The One Safe Place

Ramsey Campbell

First published in the UK in 1995

This epub is version 1.0, first published August 2014

for Peter Lavery
in celebration of such lunches

My wife, Jenny, had even more to do with the book than usual. Once it was done, the excellent Lorraine Beare—alas, now gone to Norwich—saw it through many stages, and it was also given an improving read by Nancy Webber, the kind of copy editor I imagine every writer dreams of. Nor have I forgotten Peter Lavery, as the dedication shows.

I must thank the Adair family for the Florida episode: Gerry for inviting me there in January 1993, Marion for her great hospitality, Jason for lending me his room, and Michael for making sure I was okay.

Ina Shorrock and the, sadly, late Bob Shaw were the weapons advisers.

Eight months after writing chapter one, I was invited onto an edition of
Granada Upfront,
an audience participation show, to discuss video censorship. The resemblance is obviously coincidental. Susanne's teaching in this book owes something to Martin Barker's study
Video Nasties
, an essential book, which might usefully be read in conjunction with John Martin's
Seduction of the Gullible
.

It would be his last walk. A few hundred yards from the house, alongside the chain-link fence which separated the grass of the backyards from the ankle-length grass that bordered the lake, Marshall Travis became aware of holding everything still. An egret lowered its long beak and longer neck imperceptibly to prey among the reeds a quarter of a mile across the bowl of sky that was the lake. A pair of hawks hovered above the forest of palm trees and Norfolk pine between the suburb and the Interstate. Five lizards were frozen where they clung at intervals along the fence, the nearest so close that he could see its left front claw raised an inch, the digits curled like the tips of a fern, and the tiny grey-green bellows of its sides heaving in and out. Then an airliner rose majestically from West Palm Beach, drawing thunder in its wake, a sound which felt as warm and lingering as the touch of the January air. One hawk fell out of the sky, the other swooped after it, and as Marshall took a step toward the forest the lizards were lost in the grass, with only a jingle of the chain-links to show where they had been. He picked his way through the grass, faltering twice as breezes which might have been snakes made it writhe, and climbed the bank which separated the lake from the shallow canal at the edge of the trees.

Workmen had destroyed the bridge he and his friends had built, but now someone had wedged a log across the water that was just too wide for jumping. As Marshall slithered down the cracked earth bank, a frog plopped into the canal. Twigs and Coca-Cola cans bumped the drenched log as Marshall edged across, holding out his hands on either side of him as though feeling for the ropes of a bridge over a ravine, a fancy which reminded him that he would be much higher above the ocean before the sun went down. At once the bark of the log felt loose and slippery, and his need to grab a handhold was robbing him of balance. He had to close his eyes so as to dash to the far end of the log, where fallen branches tore at his legs through his jeans as he sprawled into a giant claw of tree-roots exposed by the bank.

His eyes stung, and a salt taste began to trickle into his throat. "Knock it off, you wimp," he said through his teeth, having sucked in his breath so hard it felt like a dentist's hooks between them, and scrambled up the bank without letting himself rub the ache out of his shins. From the top he could hear the suburb: a car travelling so slowly he guessed that a turtle was crossing the road in front of it, a rotary mower buzzing like a fly close enough to swat, the repeated clop of a jumping skateboard, the old lady who lived down the block from the Travises summoning her cat Bess, the hollow snarl of a motorcycle being tuned in a garage. The car stopped, and Marshall waited until he heard it move away at speed, the driver having carried the turtle to the sidewalk; then he slithered down the far side of the bank toward the first of the ponds which seeped up out of the marsh underlying the forest and the suburb, and made his way along a white sand trail.

The forest touched his bare arms with spider-threads which glinted as they drifted through the air. Bark rattled as lizards fled up trees. Butterflies displayed themselves alongside the path and then fluttered out of reach as though the vegetation was expelling blossoms. Ten minutes' walk brought him to the power lines that stalked through the forest, cables transformed into an abacus by balls of moss. Ahead a dirt road led to the Interstate, which was parallelled by a canal whose banks were studded with shells that would one day be sand. He liked to sit dangling his legs over the bank and watching the denizens of the water, and the notion of saying goodbye to his favourite place seemed to be gathering into an emotion keener and perhaps more lasting than grief.

When the sky began to grumble he hesitated, wondering if this was the approach of one of the T-Storms the weather report on News Channel 5 had announced were Possible. It was a plane, so large or so low that he expected to see the cables vibrate, dislodging the moss. The sound expanded, overwhelming his senses until he thought he could hear other sounds in it. Just as he raised his hands to cover his itching ears the gigantic roar began to shrink, and the illusion of muttering voices dwindled in proportion. The scents of flowers and pine and green water were able to reach him again, and he'd taken a stride toward the power lines when he heard a smothered laugh behind him, and an opened beer can hissed like a snake.

He didn't have to turn. Although the air seemed to have solidified as its humidity joined with his own sudden sweat, he could keep walking. The one thing he absolutely mustn't do was run. He slid one sandal forward, sand grating under his toenails and between his toes. He heard the snap of a branch, and the voice he was dreading to hear said loudly, "Who's that waving his ass at us?"

"Wants us to think he don't know we're here."

"Maybe he's too busy reading a book," a third voice brayed.

Marshall felt small as a lizard, paralysed with one foot raised as he tried to judge how and when to move. "That right, Marsh?" the first voice called. "Been stealing books from daddums' shop?"

"That's not my name," Marshall said, and forced himself to be audible. "I don't steal."

"He don't steey-ill," the second speaker wailed. "What don't he steey-ill?"

Marshall was still facing forward, struggling not to turn. "And I don't talk like that," he blurted.

There was a splintering thud as someone dropped from his perch to the ground, and another. "I'll tell you what he stole," the first voice said.

"You tell it like it is, George S."

"His name, ain't that right, Max? Marshall's a name you only give someone when you know they're going to grow up to be a soldier like my daddy."

"He never stole your dad's name."

"You better believe it, Vic. Or his folks stole it for him. Maybe his momma because her and her kind think the army shouldn't have a say in things no more. Should just do what campus bitches like her say and the world'd be a peaceful place."

"Yeah, full of wimps like Marsh."

"Say, I thought a marsh was something you pissed in."

"Watch, he's going to make us chase his ass."

"Or he's going to stand there 'cos he's too dumb to know George S. is just behind him."

George S. hadn't sounded so close when he'd last spoken, but suppose he'd crept nearer? All Marshall could hear now was his own blood. He mustn't let himself flinch from the impression that a hand was poised to seize the back of his neck. If he could just move slowly enough that they wouldn't notice—He inched his left foot along the path and felt his weight shift forward. Then something sharp thudded into the ground behind him, spraying his legs with sand, and he spun round, his ankles scraping together.

George S. and his cronies were at least fifty feet away, leaning against three pines at the edge of the clump of trees and bushes from which they had watched Marshall pass. George S. was popping his inappropriately soft brown eyes at the beer can he'd just thrown and poking his cleft chin forward and grunting out laughs without moving his face, Max was slapping his thighs stuffed into Bermuda shorts and shaking his belly and breasts and chins, Vic was forcing bursts of air so hard between his pursed lips that Marshall wouldn't have been surprised to see Vic's permanent sunburn flake away around the mouth. The sight of them filled him with a mixture of hatred and contempt and panic, and he didn't know which emotion might get the better of him.

Max patted his stomach as if he'd just finished a meal and was ready for the next one. "Some dance, Marsh. Show us that again."

"And smile when you do it," said Vic in a voice almost as raw as his face.

"We don't want to see no tears in them big baby eyes," George S. said, scraping the heel of his boot down the trunk he was leaning against and tearing off chunks of bark. "You better start learning to jump when you're told, boy. Get in training for going to school with us."

Marshall tried to imagine that the bark was Vic's skin peeling off his face, but it didn't work. He felt as though George S. had injected tears behind his eyes, and if he tried to smile to hold in the tears he would be obeying Vic, but if he didn't move he would feel that his tormentors had taken control of him in yet another way. He heard his mother telling him that his body was nobody's property but his and that he must never let anyone do anything with it he didn't want them to do, but they already were—they were making his eyes and the scratches on his legs sting with sweat, and a nerve turn his left cheek spastic. Max emitted groans of mock sympathy as Marshall rubbed his eyes, and the nerve dragged at the corner of his mouth. Even his expression was no longer his to choose, and his helplessness made him clench his fists and speak. "No."

A wind breathed through the topmost branches and tried to strum the power lines, and he heard a man calling "Shemp" in the far distance, and the creak of relief the tree gave as George S. pushed himself away from it. "What did he just say?"

"He said a little baby word," Vic assured him.

"Sounded more like we made him fart to me," Max said, and began to shake open-mouthed and stare at his companions to encourage them to laugh aloud before he did.

"That's to look forward to." Though George S. was visibly disappointed with his cronies, that only added to the dislike he was focusing on Marshall. "What did you say, Marsh? You want to sound like a soldier, speak up like one."

Marshall didn't know if he was obeying or refusing, but his face wouldn't stay still. "No," he mouthed.

"He said it again, George S."

"Thinks we're so stupid we can't see."

"Nobody says that to me except my daddy." George S. drained another can and crushed it in his fist to aim at Marshall. "Know what pain is, boy? Know what hell is?"

Max and Vic were poised like hounds waiting for their master to give them the word. Vic's face was mottled even redder, and Max was actually panting. Marshall was afraid he might burst into hysterical laughter at the sight of them, but restraining himself wouldn't help: they had already decided his fate. He felt his mouth say "No" and heard Max squeal with mirth. "Maybe that's the only word his momma taught him," Vic crowed.

"He'd better learn not to say it to us," George S. said. "Pain and hell are what you're looking at, boy, and that's what we'll be all the time you're at our school if you don't do what any of us say."

"Let me give him a taste," Max said.

Vic rubbed a hand over the lower half of his face, and Marshall was sure he saw skin float into the air. "Tell what you're going to do, Max."

"Gonna sit on his face and give him a blast of my personal home-made perfume."

"If you're lucky that's all he'll give you. And when he's through, seeing as how your name's Marsh, I'm going to—"

"You're disgusting," Marshall cried to shut Vic up. He saw Max take that personally, shoving his chin forward in a furious imitation of George S.'s favourite stance, though the jowls of which a good deal of his face was composed made him rather resemble a lantern-jawed fish attempting to catch a fly. George S.'s hand rose snake-like and cocked back, aiming the can at Marshall's head, and Marshall knew the talk was over. He twisted around and threw himself toward the only other path which looked as though it might lead home.

"He's ours," George S. shouted, ending with a grunt as he flung the can. The whole of Marshall's back felt like an exposed nerve as he skidded along the sandy path. He jerked his hands up to protect his head and neck, too late. The can cut into him just below his shoulders, and he thought it had cracked one of the discs of his spine. The pain almost blinded him, but he had to keep running before any of his tormentors could retrieve the missile. Then a black dog bounded out of the trees to his left and raced straight at him, and his shins collided with its torso, which was solid as a fallen tree. He went sprawling, and the path dealt his forehead a gritty thump.