The Concrete Grove

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

THE BLACK-PAINTED STEEL frame of the bridge formed a shadowy grillage around her as Lana strode along the walkway. Sunlight danced through the gaps, stuttering in bright little flashes to blind her momentarily as she made her way towards the waiting figure she assumed was Tom. The dazzling light behind him didn’t allow her to make out any details: he was just a tall, dark silhouette standing with his hands in the pockets of his overcoat.

When she’d called him on the telephone earlier, desperate to hear his voice once Hailey had left her alone in the flat, he had seemed distant and elusive. When he had asked her to meet him here, at a point suspended above the River Tyne, she had at first been filled with trepidation, but then her desire to see him had overcome any doubts prompted by his odd request. Of course she would come, she’d agreed. Of course she would meet him on the bridge.

What else was she supposed to do?

The riverside air was cold. The water below her looked as thick and black as crude oil. People stared at the water from the riverbank on either side — Gateshead and Newcastle — and watched as a small working boat moved slowly under the bridge, following the flow of the river towards its mouth, and then possibly out to the open sea.

Tom didn’t turn to greet her when she approached. He just stayed in the same position, staring eastward along the Tyne, perhaps looking for a way to follow that little boat out to sea.

“So what’s with all this Man from Uncle shit?” She tried to glimpse what it was he was looking at, but all she could see were the things right in front of her: the low-set red and white Swing Bridge with its stumpy blue watchtower, the green-webbed assemblage of the Tyne Bridge, and the broad curve of the river as it swung around to the right beyond these manmade structures. “I mean, why are we meeting here like spies, at the middle of the bridge?”

“I… I’m not sure.” He kept staring along the river. Then his gaze drifted down and off to the right, towards the tacky nightclub-boat that was always docked at the south side, beside a grubby concrete access road. His hands remained inside his pockets. “It’s just, this has always been my favourite place. Ever since I was a kid, when I used to come down here with my parents, I loved it, the sense of being cut off and standing above everything. And I didn’t want to meet you in that awful place — the Grove.”

“Why not?” She looked at him. The side of his face was slightly swollen, the skin shiny and red. She’d not noticed before, but there were fresh bruises smudged along the edge of his jaw. “I don’t understand.”

Finally he turned to look at her, and as he lowered his face towards her the sun blazed behind his head, creating a glaring nova. “Neither do I. There’s been some stuff happening that I just don’t get. It’s like I’m living inside a dream.”

“Or like a dream that was living inside you has finally broken free?”

“You, too?”

She nodded. “It isn’t just you. I can’t explain anything that’s been happening, but the only part of it that feels real — feels right — is us. You and me. What we seem to have between us.” She lifted her hand and opened the fingers, like a pale pink flower. Sunlight bulged through the gaps.

Tom removed one hand from his coat pocket and grasped her wrist. “What’s going on? What have we started?” He licked his lips. The nova around his head dimmed as he shifted position, turning fully to face her. He held both of her hands with his own, squeezing them firmly but not so tight that it hurt.

“I don’t think it has anything to do with us. Not really. A lot of different things are combining to create something that’s bigger than us all. Hailey’s condition, that loan shark Monty Bright, his hired hands… and it all starts with the Concrete Grove. I think what’s coming through the cracks we’ve created has always been there, and that it’s using our desperation as a doorway.” She tried to laugh but all she managed was a sort of croaking sound. “I know how stupid and melodramatic this all sounds, but I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. I’ve seen things, stuff that I could never have thought of as real before now.”

“I’ve seen things, too.” Tom smiled but it seemed to pain him. He raised a hand and touched the side of his face.

“Those bruises,” said Lana. “What happened?”

“Last night. I fell down the stairs. I’d been drinking, and thinking about us.”

She could see that he was lying. He couldn’t even maintain eye contact; his gaze drifted back to the river, the route to the sea at Tynemouth.

“Don’t start lying to me, not now. I think all we have is the truth. If we lose that, then everything will just turn into a series of fictions, all linked by whatever’s in the Grove. Like a giant spider in a web.” She didn’t quite understand her own analogy, but something about the words made sense. It was the image of a giant spider, sitting at the centre of a web made of human life lines and spinning its own stories. Somehow that seemed right: it was an apt image. She could feel it, right down in the marrow of her bones. “Just be honest with me.”

Tom stared down at the ground. A soft wind ruffled his hair. He looked back up again, and there were tears in his eyes. “My wife. Helen. You know about her, of course, that she’s a paraplegic. She lost the use of her lower body, from the waist down, when the car her lover was driving crashed.”

“Yes. You told me all about it.” She moved closer to him. A group of teenagers ran by on the other side of the bridge, laughing and throwing coins into the river. Several cars and a bus drove towards the Newcastle side of the river, thumping over the steel joints in the tarmac decking.

“She did this to me.” He turned his face so that she could see clearly the bruising. “Last night, she… changed. She became something monstrous and she attacked me. She hasn’t been out of that fucking bed in years, but last night she managed to get out and drag herself after me through the house. I fell. She grabbed me and tried to smother me…” he turned away again, ashamed.

The sunlight flashed, making Lana close her eyes for a second. Then she couldn’t stop blinking. When he had mentioned monsters, she couldn’t fail to think of Hailey: and of the things she’d been carrying inside her. The monsters — if that’s what they truly were — she had delivered. Along with these thoughts came ones about Monty Bright. The deformities on his body; the screaming faces trapped in his flesh.

“We can help each other, you and me. If we stick together and use the strength we seem to have when we’re side by side.” She took a step back. More cars passed them on the roadside. A young couple strolled by, hand in hand; the man stared at Tom, as if he could see something strange about him. Then he looked away. “Last night I went to see Monty Bright. He and his men… they did things to me. Raped me.”

Tom made a sound deep in his throat: half sob, half moan.

“I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought they’d leave us alone if I went there, and did what they wanted. But it didn’t work out that way.” She kept her eyes on his battered face, refusing to look away in shame. Even though she’d kept quiet about what had happened with Hailey last night, she felt that she was being as honest with Tom as she ever had with anyone. She realised now that she’d placed her heart in his hands. All he need do was to squeeze it tight, or open his fingers and let it fall. Either way, it would hurt; but one way would cause far less pain than the other.

“I don’t know what you want me to say.” His mouth was a slit in his face. His eyes were now hard and empty.

“I want you to tell me that it doesn’t make any difference. That you still want me, and still want me to want you. I want you to say that you’ll help me. We’ll help each other.”

Another bus chugged by. Raised voices were carried to them from the riverbank. To Lana, the moment felt as if it might shatter like glass at any minute. “Of course I still want you. I mean, you’re the only person I know who’s as fucked up as I am.”

It was a feeble joke — desperate, really — but in that moment she loved him for even trying to lift the mood.

They walked along the side of the bridge, holding hands and looking up through the steelwork at the wedges of bright sky visible between the girders. Traffic grew heavier and as they approached the south side they began to see people making their way across the arching eye of the Millennium footbridge towards the old Baltic Flour Mill. There must be some kind of exhibition in the new gallery; the redevelopment of the building had raised the profile of the area and brought with it a fresh interest in the local art scene.

“I know a little place where we can have coffee. It’s nothing flash, just a greasy spoon café where the taxi drivers go.” Tom led her sharp right off the end of the bridge, heading down Bottle Bank, where there was a row of old shop fronts, most of them boarded over. “It’s just down here.”

A few taxis were parked at the kerb on the narrow cobbled street that led back down to the river’s edge. Set amid the timber-boarded frontages were two premises that had not succumbed to financial ruin. One of them was a taxi rank and the other was a tiny café with no name and badly whitewashed windows.

They went inside and sat down at a low table. The place was gloomy; not much light could get in around the patches of white on the window glass. If she twisted her head and leaned across the table, Lana could catch a glimpse of the street outside. “Nice place,” she said. “How many Michelin stars does it have?”

Tom laughed. “I used to do a lot of business round here, when these were all going concerns. I have a few clients on Gateshead High Street, too. Whenever I’m in the area I come in here for a morning coffee and a read of the papers. Nobody bothers you here. They all want to be left alone.”

There were three other customers in the café. A skinny middle-aged man with a facial twitch sat near the toilet door reading a battered paperback novel, and two other men sat in silence drinking milky tea from large mugs.

“They’re all taxi drivers,” said Tom. “Nobody else even knows this place exists.”

“Except you.” She reached across the table and stroked the back of his hand.

“Yeah, except me.” He stood and went to the counter, where he ordered two black coffees from a shapeless woman in a long grey sweater and grubby jeans who appeared from a door to one side. She went back through the door and emerged less than a minute later with two mugs filled with what looked like tar.

“You expect me to drink that?” She took the cup Tom offered her as he sat back down, peering into the contents and pretending to be disgusted.

“Just think yourself lucky I didn’t ask for it with milk. At least black it’s drinkable. Just about.” Tom added sugar to his mug from a chipped bowl on the table. The end of the teaspoon was frosted with an off-white crust and the discoloured clusters in the bowl looked like singed crystal meth.

Someone turned on a radio — probably the saggy woman who’d served them coffee — and a droning traffic report filled the empty spaces in the room.

“I have to ask you something.” Lana curled her fingers around the mug. The coffee was hot, but she liked the way it made her skin hurt. “Something important.”

Tom took a sip of his drink and put down his mug. “I’m listening.” His swollen face looked better in the dim light. Not so damaged.

“I plan to-,” she licked her lips. “I plan to kill Monty Bright. It’s the only way out of this I can see now. I have to kill him.” Just saying the words in daylight, even at such a low volume, forced Lana to fully consider their true meaning. It didn’t sound so bad, she thought. Not in terms of the chaos invading her life. What was a little murder to add to the mix, especially when the proposed victim was no longer even human? “I need to know if you’re willing to help me do that.”

Tom stared at her. His face went pale beneath the fresh contusions. He swallowed. The radio droned on. “If you’d said this to me a few days ago I would’ve run a mile. But now — after everything that’s happened — I’m still here. I’m still listening.”

Lana paused for breath, took a drink of the scalding coffee, just to drive the moment home, and then continued. “He isn’t a man. I think he used to be, a long time ago, but he isn’t now. Not anymore. Prolonged exposure to whatever’s festering in the Grove has changed him into something else.” She examined Tom’s face for signs of doubt, or possibly a hint that he might stand up and leave.

“Okay. Go on.”

“He showed me something that I still can’t quite get my head around. He has these tumours all over him — on his chest, mainly. But they aren’t tumours. They’re not cancers. I think they’re the remains — or maybe even the souls — of the people he’s bled dry with his debt. He doesn’t stop at money. What he wants from them — and what he wants from me — is everything. Everything his victims have to give. He wants it all. He starts with the money, and then the possessions, and then moves on to the flesh. Finally, all that’s left is the spirit, and he wants that, too.”

Tom leaned back in his chair. The legs scraped loudly across the floor, drowning out the radio newsreader’s voice. A fragment of the report caught Lana’s attention: “…the prisoner, known locally as Banjo, last night escaped police custody. He is not considered dangerous, but if anyone knows of his whereabouts they are requested to…”

Lana knew the man they were talking about — it was the drug addict they’d seen trying to rip his own face off in the street. God, she thought. Right now, that seems like it happened a lifetime ago.

She returned her attention to Tom.

He was looking up at the dirty ceiling, as if inspecting it for cracks. Without moving, he began to speak. “Last night my wife physically turned into something else. I meant it literally when I told you that.” He lowered his head and looked at his hands, which he laid out flat on the table. He looked like one of those old-time circus sideshow performers, just before they start to slam a knife into the table top through the gaps between their fingers. “She turned into a creature and attacked me. If it wasn’t so scary it would be funny,” he dipped his head, exposing a tiny bald spot at the centre of his scalp that she’d not noticed before. She wanted to reach out and touch it, to penetrate his armour.

“I think we’ve both moved way beyond the normal now,” she said. “The decisions we make here, the way we act, will define how this all ends. If we ignore the obvious — that there’s something, well, supernatural, happening, then we’re fucked.” Talking about these things made her feel that she was actually doing something to fight against the situation. In all the books she’d ever read and all the horror films she’d seen, the main characters only ever admitted far too late that the supernatural had invaded their lives. That was the thing that usually got them killed: a refusal to accept the obvious, no matter how insane it might seem.

Lana was not willing to make the same mistake.

“There’s some sort of power in the Concrete Grove and, for whatever reason, it’s noticed us. Killing Monty Bright won’t send it away, but it will get rid of an immediate threat and give us a chance to think about what we do next.”

Tom rubbed a hand through his hair. He winced as he did this, causing his injuries to flare up in fresh pain. “After what happened to me last night, I’m willing to believe that anything is possible.”

The radio broadcast changed to a music chart show. The woman behind the counter turned up the volume and began to hum along to the tune. Her feet shuffled dryly across the dusty, crumb-littered floor.

Accompanied by the soundtrack of the latest number one record, playing from a tinny little radio on a shelf in a cheap riverside café, the deal was sealed, the pact was made. Such were the circumstances under which two ordinary people became murderers.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

TOM’S CAR WAS parked on the Gateshead side of the river. They left the cafe and headed up the hill, away from the water, to the small parking area behind a row of terraced houses that had been converted into shops and offices: a solicitors, a print shop, a DVD rental outlet.

They sat in the car and stared through the windscreen, across the short cobbled lane at the tall wall guarding the yards at the rear of the buildings. The wall was topped with razor wire and there were No Parking notices painted across the garage doors.

“I’ll drop you back at your place,” said Tom.

Lana gripped his hand on the steering wheel. “Thank you.”

He nodded. Started the car.

They drove back across the bridge and along the bypass, heading towards the Cramlington exit. The traffic was heavy but it moved freely.

“How about driving past your street on the way? I want to see where you live.”

Tom glanced at her, and then returned his gaze to the road. “Why? It’s just a normal house on a boring street outside boring old Far Grove.”

“Because it’s a part of your life I know nothing about. I’ve only seen one side of you — the side that comes to visit me and takes us on day trips.”

“And agrees to help you kill people.” He said it without a trace of sarcasm. He wasn’t making a joke.

“Yes. That part, too. The part of you that wants to help me, no matter what the cost.”

They both fell silent for a while, and only when they saw the first road sign for Far Grove did Tom break that silence: “Okay. We’ll swing by my place first, just so you can see how dull and tragic my life really is.” This time he smiled, but it seemed slightly forced, as if he was trying just a little bit too hard to act normal.

Lana watched the streets go by. The houses were mostly suburban new-builds, residential boxes made by development companies to house people who didn’t care about period detail and a sense of history. Red bricks, plastic window frames, double glazing. A small plot of garden, a garage and a concrete drive. It was all so strained that Lana felt as if the image might crack, like something painted onto a sheet of glass.

“This is mine. Ours.” Tom drove slowly along his own street, not even looking at the houses. “Number Sixteen.”

“I didn’t really have you down as a new-build man. I thought you might live somewhere a little more… well, interesting.”

“It was Helen. Her dream. She always wanted to live in a nice middle class area, with a new kitchen and a driveway. Flowers in all the borders and a fucking rotary washing line on the back lawn.” His voice was filled with bitterness. Lana could hear it, like a whining sound behind the words. “Her cosy little fantasy.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked you to bring me here.”

“No.” Tom stopped the car and then turned it around in the road to face the way they’d come, performing a neat three-point turn. “It’s good that you see all the sides of me.” He still hadn’t looked at his house. The curtains were closed. None of the windows were open even a crack. “There are things in that house that I never want to go back to, but I know I will. I can never leave for good.”

She knew that he meant the memories, and the elements of the life he and his wife had stored there behind the closed doors and windows, but somehow she got the feeling that there was another layer to what he was telling her, a subtext that she couldn’t quite grasp. It was puzzling, and slightly disturbing. He seemed to have changed from the last time she’d seen him. Nothing major, just subtle details about his character that she couldn’t even attempt to isolate without feeling that she was simply reading too much into his reactions.

But something about him was different. She could feel rather than see those changes, but nonetheless they were there.

“I’ll take you home,” he said, as the car approached the end of the road. “We can talk more there, away from this mess that I’ve made.”

From one mess to another, thought Lana. But at least this one’s of your own making.

She felt guilty for pulling Tom into her problems, yet at the same time she was grateful that there was at least someone she could turn to for help. Other than Tom, she had no one. Her life had emptied of real friends as soon as Timothy had taken it upon himself to use murder and suicide as a solution to his problems.

But wasn’t that now what she was about to do? Wasn’t it exactly the same as Timothy had done?

No, she thought. It’s different. But in what way it was different she couldn’t tell. Was she more justified in murdering a rapist loan-shark than he had been in killing people-trafficking gangsters? Could you even define crimes in this way, deciding which was worse and calculating what would represent a right and just punishment? Wasn’t it all just vigilante justice, like some absurd Death Wish film? If that were the case, then she suspected she made a shitty Charles Bronson substitute.

“What’s so funny?” Tom’s voice pulled her out of her thoughts.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realise I was smiling.”

“You laughed. I was wondering what the joke was. I could use a joke right now.”

“I think we both could.” They were entering the Grove now. A group of teenagers dressed in gaudy tracksuits and hooded sweatshirts were standing on the corner of Far Grove Way, staring down the passing traffic. Tom glanced at them. He smiled.

“Jesus, there’s always kids hanging about.” Lana turned away.

“Little shits,” said Tom. Something hit the side of the car — a stone, a bottle — and Tom slammed on the brakes. The kids ran off in the direction of the skateboard park, laughing and pushing each other as they moved as a pack along the middle of the street.

“Cunts.” The amount of venom in his voice shocked her. This was the first time Lana had heard him use such extreme language.

“Forget it,” she said. “It isn’t even worth getting upset about.”

Tom put the car into gear and it moved forward, but at a slower pace than before. He kept glancing into the rear-view mirror, looking for someone upon which to take out his frustration. This was another change: the anger, the barely repressed aggression. It frightened her more than she could say.

Tom parked the car outside the flats but made no move to get out.

“Are you coming in?” Lana took off her seatbelt and waited for him to respond.

“Sorry,” he said. His voice sounded rough and hoarse. “My head’s all over the place right now. I’m finding it difficult to stay focused. Everything that’s happening… it’s just confusing me.”

“Everything with us?” She placed her hand on his knee and squeezed lightly. Just a small gesture; it was all that she dared.

“No, not just that. Things are spinning out of control. It feels like being at the centre of a whirlwind and watching the edges come apart.” He turned and looked directly at her for the first time since they’d got in the car. “Know what I mean?”

Lana took her hand off his knee. “Yes. Yes, I do. I know exactly what you mean. It’s happening to me, too — there are things I haven’t told you yet but really should. Other stuff that’s happened to me and Hailey.” She took a deep breath. “Come up to the flat and we’ll talk.”

Tom opened the door and got out of the car. He still looked slightly dazed, as if he hadn’t slept for days, but he was a lot calmer than before. He went round to the passenger side and opened the door for her, stepping back onto the kerb. “Madam,” he said, and this time his smile looked natural.

“Thanks,” said Lana, stepping out of the car. She took her keys from her purse and walked towards the flat, certain that he would follow.

Once they were inside, with the door locked, Lana began to relax.

“New TV?” Tom was standing beside the set Hailey had been given, reaching out to touch the screen.

“No. The mother of one of Hailey’s friends brought it round. A drunken act of charity.” She put down her bag and headed for the kitchen, craving a drink. “Wine okay?”

“I’m driving, but why the hell not? I mean, after all the shit that’s been raining down on us lately I doubt a drink’s going to kill me.” Again he smiled, and again it was a normal expression, completely unforced, if a little stiff and weary. “So you weren’t here when this woman brought the TV?”

“I was out. At Monty Bright’s gym.” She took the stopper from a half-finished bottle of cheap white Zinfandel and poured the wine into two glasses. Her movements were forceful and exaggerated; she felt angry that he kept talking about the stupid television.

“Sorry.” Tom walked over to where she was standing. He stopped on the other side of the partition shelves and reached for one of the glasses. “I’m babbling. I feel like I’m already drunk.”

“Well,” said Lana, “maybe a couple of glasses of this crap will sober you up.” She raised her glass and tilted it. “Chin-chin.”

They both drank in silence, not lowering their glasses until they were almost empty.

“I think we needed that,” said Tom. “Okay. I’m assuming you have a plan.” He didn’t say the word, but it stood between them like a third presence in the room: Murder.

“Yes, I have a plan. There’s something you need to know — to see, actually. I can’t explain it to you without showing you, and even then you need to look sidelong.” She went to the fridge and took out a fresh bottle of wine. Her hands shook as she opened it.

“I’m struggling to keep up with you here.” Tom took the bottle from her and finished the job, then poured the wine into their glasses. He kept drifting away from her: one minute he was there, in the moment, and the next his eyes seemed to fog over and he was elsewhere.

“I need you with me, Tom.” She moved closer to him, placing a hand on his elbow. “You have to be right here beside me, not thinking about anything else.”

Tom smiled, and she didn’t like the look of his face: sickly, feverish. For a moment he looked like a crazy man, standing there in her kitchen with a big shit-eating grin on his face and a bottle in one hand. Right then, he looked like a killer. Lana was torn between feelings of gratitude and fear.

“Are you here? Are you with me, or are you off somewhere else?”

The smile vanished. His eyes regained their focus. “Yes. Sorry. I keep doing that… drifting off inside myself. My mind’s wandering. There’s too much… too much going on.”

She walked into the lounge area, clutching her glass. Her steps felt light, as if she were floating an inch above the carpet. This whole conversation felt like one she’d dreamed before, or maybe it was a premonition of a dream she’d not yet had. Even these thoughts were dreamlike; as vague and elusive as handfuls of dust.

She walked to the hallway, stopping and turning around to face Tom. “Listen, this is really fucked up. Okay? What I’m about to show you — you’ve never seen anything like this before.” She put down her glass on the floor, standing it next to the skirting board.

“Do you ever get that feeling?” said Tom, his shoulders slumping. “You know the one, where everything feels like its slipping out of your control. Like that dream, where you’re running on sand, moving your legs as fast as you can, but you’re getting nowhere. You’re just running on the spot while the world flows by, quick as a flash.” He looked like he might faint; his face was pale and his pupils were tiny black pinpoints at the centre of his eyes.

“Come on. Stay with me. I need you.” Lana was beginning to doubt that he was capable of what she had in mind — something had happened; he had changed too much. Was it something he’d experienced last night, back at his cosy little semi in suburbia? “What’s gone on? Why are you being like this? It’s like you’re on drugs or something.” Was that it? Had he turned to chemicals to try and tune out the madness around them?

His head snapped forward and he looked directly at her, his pupils returning to their natural size. “She’s not the person she used to be. Helen… she’s become someone else. Something else.” There was such a look of imploring in his face that it made her feel sick.

“Stop feeling so guilty about betraying your wife. We didn’t set out to hurt her.”

Tom shook his head. “No, that’s not what I mean.”

“I know what you mean. We all change. Every one of us, and sometimes we have to leave people behind. You and me, we’ve changed, too. We’ve come together, changing from individuals to become a team.” She believed approximately half of this — the rest was said just to put him at ease, to make him less self-pitying. “Everybody changes. People get hurt. That’s just how life is for the likes of us.”

Tom leaned against her. She could feel his erection pressing against her thigh.

“We’re all victims. Every one of us. None of us gets out of this unscathed.” She kissed him, and he responded with force, pushing her backwards so that she slammed into the wall. She lifted one leg, wrapping it around his thighs, and pulled at his hair with her right hand while the left hand rubbed at his back, his arse. “We’re all hurting,” she whispered, between kisses. “We all get hurt.”

She fumbled with his trousers, tugging them loose and pulling them down as far as she could. She slid one arm down between their bodies and grabbed his cock, pulling that, too, so that he moaned in a mixture of pain and anticipation.

“Are you sure?” His voice was shaky.

Lana nodded. “It won’t hurt, not if we’re careful.”

He bit at her throat, licking under her chin, and slammed his body against her. His hands grabbed at her clothing, ripping her T-shirt and rolling her leggings down past her waist.

When the telephone rang she didn’t even hear it, not until he stepped back, blinking, looking like a man who had just been rudely awakened from a dream. Lana’s hand was damp. He had peaked before they’d even begun…

“What?” then she heard the sound of the telephone. “Just ignore it.” She kicked off her shoes and leggings and stood there in her torn T-shirt and knickers. Her legs were shaking; adrenalin coursed through her body, putting her on edge and ridding her body of the aches and pains. This was a fight-or-fuck moment, and her flesh knew exactly which of the two acts it had chosen.

“No,” he said, tucking in his shirt and buttoning up his trousers. His cheeks were flushing a bright shade of red. “You should get that.” He looked ashamed, as if he’d been caught in the act of something terrible.

She walked across the room, her bare legs growing cold now that the heat of the moment was gone. She was still wearing her black socks. She felt vaguely ridiculous. Her hand was sticky, so she wiped it on her T-shirt.

Lana picked up the phone and tried to ignore Tom, who was shuffling about near the hallway. “What.” The coldness in her voice made her feel better.

“What kind of welcome is that for an old friend?” Bright’s voice was even colder than her own.

Lana felt as if her guts had just dropped into her uterus. Everything between her legs tightened like a fist at the sound of his voice. Memories of the night before came flooding back: the rubbery feel of his wetsuit against her skin, the groping hands, the hard dicks, the brutal invasion of her private self that she could never put right, the emotional damage she could not ever repair. If Tom was different today, then so was she — and this person, this monster, was the reason why.

“What do you want?” Her voice was an octave higher than she would have liked, and she hated herself for showing fear in that way. Fear was exactly what he wanted, what he thrived upon.

“Oh, Lana… Lana, Lana, Lana: you always want to get right down to business, don’t you? No small talk, no chit-chat. A man could quite easily get offended, you know.” His laughter was horrible. There was no other word for it. The sound provoked such a sense of horror within her that for a moment she felt like weeping.

“Tell me what you want or I’ll hang up the phone.” Her voice wavered again.

The laughter stopped abruptly. “I have her.”

Lana had no idea what he meant. “Listen, Bright, I don’t have time for your bullshit.”

“Time… ah, yes. Do you realise what time it is?”

Angry, afraid, baffled, she glanced at her wristwatch. It was 4:30 PM.

I have her.

Hailey should be home by now. Her High School was only a short walk away, in Far Grove.

I have her.

Even if she’d dawdled back from school, walking slowly and daydreaming in that way of hers… even then, she should be home by this time.

“Where is she… where?” Her hand gripped the receiver. Tom walked up beside her and raised his eyebrows: What is it?

“She’s safe,” said Bright. All trace of humour had left his voice. It was his turn to be ‘all business’. “Don’t worry about that. She hasn’t been harmed. Not yet.”

Lana’s stomach clenched; knots tightened inside her body.

“She isn’t here, with me, but she’s safe. One of my associates has her. He called me earlier to say that he had everything in hand. You remember Francis, don’t you? The big lad?”

The giant. Boater. Francis Boater. He was the one who’d spoken out — albeit briefly and ineffectually — when they’d all been down there in Bright’s basement room. It was a slim hope, but at least it was something: he’d shown signs of regret, remorse and doubt. Maybe he was keeping her safe, and hadn’t laid a hand on her young body. Perhaps this giant was in fact her best chance for safety?

“So what do you want?” This time her voice was steady. Quiet, but resolute.

Tom grabbed her wrist but she shook him off. She couldn’t deal with him now.

“I want you to come and see me, Lana. I know that’s what you had planned anyway, there’s not much I don’t know right now. I’m in a special position, with access to all kinds of information.” He chuckled softly. It felt like his breath was right in her ear. “I have friends in low places, you see. Very low places.”

“When?”

“Tonight. Midnight. The witching hour. It’s so appropriate, isn’t it? I’ll be here alone… well, apart from Terry and some friends that can’t really be classed as being here, not really. I suppose you could say they’re partway here, and partway somewhere else.”

“What will you do when I get there?” It couldn’t be sex, not this time. There was no reason for such extreme methods. Last time, she had gone too willingly. The friends he mentioned were not the ones from before. She suspected that he was talking about another kind of friend entirely.

“I think you and me need to have a proper chat. A wee talk about things. It’s about time we put our heads together and discovered all our common concerns.” He was almost whispering now.

“Common concerns?”

“Well, your daughter for one. She seems to have gained access to somewhere I’d like to go — a place I’ve been trying to find for a long time. I don’t know how she’s done it, or what she’s used as a key, but a door has opened to let her in. And I want her to do the same for me: to open it up and escort me inside so I don’t get hurt or killed or changed into a fucking werewolf.”

“I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about.” She closed her eyes. The dream that had become her life was taking another violent twist, leading her down a road she wasn’t keen to follow.

“Oh, you will. Once we have our talk, Lana, you’ll understand everything.” He cleared his throat: a small cough, dry and delicate. “Until midnight, then. Then we can get this show on the road.”

Lana was about to speak again, but the line went dead.

“What did he want?” Tom stood there with his hands crossed over his belly, unsure whether to touch her or keep his distance.

“I don’t know what he wants, but I do know what he’s going to get.”

Tom backed away. Just a single step, but it was enough to tell her everything she needed to know about the balance of power in this relationship. Tom’s help was limited now; his strength was finite, and he had almost reached the end of his reserves. He was merely a helper, an assistant.

It was up to Lana now. She had to take charge.

“Come on, Tom. There’s something I need to show you.”

“Is it the thing you were going to show me earlier, before?” He looked away, embarrassed by his premature reaction before the phone had interrupted them.

Lana didn’t care. Not now. All that was over; there was something else to be done. “Yes, that’s right. I’m going to show you how we’ll kill that bastard and get my daughter back.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“I WON’T LET anyone hurt you.” Boater stared at the girl, wondering if she’d ever wake again. “I promise…” She wasn’t moving. She hadn’t moved for what seemed like hours. He was pretty sure it was late — it certainly felt as if they’d been there all night, maybe even a lot longer than that. But the windows were covered with curtains of foliage and very little light was able to get through the dense green drapery.

When he’d followed her into the Needle everything he’d been feeling for the past few days had come into sharp focus. The vague yearning, the newly developed sense of shame, the fact that he no longer felt the urge towards violence… it all coalesced into a big ball of hurt inside him, at his core, and he had realised that he never wanted to hurt anyone again.

Somewhere deep inside the spirit of Francis Boater, a trigger had been pulled. Now all that remained was a delayed detonation: the single gunshot that would signal the completion of his redemption.

He’d had a long time to think about things, here in the seething darkness. He remembered his countless childhood agonies: his mother, the whore, who had made him watch while she entertained her clients; the constant struggle with his weight, and the fights he’d been in because of hurtful schoolmates. Then, after leaving school, there was the amateur boxing and the weight training that made him feel so alive and full of self-worth; the many emotionally-damaged women who’d been drawn to him because of his physical bulk and his capacity for violence, and then been repelled and ran from him for exactly those same reasons. And finally there was his time with Monty Bright, when he’d become a hired hand, a lump of muscle-for-sale: a Bad Man.

His entire life had been a tapestry of pain, an intricate pattern composed of interlinked traumas. Only now could he stand back and take in the full scarred picture. The girl had enabled him to see what had been so fucking obvious all along.

When he’d walked into the building she had slowed down until he was level with her, and then she’d taken his hand, encouraging him. They’d walked deeper inside, hand in hand, and Boater had felt a connection deeper than any other he’d experienced in his life. This girl, this small, vulnerable victim he had been sent to abduct, was his saviour.

They’d come into this room, and she had lain down on the floor, curling up her legs into a position that made her resemble a resting infant. Then, just as the shadows began to crawl across the walls and the sound of unseen trees creaking and leaves whispering in a wind he couldn’t feel started up all around them, she’d spoken to him:

“Keep me safe,” she said, her small eyes watching him in the darkness. “Watch over me and make sure I’m not harmed.”

“Of course I will,” he replied, his body growing cold but his spirit starting to rise. “I promise.”

“I’m tired.” Then the girl had closed her eyes. And she had not opened them again since.

“I promise,” he said now, hours later. The room had changed around him, becoming outside rather than in, taking on a quality of the external.

Thick fingers of creeping vines had sprouted from the walls, covering them like some kind of blight. The concrete floor had erupted in places, and thick roots had burst through, snaking in loops to return underground. The ceiling was now a dense canopy of leaves. When he looked up, Boater could see distant starlight through the heavy matting. The moon was full, even though outside, in the old world he had left behind, the moon had been a mere crescent.

Boater wasn’t afraid. None of this felt threatening. The real threat came from out there, back in the urban wasteland he’d turned his back on. The feral kids, the clamouring debtors, and Monty Bright’s lust for whatever power lay at the heart of the estate. But in here, sitting under the whispering canopy and held tight within an enclave of ancient trees, there was nothing to fear but the badness inside him — and that was something he was now abandoning, like so much unwanted rubbish.

“I was lost before, Hailey.” He knew that she wouldn’t respond, but had faith that she could at least hear him. “I was stumbling around out there, not even knowing who I was or what I could be if I really tried. But now that you’ve found me, I can see the potential I’ve always had. I can sense another man locked up inside my skin, and he’s fighting to get out.” Tears poured down his cheeks but he didn’t wipe them away. They were good and clean and pure; a baptism in this new world he’d found. Or had the place in fact found him? “He isn’t a Bad Man. Oh, no. He’s a good ’un, this one. He’s the good Francis Boater.” He was smiling. It felt strange, as if he’d never been able to smile before. He supposed that he hadn’t, not really. Not like this.

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.

“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 fuck 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 fucking 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.

“Fuck this,” said Lana. “Fuck 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.

CHAPTER THIRTY

BOATER WAS SO tired that he could barely move. He’d been stuck in the same position for what felt like hours, ever since he’d gone outside the room to look at the scene which lay beyond the borders of everything he had mistakenly believed to be real.

After that, he had been gradually overtaken by a great lassitude, a strange sense of creeping lethargy that began at his extremities and moved inward. Finally he was unable to move from his spot on the ground at the centre of the oaks. Or even to think about moving. It was nice here, comfortable. The concrete walls had been stripped away, dissolved by the natural growth as he had watched in wonder. Small grey protrusions — perhaps the edges of unearthed foundations — could still be seen amid the thick tangles of low-level greenery, but they were too few and too scattered to matter.

The hummingbirds were still gathered around the girl, but now they had lifted her off the ground. It had taken a long time, and much effort had been expended, but somehow they’d managed to raise her a few inches above the soft, damp earth and they held her there, in a delicate envelope of blurred wings and muted primary colours.

Boater glanced down, at his body. Even this small movement took a long time. His muscles were stiff, unhelpful. Large thorns had burst through his flesh, erupting out of his chest. Branches had punctured his back, to twist inside him and exit through his stomach wall. He was being consumed by nature; this place, this ancient woodland, was absorbing him. First it had taken the building, and now it was going to work on him, transforming his flesh and sinew into a strange new entity — something partly human and partly plant. Soon the human parts would be gone, and all that remained would be an exotic new growth on the ground inside the grove, beneath the wonderful canopy of shading leaves and trembling branches.

Soon Francis Boater would be home. His journey could go no further, but even this far was enough. It was, he thought, a fitting end.

It was strange to consider this place as home, but it felt more homely than anywhere else he had been. His surviving family were scum, his friends were criminals, and the man he worked for was a monster. So why not just stay here, where he was truly accepted? Why not become as one with the loam and the natural fertilizer where he had so easily made his bed?

Another clutch of twigs slid out between his ribs, forcing them apart and weakening the bone. He heard the bones snap dryly, like desiccated wood, but there was no pain to accompany the sound. Herbaceous plant life did not know pain: it simply grew and withered, lived and died, as part of an endless biological cycle. His internal organs had fallen into his lower abdomen, becoming deciduous, like ripened fruit slipping from the bough.

Sunlight cut through the grove’s canopy, knifing the air and creating prison bars of light around him. Morning had arrived in this place without him even knowing that the night had ended. Boater sighed; the sound was weak, barely even there at all.

“I’ll watch over you,” he said, his voice breaking off, fading away. “I…” There was nothing more. He could no longer form the words in his spongy, fungal mouth.

The girl was still hovering above the ground, borne on hummingbird wings in a facsimile of flight. Like a broken angel she hung there, her school uniform hanging in tatters, one shoe on and the other cast away, where it sat beside an eruption of vine leaves. She swayed in the air, unsteady yet in no danger of falling back to earth. Her guardians — the birds that had taken over from Boater as her protectors — would not allow such a thing to happen.

Beyond the grove of oaks, in the denser, sun-dappled growth, large forms moved. Trees creaked and moaned; animals scattered through the undergrowth. Something was approaching, and its intentions were as unclear as everything else here — friend or foe, good or evil, the thing could be anything and everything combined.

Boater had realised as he sat there, sinking into the reality of the grove, that whatever forces converged here, they were ambivalent. Neither good nor evil, they simply existed, waiting for a time when they could be harnessed. Everything here was protected, and hidden within the fabric of the housing estate which had been raised upon the site of the original magical grove. He could see all of this playing out before him, like a projection on a screen. He was now a small part of the history of the place.

If only Monty Bright knew the truth. Perhaps then he would stop looking for something that didn’t exist, other than inside the mutated husk of his heart.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

LANA STOOD BEFORE Monty Bright as if she were some kind of Old Testament avenging angel. She held her arms out and thrust her hips forward. The Slitten gripped her nipples with their jaws, pinched loose parts of her flesh with their teeth and claws, clinging limpet-like to her body. She could barely even feel them — there was very little sensation, as if the whole of her skin had been anaesthetised.

“I called and they came.” It was true: these things had answered her plea, rallying to her side from the dark places, the spaces between love and hate, fact and fiction… and they were the only weapon she had.

In a moment, they leapt from her body and moved like zephyrs across the floor. Monty Bright barely had time to react before they were upon him, snapping at his legs, his balls, his belly, and tearing at his flesh. She watched with her head turned slightly, so that she could have a clear and unimpeded view of the carnage — she was owed at least that. If she looked straight on, all she saw were dusty shadows converging on a man whose clothing and the skin beneath seemed to shred for no apparent reason.

“Monty!” Terry moved away from the wall. “What the fuck?” To him, this was clearly madness. Lana knew that he could see nothing of his boss’s attackers. All he witnessed was the rending of flesh from bone.

Tom acted quickly, which surprised her. He was so far gone by now that she’d expected him to just stand there, like a lost little boy waiting for his mummy to come and save him. But he moved quickly, heading off Terry’s assault. The two men came together, colliding at a point to the right of Bright’s desk.

They went down fighting. Lana watched as Tom rolled on top, grabbing at his opponent. Terry put one arm — the prosthetic — up to ward off the blows, but Tom’s movements were so savage, so compelling, that the arm started to come loose from his stump. The straps gave way; the plastic limb slid down his jacket sleeve, and Tom was left holding it. He stared at the glove-clad hand, the thin metal pistons and the plastic casing, like a child shocked by the complexity of a new toy.

Then, reacting quicker than Terry, who was still wedged beneath him, Tom began to beat the other man about the head and shoulders with his own artificial limb. Under different circumstances, it would have been a comical sight: one man straddling another, and hitting him with a plastic arm. But here, now, sharing a room with monsters, both human and otherwise, Lana felt anything but the urge to laugh.

She turned away when Terry started screaming. Blood washed across his face, into his eyes, his mouth, and rendered his features meaningless.

The Slitten had not taken their time on Monty Bright. Their actions were quick and decisive. He was down on his knees, clawing at the shapes that were crawling across his ravaged body. His suit was torn to shreds, and the wetsuit he wore underneath his outfit and been peeled away in several areas, putting on show his distorted physique.

The faces on his chest squirmed, opening their mouths in silent screams. Arms and legs, hands and feet, knees and elbows, popped in and out of the slashes and gouges in his body. There was no blood beneath the upper layers of muscle: whatever fluids had once kept Bright alive were long gone, and his veins had shrivelled and frayed like liquorice root. His muscle-mass fell away beneath the onslaught of so many small claws, sharp teeth, and Lana saw flashes of dull white bone.

As he fell forward, pitching face-down onto the carpet, the television screens exploded, sending shards of glass in a brittle shower across the room. Burnt, toughened flesh, like scorched leather, sprayed in chunks from the cavities left behind. Whatever monsters Monty Bright had allied himself with were now dead to this world. Perhaps they’d gone back to that other place, the one he spoke of so fondly. Or maybe they had never existed in the first place, and all Lana was seeing were the remnants of Bright’s bad dreams as they turned to filth on the office floor.

Calmly, she picked up her coat and put it on, and then walked past Bright’s twitching form to pick up his book from the desk. The volume had clearly meant a lot to him, so she thought it might contain some useful information.

Bright made a few noises — like high-pitched farts — but then fell silent. The Slitten were receding now, going back to the dust and the darkness. Their job here was done, and she no longer needed them, so the fuel of her desire was spent.

“Thank you,” she said, gripping the book in her hands, pressing it against her chest. She had no idea what kind of power Hailey had invoked, or what kind of monsters their need and desperation had summoned, but at least the beings had not meant them harm. She had the feeling that the energies at work in the Grove were wild, untamed, and only certain individuals could harness them. Hailey had done so inadvertently, but what if Bright had eventually learned a way to purposefully control these forces? For that reason alone, never mind all the rest, he was better off dead.

Flames billowed from the televisions. Each one was like an open kiln, giving off an enormous amount of heat.

“What do we do now?” Tom was standing over Terry. The man wasn’t moving, but she didn’t think he was dead. Not yet.

“Let it burn, she said, feeling nothing. She walked over to Bright’s liquor cabinet and opened several bottles of fine whisky, rum and brandy.

Then she started to pour the fluid over anything that was flammable, even Terry’s supine form. “Let it all fucking burn.”

The flames spread quickly, and as she and Tom left the room Lana heard the sound of someone stumbling to their feet. She let Tom walk out first and then turned around. Terry was down on one knee, holding on to the edge of Bright’s desk. His bloody face was pointed at her, his wide white eyes imploring, asking for mercy.

Lana stepped back into the room and picked up one of the discarded whisky bottles. She held it by the neck and approached the kneeling figure. Then, entirely without guilt or remorse, she pulled back her arm and clubbed him with the bottle across the side of his head, sending him crashing back to the floor. Flames caught at his trouser legs; he tried to kick them away, but it was too late, the fire was climbing towards his midriff. He opened his mouth to scream, but all that emerged was a dry, rough rasping sound, animalistic in its intensity. His eyes were empty — there was barely anything left of him to burn.

Lana turned around and left the heat of the room, closing the door behind her to hold back the fire for a little longer, just until they could make it down the stairs.

Tom was waiting for her at the door. He was standing with his head bowed, his forehead resting against the doorjamb. His eyes were closed. “What have we done?” he asked, as if he were talking in his sleep. “What have we done here?”

“We’ve taken care of business.” She went to step past him, entering the cold night. The air felt good against her skin; it tightened the flesh on her face, drawing it around her skull, and made her feel like a different person.

She was just about to walk away when a hand gripped her shoulder. Spinning around, with both arms raised, she saw a figure lurching towards her out of the smoky darkness inside the gym. Eyes that were all big, black pupil loomed into her field of vision, a bleached white face hung in the greying air.

“Get off me!” She pulled away, back-pedalling in the doorway and falling out into the street. Tom was already outside; he had moved aside as she had come stumbling out backwards.

The man stood in the doorway, hands grasping the frame. He was bobbing from side to side like a drunkard.

Lana suddenly realised who he was.

It was the junkie, Banjo. His face wasn’t ghostly white at all; it was the bandages, the dressings pulled taut across his ruined features. She recalled the news report about his escape from the hospital and reasoned that he must have made his way back here, back home, and come to the last place he could ever remember being before he lost his mind. His hair stuck out of the bandages in random tufts. His eyes rolled. Those huge dark pupils looked like marbles pressed into the front of his head.

“Go on, now,” she said, coaxing him as if he were a child. “Go back inside, out of the cold.”

He swayed there, uncertain, trying to focus on the sound of her voice. He was empty: a gap in the shape of a man. Whatever had been done to him it had hollowed out his mind, leaving his head as empty and draughty as an abandoned room.

“Go back in there.” She pointed over his shoulder, and finally he seemed to glean some kind of understanding. Lumbering like an injured beast, he turned clumsily on his heels and staggered back inside, closing the door behind him. Smoke billowed out around the edges of the door, and Lana felt no guilt for sending him away to burn.

It’s for the best, she thought. What the hell kind of life could he ever have? He’s ruined; this place has ruined him, just like it ruins everyone.

They walked quickly back to Tom’s car with the sound of sirens slicing the air, cleaving it like blades as the emergency services raced towards the estate. Someone — a rare concerned neighbour — must have noticed the smoke or the flames and called the authorities. The sirens drew closer as they reached the vehicle, and when they closed the doors they could still hear them clearly, as if the windows were rolled down.

“What do we do now?” Tom started the engine.

“We get away from here. I need to look at this book, see if it gives me any clues to where that fat bastard might’ve taken my daughter. It’s all I have to go on. He won’t hurt her, I know that now. From what Bright said, the fool seems to think that she’s his only shot at salvation. Funnily enough, she’s probably safer with him, wherever they are, than she is with me right now.” She smiled, but there was no humour there. It felt more like a scowl.

They drove away from the Grove, heading out towards Far Grove.

“Where are we going?” Lana stared through the windscreen. She could see firelight reflected in the glass.

“My place is less than five minutes away. You can look at the book there, and it’s my turn to show you something.” He was gripping the wheel so tightly that his knuckles had turned white.

Lana turned over the book in her hands, inspecting it: Extreme Boot Camp Workout by Alex ‘Brawler’ Mahler. It sounded ridiculous, like something you’d buy on a satellite TV shopping channel. The binding was frayed and dirty and the edges of the pages were worn thin by Bright’s fingers. She opened a page at random, and saw an extract from an A-Z pasted across the middle pages of the book, obscuring the text and several printed diagrams of a man performing exercises.

The glued page was a map of the Concrete Grove, and someone — probably Bright — had handwritten words over certain areas. ‘Skeights’ was one word, this one scrawled over the section representing Beacon Green. ‘Croatoan’ was another. These words looked simultaneously familiar and utterly alien — like historical artefacts found under the soil in a backyard. She’d seen the second word before, but couldn’t recall where.

A thick arrow, marked in blue ink, pointed off the page in the direction of the council refuse tip close to the old Near Grove train station. There were other words, other phrases, some of them in what looked like a foreign language. Lana couldn’t make out what any of this meant, but she knew it all added up to something important.

‘Twins’ (this one gave her a twinge), ‘Channels’, ‘Captain Clickety’, ‘Hummers’… all words that must have added to and expanded upon Bright’s private mythology of the Grove: keywords and buzzwords signifying events and knowledge that had died along with him.

Located at the centre of the page, directly over the centre-fold of the workout manual, was the Needle. Someone had drawn crude shapes that were meant to be trees. They’d even coloured in the leaves a dark shade of Crayola green. A big red cross had been inked there, and gone over so many times and so heavily that the pen had torn through the paper. ‘Locus?’ said the word — which was also a question — written next to the cross.

Suddenly she knew where the fat man had taken Hailey.

“Stop the car,” she said, turning to face Tom. It all seemed so obvious. She couldn’t believe it had taken her so long to make the connection.

“I am. We’re already here.”

She glanced up through the windscreen. The house was in darkness. “Why aren’t there any lights on?” Tom had pulled up in the middle of the road.

“I told you,” said Tom, taking the keys from the ignition and opening the car door. He stepped out and crossed to the kerb. “I need to show you something.” His voice was strange: low and husky, as if his throat had tightened.

Lana got out of the car and followed him across the road to the front of the house. She left the book in the car but didn’t even notice its absence. The book had given her all the information she required. “Tom, she’s in the Needle. He has her in that fucking tower. Come with me, help me get her out.”

He walked along the drive and stopped outside the front door. Then, without saying anything, he took out his key and opened the door. He turned to her, smiling, and motioned for her to follow him inside. Then he stepped into the house, leaving the door wide open.

Lana knew that she needed to go back to the Grove, to get to the tower block while everyone else in the area was distracted by the fire. The sirens were still wailing, but they had stopped moving. The fire brigade and police must have reached Bright’s gym and begun the process of extinguishing the flames. But still, she walked along the drive and stood at the open door, with one foot resting on the doorstep as she peered inside.

“Tom?” She called into the house, but there was no reply. It was dark in there, but she could make out a figure in the entrance hall, standing at the bottom of the stairs.

Lana took a step inside. “Come on, Tom. Let’s get Hailey, and then we can get away from here. We can hide out up in the Highlands, or somewhere. Find a place where they’ll never catch up with us.” She knew she was lying: there was no way out of this, not now. The best she could hope for was to save her daughter. Little else mattered.

Tom was standing over the body of a very large woman. She was motionless, and lay face-down at the bottom of the stairs, her nightdress hitched up to show her massive, creased legs and her saggy, crumpled buttocks. Her head was twisted brutally to one side, forced around at an unnatural angle.

“It attacked me,” said Tom, staring down at the woman’s corpse. She was clearly dead: her face was as white and crumpled as old linen sheets. “I fought with it, and we fell down the stairs. Powerful beasts, these things. So, so strong… like a fucking ox, or something.”

“Tom… what are you talking about, Tom?”

His head spun around to face her. His eyes were huge, eating up the residual light in the room. “This,” he said. “The fucking sea cow.” He kicked the corpse but it barely moved. It was too heavy. “Clickety-clickety-click.”

She ignored that last part, unable to even grasp at its meaning. “This… this is your wife?”

He shook his head. “Don’t be stupid. I don’t know where Helen is. This is the sea cow. It took her place, and it attacked me. Up there.” He raised a hand and pointed up the stairs.

How the hell had she managed to get up there? She was paralysed from the waist down. Had he dragged her out of bed and up the stairs only to throw her down? “Tom, I think you need to take a look at her and try to focus. Really look at her. Look at your wife.”

He was crying now. “I wish I knew where she was. I need to find her, to make sure she’s okay, and then we can leave. You, me and Hailey. We can leave all this shit behind us and start a new life.”

“Tom.” She was losing patience now. The old Lana might have taken the time to talk him down, to make him realise his mistake, but the new Lana, the warrior woman, couldn’t spare the time or the effort. “I’m going now, Tom. I’m going to get my daughter. You’ve killed your wife, do you hear me? You killed her. I can’t help you, not with this. There isn’t the time.”

He sunk down to the floor, onto his knees. Slowly, with great care, he reached out and began to stroke the dead woman’s fleshy cheek. Her eyes were open. White foam was dried around her mouth, like a crust of salt. “Where’s Helen? Such gentle creatures when you see them on telly, but you’re not gentle, are you? You stole my wife.”

Lana turned away and made her way slowly to the door. When she stepped outside, emerging into the cool night air, she reached behind her and shut the door firmly, making sure that it was tight to the frame. She could at least do this for Tom: give him some peace and some time to figure out what he had done.

In the distance, over the estate, the sky was bright with reflected flames. She could see the Needle beyond the capering yellow light, sticking up like a thick, grey finger pointing towards the stars.

“I’m coming, Hailey,” she whispered as she started to run. “Mummy’s coming.”

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 fucking 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.