Or so he quickly told himself.

  And yet, something of significant size, power and savagery had thrown the carcass of a large animal into a tree yesterday. An elk or moose. Stripped it and flung it upwards as if to mark territory or create some outdoor larder.

  Hutch broke Luke’s train of thought, which seemed to be quickly derailing his attempts at reassuring himself, to say, ‘Make sure the soup packets and hot dog tin are buried. Or some long-nosed mutha will be rooting around tonight.’

  Luke snorted, but was too tense to laugh. ‘What do you think—’

  And there it was again. Closer than before, but coming from behind Luke and not Hutch, as if it had soundlessly circled their encampment.

  Their torch beams scattered into the trees and then were swallowed by the thick wet walls of foliage that surrounded them.

  ‘Badger or something,’ Hutch suggested.

  ‘Wolverine?’

  ‘I have no idea what they sound like.’

  ‘Bear?’

  ‘Possibly. But they’re too small to be dangerous up here. Just clap your hands if one comes snuffling around.’

  Try as he might, Luke could not picture a small bear.

  After ten minutes of silence, Hutch stood up with a groan. He seemed satisfied that there was no danger, which alarmed Luke, who was too anxious to feel foolish, but was stunned to silence by Hutch’s confidence as he then said, ‘I’m going to turn in, Chief, and try and get some kip. Give me a shake before you take off tomorrow. We need to look at the map and talk tactics.’

  ‘Sure. No problem. Best if I leave soon as it is light,’ Luke said, over one shoulder while still flicking his torch about the treeline that any of them could simply reach out and touch from the mouth of a tent, so close was the forest about their ramshackle camp.

  Hutch nodded. ‘I can’t see us lot moving far. I’m beginning to think we might be better off waiting here for a day until Dom’s knee goes down a bit. We’ve got enough water. And at least you’ll know where we are. Roughly.’

  After discussing this matter of survival almost nonchalantly, Hutch unzipped the fly of the tent he shared with Dom and began fumbling at his laces, as if this situation was suddenly all banal again, some kind of camping formality without terror being involved. But it was involved, at least in Luke’s thoughts; Hutch was just too exhausted in the cold, strange, pitch-black world to inject much else into the sound of the cries at this hour.

  ‘Night,’ he said to Hutch.

  ‘Night,’ Hutch replied under the noise of the tent’s zipper going back up. Luke watched the tent shake about as Hutch prepared his bedding, saw the bright yellow disc of torchlight skim about the inside of the tent like the luminous eye at a porthole of some
submersible craft, with the forest about them a deep black sea.

  Luke sat down within the awning of his tent, listened beyond Phil’s wheezy breathing and Dom’s snoring. In minutes of his torch being clicked off, Hutch was whistling through his nose as he too fell into a heavy sleep.

  Luke took out his cigarette packet. His face and skin were burning from exhaustion, his head felt unnaturally heavy, but his mind was still too active to let itself fully rest. At least out here he could smoke.

  He lit up. Smoked the cigarette slowly. And silently, he asked himself again, how was it that some people got left behind?

  When he finished the cigarette, he wiped at his eyes and climbed into the tent he shared with Phil.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  The moon, large and so bright. Is it possible for it to be so near the earth? To arc across the night sky from one end of the horizon to the other?

  Silver light frosts the treetops that stretch away forever. Near the ground, the air is bluish-white and gassy as moonlight mingles with the cold. And the wood looks like the bristling surface of an army, with lances, standards and great armoured backs rising out of a dark mass, once seething forward and now frozen as if a terrible march or retreat has been suspended. But it parts around this place. Avoids it. Thick trunks of ancient trees and whipping walls of bracken pull back from the edge of the paddock, from where they uneasily circle the loose, faded and stained tents. Nothing but long weeds and grass dare to mill about the campsite.

  And what is that hanging from the treeline? Stretched between the black fringe of the wood like washing blown from a line and caught in the high tiers of forlorn branch and limb, something flutters. They could be shirts, holed and ragged. Discarded things with torn sleeves. Three of them, matched with three sets of frayed leggings, thin as long johns arranged below. And all stained with rust.

  Skins. Stripped from dead things. Peeled off and flung upwards to hang like pennants, about the place you sought refuge in.