by Gary McMahon
He got up and walked towards the door. It was closed, but it no longer resembled a normal door set within a fabricated frame. This door was a solid slab of living wood: a natural barrier. There was no handle, no keyhole. He reached out and pushed it open. The door swung on hinges of fibrous vines, helped on its way by the weight of Boater’s body as he leaned against it.
Beyond the door there was a crumbling section of concrete wall. Where before there had been a long grey corridor filled with dumped trash, there was now a shadowy landscape of trees and bushes and uneven ground that bled into a thick, syrupy blackness. The broken concrete wall looked like ancient ruins against this dark backdrop. Rotten teeth of brickwork poked up through the ground here and there, like reminders of another forgotten time in history.
A series of oak trees stood proud and massive and implacable, forming a tight circle around him. Darkness bulged in the gaps between their trunks. It looked as if the trees were protecting the small, ruined room in which Hailey Fraser now slept…
“The Grove,” whispered Boater.
He turned around and saw that the door was shut. The concrete wall was covered in a layer of plants; leaves and stalks criss-crossed to form a natural skin over the man-made shelter.
The landscape was gradually smothering the unnatural structure.
There were sounds of movement in the undergrowth. Nocturnal creatures hunted for food, made their way between entrance holes to their sets and burrows and led their young on secretive night-time journeys, exploring the limits of their world. Boater looked around, at the strange florae which hid so many scurrying scavengers. Huge hand-like leaves twitched beneath his gaze, exotic flowers closed their petals over bulging stigmas and stamens, and the tall stems of large plants shuddered like eager lovers in the night.
Boater fell to his knees, raising his hands in a mockery of prayer. The trees creaked; their language was splintered, unknowable. A chorus of plant life created a kind of song with nothing but their excited, jittery motion.
The vast, eternal woodland stretched away into a primeval forest of forever outside the circular grove of ancient oaks. The borders swelled fractionally, increasing in size as the landscape fed from the dreams of a broken man with nowhere left to go. He could almost feel the place breathing.
Somewhere out there, at the edge of his imagination, Boater knew that there was a better place, an alternative to the world he had always known. But he couldn’t enter that place – he didn’t have permission to stray past its invisible boundaries.
Yet still, he felt that he was being allowed to know a little of its history.
Whatever power he had stumbled across here was neutral and existed in a realm where human terms like good or bad meant nothing. Tattered and flyblown, the energy stored here responded only to human emotion – until then, it lay dormant, a battery awaiting a charge. But the Concrete Grove estate was a receptacle for negativity: only failure and regret could be produced in such a misbegotten location.
So the power here had mutated, becoming a reflection of the stew of fear and desire upon which it fed. Boater sensed that over time things had altered here, and once-ambivalent creatures had evolved into ravenous beasts, taking on grotesque faces. New shapes had formed amid the dregs of muddy magic, and they brought with them brand new hungers.
This place – Monty Bright’s so-called ‘splinter of Creation’ – had eventually been polluted by the world inside which it was hidden. And toxins had leaked back out through rips and fissures, slowly returning to the world outside the Grove, but in other forms entirely.
This realisation hit Boater like a blow to the stomach. He felt unmoored from his life for a moment, as if his entire body had been shaken off the planet by a violent force.
“If this is a dream, or if I’m lying dead somewhere and I’ve come here on my way to someplace else, please let it never end. Let me stay here forever.” He clenched his fists and held them high, making a promise that he could never put into words. This vow came from deep inside, beyond blood and tissue and bone: this was the promise of the man who was imprisoned in the hidden chambers of his own heart, the fabled Good Man that he had never been allowed to become.
“I promise,” he said, not even knowing what he meant by those words. But the Good Man knew. He understood everything, even the things which lay beyond words, behind the mask of language.
The Good Man knew it all.
“I promise.”
And the Grove responded as it always did: with infinite patience.
After a while Boater felt calmed. His tension slipped away, lifted from him by the tranquillity which had returned to the Grove. The undergrowth was still and silent. The night felt empty and airless. The stars flickered in the vast black sky, providing just enough light so that he could see.
He stood and returned to the room, going back through the hewn timber door and closing it firmly behind him. When he looked, it was a normal door once more. Cheap plywood panels, a plastic handle, steel hinges.
He turned to face the gloomy interior of the room. The rate of growth across walls and floor had intensified, making the mulch beneath his feet seem thicker and the covering on the walls even denser than before.
Hailey’s sleeping body was obscured by what he at first thought was a dark cloud, or a mass of shadows. But as he moved further into the room, drawing closer to the girl, he saw that she was being shielded by scores of tiny, coloured birds. There was no sound; they didn’t move. The entire tableau was like a painting, a still-life image.
Then, just as the birds noticed him, movement returned to the scene: their wings beat faster than his eyes could discern, creating a Technicolor blur; the sound of humming filled the air.
“Don’t hurt her…” But he knew that the birds were not here to cause the girl harm. The birds, like Boater himself, were intent on protecting Hailey. They would see that she was safe.
“Safe and sound,” he said, sitting down on the floor nearby. He was too afraid to move any closer, in case the birds mistook him for a potential enemy, yet he wanted to remain at her side until the birds took her from him and set her free in this world. So he sat there on the soft forest ground – no concrete now; just damp earth and rotting vegetation – and stared at the hummingbirds in wonder.
Whatever happened next, he knew that he had a role to play. For once in his life, Francis Boater felt like he might just make a difference.
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.