The Concrete Grove

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE





TOM HAD TAKEN drugs in the past, when he was a student. It was something he’d done only occasionally, whenever he’d been hanging out with a certain group of friends who were into the scene. Just a few joints, one or two tabs of LSD, and, once, a line of cocaine snorted from the top of a toilet cistern in a Newcastle nightclub. He’d never enjoyed the loss of control, so his drugs phase had lasted all of five weeks. After that he had never felt the urge to try them again, and he drifted away from those friends anyway, moving on to a group whose drug of choice was alcohol.

Now, walking alongside Lana through the streets of the Concrete Grove, he felt as though he had once again ingested a mild hallucinogen. In truth, he’d felt this way for days. His mind was lost in a soft fug, enveloped in a mist that kept shifting and altering the way he felt and how he viewed the world around him.

Last night, when he had been stalked and then attacked, was the culmination of these feelings. He knew that it hadn’t happened – nothing so absurd could possibly be real – but at the same time he also knew that there was in fact the corpse of a sea cow at the bottom of his stairs.

“Hold my hand.” Lana grabbed his and clutched it tightly. “The last time I made this journey I got lost.”

His mind raced for an instant, and then slowed right down, as if that fog was getting thicker. “Lost? How do you mean, lost? It’s only five minutes away.”

She squeezed his hand again, as if she were seeking reassurance. But Tom felt incapable of giving her what she wanted. His strength was gone; he was a shell, a husk, an empty shape walking what felt like a predetermined path towards damnation.

“I know. But I kept going along streets and ginnels and coming out where I shouldn’t. And it was never the same place twice. I felt like somebody was rearranging the streets as I walked along them, trying to make sure that I didn’t know where I was going. It took me ages… ages…”

The sky was vast and clear. Stars shone brightly, like tiny light bulbs strung across the blackness. The moon was a slender curve of silver.

Tom tried to remember what they’d done since Monty Bright’s call, but he had only a vague memory of drinking bland white wine and listening to Lana talk about her daughter. There was little sense in doing anything else. They didn’t know where Bright’s man had taken Hailey. It could be anywhere, even somewhere off the estate. All they could do was try to kill some time before meeting the loan shark on his own terms. Lana was desperate. She had even got out photographs at one point, and made Tom look at snapshots of them both in happier, more prosperous times. There had been tears, and then there had been rage. Finally, like an afterthought, there had been another failed attempt at lovemaking.

It was all a blur. Nothing was fixed in his mind. If he tried to grab hold of a specific recollection, Tom felt that it might slip from his grasp like a wet, thrashing fish.

“Nearly there,” he said, just to hear the sound of his own voice. When he looked up at the tops of the streetlamps, he saw strange writhing motion at the centre of the fluorescent glow: foetal light; unborn illumination. His ideas were just as crazy and confused as his emotions.

When they reached the top end of Grove Lane, near the junction with Grove Street West, it was apparent that the door to Bright’s gym was unguarded. There were no burly men waiting outside, and the shutters were down across the windows. Tom could hear music from the Unicorn, the pub around the corner. He’d been told stories about that place, and none of them had happy endings. It was an old-school Northern boozer, with dusty wooden floors to absorb the blood from fights, and the landlord kept a baseball bat behind the bar just in case things got out of hand.

“It’s open, just like he promised.” Lana pushed open the main door of the gym – a heavy wooden barrier with a steel kickboard along the bottom and wire mesh over the small safety-glass window pane at the top.

Darkness seemed to bleed out through the doorway, but Tom knew that it was simply an illusion, another rogue vision.

“Come on. Let’s go up.” Lana led the way, letting go of his hand as she crossed the threshold. He knew that he could run away now that her attention was focused elsewhere, but somehow he managed to convince himself to stay.

Get it over with, he thought. Then you can go home and see what’s what.

Somewhere at the back of his mind, where he was struggling to keep it pinned down, a voice said: you don’t really want to go home. Not ever again. You know exactly what’s what.

Tom followed her inside, every inch of him screaming to turn around and leave. They had come here to commit premeditated murder, and they wouldn’t get away with it. People like them never managed to commit a crime without being caught. Only the real criminals went free, boasting about their dirty deeds as they planned the next one.

Monty Bright had killed people. Everybody knew this; it was a fact, as much as local gossip was capable of producing such a thing. But the police had never managed to link him to any of the victims he was supposed to have either murdered himself or had dispatched by others. He was always somewhere else, with someone who would sign a statement or swear in court that they’d been with him all night.

No, only one-off murderers got caught. They always did. This was another fact of the streets.

They walked past an open doorway on their right, and Tom paused to look inside. There was a boxing ring in the centre of the room, and various heavy bags and speedballs set up along the walls. He thought he saw someone shadow boxing, but when he looked again it was simply a shadow. It moved like a pro, bobbing and weaving and ducking, fighting itself back and forth across the length of grubby wall.

More tricks of the mind; another absurd mental hiccup.

If he wasn’t careful, he’d see a sea cow lurching towards him across the floor, dragging its bulk over the exercise mats and around the piles of free weights and medicine balls…

“This way. I remember… from last time.”

He followed her up the steep flight of stairs, gripping the handrail as he climbed. The walls leaned towards him, creating a vertical wedge into which they moved. The sound of the stairs creaking seemed to happen a second or two behind each footfall, as if there was some kind of aural delay. He kept his eyes fixed straight ahead, watching Lana’s narrow back and her slim backside, as she gained the upper landing.

They paused there, outside another door.

“He’s in here,” Lana whispered. “This is his office.” She pressed an ear against the door and closed her eyes. “I can hear movement.”

“You’d better come in.” The voice came from the other side of the door. Bright knew they were there; he’d been waiting for them. Of course he had. He’d probably watched them every step of the way after they’d entered the building, sitting behind his desk with his eyes on a CCTV monitor.

“The door’s unlocked.”

Lana turned to him and nodded. Her eyes were wide and questioning, seeking confirmation that he was still willing to back her up.

“I’m ready,” he said, and steeled himself for the unexpected.

Lana turned the handle and opened the door. Light spilled out onto the dim landing. Tom followed her inside. Lamps gave off low-level light, which spilled across the carpet. The walls were covered in framed pictures and portraits. Some of them were nightmarish, others bland and unremarkable. Images of monsters hung next to stiff-backed men in Victorian suits, their eyes narrow and their faces stern and unflinching.

“Come on in,” said Monty Bright. “Let’s get this show on the road.” He sat in his office chair, with his feet resting on the desk and his hands clasped behind his head. His hair was slicked back, tight against his head, and shone in the oddly lambent light. His face looked like one of those paintings: unmoving, placid, hiding real feelings behind an immobile mask.

Another man stood against the wall at the side of the desk. He was broad, dressed in a dark suit, and was wearing leather gloves on his clenched hands. Six or seven old television sets stood on the floor, their screens cracked, their casings dusty and showing signs of handling, clean patches where large swathes of the dust had been cleared as they were carried into the room.

“You remember Terry, of course. And his stump.” Monty Bright grinned. For a second his teeth looked false, as if too many of them had been crammed into his mouth. “And you are?” He inclined his head, indicating that he was speaking to Tom.

The other man – Terry – took a single step away from the wall.

“I’m nobody. Nobody important.” Tom closed the door behind him.

“Oh, but we’re all important here.” Bright stood up. He wasn’t very tall. “We all have a role to play. This is something I’ve learned. Even the most humble of us has a part in all this.” He picked up a book from his desk – some kind of workout manual. It looked old; the cover was worn and faded. One of the desk lamps – the one situated nearest Bright – flickered twice.

Tom suddenly found the man’s name amusing, like an irony that was only now becoming apparent. He wasn’t bright at all – he was dark; as dark as they come. Even the light shuddered in his presence.

“Where’s my daughter, you prick?” Lana stood with her fists clenched. She looked ready for a fight, perhaps even to the death. She had put on an ankle-length black coat just before they’d left her flat, and she kept it buttoned up to the throat as she confronted the loan shark. Part of Tom wanted her to keep it fastened, but the vengeful side of him couldn’t wait to see her open that coat and get things started.

“She’s safe, just like I said on the phone.” Bright came around to the front of the desk. His chunky shoes, with their inch-high heels, clumped softly on the carpet. Everything to Tom seemed hyper-real, as if the world had taken on extra levels of vividness.

“Where.”

Lana stared right at him.

“Is.”

She opened her hands, slowly flexing the fingers.

“She.”

She was utterly in control of the moment.

“My, my…” said Bright, trying for amused nonchalance but failing, and betraying the fact that he was shaken by her apparent lack of fear. “My, but how you’ve changed, and in such a short time, too. The last time I saw you, you were washing spunk off your skin.” He folded his arms across his wide chest. The suit jacket strained at his upper arms and shoulders, as if the seams were about to burst.

“Tell me now, before it’s too late.”

Terry remained where he was, silent and threatening. Tom felt like he and the other man were simply an audience for this confrontation. The meeting playing out before them was like high drama: the finale to a play whose first two acts had been performed in private.

He watched copies of the scene repeated in miniature on the reflective surfaces of the television screens.

“Remember my associate, Francis? The large man. He has her. I don’t know where, he didn’t tell me, and I can’t get a signal on his mobile. Unless, of course, he has it turned off. I think he imagines he’s hunting down some kind of redemption, and your daughter is the means to him finding it.”

Lana’s posture relaxed. Her shoulders slumped.

“I’ve had Francis following your pretty little girl for a few weeks now, but lately he’s turned against me. I wanted him to bring her straight here, so I could put her downstairs, to keep her safe. But he had other ideas. Or maybe she did.”

“What is it you think she can do for you, Bright? A monster like you, trying to put your hands on a young girl. If you think I’ll let it happen, you’re even crazier than I thought.” Her voice was hard and clear. She was unafraid. Tom saw the steel within her, and it was almost enough to make him fearless, too.

“I’ve been looking for a way into somewhere that’s been hidden for a long time. It started for real with this book.” He held up the fitness manual. “It gave me the pointers, and I’ve kept looking for more ever since. It’s all in here: the evidence.” He leaned back against the desk, too short to actually sit on its top. Instead he just rested his backside against the edge. “It’s all in here; all the information I’ve managed to find. There isn’t much, but news about the place isn’t exactly in the public domain. Your daughter found an open door, and she’s been welcomed inside. She reached out and touched the power at the heart of the Grove, and it liked what it saw. She has a strange combination of innocence and yearning, and it seems that was all she needed to get over there, to the place I’ve been kept out of for so long.”

“What the f*ck are you talking about? And what the hell is going on with all these TVs?”

“More evidence.”

Right then, as if they’d been waiting for a cue, the televisions sets flickered into life. The damaged screens flared, giving off a dull glow, and there was a series of clicking noises as the old cathode ray tubes sparked into life.

(Clickety-clickety-click…)

“What is this?”

Bright smiled. “Oh, just a little light viewing, to demonstrate what I’m talking about.” He looked at the screens, his face pale and washed-out, like a degraded image of itself.

Tom glanced at them, too.

On each of the screens there appeared the same scratchy, flickering image: a grove of massive trees, and at its centre what looked like a group of men in Halloween costumes. But the costumes were too sophisticated to be anything other than real – these were monsters, plain and simple. And Tom had already been introduced to their human counterparts.

Their legs were long and muscular, bent back like the limbs of giant crickets or grasshoppers. Their faces looked burnt; they possessed the shiny quality of scar tissue. It was difficult to make them out clearly, because the image was so grainy and incomplete, but there seemed to be five or six of them gathered at the centre of the grove of trees – the same as the number of television sets in the room. They jumped and hopped around the clearing, twitchy and excited.

“These,” said Bright, “are my friends. They came to me one night, as I was watching an old porno movie on a TV in some junkie’s squalid little bedsit. I can only see them on old television sets, for some reason. They don’t show up on digital technology. These monsters are old-school.”

Terry took a step forward, staring at the screens. “There’s nothing there, Monty. They aren’t even switched on.”

“Can you see them, Lana?” Bright waited for her response.

Lana simply nodded.

“And what about you – is it Tom?”

“Yes. I can see them.” He didn’t look at Bright. His gaze was fixed on the screens. Amid the crowd of jittering bodies he was sure that he could make out a familiar shape. If he peered hard enough, and concentrated, he could see what looked like a large sea cow writhing on the ground between their massive, concertinaed legs. “I can see.”

“I’ve seen a lot of things here, in the Grove.” Monty’s face seemed to slacken; he was turning inward, lost in his own thoughts and memories. “I remember one night, when I was about seven years old, my mother sent me to the Dropped Penny to get my father. He was a drunkard, good for nothing but pissing his life away…”

Nobody moved; the man’s anecdote, the sheer force of his memories, acted like a binding agent, bringing them together inside the room.

“When I got there, he was regaling his cronies with stories of his youth – utter bullshit, like always, but they were a captive audience. When I interrupted him, he slapped me hard across the face. Instead of letting him see me cry, I ran away. I headed towards the Embankment. I remember the moon was huge… the stars stared down at me like bright little eyes, and when I saw it lying there in the gutter, breathing white mist into the cold air, I thought I was dreaming. It was a unicorn, like in the books I’d read. Something from a fairytale. But its horn had been sawn off about an inch away from its head, and its face was battered and bleeding. So I knelt down and I started to stroke it, crying and still ashamed – still hurting because that bastard had shown me up in front of the whole pub. The beast died in my arms, with me looking it straight in the eye. And do you know what my only thought was, the thing that kept going round and round in my head? Well, I’ll tell you. All I could think of was this: I want to meet whatever did this. I want to see what’s f*cking crazy enough to kill a unicorn.”

The silence snapped, like a rubber band stretched past breaking point. Tom could have sworn that he heard it break.

“Monty, I don’t like this.” Terry was losing his grip. It was obvious. He was no longer a threat; his fear was nullifying him. He wanted only to be out of the room.

“F*ck this,” said Lana. “F*ck you and your sad little nostalgia trip. Where does your man have my daughter?”

Bright turned to her, his face ashen in the television light. “I have no idea. Really, I don’t. All I know is that he was following her through the Grove, and he caught up with her. That was the last time I was able to speak to him. That’s why I asked you here, to help me find her. To bring her in so we can find out what she knows about that place – the other grove, and the infinite garden beyond.”

“Do you really think I’d help you find my own daughter? The person I love most in this shitty world?”

“Of course,” said Bright, taking a step towards her. “If the price is right, you’ll do anything. You’ve already proven that. So let’s get this show on the road.”

Tom felt ill. The television screens were flickering. Their plastic shells looked soft and malleable. He thought about the famous painting by Salvador Dali, the one with the melting clocks.

“Yeah,” said Lana, slowly unbuttoning her coat. Her expression was flat and lifeless, like a death mask. Her voice was low. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

The creatures Tom had seen a few seconds ago were crammed to the front of each television set, pressing against the grubby, cracked glass and clamouring to be let out. Their faces were squashed, their limbs folded, their squat bodies pulsed and flexed, forcing the screens outward.

He glanced back at Lana just as she let her overcoat drop to the floor. It formed a black puddle around her feet, like spilled tar.

Lana was naked from the waist up. She had on a pair of tight leggings and some grubby running shoes, but her upper body was bare. The Slitten hung like bats from her breasts and beneath her armpits, but he could only see them when he looked to the side, watching them from the peripheral. She’d taught him that first, when she’d shown them to him that afternoon, nesting quietly in Hailey’s bedroom.

These, then, were the ultimate response to Bright’s media-monsters. The yin to his yang. Everything must have an opposite, and if Monty Bright’s hideous soul had helped create the things inside the televisions, then Hailey must have generated the Slitten to oppose them. Sometimes, he thought, desperation can be a positive force.

Everything that came next happened so fast: much too fast for Tom to fully comprehend the order of events. It was all he could do to keep up with the action, and ensure that he played his part to his best ability.