The Ritual

speak.
    Stupidly, in his fright, Hutch felt a yawn rise through him.
    Phil tried to shout but it came out a yelp. ‘Something’s’ – he swallowed – ‘up there!’
    Hutch looked at the ceiling. He dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘You are kidding me.’
    ‘Let’s go,’ Dom said.
    Hutch held a hand up. ‘Ssh.’
    Around the table, Dom and Phil scrabbled for their boots. Heads close, Dom asked Phil something in a whisper. Phil turned his head quickly towards Dom’s face. ‘I don’t know! I
saw it. In the bed.’ It was a preposterous statement, but no one laughed or could even swallow. The very idea of a bed in this place should have cut the tension, but somehow it made
everything worse.
    Hutch held up two hands, palm outwards. They were filthy. ‘Quiet! Cool it. Just cool it. There can’t be anyone here. Look at the dust. There were no footprints when we came in.
It’s not possible.’
    Plump face bloodless and quivering, Phil struggled to speak. ‘It’s in there. Up there.’
    ‘What?’ Dom demanded.
    ‘An animal?’ Luke asked.
    Hutch looked at Luke. ‘Get your shank out.’
    Luke frowned.
    ‘Knife,’ Hutch said, then held up his own.
    Dom had one boot on and was stabbing his naked toes at the other wet boot which scooted across the floor. ‘This is getting stupid. Bloody stupid.’
    Hutch strained his neck forward. ‘Can’t be an animal. Listen.’
    Dom pulled the second boot back on and winced. ‘Fuck this. I’m off.’
    ‘Dom, shut it! Listen.’ Hutch walked slowly to the foot of the stairs.
    Luke moved away from the door to let Phil and Dom pass on their way out. ‘Easy H. Could be a bear.’
    Hutch shook his head. ‘It would be down here with us by now.’ He looked at Phil and Dom who stood together on the porch, peering back inside. A gust of wet air and the smell of damp
wood grew stronger indoors, as if eager to replace their presence inside. ‘Phil. Was there a hole or something up there?’
    ‘Eh?’
    ‘A hole? In the roof? A window busted? Was it an animal?’
    Phil swallowed. ‘It was sitting up. Staring at me.’
    ‘What?’ Dom asked.
    ‘I don’t know. I saw some eyes in my torchlight. And something black. Something big. But it didn’t move. It just sat there and stared at me.’
    Dom threw his head back. ‘Jesus Christ. I can’t believe this!’
    Hutch glared at him. ‘Dom. Cool it. We’d have heard anything alive in here long before now. You can hear mice under here and they’re the size of your thumb.’
    Hutch looked at Luke, hoping to prompt an idea. But Luke’s expression told him that it didn’t look like he was convincing anyone about an absence of life in the building. Around
them, the sound of rain pelting the walls like hail threatened to engulf the shuffling of their feet.
    Hutch looked at the ceiling. ‘We can’t go back out in this. The temperature will drop like a stone in an hour. We’re already soaked. We’ll freeze.’ For a few
seconds no one spoke, but glances were exchanged back and forth.
    Luke suddenly grinned at him. ‘You first then.’

NINE
    It was not possible to creep up the stairs soundlessly, as they would have wished. The planks moved under their feet. They cracked and even boomed with every careful and
reluctant footstep taken. Hutch went first holding his torch in one hand, his knife in the other. Luke stayed close behind him, but not too close that he couldn’t turn and bolt down the
stairs if Hutch so much as flinched. The tiny knife handle hurt his fingers. He relaxed his grip.
    ‘Anything?’ Luke whispered, looking up through the narrow, black wooden tunnel they squeezed clumsily through; a thin passage that reeked of the old sheds in an allotment he’d
explored as a kid, fragrant with cat urine and clotted with dross.
    ‘Nah,’ Hutch said, his voice tight like he was holding his breath.
    Luke’s pulse threatened to jump out of his mouth and ears at the things his torchlight revealed around Hutch. The old dark wood was crowded with long bearded faces that were nothing more
than the patterns in the discoloured grain of ancient timber. It was museum-old, museum-black. It should have been behind glass, not around them in the darkness. He suddenly respected Phil for
going upstairs on his own.
    The thought of people once living here with no electric light or power in the foul wood, filled Luke with such a sense of wretchedness he felt like his soul was being pulled down and through his
feet. They