The Ritual (29 page)

But before he could strike again, something heavy and naked moved quickly into the room. He turned his head a fraction. Sucked in his breath.

The insane face of the mottled hare came at him so fast he gasped. Two chubby fists struck his face. At least three times, before he dropped the jug and managed to seize one of the girl’s wrists. It was doughy in the palm of his rough hand. The hare’s feet stamped and kicked at him. They whirled sideways, like a pair of drunks performing some ludicrous dance.

He shrieked as her nails raked down his cheek. He thought one of his eyes had been clawed out. Hot salty water blurred his entire vision. Or was it blood?

There was a long pause when nothing happened, and he was only able to detect a watery outline of the hare, swimming before his eyes. And then a small fist thumped down and into the open wound on his scalp.

FIFTY-THREE

Luke came to on a grubby floor, and wondered where he was. Looked up, at where the screaming voice so garbled with rage and grief was issuing from.

He saw tall Loki clutching the hare to his chest. Holding her back. Back from him.

Fenris was on his knees, moving groggily towards the door, moaning to himself.

The girl kept up her shrieking. It was like glass smashing inside his head. Luke tasted blood in his mouth. His head was cold, wet, opened. He touched his face. Then put his fingers in front of his squinting eyes. They were slick, bright red.

Nothing could stop the girl from screaming and kicking her small fat feet in his direction. Until Loki lifted her from the floor and heaved her away, towards the door. ‘Let me cut him!’ she screamed in English, directing her bristly face at Luke. ‘Let me cut him.’

Loki shouted at her in Norwegian. But the girl was inconsolable. The glassy eyes of the hare seemed to fix on Luke, where he lay with a face all shiny and hot and wet. ‘Let me cut him, Loki! Let me cut him up, Loki!’

‘No! Then there will be nothing left. Think. Think. Think,’ he repeated, though with his accent, it sounded like he was shouting, ‘Sink, sink, sink.’

Fenris fell to his elbows, placed his head face down on the floor, and started a rhythmic moaning that made him sound like a child. His black hair puddled around his head. Luke stared at the man’s ribs and the bony vertebrae under his blue-white skin. They were children, Luke thought. Kids. Damaged kids.

The kicking girl grew tired. She struggled less, then relaxed her body and started to sob. ‘I want to. I want to,’ she said.

‘Not yet,’ Loki said, and held her very tightly.

FIFTY-FOUR

If the hare had picked up Fenris’s knife, he would be dead. He would have bled out, brightly and hopelessly on the dirty floor of this room. An image flashed into his imagination, of his dirty skin parted into long red mouths. He shut down his eyes and his disordered thoughts upon such a vision.

The argument still raged below. On the ground floor. Sporadically, Loki’s voice rose out of necessity to force down the cries of the girl. For the first time in a while, Luke could not hear Fenris.

A chair scraped loudly across a floor, then toppled on to its side. Glass smashed. Upstairs in his little room, Luke flinched.

He used his forearm to dab at the blood trickling down his forehead. His head was hot and weightless, and there was a swelling behind his eyes. The actual gash didn’t hurt so much any more. But it would do again. Soon. Endorphins had merely surged. Their good work was temporary. It always was.

The fight made him feel better. Stupidly so, because he had made things much worse for himself. Security would be tightened, grudges had formed, faces would have to be saved, revenge needed to be taken. Inevitable, predictable, childish; the consequences of being human. It was the way of things. The ground rules were just being established between him and them. Every new grouping of people formed a hierarchy. And he was at the bottom of this one; a disempowered witness to their moronic sadism. That was his role.

‘How? How?’

Below, the girl made a chesty groaning sound, like she had screamed and sobbed herself dry. Loki’s voice rumbled. Still no sound from Fenris.

Luke sat down on the box bed and wished he had water to drink. Strangely, he also hoped he had not hurt Fenris badly. He took no pleasure in the look of animal pain he had caused.

At last his mind was really beginning to wake itself up. He welcomed this new urgency. Healing needed to be deferred, if that was at all possible. He needed to bite down on the pain and get the fuck out fast.

He had been taken from danger, from imminent mortal danger, but then enclosed in a stinking bed in an airless room in an old house, and left unaware of the location of the house. A person needs to know at least that to feel comfortable; needs to know where they are in the world. Ever since Hutch decided on taking the short cut, he was finished with not knowing precisely where he was. ‘Fuck you, H.’

But when you have taken a person into your care, and you feed them, shelter them, but do not attend to what could be a serious head injury, and Sweden is a modern country with emergency services, hospitals, even helicopters when required, then …

Luke pulled his dirty fingers down his wet face, utterly confounded by the absurdity and the impossibility of the situation.

They would tell him nothing. Fenris evaded his questions. No useful information would be forthcoming from his hosts; he sensed that much. He was being kept here against his will. So escape should be his only focus. Because the masks, the music, the screaming, the fire down there in the dark grass: it was all leading to a terrible conclusion.

He’d tried not to think about that thing in the woods, of what killed his friends. Until now he had been too ill and hurt and tired to do so. But his dealings with it were not over. Of that he was certain.

They were here for
it
too. Blood Frenzy. And they had revealed their identities through the silly demoniac names that could be easily traced through the P.O. Box in Oslo and the name of the record company. And if there was any truth to Fenris’s bragging, about what they had been up to, then his release from here was not imminent. They were on the run.

He thought of the freaky old woman. Wondered about her.

Slow heavy feet boomed up the stairs. Broke his thoughts apart and into a rout.

He tensed. Looked about for a weapon. The jug was still in the room, on its side, intact; incredibly intact. And the bucket. He went for the jug, gripped its worn handle. Images of Fenris’s curved knife came into his mind and he shivered. He could not stop the shivers, or the trembling that took hold of his jaw.

‘Luke? It is Loki.’ No attempt was made by Loki to enter the room.

They were wary of him now.
That’s good. Wary is good. They are just kids anyway. Fenris is a bull-shitter, a big mouth. They haven’t killed anyone
.

Luke stood a few feet from the door and gave himself enough room to swing the jug. ‘Yeah.’

‘Good, you are listening.’

‘All ears.’

‘Of this I am very pleased, Luke. Because you need to listen very good. Yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘Tonight, you make a big mistake.’

‘I do?’

‘Yes you do, my friend, you do.’

‘He came at me with a knife. What am I supposed to do?’

‘If he wanted to kill you Luke, you would already be dead. You understand?’

‘Not really.’

Loki sighed. ‘Fenris has killed before. To him, killing is nothing. You see?’

Luke felt his skin go cold. Heat seemed to be draining away from his body through his own feet.

By an act of will, he forced the implications of what Loki had just said from his mind, and in much the same way that he had censored the vision of his knife-ruined flesh before. He had to keep holding himself all together or it was over. ‘When it is me he threatens, it means something to me, Loki. You understand that?’

‘He was not going to hurt you. He like you. Is glad you are here with us. He gets bored with me and Surtr. You see, me and Surtr are together and Fenris is the one left out. Yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘But now you have no friends here, Luke. You messed it up.’

‘He was no friend, Loki. And I’m no fool.’

Loki guffawed. ‘I never said you were, Luke. You want to survive. You fight. You are not weak. And I respect that. You are special. Which is why you survive and your friends die. Yes? Fenris was foolish to take his eye off you, that is all. But he learn a valuable lesson. I would prefer him not to know this lesson again, because now I have work to do. To be the peacemaker, yes?’

Luke stayed quiet. He found himself desperately trying not to like Loki.

‘Are you still with me, Luke?’

‘Yes!’

‘Good. But please you are guest, so do not shout. OK?’

‘OK.’

‘Thank you.’

‘My friends, Loki. Did you kill my friends?’

‘No we did not, Luke. I cannot tell you precisely what happened to them, but soon I wish to find out—’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Luke! It is I who is speaking. So listen to me. Now you must be careful and … how they say? Sleep light. Because someone in this house, not far from your bed, they very much want to kill you.’

‘You tell Fenris that I am sorry. I hit him because I thought he was going to hurt me. And I am very tired of being hurt, Loki. Can you understand that? My friends have been murdered and I want … I just want all of this to end.’

‘I understand, Luke. And it will all end soon.’

This statement made him mad with hope until he realized that Loki was probably talking about a completely different ending to his story.

‘But Fenris is not your problem,’ the deep-voiced giant said into the door. ‘He is mad at you, yes. He hoped you would be good company for him while you wait.’

‘Wait for what?’

‘I have not finished, Luke—’

‘What, Loki? What am I waiting for? Eh? The police. Because that is who will be coming very soon.’

‘I do not think so, Luke. Do not give yourself false hopes, my friend. You are far too important for us to give away to the police. And they are the last people we want to see. But I am sure they would like to meet us.’ Loki laughed to himself. Disingenuous, but deep laughter. ‘I tell you very soon, my friend. All in good times. But tonight’s party was for a very good reason. As you will soon see. But you must be patient a little while longer, Luke. Until then, you must understand what it is I am saying about your behaviour as a guest in this house.’

‘I am trying, Loki. I am trying very hard to understand why I am being kept here against my will.’

‘Your will is strong, Luke. But please let me tell you the problem you have right now. Yes?’

‘Yes. Yes. Yes. Tell me, Loki.’

‘When I say you have a very big problem in this house, I do not lie, Luke. But it is not Fenris. He has a sore head, but he don’t kill you. Your problem is Surtr, Luke.’

‘You keep your mad bitch away from me. OK, Loki? How’s that, mate?’

‘I will try my best, Luke. But I must sleep also. And she is very absolutist.’

‘I don’t follow?’

‘She likes to stab, Luke. To cut. She is a little crazy in her ideas. One time we got this guy and she … Well, let me make you imagine a man who tries to run with no toes on his feet. It was a very funny thing to see, I can tell you. And she never stop with his toes. All of him fits inside this … this … baggage. You know, the airport baggage?’

Luke thought he might be sick again. He needed to sit down. Tried to bring the strength back into his arms.

‘I think you understand me, Luke. So I ask a favour from you. You do as we say. Which mean, no more fighting, my friend. I leave you to think on this.’ His footsteps began to retreat down the corridor outside.

Luke moved to the door. ‘I need water. Loki. Water.’

The loud footsteps returned to the other side of the door. ‘I bring it.’

‘Hot water. A bandage.’

‘Not possible.’

‘Some painkillers. Headache tablets.’

‘Not possible.’

‘Cigarettes, please.’

‘Not possible.’

‘Tell you what, call an ambulance. Right now.’

‘Not possible,’ Loki said, without a trace of humour.

Wincing, as even the minutiae of limited mobility seemed to make his swollen brain collide painfully against the insides of his skull, Luke moved his body across the bedding to the side of the bed. Slowly, he hooked his legs over and then stood upright. Even with his head supported by both hands, he felt unbalanced, seasick.

He gulped at more of the stale dusty water, straight from the jug. It trickled round each side of his mouth and spattered down his naked chest. Besides his damp underwear, they had removed all of his clothes. He felt too ill and anxious to explore the reasons why. But there were no medical supplies here, and
they
were not going to let him go. Those were the new facts. The new rules binding his life.
What was left of it.

A terrible bolus of emotion suddenly came up from behind his sternum where it had been stored in his worn-out heart. It rushed, burning, through him. He knelt on the floor. Bent over, sobbed.

His throat was thick with an emotion that could have been loneliness, or sadness, or self-pity, or despair, or all of these things at once. He didn’t know, but he thought anything, even death, was better than feeling this way.

He was hurting. So much. His head. He wanted it to stop. Would offer anything for a painkiller. Up and down his back, and around his calf muscles where thorns had curled and torn, the scratches shrieked with their own tiny voices. Even between his fingers there were cuts he could not recall the cause of.

He looked at the dirty swollen skin of his hands and forearms. And to think, he’d believed himself saved. His chest tightened and his skin pinpricked cold; the sensation felt horribly familiar.

Lying on the wooden floor, he curled into himself, held his broken head, and quietly wept until he was exhausted by the effort of producing tears.