The One Safe Place

by Ramsey Campbell

  "I'm thinking, James."

  "Actually, it's Mr. James."

  "Then maybe you should say Mr. Travis."

  "Whoa," the reporter said, or a word that sounded like it, and threw up his palms as though Marshall had pointed a gun at him. The gesture brought Marshall unexpectedly close to remembering, though even as it was taking place the shooting had seemed like a nightmare he'd already had, and the memory found words for itself. "He tricked me."

  "You can say that again, son. Drugged you without your knowledge. You weren't responsible in the eyes of the law. Over the worst by now, is he, Mrs. Travis?"

  "The doctors say so."

  "And what do you say, son?"

  "Sure." The question, and the hot noisy kaleidoscope surrounding him, were distracting Marshall from the issues he wanted to clarify, except mightn't they be best kept to himself while his mother could hear? "I was trying to save him," he made himself say instead.

  "The other boy, that is. You didn't know then what he'd done to you, obviously. Is it right he was being abused?"

  For a moment Marshall thought he was being asked whether Darren had deserved it. "Yes," he said. "I was aiming for the guy who had him."

  "To stop it, you mean, of course. Yes." Having answered for Marshall, the reporter raised his pint of beer to him. "I hope you aren't blaming yourself. You always hear them say it in films, don't shoot or you might hit the other person. You'd never handled a gun before, had you? No wonder you missed. I would have."

  "I didn't miss."

  The reporter lowered his glass slowly as he reached for his notebook. "You didn't?"

  "Mr. James—"

  Marshall interrupted his mother. "He lifted Darren up just as the gun went off."

  "Darren being the boy. Darren Fancy, wasn't it? Some surname. Exactly what nobody would." The reporter had found nothing further to write after all. "Looking back now, how do you—"

  "Drink up, Marshall, or bring it with you. They've announced our gate."

  "Just another couple of questions while he does that if I may, Mrs. Travis. Is it true you're leaving because of the possibility that someone related to the people who were shot might seek revenge?"

  This time the rap of the glass on the table was so sharp that a policeman looked hard at Marshall's mother as she stood up, hefting her bag.

  "Tell me, do you make a living asking questions like that? Do you consider yourself to be a professional?"

  "I'm sorry, Mrs. Travis, if I—"

  "Too late. Get your bag, honey. Leave the drink. I'll buy you another when we're through the gate."

  The policeman was still looking, but Marshall couldn't tell whether his hand was flickering toward the gun at his hip. Presumably not, since he turned away as Marshall's mother thrust the strap of the flight bag into Marshall's hand. As Marshall felt his fingers close around it, and his legs begin to walk in the direction his mother was urging, the reporter said, "I'm sorry if I gave you the impression I wasn't on your side. I'll tell you now, son, I think you did us all a favour."

  Marshall felt his mother grip his elbow, not so much steering him as driving him past the table, but he hesitated long enough to hear what the reporter added. "Got rid of one bad apple and if you ask me, another that would have ended up just as bad."

  Marshall was being urged past the policeman, close enough to reach out and unbutton his holster. His mother didn't slow down until they reached the security check, where a man with a ponytail was advancing and retreating through the alarmed arch, and having to divest himself of keys and coins and his brass-buttoned denim jacket. She visibly didn't relax until both she and Marshall were through the arch, out of the reporter's territory, and not much even then. She bought herself another gin and it, and for Marshall a Coke in a bottle, which felt like being on his way home. He bought a paperback about true crimes from the bookstall, and found his mother rattling the ice cubes in her glass as though she was trying to grind them into water. She seemed to decide not to say what she was thinking, then did. "If anything that stupid insensitive clod said bothered you—"

  "It didn't, mom. You don't have to worry about me anymore."

  However true that was, it was one more thing he should have left unsaid, because he sensed it was having the opposite effect. At least her concern for him remained silent while he read about executions, which he did on a seat among the duty-free shops, and on another by the boarding gate. Once they were aboard the airplane he concentrated on the faces of those passengers who were already seated, and then the faces which ballooned toward him down the aisle. Few of them looked like criminals, but of course it would be a mistake to think that criminals always did.

  The stewardesses offered boiled sweets from baskets as the plane began to taxi through a downpour, and Marshall took a sweet as soon as a basket reached him. It made no sense to suspect everything—you had to learn what to be suspicious of. Once the stewardess was past, his mother nodded at her purse. "Do you want..."

  "It's all right, mom. I won't need those." The doctor had prescribed him far more tranquilizers than Marshall thought were necessary, but at least his mother hadn't even mentioned them for weeks. He gazed at the rain zigzagging down the window, slicing the view of the runways into jigsaw pieces. He watched the stewardesses enact their safety mime with smiles which must be designed to reassure but which managed to suggest to him that the routine was something of a joke—the opposite of the nervousness with which it had infected him on the reverse of this flight. He wasn't the same person, he thought as the plane gathered speed and the lines of rain on the glass straightened and stretched horizontal before splitting into fragments like a Morse transmission meant specifically for him. Then the land tilted and plummeted away, and the plane pierced the grey sky, which erased a vista of houses that looked poised to slide in disarray down the green fields to the horizon. Grayness arrested the plane, and Marshall's mind too, and he was struggling to work his mind loose of the thick vagueness when it sank past the windows, transforming itself into a sunlit field of white.

  The blaze of sunlight felt like a promise of Florida. He basked in it for a few minutes, until his attention was caught by the shadow of the plane on the clouds far below him. It was encircled by a rainbow, and both of them were so small he imagined wearing them for a badge. He turned to point them out to his mother, but she was asleep.

  She needed a rest from worrying about him, and besides, he couldn't share everything with her. Soon he'd be able to show her she no longer had reason to be anxious for him. Soon he wouldn't have to keep reminding himself that he was as sure of his life as she was of hers, so that the world ceased to resemble a cartoon of itself which he was trying to inhabit. She was going back to teach in Florida, and he knew what he would be when he grew up. They weren't running away, and it was his duty to ensure they never had to again.

  He wished he could have explained to the reporter. If any of Darren's family wanted to follow, let them come. The only one Marshall would have cared about was dead. When he'd heard that Darren's mother was in prison for her involvement with a robbery he'd gone back to the house one day to find out what he could, and had learned from a neighbour that the old man had died in his bed.

  Though the news had enraged Marshall, it had also proved him right about the Fancy family. When he'd told the reporter that Darren had tricked him, he hadn't been trying to explain away his own actions. Of course he was responsible, whatever the reporter said. He hadn't missed. Darren had deserved it as much as the man who'd tried to use him as a shield had. However pathetic criminals managed to look, Marshall was no longer going to allow that to matter to him.

  His mother gave a small protesting moan, then her eyes ceased to range about behind their lids as whatever dream she was having subsided. He saw the aisle beyond her, and remembered how on the last flight they'd had a trio of seats, his father occupying the far one. Much as he loved his father, there was one mistake for which he might never be able to forgive him. He had to lear
n from it, so that he at least would keep his mother safe from any threat the world was saving up, not just the dogs.

  He shoved his book into the pocket of the seat in front, and gazed at the face of a dead criminal as the plane lanced the sky. Far from running away, he was going back where things were done right, where the law as well as criminals was armed. Once he was old enough he would join the police, and if by any chance they wouldn't let him join—if they failed to understand what he'd had to do at the Fancy house—he would still own a gun. Let George S. and his cronies try to fuck with him then—let anyone. His father had taught him the most important lesson of his life, and so, he was forced to admit, had Darren. "Always make sure your gun is loaded," he whispered, and smiled at his mother as she moaned once again in her sleep.