Free The Ritual by Adam Nevill

stairs to the attic and then been found kneeling before a hideous rotten effigy.
    Two figures had been standing beside him in the dark downstairs of the house. That was how the dream began. Old faces with dirty teeth told him to climb the stairs. Had told him that someone was waiting. Don’t keep him waiting , they had said. Your clothes are in the fire.
    And up he had gone. Up, up, up the black wooden stairs. He desperately didn’t want to climb them, but the will of the dream would permit no turning around or going back down. He’d tried to stop his ascent, but remembered going numb and being unable to breathe. So up he went. And to think he had even been physically climbing the stairs at the same time.
    ‘Not so fast, H!’ Dom called out beside him.
    ‘Mmm? Sorry.’ Hutch slowed down.
    His feet had been bare, the soles black with the filth on the old wooden stairs. Hands out, he’d steadied himself against the dark wood that had felt wet underfoot. He was naked. His body thin and pale and shivery; he’d felt like a little boy tottering for his bath. Yes, he had been smaller, and younger in the dream. He’d desperately wanted to be covered, protected.
    There were no windows in the house, just a faint reddish light coming down from up there . Around the corner of the staircase he’d then staggered into the attic, and opened his mouth to call for help. But no sound had come out of his mouth. There was no air inside him, like he was winded.
    Inside the red place he’d kept his head down and his eyes fixed on his dirty feet. Dirty and wet. Wet from the piss that had tickled warm against his thighs and dripped down his calves.
    He’d tried not to look up, because something was in there with him. Snorting with excitement because it could smell his piss and fear.
    Bones. There were bones on the floor. They made it all worse. Especially the ones with the grey bits attached. And some of the little bodies had gone so black he could not tell what they had once been. On the stained planks he’d stepped around the bones, but some had still crunched under his blackened soles and slid around his grimy toes. The bones got bigger as he moved closer to the snorting sound.
    And then he could smell it . Dung in straw, cattle sweat and sulphur stink; it made his eyes water. A goaty breath panted over his head and bare chest and made him cough. The taint had still been inside his mouth when Luke woke him.
    In the dream, the knocking began when he smelled it . Near him. Sounded like wood banging against wood. In front of him. And he could not prevent a peek at what made the hollow knocking noise.
    Black hooves. Once again they reared up in his mind. Big and sharp with yellowish bone at the tip. Wide as a horse’s feet, snapping down against the wooden box it sat inside. Banged them with excitement it did. The black rim of the wooden box was chipped and grooved.
    Its glee grew as his soft white body came closer. So close. Coming out of a big head he had heard wet snorts and deep whinnies. Clack, clack, snap went its hot mouth with the yellow teeth inside, like a trap.
    Before him, below him, cut smooth into the front of the box had been a small circular gap to rest his throat. So that his head would hang into the unbreatheable musk of devil and animal. His head was to hang below its teat-pocked belly, pinkish under the longer black hairs. Then those hooves would smash down like a hammer onto a dinner plate.
    Bits of skull littered the dirty straw between the black stick legs of the thing. The forelegs were long and down they came again and again to make the imbecile rhythm of hoof on wood.
    Its body had been so tall, like it had long outgrown its little cradle. And he knew the horns on the terrible head were scratching the beam in the middle of the ceiling.
    And over he had gone against his will. Into the blinding stink, and the sound of his own cries were obscured by the knocking. Speeding up. Drumming with no rhythm on the scarred