The Ritual

the floor of the church. Luke followed him. The floor felt spongy, almost mobile, beneath his feet, like he was
walking on a mattress. The floor sloped.
    And then Hutch was suddenly down on his side, his legs buried to mid-thigh in the leaves behind the first row of pews. ‘Shit.’ Hutch didn’t move. ‘I’ve gone right
through the floor.’
    Luke looked down at his own feet. ‘You OK?’
    Hutch didn’t answer and didn’t move anything but his head. He looked down at what his legs had disappeared into, then propped himself up on one arm, which he had to bury to the elbow
in fallen leaves to find something solid enough to support his upper body.
    ‘Hutch. You all right?’
    ‘Think so. But I’m scared to look.’
    ‘Here. Let me give you a hand.’
    ‘Careful,’ Hutch said. ‘It’s rotten through.’
    Luke stopped, then inched towards the interior wall on his left, instinctively feeling that the floor at the base of the walls would be a safer option.
    Hutch stood up fully inside the hole he had made. ‘Just as well the wood is soft. Imagine what splinters could have done.’
    ‘Or a rusty nail.’
    Hutch leaned his head back between his shoulders and shouted ‘Fuck off!’ at the remnants of roof. Then raised a foot from the hole and tried to find an adjacent piece of board sturdy
enough to take his weight near the bench on his right side.
    ‘I’m on my way over,’ Luke said
    ‘Nah. We don’t both want to end up in the crypt.’
    Luke let out a strangled laugh that sounded aggressive to his own ears. He shut it off and stopped smiling.
    The floor was firmer at the side, and Luke carefully worked his way to the last row of the pews. Then he stepped over the first little black bench and into the space between the two end rows. He
could barely get the width of one leg between them. ‘People must have been tiny. Like children.’
    His own observation unnerved him in the faint but perceptible way the interiors of historical buildings always did when he ducked through tiny doorways and saw the little beds and chairs that
once serviced the long-dead. Perhaps it was this sudden and unwelcome reminder of his own mortality that made him feel, so acutely, a sense of a frightening loss that was like vertigo. That all
things must pass. That anyone who had lived there and used the furniture before it became antique was now dust. The dank oppressive atmosphere of the enclosed and rotten space he was inside added a
sense of desolation. Despite the rain, he was glad it had no roof. Even the dull mackerel light was welcome. He felt suddenly grateful for the company of the others. ‘The last thing this
place feels is holy.’ He could not stop himself from just blurting it out.
    ‘I know what you mean.’ Hutch had regained his feet and was standing in the narrow aisle between the pews, testing the floor in front of him, before taking careful steps forward as
if he was walking on ice.
    Luke stepped over the next row of pews but the section of floor he placed his foot upon was soft and gave way. He withdrew the leg and tried further down until he found a firmer spot. Hutch
reached the altar.
    ‘You reckon where you are can take our combined weight?’ Luke asked Hutch.
    ‘I reckon.’ Hutch wiped the thick mulch of dead leaf mould from the top of the altar, until his bare hand reached stone.
    Luke gingerly approached the altar from the side, rubbing his back against the dark wall that was down to stone in most places, the plaster having been dissolved by the rain falling through the
roof for . . . for how long he had no idea. But for a long time.
    ‘Anything on it?’ he asked.
    ‘Like what, a virgin sacrifice?’ Hutch replied without smiling.
    ‘Runes and shit.’
    ‘Nope. Just a weird hollow. See, right in the centre. It’s been hollowed out.’
    ‘Baptism font.’
    Hutch nodded. ‘You could be right, Chief.’
    ‘What did you mean before?’
    ‘Eh?’
    ‘Before. You said it was odd.’
    Hutch frowned at Luke, then his grimy forehead smoothed out. He tapped a finger against the top of the stone he stood behind. ‘No crucifixes on the stone arch. All the carvings on the
stone face are pagan.’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘Old too. And those runes. You know those circular markings on Viking carvings? Serpents? With those long snaky bodies, all swallowing each other at one end?’
    ‘Yeah. Yeah.’
    ‘Well, I think there was once a pair of those on it, with what looks like carvings of’ –