The Concrete Grove Read online

  THECONCRETE

  GROVE

  Gary McMahon

  This one’s dedicated to Mark West,

  who always sees the wood for the trees.

  First published 2011 by Solaris

  an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd,

  Riverside House, Osney Mead,

  Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK

  www.solarisbooks.com

  ISBN: (ePUB) 978-1-84997-277-2

  ISBN: (MOBI) 978-1-84997-278-9

  Copyright © Gary McMahon 2011

  Map artwork by 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.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THANKS ALWAYS TO Emily and Charlie for showing me another world; to Mark West for his beta-reading skills and enthusiasm; Sharon Ring for taking chances; John Haslam and Mick Parkinson for moral support and match-day drunkenness; Emily again for allowing me to use our romantic weekend away to do some valuable research; Jon Oliver for commissioning a mad idea for three books from a one-page synopsis; and the whole talented team at Solaris for helping me pursue this vision and get a story that’s been in my head for decades onto the page.

  One of the widespread beliefs is that hummingbirds, in some way, are messengers between worlds. As such they help shamans keep nature and spirit in balance.

  Source: www.hummingbirdworld.com

  PART ONE

  Shades and Shadows

  “I don’t like it here. The closer you get

  to the centre, the weirder it feels.”

  – Hailey Fraser

  CHAPTER ONE

  HER NAME WAS Hailey. She was just fourteen years old.

  And she was afraid.

  No, that wasn’t quite right. Hailey wasn’t afraid, not exactly; she was sad and confused and worried about her mother, and all she really wanted was to be left alone. Just for a few minutes, maybe even as much as half an hour. She needed some time on her own, during which she could think about things and set the facts in order. The world always seemed a little less harsh when the facts were put in place, with everything lined up in neat little rows where she could see them properly. Like her books on their shelves or her stuffed toys sitting against the skirting board at home.

  It was Hailey’s mother who was afraid. Even Hailey could see that. Her mother, she knew, was terrified.

  Things had been tense around the flat lately – even Hailey, with her limited ability to empathise, was aware of this tension. Her mother chewed her fingernails all the time, and she lost her temper much easier than ever before – easier and more regularly. She was drinking a lot – cheap wine in big bottles from the local off-license – and Hailey could sometimes hear her crying at night through the thin walls of their crummy little flat in the Grove. In the morning she would pretend that she’d slept well and everything was fine, but Hailey knew that there were tear stains on her mother’s pillows.

  Hailey walked slowly through the narrow streets, ignoring the youths who were perched on garden walls and loitering at the corners smoking cheap cigarettes and drinking cider from plastic bottles. She paid no attention to the fat man who always seemed to be watching her from a parked car near the shopping arcade, and blanked the old woman who stood on her front step shaking her fist at the sky and shouting at the birds.

  Such sights were normal in the Grove – the Concrete Grove. Hailey had learned this. The people who lived on the estate were somehow different from the ones she had known before, in her old life, when her mother had a job and money wasn’t a problem.

  These people, the ones she now lived among, were closer to the bottom of the pile than anyone else she’d met. That’s how her mother termed it: the bottom of the pile. As if society was just a big pyramid of people, squirming and shouting and fighting for position, and she and Hailey had slipped through the gaps to end up somewhere near its base. Sometimes, late at night, when she was unable to sleep, she could almost feel the pressure of all those bodies above her, pushing and shoving and nipping and punching… looking for a way to climb.

  She quickened her pace and reached the north end of Grove Road, where the Bailey brothers lived. The twin boys, both fifteen and in the year above Hailey in classes, were possibly the worst bullies at her school. A month ago they’d put little Lloyd Jones in hospital, slashing his back with a straight razor taken from their father’s things. Hailey recalled the police visiting the school, when not one of the other pupils had dared say anything against the brothers – which meant, of course, that they had got away with their crime because there were no witnesses. They remained unpunished, even though everyone knew they’d done it. Even the headmaster knew, but he was just as scared of the Bailey family as everyone else in the area.

  Was every school like this, or just the one she went to? She didn’t remember her old school being so violent or filled with such aggressive pupils, but it was so long ago now – a full eighteen months – that she could barely recall anything about the place, other than it had seemed so clean and bright and stress-free in comparison to her current educational establishment.

  She was glad that school was over for the day, and that she could roam around on her own just to get the horrible prison air of the place out of her lungs. At her old school, she’d been happy to stay behind and help the teacher tidy the class, or play outside the gates with her friends before heading home for dinner. These days all she wanted was to be away from school, yet still she could feel its awful shadow at her back.

  She was now nearing the centre of the estate, where the Needle was located. She’d bypassed the shopping arcade, where the worst trouble-makers tended to gather like a herd of bored animals, and was now approaching the middle of the set of concentric streets that made up the main body of the Grove. A number of the flats and houses around this central area were empty, their doors and windows boarded. Others were occupied either by the kind of people you didn’t want to meet or tenants who rarely stepped outdoors before nightfall. It was a creepy place, even in broad daylight, yet she was often drawn here by its sense of emptiness.

  A border of old timber hoardings and security fencing surrounded the derelict tower block, but everybody knew a way in. Hailey’s point of access was through a shallow channel someone had once dug under the fence close to the old red-brick electricity sub-station at the front of the building. She couldn’t remember who’d shown her this route inside the perimeter, only that it had been pointed out to her late one Sunday evening, when dusk was falling and the sound of motorbike engines churning up and down the surrounding streets had filled the air.

  Hailey got down on her belly and wriggled through the gap, trying her best not to ladder her thick black tights on any hanging wire or splinters. Her mother would kill her if she ruined another pair; the tiny clothes budget for this month was long gone.

  The sky seemed to darken around her as she slid under the barrier, as if her entrance had triggered a dimmer switch in the heavens. She knew this was a silly thought, that it was too early in the afternoon to grow so dark, but there was something nice about pretending to be so important that the sky would create an atmosphere just for her.

  Somewhere in the depths of the estate a dog began to bark; a burglar alarm went off, the wailing tone bound to be
ignored and left to peter out of its own accord. A police helicopter hummed through the sky above her, so she stayed where she was, belly pressed into the dirt, until it passed by. But this was just another game. Nobody cared that Hailey was here; nobody was concerned about her whereabouts. Not even her mother.

  After several seconds had passed, and sensing that she would not be seen, Hailey jerked upright and scurried across the cracked and stained concrete forecourt towards the waiting Needle. She stared at the empty building as she approached, peering at its boarded upper windows and security-shuttered doorways. Several of the caged windows on the ground floor had been partially exposed by vandals tearing off the timber and paint-daubed metal sheets and breaking the glass beneath. These openings bled darkness; they provided small, square glimpses of something black, unhealthy and rotten. If she allowed herself, Hailey could imagine things moving in there. Strange things. Dark things. Things that lived in such forgotten places.

  What was she doing here? Why did the decrepit building have such a hold on her? She always came to the same place when she was feeling uneasy or simply craved solitude. Despite its central location on the estate, and the fact that there were so many ways in, children rarely played here. The place, Hailey’s few friends had often told her, was haunted; and once, a long time ago, a bunch of children had even been harmed by the spirits who dwelled within its crumbling concrete walls. Depending on who she spoke to, these children had either been scarred for life or murdered. The story changed with each telling, the way a fairytale might.

  Hailey kept walking. The Needle ignored her, just like everyone else.

  She stopped, confused. Why was she thinking of the old building in terms of a personality?

  Hailey stared at the grubby concrete, trying to understand her feelings towards the place. She should be too afraid to set foot here, especially alone, but for some reason the resolutely upright Needle seemed to offer her some kind of solace.

  Yes, that was the word: solace. She’d encountered it in English class. It meant comfort or consolation. That, she thought, sounded just about right.

  She started to move again, towards the tower block. Broken glass crunched underfoot; her left ankle twisted slightly as she stepped into a shallow depression in the ground; her right foot kicked something hard and it rolled away from her across the uneven surface. But she didn’t look down. She kept on staring ahead, watching the Needle as it loomed closer. Its tall grey rendered walls were as cold and dry as reptile skin; the boards across its windows were closed eyelids; the patches of weeds and wild grass at its base were as welcoming as a doormat at the threshold of a lovely home.

  The conflicting emotions rushing through her – fear of the dark and empty spaces within the building’s shell; a sense of feeling welcomed or, more precisely, bidden – made her feel slightly sick, as if she’d eaten something bad.

  The main doors to the tower block were sealed with security shutters, so Hailey continued round to the rear, where there was a way in through a small ground floor window where the metal sheeting had been pulled aside. The window panel had been removed long ago, before the access point had been shored up, so whoever had then torn away the corrugated metal had been able to slip inside without having to shatter the glass.

  Hailey peeled back the thin metal square, struggling to fold it away from the wall. The metal groaned as she moved it, and then finally it seemed to relent under the pressure and bent back to reveal the window aperture beneath.

  The opening was roughly the size of the screen of the portable television Hailey had in her room at home. She was a slim girl – didn’t eat much, and wasn’t even keen on the sweets and sugary treats the other kids seemed to love – so she was always able to squeeze through without much of a problem.

  She leaned in and forced the metal sheet further back with her shoulder, turning her body so that she could scrabble up the wall and begin to climb through. She wriggled her body into the gap, aware of the metal sheet digging into her side as she moved into the space. Then, with a final shrugging motion and a kick of her legs, she was through and tumbling onto the floor at the other side of the wall.

  Dust rose in a cloud around her; the noise she’d made echoed through the concrete shell. Hailey sat on the ground and blinked into the darkness. It always seemed too gloomy in here – much more than she would have expected from the outside. It was as if natural daylight was afraid to enter, and the darkness held inside the Needle acted as a sort of barrier, protecting whatever else lived here from the light.

  Now there was another unwelcome thought. Why did she keep doing this, trying to scare herself? It was like some kind of challenge. She was throwing down the gauntlet, daring herself to venture further inside the building. Maybe the bullies were right, and she really was as weird as they said.

  A sound came to her from up ahead: a brief scraping noise, like a stick being dragged along the wall. She peered into the darkness, waiting for the interior to resolve in her vision. She saw the empty space, the walls and black rectangles of doorways. Her ears thrummed. She was in a hallway – she knew that much from past visits – but for some reason she never knew which way to turn. Was it left or right up ahead?

  Standing, she moved across to the wall, reaching out to touch it, to confirm that it was there, as solid and immobile as ever. The sound did not repeat. Silence grew and swelled and threatened to become something even worse than noise. Hailey closed her eyes tightly for a couple of seconds, and then opened them again. This time the room was clearer; she could see deeper into the building.

  A few metres ahead, the hallway became a T junction. Hailey paused for a moment to think, and then remembered that the left turn led to more rooms and the right one would take her to the reception area at the front of the building, which was usually littered with empty beer cans and bottles, used condoms and dirty syringes left behind by nocturnal visitors. Everyone who came here used the reception area: it was large and uncluttered, and the walls were covered with graffiti that probably dated back to the time when the Needle had been emptied and sealed.

  Hailey moved forward, and when she reached the junction she turned left. Her ears felt under pressure, like when she went swimming in the deep end at the local pool. Doorways seemed to lean forward, blocks of blackness taunting her, challenging her to enter. She walked along the hallway, stepping over mounds and heaps of garbage – despite keeping the main area clear of debris everyone seemed to dump their rubbish here. She passed an old sleeping bag, holes torn in the fabric and the white guts seeping out. An old armchair sat against the wall, the stain across its back and arms resembling the bloodied outline of an unusually thin human figure.

  Something moved behind her. Hailey refused to turn and look. There was nobody there; the building was empty. It was just a cat or a rat, or even a bird that had gained entry through an upper window, rooting around in the garbage.

  The last doorway was closer now. It was the room she always used. The doorway had no door; even the hinges had been removed. She could never say why she came to this room, only that it was small and nondescript and relatively untouched. The other rooms she’d been inside were either blackened by fire, smelled of old sweat and urine, or were filled with random objects – black plastic bags filled with water-damaged porn magazines, broken crates and pallets, wheelie bins, shopping trolleys, and even a surprising number of discarded children’s toys.

  It was amazing what some people would dump in places like this…

  When she reached the final doorway she stopped at the threshold. For the first time she felt a strange sense of apprehension, a feeling that she shouldn’t be here, not now. She waited, and the feeling faded. Perhaps it was just a result of the increased tension at home, or something stirred up by that noise she’d heard earlier.

  But no, that wasn’t it. There was something… something else. Then, at last, she realised what was troubling her. Since entering the building she had been aware of a sort of vibration in the air, a sof
t thrumming sound that she had at first put down to distant construction machinery or heavy traffic. But there were no building works nearby, and the nearest main road was a couple of miles away. That police helicopter she’d spotted earlier? No. That would be long gone by now.

  So what was it, that small sound, that weird throbbing in the still, dead air?

  Not hesitating any longer, Hailey stepped through the doorway. The thrumming sound inside her head was threatening to leak out.

  The room looked the same as it always did, but there was something different about the space as she entered. That sound was stronger here, inside the room. It sounded like bees, buzzing around a hive. Hailey was puzzled. Was there a wasps’ nest in here, or perhaps a swarm of flies clustering around a pile of shit?

  Part of her screamed that she should leave, but another, calmer part of her made her legs move and forced her deeper into the room. It was dark. The two windows were covered. The buzzing grew louder, as if responding to her presence.

  At the end of the room was a cupboard – a built-in wardrobe. The doors remained intact, and the cubby hole was always empty, as if nobody had even noticed it, or if they had seen the cupboard they had not been interested enough to look inside. The buzzing seemed to be coming from within, behind the closed doors. It wasn’t only in her head after all, and the realisation filled her with relief.

  Hailey moved forward, towards the wardrobe. The buzzing sound intensified.

  She stood before the doors. They were tall and narrow, with stainless steel handles. She reached out and grasped one of those handles, her fingers tightening around it. Don’t, she thought. Leave it alone. But that other part of her – the calm part – whispered to her that she should open the doors.