Gary McMahon - The Concrete Grove

Monty didn’t look up from his book. He held it open on his thighs, studying it like it was a school text. He nodded, distracted and not really listening. “Did you know, Francis, that when the Romans were here in Northumberland they found something strange in the land this estate is built on?”

Boater had no idea what to say or even if a response was expected. Monty had been doing this more and more lately: talking to himself by telling Boater and the rest of the men things, passing on obscure information. It was like he was involved in a lengthy conversation with himself, and all Boater and the others were expected to do was listen.

Monty continued: “Pagan tribes would worship an old grove of oak trees, dancing and fucking and draining their blood into the soil. The Romans murdered this tribe, and then they burned down the oaks and dug up the charred earth, at least that’s what the books say, the ones I borrowed from the library. The ones no fucker else bothers to read. Nobody seems to know what kind of power the Romans found, but I like to think that Hadrian built his fucking wall to keep it inside rather than keeping the Jocks out.” He laughed, and it was a terrible sound: dull and flat and empty of feeling. “It seems to me that old Hadrian didn’t like what they found here. Nobody ever spoke of it again, except to say that the ground was cursed. That it was a Bad Place.”

Finally he glanced up from the book, as if realising that he was no longer alone. He closed the cover, running his fingers along the creased spine.

Boater read the book’s familiar title: Extreme Boot Camp Workout by Alex ‘Brawler’ Mahler. It was nothing but an exercise manual, a battered old workout book written by some ex-army type. Monty had picked up the book in a second-hand book shop, but he handled the thing like a holy relic — sometimes he even called it his ‘Bible’. He was constantly making incomprehensible notes in the margins, or sticking cut-out snippets of newspaper articles to the pages with a little glue-stick. He’d even sketched things in there, filling the margins and the white spaces between blocks of text with doodles that meant nothing to Boater but obviously held some kind of meaning for him.

Nobody else was allowed to touch the book, and Monty even kept it locked in his safe on the rare occasions when he wasn’t carrying it with him. But Boater had glimpsed the contents of the open pages on his boss’s desk several times, and the things he’d seen there — scrawled, glued and scribbled — were distressing. As far as he could tell, Monty had noted down, among other things, brief snatches of foreign languages, random words and phrases and odd bits of poetry. He had sketched partial maps and diagrams and scribbled monsters on the pages. The book now resembled the decor in the rooms inside a madman’s head, and Boater had actually become afraid of it, or more precisely what it might represent.

A book… he was scared of a fucking book. How stupid was that?

“We could learn a lot from the Romans,” said Monty, placing the book on his desk and unfolding his short legs so that he could set his feet on the floor. “Sorry to bore you with this, Francis, but it’s interesting. Hard bastards, they were, the Romans. Bummers and pederasts to a man, but they were fucking ferocious fighters when they had to be.”

Boater shuffled his feet on the carpet. He had no idea what was expected of him, he never did when Monty started acting this way. “Yeah, boss. I’m sure.”

Monty spread out his hands on the neat, uncluttered desk and slowly shook his head. He closed his eyes and opened them again. “You’re a simple man, aren’t you? A few beers with the lads, a bit of frisk in the car park when the pubs chuck out, and a quick shag with whatever slapper you manage to drag back home with you at the end of the night. Simple pleasures.” He paused, waited for an answer.

“Maybe.” Boater felt his anger rising. He didn’t like to be spoken down to like this, not even by Monty, the most powerful man he knew. It sent him crazy, burning him up inside. It made him want to lash out in every direction. He glared at his boss, approaching an imaginary line, one he knew he would be a fool to cross.

“I’m not trying to insult you, Francis. Never that. You’re a good man. A top man. You’re my top man. But sometimes even you must think about the nature of existence. How and why we’re here, on this fucked-up planet. There has to be more than fucking and fighting and drinking. Doesn’t there? I think about this stuff a lot. Ever since I was a kid I knew this place — the Grove — was special. Things happen here, things that aren’t meant to happen. Stuff that doesn’t happen anywhere else.”

Not unless you’ve had enough drugs, anyway , thought Boater, trying not to smile. The rage was gone; it had passed quickly, like a brief spell of bad weather.

Boater had heard a lot of this before. It was Monty’s pet subject: the theory that the Concrete Grove was a place where forces converged, and ghosts and monsters could be seen. Sometimes he would go on for hours, his monologue deteriorating the longer he talked and becoming more and more like a sort of personal code. It was worse when he was drunk or high; those times he sometimes came across like a religious maniac, thumping the table and shouting and yelling about all kinds of weird shit.

“I know you boys think that this is all just bullshit. But it’s not. There’s a lot of documented facts available, if you know where to look, who to ask, what holes to dig around in. Recorded UFO sightings and ghostly apparitions. Stories about poltergeists and shape-shifters. It’s all around this area, throughout history — the Lambton Worm, the Laidly Worm, the Hexham Heads, the Cauld Lad, the fucking Beast of Benton… so many myths and folktales. Did you ever think that these stories might all be part of a single, greater myth?”

He scratched his cheek, leaving red marks on the orangey, clean-shaven flesh.

“That’s what I think. There are others, too, who think the same way. I’m not the only one.” He picked up his faded copy of Extreme Boot Camp Workout and held it near the side of his face, as if listening to the paper. He gripped the spine, the pressure of his fingers flaring out the edges of the pages. “I bought this in a second-hand book shop in Morpeth. This was way back in, oh, about 1980. I’d been on a dirty weekend with some married tart — she liked to go walking up there, in the countryside. She liked it outdoors.”

The ghost of a smile crossed Monty’s face, but rather than settling Boater’s nerves it made them jangle. He’d seen that exact same smile before, usually when Monty had been reminiscing about violence.

“Yeah… good times.” The smile slipped, fell. “I already suspected that this place was special, that there was something weird going on. I’d spoken to a few people, and even seen one or two things myself that I couldn’t really explain. Then, it was as if this book was meant to fall into my hands. I picked it up and flicked through the pages, and on page twenty-nine I found a hand-written notation. Do you want to know what it said? I’ve read that phrase so many times now that I see the words whenever I close my eyes.”

Boater didn’t want to hear. He really didn’t. But he found himself nodding, betraying some inner compulsion for self-torment. Even though he’d heard the phrase repeated a hundred times.

“The note said: ‘The Concrete Grove is a doorway to Creation’.”

The pause that followed felt vast and dramatic, and filled with so many different meanings that it made Boater’s head ache.

“That’s Creation , with a capital C. It was my first clue, my first pointer. After that it was just a matter of sifting through old books, listening to pensioners tell me their fucking crazy stories, the stories nobody else would ever take seriously. If a scientist wrote a book and made a list of all the ghostly sightings and unusual activity that’s gone on here, he’d see that it was well above the national average. It’s a melting pot of the supernatural, mate. A fucking melting pot .” He shook the book, making the pages flutter. “And I’ve made my own notes, in here, for years now. Lots of notes, and a lot of other weird shit I can’t even understand: signs and symbols from history books and parchment papers kept in old church crypts.”