by Gary McMahon
Praise for Gary McMahon
“The Concrete Grove is a tense, ghoulish, creeping horror guaranteed to give you recurring nightmares! Brilliant characterisation, economic prose and with genius control of building tension, the climax of The Concrete Grove will leave you reeling! There's a new wave of brilliant horror writers – and McMahon's right there at the top of them.”
– Andy Remic, author of Kell’s Legend
“Gary McMahon is one of the finest of a new breed of horror writers. His work combines spare, elegant writing with an acute sense of the growing desperation felt by those having to deal with the crime and crumbling infrastructure of our urban centers. Illuminating these themes with a visionary's sense of the supernatural makes The Concrete Grove one exciting read.”
– Steve Rasnic Tem, author of Deadfall Hotel
“Gary McMahon is a spellbinding storyteller. The Concrete Grove is as feverish and unnerving as it is gripping: a bleak orchard of humanity where you hardly dare to look at what dark things hang gleaming and winking in the branches of the trees.”
– Graham Joyce, author of The Silent Land
“The Concrete Grove is an outstanding mix of urban horror and dark fantasy, hints of King’s The Dark Tower series, hints of Holdstock’s pagan fantasy but above all the realisation of McMahon’s talents as the outstanding British horror writer of our times.”
– The Black Abyss
SILENT
VOICES
Gary McMahon
For Charlie, my Best Boy:
I can’t wait to see what kind
of man you grow up to be
First published 2012 by Solaris
an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd,
Riverside House, Osney Mead,
Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK
www.solarisbooks.com
ISBN: (epub) 978-1-84997-351-9
ISBN: (mobi) 978-1-84997-352-6
Copyright © Gary McMahon 2012
Cover Art by Vincent Chong
Map by Gary McMahon and Pye Parr
The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of he copyright owners.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Also by Gary McMahon
Hungry Hearts
Pretty Little Dead Things
The Concrete Grove
Dead Bad Things
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks always to Emily and Charlie for giving me a reason to fight; to Ross and Katarzyna Warren for checking and correcting my pitiful attempts at the Polish language; to John Probert for the medical advice regarding stab wounds; to Michael Wilson, Jim McLeod, Jason Baki, Colin Leslie and many other kind reviewers and bloggers who supported the first Concrete Grove book; to Mark West (again) for his interest and enthusiasm; and finally huge thanks must go to John Roome for some sound advice given at a time when it mattered.
“The rest is silence.”
– Hamlet, Act 5 scene 2
by William Shakespeare
“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.”
– Old English Nursery Rhyme (circa 1811)
TWENTY YEARS AGO, WHEN THE WORLD WAS SO MUCH SMALLER...
THE SUN IS a bronze penny hanging motionless in the sky as the boys toil beneath its hazy glare, laughing and sweating and having fun. The kind of fun that they will never have again, once they go beyond a certain age: kid fun, all happiness and innocence and mercifully free of the sharp edges adults develop, even in their play.
It’s been a long day for the Three Amigos – a typical English summer day, filled with running and play-fighting and sweet, long bike rides along the old railway line that runs along the bottom of the Embankment, with the gang pretending they are on their way to somewhere special – a place other than this one, with its embittered people and grey concrete promises.
But now, late in the afternoon, the bikes have been put away and the three boys are planning to build something in the trees at the north edge of Beacon Green, just up the hill from the old Near Grove railway station: a high platform, the beginnings of a proposed tree house.
Marty brought back the necessary tools from the drawers in the garage when he returned from a tense lunch with his perpetually warring parents, and Brendan stayed behind while the others returned home to eat so that he could gather enough wood for the project. Brendan never goes home for lunch: his father is dead and his mother drinks too much, even during the day. Especially during the day. Simon, the third member of the group, often feels guilty that he never invites his friend home for a meal, but the tension between his own parents is too uncomfortable to inflict upon anyone else. They are going through a ‘bad spell’; that’s what they call it, as if it’s the result of some kind of dark magic. As far as he can tell, he once told Brendan, their entire marriage is a bad spell – one that’s been going on since before he was born.
“Get that bit over there,” says Marty, the muscle of the gang. He points towards the splintered remains of a timber pallet and waits for the other two to walk over, drag it from where it lies half-hidden under the bushes, and then carry it over to the site of their construction project.
“Jesus, it’s heavy.” Brendan is very thin; his elbow bones jut out like twigs and his face always looks starved.
“Yeah, but that’s because you’re a wimp.” Simon laughs at his friend and gives a tug on his end of the wooden pallet, causing Brendan to stumble. Brendan sticks out his tongue; it is a child’s riposte, lacking sophistication even for a ten-year-old.
“Come on, then. Let’s get this thing built!” Marty is standing with one foot resting on the mouldy trunk of a fallen tree. He has his hands on his hips, and he pouts as if he is waiting to be kissed. To the other boys, he looks strangely alluring: like an asexual being that’s been trapped somewhere between childhood and the great unexplored country of adulthood. A tree nymph or a woodland elf: some mythical being from a story book, rather than the streets of a northeastern council estate.
“Yes, Miss!” Brendan’s voice carries through the silent trees, disturbing a ground-dwelling bird or a small mammal from its hiding place. The animal darts through the undergrowth, rustling the leaves and branches, as Brendan and Simon let loose with a brace of laughter.
Marty shakes his head and slowly lets his arms drop to his sides, abandoning the pose. “Piss off!” he shouts, much too late to salvage his dignity.
The boys fall quiet for a while, occupied by the simple task of sorting out pieces of wood. They discard ruined, shattered pieces of timber and form a pile of decent material that can be re-used. The sun moves slowly down the sky, tracing the day’s journey towards early evening. The sky seems to shimmer above the scene, like the underside of a distant body of water.
Brendan stops for a rest. He walks across to the nearest tree and sits down at the base of its trunk, retrieving a can of pop from his jacket, which lies grubby and creased on the ground. He opens the tab and drinks deeply, his eyes closed and his head tilted upwards. His fringe falls back to reveal a forehead pocked with livid acne and absently he scratches his thigh with his free hand. It’s a displacement trick he learned long ago – scratch another part of your body rather than the place you real
ly want to scratch, and pretend that you’ve eased the discomfort.
Brendan opens his eyes as he lowers the can, scanning for a moment the green expanse of Beacon Green which lies beyond the line of the trees. He narrows his eyes, leaning forward with an intent look on his face. He licks his lips, stray droplets of pop making them sticky and sweet. Close to his position, gouged into the bole of the nearest tree, someone has used a penknife to write a single nonsense word: Loculus.
Brendan studies the hand-carved word. It means nothing to him, yet something inside him stirs. The spotty skin on his back crawls, as if tiny feet are walking between his shoulder blades. His forehead begins to itch.
His eyes widen. He has seen something, some kind of movement, way behind the carved tree; an image that he believes does not belong here. He begins to stand but pauses partway to his feet, staring at a point beyond the trees. What was it? Did he even see anything at all, or is he just tired?
Staring in wonder, he watches a tall, dark figure as it passes between the final row of trees, taking short, dainty strides – almost skipping along – and facing forward. The figure is wearing a long black overcoat that reaches down to its ankles. On its head is perched a strange black cap – like a flattened top hat, but with a wider, floppier brim. Beneath the hat is a sort of black snood or cowl that falls down the back of the head, protecting the rear of the neck.
Brendan wants to call out to his friends, but something has robbed him of his voice. He crouches there, with one hand pressed flat against the base of the nearest tree, supporting him, and the other still gripping the empty pop can. He watches the figure as it passes from tree to tree, visible for seconds at a time as it dances gaily between the broad dark trunks.
The figure is either hideously deformed or wearing some kind of mask. The bone-white face is pinched forward and outward to form a long beak with a sharpened end. The large, bulbous eyes look like swimming goggles, but with black frames and lenses.
The figure is terrifying. Fear has taken Brendan’s voice, and only when he realises this does he regain the ability to communicate.
“Lads!” He turns and glances towards his friends, and then back again to where he saw the figure. It has stopped and turned towards him in the short time when his attention was elsewhere; he feels its gaze, even through the absurd goggles. There is a thin walking stick in the figure’s yellow-gloved right hand, and it raises it, like a weapon or a magician’s wand, pointing it in Brendan’s direction. The other hand, also covered by a dull yellow glove, makes abstract shapes and patterns in the air, the fingers moving in intricate contortions, as if they are tying knots out of nothing. He knows that he should not be able to pick out such minor details at this distance, but somehow he can. It is as if the figure has grown more vital in his perspective, like an embossed image standing proud from a flat background. The effect is disorienting: he feels sick, his head begins to pound; his eyes water as the figure looms in his vision, drawing closer and increasing in definition without taking even a single step towards him. It must be an optical illusion... a trick of the light.
Then he begins to hear the clicking sound, like fingers snapping along to some otherworldly tune.
Brendan opens his mouth, but no words come out. He stares at the figure, at the way its coat flaps about the thin body even though there is no wind to cause the motion; the way the material bulges and rises slightly in front, as if a rogue gust is trapped under there, between the figure’s long, thin legs. Then, one by one, what looks like several additional limbs seem to emerge from beneath the hem of the coat, their small, bare, two-toed feet kicking and flapping as they descend awkwardly to the ground.
“Quick, lads! Come here!” His voice sounds raw, as if his throat has been damaged, his mouth parched. But at least he has found the strength to speak.
He glances away and then back again. The figure is no longer there. A beam of sunlight blazes in the spot between the trees where the figure had stood, making the air look as if it has caught fire. The two trees that had framed the figure seem to bend fractionally outwards, making the space bigger than before and straining beneath the pressure of reality.
“What’s up?” Simon is standing beside him, reaching down to help him complete the journey from sitting to standing. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Brendan turns his head and stares at his friend, at his wide, amused eyes. He feels the small pimples on his forehead tighten; the larger ones clustered across his back and shoulders begin to pop, covering his flesh in a warm, sticky excretion. He doesn’t quite know if he’s still afraid or simply relieved that he was just seeing things out there, beyond the trees.
Should he be glad that his imagination is creating phantoms, or should he be afraid that it has done so to fill some kind of gap in his brain?
“I think I did,” he says, shaking now, unable to hold back either a scream or a laugh – he’s not sure which – for much longer. “A ghost... or a monster.”
PART ONE
Learning To Speak
“Sometimes you have to go back just so you can move forward.”
– Simon Ridley
CHAPTER ONE
SIMON RIDLEY SAT at the window and stared out at the seething darkness of King’s Cross. His torso was bare; he’d spilled some wine on his shirt earlier, when he’d been preparing a late dinner, and it was warm enough in the flat that he had not bothered to put on a clean one. The July sky was clear and the thin, fragile clouds drifted like skeins of semen in bathwater.
The room was dark, too. He had not turned on the lights. The dinner he’d made sat cold and untouched in a bowl on the kitchen counter, the pasta stiffening and the tomato and garlic sauce congealing like old blood. He rubbed his face with his hands, and realised that he needed a shave. His head felt emptied, hollowed out.
A creased, padded manila envelope lay on the dining table before him, and he tried his best not to look again at the printed handwriting. The package had been posted here, to his home address, rather than the office, and it had arrived after he’d left for work. So he’d only seen it when he got back a few hours ago, after leaving the office early because of the overnight car journey he had scheduled.
The book sat next to the discarded packaging, the outer edges of the cover slightly blackened, perhaps by fire. The title was illegible, the author unknown. But he knew what the book was. Once, a long time ago, it had belonged to Simon. He had owned it in another lifetime.
The book was called Extreme Boot Camp Workout by Alex ‘Brawler’ Mahler. It had once belonged to Simon’s father, a man who enjoyed keeping fit more than he liked spending time with his family. Simon had lost track of the book years ago, when he left home to come to London. But now it was here, back in his hands.
A helicopter hummed past his window, miles away but still visible in the crisp evening sky. Simon turned his head and watched it go by, reminded of something he had seen or been told of a long time ago but could not quite grasp with any level of clarity right now – something to do with hummingbirds.
He reached out and touched the other item that had been inside the envelope along with the book: a single immature acorn, its shell caught in the process of darkening from green to brown. Carved roughly into the shell were his initials: SR. His fingers traced the letters, and then he pulled his hand away, as if he were afraid to touch the thing for much longer than a few seconds.
His laptop sat open on the table, its screen the only bright spot in the room. The web browser displayed an article from the Northumbria Times newspaper. It was old news, from before Christmas. November, to be exact: almost nine months ago. He couldn’t even remember what he’d been doing back then. Lately his life seemed to be running away from him, leaving him with vague, unsubstantial memories of business meetings and social events, deals and parties and random encounters with people who held little interest for him.
The article was about a fire on a housing estate in Northumberland which the locals called the Concre
te Grove. Simon had grown up there, and left as soon as he was old enough to get out on his own. But despite him not setting foot back there in the best part of fifteen years, the place had never really left him.
You can take the boy out of the Grove...
According to the reporter a small gym owned by a local gangster had been set alight, and the fire had killed two people: the owner, Monty Bright, and one of his associates, a man called Terry Bison. Both men’s bodies had been so badly disfigured in the fire that they could only be identified by partial tattoos and dental records. The second man had also been identified by his prosthetic arm.
A few columns down the page, printed as an unrelated side bar, there was mention of unidentified birds gathering over the local landmark known as the Needle. The old tower block – derelict for decades – seemed to have been the focal point for the congregation of tiny birds on the night of the blaze. Hundreds of them had hovered around the tip of the tower, remaining there for half an hour, and then disappeared once the blaze was under control. It was reported as a natural phenomenon, a weird bit of local colour.
A hard copy of both of these articles had been included in the envelope, along with the book. Their headlines were crudely circled in red pen by whoever had sent him the package. Simon had no idea why anyone would send him these now, so many months after the fire in the report. The postmark on the front of the envelope showed that it had been sent from the northeast. It didn’t take much to put the clues together and realise that someone from the Grove had sent him the information. Probably the same person who regularly sent him clippings from the local rag, leaflets taken from the Tourist Information Centre, and countless other pieces of seemingly random information. He’d been receiving this stuff for years. Even when he moved house – which was often – the anonymous sender somehow managed to track him down.
