The Concrete Grove

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO





IT DIDN’T TAKE Lana long to reach the outskirts of the Concrete Grove. People were milling in the streets, trying to get a good look at the fiery display. Two fire engines were parked on Grove Lane, with groups of firemen working to put out the blaze. It looked like they’d managed to catch the fire in time to stop it spreading, and they were in the process of limiting the damage. The gym was already ruined, a blackened shell, but the nearby properties were undamaged apart from soot-stains on their frontages. Most of them were empty, anyway, and the rest were rented properties. Nobody in authority would care about the fire: even the landlords could claim on their insurance, and the evening’s destruction would be considered nothing more than an inconvenience.

Not a living soul would mourn the dead. Men like Monty Bright, and his enforcer Terry, were never really loved. They were only ever feared, and when they died the communities they lived off like parasites let out a collective sigh of relief.

Maybe later, when all this was over and if she survived the night, Lana would return here to lay flowers for the poor junkie, Banjo. It was the least she could do, even if by sending him to his death she had shown him little mercy.

The air was hot as she jogged along Grove Side, towards the centre of the estate. She moved away from the blaze, and by the time she had entered the mouth of Grove Street, along which she could join the Roundpath, she was once again growing cold. She pulled the overcoat tighter across her chest, all-too aware that she was still half-naked beneath its thin covering. She checked the buttons, making sure that they were secure, and continued along the street to the end, where she slowed her pace once her feet crunched on the loose material of the circular pathway which ran around the perimeter of the Needle.

Pausing for a moment, she glanced up and looked at the tip of the building. A dark mass had gathered around its pyramidal glass peak: not smoke, not clouds, but hundreds of tiny birds. The air was filled with a distant humming; now that the crackling of the fire was behind her, she could hear the sound of the birds’ wings as they beat gracefully against the air.

Hummingbirds, she thought. More f*cking hummingbirds.

Were these things guardians, or harbingers of some kind? She recalled one of the words she’d seen written across the map of the estate in Bright’s workout book. Psychopomp.

A soul conductor; a creature whose job it was to guide the souls of the recently deceased to the afterlife, the other side, the place that she had never believed in. Was that the role of the hummingbirds? Did they accompany people as they crossed over, journeying from this place to that other – from the Concrete Grove to the grove beyond?

Her mind was racing. This was all mad conjecture, but it made as much sense as the ravings of that crazy man Monty Bright – him and his alternative world, his parallel universe that existed within the estate. His rambling speech and the book – what little of its contents she’d had the chance to skim – both seemed to suggest that Bright had been searching for a fragment of Creation, a sliver of the Garden of Eden. But what if he was only partly correct and the garden he had been seeking for so long was actually a wood, a forest, a dark tree-filled land that acted as a depository for lost dreams and nightmares? And what if the doorway to that place was a grove of ancient oak trees, over which had been constructed a concrete tower block?

Hailey had found a key to unlock that door. Bright had called it a mixture of innocence and yearning, but whatever unique qualities her daughter possessed, they were currency here. Lana had always told Hailey that she was special, but had never really known it for sure, until now.

Something deep within her responded strongly to the theory: she felt that the place towards which she was now heading, the realm Monty Bright had died trying to find, was like a failing battery, powered by the dreams and desires of the people who gathered around it. And in a place like the one she’d left behind, a blasted, godforsaken pit like the Concrete Grove, the only charge this battery could receive was negative.

So the forces here had mutated, becoming toxic. They had changed, and sprayed out their waste like a buried nuclear core going into a slow, decades-long meltdown.

She ran towards the old construction hoardings that formed a barrier around the tower, looking for a way inside. There had to be one – a gap in the fence, a slight depression in the ground under one of the boards, or perhaps a couple of damaged sheets of timber panel through which she could force entry. Soon she saw a loose board, and not caring who heard or even saw her, she set to work on pulling it free. This took several minutes and she tore one of her fingernails, but finally she managed to tug the board far enough away from the makeshift barricade that she could squeeze through the gap.

She tore the sleeve of her coat, and one of her running shoes came off, but she didn’t stop to pick up the shoe. Instead she took off the other one and proceeded barefoot, stepping on splintered timber and old nails, tearing the soles of her feet but barely even feeling the pain.

More sirens sounded a long way behind her. She didn’t turn around to see if the fire was out; she kept on going, heading towards the main entrance of the Needle.

This time she didn’t need to struggle to find a way inside.

Because the doors were open.

Something had been waiting for her to arrive.

Above her, the humming sound continued. Around the base of the tower block, thick roots squirmed and writhed, tunnelling into the earth and then emerging again, displacing the turned soil and the building debris. The earth was alive with motion; something was straining at the boundaries of her perception, trying to be seen.

“I’m coming, Hailey.” She walked into the Needle, and entered another world, passing from night to day in a heartbeat.

The floor was not concrete; it was soft earth covered in a layer of mulch. She felt it soak the soles of her feet and ooze between her toes, cold and invigorating, placing her in the moment. The sounds of the forest filled her ears; its rich, loamy smell invaded her nostrils. She was not inside a precast concrete frame building, she had instead entered some kind of woodland glade… no, not a glade: a grove.

Stood in a circle around her were several ancient oaks. Their rugged trunks were thick and imposing. The branches reached up, entwining, grasping, meshing, to form a dense canopy. Hairy conical nests hung from those branches, and hummingbirds darted in and out of the tiny entrance holes. The sky above the canopy seemed miles away, as if it had receded to a point where it was barely visible to the eye. All she could make out was a vast emptiness; a canvas upon which was painted thin, wispy clouds, behind which there burned a high, hazy sun. Lana turned her attention to the very centre of the grove of oak trees, and there, amid a small cairn of grey stones that might have once been part of a concrete structure, she saw a huge man-shaped mound of mossy ferns and leaves. The mound twitched as she approached, and when she stood before it she realised who it resembled: Francis Boater, Monty Bright’s redemptive hard-man.

“Where is she?” She stared at the huge mound, not expecting it to be capable of speech. She knew that she should be afraid – indeed, the person she used to be would have been terrified – but all she felt now was a deep sense of pity. This man – this torturer and rapist – had been exploited by the forces here and then left to be absorbed into the fabric of the place. It was a correct end, she supposed, yet still there was something rather sad about his prolonged demise.

A sound came from the mass. Like a breathy whisper.

Lana went down on her knees and leaned in close, pressing the side of her head to the damp, mossy lump.

“I protectssssssssssssssssssssssssss…”

“Thank you,” she said, and got back to her feet. “Thank you for watching over her, you piece of shit. Thanks for that, if nothing else.” She backed away, repulsed by the thing that had once been a man, or had at least called itself a man.

Daggers of sunlight pierced the foliage, slipping between the leaves and branches of the big, old trees. At the outskirts of the grove, something moved, slowly stalking her. It padded in a wide circle, biding its time, waiting for the right moment to reveal itself to her.

“Hailey? Is that you, baby? I’m here. I’ve come to get you.”

The air inside the grove began to darken, as if a dense black cloud had crossed the sun. Shadows crept into the open, sliding through the gaps between the trunks and out from beneath low-lying foliage.

The thing outside the grove started to move inward, making its way through the trees. It was huge, bulky and covered in thick, dark fur. Like a bear, it moved first on all fours and then reared up on its hind legs to clear felled trees and other random obstacles.

“Oh, no…” Lana looked around, but there was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. The beast had seen her; it knew exactly where she stood and how vulnerable she was.

The thing dropped and loped on all fours into the clearing, with its large, shaggy head turned to one side. The creature’s flanks were huge and glossy and blood-flecked. Its heavy paws were large and threatening. Sharp claws curved like sickles from the ends of its rudimentary fingers; they scraped across the bases of the trees, cutting out swathes of bark.

“Please. Don’t.” Lana was powerless. Finally, she was afraid. She saw now the stupidity of coming here, of trying to bring back her daughter from a place that did not want to let her go. In fact, how did she even know that Hailey wanted to leave? What if she had been coming here for months, seeking solace and some kind of communion with the dormant forces that were now beginning to awake? Perhaps she had found her true home here, among the lost and ruined artefacts of other people’s dreams.

At last the beast turned its head towards her. Its face was human; she knew it would be, and even whose features she would see.

It was Timothy: her dead husband. His eyes stared at her from above grizzled, hairy cheeks, and he frowned as if in vague recognition.

Lana stood there and waited for him to come to her. She had been waiting like this for such a long time.

Standing on his back legs, Timothy lurched towards her, slashing at her with those long, lethal claws. He roared; the air shook. Birds took flight around them, rising from the underground to take to the sky. Lana felt slick warmth at her belly, and when she placed her hands there blood flowed across her fingers. She grabbed at the wound, trying to stop the flow, but it was no good. She was already dying.

She closed her eyes and felt her body being hauled into the air. She flew, slung up into the branches of the nearest tree, and then once again she felt those claws go to work on her stomach, slicing away her sense of self.

What felt like hours later she opened her eyes. The world was upside down. The bottoms of the trees were at the top of her field of vision; the rustling canopy was the ground. Her ankles ached. Her belly was empty. There was nothing there, just a cool breeze across the exposed inside of her gut. Steam drifted past her eyes, from the upside-down ground and towards the tumbledown, loosely-packed sky.

A small upside-down girl stood several yards away, fumbling with the hem of her dress. She was wearing the tattered remains of a school uniform, but her legs and feet were bare. Her small toes were filthy with soil. The trees and the foliage closed around her, keeping her beauty and her innocence close. The air held her like a gentle hand. She was part of this place now, and would never again be forced to endure the concrete agonies from which she had finally escaped.

“Goodbye, Mum.” Her voice was like music; the sound played on and on, repeating even after the girl had turned around and begun to walk away, into the trees, heading into the world beyond the grove. Lana recognised the song; she just couldn’t place the name of the singer, or join in with the words.

“Not yet,” she breathed. Then the world – this one, and the one outside, where she never again wanted to set foot – went dark and the relentless sound of humming filled the emptiness that had always been inside her, taking away the fear at last. “Yes,” she whispered. She was ready to go now. There was nothing left to keep her here.