Beyond Here Lies Nothing - By Gary McMahon
– From the diary of Jack Pollack, April 1974
PART ONE
The Gone-Away Girls
“Promise me that you won't try to save me.”
– Abby Hansen
CHAPTER ONE
IT STARTS, FOR him, with an ending...
In fact, it begins with a funeral.
Death is a constant in the Concrete Grove, just as it is everywhere else in the world. People come and they go; they live and they die, blooming and then withering like seasonal flowers on the stem. This natural cycle perpetuates, bringing existence and extinction and joy and sorrow, and everything else in-between, into sharp focus. But in the Grove these fundamental truths are pushed even closer to the surface, like a spiritual hernia; it is a place where the cycles of life and death are played out at an intimate scale across an epic canvas. A million different beginnings and endings, each with their separate details, their intimate little secrets...
But for Marc Price, it begins with an ending...