The Ritual

paused.
    Somewhere to his right a branch snapped and the sound cracked off every trunk for what sounded like miles.
    Luke moved to the sound, keeping his head down and shoulders tense. Then found himself rushing at full speed to the place where the silence had been broken. Unthinking, blind with the red
maelstrom that foamed and roared in his ears, he leapt over a slippery log and kicked noisily through the bracken. ‘Where are you, bitch?’
    He saw nothing. In the distance, their cries rising ever more frantically, Dom and Phil begged him to return to his mind.
    ‘Come on. Come on and find me,’ he said in a low voice, every word tighter than the last, speaking to the solemn trees and wet verdure, the dead wood and foot-deep leaf mulch, the
fungus and thorns, the shadowy air and distant mist atop the green tinted rocks, to all that hid this terrible and unnatural thing. Because only now, like this, could he face whatever it was that
could do such things to a man. And at no other time. So this is a place he told himself he must return to; must save some deep part of himself for when the time came to die out here. And it would
not be easy for their hunter. He would not go quickly or quietly. He swore this to the oldest forest in Europe.
    After a long moment of remaining still, he began to take careful steps back towards the others.

THIRTY-THREE
    ‘What did you see, Dom? What did you see?’ Luke panted as much as spoke. His whole body shivered as the adrenaline drained from his muscles.
    Dom and Phil were wary of him. They stared at the mad stranger with their shocked faces like the people on the underground platform after his fight; those who stared from the open doors of the
carriages and through the yellow windows at the maniac who had punched a stranger out cold. Dom and Phil did not know him. How little do we know of anyone, let alone ourselves? Luke thought in the
kind of clarity he had experienced no more than a dozen times in his entire life. ‘What came in Dom? What was in your tent?’
    Dom shook his head. ‘I don’t fucking know. It was pitch-black.’
    ‘Think. Was it big? Bulky like a bear? On all fours, like a dog?’
    Dom looked bewildered, breathless. He was showing too much of his eyes. ‘Big. Stank. Like, like a wet animal, but worse.’
    ‘Did it make a sound?’
    ‘I don’t . . .’ He screwed up his face and slapped both hands over his ears. ‘Like when a dog gets something in its mouth. Oh, Jesus. Don’t make me . . . It had him
in its mouth.’
    Luke nodded, straightened his back. Looked over his shoulder as his chest rose and fell, rose and fell.
    ‘A bear. It’s a big bear,’ Phil said, his whole face shaking, his red eyes full of water. ‘Big cat. They escape. Private zoos. A . . . A . . . Wolf.’
    ‘We need to know. Need to know as much about it as possible.’ Luke looked at Dom and then at Phil, lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘It’s been following us all day. It
made sure we saw Hutch. Arranged it. Animals . . . wouldn’t do that.’
    ‘How?’ Phil asked, his voice like his face, aghast at the dreadful impossibility of it all.
    ‘It’s hunted us for three days. Maybe as soon as we came into this forest. First day, we were supposed to find that animal in the tree.’ Luke lit a cigarette, his movements
slow, incongruously calm and deliberate. ‘And the house. The effigy in the attic. The goddamned church. What you saw in the cemetery. It’s all connected. Somehow.’
    Dom and Phil stood close together, their eyes not leaving the forest that stretched forever around them.
    ‘Come on,’ Dom said, his voice shaking. ‘It’s an animal. A fucking wolf or something. Don’t start with that crazy shit. It’s not the right place or
time.’
    ‘How can a wolf, a bear, a wolverine, whatever, put a body up in a tree like that? Eh? Think, man.’
    Dom’s face made it clear how hard he was struggling with the very idea that what they were dealing with was not just beyond their combined imaginations, but also impossible. He looked ill,
pale, haggard, and shuffled his good leg a few inches while the other remained bent at the knee, useless. It needed to be raised and straight, Luke thought inappropriately, and stupidly, and
emotionlessly at such a time as this.
    ‘A man. Some kind of maniac,’ Dom said.
    ‘Possible,’ Luke replied, nodding, hoping. ‘Some Swedish hillbilly with a hard-on for tourists. This shit is supposed to happen all the time, in