The Concrete Grove

CHAPTER NINETEEN





IT WAS TIME. It was coming. She could feel it.

Her belly was swollen, the skin there pulled so taut that it seemed as thin as tissue paper. When she peered down at those areas of her stomach that were visible between her clutching fingers, she could see rapid movement beneath – a frantic motion in her belly, like scrabbling hands. There was no pain; she was beyond that now. All she felt was a strange hunger, a terrible emptiness despite the thing –

Or things; what if there was more than one? Like twins?

– that was rapidly filling her stomach.

Hailey was lying on her bed, staring up at the bedroom ceiling. Her eyes stung. The back of her neck was burning. But still she felt these sensations as an outsider, an observer. Everything that was happening right now was taking place inside her – the external didn’t matter. Her existence had wound tightly around whatever was stirring at her core.

“Come on,” she whispered, almost cooing the words. “Come on out and see me.” She stroked the mound of her belly, feeling the hot, damp skin shift. “Come out, now.”

The hands responded by fluttering again. She knew there were no hands in there – not really – but that was how she had now begun to think of the movements within her body: quick-clutching hands, scrabbling around her internal organs.

The radio was on and voices were debating car crime in Newcastle. It was a late-night phone-in show, one that had won national awards because of its cutting edge approach. The radio was not Hailey’s – all of her stuff had been taken by the men who had come to intimidate her mum while she was out at school. She had found the radio in the bottom drawer in the kitchen. It was an old model, like something out of a film: black plastic and with a single tape deck built-in. Hailey only knew what a tape deck was because she’d seen them in magazines, in features on retro fashion and accessories. Like everyone her age, she listened to downloaded or pirated music on her MP3 Player.

At least she had done, before those bastards had taken her stuff.

The pressure on her stomach increased. Whatever was inside was straining to get out.

Hailey knew from physics lessons at school that there were forces constantly being exerted upon the world, the solar system, even the entire universe; pushing and pulling, acting and counteracting: a delicate balance of forces, both cosmic and prosaic. There were forces everywhere, shaping the very nature of reality with their endless activity.

But what if there were also forces that were not generated in this world, forces from somewhere else? A place beneath the world she knew. Somewhere with its own physical laws, which acted against our laws rather than alongside them? A place that was always looking for a way in, a breach in the walls between worlds…

And what if the thing (or things) inside her was a part of all that? A spore or a seed from that other place, something she’d picked up somehow, getting it under her skin. What if that seed were growing? And what if she, Hailey, was to be its way into the world?

The thought, however odd, didn’t trouble her as much as she expected it to.

She knew that she should be afraid, but she felt as calm as a prayer. Her mind was clear. All she was able to focus on was the movement inside her body, and she was unable to think of it in any terms other than the contents of an egg. A huge egg, its shell pure and white, and with the suggestion of something moving inside.

“I’m an egg,” she said, talking to the empty room, the white walls, the cheap-papered ceiling. “I am an egg, and this thing is growing inside me.”

She listened to her voice but the words didn’t seem like they belonged to her. Not for the first time, she felt like someone else was speaking for her, shaping her lips.

She pressed her hands against her belly once again. This time the movements inside became more frantic, responding to the heat transmitted through her palms.

“It’s coming,” she said, and this time the voice was hers. It could not possibly have belonged to anyone else. She recognised the longing, the desperation that hid behind the words – the same emotions that she detected whenever she said her father’s name, late at night, as she stared at herself in the mirror.

She wanted this. She really did. She desired it more than anything – apart from having her dad back, her old life returned to her. But this was the next best thing. It was the best that she could hope for.

New life. Of a sort. Hunger. Need. Maybe even a saviour.

Perhaps what happened here tonight would save her and her mum.

The movement inside her stopped. Silence filled the room. Then she heard a low humming sound. But the room was empty, she was all alone. None of the electrical appliances were on in the other room – the vacuum cleaner had been taken by those men, the washing machine too. Nothing was switched on that would make a noise even remotely like this one.

Even the radio had gone silent. Not even static came from its little mono speaker.

But the humming… it remained, filling her ears. Its volume was constant. Low, regular, and constant.

Hailey sat up on the bed and turned to face the window. The weight of her stomach was a pleasant ache. The curtains were open and the sky outside was dark. She often liked to look at the moon, the stars, and imagine that she was up there, high up in the night sky and flying. Drifting away from all this fuss and bullshit.

There was a large flock of tiny birds hovering outside her window. She could see them outlined against the deep black sky, their wings blurring, sharp beaks glinting in the bleed-off from sodium street lights. Hummingbirds, hundreds of them, perhaps even thousands. The same kind she’d seen in the Needle a few days ago. They hung there, on the other side of the glass, watching her.

Hailey swung her legs off the side of the bed and got shakily to her feet. Her legs ached, but again there was no real pain, just the vague sensation of aching, like muscle memory. She padded across the carpet and went to the window. The birds didn’t move. A dense cloud of freeze-frame motion, an unmoving flurry of beating wings. She wondered if anyone else could see them, or if this was some kind of vision meant only for her. Hailey’s perception of the world was changing by the minute, and where, before, such a thought would have struck her as crazy, it now seemed perfectly reasonable.

She was carrying a wonder inside her, so why shouldn’t there be more wonders on show just outside her window?

“Hello there…” She raised her hand and placed her fingertips against the window. The hummingbirds remained as they were, suspended in the air with their wings blurring, as if locked in place like tiny working machine parts in the mechanism of eternity.

“Yes,” she said, struck by the sudden insight. “That’s what you are: cogs in the machine. Just like me. Like all of us.”

Then understanding slipped away and once again her mind was empty, a container for whatever sights the night might throw at her.

She dragged her fingers soundlessly down the pane of glass, leaving faint marks to chart their progress. The marks faded quickly; the attendant hummingbirds began to float slowly backwards, moving away.

“Come back,” she whispered, tears falling down her face. “Don’t leave me.”

But the birds didn’t respond. They drew back, and then shot up into the darkness as one, a blurred arrow ascending to the heavens. Then, in seconds, they were lost to her, gone into the blackness beyond the thin veil of clouds.

Hailey had never felt so alone, even when her dad had died.

She dragged her gaze from the sky and looked across the Grove, feeling abandoned, melancholy.

The top floors of the Needle poked up above the uneven line formed by the rooftops, its peak piercing the thin, low clouds. To Hailey it now resembled the huge fossilised trunk of an ancient tree, its branches grey and withered and its leaves having fallen to earth long ago, before she was even born: a petrified tree, with its topmost branches scraping the sky. A weird organic structure that had its roots buried in that other place.

For the first time in her life she realised how shallow her understanding of things had always been, and that everything has an inner life, an alternative identity. All she had been aware of until now was the surface, but recent events had shown her that the most important things are those which lie beneath.

Her legs felt cold.

She glanced down, at her naked body, and saw that her inner thighs were glistening. A reservoir of cool liquid had burst from inside her, washing her clean, preparing her for the act of passage yet to come.

Hailey knew exactly what was required of her, as if some trace memory, a stored neurological imprint, had suddenly revealed itself. She squatted down on her haunches, knees forced apart with her bent elbows, hands clasped tightly together as if she were deep in prayer. Then she waited to deliver something strange into the world.





…AND THIS TIME, in the dream, she is standing inside a ring of tall oak trees, looking up to watch the sunlight as it filters through the brown-tinged leaves. She squints, momentarily blinded by the light, and then clouds pass overhead and she can open her eyes again.

The creature she saw last time, near the swinging corpse of her mother, has moved on. The corpse has been taken down. She is alone. Her skin is warm, and when she looks down she sees blood smeared on the inside of her naked thighs. Deep red clots cling to the sides of her knees; red patterns decorate her shins and feet.

The sun moves west to east, travelling too-fast across the flat sky, and she is momentarily plunged into shadow. The trees creak, their ancient trunks shifting to accommodate the new position of the light source. Their branches are striving to be touched by the sun’s bright fingers.

She feels empty. She is bereft. Something has gone away, leaving her behind. Whatever she was carrying inside her has moved on. She takes a tentative step forward, and then another, gradually moving from the centre of the small grove of oak trees to its outskirts. She reaches out a hand and caresses the old, wrinkled bark as she passes one of the trees, and it moves beneath her hand, twisting like a living body. Her fingertips find a crack in the bark and slip inside, feeling the warm sap beneath. Under the toughened hide of the tree she touches something smooth and unmarred, not unlike newly formed human skin.

She stops and stares at her fingers. They are sunk up to the first joint into the tree trunk. She gently peels away a piece of bark, being careful not to cause too much damage to the delicate structure. The tree moves again, but this time as if it is responding to her touch. There is something almost erotic about the way the trunk slowly spins, turning eagerly to meet her wanton attention.

The underside of the bark is tacky; it sticks to her fingers as she fondles the material. She pulls the chunk of bark away and lets it drop to the ground, where it comes softly to rest on the grass and the fallen leaves next to her bloody feet. Leaning in close, she examines the patch that she has uncovered. It is human skin: soft and pink and covered in a red-tinged, viscous liquid, like the wet flesh of a newborn baby.

As she watches, the skin begins to rise and fall. She rests her fingers on the area and can feel a pulse, which beats much slower than her own.

“Alive?” The question is one that barely needs voicing. It is obvious to her now that the tree – or the thing she has found beneath the layer of bark, whatever it is – lives. It is breathing; it has a pulse and probably a heartbeat; there is blood, not sap, running through its mysterious system.

She presses against the patch of skin with her fingertips and watches as it pushes inward, making a slight indentation. The tree shifts; a small twitching motion. The leaves above her shudder. The sound they make is like tracing paper being crumpled up in a fist.

“Where is it?” The bark surrounding the area she has uncovered starts to peel away. The trunk begins to strip naked, revealing under its dry covering a vaguely human shape. There is the suggestion of legs, wide thighs, and the smooth curves of hips. Large breasts without nipples. The subtle v-shape of a crudely carved pudendum. It resembles a primitive wooden sculpture, but soft to the touch, and slightly elastic.

There is no head; the body is massive, and visible only to the shoulders. Whatever sits above is covered by the canopy of leaves.

Without thinking, she presses her hand further, deeper into the midriff of the unveiled body. The moist skin yields, and then splits. Her hand enters easily into the hole, that same viscous fluid aiding its passage. She slides both hands inside up to the wrist, gently spreading the edges of the wound, and grasps what she finds waiting within the cavity she has made.

The thing is rigid, motionless. She pulls it out, stepping back to allow it some space.

It is a small, rough puppet: no face, no fingers on the end of its stumpy hands. Just a rough-hewn caricature: a rude representation of a human child. She holds it close, hugging it against her naked chest. Her nipples harden, responding to the puppet’s silent hunger.

The puppet does not move. It is nothing more than an empty shell, a half-finished simulacra taken from inside a larger organism, like a splinter of prosthetic bone removed from torn flesh. There is something missing, a vital element. It is hungry but it is unable to feed. She presses its smooth, formless head against her breast, willing for it to partake of her food. Watery milk dribbles from the ends of her nipples, splashing onto this soulless, lifeless hunk of wood.

She doesn’t know what else to do.

Nobody has ever prepared her for this.

“Help me.” Her voice is tiny, lost in the primeval wood. “Help us. We need you. There’s no-one else. I beg you, just help us out of this mess.” Tears streak down her face, dripping delicately onto the top of the puppet’s inchoate head. Then, in reaction to her fathomless need, the puppet’s head slowly begins to move. It turns, pivoting on the broad neck, and the thing looks up at her. The puppet has no eyes but she can feel its gaze.

“Please. Help us. Help me and my mum… we need… we need…”

The trees writhe, their leaves speaking a language she cannot understand. A large flock of small birds flies overhead, darkening the sky and casting a flowing shadow on the ground at her feet.

“We need help.”

The puppet begins to shake, its stunted arms and blocky legs wriggling as it struggles in her grasp.

“We need you.”

The puppet, she realises, is laughing.