Gary McMahon - The Concrete Grove

She’d given birth, that much was obvious. Her belly was hanging in such a way that it was clear something had recently vacated it. She pushed the loose flesh aside, inspecting the area beneath. There was blood on Hailey’s pubes, and stringy matter pasted to the inner surfaces of her legs. The blood was congealing; it was not running fresh. Whatever had occurred, it was over. The damage was done.

“You’ve had a baby?” She could not believe that she was saying the words.

Hailey laughed. It was an awful sound: empty and uncomprehending. “No, Mum. Not a baby. I’ve deliveredsomething, but it certainly wasn’t a baby.” Hailey’s voice sounded strange, like she was a grown woman and not a little girl. She spoke like an old crone, battered and beaten by life’s traumas but not yet ready to lie down and quit.

Lana decided to change the course of the conversation, to give Hailey some room in which to find her focus. “Where did the TV come from, honey?” She rubbed her daughter’s forearms, as if she were trying to warm them up, to help circulate the blood in her veins.

“Tessa’s mother brought it over. Late on, after you’d gone out.”

Lana had no idea who Tessa was.

“That was nice of her.” She kept rubbing Hailey’s arms. She couldn’t stop. “I’m sorry, honey. Mummy couldn’t make it better.” Tears ran down her cheeks and she stroked Hailey’s cold wrists. “I tried, I really did, but I couldn’t manage it. I’m sorry for your illness, I’m sorry for the things we’ve seen and done. I’m sorry your daddy isn’t around to see how beautiful you are.”

Hailey’s eyelids flickered, and then her eyes slowly closed and opened again. They were completely white, without a trace of pupil or iris. She opened her mouth and a trail of saliva ran down her chin. She was having some kind of fit. Another one.

Lana grabbed her daughter by the shoulders. “Hailey?”

Hailey’s body began to shake. Lana was almost used to this by now, but combined with everything else she was going through it seemed much worse this time.

“Oh, Hailey. Oh, honey.” Lana cradled her child in her arms and reached out to something she didn’t believe in. If there was a God, or some kind of greater power that watched over the fallen, then why would it not answer her pleas? The doctors were useless; they didn’t know what was wrong. None of them could make a proper diagnosis. Maybe all she had left to rely on was whatever might be listening to her prayers.

The shuddering motion stopped. Hailey pushed herself out of her mother’s embrace. Her eyes were normal again. White flecks of spit speckled her chin.

“The Slitten,” said Hailey, her voice low and cold and even. “They’ll help us. Just ask. Ask .”

After everything she’d seen lately — and all the horror she’d experienced in Monty Bright’s basement room — Lana was ready to believe in anything. Any slim hope offered to her looked appealing, even the private fantasy belonging to a damaged teenager. She let go of Hailey and shuffled backwards on her knees, clasping her hands in a clumsy prayer. She lowered her head and gathered whatever energy still inhabited her battered body.

“ Just ask .” Hailey’s voice was a whisper, an echo.

Lana stared at her hands, clasped before her in an idiot’s plea. Suddenly this seemed like an absurd children’s game. She pulled her hands apart and wiped them on the front of her dress, as if they were covered in dirt. “No. This is stupid,” she shook her head. “Like I said before, it’s just fucking stupid.” She stood and walked over to Hailey, manhandling her in a more aggressive way than she first intended. “Let’s get you cleaned up. I always seem to be doing that lately.”

Hailey said nothing. She just allowed herself to be led to the bathroom.

Lana ran the hot water until it was steaming, and added just a little cold so that the water was tolerable to sit in. Then she helped Hailey undress and guided her into the bath. The room was filled with steam. The window glass was opaque. The surface of the mirror was like a cataract-blinded eye. She felt close to a place where all of this made some kind of sense, an alternative world in which pain was simply a method of gaining entry, where trauma was just the price of admittance.

She put Hailey to bed and then took a shower to relax — the faulty shower head decided to work on the third attempt, the water spluttering at first but then flowing with renewed force. But no matter how many times she bathed herself, Lana knew that she would never be rid of the stain of this evening. She was polluted; her body had been changed by what she’d allowed those men to do to her. And the sight of Monty Bright as he shed his wetsuit had imprinted itself on her mind, altering the geometry of her brain forever.

After her shower, she dressed in clean clothes and returned to Hailey’s room. The girl was sleeping, lying in exactly the same position as when Lana had left her before midnight. The girl’s eyes moved rapidly beneath waxy lids; she was seeing something other than the depressing sights around her. Maybe even something wonderful. Lana reached out and stroked Hailey’s forehead, fighting back tears.

Hailey’s eyes opened.

“ Just ask .”

Lana took away her hand. She stared at her daughter’s pale face, at her dull, hard eyes. Then she relented. If it made Hailey happy, she could at least do this for the girl, feed her crazy little fantasy.

But somewhere deep inside her, where her hopes and dreams lay dry and withered, like dead flowers, hope stirred.

Lana closed her eyes, once more pretending to pray.

“Help me. Please help.” Lana’s voice sounded different. Her words felt strange as they left her throat. They were like solid objects regurgitated into the room. The words had shape and form: they were alive; and once released, they went out in search of something incredible.

When Lana opened her eyes, Hailey was sitting up in bed, wide awake now. The expression on her daughter’s face was one of bliss, like a child on Christmas morning. She held her hands together in front of her chest, and then slowly, and with great intent, she began to unbutton her nightdress.

Lana leaned back. “What are you doing, honey?” That faint fluttering of hope was gone; the fragment of belief was spent. There was nothing here in this room but a girl who had lost touch with reality and a mother who had failed to protect her.

“I’m summoning them.” Hailey’s breasts looked bigger than when Lana had bathed her earlier; they spilled out of the open neck of the garment, full and firm and lactating. Watery milk striated with pale crimson streaks leaked from the rigid nipples, drawing wet lines down Hailey’s bloodless, paper-thin chest.

Lana stared at her daughter’s body. It had changed. Something beyond understanding had happened.

The sound of rain clawing at the windows. But it wasn’t raining; hadn’t rained for days. Spindly, twig-like shadows crept across the walls and ceiling, pasting darkness upon the walls; the bricks and floorboards creaked as if in preparation for the arrival of something glorious. The air turned dusty and grey light seeped from invisible cracks to baptise the room.

Gossamer filaments drifted down from the ceiling, like the webbing of a spider, but longer, firmer, thicker. At the top of each frosted strand there was a small bundle, like an oversized, blackened fist, which slowly began to unfurl and reveal a lighter underside. Dusty petals opening. Striving for the light.

Lana stared at the ceiling, and at the things making their way down towards her.

“What are they?”

“The Slitten.” Hailey bared her chest to the room, throwing back her head and closing her eyes in an expression of near ecstasy. The Slitten responded en masse . Scores of them dropped like desiccated spiders from the ceiling, rolling across the floor towards the bed. They were shadow and half-light, lines and slashes, more thought than substance. Their features were vague, like stolen shards of daylight trapped in sealed rooms, and their limbs were many and sharp-clawed. When Lana stared straight at them they became blurred, lacking focus. But when she looked off to the side, they solidified and took on form in her peripheral vision. Their desiccated reptilian mouths gaped. The ragged holes in their crisped bodies showed only hollowness within. They were like living fossils, the calcified shells of reanimated prehistoric beasts.