The Ritual

more.’
    ‘That’s good to know. Thanks for sharing.’ Dom pushed Hutch off his legs and stretched his body out lengthways, in readiness for sleep.
    ‘The blasted heath,’ Luke said, smiling. ‘The cursed wood.’
    Phil stood up. ‘I need a piss.’ He stumbled away, his feet booming on the floor. He disappeared into the annex where the rusty tools were stored.
    ‘No. Please,’ Luke said, more horrified than he sounded.
    ‘Phillers, you weasel,’ Hutch cried out, through his giggles.
    ‘Outside for a shit,’ Dom added.
    ‘I’m not taking a shit,’ Phil said, his voice muffled in the darkness. ‘Yet.’
    Hutch and Dom exploded into laughter.
    Luke shook his head, fighting a smile that ached around his mouth. ‘I cannot believe you are my friends. Burning furniture and crucifixes, and now pissing indoors. Totally unacceptable
behaviour for fathers and husbands.’
    Dom sat up to unzip his sleeping bag. ‘Tell me where you’ve done it. I need to go too. We might as well piss on the same spot.’
    When Phil and Dom were lying down inside their sleeping bags, Dom snoring within minutes, Phil wheezy but motionless, Luke remained awake and propped up on one elbow inside his
own sleeping bag. Hutch lay concealed in a funnel of red nylon that tapered down to his feet, but stared wide-eyed at the fire he’d replenished with as much dry wood as he could shave from
the walls before they all turned in.
    ‘H?’
    ‘Mmm?’
    ‘Forgive me for speaking out loud, but what is the plan?’
    Hutch turned his head and grinned. ‘Haven’t got a clue.’
    Luke laughed quietly. ‘It’s not been without merit. This trip. We can dine out on it for years. This place is off the scale.’
    ‘Which is no exaggeration. But if the sun had been shining and it hadn’t been raining, I have to ask myself if it would look half as terrifying as it does.’
    Luke nodded. ‘I still think it would.’
    Hutch yawned around a smile. ‘Me too.’
    Bunching up his last set of unworn and dry clothes inside his pack, Luke fashioned a pillow behind his head. He tried to shuffle closer to the stove without disturbing Phil, but ended up in a
foetal position. ‘I had this freaky idea earlier. When we were upstairs.’ Luke knew the idea would be unwelcome to the ears of anyone still awake, but could not stop himself thinking
out loud. ‘If that thing upstairs was a representation of the thing that threw the carcass into the tree.’
    ‘I heard that,’ Phil said, sleepily.
    Hutch sniggered. ‘It was a shocker to be sure. But we all know,’ he winked at Luke, ‘that things like that don’t exist. More’s the pity. But it’s amazing what
mountaineers think they’ve seen when they’re oxygen deprived. And sailors lost at sea. Exhausted soldiers. Same deal. We become detached from the familiar and our ancestral imagination
tries to work shit out. Isolation. Long winter darkness. That’s what did this.’ He looked at the ceiling. ‘Someone lost their mind for sure out here.’
    ‘Think I would too. This place has put an end to my long-held fantasy about living alone, in a cabin in the woods. But the thing in the tree . . .’
    Hutch yawned, his eyes half closed. ‘Animal. We’re not wildlife experts. For all we know, it is something bears do. Larder or something, like you suggested. Anyway, I better turn in.
We can embellish to our heart’s content once we’re in that tourist hut by the river tomorrow.’
    Luke nodded. ‘Sure. Sweet dreams.’

TWELVE
    Sticks. Spiking cheeks. Looking for eyes. Poking the throat. Sticks. Bristling phalanxes needling from branches and erupting from the ground. Sticks everywhere.
    Into the dark. Throwing your weight forward. Head down to protect your face. Arms flung out, fingers grasping for purchase, to seize handfuls of the sharp sticks and tug them aside. But down
sleeves, inside your collar, and into your socks to catch like barbs, go the sticks and they bring you to a thrashing suspension, your feet never finding the ground. Because you cannot feel the
earth, the dark clay from which all of it springs. Down through cracking bracken, sharp brown thorns and crunching dead wood, your feet plunge. Buried to the knee in small crevasses from which you
cannot haul slow spent legs.
    And there you hang. Gulping at the air like a man drowning. Dizzy with exhaustion, weary like the dying, you hang between the bindings of vine and the scaffolding of sticks. And wait. Wait for