The Ritual

in a fan across one side of his head.
    ‘Where the fuck is H?’ Dom demanded of them, breathless. He looked at Luke, then at Phil, then Luke again. ‘Where the fuck is he?’

THIRTY
    They returned to the campsite two hours after waking. Above the forest, where they could see it, the sky was now a dark indigo.
    No one spoke from the shock of it all. They were numb with fright and sick at the colossal thought they each tried to comprehend, then accept. Something that would keep rearing up in their minds
and hearts when they were too tired to suppress it and were caught off guard. Something impossible, something consuming, something choking.
    They had called his name a hundred times; hobbling and shuffling in a nervous pack, torch beams flashing all about them at the dripping impenetrability of the forest; heads whipping back and
forth at every meagre sound or far-off screech of a bird in the cold air, until they were dizzy and aching and exhausted by their own skittish fears. No one answered their calls; calls that were
strident at first, then desperate, and finally just hoarse and not penetrating much beyond the immediate thickets.
    ‘Hutch!’
    ‘Mate!’
    ‘Hutch!’
    ‘H!’
    It had been too dark to see the evidence of his departure. But Hutch was gone and now they were left alone with his blood that was dark and thickening all about the broken-down tent.
    ‘Can you take the other tent down?’ Luke asked them, breaking a long silence with a voice that was flat and distant to his own ears. ‘And pack it up. Plus your gear. We need to
move the minute the light improves.’
    Mystified, Dom and Phil just stared at Luke. Shocked and angry with him too, but also listless and apathetic, they just stared, and stared. He tried to explain himself. ‘I’m packed.
The map. I need to look at it.’ He glanced at the destroyed tent. ‘Maybe sort Hutch’s things as well.’
    It was four in the morning; they had been woken at two. But at least they were all inside their sleeping bags by eleven the night before, so a few hours’ sleep were behind them. Not enough
to recover from the previous day’s exertions, Luke calculated, but enough to give them a few hours of strength this coming morning. The most important hours of the entire trip so far. Luke
knew the edge of the forest must be reached in the coming morning, by noon latest. Dom’s knee would slow him to a weak shuffle soon after. Once that happened, they would not progress more
than a mile or two before nightfall.
    ‘What?’ Dom finally said, stupefied.
    ‘His torch. Knife. Stuff we can use. He had energy bars in his bag.’
    Dom looked at Phil. Then raised both arms, before clapping them at his sides. ‘We’re not going anywhere ’til we find him.’
    Luke looked at the ground and released a long and tired sigh.
    ‘What are you suggesting? We just take off? Cherry-pick his gear?’ Dom barked, his words trembling with emotion.
    Phil looked at the ruined tent and the blood that had gone viscous and oily in the thin light of a stray torch’s light, idle and unfortunate in its placement. And there was so much of it
to be seen, if you angled your torch through the hole as Phil then did.
    ‘Oh God, H.’ Phil suddenly crouched down and covered his face with both hands. Now he understood.
    But at the sound of Phil’s distress, a huge lump came into Luke’s throat. He stopped listening to Dom, closed his eyes. H, H, H is gone; an idiot rhyme chanted through his
head. He felt like a child. The urgency of his purpose to get them occupied and then moving dissipated.
    Phil was crying. Dom’s face crumpled. A long syrup of saliva drooped from his bottom lip. His eyes welled with water. One hand across his brow, as if shielding his face from the sun, his
shoulders moved with each sob. Luke felt his jaw loosen. Salt scalded his throat down to his sternum. Hutch’s smiling face came into his mind. He almost heard a cackle. The idea he no longer
existed was so preposterous it made him lightheaded. Then it was as if he had heartburn and indigestion at the same time.
    Luke dropped to his buttocks and groaned through a cage of fingers wrapped about his face. For once he was oblivious to the stinging scratches on his calves and those hot lines etched across his
cheeks and ears, was immune to the tugging aches inside his thighs. Beyond his own clasping hands, the other two wept into the darkness.
    At one point Luke stood up and immediately bumped into