The Ritual (12 page)

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, like 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.

Hutch anticipated a bad night ahead, sitting up or curled into a corner of the two-man tent. But at least it would be dry inside, or so Hutch promised the others. From the waist down they were all soaked. The chafing inside Phil’s jeans was bad. He had managed to slowly peel the wet denim down to his knees, but doubted he would ever get them back on again so left them half down. His inner thighs were now shiny in the faint light with a salve they could smell. Tomorrow, he would have to squeeze into the pair of filthy over-trousers Dom had worn during the first two days of the hike. Phil lay down inside a tent, on top of his sleeping bag, in silence.

Spread out over Hutch’s sleeping-bag cover was the remainder of their food supplies. There was hunger ahead. Dom had demanded a substantial lunch. As a result, in the little metal pot on the camping stove was the last meal they could fashion together out of the two remaining packets of dried soup, a bag of soya mince, some freeze-dried savoury rice and the last tin of hot dog sausages. After that, they were down to four energy bars each and one communal chocolate bar, some boiled sweets and chewing gum. And even tonight’s food would amount to little more than a mug of soup each, cooked in pre-boiled marsh water, with two sausages standing upright in each of the four cups surrounded by soya mince. But not one of them could concentrate on anything but the slow advance of the pot’s contents to readiness.

At the perimeter of one of the stony outcrops, Luke had found a creek. Water that never grew beyond a brownish trickle in three separate locations. The actual stream seemed to be underground. But at least the murky water ran freely, and was cold and fresh. For ten minutes they had sat in silence and filled themselves, and then the plastic litre canisters and personal canteens. Hutch had felt dizzy and sick afterwards. But there had been no stopping them gorging on the first fresh water they had seen in two days.

At least their pitiful campsite was on the best ground they had seen for hours; out of the chilly breeze that could come through the trees at dusk, and more or less level once the scrub had been removed. With the tents up, Hutch set about preparing the stove and assembling the ingredients. They were all too tired to talk. And didn’t even look at each other.

Luke was spent. Aches bruised his thighs and jabbed through his buttocks. Had he taken off by himself, he wondered how far he would have made it alone. At least twice the distance they had covered as a group. Maybe he would even have found the fringe of the forest. Who could say? But once they were clear of that dreadful church, he had just wanted to break free of the others. Every moment of misery endured since fuelled his resentment at Phil and Dom for slowing them down; putting them at risk by being so physically unprepared for the trip. And the rash decision Hutch had made with the short cut still made him smoulder. Much of his anger should have been directed at himself. He was transferring it onto the others. He knew it. Taking the short cut had been against his instincts. As had their continuation on the trail from the house that morning, westwards into the unknown. Taking both routes had been the wrong thing to do; he had known it, but he had followed the others and not raised enough of an objection. Why? Same again with squatting in the hovel last night; his participation had been contrary to his instincts. And look at what it had done to them all. It had been a night they had lacked the energy and inclination to confront since. Something terrible happened to each of them they could later blame on environment or tiredness. But they were not random, those dreams.

He wanted a clean break from it all and from all of them. Tomorrow, he would take off. On his own to get help. He had made the decision earlier that evening. And when he told Hutch in a whispered aside, his old friend had just nodded his assent. Not raising any of his usual enthusiasm for the new strategy, or a single objection, Hutch had just moved his head slowly. Inside his grimy sockets Hutch’s eyes had looked too old, dim somehow.

They were
fucked
. Really in trouble now. The day had been a waste of time, exhausting the last of their supplies and what little energy Phil and Dom had left. They had turned that corner, from camping to survival. It had happened sometime during the day. Probably in the early afternoon. Had not been marked by anything specific, but by everything. And only now, once they’d stopped staggering, foot by foot through the debris, had Hutch finally accepted their situation. Just knowing it made Luke’s head heavy. But at least it stilled the maelstrom of ideas in his mind, and the sense of choice, that had almost made the morning exciting for them in the way men can get excited outdoors.