He drives to the massive, circular concrete wall erected around what is now known as the ‘Green Zone’ and parks his car near the twenty-four-hour security station. The wall guards know him well; he was recently promoted to the newly created role of Green Zone Task Force Commander. The title makes the role sound far grander than it actually is. He is simply an attaché. But he has a good relationship with most of the guards, and sometimes he plays a game of cards or just sits for a cup of tea and a chat.
The baby always falls asleep during the drive. He wonders if it is the movement of the car or some other, deeper feeling that sends the baby into a slumber.
The security lights are bright. It feels right that light is shone constantly onto the estate. Beyond the high walls and the razor wire, beyond even the reach of those arc lights, a vast darkness deeper than any other he has ever known lies in wait. Nobody is sure if the security guards are protecting this area from the outside or protecting the outside from its influence. The official stance is that they are just “keeping an eye on things”.
Sometimes, when conversation lulls in the security station, or if he decides to walk along the walls for an inspection, he can hear the muted rustling of leaves and undergrowth, the creaking of branches. Occasionally he thinks that he hears a faint clicking sound, like chattering teeth…
He has not seen behind those walls since they were erected, but he has been told that there is now a forest in there — and at its heart there stands a grove of ancient oaks whose leaves have turned black. The roads and houses outside the perimeter are half-buried relics; the concrete ruins are like the remains of a lost civilisation, choked by the calcified remains of trees. No flight paths are allowed in the airspace above the wall. Whatever is in there, they are still trying to keep it hidden, at least for as long as they can.
The wall follows the line of what used to be known as the Roundpath. It contains the plot where the Needle once stood. It’s just a small patch of land, and yet he has heard reports that the area contained within it goes on for miles. Part of him knows this cannot be possible; another part of him believes it implicitly.
Within the next few months, an expedition will be sent behind the wall. He hopes this isn’t a mistake. Whenever he stands here, looking up at the wall, he is reminded of the film King Kong… Skull Island, another massive wall, and a hungry monster living in the landscape beyond.
All the survivors of what happened a year ago were relocated. Many of them sold their stories to newspapers and magazines and appeared on TV chat shows and documentaries. Handheld footage from mobile phones appeared on YouTube. Blurred digital photographs were reproduced in newspapers and magazines around the world. Over the last twelve months so much has been said and written about those events in the Concrete Grove that sometimes he feels like it’s a fiction — and he is merely a character in a book that’s still being written, or has yet to be written.
Some of those survivors are dying. The official verdict is that it’s a form of cancer, but he isn’t so sure. He’s heard rumours of tumours formed on the skin like bunches of black leaves. Of bones transforming into what seem to be blackened twigs and branches and breaking through the flesh.
Whatever this is, it isn’t over. In fact, it might have just begun…
He thinks of the dead and what he owes them.
Most of all, he remembers Erik Best and Marc Price — who still has not been found.
And he thinks of Abby Hansen and how she now protects the ageless Gone Away Girls, taking care of them in an old orphanage up in Scotland, where the press and the public cannot touch them. He thinks fondly of the Girls themselves, and how they never age, never speak of what they have seen and done. They just sit there, staring patiently into the distance, as if they are waiting for something.
There are so many unanswered questions. A new world order is waiting to slide into place. Mankind can no longer feign ignorance of the numinous.
Perhaps one day the answers to all questions will be found beyond those thick, high walls — one of the regular expedition groups might even find something of use in that dense primeval land.
Whenever he drives back home from these nocturnal visits, usually with the first faint rays of the sun kissing the horizon, he returns to bed and holds his wife. He hangs on to her as if she is a lifeline. He doesn’t want to ever let go.
Every once in a while she mumbles something in her sleep: a word that he thinks sounds a lot like their daughter’s name. They called their baby Hope, because that’s what she represents.
He kisses his wife’s shoulder, her neck, and then whispers secret, wordless promises into her ear as she sleeps.
And he waits quietly for the darkness to pass.
‘The Concrete Grove’ by Gary McMahon
IT KNOWS WHERE YOU LIVE…
Imagine a place where all your nightmares become real. Dark urban streets where crime, debt and violence are not the only things to fear. Picture a housing project that is a gateway to somewhere else; a realm where ghosts and monsters stir hungrily in the shadows. Welcome to the Concrete Grove.
This deprived area is Hailey’s new home, but when an ancient entity notices her, it becomes something much more threatening. She is the only one who can help her mother as she joins in a dangerous dance with loanshark Monty Bright. Only Hailey can see the truth of Tom’s darkest desires as he tries to become part of their family. And only Hailey can lead them all to the heart of the estate where something older than this land stirs and begins to wake…
‘The Concrete Grove is McMahon’s most accomplished work to date. A compelling novel of extremes.’
‘There’s a new wave of brilliant horror writers, and McMahon’s right there at the top of them.’
‘McMahon’s visionary sense of the supernatural makes The Concrete Grove one exciting read.’
‘Silent Voices’ by Gary McMahon
IT’S CALLING YOU BACK…
Twenty years ago, three boys staggered out of an old building. Missing for a weekend, the boys had no idea where they’d been, but they all shared the same vague memory of a shadowed woodland grove. Now, Simon has returned to the Concrete Grove to see his old friends and unearth painful childhood memories, and things once buried are beginning to claw their way back to the surface.
The hummingbirds are flying again. Nightmares made manifest walk the streets. A dark entity is calling from the shadows, reaching out to three terrified boys who have grown into damaged men. And the past is about to catch up with them all, staining their lives with a darkness they never truly escaped.
Silent Voices is the terrifying follow-up to McMahon’s award-winning The Concrete Grove.
‘There’s a new wave of brilliant horror writers — and McMahon’s right there at the top of them.’
‘Gary McMahon is one of the finest of a new breed of horror writers.’