The Ritual

returned his stare. Her little mouth was tight, grim.
    There were sheathed knifes at the waists of Loki and Fenris, but they came to him without the rifle. The plastic tie around his ankles was severed by Fenris so that he could walk.
    He was pulled off the bed by his bound wrists and tugged from the room. Outside, they hauled him down the passageway to the right of his room, to lead him upwards and into the dark house, and
not down and out of it.
    At the end of the cramped passage, the old woman stood and blocked the bottom of a staircase that was so small and narrow, Luke imagined it had been built solely for the passage of children. In
the amber light of the lamp that Loki carried, her embedded eyes glinted black with fury, and also with fear, like those of a mother afraid for her young.
    Then the little old woman and her loud feet suddenly turned and clumped ahead of Loki, like she was suddenly eager to get up those stairs first. And now that she knew she could not stop the
eager chattering mischief and insolent will of the youths, she seemed to move too swiftly for her years on those little loud feet. To Luke, the hidden haste of her limbs inside that old dress, its
hem sweeping the stairs, and the sight of her little body topped by the tatty white head, scuttling upwards into shadow, was a vision as unwelcome and disconcerting as that of an unpleasant doll,
suddenly come to life.
    But up and into the smell of age Luke was pushed. Forced from behind by Fenris, he was squeezed into Loki’s ungainly wake through the narrow dark staircase, its confines as hot as an
unclean mouth. The attic had its own breath that came down dusty and tangy with roof spaces where old air collected under warped timbers, and was further thickened with a taint of petrified flesh.
Luke recognized a smell sharpened by the long-ago desiccation of small bodies, of birds and rodents; their ruin now a lingering residue. It was the same odour he had discovered in the loft of a
flat full of dead rats he once rented in West Hampstead.
    His heart jumped inside his chest when he caught the scent, and his eyes burned from his inability to blink as he was pushed closer to the top of the staircase. Something was living up there; he
had heard it in the night. And the fact that it was living up there in that terrible reek of dried-out decay, made him absolutely certain that he did not want to see it.
    Loki struggled before him, his progress slowed to a squeezing and scraping of his length against the ancient timbers and the wooden planks and dry plaster that buckled between the uprights.
Amber light, from the swaying oil lantern in Loki’s hand, threw a warm glow downwards, between Loki’s legs, and for moments Luke was able to see his feet on the little stairs that were
so worn down and scuffed at their middle.
    The girl stayed downstairs; her plump face unsmiling with alarm, or even fright; the washed-out blue eyes were magnified with awe at what Luke was being pushed towards by her collaborators. Up
here was something she had clearly seen before, but did not want to witness again.
    But up he went, reluctant, stumbling; pushed by Fenris and pulled by Loki to the threshold of the black space.
    Inside, there was no light beyond the halo of Loki’s lantern, which the giant suddenly shielded with one large hand. And then dimmed the flame inside the glass shade as though to protect
sensitive eyes.
    Not so much as a thin streak of murky daylight cut through a loose tile in the low roof above them. This was the peak of the house; the summit of all its mystery and horror. Walls and stairs and
beams below in the old structure crookedly supported it, but also concealed what was up there; insulated it, preserved it and its continuing purpose. And Luke could now literally taste the
impending revelation that he would rather be without. His terror was such that he could not even swallow. He tried and failed to rid his mind of the memories of what could still be found in these
old places, out here among the oldest trees of Europe.
    Loki and Fenris fell into a hushed reverence once they were inside the attic space.
    A stinking hand curled around Luke’s face and covered his mouth from behind to make sure he also observed a respectful quiet. Fenris. The slender dirty hand remained there, tight across
his lips. A bony shoulder and chest pushed against his back and shunted him further into the darkness. He peered down to see his naked feet, and at