The Ritual

house. Everything around here
was morbidly aged and neglected. The very smells of the place were alien to him. The house smelled of the forest. Of the dark dripping heart of the terrible wood, that reared up black and still and
impenetrable around the grassy paddock.
    He was suddenly gripped with a terror that the pyre was for him. That the youths were going to burn him alive.
    He forced himself to deny the possibility, to stem the spurt of panic that came into his mouth. They were just young and drunk. They had saved him. They took nothing seriously; they were
teenagers. Excitable. That’s all. Someone had gone to fetch a doctor.
    Then why lock the door? Luke turned his head slowly and looked at the little door. To . . . to keep him safe. But from what?
    Luke shuffled as fast as he dared across the room to the door, the floor gritty under the soles of his feet. Supposing a time came, when the pain in his head lessened and more mobility returned
to his body, he wondered if he would need to free himself from the room, silently. The tiny window was too small to climb through, so he was only left with the door as a method of escape.
    He turned the black iron door handle. Locked. He knew it was, but maybe it could be forced open. The house was old, the door narrow, it looked flimsy. But when he shook the handle and pressed
his naked shoulder into the wood, the door proved to be more solid and heavy than it appeared, and was also swollen slightly crooked in the doorway. There was little movement of it inside the
frame. His brief hope of an easy escape died.
    He bent over and waited for the quakes inside his skull to subside to ripples. Returned to the window.
    Down below, Fenris and Loki had stripped off their T-shirts and revealed their upper bodies to the cold evening air: pale as grubs around the tattoos, chests smooth, upper arms long and thin and
festooned with more of the black spiky tattoos. Swathes of matted black hair formed drapes around their freshly whitened faces. He had not realized how long Loki’s hair was until now; it fell
past his waist in a tatty curtain. The man’s limbs were spindly, but he was a giant. He had some sort of bandolier that crossed his chest; it was made from black leather and studded. Both
men’s forearms bristled with long silver nails, protruding from leather bands that stretched from wrist to elbow.
    Grimaces had been newly depicted on to the young but knowing faces of the two men. They widened their eyes at the dark sky and did more of the idiotic shrieking, with their arms held out from
their bodies. Luke could not see the girl.
    Black metal music suddenly exploded from the old CD player. The machine was out of sight, and must have been operated by the girl, who suddenly ran into view, naked. Her buttocks and heavy
breasts shook as she ran. There were no tattoos visible on her skin and she had small feet. Absurd feet. Her skin was so pale too, almost luminescent. Upon her head she wore the mask; had become
the hare again. Her head looked oversized, shaggy, and the vague shadow her head cast before the orangey glow of the house was not pleasant.
    Messily, Fenris upended the petrol can over the wood. It splashed silvery. Loki produced a Zippo lighter and Luke suddenly identified one major cause of the unrelenting irritation that had
refused to subside inside him since he had eaten. He was in withdrawal. And desperately wanted to smoke. Wondered how long it had been since his last cigarette. He’d rather have tobacco than
clothes or fucking steel cutlery. ‘Please, please let them have cigarettes,’ he whispered.
    The Zippo took its time igniting the pyre. And the pyre had to be relit four times, despite the leaping of the fat hare and Fenris’s excitable shrieking to urge the flames into existence.
They were all drunk.
    He watched more of the youths’ drunken dancing. The two men were gulping something from horns fashioned into cups. Moonshine. The ungainly hare fell to its knees twice. Against the
windowpane the light and heat from the fire seemed to beat, and push him further back inside the room.
    Tiredness from his exertions made his body suddenly feel old and wretched. He felt faint and nauseous. This was no time to try anything clever.
    He made his way back to the bed. Lay upon the eiderdown, unable to face the urine-damp sheepskins and soiled hay beneath. Closed his eyes, shivered. Tried to make sense of what was happening to
him. He found it hard to