The Concrete Grove

CHAPTER TWENTY





BOATER FELT UNCOMFORTABLE as he led the woman up the stairs to Monty’s office. He could sense her close behind him as he climbed the stairs, and hear the sound of her breathing in the enclosed space. She wasn’t wearing much perfume, but he could detect the trace of a light floral scent on her skin. She was scared – of course she was; they always were. They knew what they were here for, and what was going to happen to them, but still they were afraid. Monty enjoyed that fear; it was part of the thrill. Boater used to like it, too, but recently things had changed.

He reached the top of the stairs and turned around to face Lana. She was beautiful, even with her face scrubbed clean of make-up. The rage he’d felt towards her down by the Quayside, when he’d been confused and wrong-footed by his own churning emotions, had gone now. It had been replaced with a sense of longing.

“Just wait here for a minute. I’ll tell him you’re here.”

“Thank you,” she said, leaning her shoulder against the wall. She had not yet reached the top of the stairs, and stood two steps down from the short landing. The shadows clung to her, roaming over her body like eager hands. Boater thought that she didn’t look quite real: an erotic phantom.

“Just a minute… ” He spun around in the tight space and knocked on the office door. The light bulb in the ceiling flickered.

“Yeah. Come in.” Monty’s voice was muffled, but he sounded distracted.

He’s probably scribbling in his little book, thought Boater as he pushed open the door and stepped inside.

The table lamps were set low down, near the floor, giving the room a dusky atmosphere. The main lights were off and the window blinds were closed. Monty sat at his desk with his feet tucked up underneath him on the big chair. He was wearing his reading glasses, something that humanised him in a way that Boater found contradictory. Surely monsters didn’t wear reading glasses…

“She’s here. The Fraser woman. She’s here, just like you said.”

Monty didn’t look up from his book. He held it open on his thighs, studying it like it was a school text. He nodded, distracted and not really listening. “Did you know, Francis, that when the Romans were here in Northumberland they found something strange in the land this estate is built on?”

Boater had no idea what to say or even if a response was expected. Monty had been doing this more and more lately: talking to himself by telling Boater and the rest of the men things, passing on obscure information. It was like he was involved in a lengthy conversation with himself, and all Boater and the others were expected to do was listen.

Monty continued: “Pagan tribes would worship an old grove of oak trees, dancing and f*cking and draining their blood into the soil. The Romans murdered this tribe, and then they burned down the oaks and dug up the charred earth, at least that’s what the books say, the ones I borrowed from the library. The ones no f*cker else bothers to read. Nobody seems to know what kind of power the Romans found, but I like to think that Hadrian built his f*cking wall to keep it inside rather than keeping the Jocks out.” He laughed, and it was a terrible sound: dull and flat and empty of feeling. “It seems to me that old Hadrian didn’t like what they found here. Nobody ever spoke of it again, except to say that the ground was cursed. That it was a Bad Place.”

Finally he glanced up from the book, as if realising that he was no longer alone. He closed the cover, running his fingers along the creased spine.

Boater read the book’s familiar title: Extreme Boot Camp Workout by Alex ‘Brawler’ Mahler. It was nothing but an exercise manual, a battered old workout book written by some ex-army type. Monty had picked up the book in a second-hand book shop, but he handled the thing like a holy relic – sometimes he even called it his ‘Bible’. He was constantly making incomprehensible notes in the margins, or sticking cut-out snippets of newspaper articles to the pages with a little glue-stick. He’d even sketched things in there, filling the margins and the white spaces between blocks of text with doodles that meant nothing to Boater but obviously held some kind of meaning for him.

Nobody else was allowed to touch the book, and Monty even kept it locked in his safe on the rare occasions when he wasn’t carrying it with him. But Boater had glimpsed the contents of the open pages on his boss’s desk several times, and the things he’d seen there – scrawled, glued and scribbled – were distressing. As far as he could tell, Monty had noted down, among other things, brief snatches of foreign languages, random words and phrases and odd bits of poetry. He had sketched partial maps and diagrams and scribbled monsters on the pages. The book now resembled the decor in the rooms inside a madman’s head, and Boater had actually become afraid of it, or more precisely what it might represent.

A book… he was scared of a f*cking book. How stupid was that?

“We could learn a lot from the Romans,” said Monty, placing the book on his desk and unfolding his short legs so that he could set his feet on the floor. “Sorry to bore you with this, Francis, but it’s interesting. Hard bastards, they were, the Romans. Bummers and pederasts to a man, but they were f*cking ferocious fighters when they had to be.”

Boater shuffled his feet on the carpet. He had no idea what was expected of him, he never did when Monty started acting this way. “Yeah, boss. I’m sure.”

Monty spread out his hands on the neat, uncluttered desk and slowly shook his head. He closed his eyes and opened them again. “You’re a simple man, aren’t you? A few beers with the lads, a bit of frisk in the car park when the pubs chuck out, and a quick shag with whatever slapper you manage to drag back home with you at the end of the night. Simple pleasures.” He paused, waited for an answer.

“Maybe.” Boater felt his anger rising. He didn’t like to be spoken down to like this, not even by Monty, the most powerful man he knew. It sent him crazy, burning him up inside. It made him want to lash out in every direction. He glared at his boss, approaching an imaginary line, one he knew he would be a fool to cross.

“I’m not trying to insult you, Francis. Never that. You’re a good man. A top man. You’re my top man. But sometimes even you must think about the nature of existence. How and why we’re here, on this f*cked-up planet. There has to be more than f*cking and fighting and drinking. Doesn’t there? I think about this stuff a lot. Ever since I was a kid I knew this place – the Grove – was special. Things happen here, things that aren’t meant to happen. Stuff that doesn’t happen anywhere else.”

Not unless you’ve had enough drugs, anyway, thought Boater, trying not to smile. The rage was gone; it had passed quickly, like a brief spell of bad weather.

Boater had heard a lot of this before. It was Monty’s pet subject: the theory that the Concrete Grove was a place where forces converged, and ghosts and monsters could be seen. Sometimes he would go on for hours, his monologue deteriorating the longer he talked and becoming more and more like a sort of personal code. It was worse when he was drunk or high; those times he sometimes came across like a religious maniac, thumping the table and shouting and yelling about all kinds of weird shit.

“I know you boys think that this is all just bullshit. But it’s not. There’s a lot of documented facts available, if you know where to look, who to ask, what holes to dig around in. Recorded UFO sightings and ghostly apparitions. Stories about poltergeists and shape-shifters. It’s all around this area, throughout history – the Lambton Worm, the Laidly Worm, the Hexham Heads, the Cauld Lad, the f*cking Beast of Benton… so many myths and folktales. Did you ever think that these stories might all be part of a single, greater myth?”

He scratched his cheek, leaving red marks on the orangey, clean-shaven flesh.

“That’s what I think. There are others, too, who think the same way. I’m not the only one.” He picked up his faded copy of Extreme Boot Camp Workout and held it near the side of his face, as if listening to the paper. He gripped the spine, the pressure of his fingers flaring out the edges of the pages. “I bought this in a second-hand book shop in Morpeth. This was way back in, oh, about 1980. I’d been on a dirty weekend with some married tart – she liked to go walking up there, in the countryside. She liked it outdoors.”

The ghost of a smile crossed Monty’s face, but rather than settling Boater’s nerves it made them jangle. He’d seen that exact same smile before, usually when Monty had been reminiscing about violence.

“Yeah… good times.” The smile slipped, fell. “I already suspected that this place was special, that there was something weird going on. I’d spoken to a few people, and even seen one or two things myself that I couldn’t really explain. Then, it was as if this book was meant to fall into my hands. I picked it up and flicked through the pages, and on page twenty-nine I found a hand-written notation. Do you want to know what it said? I’ve read that phrase so many times now that I see the words whenever I close my eyes.”

Boater didn’t want to hear. He really didn’t. But he found himself nodding, betraying some inner compulsion for self-torment. Even though he’d heard the phrase repeated a hundred times.

“The note said: ‘The Concrete Grove is a doorway to Creation’.”

The pause that followed felt vast and dramatic, and filled with so many different meanings that it made Boater’s head ache.

“That’s Creation, with a capital C. It was my first clue, my first pointer. After that it was just a matter of sifting through old books, listening to pensioners tell me their f*cking crazy stories, the stories nobody else would ever take seriously. If a scientist wrote a book and made a list of all the ghostly sightings and unusual activity that’s gone on here, he’d see that it was well above the national average. It’s a melting pot of the supernatural, mate. A f*cking melting pot.” He shook the book, making the pages flutter. “And I’ve made my own notes, in here, for years now. Lots of notes, and a lot of other weird shit I can’t even understand: signs and symbols from history books and parchment papers kept in old church crypts.”

Boater smiled. He didn’t know what else to do.

“I know, you all just think I’m a madman, using this as an excuse for some of my more extreme behaviour. Maybe you were right, at first. It was an appealing justification. But now, you unbelieving cunts, I know it’s all real.” He smiled, and his mouth seemed to open too wide, like that of a shark. His teeth were small and pointed. “It’s all real.”

“Monty…” Boater tried to bring his boss back down to solid reality. It was always the same when he did a lot of drugs, and those new steroids he’d got in from China were messing with him in a way that was particularly intense. “Lana Fraser. She’s waiting outside.” He really wished that he had not come here tonight. He could have been back at his flat instead, shagging that girl. The one whose name he couldn’t even remember. But he didn’t need a name to lay down with her; names weren’t important, not when all you wanted was a dirty f*ck.

He wished he was there instead of here; he wished that he was balls-deep inside that girl, erasing all thoughts of Monty Bright and his twitchy madness, his unnerving talk of ancient powers and festering forces.

“Oh, yeah. Lana Fraser.” Monty stood, his crumpled suit looking cheap and vulgar in the dim light. “Bring the whore in here and we’ll start the fun.” He walked over to the wall and opened the safe, and then placed his beloved book on a shelf. He touched the book’s tatty cover once, with the very tips of his fingers, before shutting it away and locking the safe door. He placed the key in his trouser pocket and then turned back to face the room.

He walked right up to Boater, standing mere inches from him. Boater always noted the fact that Monty had a peculiar odour – he smelled of old paper and dust, as if the essence of that book was rubbing off on him.

The top of Monty’s head came up level with Boater’s chest. He was a small man, and his body was wrecked from years of drug abuse and punishing gym routines. But he was fast, and he was remorseless. Boater had once seen his boss bite off a man’s nose and spit it back into the victim’s open mouth. He had witnessed Monty laughing as he cut off a woman’s hand for refusing to pay a debt, either in cash or in kind. He had seen this man commit so many foul crimes, so much brutality. Rape and murder and mayhem. And in the past, Boater had liked it. He had enjoyed it. Maybe he had even needed it.

But not now. Not today, or for any time afterwards. Something had happened; a window had opened inside him, allowing in the light and a gentle breeze. When he closed his eyes he could see a grove of trees with acres of dense woodland beyond, and his nostrils were filled with the smell of damp foliage…

Something had altered. A transformation had begun. None of this felt right any more. He no longer enjoyed the vileness and vulgarity of his life. He didn’t want to hurt people, not ever again. He wanted to see that beauty, to hear the sound of the wind in the trees and lie on the soft earth beneath their branches – perhaps even sinking into the loam, becoming part of it, a part of nature.

“Bring the bitch in,” said Monty. “I’m ready for her now.”

He was not smiling.

Boater went to the door and opened it. He wanted to scream at the woman on the landing, tell her to run and never stop, to keep on going until she and her daughter were far away from here. “He’ll see you now,” he said instead. His back was sweating; his legs felt weak. This wasn’t right.

Lana Fraser walked into the room, trying to summon from somewhere deep within her an ounce of dignity. Her beauty was enough to make both men take a step back, giving her some space. Her face was her power, but all power, Boater knew, fell down in the presence of greater strength.

“At last you’ve come to see me.” Monty grinned. His orange skin creased around his mouth, forming multiple parentheses. His hair, slicked back with too much hair product, glistened like a beetle’s back. “I’m so glad you could… come.” The emphasis on the last word was not lost on any of them.

Boater wanted to leave, but he knew that he couldn’t. He was stuck here, right until the end. There was no turning back, not yet. But perhaps he could try to make amends later, after the fact.

“You mentioned on the phone that I could clear my debt.” Her voice was impressively strong. She didn’t falter. The words were spoken clearly, and without much inflection. It sounded like she was reading aloud from a written statement.

“Did I, now?” Monty walked across the room to a door located opposite the one she’d come in. He reached out and opened it, revealing a staircase beyond. “You’d better come down the back stairs, then, and meet my other associate. I’m sure we’ll all be fascinated to hear what you have to offer.” He stepped to one side, the mockery of a gentleman, and bowed slightly. “We work as a group here. We all like to join in. The last girl left with a face like a plasterer’s radio.” He was attempting to push her buttons, looking for her breaking point. Boater had seen it all before, and no matter how strong they seemed at the beginning, they all broke down at some point.

Lana Fraser walked purposefully towards the open door. She did not take her eyes from Monty’s face. She took in every inch of him – from his off-coloured solarium tan to his whitened teeth and his deceptively weak looking chin. Then she went through the door and stepped down into darkness.

Monty turned towards Boater, smiled, and winked. Then he followed her into the stairwell.

Boater waited for as long as he was able – thirty seconds, perhaps even as long as a minute – and then he, too, went through the doorway and started down into Monty’s hidden basement rooms. For a moment he felt that Monty himself was swallowing him whole, and sucking them all deep inside his mad, black heart.