by Gary McMahon
“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 p
artly 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 ca
binet 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.
