The One Safe Place

by Ramsey Campbell

  Videocassettes spilled out of the bag as Marshall dumped the boxed pizza on the counter. "Who sent you those?"

  "Ross at Blockbuster," Don informed him, having discovered a letter among the cassettes. "Well, will you look at this. All I did was send him a couple of movie books that are only published here, and he's sent us a bunch of the movies I told him I couldn't believe were censored in Britain. Stallone and Arnie and Steven Segal. Some of your favourites, and maybe some for your mother to use with her students."

  "Can we watch one tonight?"

  "What, a student? That's called voyeurism."

  One of the men cleared his throat, and the other coughed as though they were exchanging mating calls, and it occurred to Don that the conversation might be embarrassing either or both. He made space on the counter to open the pizza box and lifted out a slice, tilting it to catch streamers of melted cheese. "How much change was there?"

  Marshall disengaged a slice and blushed. "Can I pay you back when we get home?"

  "Sure, but in future I'd like you to ask first. You still haven't told me how much."

  "Sixty pees."

  "It's a good job Mr. Disapproving isn't still around to hear you mauling the language. I hope I get to share the candy."

  "I didn't buy any."

  "What else does sixty pee buy, or is it a secret?"

  "I didn't buy anything, dad."

  Don chewed fast and swallowed. "Don't tell me you were robbed."

  "No, dad, of course not, truly."

  "So are you going to explain the vanishing trick?"

  Marshall held up the remains of his slice of pizza in front of his face and lowered his voice. "Dad..."

  "You'll drip cheese if you're not careful."

  "Dad, there was a lady and her baby sitting on the sidewalk outside Pizza Hut with a card saying they were homeless," Marshall said rapidly, and chomped on the slice.

  "Okay, Marshall. That's nothing to be ashamed of, for you to be, I mean," Don told him, and realised Marshall was embarrassed by being overheard. "It's all right, son. Nobody's listening but me."

  As though to confirm this, the man who'd been pulling books half off the shelves nearest the door approached the counter, lowering his perceptibly unequal eyebrows and opening his large loose mouth. "Have you Holding Onto My Lamppost by George Formby?"

  Don laid the remains of his slice of pizza on the open lid of the box. "Excuse the lunch. Is that a record?"

  "It's his life story told by him."

  "I can't say I've come across it. I don't suppose you brought any napkins, Marshall?"

  "Sorry, dad."

  "How about Room for a Little One by Arthur Askey?"

  Don used his handkerchief to clear away a strand of cheese which he'd become aware was drying on his chin. "No again, I'm sorry. All the books on theater and film—"

  "One Hand on My Fiddle by Ted Ray? Twenty Years in Knickers and a Dress by Arthur Lucan?"

  "They're British... ?"

  "Of course they're British."

  "I was going to say theater and film are over in that corner, only I don't recall those names."

  "Too British?"

  If the man wanted books on British comedians, which Don took them to be, why had he been browsing in the criminology section? He didn't even seem particularly interested in the answers to his questions; he kept glancing toward Marshall as though the sight of pizza being eaten held a disagreeable fascination for him. Nevertheless Don said, "Sorry," but was sorry that he had, since the man turned brusquely and headed for the door. "Should be called the Sorry Shop," Don was half convinced he heard him mutter.

  "I should bag those videos while we can distinguish them from pizza," Don advised Marshall, and the man went into rewind. He was backing down the steps to make way for a woman preceded by a wheeled tartan basket full of books. He left the shop as she drove the basket to the counter and raised her small flat face beneath its grey thatch to Don. "You don't just sell books, do you?"

  "Just sell, no. Sell just, yes. What have you, oh." The lid of the basket had flopped open, exposing a haphazard heap of Reader's Digest Condensed Books, which—along with the magazine itself, and car repair manuals, and By Love Possessed, and The Red and the Green, and almost anything by H. G. Wells which wasn't science fiction and hadn't been filmed, and books which debunked the occult rather than gulping it down—it was his experience that more people wanted to sell than to buy. "Anything besides those?"

  "They're improved, those books. They don't take as long to read."

  Don had the distinct impression that he wasn't the first bookseller whom she'd found less than enthusiastic. "Some of the authors mightn't feel improved," he said.

  "They're paid, aren't they? More than they're worth, most of them, if you ask me. Folk nowadays haven't time to read these big fat things you've got gathering dust."

  "You'd be surprised how fat you can be and stay popular." Don saw before he'd completed the sentence that he might have worded it more tactfully, since she wasn't what anyone besides her family was likely to call slim, but he'd been distracted by realising that the second suited man had at some point slipped out unnoticed by him. "I wonder sometimes if I'll see the day when books are sold by weight."

  She could have taken that as some measure of agreement, but she only rocked the basket as though to soothe the books. "You're from the States, aren't you?"

  "Could you tell by the pizza?"

  "By the accent," she said in a tone which made him feel smaller than Marshall. "So are these books."

  "I can only apologise." Most of his mind was on trying to identify whether any stock had vanished with the man. His words having caught up with him, he said, "Have you thought of trying the markets?"

  "I've more than thought. Are you not even going to look at them?"

  "If they're all in that format..." When she only stared he said even more feebly, "I really wish..."

  "God, I'd like to land you all such a thump." For a moment the woman resembled a bulldog about to leap at him as representative of his profession. Instead she towed the basket as far as the steps before casting a disparaging glance at the pizza. "You'd think you were running a takeaway," she said, and left a trail of rubbery bumps behind her all the way to street level.

  Marshall finished the last mouthful of his half of the pizza. "Never mind, dad."

  "I don't. Fun of a kind, I thought, didn't you?" As that provoked Marshall's version of his grin, Don set about checking the shelves. "Have half that last slice if you want," he said, though the encounters with customers had left him feeling hungrier than ever.

  At least no books appeared to have been stolen, and after that the day started to pick up. A young woman with a trace of paint under her fingernails bought more than two hundred pounds' worth of illustrated Victorian books from the display in the locked bookcase, and a researcher from Granada Television bought a rare first of No Orchids for Miss Blandish for his producer and a variety of review copies for himself. A reviewer with a hip flask peeking from his back pocket brought in at least a dozen new unread hardcovers, one of which the author of a novel Stephen King had found unputdownable had been unable to relinquish. Marshall finished the book he was reading and took a breath and commenced that one. Don rang the future owner of And But, who spent more than half their brief contact in shouting at her dog, then he turned to listing the books he'd bought during the past month but not yet sold.

  He was enjoying handling and describing them when Marshall emitted a sound of surprise. No book he read was deemed to be much good unless it earned at least a few audible gasps, and so Don didn't look up until he heard, "Mom, you're early."

  "Shall I go away again so you can be men together?" Susanne shaded her face as she descended the steps, and when she took her hand away her long snub-nosed wide-mouthed face seemed to glow with the light in her large eyes. Her hair the color of sunbleached corn swayed forward as she leaned across the counter to kiss Don and then Marshall, who glanced over he
r shoulder in case anyone saw him. "Good day so far?" she said as Marshall returned to his book.

  "Eventful is the word that springs to mind. Are we still on for dinner at the Koreana and a movie at the Cornerhouse, or does the look you aren't quite keeping to yourself forebode a change of plan?"

  "I'll go along with you guys. By eventful you don't mean anything I should brace myself for."

  "No, only anecdotes to amuse you over dinner. But I'm sensing you have another kind of news."

  "Well..." She glanced at Marshall, then leaned close to blow softly at his forehead. "Honey."

  "Ye," Marshall said as if he hadn't time to choose a final consonant, and crouched over the book.

  "Marshall."

  "Marshall."

  Hearing them both speak made him look up reluctantly. "What?" he said in the tone of someone wakened from a good dream.

  "Nothing too terrible. I'm sure it shouldn't be," Susanne said, and dug in her canvas tote bag. "I've written it all down. It won't be for a while yet anyway. Only Marshall, don't mind if you maybe have to see that man again who broke into our house."

  6 A Trial

  Once Marshall was past the security check and upstairs in the waiting area outside the courtrooms, the building reminded him more than ever of an airport terminal. Beneath the high ceiling of the white hall longer than his street the almost floor-length windows might have overlooked runways rather than people pursuing trajectories across a paved square. Next to the windows bunches of six square red armchairs, rows of three stuck back to back, faced one another all the way down the room. An electronic bell sounded two notes, and Marshall wouldn't have been altogether surprised to hear a flight announcement, but a woman's amplified voice said, "PC Pickles please attend Court 13." Nobody in sight took any notice—not the gatherings of bewigged barristers robed like some of Marshall's teachers, nor the people scattered about the armchairs, most of whom appeared in various ways to be trying not to look like criminals—except for a toddler who began to wail, adding to the echoes mating beneath the roof. A man whose head was shaved so close it seemed a metal plate was showing through the skin released the baby from its stroller and bounced it on his knee, and a man with a wig clasping his head as far down as his ears came forward like Dracula to meet the Travises. "Thank you for being so punctual. We shouldn't be kicking our heels long."

  He was the barrister who'd visited their house and quizzed him about the intruder, Marshall saw, and heard him say, "Could the young man sit out while we just have a word?"

  "Won't you need him as a witness after all?" Marshall's mother said.

  "Mom, I want to."

  "I would hope there won't be any difficulty at this stage, Mrs. Travis. If we could..." the barrister said, flattening one palm to indicate a door beside the entrance to the nearest courtroom. "You can amuse yourself for five minutes, can't you, young man?"

  "Sure," Marshall said, feeling his face grow hot and his mouth twitch into a helpless smile, and wishing he'd thought to bring a book. "Sure," he repeated to let his mother hear how unconcerned he was, but she gave him one of the looks she often gave his father, which said that both of them knew the truth, before being ushered by the man into the room.

  A statue of a draped woman with no pupils in her eyes was lowering her hands to indicate two armchairs whose foam was exposed by gouges in the plastic. Marshall sat on one of their neighbours, but when he felt its tripe of foam shift uneasily beneath him he stood up to read the notices posted outside each courtroom.

  The Crown vs. Philip Fancy. So that was the man's full name. It made him feel suddenly present, and Marshall had to suppress a nervous burp as he stared about at all the people who weren't surmounted by a wig. Reading that the case was being tried by Mr. Justice Melon was reapplying that smile to his mouth when he glimpsed movement to his right, beyond the glass doors which led to the stairs. He glanced that way and saw the identikit portrait coming toward him.

  It wasn't a portrait, it was the real face rendered flat and colourless by the coating of sunlight on the glass. The doors were shoved aside, and the face split into three and blazed with sunlight and advanced on him.

  For a moment which felt like never again being able to breathe Marshall thought they were all somehow the man who'd forced his way into the house, and then he saw none of them was. One was too fat, the others were too young. Nevertheless he wanted to emit the kind of cry which sometimes wakened him from nightmares as, having veered toward the first courtroom and away after a prolonged contemplation of the notice, they converged on him.

  He dragged his head around and fixed his stare on the notice. He was surrounded by a smell of new suits and aftershave and deodorant not quite cloaking sweat. The echoes closed around him to drown him, a burp which tasted like too much breakfast rose to his lips, and a voice said almost in his ear, "Here's the fucker."

  It wasn't until the trio moved away that Marshall realised the man hadn't been referring to him. A taste of cereal and eggs and English sausage filled his throat, and he floundered between the glass doors and fled down the stairs to the men's room.

  The twin of the outer door admitted him with some reluctance to a white room where two cubicles presented Engaged signs to him. In one of them a man was discovering how many different speeds and inflections he could use to moan "Oh God." Marshall stumbled to a washbowl and splashed cold water on his face, and felt his face drip, at which point the pressure within him relocated itself to his bladder. He lifted his head to the mirror and grimaced at the hair peeking over the back of his head, he ran his comb under the faucet and plastered his hair down with water so nearly hot it came as a shock, and then he raced to the nearest urinal and unzipped himself.

  He closed his eyes and tried to sense which muscles needed to be used, but the whole of his groin had been overtaken by an ache. He took hold of his penis and wagged it, appreciating how much bigger it was since West Palm Beach, but what good was size if it didn't work? As he shook it hard enough to make it twinge he heard the inner door judder, and saw its tiny misshapen reflection opening on the pipe above the urinal, and a figure bulging through it. "I thought you must be in here," his father said. "They're nearly ready for you."

  "I won't be—I'm just—"

  "I know the feeling." His father stood at the adjacent urinal and unzipped himself amid the silence which had fallen. "Just let it come, I used to tell myself. Just relax. Try thinking of a stream running down a mountain. Try waving it about a bit," he said as someone else came in.

  Marshall's giggle at the thought of that being overheard shifted the dam. He was jetting pleasurably when a second newcomer said close behind him, "Isn't that fucking—"

  "Fucking right it is, Ken."

  They were both the younger men. Marshall felt as though he was tethered to the bowl by his urine, and sensed that his father couldn't turn either. When a bell went off overhead he jerked so much that his stream almost swayed out of the bowl. "PC Harry please attend Court Four," said the voice which the bell had announced, and the bolt on the door of the non-groaning cubicle slid back to release a policeman in uniform. "Come on, dad," Marshall whispered, and zipped himself up. "You said they were waiting."

  "Give a man a chance to micturate." Marshall's father produced a last trickle and shook himself off and packed himself away, and as he turned from the urinal Marshall saw he hadn't realised who was in the room. The policeman was keeping an eye on the room in the mirror while he washed his hands, and seemed more interested in the Travises than in the two men swaggering to the urinals. As his father pushed him out of the men's room Marshall gave a hiccup that tasted stale. "Don't worry," his father said once the twin doors had thumped shut, "they can't touch us."

  Until his father had said that Marshall had believed it, and why should it become untrue because it had been said? They were making so much noise in hurrying upstairs he couldn't hear if they were being followed. He felt safer in the long hall planted with barristers, where echoes and his mother
came to meet him. "Won't be long now. The lawyer says just tell the truth the way you told it to him and you'll be fine."

  It wasn't until Marshall sat down outside the courtroom that he saw he'd walked past the third man with the face, who was watching him from the row of chairs less than ten feet away and breathing so hard Marshall was almost sure he could see the nostrils widen and narrow with each breath. The younger men barged through the glass doors and caught sight of the Travises, and said something to each other which showed their teeth. They stalked forward to sprawl on either side of their relative and stare at Marshall.

  He could stare back. He could stare at each of them in turn, except that he felt as though they were paralysing his eyes in the sockets, around which the skin was beginning to jerk. The men could only stare, and he was with his parents in a place devoted to the law. He swallowed the taste of altogether too much breakfast, and his mother sat forward. "Excuse me, would you mind not staring?"

  The six eyes fastened on her, and a virtually identical grin appeared on all three faces. "Fuck off, you silly slag," said the younger man whose name wasn't Ken.

  Marshall's father slapped his knees preparatory to standing up, and the speaker and Ken shoved themselves to their feet. "What you going to do about it?" Ken snarled.

  Marshall's father sat back and displayed his upturned palms. "I'm open to suggestions."

  The man looked as though he might spit on the floor with rage. He took a step forward, clenching his raw fists, and wrenched his arm free as the older man tried to detain him. Surely if he spat someone would intervene—surely they would before he reached Marshall's father, or was everyone too confused by the echoes to notice what was happening? Then the door to the courtroom swished open, and a woman in robes but no wig strode out. "Marshall Travis, please," she called.