The Concrete Grove

The Concrete Grove - By Gary McMahon

PART ONE

Shades and Shadows


“I don’t like it here. The closer you get

to the centre, the weirder it feels.”


– Hailey Fraser



CHAPTER ONE


HER NAME WAS Hailey. She was just fourteen years old.

And she was afraid.

No, that wasn’t quite right. Hailey wasn’t afraid, not exactly; she was sad and confused and worried about her mother, and all she really wanted was to be left alone. Just for a few minutes, maybe even as much as half an hour. She needed some time on her own, during which she could think about things and set the facts in order. The world always seemed a little less harsh when the facts were put in place, with everything lined up in neat little rows where she could see them properly. Like her books on their shelves or her stuffed toys sitting against the skirting board at home.

It was Hailey’s mother who was afraid. Even Hailey could see that. Her mother, she knew, was terrified.

Things had been tense around the flat lately – even Hailey, with her limited ability to empathise, was aware of this tension. Her mother chewed her fingernails all the time, and she lost her temper much easier than ever before – easier and more regularly. She was drinking a lot – cheap wine in big bottles from the local off-license – and Hailey could sometimes hear her crying at night through the thin walls of their crummy little flat in the Grove. In the morning she would pretend that she’d slept well and everything was fine, but Hailey knew that there were tear stains on her mother’s pillows.

Hailey walked slowly through the narrow streets, ignoring the youths who were perched on garden walls and loitering at the corners smoking cheap cigarettes and drinking cider from plastic bottles. She paid no attention to the fat man who always seemed to be watching her from a parked car near the shopping arcade, and blanked the old woman who stood on her front step shaking her fist at the sky and shouting at the birds.

Such sights were normal in the Grove – the Concrete Grove. Hailey had learned this. The people who lived on the estate were somehow different from the ones she had known before, in her old life, when her mother had a job and money wasn’t a problem.

These people, the ones she now lived among, were closer to the bottom of the pile than anyone else she’d met. That’s how her mother termed it: the bottom of the pile. As if society was just a big pyramid of people, squirming and shouting and fighting for position, and she and Hailey had slipped through the gaps to end up somewhere near its base. Sometimes, late at night, when she was unable to sleep, she could almost feel the pressure of all those bodies above her, pushing and shoving and nipping and punching… looking for a way to climb.

She quickened her pace and reached the north end of Grove Road, where the Bailey brothers lived. The twin boys, both fifteen and in the year above Hailey in classes, were possibly the worst bullies at her school. A month ago they’d put little Lloyd Jones in hospital, slashing his back with a straight razor taken from their father’s things. Hailey recalled the police visiting the school, when not one of the other pupils had dared say anything against the brothers – which meant, of course, that they had got away with their crime because there were no witnesses. They remained unpunished, even though everyone knew they’d done it. Even the headmaster knew, but he was just as scared of the Bailey family as everyone else in the area.

Was every school like this, or just the one she went to? She didn’t remember her old school being so violent or filled with such aggressive pupils, but it was so long ago now – a full eighteen months – that she could barely recall anything about the place, other than it had seemed so clean and bright and stress-free in comparison to her current educational establishment.

She was glad that school was over for the day, and that she could roam around on her own just to get the horrible prison air of the place out of her lungs. At her old school, she’d been happy to stay behind and help the teacher tidy the class, or play outside the gates with her friends before heading home for dinner. These days all she wanted was to be away from school, yet still she could feel its awful shadow at her back.

She was now nearing the centre of the estate, where the Needle was located. She’d bypassed the shopping arcade, where the worst trouble-makers tended to gather like a herd of bored animals, and was now approaching the middle of the set of concentric streets that made up the main body of the Grove. A number of the flats and houses around this central area were empty, their doors and windows boarded. Others were occupied either by the kind of people you didn’t want to meet or tenants who rarely stepped outdoors before nightfall. It was a creepy place, even in broad daylight, yet she was often drawn here by its sense of emptiness.

A border of old timber hoardings and security fencing surrounded the derelict tower block, but everybody knew a way in. Hailey’s point of access was through a shallow channel someone had once dug under the fence close to the old red-brick electricity sub-station at the front of the building. She couldn’t remember who’d shown her this route inside the perimeter, only that it had been pointed out to her late one Sunday evening, when dusk was falling and the sound of motorbike engines churning up and down the surrounding streets had filled the air.

Hailey got down on her belly and wriggled through the gap, trying her best not to ladder her thick black tights on any hanging wire or splinters. Her mother would kill her if she ruined another pair; the tiny clothes budget for this month was long gone.

The sky seemed to darken around her as she slid under the barrier, as if her entrance had triggered a dimmer switch in the heavens. She knew this was a silly thought, that it was too early in the afternoon to grow so dark, but there was something nice about pretending to be so important that the sky would create an atmosphere just for her.

Somewhere in the depths of the estate a dog began to bark; a burglar alarm went off, the wailing tone bound to be ignored and left to peter out of its own accord. A police helicopter hummed through the sky above her, so she stayed where she was, belly pressed into the dirt, until it passed by. But this was just another game. Nobody cared that Hailey was here; nobody was concerned about her whereabouts. Not even her mother.

After several seconds had passed, and sensing that she would not be seen, Hailey jerked upright and scurried across the cracked and stained concrete forecourt towards the waiting Needle. She stared at the empty building as she approached, peering at its boarded upper windows and security-shuttered doorways. Several of the caged windows on the ground floor had been partially exposed by vandals tearing off the timber and paint-daubed metal sheets and breaking the glass beneath. These openings bled darkness; they provided small, square glimpses of something black, unhealthy and rotten. If she allowed herself, Hailey could imagine things moving in there. Strange things. Dark things. Things that lived in such forgotten places.

What was she doing here? Why did the decrepit building have such a hold on her? She always came to the same place when she was feeling uneasy or simply craved solitude. Despite its central location on the estate, and the fact that there were so many ways in, children rarely played here. The place, Hailey’s few friends had often told her, was haunted; and once, a long time ago, a bunch of children had even been harmed by the spirits who dwelled within its crumbling concrete walls. Depending on who she spoke to, these children had either been scarred for life or murdered. The story changed with each telling, the way a fairytale might.

Hailey kept walking. The Needle ignored her, just like everyone else.

She stopped, confused. Why was she thinking of the old building in terms of a personality?

Hailey stared at the grubby concrete, trying to understand her feelings towards the place. She should be too afraid to set foot here, especially alone, but for some reason the resolutely upright Needle seemed to offer her some kind of solace.

Yes, that was the word: solace. She’d encountered it in English class. It meant comfort or consolation. That, she thought, sounded just about right.

She started to move again, towards the tower block. Broken glass crunched underfoot; her left ankle twisted slightly as she stepped into a shallow depression in the ground; her right foot kicked something hard and it rolled away from her across the uneven surface. But she didn’t look down. She kept on staring ahead, watching the Needle as it loomed closer. Its tall grey rendered walls were as cold and dry as reptile skin; the boards across its windows were closed eyelids; the patches of weeds and wild grass at its base were as welcoming as a doormat at the threshold of a lovely home.

The conflicting emotions rushing through her – fear of the dark and empty spaces within the building’s shell; a sense of feeling welcomed or, more precisely, bidden – made her feel slightly sick, as if she’d eaten something bad.

The main doors to the tower block were sealed with security shutters, so Hailey continued round to the rear, where there was a way in through a small ground floor window where the metal sheeting had been pulled aside. The window panel had been removed long ago, before the access point had been shored up, so whoever had then torn away the corrugated metal had been able to slip inside without having to shatter the glass.

Hailey peeled back the thin metal square, struggling to fold it away from the wall. The metal groaned as she moved it, and then finally it seemed to relent under the pressure and bent back to reveal the window aperture beneath.

The opening was roughly the size of the screen of the portable television Hailey had in her room at home. She was a slim girl – didn’t eat much, and wasn’t even keen on the sweets and sugary treats the other kids seemed to love – so she was always able to squeeze through without much of a problem.

She leaned in and forced the metal sheet further back with her shoulder, turning her body so that she could scrabble up the wall and begin to climb through. She wriggled her body into the gap, aware of the metal sheet digging into her side as she moved into the space. Then, with a final shrugging motion and a kick of her legs, she was through and tumbling onto the floor at the other side of the wall.

Dust rose in a cloud around her; the noise she’d made echoed through the concrete shell. Hailey sat on the ground and blinked into the darkness. It always seemed too gloomy in here – much more than she would have expected from the outside. It was as if natural daylight was afraid to enter, and the darkness held inside the Needle acted as a sort of barrier, protecting whatever else lived here from the light.

Now there was another unwelcome thought. Why did she keep doing this, trying to scare herself? It was like some kind of challenge. She was throwing down the gauntlet, daring herself to venture further inside the building. Maybe the bullies were right, and she really was as weird as they said.

A sound came to her from up ahead: a brief scraping noise, like a stick being dragged along the wall. She peered into the darkness, waiting for the interior to resolve in her vision. She saw the empty space, the walls and black rectangles of doorways. Her ears thrummed. She was in a hallway – she knew that much from past visits – but for some reason she never knew which way to turn. Was it left or right up ahead?

Standing, she moved across to the wall, reaching out to touch it, to confirm that it was there, as solid and immobile as ever. The sound did not repeat. Silence grew and swelled and threatened to become something even worse than noise. Hailey closed her eyes tightly for a couple of seconds, and then opened them again. This time the room was clearer; she could see deeper into the building.

A few metres ahead, the hallway became a T junction. Hailey paused for a moment to think, and then remembered that the left turn led to more rooms and the right one would take her to the reception area at the front of the building, which was usually littered with empty beer cans and bottles, used condoms and dirty syringes left behind by nocturnal visitors. Everyone who came here used the reception area: it was large and uncluttered, and the walls were covered with graffiti that probably dated back to the time when the Needle had been emptied and sealed.

Hailey moved forward, and when she reached the junction she turned left. Her ears felt under pressure, like when she went swimming in the deep end at the local pool. Doorways seemed to lean forward, blocks of blackness taunting her, challenging her to enter. She walked along the hallway, stepping over mounds and heaps of garbage – despite keeping the main area clear of debris everyone seemed to dump their rubbish here. She passed an old sleeping bag, holes torn in the fabric and the white guts seeping out. An old armchair sat against the wall, the stain across its back and arms resembling the bloodied outline of an unusually thin human figure.

Something moved behind her. Hailey refused to turn and look. There was nobody there; the building was empty. It was just a cat or a rat, or even a bird that had gained entry through an upper window, rooting around in the garbage.

The last doorway was closer now. It was the room she always used. The doorway had no door; even the hinges had been removed. She could never say why she came to this room, only that it was small and nondescript and relatively untouched. The other rooms she’d been inside were either blackened by fire, smelled of old sweat and urine, or were filled with random objects – black plastic bags filled with water-damaged porn magazines, broken crates and pallets, wheelie bins, shopping trolleys, and even a surprising number of discarded children’s toys.

It was amazing what some people would dump in places like this…

When she reached the final doorway she stopped at the threshold. For the first time she felt a strange sense of apprehension, a feeling that she shouldn’t be here, not now. She waited, and the feeling faded. Perhaps it was just a result of the increased tension at home, or something stirred up by that noise she’d heard earlier.

But no, that wasn’t it. There was something… something else. Then, at last, she realised what was troubling her. Since entering the building she had been aware of a sort of vibration in the air, a soft thrumming sound that she had at first put down to distant construction machinery or heavy traffic. But there were no building works nearby, and the nearest main road was a couple of miles away. That police helicopter she’d spotted earlier? No. That would be long gone by now.

So what was it, that small sound, that weird throbbing in the still, dead air?

Not hesitating any longer, Hailey stepped through the doorway. The thrumming sound inside her head was threatening to leak out.

The room looked the same as it always did, but there was something different about the space as she entered. That sound was stronger here, inside the room. It sounded like bees, buzzing around a hive. Hailey was puzzled. Was there a wasps’ nest in here, or perhaps a swarm of flies clustering around a pile of shit?

Part of her screamed that she should leave, but another, calmer part of her made her legs move and forced her deeper into the room. It was dark. The two windows were covered. The buzzing grew louder, as if responding to her presence.

At the end of the room was a cupboard – a built-in wardrobe. The doors remained intact, and the cubby hole was always empty, as if nobody had even noticed it, or if they had seen the cupboard they had not been interested enough to look inside. The buzzing seemed to be coming from within, behind the closed doors. It wasn’t only in her head after all, and the realisation filled her with relief.

Hailey moved forward, towards the wardrobe. The buzzing sound intensified.

She stood before the doors. They were tall and narrow, with stainless steel handles. She reached out and grasped one of those handles, her fingers tightening around it. Don’t, she thought. Leave it alone. But that other part of her – the calm part – whispered to her that she should open the doors.

Her hand made a fist around the small handle. Then it turned, pulled, and the door eased noiselessly open.

At first Hailey didn’t know what she was seeing. There was a dense cloud inside the wardrobe, low down near the floor on the right hand side. The cloud seemed to be moving, vibrating. The buzzing sound was louder now – it filled her ears, flowing inside her head. The sound was that of their wings: quicker than thought, lighter than dreams.

She was looking at a swarm of giant insects. Flies. Bees. Hornets. No, that wasn’t right. They were too big, too quick… too beautiful.

They weren’t insects, they were birds.

Hummingbirds.

Hailey had only ever seen hummingbirds on television, on nature programmes, and they had always fascinated her. As far as she knew they lived in America, and places like Ecuador and Mexico. There certainly weren’t any in England. So what were these ones doing in a dingy cupboard in a derelict tower block in Northumberland?

They were gorgeous. Their plumage was radiant – green, red, yellow and gold. The colours bled and mingled as she watched, lighting the darkness and forming a shimmering mirage of sad beauty in the bottom corner of that wardrobe.

There were a lot of them in there. Each one was tiny, the size of a baby’s hand, and they were clustered in the corner as if they were all feeding from the nectar of a single bunch of flowers. Hailey watched them in silence, feeling a sense of awe creep along her arms, then climb to her neck, where it rose higher and flushed her cheeks.

“Beautiful,” she whispered.

And that one word was enough to break the spell.

The flock of birds seemed to undulate, shifting as if their natural rhythm had been disturbed or even broken. They turned to Hailey as one, their little black eyes peering at her from the corner, their sharp little red beaks glinting in the shadows. Then, as if dancing, they flowed out from their hiding place, breaking apart their formation to hover before her, creating a brightly-hued screen between her and the interior of the wardrobe.

Spellbound, Hailey reached out a hand… her fingers opened, then closed. She tried to grab one – just one – of the hovering miracles, but they all flowed away from her, breaking ranks and forming an opening. She looked through the gap they had made and into the cupboard. And she saw what it was they had been eating, and why their beaks were so red, like they’d been carved from ruby.

The dead dog was folded into the corner of the wardrobe, its legs broken and twisted, its head crushed. The fur of the dog’s jaw, and along its neck, was red, tattered, and the corpse had been punctured thousands of times. By countless tiny little beaks. Red beaks. Like rubies.

Hailey tried to scream but the hummingbirds were stealing her air, sucking it from her throat. She backed away, flailing out at the suddenly obscene creatures. Their wings moved faster than she could see; the buzzing sound was louder than anything she had ever heard. She knew that she would fall before it even happened: the image flashed through her mind, clear as a frame from a film.

Walking backwards, panicked and unable to take a breath, she felt her legs tangle and then she went down, hitting the concrete floor hard. She cried out in pain and shock and fear, and the hummingbirds swooped backwards, allowing a small space to open up between her and them. She drew breath; her cheeks swelled; her throat opened. Finally, and with great relief, she opened her mouth and screamed.

The birds backed away as one hovering mass: their colours were like spilled paints, their motion was nightmarish. Where Hailey had first perceived beauty, she now witnessed horror of a kind that she barely even understood.

She scrabbled on the floor, turning around and rising to her feet, pushing away and heading for the door.

Then she saw what the birds were moving away from.

Her scream had not caused them to flee. It was something else. A thing so alien, so unlike anything she had ever imagined, that it took on a strange kind of beauty – a beauty tinged with horror and darkness, and with tears and blood and sweat. Hailey’s belly began to cramp; she felt moisture between her legs.

“What?” she said, and it was the only thing worth saying, the only question she could have asked. She tried to move back the way she’d come, towards the birds, but was caught between two extremes. Her legs skidded on the smooth concrete floor, her skirt riding up to show her dirty, slashed tights. The floor was cold on her exposed flesh. The backs of her legs turned to stone.

Hailey glanced down at the exposed parts of her legs: her scuffed knees, the smooth patches of thigh visible through her ripped tights. Then she looked back at the small, ragged shape that was blocking her escape.

Something vague, dusty and tattered shifted in the shadows near the doorway. Then, as if responding to her whispered question, it began to chuckle.

Others joined the creature, spilling from the joints in the walls and ceiling, squeezing through the plug points and light-fittings. Then, clustered together in a dense and leering pack, they came streaming towards her, aiming for a point directly between her open legs.