The Ritual

million.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Ssh.’ Hutch looked at both tents again. ‘Separated.’
    ‘For real?’
    Hutch nodded, reached for the pot. ‘Pass your bucket.’
    Luke handed him his empty mug.
    Hutch concentrated as he poured the coffee from the pot. ‘Since before my wedding. They weren’t even technically together that day. Gayle’s been really depressed for years.
Self-image issues. Post-natal stuff after Molly, their last kid. Who knows? And sometime last year she just stopped functioning. And you know what a handful their youngest is, asthma, A.D.D., now
they think it’s autism. The works. Plus Dom’s got the bullet from work. Marketing in a financial services industry. First out. His whole shtick has been flushed.’
    ‘So what’s he doing?’
    ‘Looking after the kids, getting pissed, and chasing tail with very little success. Gayle’s at her mum’s. Heavily medicated.’
    Luke put his face in his hands and groaned. ‘Shit.’
    ‘And he’s come all the way out to Sweden to get pissed on, lost, and to cap it all you give him not one shoeing, but two. So that’s why they’re both a bit wound-up and
spiky and probably not that agreeable to being reminded about how a man without responsibility lives it up.’
    ‘Why the fuck didn’t you tell me, H?’
    ‘They didn’t want it to intrude on the holiday. Just wanted a total break from it and if you knew, there would have been too many explanations and a whole bunch of soul
searching.’
    Luke felt his body go cold, from his scalp to the soles of his feet. He shuddered. Felt self-loathing fill him up. ‘God, I am a cunt.’
    ‘You weren’t to know.’
    ‘If you don’t have your mates at times like this.’
    ‘Chief, you’ve hardly been close. You’ve been off their radar for years.’
    ‘I knew something was up. Knew it. I should have guessed. Jesus, I am so selfish. So self-involved. I can’t see past my own bullshit—’
    He was interrupted by a crash. Out there, somewhere in the length and breadth of the countless trees and the oceans of invisible ruin and tangle, a great bow or strong limb had been snapped in
half. The sounds of its breaking seemed to shoot in so many directions, it became impossible to guess where the sound originated.
    ‘Jesus. That freaked me.’
    Hutch exhaled noisily. ‘Me too.’
    ‘I heard it before. Outside the hovel.’
    ‘Just falling wood.’
    ‘You reckon?’
    ‘Diseased branches get waterlogged and just break off.’
    But the next series of noises they heard were not caused by a tree, nor could they be passed off as being similar to anything they had heard before in this forest, or in any other forest. It was
a mixture of a bovine cough and a jackal’s bark, but one so deep and powerful it suggested a chest more expansive and a mouth wider than either of those comparisons. Bestial. Ferocious. To be
avoided. Then it was repeated. Downwind of them, about twenty metres deep. But not preceded or followed by the sound of movement.
    It was definitely animal, something big, but Luke knew how the dark obscured or amplified nocturnal sounds. Even a small toad could seem gigantic and be heard for miles; a bird call could be
mistaken for a human scream, and a mammal’s sudden mating cry might even have words inside it. There were no predators they need be afraid of out here, he reminded himself. Plenty of wildlife
for sure, but unless they stepped onto an adder or crossed the path of a wolverine with young, they would be fine. They had checked. It was just a case of city ears not accustomed to the cries of
the night out here in the wild. Or so he quickly told himself.
    And yet, something of significant size, power and savagery had thrown the carcass of a large animal into a tree yesterday. An elk or moose. Stripped it and flung it upwards as if to mark
territory or create some outdoor larder.
    Hutch broke Luke’s train of thought, which seemed to be quickly derailing his attempts at reassuring himself, to say, ‘Make sure the soup packets and hot dog tin are buried. Or some
long-nosed mutha will be rooting around tonight.’
    Luke snorted, but was too tense to laugh. ‘What do you think—’
    And there it was again. Closer than before, but coming from behind Luke and not Hutch, as if it had soundlessly circled their encampment.
    Their torch beams scattered into the trees and then were swallowed by the thick wet walls of foliage that surrounded them.
    ‘Badger or something,’ Hutch