The Concrete Grove

PART THREE

Faces

“The things you do have

begun to repel you.”

– Monty Bright



CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO


“SO, FRANCIS, DO you have anything you’d like to tell me?”

They were back in Monty’s office. Boater was standing on one side of the desk while his boss poured two glasses of fifteen year-old Glenlivet on the other side, from the comfort of his chair.

“No,” said Boater. “Not that I know of, anyway.”

Monty raised one eyebrow, finished pouring the whiskies, and then looked directly at Boater. “Well what was all that about, downstairs? Why did you want to leave before the fun started?” He slid Boater’s glass across the desk, and then leaned back, raising his own glass to his lips.

Boater wasn’t comfortable; he hated confrontation unless it involved extreme and sudden violence. He was not a talker: he was a puncher, a kicker, a head-butter, a stomper-of-heads. Social intercourse was not one of his strengths, but kicking the shit out of people was.

“Well, Francis?” Monty put down his glass and smiled. “Talk to me. Tell me what’s on your mind. We’re not animals, we’re men. And men should be able to reason with each other.”

Boater reached for his glass. His hand was shaking. He was twice the size of the other man, and probably weighed three times as much, yet he was afraid. It wasn’t that he was scared of Bright physically, not really. What instilled him with this wholly unreasonable fear was the thought of Bright’s madness. He knew that now; he could see it at last. His boss, the man he had served without question for almost two decades, was f*cking insane.

He took a large swallow of the whisky. It burned his throat, but as the liquid travelled down the intense burning sensation changed to a gentle heat that helped calm him. “I just feel different these days, Monty.” He licked his lips, getting a second taste of that hot, sweet mouthful. “It’s been happening for a little while. I’ve started to hate what I do, what I am. The things I’m capable of… they make me feel… f*ck, I dunno. I can’t use words like you can.” He looked down, ashamed of his lack of vocabulary, his inability to express himself as clearly as he would have liked.

“The things you do have begun to repel you.” Monty stood and walked around the desk. “Is that it, Francis? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

Boater nodded. He raised his head. He felt tired, so very tired.

“Look around you, Francis. Look at my walls.”

Boater turned his head and stared at the framed pictures and photographs. He’d seen them all, many times before. He didn’t know who any of the people in the portraits were, and the other stuff – sketches and diagrams of weird objects, buildings and places – left him cold. He didn’t appreciate art or culture. His idea of a good night out was to drink until he fell over, and the only films he liked featured lots of car chases and gunfights.

“That man over there. See him?” Monty walked over to the portrait in question, which hung next to a strange three-panelled print of demons cavorting in giant teacups and fragments of broken egg shells. The painting showed the face of a man with thinning hair and fleshy features. A funny-looking bloke, thought Boater. I bet he didn’t get much fanny.

“That’s Arthur Machen. He wrote stories and novels, a lot of them about another place that exists alongside our own. A place where there are angels and demons. A real place, mind you, not some daft country you can get to through the back of a wardrobe. No, Machen’s other place was a realm of spirituality. It was a world where faith and belief were very real, and they had faces… sometimes they were hideous faces, and sometimes they were beautiful.”

Boater stood there in silence, unsure of what his boss wanted from him. He looked at Monty, and then he looked back at the framed portrait. He pressed his lips together, and then moved them apart so that he could finish his drink. It was just a picture of an ugly old man. There was nothing more to see.

“What I’m trying to say, Francis, is that a lot of people have strange feelings and ideas. Some are equipped to express those ideas, and others keep them locked up inside. You’re changing, that’s all. Something is changing you. We’re all very close to something that’s exerting a kind of energy – a psychic power, I suppose, that’s altering the way we look at the world. It’s the place I’ve been trying to find for years, ever since I found that book, my little Bible. And possibly before that, without even knowing.” He pointed over to his desk, where his beloved copy of Extreme Boot Camp Workout was laying face down amid some scattered papers. “It’s all in there – even some of Machen’s words on the subject. He wrote a story called ‘N’, where he said that a fragment of Creation had broken off and landed in London, where it acted as a doorway to allow the mystic to intrude upon the everyday world.”

Boater’s head was throbbing. He felt like a man standing on a ledge, thinking about whether he should leap or turn around and walk away. Jumping had never felt so appealing. He understood none of this.

“I need you to do something for me, Francis.” Monty had changed the subject again. He often did this, swinging his conversation in unexpected directions. “This is a big favour. You’re the only one I can trust. Terry and those other clowns, they’re okay in a fight outside a nightclub, or to use as muscle when I need to claim a repayment, but you have certain sensibilities – especially now – that make you unique. You’re my man, Francis, my fox-in-the-box. You always have been.” He smiled, but his lips were stuck to his teeth and it made him look slightly odd, as if he were wearing a mask.

Boater resisted the urge to shudder and returned the smile. But it felt wrong, as if he too were forcing the muscles of his face into an unnatural expression.

“First let me show you something. Grab that bottle and let’s go back downstairs. There’s something I think you need to see.” He waited for Boater to move, and when he did Monty waited some more, watching his man, his fox-in-the-box, with eyes that betrayed a mean, seedy hunger.

Boater kept the whisky bottle in a firm grip. It felt like the glass neck of the bottle might break if he gripped it any tighter. For some reason, he wanted desperately to uncork the bottle and swig the entire contents down in one. He thought that if Monty attacked him he’d use the bottle as a weapon. Then he wondered why he was even thinking such a thing.

“Let’s go down, Francis.”

Boater glanced one more time at the portrait – what was his name, Arthur Mackem? The subject’s watery gaze seemed to take him in and then spit him out again, judging him as unworthy. He looked away, feeling ashamed. Why did he always feel so ashamed these days, as if he were somehow seeing the real Francis Boater for the first time and judging himself as worthless?

They went through the door and once again descended the old wooden staircase, with Monty in the lead. The disembodied landings seemed creepy and shadow-filled, as if figures stood just out of sight on the timber boards. When they reached the basement level, Monty turned and walked in a direction that led away from the ‘play room’ where they’d taken Lana Fraser.

Boater rarely came down here if it could be helped; he wasn’t comfortable with all that earth, and then the weight of the building above it, pressing down on his head. He liked to see daylight, a way out of the darkness, and this felt like they were turning their backs on the world above to seek solace in the musty darkness under the ground.

“I’ve never shown you this room.” Monty’s voice sounded flat, as if he were covering his mouth with something. “The only other people to have seen this place are dead.” It was not a threat. Monty was simply imparting knowledge.

Boater remained silent. The bulbs in the wall lamps guttered like candle flames. He listened to the sound of their footsteps as they made their way along the narrow passage, and ran his hands along the cool stone walls. He didn’t know why these underground rooms had been built – perhaps they were originally meant to be storage areas – but Monty loved it down here, in his private maze. There were rooms where beatings had been dished out, quiet corners where women had wept and other small chambers filled with drugs that would be sold on the streets of Newcastle, or handed out to the local dealers in the Grove for distribution closer to home.

Part of the myth of Monty Bright was stored here. The stories people told on the streets, the facts they twisted to become legend, had all started here, as fragments of Monty’s self-built reality.

“In here,” he said, pulling up short at yet another ordinary door. The paint had peeled. The wooden surface was pocked with small abrasions. “This is where I keep them.” His focus had drifted again, like it sometimes did when he spoke about the knowledge he had learned and the things he had written in his worn copy of Extreme Boot Camp Workout. Monty’s voice sounded like it was coming from miles away.

Boater was on the verge of turning around and making his way back above ground, where he could breathe some fresh, clean air, or at least the air that passed for clean and fresh in the Grove.

“Let’s get this show on the road,” said Monty, with a rehearsed air. Indeed, Boater had heard him use the phrase many times, usually in the moments before someone was beaten or cut or raped. Sometimes it even preceded a killing blow.

Monty unlocked the door, pushed it open, and blackness pulsed in the room beyond. Boater followed his boss inside, wishing that he had walked away after all. He didn’t like the feeling he got when he crossed over the threshold. It felt like someone had died in there.

“This is what I wanted to show you.” Monty reached out a hand and flicked a light switch. Dim light spilled down the walls and crept across the floor, failing to fill the far corners but illuminating the very centre of the space like a spotlight on a shabby stage. “I wanted you to meet my secret council.”

Boater looked down at the floor and saw a bunch of old television sets. Most of the screens were cracked; some of them were partially shattered. Each set was of a type that was now rarely sold. There were no flat screens here; no HD-ready plasma models. Just a lot of old, busted television sets like the one his mother used to have in the parlour when he was growing up.

“Monty…” But he didn’t know what to say. This was too weird. None of it made any sense.

“This is where I get my information. Can you see them in there? They tell me things: the bad stuff that’s going to happen unless I do something to prevent it.” Monty was down on his knees in front of the first row of televisions. He was reaching out a hand and brushing the screen with his fingertips, as if he were cleaning the surface of dust. “They help me. They advise me what to do.”

The screens were all dark. These television sets had not worked in years, maybe decades. Even Boater could see that. There was no doubt in his mind that nobody had watched anything on these things since the days when there were only three terrestrial channels available through a roof-mounted aerial or antenna.

“These are the lords of all I survey. They see everything. Their eyes are all around the Grove. They travel to different places, to people’s homes, through the airwaves and they spy on my debtors. Then they bring back snippets of news, like little carrier pigeons.” There was an element of awe in Monty’s voice, but also one of love.

“I see,” said Boater. “That’s… good. It’s handy, isn’t it?” He backed up slowly, making sure that he was close to the door. Just in case Monty flipped. He gripped the neck of the bottle tighter.

Monty turned his head. He was still down on his knees in the dirt, as if praying before the host of broken television sets. “You don’t, do you? You don’t see them.” He smiled, and for a moment Boater thought that he saw cold, flat TV light play across his features.

“No,” said Boater, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, but I don’t see a f*cking thing. There’s nobody there, on those screens. The TV sets can’t talk to you.” He held out his hands, a placatory gesture. “They aren’t even plugged in.”

“Not on the screens, Francis. In the screens. They’re inside there, like baby birds waiting inside their eggs. They hatch out sometimes, but only to feed. They take back the sights that television has given us, and when it happens they leave behind a blank slate. People are nothing without their borrowed visuals, their hand-me-down ideas. When they’re removed from the great glass tit they become empty very f*cking quickly…” He turned back to the televisions, as if they’d all come on together to show him the different channels they could receive.

Boater was locked in place. He couldn’t move. So he just stood there, and he watched.

“That’s what happened to that stupid druggie thief, Banjo. They stripped him clean, taking back the visions and washing his brain as clean and smooth as a baby’s arse.”

Boater remembered the guy, that junkie. They’d brought him down here and beaten him, and then Monty had told them to leave him alone with the f*cker. That was the last Boater knew of him until he saw a report on the local news, stating that the junkie had been found walking the streets trying to rip his own face off. If he remembered correctly, Lana Fraser and some bloke had seen it happen.

“That rotten little bastard got what he deserved. He got wiped clean, retuned to an empty channel.”

The longer Boater stared at the TV screens the more he thought that he could see something behind them, coiling in the darkness. It looked like snakes made of smoke, or limbs of mist. A writhing mass comprised of long, twisting shapes was packed in behind the broken glass, and they were slowly becoming clearer, gaining resolution. Then, as though a visor had been lifted from before his eyes, he caught sight of huge, twitching, insect-like legs, folded over and stuffed tightly into the spaces behind the screens. “I think I see something,” he said, taking a few steps forward, into the room. “They’re in there, aren’t they? They’re really in there.”

“Yes, they are.” Monty stood and walked to Boater’s side. He laid a hand on his forearm. “They told me to take the girl.”

Boater glanced at him. “What girl?” But he knew; of course he did. He’d been keeping an eye on her for almost a fortnight now, since Monty had asked him to swing by her school a couple of times a week, and perhaps follow her home every now and then. If she had ever seen him, all she would have noticed was a fat man in a car parked by the Arcade, or some burly bastard standing outside the Dropped Penny pub waiting for someone.

“First they told me to watch her, and I put you on the job. Now they’ve said that I need to take her. That Fraser woman, she’s going to try to kill me. She’ll come back here very soon, and perhaps she won’t be alone. I need an insurance policy, a little leverage, some collateral on the remainder of her loan.” He gripped Boater’s arm. His fingers felt like steel rods. “Get the girl for me, Francis. Get that cunt’s daughter and put her somewhere safe.” His eyes were manic, filled with an energy whose intensity was terrifying.

Boater’s head felt like it was expanding, and a strange droning noise filled his ears. He watched Monty’s lips move but he could barely hear what was being said.

“Get her and hide her until I tell you it’s safe to bring her back out into the open.”

Even though his hearing was impaired by the keening sound inside his head, Boater understood completely what he was being ordered to do. The only problem was he didn’t know if he could go through with it.

“But first,” said Monty, smiling again. “You can help me carry these f*cking televisions upstairs.”





LATER, AS HE sat in his car outside the gym, Boater stared at his tired reflection in the rear-view mirror. He looked different; his features had altered subtly, as if he were trying to physically become someone else. But then the light from passing headlights briefly illuminated the interior of the car and he was once again the same old Francis Boater, with his bloated face and his small eyes. But for a moment there, in the shadows, he had almost been able to convince himself that he was a different person entirely.

He thought about the girl, and what Monty had told him to do. He pictured all the times he’d seen her recently, walking along on her own, heading either to or from her school. She was always alone; she never walked with friends. Like Boater, she seemed to travel through her life alone.

Right then, sitting motionless in his car on a darkened street, he decided that this time he was going to make his own decisions. This time, whatever he did he would do for the right reasons.