The Concrete Grove

by Gary McMahon

  “Are we ready?” Bright rubbed his hands together. His wetsuit absorbed the meagre light, glistening like the flesh of some hideous black lizard. “Are we all ready?”

  “Fuck, yeah,” said Terry, moving forward, away from the shower stall. He was standing in his white wife-beater vest and underpants. She could see clearly that he was ready for action.

  “Yeah,” said Boater, still standing behind her. There was something about the giant that Lana couldn’t fathom. It was obvious that he was having some kind of crisis of faith; she’d picked up on the fact that he was struggling with his own emotions. He’d almost turned against his boss. She felt it in the air: a sense of suppressed rebellion. Why couldn’t he have gone all the way and brought the fight out into the open, giving her some slight hope that this might not happen – that these men might not use her as a sex doll in this grimy basement room?

  Terry’s pink nub of a wrist shone weakly in the dim light. Monty Bright grinned like a lunatic. And behind her, remaining out of sight for now, a silent giant took stock of his situation far too slowly to offer Lana any form of hope.

  Bright took something from his trouser pocket: a thin black scarf. “Here.” He said. “Put this on.” He opened his fingers and let the scarf unfurl, holding one end between his thumb and the palm of his hand. It was not a scarf, it was a blindfold: a black silk blindfold.

  Lana reached out and took the blindfold from his hand. His skin felt cold and clammy, but that might just have been her imagination, conjuring little tricks to transform a bad man into a demon.

  “Put it on, now.” The playfulness had gone from his demeanour, leaving behind a blank, empty shell waiting to be filled by whatever he could take from her.

  There was a pause. The room seemed to exist out of time for a moment, as if they’d all moved sideways into another state of being.

  When Bright slapped her, without warning, it took her a second or two to register the pain. She heard the sound – quick, high and sharp – and had time to wonder what it was before her cheek started to burn. It was too late to even raise her hand and feel the spot where he had hit her. The pause between the violent act and her realisation of it was too great for her to react without feeling stupid. “Oh,” she said instead. It was an ineffectual remark; she wished she’d just kept her mouth shut. “Oh,” she said again, thinking, Shut the fuck up!

  Bright nodded. The walls closed in, squeezing her sense of spatial awareness until it lost all meaning. She realised why Bright had slapped her. The bastard had done it to sharpen her senses, to plunge her into the moment like someone jumping into a cold lake. To make sure she was fully aware when things got under way.

  He wanted to ensure that she was trapped firmly in the present and not retreating into some inner chamber where she might distance herself from the outrage. The fucker knew exactly what he was doing. He had done this too many times before to make silly mistakes and allow his victim – his debtor – even a scant emotional reprieve. Maybe his men were just along for the ride, but like most serial rapists, Bright was interested in mental rather than physical penetration.

  “Let’s get this show on the road,” said Bright, softly, almost lovingly – as if he were savouring the taste of his catchphrase on his tongue.

  Lana covered her eyes and waited for the suffering to start.

  AFTERWARDS, WHEN IT was all over and done with, she stood in the shower stall and let the cold water chill her battered body. Hot water would have been too much of a kindness, and men like these were not known for their acts of generosity.

  Lana ached everywhere, inside and out. The stink of semen clung to her. She had vomited so much in the shower that her belly felt mercifully empty. She had not taken the blindfold off. She didn’t want to see them again until she was clean. She faced the wall and let the sound of the water deafen her, but still she heard the door as it opened and closed, and the footsteps approaching across the hard floor.

  “Hurry up. We have things to do.”

  It was Terry’s voice. She would never forget that voice, even if she lived to be an old woman. He had whispered such terrible things in her ear as they’d used her body, entering every orifice. Such terrible, terrible things. He’d spoken of Hailey, and how she looked. He’d talked about her daughter’s young body, and what he would like to do with it. The words he’d used had been ones she’d heard before, many times, but in the situation she was in they became something new: another language, and one that expressed only depravity.

  These were surely not men; they were animals. Beasts. They had no souls, no morals. They were demonic.

  But, no. They were just men: Bad Men.

  She fumbled for the taps and turned off the flow of water. Then, wincing as her limbs burned with pain, she took off the blindfold. Then she turned to face the one-handed man who had defiled her. He was fully clothed and his prosthetic was fixed back in place. He was once again wearing both of his black leather gloves.

  “Put your fucking clothes on.” The contempt in his voice was almost as hurtful as what they’d done to her. Almost, but not quite. Not at all, if she was honest. That was just another lie to tell herself, a flimsy barrier to wedge between her and the memory of what had been done here in this shabby little basement room she would always think of whenever she heard the word ‘hell’.

  The door opened again just as she was putting on her blouse. She watched Bright walk in as she buttoned it to the neck and smoothed out the collars.

  “So, are we done?” Her voice was hoarse. Her throat felt like it had been filled with cement. “Are we square?” She shuffled forward. Each tiny step made her thighs blaze, her crotch burn, her torn anus clench, and set off a series of dull explosions deep inside her lower abdomen.

  I’ll need to get checked out, she thought. For STDs. AIDS.

  This grim note of reality, even more than the acts she’d been made to perform and submit to, threatened to tear her apart. The aftermath – the thought of the countless small, intimate and desperately embarrassing tasks she would need to undertake before declaring herself clean and safe – were like daggers in her belly.

  “Well?” She was amazed that she still possessed enough strength to raise her voice. She certainly wouldn’t be able to raise her hands to defend herself if one of the men chose to slap her again. Such physicality was beyond her right now, at least until she started to bruise.

  “For now,” said Bright.

  Terry laughed softly, but when Bright glanced at him he fell silent, and then lowered his head and left the room. He shut the door quietly behind him, as if that one look had caused him to fear even the slightest sound.

  The games were over.

  Bright was once again wearing his suit, but was not wearing any shoes. He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and took out a fat cigar – probably Cuban, thought Lana, madly, focusing on absurd details rather than the larger canvas of the picture taking shape before her. He lit the cigar and took a long drag. Smoke trailed from his lips; Lana thought it moved too slowly to be real.

  “What do you mean?” Her hands dropped to her sides. She felt boneless, as if the men had filleted her on the bed. “You promised.” But she knew that any promises made by such a man were subject to the whims of his fancy. She’d been a fool to let herself believe that this would make any difference to her situation, but what else did she have to cling to other than foolish belief?

  “I promised you nothing,” said Bright, looking at the cigar in his hand. The tip glowed bright red, like a single devilish eye. “Consider this visit a down payment. The way I figure it, you’ll have your debt cleared in, say, six to eight months. Even quicker if you bring the girl along next time. Nice and tight and pretty, isn’t she? I’ve seen her through the school gates, playing with her little friends. I think my friends would like to play with her very much.”

  Lana knew that she should rush him, maybe go for the throat, the eyes: attack the soft parts, just like a cornered rat. But it was futil
e. He was too strong, and had always possessed the upper hand. Right from the start, he’d played her along, upping the odds until she came to him and offered him exactly what he wanted and could have taken at any point, if that had been his choice.

  But Monty Bright did not want to take; it was the very act of offering that turned him on, made him shine.

  Where’s your compassion?” she said, failing to penetrate his armour. “Where’s your basic human decency?” She hated the desperation she heard in her weakened voice, but it was all she had left to offer, the only thing she could dredge up from inside her poor, defiled wreck of a body.

  Bright walked towards her. He was shorter than she remembered; he barely came up to her shoulder now that she’d put her pumps back on. His skin looked soft, malleable, and his eyes protruded like boiled eggs from a face as flat and round as a polished plate. Bright’s shoulders were hunched; his posture was awkward, as if the years of self-abuse disguised as exercise had mutated his basic geometry. He slowly raised his hands and began to slip off his shirt. He still wore the wetsuit underneath, as he had done during her ordeal, and she stared in horror as he slid his fingers under the neck of the garment and began to peel the material downwards, as if he were calmly removing a layer of skin. He extracted his arms from the rubbery suit and rolled it down towards his waist.

  “For that, dear Lana, I’d have to be human.”

  The blindfold and the wetsuit had prevented her from seeing anything before, and most of the time her arms had been pinned down or back behind her, but his naked torso was a mass of lumps and abrasions. More and more of this was revealed as he continued to drag the garment down over his belly. The malformations looked like ripe tumours: they dangled in grapelike clumps from beneath his armpits, clustered around his nipples and made a ribbed embossment down the faint seam of his hairless belly.

  Even now, after everything she’d gone through, Lana felt sick to the stomach.

  There were small mouths in there, amid the globules and curlicues of flesh, and bright little eyes that blinked uncomprehendingly. A nose or a sex gland twitched; snot or semen spilled from its shiny, puckered end. Here was a whole community of beings, perhaps even the physical representation of the souls of people he’d consumed as repayment for debts even greater than her own, loans whose rate of interest was infinite.

  “Bring the girl next time,” he said, smiling around his cigar. “I’ll show her a whole new world of hurt.” The cigar’s fiery red eye winked: just once, but it was more than enough to ensure she got the message.

  PART THREE

  Faces

  “The things you do have

  begun to repel you.”

  – Monty Bright

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Let’s go down, Francis.”

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

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