The Ritual

thirty-six hours. He repeated the menu in a
silent mantra.
    The last time he’d drunk any fluid was in the morning; a cup of thick bitter coffee. The sweat on him turned cold and he stopped again to dry-heave against a tree.
    At 10, his vision was down to five feet, but he continued hobbling in a dark and blurry void that was more disorientation than direction.
    His head was down. Eyes mostly closed. But he suffered a sudden sense that he was not alone. Luke looked up, certain that the presence of other figures had encroached into his immediate space.
And he saw, in the dimming gloom between the trees, a whole host of little white figures. Upright, perfectly still, repeated to the ends of his vision. He screwed up his good eye, blinked.
    And all of the . . . children? . . . were gone.
    Dwarf willows in thin light; he’d mistaken them for an indistinct crowd of little white people; thin and poised and staring.
    Sometime after midnight, he was sure Hutch had begun to walk behind him. Phil was there too. They had come to their senses and realized this complicated and well-orchestrated
practical joke had gone too far, now that he was so lonely and hurt and lost. They were too embarrassed to see his reaction to their cruel ingenuity so kept their faces turned away from him. And he
was so upset that they had been fooling with him that he ignored them. He felt sulky and betrayed and wanted to sob hard. Eventually they gave up following him.
    When Dom caught up with him and fell into step again, Luke was too tired to speak to his friend or to ask him where he had been. But he smiled and hoped Dom could sense, in the lightless depths
of the nocturnal forest, that he was pleased to see him again.
    When he stopped to rest and slap about for his torch – he was sure he had one earlier – Dom had wandered off again.
    Sitting on a stone Luke passed out.
    And began a conversation with Charlotte in the Prince of Wales pub in Holland Park back home. It was sunny and they were sitting outside, just like they did on their second date when she had
come out of the tube station in a short skirt and leather boots and he had been mute with desire and astonishment because she had been wearing trainers and jeans when they first met, when he had
gone home content that a girl had taken his number, though was not that bothered about seeing her again. But then was so pleased to be with her that second time, and had decided right there in the
beer garden to make a go of it with her. He told her she was a ‘fox’ and she smiled. She reached across the table and touched his face, bit her bottom lip and told him he was
‘lovely’. They sat together for hours. They kissed and told each other everything about their jobs, their hometowns, their families, their last relationships, all of that stuff that can
come out on an early date with someone you immediately care about.
    When he awoke, dragged from sleep by the ache in his neck and the throbbing behind the slice in his forehead, he continued to talk to Charlotte until he realized he was alone and leaning against
a dead tree in a forest. Moisture had soaked up through his trousers and into his underwear. He was sodden and he shivered. Where was his sleeping bag?
    Through the upper branches of the trees he could see the sky was turning the pale blue-grey of early morning. He looked at his watch: 6 a.m. He had slept for three or four hours. Why had it not
killed him here? He tried to work this out, but was too tired and in too much pain to investigate the idea much. Was too thirsty to even swallow. His lips were crusted with salt.
    On his hands and knees he moved so slowly.
    Just another twenty feet then lie down and let the darkness take you.
    Pressing the compass to his one good eye, he saw nothing. Dropped the compass but felt the loop of string around his neck go tight, but could not catch the compass as it swung like a pendulum
above the dark earth beneath him.
    Just go up this incline to that tree.
    Down at the bottom of this glade are two stones upon which you can sit.
    Through those two spruce trees the nettles seem to clear.
    Behind that copse of fir there could be water. It looks like the kind of place where there could be water.
    The trees thin at the top of that rise. Let’s go up it sideways. Might be easier.
    At the summit of a mound of earth, around which the forest parted as if to make room for a place where people might gather under the solitary tree, he sat and