The Ritual

Walked straight to the edge of the summit and looked down the rocky slope they had
ascended, down to where Phil had been gathering firewood.
    ‘Phil!’ he called at the top of his voice. Called until his lungs squeezed out all of the air and hung spent and exhausted inside his chest. ‘Phil! Phil! Phil! Phil!’
Then he was coughing, his throat wrenched and painful.
    There was no sign of Phil at all, and no response from the eternity of wet trees and dark hollows and eruptions of tangled undergrowth. No bird calls, not a breath of wind; even the rain seemed
to have paused in shock at what must have come from those trees to snatch a full-grown man from his feet.

THIRTY-EIGHT
    ‘I . . . I heard him scream. I never let him out of my sight. I swear. He was twenty feet away. It was the stove. I was checking the water. Leaning over to see if it was
boiling. Then I heard him scream . . .’ Dom talked the quavers out of his voice, until it became flat and quiet. ‘He’s gone.’
    Luke crouched beside him, the knife still clenched in his fist. He looked away from Dom and the tent. Scanned the surrounding rise of boulder and stone to make sure nothing was coming for
them.
    ‘Jesus. Jesus Christ.’ He could not accept this. That Phil was gone too; being pulled apart down there, somewhere in the shadows . . . He stopped the thought from blossoming into
something more sudden and red and wet than it already was.
    It wasn’t possible. Any of this. Perhaps if he wasn’t so tired, with every muscle hurting under his damp skin, and his mind thick and dizzy with fatigue, he would go mad. Three days
in this place had blunted his edges. His personality was disappearing, paring itself down to instinct and fear. How a rabbit must think. You didn’t need to be sentient out here, just afraid
all the time and quick to act when the world suddenly felt wrong around you; too still, too easy. That’s when you died out here.
    He should go now. Take off on his own. He really should. He stood up and looked to the other side of the hill. It was taking them one by one then vanishing. Splitting up might confuse it.
He should use the last of the light and the last of his legs and just run and never look back.
    But would it change its pattern and kill them both tonight? First Dom up here, alone inside the tent, and then him down there, tangled in the undergrowth and delirious with exhaustion. Easy
prey.
    The dream. The sticks.
    Dom’s shivering face looked up at him. The rims of his eyes were bright red. Dirty and bruised and dishevelled and wet, wearing only grimy boxer shorts and a waterproof, he looked
pathetic. Something thickened and surged in Luke’s chest. He shuddered. Dropped to his knees and put his arms around Dom’s shoulders. Squeezed his eyes shut. Dom trembled, but his hands
gripped the waterproof around Luke’s waist and he clung on like a child after a terrible fright.
    In the drizzle and thin light, they held each other for a long time, in silence.

THIRTY-NINE
    It was getting dark now and there would be no fire. Just their torches and the little blue whoosh of the camping stove, both resources that would need to be used sparingly
until the morning. They sat back to back, in front of the tent after finishing the last energy bars and the rest of the sugar. It settled them for a while. A slender stream of nutrients in their
exhausted blood allowed a brief period of calm to take possession of them.
    A cold breeze blew constantly from the south west; below the hill it stirred the trees like a great and impatient breath. The rain had petered out, but the air was chilly. Shades of evening were
created all about them by the dark weight of the cloud cover above. Darkness would soon overcome them.
    They sat on Phil’s sleeping bag to save their buttocks freezing against the unforgiving stones, and each took a 180-degree view of the hill, keeping watch, alone, and trying to steer their
thoughts away from Phil.
    Dom began to laugh, but without any warmth, and broke the long silence that began when their backs first pressed together. ‘Everything I wanted to get away from for a week, I’m
desperate to see again. Fucking crazy.’
    Luke could feel the broad weight of Dom’s shoulders easing further into him. He hadn’t realized a body could be so heavy, so dense. Luke cleared his throat. ‘You’re not
wrong.’ He stared into the distance. ‘I’ve been at my wits’ end. With my whole life. For so