The One Safe Place (32 page)

He had to be sickening for a fever. His hands and feet were sweating, and he had a growing impression that something unpleasant was about to happen inside him or around him, or both. He stepped back, observing how the window looked boarded up with dust and sunlight, and then his gaze dropped to the sidewalk. He was treading on his father's blood.

He recoiled and found himself pressing his back against the wall of the shop, one hand trying to grab a lump out of it. He could no longer distinguish the stain on the flagstones, or could he, very faintly? Had he seen it more clearly before, or had he glimpsed it only because he knew it had once been there? He shouldered himself away from the wall and began to circle the area of sidewalk, trying to find an angle from which the unyielding sunlight wouldn't confuse him. Then a dark spot appeared at his feet, and another.

The spreading drops were too dark for rain. As he jerked backward, a trail of them spattered the sidewalk. They were dripping from the heel of his right hand. He'd broken the cup by gripping it too hard, and cut himself. He fumbled the cup into his other hand and stared at the sticky liquid that was beginning to trickle into his sleeve. Even when he managed to see that it was brown, not red, he had to stop himself searching for a cut, and when he licked the trickle off his palm it didn't taste quite like Coke. His legs scraped together as he ran to the nearest trash bin. Looking up from dumping the cup into the throat choked with garbage, he saw the Arndale Centre ahead. Somehow he'd approached his father's shop by as indirect a route as he could find. It didn't matter now, nor did his memory of having seen the inside of the bin gulp as though swallowing the cup, because so many buses stopped alongside the Arndale Centre that he was sure of finding one to take him to his mother.

Or should he go home and lie down? He felt indecision thickening around him until he succeeded in grasping that he could decide once he was on the bus. He saw a green man jump and hesitate before commencing a dance to beckon Marshall across the road, along with a random selection of people whose walk he tried to imitate in case any of them noticed he was supposed to be in school or that something was wrong with him.

The roar of the buses hit him in the face. He tried to keep walking toward them, through a square arroyo bridged overhead by the same sandy rock, but the noise was so loud it was dislodging sand from cracks in the bridge—he could see it faintly in the air and feel it gathering on his forehead. Terrified of being crushed by either the bridge or the noise, he ran around the outside of the mall to the street which admitted no traffic.

There was still far too much noise beneath another section of the underbelly of the mall, which he saw lowering itself toward him, absorbing the light as it came. He was surrounded by people who'd taken their faces into the dimness for reasons he didn't want to think about, let alone see happening. He dashed onto the open street and forced himself to slow down, because he was going to have to walk to the University, although by the time he did that, wouldn't his mother have gone home? A woman wheeled a stroller in front of him to show him her doll which looked and sounded almost like a crying two-year-old, but the words on slabs above the shops were reminding Marshall that he'd neglected to deal with the bookshop sign. He ought to go back, except for having to avoid a wagon that was crawling toward him on the brushes on its wheels, poising itself to dodge after him if he dodged. He couldn't tell how fast it was moving or how far away it was. "There's no traffic here," he protested, and heard his voice isolate itself and draw attention to itself—its accent, its aggressive petulance, the way its intonation seemed to mean he was denying the existence of the wagon—and saw inflated heads bob up from collars and nod toward him on the thick strings of their necks. He dodged them and the wagon, then veered away from the hi-fi speakers that were shop doorways, trying to hammer his brain flat with sound. Even if he wouldn't have been able to take down the sign he ought to have written his father's dates on it, or would that attract vandals to smash it like the headstone? Water thick with sunlight began to bulge his eyes, and he was rubbing them clear when he almost tripped over a figure seated against the wall under the window of a clothes shop—a man dressed in a sack or an old coat, which he'd pulled up over his head and draped around a grey dog on his chest. The animal must be dead, because it was grey with dust, and so was the stubble covering much of the man's caved-in face. Were his eyeballs coated with dust, or were his eyes shut? The head fell back, the face began to move, which ought to mean he was alive, except that it appeared to be coming to pieces. Everyone else in the viciously bright street was ignoring him, and Marshall retreated before he would have had to cry out, and found he was facing a telephone booth, one of half a dozen standing back to back to protect one another. He didn't need to phone, he'd been to the shop, his father would tell his mother where he was. He heard what he was thinking, and having thought it frightened him so badly that he ran into the open booth, struggling to dig the University phone number out of his brain. Something came to meet him: a face in the glass of a notice above the phone, a face which was eager for him to see what it looked like and which was bloating through the glass to drag his mind in. As he fell back he saw the sky begin to quiver with the scream that was fighting to burst out of him. The sidewalk exploded into his face, all its eyes gleaming blackly, its grey wings clattering like smashed stone, and he fled into the nearest entrance to the mall.

Or was it a mall? He seemed to have walked into a wardrobe as wide as a main street and full of clothes on either side of him. Maybe it was a street whose two layers of shops were crushed beneath a roof. It was stuffed with voices which couldn't escape because of the roof, some of which Marshall was certain were discussing him. "He isn't fooling me..." "Coming in like that..." "Who does he think he is?" "About time somebody was told..." "I'd break every bone in his..." A woman's face was crinkling and losing definition as the air leaked out of it, a man's was so pumped up that Marshall saw moisture drifting over the eyes, the way it did on the surface of a bubble about to burst, and he floundered onto an escalator to leave those sights behind. As he clung to the rubber snakes despite their writhing in his hands, he saw that he was being raised toward tanks brimming with urine on the underside of the roof. He was walking backward fast in case any of the tanks cracked when a voice breathed "Watch it, son" in his ear and a body as plump as the voice pressed itself against him. The tanks were only full of yellow light, Marshall was almost sure, and he just had a very bad fever and had to get home. He'd give the buses behind the mall another try, he would make himself do that after he returned to the bookshop in order to... He faltered while he tried to think, stairs snapping at his heels, and then Plump shoved him away from the top of the escalator. Marshall went staggering toward a block of shops, one of which emitted a series of shrill quick beeps. "Not me, I didn't steal—" he cried, and saw a woman dragging a toddler back into the drugstore and snatching a packet of tampons out of his hand, which meant that Marshall needn't have made himself conspicuous; why couldn't he keep his voice to himself? Because he had a fever, an awful kind of fever, a hideous and loathsome and shameful kind of fever, which was making him taste how it would be if one of the tanks spilled its contents on him. He scraped his tongue against the back of his teeth as he sent himself along the walkway above the exercise yard, praying that none of the prisoners would look up and notice him. Was he heading for the buses? There was a uniformed guard at the end of the walkway, and Marshall only had to prepare his question in advance so that he wouldn't hesitate longer than was normal, or speak too fast, or betray himself by his tone, or his expression, or the way he stood, or how he walked toward the guard. "Can you tell me... Sure you can, it's your job... I mean, may you, could you tell, I need to know..." Then he saw that the guard was sticking out his tongue and farting with his lips, and felt a wild grin wrenching his own mouth open to let out a laugh that might sound more like a scream. But the guard was only doing his best to amuse a woman's second head, a baby that was peeking over her saliva-coated shoulder, and Marshall hurried toward him to apologise for having been about to laugh. The baby waved a hand, the guard stuck a finger in the carnivorous plant it became, and someone took hold of Marshall's arm. "Hey up, Marshall. Where you going?"

Marshall turned his head, feeling the cords of his neck drag at the flesh over his collarbone. The mall zoomed backward to isolate the other and bring him into sharper focus. He looked older than Marshall, maybe because he was an old man shrunken small enough to wear a boy's track suit, and his neck was clamped with a device hissing with electricity. Marshall tried to jerk his arm free, but the other held on, muttering, "Hey, it's all right. You're with me, Marshall."

His voice was undecided whether it was high or low. Marshall recalled that state overtaking his own voice when he was on television, and wondered if he was being filmed now; that would explain the unreality surrounding him. His companion did appear to be a boy, however thin and pale and however cobwebby under the eyes, and his presence was the only reassurance Marshall had. Indeed, he was beginning to look elusively familiar. "Are you in my class?" Marshall said.

The boy's face flickered and rearranged itself. "We aren't all as clever as you, lad. I've seen you round the school. Any road, where do you want to go?"

Would Marshall's mother still be at the University if he went there? He shook his wrist out of his sleeve, feeling the bones shift inside the flesh, and peered in dismay at the nest of swarming bits of blackness under the glass of his digital watch. "What time is it?" he pleaded.

"God," the other boy said incredulously, "give it here."

Marshall was scrabbling at the catch of the metal strap when the boy grabbed his wrist and twisted it so as to look at the watch. "Half four."

Marshall's mother would be through or almost through by now, unless she stopped to talk to anyone, or maybe he could phone her to ask her to wait there for him, though if she had already left he would only be wasting time, and if he couldn't read his watch he mightn't be able to dial either, particularly since he'd forgotten the number of the University and please not his home number as well... "I want to go home," he heard himself trying not to wail.

"I'll take you if you want. I know where you live."

Marshall was terrified that if he doubted the claim the boy might abandon him, yet his voice said, "Where?"

"Off Wilmslow Road."

Marshall tensed himself so as not to collapse with relief. "How'll we get there?"

"Howl yourself. On a bus if you can't pay for a taxi."

Marshall groped in his pocket, but seemed unable to insert his entire hand, though he was sure he had before. Had his hand grown or the pocket shrunk? "How much?" he said some of, consonants sticking to his lips.

"It's all right, lad, the bus'll do us. Come on or we'll miss it."

Since the boy appeared to be as anxious to take him home as Marshall was to be there, Marshall's limbs became familiar again and carried him after his saviour. He was past the guard and on a street which he needn't remind himself was actually an upper floor when the relief that had flooded through him froze, and cracked, and let a wave of panic overwhelm him. His legs jerked him onward while the rest of him shivered, and he was wondering if everyone in the mall was too disgusted by his appearance to want to acknowledge him, when he saw ahead of him a pillar with a mirror as tall as the ceiling for each of its four sides. The boy he was following slipped out of the nearest mirror, making way for the thing which had reached out of the depths of the phone booth. It was dressed like Marshall, and nearly had his face, except that a doll's head had been substituted for the skull beneath the mottled pink flesh which it was pulling slightly but horribly out of shape. Only the terrified eyes in the sockets cut out of the flesh looked entirely human. He felt the misshapen plastic poking at his face from within. His hands were fumbling up his cheeks toward the raw edges of his eyes when the apparition vanished from the mirror, because the boy had grabbed his arm and tugged him a couple of stumbling steps. "Never mind that. Don't let it fuck your head up. Don't look."

There seemed to be a promise of reassurance in the way the boy had known he must intervene and how, and so Marshall pleaded, "Do you know what's wrong with me?"

"Some bug everybody's getting, it'll be."

The notion that everyone around him felt like him shook Marshall from head to foot, so violently he couldn't tell when the shaking turned into soundless laughter that jabbed at the inside of his chest. "That's it, Ma, have a bit of fun if it helps," the boy said. "Only don't make too much of a show of us."

When he called Marshall his mother the boy meant his name, and when he'd talked about a bug he had meant an infection, but Marshall was afraid that if he didn't laugh aloud he would see an insect pretending to be part of everyone around him, or might laughing make him cough his own bug up? He trailed after the boy, between shops that kept trying to flicker toward him. He mustn't move too fast in case anybody thought he'd stolen from one of the shops, though mightn't they think he had if he moved too slowly? The hairy mound on top of his guide's head escorted him down an escalator, and his panic had begun to subside when he saw he was descending past a cage as high as the mall and fluttering with birds. He clung to the clammy rubber snake and twisted his head round to stare back, attempting to see whether the shops were really cages, until he was unable to swallow or breathe for the dragging at his neck. "We aren't at the zoo, are we?" he gasped.

"Aye, and you're the monkey. Get a grip, lad, there's the bus."

The boy was indicating a sign above the corridor beyond the screeching birds. One of the words on it did appear to be "buses," interpreting a symbol whose incomprehensibility at once spread to the word, which perhaps wasn't "buses" after all. The arrow attached to the word was unable to keep still, but the boy must be confident of its direction, because he led Marshall to the end of the white corridor, where the windows showed darkness outside. How long had Marshall been lost in the mall? "What time is it now?" he cried.