The Ritual

he wafted his hand towards the door and the wood outside – ‘all of this
around them. Vines and leaves. The rain has corroded most of it.’
    ‘Cool. I’ll take a look.’
    ‘I chipped away a little bit of the dirt with my penknife on the pillars. It’s quite intricate, which is odd because the actual building is very basic. Like a shed or croft. But it
must have been a Christian church once. Probably the last time it was used. It’s weird because there are no Christian symbols in here. No Christian headstones outside either. So no one was
interned here in the last . . . millennia. How does that work?’
    ‘The church has just been built over an earlier site?’
    ‘Exactly. A sacred site, I think. And the church must have once been the centre of that . . . settlement we found. Which can’t be more than a century old, like this building. So
people still came to worship, but stopped burying their dead here. Weird.’
    The mention of which did something unpleasant to Luke’s empty stomach. In the maelstrom of his confusion and his disorderly thoughts, he wanted to start peppering Hutch with questions but
held his tongue. And felt anxious to get moving again; to get away from the place, and quickly.
    ‘And the other crazy thing is,’ Hutch said, raising both hands into the air, ‘it’s still here.’
    Luke frowned.
    Hutch pointed at the stone plinth. ‘No one has carted any of this off to a museum. I don’t think there are that many good examples left of the Norse carvings in the wild.
They’re all uprooted and preserved. Protected from acid rain in display cases in museums down in Lund or Stockholm. That’s where I’ve seen them before.’ Hutch lowered his
voice. ‘So, between me and you, I’d guess that no one knows this is here.’
    Luke could not hide his shock at hearing this fact voiced, even though he had privately arrived at the same disconcerting conclusion.
    ‘No one has been through here since this place was abandoned. I’d put money on it, Chief.’
    Luke shook his head in disbelief and with a disquiet he hoped did not show.
    Hutch’s voice lowered even further. ‘And if we weren’t lost and soaked and hungry, it would be pretty cool to discover it. We’d make the papers.’
    ‘But now it’s just freaky and scary.’
    ‘Exactly. And we still might make the papers for another reason.’
    They looked at each other and were both beginning to crack mad grins when Phil started shouting outside.

TWENTY-FOUR
    Luke burst out of the church. Dom was on his feet, but poised to cringe or run, it was hard to tell. Phil stood knee-deep in undergrowth with his back to the chapel, staring
into the overgrown cemetery. When he turned about his face was tight with shock and terror. The same expression he had that morning when they found him naked and incoherent in the hovel. His
trousers were undone. He must have been taking a piss. If he had not been so disturbed by what he had just seen, it might have been funny.
    Hutch was swearing aloud from somewhere behind him; he had not followed Luke out through the church arch. ‘What’s wrong?’ Luke called to Phil, then looked at Dom when no
reaction was forthcoming.
    Dom returned his stare. ‘I don’t fucking know!’
    Phil had begun by crying out, like he had been bitten or burnt and was just coming to terms with the pain. But then he had been shouting with more than fear. By the time Luke stumbled over the
pews and emerged into the weeds outside the building, Phil was silent and standing still in the rain. It was worse than the shouting.
    Luke looked at the back of Phil’s head, blue and pointy with the hood of his coat up. ‘Phillers? What is it?’
    Phil was staring into the trees, towards the two rune stones visible from the rough clearing in front of the church. At the sound of Luke’s voice, Phil quickly tucked and then belted
himself away. He turned around and stumbled through the undergrowth towards the church like he was wading through seawater in a hurry.
    Dom and Luke could not stop themselves exchanging glances, until looking at each other became too awkward. Dom looked over Luke’s shoulder and roared, ‘Hutch! Get your arse out here.
Now!’
    Hutch said something from inside the walls of the church. It was muffled and too low for any of them to hear. It was like he was preoccupied with something. But what could have been of more
concern than the noise Phil had just made?
    ‘Hutch!’ Luke took long strides