Gary McMahon - The Concrete Grove

Sunlight cut through the grove’s canopy, knifing the air and creating prison bars of light around him. Morning had arrived in this place without him even knowing that the night had ended. Boater sighed; the sound was weak, barely even there at all.

“I’ll watch over you,” he said, his voice breaking off, fading away. “I…” There was nothing more. He could no longer form the words in his spongy, fungal mouth.

The girl was still hovering above the ground, borne on hummingbird wings in a facsimile of flight. Like a broken angel she hung there, her school uniform hanging in tatters, one shoe on and the other cast away, where it sat beside an eruption of vine leaves. She swayed in the air, unsteady yet in no danger of falling back to earth. Her guardians — the birds that had taken over from Boater as her protectors — would not allow such a thing to happen.

Beyond the grove of oaks, in the denser, sun-dappled growth, large forms moved. Trees creaked and moaned; animals scattered through the undergrowth. Something was approaching, and its intentions were as unclear as everything else here — friend or foe, good or evil, the thing could be anything and everything combined.

Boater had realised as he sat there, sinking into the reality of the grove, that whatever forces converged here, they were ambivalent. Neither good nor evil, they simply existed, waiting for a time when they could be harnessed. Everything here was protected, and hidden within the fabric of the housing estate which had been raised upon the site of the original magical grove. He could see all of this playing out before him, like a projection on a screen. He was now a small part of the history of the place.

If only Monty Bright knew the truth. Perhaps then he would stop looking for something that didn’t exist, other than inside the mutated husk of his heart.

LANA STOOD BEFORE Monty Bright as if she were some kind of Old Testament avenging angel. She held her arms out and thrust her hips forward. The Slitten gripped her nipples with their jaws, pinched loose parts of her flesh with their teeth and claws, clinging limpet-like to her body. She could barely even feel them — there was very little sensation, as if the whole of her skin had been anaesthetised.

“I called and they came.” It was true: these things had answered her plea, rallying to her side from the dark places, the spaces between love and hate, fact and fiction… and they were the only weapon she had.

In a moment, they leapt from her body and moved like zephyrs across the floor. Monty Bright barely had time to react before they were upon him, snapping at his legs, his balls, his belly, and tearing at his flesh. She watched with her head turned slightly, so that she could have a clear and unimpeded view of the carnage — she was owed at least that. If she looked straight on, all she saw were dusty shadows converging on a man whose clothing and the skin beneath seemed to shred for no apparent reason.

“Monty!” Terry moved away from the wall. “What the fuck?” To him, this was clearly madness. Lana knew that he could see nothing of his boss’s attackers. All he witnessed was the rending of flesh from bone.

Tom acted quickly, which surprised her. He was so far gone by now that she’d expected him to just stand there, like a lost little boy waiting for his mummy to come and save him. But he moved quickly, heading off Terry’s assault. The two men came together, colliding at a point to the right of Bright’s desk.

They went down fighting. Lana watched as Tom rolled on top, grabbing at his opponent. Terry put one arm — the prosthetic — up to ward off the blows, but Tom’s movements were so savage, so compelling, that the arm started to come loose from his stump. The straps gave way; the plastic limb slid down his jacket sleeve, and Tom was left holding it. He stared at the glove-clad hand, the thin metal pistons and the plastic casing, like a child shocked by the complexity of a new toy.

Then, reacting quicker than Terry, who was still wedged beneath him, Tom began to beat the other man about the head and shoulders with his own artificial limb. Under different circumstances, it would have been a comical sight: one man straddling another, and hitting him with a plastic arm. But here, now, sharing a room with monsters, both human and otherwise, Lana felt anything but the urge to laugh.

She turned away when Terry started screaming. Blood washed across his face, into his eyes, his mouth, and rendered his features meaningless.

The Slitten had not taken their time on Monty Bright. Their actions were quick and decisive. He was down on his knees, clawing at the shapes that were crawling across his ravaged body. His suit was torn to shreds, and the wetsuit he wore underneath his outfit and been peeled away in several areas, putting on show his distorted physique.

The faces on his chest squirmed, opening their mouths in silent screams. Arms and legs, hands and feet, knees and elbows, popped in and out of the slashes and gouges in his body. There was no blood beneath the upper layers of muscle: whatever fluids had once kept Bright alive were long gone, and his veins had shrivelled and frayed like liquorice root. His muscle-mass fell away beneath the onslaught of so many small claws, sharp teeth, and Lana saw flashes of dull white bone.

As he fell forward, pitching face-down onto the carpet, the television screens exploded, sending shards of glass in a brittle shower across the room. Burnt, toughened flesh, like scorched leather, sprayed in chunks from the cavities left behind. Whatever monsters Monty Bright had allied himself with were now dead to this world. Perhaps they’d gone back to that other place, the one he spoke of so fondly. Or maybe they had never existed in the first place, and all Lana was seeing were the remnants of Bright’s bad dreams as they turned to filth on the office floor.

Calmly, she picked up her coat and put it on, and then walked past Bright’s twitching form to pick up his book from the desk. The volume had clearly meant a lot to him, so she thought it might contain some useful information.

Bright made a few noises — like high-pitched farts — but then fell silent. The Slitten were receding now, going back to the dust and the darkness. Their job here was done, and she no longer needed them, so the fuel of her desire was spent.

“Thank you,” she said, gripping the book in her hands, pressing it against her chest. She had no idea what kind of power Hailey had invoked, or what kind of monsters their need and desperation had summoned, but at least the beings had not meant them harm. She had the feeling that the energies at work in the Grove were wild, untamed, and only certain individuals could harness them. Hailey had done so inadvertently, but what if Bright had eventually learned a way to purposefully control these forces? For that reason alone, never mind all the rest, he was better off dead.

Flames billowed from the televisions. Each one was like an open kiln, giving off an enormous amount of heat.

“What do we do now?” Tom was standing over Terry. The man wasn’t moving, but she didn’t think he was dead. Not yet.

“Let it burn, she said, feeling nothing. She walked over to Bright’s liquor cabinet and opened several bottles of fine whisky, rum and brandy.

Then she started to pour the fluid over anything that was flammable, even Terry’s supine form. “Let it all fucking burn.”

The flames spread quickly, and as she and Tom left the room Lana heard the sound of someone stumbling to their feet. She let Tom walk out first and then turned around. Terry was down on one knee, holding on to the edge of Bright’s desk. His bloody face was pointed at her, his wide white eyes imploring, asking for mercy.