The Ritual

by Adam L.G. Nevill

This was never a place for a man to be, ever. He felt that instinctively. You got mixed up with the kind of madness that nailed skulls to walls.

‘Apparently we’re all programmed at a primal level, in the reptilian brain, to fear the woods.

And it would not be easy for their hunter. He would not go quickly or quietly. He swore this to the oldest forest in Europe.

Everyone is fucked up, Luke. Damaged. We’re all messed up, underneath. Doesn’t matter what kind of house you live in.’