“Tell me now, before it’s too late.”
Terry remained where he was, silent and threatening. Tom felt like he and the other man were simply an audience for this confrontation. The meeting playing out before them was like high drama: the finale to a play whose first two acts had been performed in private.
He watched copies of the scene repeated in miniature on the reflective surfaces of the television screens.
“Remember my associate, Francis? The large man. He has her. I don’t know where, he didn’t tell me, and I can’t get a signal on his mobile. Unless, of course, he has it turned off. I think he imagines he’s hunting down some kind of redemption, and your daughter is the means to him finding it.”
Lana’s posture relaxed. Her shoulders slumped.
“I’ve had Francis following your pretty little girl for a few weeks now, but lately he’s turned against me. I wanted him to bring her straight here, so I could put her downstairs, to keep her safe. But he had other ideas. Or maybe she did.”
“What is it you think she can do for you, Bright? A monster like you, trying to put your hands on a young girl. If you think I’ll let it happen, you’re even crazier than I thought.” Her voice was hard and clear. She was unafraid. Tom saw the steel within her, and it was almost enough to make him fearless, too.
“I’ve been looking for a way into somewhere that’s been hidden for a long time. It started for real with this book.” He held up the fitness manual. “It gave me the pointers, and I’ve kept looking for more ever since. It’s all in here: the evidence.” He leaned back against the desk, too short to actually sit on its top. Instead he just rested his backside against the edge. “It’s all in here; all the information I’ve managed to find. There isn’t much, but news about the place isn’t exactly in the public domain. Your daughter found an open door, and she’s been welcomed inside. She reached out and touched the power at the heart of the Grove, and it liked what it saw. She has a strange combination of innocence and yearning, and it seems that was all she needed to get over there, to the place I’ve been kept out of for so long.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? And what the hell is going on with all these TVs?”
“More evidence.”
Right then, as if they’d been waiting for a cue, the televisions sets flickered into life. The damaged screens flared, giving off a dull glow, and there was a series of clicking noises as the old cathode ray tubes sparked into life.
(Clickety-clickety-click…)
“What is this?”
Bright smiled. “Oh, just a little light viewing, to demonstrate what I’m talking about.” He looked at the screens, his face pale and washed-out, like a degraded image of itself.
Tom glanced at them, too.
On each of the screens there appeared the same scratchy, flickering image: a grove of massive trees, and at its centre what looked like a group of men in Halloween costumes. But the costumes were too sophisticated to be anything other than real — these were monsters, plain and simple. And Tom had already been introduced to their human counterparts.
Their legs were long and muscular, bent back like the limbs of giant crickets or grasshoppers. Their faces looked burnt; they possessed the shiny quality of scar tissue. It was difficult to make them out clearly, because the image was so grainy and incomplete, but there seemed to be five or six of them gathered at the centre of the grove of trees — the same as the number of television sets in the room. They jumped and hopped around the clearing, twitchy and excited.
“These,” said Bright, “are my friends. They came to me one night, as I was watching an old porno movie on a TV in some junkie’s squalid little bedsit. I can only see them on old television sets, for some reason. They don’t show up on digital technology. These monsters are old-school.”
Terry took a step forward, staring at the screens. “There’s nothing there, Monty. They aren’t even switched on.”
“Can you see them, Lana?” Bright waited for her response.
Lana simply nodded.
“And what about you — is it Tom?”
“Yes. I can see them.” He didn’t look at Bright. His gaze was fixed on the screens. Amid the crowd of jittering bodies he was sure that he could make out a familiar shape. If he peered hard enough, and concentrated, he could see what looked like a large sea cow writhing on the ground between their massive, concertinaed legs. “I can see.”
“I’ve seen a lot of things here, in the Grove.” Monty’s face seemed to slacken; he was turning inward, lost in his own thoughts and memories. “I remember one night, when I was about seven years old, my mother sent me to the Dropped Penny to get my father. He was a drunkard, good for nothing but pissing his life away…”
Nobody moved; the man’s anecdote, the sheer force of his memories, acted like a binding agent, bringing them together inside the room.
“When I got there, he was regaling his cronies with stories of his youth — utter bullshit, like always, but they were a captive audience. When I interrupted him, he slapped me hard across the face. Instead of letting him see me cry, I ran away. I headed towards the Embankment. I remember the moon was huge… the stars stared down at me like bright little eyes, and when I saw it lying there in the gutter, breathing white mist into the cold air, I thought I was dreaming. It was a unicorn, like in the books I’d read. Something from a fairytale. But its horn had been sawn off about an inch away from its head, and its face was battered and bleeding. So I knelt down and I started to stroke it, crying and still ashamed — still hurting because that bastard had shown me up in front of the whole pub. The beast died in my arms, with me looking it straight in the eye. And do you know what my only thought was, the thing that kept going round and round in my head? Well, I’ll tell you. All I could think of was this: I want to meet whatever did this. I want to see what’s fucking crazy enough to kill a unicorn.”
The silence snapped, like a rubber band stretched past breaking point. Tom could have sworn that he heard it break.
“Monty, I don’t like this.” Terry was losing his grip. It was obvious. He was no longer a threat; his fear was nullifying him. He wanted only to be out of the room.
“Fuck this,” said Lana. “Fuck you and your sad little nostalgia trip. Where does your man have my daughter?”
Bright turned to her, his face ashen in the television light. “I have no idea. Really, I don’t. All I know is that he was following her through the Grove, and he caught up with her. That was the last time I was able to speak to him. That’s why I asked you here, to help me find her. To bring her in so we can find out what she knows about that place — the other grove, and the infinite garden beyond.”
“Do you really think I’d help you find my own daughter? The person I love most in this shitty world?”
“Of course,” said Bright, taking a step towards her. “If the price is right, you’ll do anything. You’ve already proven that. So let’s get this show on the road.”
Tom felt ill. The television screens were flickering. Their plastic shells looked soft and malleable. He thought about the famous painting by Salvador Dali, the one with the melting clocks.
“Yeah,” said Lana, slowly unbuttoning her coat. Her expression was flat and lifeless, like a death mask. Her voice was low. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
The creatures Tom had seen a few seconds ago were crammed to the front of each television set, pressing against the grubby, cracked glass and clamouring to be let out. Their faces were squashed, their limbs folded, their squat bodies pulsed and flexed, forcing the screens outward.
He glanced back at Lana just as she let her overcoat drop to the floor. It formed a black puddle around her feet, like spilled tar.