Beyond Here Lies Nothing cg-3 Read online

  Sometimes, when conversation lulls in the security station, or if he decides to walk along the walls for an inspection, he can hear the muted rustling of leaves and undergrowth, the creaking of branches. Occasionally he thinks that he hears a faint clicking sound, like chattering teeth…

  He has not seen behind those walls since they were erected, but he has been told that there is now a forest in there — and at its heart there stands a grove of ancient oaks whose leaves have turned black. The roads and houses outside the perimeter are half-buried relics; the concrete ruins are like the remains of a lost civilisation, choked by the calcified remains of trees. No flight paths are allowed in the airspace above the wall. Whatever is in there, they are still trying to keep it hidden, at least for as long as they can.

  The wall follows the line of what used to be known as the Roundpath. It contains the plot where the Needle once stood. It’s just a small patch of land, and yet he has heard reports that the area contained within it goes on for miles. Part of him knows this cannot be possible; another part of him believes it implicitly.

  Within the next few months, an expedition will be sent behind the wall. He hopes this isn’t a mistake. Whenever he stands here, looking up at the wall, he is reminded of the film King Kong… Skull Island, another massive wall, and a hungry monster living in the landscape beyond.

  All the survivors of what happened a year ago were relocated. Many of them sold their stories to newspapers and magazines and appeared on TV chat shows and documentaries. Handheld footage from mobile phones appeared on YouTube. Blurred digital photographs were reproduced in newspapers and magazines around the world. Over the last twelve months so much has been said and written about those events in the Concrete Grove that sometimes he feels like it’s a fiction — and he is merely a character in a book that’s still being written, or has yet to be written.

  Some of those survivors are dying. The official verdict is that it’s a form of cancer, but he isn’t so sure. He’s heard rumours of tumours formed on the skin like bunches of black leaves. Of bones transforming into what seem to be blackened twigs and branches and breaking through the flesh.

  Whatever this is, it isn’t over. In fact, it might have just begun…

  He thinks of the dead and what he owes them.

  Most of all, he remembers Erik Best and Marc Price — who still has not been found.

  And he thinks of Abby Hansen and how she now protects the ageless Gone Away Girls, taking care of them in an old orphanage up in Scotland, where the press and the public cannot touch them. He thinks fondly of the Girls themselves, and how they never age, never speak of what they have seen and done. They just sit there, staring patiently into the distance, as if they are waiting for something.

  There are so many unanswered questions. A new world order is waiting to slide into place. Mankind can no longer feign ignorance of the numinous.

  Perhaps one day the answers to all questions will be found beyond those thick, high walls — one of the regular expedition groups might even find something of use in that dense primeval land.

  Whenever he drives back home from these nocturnal visits, usually with the first faint rays of the sun kissing the horizon, he returns to bed and holds his wife. He hangs on to her as if she is a lifeline. He doesn’t want to ever let go.

  Every once in a while she mumbles something in her sleep: a word that he thinks sounds a lot like their daughter’s name. They called their baby Hope, because that’s what she represents.

  He kisses his wife’s shoulder, her neck, and then whispers secret, wordless promises into her ear as she sleeps.

  And he waits quietly for the darkness to pass.

  ‘The Concrete Grove’ by Gary McMahon

  IT KNOWS WHERE YOU LIVE…

  Imagine a place where all your nightmares become real. Dark urban streets where crime, debt and violence are not the only things to fear. Picture a housing project that is a gateway to somewhere else; a realm where ghosts and monsters stir hungrily in the shadows. Welcome to the Concrete Grove.

  This deprived area is Hailey’s new home, but when an ancient entity notices her, it becomes something much more threatening. She is the only one who can help her mother as she joins in a dangerous dance with loanshark Monty Bright. Only Hailey can see the truth of Tom’s darkest desires as he tries to become part of their family. And only Hailey can lead them all to the heart of the estate where something older than this land stirs and begins to wake…

  ‘The Concrete Grove is McMahon’s most accomplished work to date. A compelling novel of extremes.’

  — Mark Morris, author of The Deluge

  ‘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

  ‘McMahon’s visionary sense of the supernatural makes The Concrete Grove one exciting read.’

  — Steve Rasnic Tem, co-author of The Man on The Ceiling

  www.solarisbooks.com

  ‘Silent Voices’ by Gary McMahon

  IT’S CALLING YOU BACK…

  Twenty years ago, three boys staggered out of an old building. Missing for a weekend, the boys had no idea where they’d been, but they all shared the same vague memory of a shadowed woodland grove. Now, Simon has returned to the Concrete Grove to see his old friends and unearth painful childhood memories, and things once buried are beginning to claw their way back to the surface.

  The hummingbirds are flying again. Nightmares made manifest walk the streets. A dark entity is calling from the shadows, reaching out to three terrified boys who have grown into damaged men. And the past is about to catch up with them all, staining their lives with a darkness they never truly escaped.

  Silent Voices is the terrifying follow-up to McMahon’s award-winning The Concrete Grove.

  ‘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.’

  — Steve Rasnic Tem, author of Deadfall Hotel

  ‘The outstanding British horror writer of our times.’

  — The Black Abyss

  www.solarisbooks.com

  ‘House of Fear’ edited by Jonathan Oliver

  HOME IS WHERE THE HORROR IS…

  The tread on the landing outside the door when you know you are the only one in the house. The wind whistling through the eves, carrying the voices of the dead. The figure glimpsed briefly through the cracked window of a derelict house.

  Critically-acclaimed editor Jonathan Oliver brings horror home with a collection of haunted house stories by Lisa Tuttle, Stephen Volk, Terry Lamsley, Adam L. G. Nevill, Weston Ochse, Rebecca Levene, Garry Kilworth, Chaz Brenchley, Robert Shearman, Nina Allan, Christopher Fowler, Sarah Pinborough, Paul Meloy, Christopher Priest, Jonathan Green, Nicholas Royle, Eric Bown, Tim Lebbon and Joe R. Lansdale.

  “Jonathan Oliver is the hottest new horror editor to come out of the UK since Stephen Jones, and I have high hopes for House of Fear.”

  – Jonathan Strahan, Locus award-winning editor of Swords and Dark Magic

  www.solarisbooks.com

  ‘Hell Train’ by Christopher Fowler

  Imagine there was a supernatural chiller that Hammer Films never made. A grand epic produced at the studio’s peak, which played like a cross between the Dracula and Frankenstein films and Dr Terror’s House Of Horrors…

  Four passengers meet on a train journey through Eastern Europe during the First World War, and face a mystery that must be solved if they are to survive. As the ‘Arkangel’ races through the war-torn countryside, they must find out:

  What is in the casket that everyone is so afraid of? What is the tragic secret of the veiled Red Countess who travels with them? Why is their fellow passenger the army brigadier so feared by his own men? And what exactly is the devilish secret of the Arkangel itself? />
  Bizarre creatures, satanic rites, terrified passengers and the romance of travelling by train, all in a classically styled horror novel.

  www.solarisbooks.com

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I wrote this novel more or less in isolation, so there aren’t many acknowledgements to make. But a huge note of thanks must go, as always, to Emily and Charlie, my beloved little family. You keep me going. Thanks also to the usual suspects — mainly Mark West, Sharon Ring, Simon Bestwick, Jim Mcleod, Michael Wilson and Ross Warren — for their constant and gratifying support. Cheers to the writer chums who invited me to a terrific working weekend in Matlock: it really helped me get started on this book. A special doff of the cap must go to Steve Volk, Tim Lebbon, Adam Nevill, Joe D’Lacey and my good mate Mark Morris for being so bloody inspirational. Finally, thanks again to Jon Oliver and the brilliant team at Solaris. I literally couldn’t have done all this without you.

  Also by Gary McMahon

  The Concrete Grove Trilogy

  The Concrete Grove

  Silent Voices

  Hungry Hearts

  Pretty Little Dead Things

  Dead Bad Things

  About the Author

  Gary McMahon’s fiction has appeared in magazines and anthologies in the UK and US and has been reprinted in both The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. He is the British-Fantasy-Award-nominated author of Rough Cut, All Your Gods Are Dead, Dirty Prayers, How to Make Monsters, Rain Dogs, Different Skins, Pieces of Midnight, The Harm, Hungry Hearts, and has edited an anthology of original novelettes titled We Fade to Grey.

  His most recent novel is Pretty Little Dead Things from Angry Robot Books.

  Author website: www.garymcmahon.com

  Praise for Gary McMahon

  “McMahon writes gritty, ultra-realistic horror — a welcome antidote to the effete horror romance currently flooding the market — about the angst of urban existence in the 21st century.”

  — The Guardian

  “Gary McMahon is a spellbinding storyteller. The Concrete Grove is as feverish and unnerving as it is gripping: a black orchard of humanity where you hardly dare look at what dark things hang gleaming and winking in the branches of the trees.”

  — Graham Joyce on The Concrete Grove

  “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 with a visionary’s sense of the supernatural makes The Concrete Grove one exciting read.”

  — Steve Rasnic Tem on The Concrete Grove

  “If you’re a fan of slow-burn horror told in a strong and compelling way… McMahon is one to watch.”

  — Starburst

  Copyright

  First published 2012 by Solaris

  an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd,

  Riverside House, Osney Mead,

  Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK

  www.solarisbooks.com

  ISBN: (epub) 978-1-84997-444-8

  ISBN: (mobi) 978-1-84997-445-5

  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.

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