Gary McMahon - The Concrete Grove

It was a feeble joke — desperate, really — but in that moment she loved him for even trying to lift the mood.

They walked along the side of the bridge, holding hands and looking up through the steelwork at the wedges of bright sky visible between the girders. Traffic grew heavier and as they approached the south side they began to see people making their way across the arching eye of the Millennium footbridge towards the old Baltic Flour Mill. There must be some kind of exhibition in the new gallery; the redevelopment of the building had raised the profile of the area and brought with it a fresh interest in the local art scene.

“I know a little place where we can have coffee. It’s nothing flash, just a greasy spoon café where the taxi drivers go.” Tom led her sharp right off the end of the bridge, heading down Bottle Bank, where there was a row of old shop fronts, most of them boarded over. “It’s just down here.”

A few taxis were parked at the kerb on the narrow cobbled street that led back down to the river’s edge. Set amid the timber-boarded frontages were two premises that had not succumbed to financial ruin. One of them was a taxi rank and the other was a tiny café with no name and badly whitewashed windows.

They went inside and sat down at a low table. The place was gloomy; not much light could get in around the patches of white on the window glass. If she twisted her head and leaned across the table, Lana could catch a glimpse of the street outside. “Nice place,” she said. “How many Michelin stars does it have?”

Tom laughed. “I used to do a lot of business round here, when these were all going concerns. I have a few clients on Gateshead High Street, too. Whenever I’m in the area I come in here for a morning coffee and a read of the papers. Nobody bothers you here. They all want to be left alone.”

There were three other customers in the café. A skinny middle-aged man with a facial twitch sat near the toilet door reading a battered paperback novel, and two other men sat in silence drinking milky tea from large mugs.

“They’re all taxi drivers,” said Tom. “Nobody else even knows this place exists.”

“Except you.” She reached across the table and stroked the back of his hand.

“Yeah, except me.” He stood and went to the counter, where he ordered two black coffees from a shapeless woman in a long grey sweater and grubby jeans who appeared from a door to one side. She went back through the door and emerged less than a minute later with two mugs filled with what looked like tar.

“You expect me to drink that?” She took the cup Tom offered her as he sat back down, peering into the contents and pretending to be disgusted.

“Just think yourself lucky I didn’t ask for it with milk. At least black it’s drinkable. Just about.” Tom added sugar to his mug from a chipped bowl on the table. The end of the teaspoon was frosted with an off-white crust and the discoloured clusters in the bowl looked like singed crystal meth.

Someone turned on a radio — probably the saggy woman who’d served them coffee — and a droning traffic report filled the empty spaces in the room.

“I have to ask you something.” Lana curled her fingers around the mug. The coffee was hot, but she liked the way it made her skin hurt. “Something important.”

Tom took a sip of his drink and put down his mug. “I’m listening.” His swollen face looked better in the dim light. Not so damaged.

“I plan to-,” she licked her lips. “I plan to kill Monty Bright. It’s the only way out of this I can see now. I have to kill him.” Just saying the words in daylight, even at such a low volume, forced Lana to fully consider their true meaning. It didn’t sound so bad, she thought. Not in terms of the chaos invading her life. What was a little murder to add to the mix, especially when the proposed victim was no longer even human? “I need to know if you’re willing to help me do that.”

Tom stared at her. His face went pale beneath the fresh contusions. He swallowed. The radio droned on. “If you’d said this to me a few days ago I would’ve run a mile. But now — after everything that’s happened — I’m still here. I’m still listening.”

Lana paused for breath, took a drink of the scalding coffee, just to drive the moment home, and then continued. “He isn’t a man. I think he used to be, a long time ago, but he isn’t now. Not anymore. Prolonged exposure to whatever’s festering in the Grove has changed him into something else.” She examined Tom’s face for signs of doubt, or possibly a hint that he might stand up and leave.

“Okay. Go on.”

“He showed me something that I still can’t quite get my head around. He has these tumours all over him — on his chest, mainly. But they aren’t tumours. They’re not cancers. I think they’re the remains — or maybe even the souls — of the people he’s bled dry with his debt. He doesn’t stop at money. What he wants from them — and what he wants from me — is everything. Everything his victims have to give. He wants it all. He starts with the money, and then the possessions, and then moves on to the flesh. Finally, all that’s left is the spirit, and he wants that, too.”

Tom leaned back in his chair. The legs scraped loudly across the floor, drowning out the radio newsreader’s voice. A fragment of the report caught Lana’s attention: “…the prisoner, known locally as Banjo, last night escaped police custody. He is not considered dangerous, but if anyone knows of his whereabouts they are requested to…”

Lana knew the man they were talking about — it was the drug addict they’d seen trying to rip his own face off in the street. God , she thought. Right now, that seems like it happened a lifetime ago .

She returned her attention to Tom.

He was looking up at the dirty ceiling, as if inspecting it for cracks. Without moving, he began to speak. “Last night my wife physically turned into something else. I meant it literally when I told you that.” He lowered his head and looked at his hands, which he laid out flat on the table. He looked like one of those old-time circus sideshow performers, just before they start to slam a knife into the table top through the gaps between their fingers. “She turned into a creature and attacked me. If it wasn’t so scary it would be funny,” he dipped his head, exposing a tiny bald spot at the centre of his scalp that she’d not noticed before. She wanted to reach out and touch it, to penetrate his armour.

“I think we’ve both moved way beyond the normal now,” she said. “The decisions we make here, the way we act, will define how this all ends. If we ignore the obvious — that there’s something, well, supernatural , happening, then we’re fucked.” Talking about these things made her feel that she was actually doing something to fight against the situation. In all the books she’d ever read and all the horror films she’d seen, the main characters only ever admitted far too late that the supernatural had invaded their lives. That was the thing that usually got them killed: a refusal to accept the obvious, no matter how insane it might seem.

Lana was not willing to make the same mistake.

“There’s some sort of power in the Concrete Grove and, for whatever reason, it’s noticed us. Killing Monty Bright won’t send it away, but it will get rid of an immediate threat and give us a chance to think about what we do next.”

Tom rubbed a hand through his hair. He winced as he did this, causing his injuries to flare up in fresh pain. “After what happened to me last night, I’m willing to believe that anything is possible.”

The radio broadcast changed to a music chart show. The woman behind the counter turned up the volume and began to hum along to the tune. Her feet shuffled dryly across the dusty, crumb-littered floor.