The Ritual

finger joint. It did not hurt, but he had to stifle a scream all the
same. She resisted to the last, like a dying insect with its stinger raised at a bird’s sharp face.
    He despatched the second fossil swiftly, struck it hard with the knife held like a dagger, and caved in half of its skull while throttling its wizened neck at the same time. He felt the head
collapse to dust. Breathed some of it in, coughed, spat.
    He stood up, and where they rattled and muttered against the walls, on either side of the little throne room, he felt for their sharp-featured faces, their old dry heads, their desiccated
grinning, and he punched the knife through them. Through them all. One by one. Broke every head to dust. Until nothing whispered or shook within its mooring any longer.
    Once he had finished with them, he bent over and retrieved the rifle. And while turning his thoughts to finding clothes, far out in the woods he heard a sound so terrible, he lost his balance
and sat his bare buttocks down in the hot darkness of the attic.
    The dreadful bullock bark. The devil-dog yipping.
    The wet sky, the aged trunks of sleeping trees, the cold unfeeling earth, functioned as an acoustic chamber, and within that space the oldest and most poignant sound of anguish pierced him, and
every living thing within earshot, to the marrow. A mother’s cry.
    Moments later, he heard Surtr too. She unleashed a scream and he knew she had met a sudden and painful end in the claws or teeth of something much greater than herself. Moder was coming
home now. Drawn by the loss of her own.
    Luke scrabbled and half fell down the attic stairs. He ran into Loki and Surtr’s old room and peered out at the trees. Little of the sun was showing itself, and seemed to grow afraid and
moved back behind the low grey clouds.
    Again, the bullock cough. He could not see her, but knew she was much closer now. Somewhere nearby, Moder ’ s black flanks were shuddering with emotion, and the yipping that
came out of her trembled. She was crazed with rage. Blind. Intent.
    Truck. Truck. Fucking truck.
    Knife in one hand, rifle in the other, naked and begrimed, he ran down the stairs on skittish feet and staggered into the kitchen. Peered out through the window.
    The tiny body of the old woman was gone from the grass.
    He briefly thought of putting the rifle barrel inside his mouth and then a big toe inside the trigger guard.
    The old black presence was invisible but immense; it reared up and covered the house, inflicted so much pressure upon his thoughts they hardened into diamonds of a terror that was total,
mindless, pure and complete. He gaped, he pissed down his dirty legs. One arm started to shake so badly, the other had to come around and hold it steady. He made a groaning noise that just did not
sound like anything that had ever come out of his mouth before.
    Truck.
    He shuddered across to the table, hyperventilating, shaking to the black soles of his Neanderthal feet.
    Too many things; not enough hands. Rifle. Knife. Keys.
    He put the keys into his mouth, bit down on all the screams that wanted to come out. His teeth oozed around the metal keyring like butter.
    Rifle out before him, the stock banged hard into his shoulder, his saliva dripping all over the keyring, the knife in the palm of the hand that held the rifle barrel steady, he walked back into
the silvery morning of the old world, naked.

SIXTY-EIGHT
    It could move fast, he knew that. Though the last time it had cried out, the sound had been bellowed skyward from the other side of the building; what he thought of as
the front. So he tried to reassure himself he could sneak away through the kitchen door in the rear; get to the truck, and go, while it still shrieked and paced about out front.
    But he had taken no more than five steps through the grass, away from the back door, when he heard it again: to his front, to the right, where the forest resumed its oceanic immensity on the
right-hand side of the orchard. It was as if it too was rushing for the truck now, keeping pace with his intentions. And it must have covered fifty yards in a mere matter of moments.
    Down on one knee, Luke swung the sights of the rifle across the base of the treeline, anticipating the emergence of a long black shape pressed to the ground.
    Nothing came; the trees remained still and dark in the falling rain. Would the weather mask his scent? he wondered, uselessly, because it had always known exactly where they were at