The Ritual

America, Australia. Not in
Sweden, but who knows? Maybe it does. We’ve found a bit of the country not too many people seem to know about. Or if they did, they’re not around now to talk about it. That church was
full of dead people. Some of the bones . . . They weren’t new, but they weren’t that old either.’
    ‘Sacrifice,’ Phil said in a timid voice.
    Luke and Dom looked at him. His pointy blue hood was pulled up again and he stood with his back to them, staring into the trees. Back in the direction Hutch was displayed. From over Phil’s
shoulder, Luke could see one of the actual trees they had stumbled away from, and a pale foot was visible through the branches. He thought of his own sudden mad charge into the forest and suddenly
felt cold and sick down to the soles of his boots. His balance deserted him for a moment, and he swayed until a shuffle of his feet moored him again.
    ‘What are you talking about?’ Dom sounded angry.
    Luke raised a hand to quieten him; looked at Phil. ‘Go on, mate.’
    Phil looked at the ground. ‘I had a dream. In that house. I remember bits of it. There were people in it.’
    ‘What the fuck are you on about?’ Dom demanded.
    ‘Dom,’ Luke hissed through his clenched teeth. He turned back to Phil. ‘I had one too.’
    Phil swivelled towards Luke sharply and stared at him; the eyes in his red and sweating face were wild and so full of fear it was hard to look into them and impossible to look away.
    Luke nodded. ‘Yes, mate. In the dream I was trapped. Out here. Caught up in the trees. With . . . with that sound. Circling me.’
    Dom slid to the ground, his back against a tree, his body slack with despair. He had dreamed too. And Luke wanted to know of what. Wanted every scant clue on offer. Their survival would depend
upon it. He’d lived ten years of his life in London amongst people whose entire vocal output was a public relations exercise, who spun the truth of their existences into scenarios designed to
provoke envy. People who couldn’t face the idea that things weren’t going right for them. By not speaking of something negative, or allowing themselves to even think about it, the
problem no longer existed. He’d once envied them, then felt contemptuous. But he was not like them. In fact, he was their opposite. He’d always analysed the crap in his life
forensically. Perhaps the attitude held him back, ruined any chance of real and sustained happiness; this refusal to delude himself. But there was no place for lunatic optimism out here, or denial
of the facts, no matter how preposterous they were. Luke found he had almost accepted the situation, and wondered if it was because he always expected the very worst to befall him, all of the time,
in every aspect of his life.
    ‘I was stuck,’ Luke said. ‘And something was hunting me.’ Like a premonition, he wanted to say. ‘It was so real. Vivid, you know? And Hutch. I found him in the
attic. Sleep walking. And he’d seen something awful too. Something in a dream.’ Dom was trying not to listen. Luke raised both hands in the air to add emphasis to what he was saying.
‘We all lost it in that place. And were too embarrassed in the light of day to confront it.’ He pointed at Dom. ‘You wouldn’t let us. And you still want to pretend it
isn’t happening. Well fuck that shit. We’d better open our eyes to this. Now.’ Luke stared at Phil and nodded at him.
    Phil swallowed. Took a breath. ‘They sacrificed people. I think. In that house. To something. A long time ago.’
    Luke nodded. ‘When that church was open for business and that cemetery wasn’t so overgrown. The people in that basement were in a really bad way. Murdered.’
    Phil raised his face to look at a portion of sky visible through the canopy. ‘They hung them. Strung them up for it. I think it was younger then. But it’s still here. They’re
gone. The old people I saw in my dream. Who . . . fed it. But it is still here.’
    Dom stared into the trees in silence.

THIRTY-FOUR
    ‘I’ll never get across it.’ Bright-red skin shone through the patchwork of dirt on Dom’s face. He leaned a shoulder against a tree, angling the crutch
into the spongy ground to hold himself upright. The crutch was a discarded tree branch at the right length and thick enough to be sturdy; it even had a V-shape crook to slip under an armpit. A
third attempt at a walking aid; the first two having been discarded as ineffective. Luke found