The Ritual (16 page)

‘What?’ Dom finally said, stupefied.

‘His torch. Knife. Stuff we can use. He had energy bars in his bag.’

Dom looked at Phil. Then raised both arms, before clapping them at his sides. ‘We’re not going anywhere ’til we find him.’

Luke looked at the ground and released a long and tired sigh.

‘What are you suggesting? We just take off? Cherry-pick his gear?’ Dom barked, his words trembling with emotion.

Phil looked at the ruined tent and the blood that had gone viscous and oily in the thin light of a stray torch’s light, idle and unfortunate in its placement. And there was so much of it to be seen, if you angled your torch through the hole as Phil then did.

‘Oh God, H.’ Phil suddenly crouched down and covered his face with both hands.
Now he understood
.

But at the sound of Phil’s distress, a huge lump came into Luke’s throat. He stopped listening to Dom, closed his eyes.
H, H, H is gone
; an idiot rhyme chanted through his head. He felt like a child. The urgency of his purpose to get them occupied and then moving dissipated.

Phil was crying. Dom’s face crumpled. A long syrup of saliva drooped from his bottom lip. His eyes welled with water. One hand across his brow, as if shielding his face from the sun, his shoulders moved with each sob. Luke felt his jaw loosen. Salt scalded his throat down to his sternum. Hutch’s smiling face came into his mind. He almost heard a cackle. The idea he no longer existed was so preposterous it made him lightheaded. Then it was as if he had heartburn and indigestion at the same time.

Luke dropped to his buttocks and groaned through a cage of fingers wrapped about his face. For once he was oblivious to the stinging scratches on his calves and those hot lines etched across his cheeks and ears, was immune to the tugging aches inside his thighs. Beyond his own clasping hands, the other two wept into the darkness.

At one point Luke stood up and immediately bumped into Phil, who seized him, his head down, and he squeezed Luke’s biceps so hard Luke thought Phil’s long dirty nails had drawn blood inside his waterproof. He had to prise Phil’s fingers off his arms. Then hold Dom’s shoulders as he too shook from terror or grief or a panic attack; Luke didn’t know. And for a long time they were all disorientated and incapable in the darkness and the cold. They blundered. They cried. Until they all sat and stared in silence, shivering in the cold that drew their warmth from out of their fragile bodies and into the dense black earth.

THIRTY-ONE

‘You can’t stay here.’ Luke spoke quietly to Dom, who sat on his pack beside the demolished tent. ‘You’ve a few hours in that knee this morning to make another concerted effort to get out of here. We’ll keep going south. We have to. Now. In as straight a line as possible.’

Dom hung his head between his knees. He’d grieved himself to silent exhaustion before they had even taken a step.

Luke took a deep drag on his cigarette and then spoke through the veil of bluish smoke hanging before his face. ‘Your knee is shot. It’ll seize up before midday. Me and Hutch …’ he paused and swallowed, ‘we talked last night. We were hoping you two would be able to rest up for a day or two here, while I carried on to find a way out and get us help. He wanted you off your knee for a bit. And to give Phil time to get his wind back. There is enough water for a couple of days, and we know where to get more if help is more than two days away. But everything has changed now. We cannot … we cannot spend another night in this place. End of story.’

‘Don’t,’ was all Dom said, elbows on his knees, lifting his bruised and puffy face and looking at Luke in such a way as to prevent any reminder of what happened at night out here.

Luke waved a hand as if to knock something away. ‘I’ve just been looking for …’ He cleared his throat. ‘He was taken through there.’ Luke pointed at the faint aperture in the wall of scrub on his right side. ‘The way it’s all been broken down stops about twenty feet in. And the blood.’

‘You’re not leaving us here. We stick together from now on,’ Phil suddenly blurted out from where he was standing at the side of the clearing, looking into the wet darkness.

Luke nodded. ‘Of course. Goes without saying.’

Dom looked at him. ‘You don’t know where the fuck we are, do you?’

‘Vaguely.’

Dom laughed mirthlessly. ‘Vaguely. Vaguely. Haven’t we had enough of vaguely? I mean vaguely is the reason we are sitting here now around a tent full of blood. Any more vague ideas of which way we should be heading are going to get the rest of us killed.’

Phil sucked in his breath.

Luke studied the outline of Dom’s face, again suppressing the urge, which came up his throat like panic, to just take off on his own. He took a moment to place his thoughts in a careful row. ‘The chance to retrace our steps back out of here is long gone. So we have no choice but to keep going south. We’ve got to hope we can break out through the closest edge of the forest. What Hutch was aiming for.’

Phil looked at Dom. ‘We have to. I’m not staying here, waiting for help.’

Luke looked at his watch. ‘Today we should have reached Porjus. Tomorrow night we’re supposed to head back to Stockholm. Day after that we’re supposed to be back home early.’ He looked at the other two and heard a note of hope lighten his tone of voice. ‘How long before someone realizes something’s gone wrong for us and raises the alarm? Your folks expecting you guys to call home tonight? Tomorrow?’

Neither Phil nor Dom would meet his eye. Both looked down in a new kind of discomfort that had nothing to do with exhaustion, cold, or a lack of sleep. It was as if they had suddenly realized the consequences of some unfortunate news.

Hutch said they were both separated, but Luke wondered what that really meant. Would they still be in daily contact with their wives because of the kids? Would they be expected to physically reappear and perform fatherly duties at a prescribed time? Because no one was expecting him to call. He’d only been seeing Charlotte, casually, for a month. His supervisor at work would call his mobile if he didn’t show up on Monday. But that was still four days away. And being absent from work and out of reach for a few days would not result in his colleagues putting in a call to the authorities. He doubted his boss would do anything other than hire someone else to take his job after a week of him not checking in. His parents might be concerned after a couple of months of silence. And his handful of friends in London might wonder why he had gone to ground for a while, but he couldn’t imagine them making a prompt and determined effort to track him down either. He often went months these days without seeing any of them. They were all busy with their own lives and lived in different parts of the city. And he was just not that close to anyone any more, if he was really honest with himself. His best bet was his flatmate; they had little in common, and she’d only lived in the flat for six months, but she was looking after his dog while he was away in Sweden. Surely, she’d be the first to try and work out where he was; maybe a week after he failed to show. But who would she call? Who did she know of to call? She’d leave messages on his mobile and then maybe check in with the record shop, if she could even remember the name of it. And that would only probably be because she was sick of walking the dog twice a day.

These thoughts saddened him, then made him angry at himself. If you had no partner or career then who gave a shit about you at his age? That had been the whole point: to disengage from any responsibility so he could do his own thing. Well he was doing that now for sure. Luke laughed out loud.

‘What?’ Dom asked. ‘What?’ his voice eager with curiosity to hear what Luke had just worked out.

Luke tossed his cigarette into the bushes. ‘I just ran through a list. It could actually be months before my own family and friends report me missing. I guess my best hope is my flatmate, who I’m not close to. Or … hang on … maybe the airline. But then … damn, people miss flights all the time; they don’t call search and rescue. And we’ve already paid for the seats, so they have our money, so why would they give a damn?’ He imagined his name being called out over a public address system at Stockholm airport, by a female Swedish airline official. It would probably be the last time his name was spoken outside of this forest for a while.

‘I’m thinking maybe four, five days for me,’ Dom said. He must have been referring to his family which ratcheted up Luke’s fear. But four days would be too late for them all. ‘What about you Phillers?’ Dom asked.

Phil didn’t even turn round from where he was facing the trees, shining his torch about as if keeping watch. ‘What?’

‘How long?’

‘Mmm?’

‘How long before someone gets worried because you are a no-show back home?’

‘Michelle wouldn’t give a—’ He stopped himself. ‘Maybe work. I have a meeting next Monday at the bank. Maybe …’ He seemed to be struggling with his thoughts, whatever they were.

Dom sighed with exasperation, then suddenly raised both hands. ‘Hostel. The hostel we should be in tonight. Hutch booked it. Told them where we were coming from too.’

‘True,’ Luke said, his voice flat. ‘They might call his mobile when we don’t pitch up. If there is even a signal up there. But people must blow off those places all the time. Change of plan. Better offer. Whatever.’

‘The forest wardens?’

‘Hutch never called the Porjus branch. Said it was just for winter hikes.’

‘Shit!’ Dom kicked his good leg at the ground. Phil continued to search about the treeline with his torch.

Luke lit his fourth roll-up cigarette since he’d woken. Squinted through the smoke. ‘Hutch’s missus. Angie will be expecting him to call as soon as he’s near a signal. That’s our best bet.’

Dom frowned. ‘Makes sense. We’ll have to tell her. Jesus.’

‘Come on. Forget about that. We’ve got to move. Now. Just keep going like our lives depend on it. Because they do.’

THIRTY-TWO

And then they found Hutch hanging from the trees in the same way they found the animal two days before.

Luke turned, shouted, ‘Don’t look! Don’t look!’ as if he were protecting children in his care, which made Phil and Dom look up like children.

Dom fell against the nearest available tree trunk. ‘God! God!’ he shouted into the wet air.

Without a sound Phil walked away through the trees, back the way they had just travelled. After twenty feet he stopped and started to shake. Then bent at the waist and vomited. Luke saw something white and runny drop from his mouth, then turned away and heard a splash. He looked up at Hutch.

Stripped naked. No sign of his clothes. Opened down the front of his torso to a groin black with old blood. Pale muscular legs stained brownish. Feet drifting in space at the height of their heads. Eyes open wide, as was his mouth, the latter filled with a swollen tongue. His expression was one of mild surprise in an ashen face not without a suggestion of life, as if he were merely looking out and into the middle distance where something had caught his eye and made him stare, distractedly.

Inside his torso nothing appeared to have survived the attack and most of one shoulder and the adjoining bicep muscle were gone to the white of bone. Where two branches extended out from the side-by-side pillars of dead spruce trees, he had been wedged fast, his weight supported by the passage of a branch under each armpit.

His body had been arranged as if crucified and positioned to face them as they came stumbling and panting through the trees.

Luke’s scalp tingled and the temperature of his body plummeted down to his icy toes. His vision began to judder and some white light flashed at the side of his eyes. He thought he was going to faint. Muscles twitched in his face, mostly around his mouth. He couldn’t stop the spasms.

Then his head suddenly cleared of everything but a thought that fell like a blow against his face: how did Hutch’s killer know they would pass this way?

For the three hours after breaking camp they had followed the most obvious route southwards, down through the forest, directed by convenience through the spaces between thick towering spruce and the thinnest undergrowth on the forest floor to this very spot. Which would mean they were being watched right now and Hutch’s body had been hastily erected and exhibited only minutes before their arrival at this terrible place: a carcass presented to them by something with great strength that could climb.

As soon as Luke endured these thoughts, the air of the old wooded land abounded with a bark that could also have been a cough. The same bestial outburst he and Hutch heard the night before while sitting around the flickering stove flame.

Luke swivelled his entire body about, his vision flickering and failing to settle on any single point out there in the trees. He dropped his rucksack to the ground and flailed for the knife in his pocket.

Dom leapt back from the tree, then stumbled in agony after thrusting his whole weight onto his angry knee. Through the brownish muck on his bruised face, his complexion was bleached with terror and pain.

Phil crashed back through the undergrowth towards them, stumbled and fell to his hands and knees. Rising with a strangled animal sound in his throat before it formed into, ‘Fuck, oh fuck. Fuck.’ He then turned about in a circle, dizzy and ungainly, his rucksack hanging from one elbow.

‘Knife,’ Luke called to Dom, holding his own penknife up high and out from his body. Dom slapped frantically about the pockets of his waterproof.

The bark came again from a new direction, and a position closer to them, somewhere behind where Phil was frantically peering about. The rough challenge of the bark was followed by two hard snorts and then the kind of whinny that jackals make with their black lips pulled high in television documentaries.

Luke moved towards the sound, his breath and blood so loud in his skull he fought to hear anything else. Every muscle buoyant with warmth and a sudden energy, he moved quickly, dodging about the trees, light on the balls of his feet, his knife gripped so tightly his whole arm felt rigid-white.