The Concrete Grove

abandoned room.

“Go back in there.” She pointed over his shoulder, and finally he seemed to glean some kind of understanding. Lumbering like an injured beast, he turned clumsily on his heels and staggered back inside, closing the door behind him. Smoke billowed out around the edges of the door, and Lana felt no guilt for sending him away to burn.

It’s for the best, she thought. What the hell kind of life could he ever have? He’s ruined; this place has ruined him, just like it ruins everyone.

They walked quickly back to Tom’s car with the sound of sirens slicing the air, cleaving it like blades as the emergency services raced towards the estate. Someone — a rare concerned neighbour — must have noticed the smoke or the flames and called the authorities. The sirens drew closer as they reached the vehicle, and when they closed the doors they could still hear them clearly, as if the windows were rolled down.

“What do we do now?” Tom started the engine.

“We get away from here. I need to look at this book, see if it gives me any clues to where that fat bastard might’ve taken my daughter. It’s all I have to go on. He won’t hurt her, I know that now. From what Bright said, the fool seems to think that she’s his only shot at salvation. Funnily enough, she’s probably safer with him, wherever they are, than she is with me right now.” She smiled, but there was no humour there. It felt more like a scowl.

They drove away from the Grove, heading out towards Far Grove.

“Where are we going?” Lana stared through the windscreen. She could see firelight reflected in the glass.

“My place is less than five minutes away. You can look at the book there, and it’s my turn to show you something.” He was gripping the wheel so tightly that his knuckles had turned white.

Lana turned over the book in her hands, inspecting it: Extreme Boot Camp Workout by Alex ‘Brawler’ Mahler. It sounded ridiculous, like something you’d buy on a satellite TV shopping channel. The binding was frayed and dirty and the edges of the pages were worn thin by Bright’s fingers. She opened a page at random, and saw an extract from an A-Z pasted across the middle pages of the book, obscuring the text and several printed diagrams of a man performing exercises.

The glued page was a map of the Concrete Grove, and someone — probably Bright — had handwritten words over certain areas. ‘Skeights’ was one word, this one scrawled over the section representing Beacon Green. ‘Croatoan’ was another. These words looked simultaneously familiar and utterly alien — like historical artefacts found under the soil in a backyard. She’d seen the second word before, but couldn’t recall where.

A thick arrow, marked in blue ink, pointed off the page in the direction of the council refuse tip close to the old Near Grove train station. There were other words, other phrases, some of them in what looked like a foreign language. Lana couldn’t make out what any of this meant, but she knew it all added up to something important.

‘Twins’ (this one gave her a twinge), ‘Channels’, ‘Captain Clickety’, ‘Hummers’… all words that must have added to and expanded upon Bright’s private mythology of the Grove: keywords and buzzwords signifying events and knowledge that had died along with him.

Located at the centre of the page, directly over the centre-fold of the workout manual, was the Needle. Someone had drawn crude shapes that were meant to be trees. They’d even coloured in the leaves a dark shade of Crayola green. A big red cross had been inked there, and gone over so many times and so heavily that the pen had torn through the paper. ‘Locus?’ said the word — which was also a question — written next to the cross.

Suddenly she knew where the fat man had taken Hailey.

“Stop the car,” she said, turning to face Tom. It all seemed so obvious. She couldn’t believe it had taken her so long to make the connection.

“I am. We’re already here.”

She glanced up through the windscreen. The house was in darkness. “Why aren’t there any lights on?” Tom had pulled up in the middle of the road.

“I told you,” said Tom, taking the keys from the ignition and opening the car door. He stepped out and crossed to the kerb. “I need to show you something.” His voice was strange: low and husky, as if his throat had tightened.

Lana got out of the car and followed him across the road to the front of the house. She left the book in the car but didn’t even notice its absence. The book had given her all the information she required. “Tom, she’s in the Needle. He has her in that fucking tower. Come with me, help me get her out.”

He walked along the drive and stopped outside the front door. Then, without saying anything, he took out his key and opened the door. He turned to her, smiling, and motioned for her to follow him inside. Then he stepped into the house, leaving the door wide open.

Lana knew that she needed to go back to the Grove, to get to the tower block while everyone else in the area was distracted by the fire. The sirens were still wailing, but they had stopped moving. The fire brigade and police must have reached Bright’s gym and begun the process of extinguishing the flames. But still, she walked along the drive and stood at the open door, with one foot resting on the doorstep as she peered inside.

“Tom?” She called into the house, but there was no reply. It was dark in there, but she could make out a figure in the entrance hall, standing at the bottom of the stairs.

Lana took a step inside. “Come on, Tom. Let’s get Hailey, and then we can get away from here. We can hide out up in the Highlands, or somewhere. Find a place where they’ll never catch up with us.” She knew she was lying: there was no way out of this, not now. The best she could hope for was to save her daughter. Little else mattered.

Tom was standing over the body of a very large woman. She was motionless, and lay face-down at the bottom of the stairs, her nightdress hitched up to show her massive, creased legs and her saggy, crumpled buttocks. Her head was twisted brutally to one side, forced around at an unnatural angle.

“It attacked me,” said Tom, staring down at the woman’s corpse. She was clearly dead: her face was as white and crumpled as old linen sheets. “I fought with it, and we fell down the stairs. Powerful beasts, these things. So, so strong… like a fucking ox, or something.”

“Tom… what are you talking about, Tom?”

His head spun around to face her. His eyes were huge, eating up the residual light in the room. “This,” he said. “The fucking sea cow.” He kicked the corpse but it barely moved. It was too heavy. “Clickety-clickety- click.”

She ignored that last part, unable to even grasp at its meaning. “This… this is your wife?”

He shook his head. “Don’t be stupid. I don’t know where Helen is. This is the sea cow. It took her place, and it attacked me. Up there.” He raised a hand and pointed up the stairs.

How the hell had she managed to get up there? She was paralysed from the waist down. Had he dragged her out of bed and up the stairs only to throw her down? “Tom, I think you need to take a look at her and try to focus. Really look at her. Look at your wife.”

He was crying now. “I wish I knew where she was. I need to find her, to make sure she’s okay, and then we can leave. You, me and Hailey. We can leave all this shit behind us and start a new life.”

“Tom.” She was losing patience now. The old Lana might have taken the time to talk him down, to make him realise his mistake, but the new Lana, the warrior woman, couldn’t spare the time or the effort. “I’m going now, Tom. I’m going to get my daughter. You’ve killed your wife, do you hear me? You killed her. I can’t help you, not with this. There isn’t the time.”

He sunk down to the floor, onto his knees. Slowly, with great care, he reached out and began to stroke the dead woman’s fleshy cheek. Her eyes were open. White foam was dried around her mouth, like a crust of salt. “Where’s Helen? Such gentle creatures when you see them on telly, but you’re not gentle, are you? You stole my wife.”

Lana turned away and made her way slowly to the door. When she stepped outside, emerging into the cool night air, she reached behind her and shut the door firmly, making sure that it was tight to the frame. She could at least do this for Tom: give him some peace and some time to figure out what he had done.

In the distance, over the estate, the sky was bright with reflected flames. She could see the Needle beyond the capering yellow light, sticking up like a thick, grey finger pointing towards the stars.

“I’m coming, Hailey,” she whispered as she started to run. “Mummy’s coming.”