The One Safe Place (40 page)

He shoved his hand into his pocket to make sure of the coin. It felt thin as tinfoil—felt as though he was rubbing it to nothing as he walked. At least the door of the booth was open wide enough for him to slide in without letting go of the coin. The row of shops was telling him he'd left his father's shop alone in the cold and the dark, but he had to call his mother while he had the chance. He unhooked the orange cartoon of a receiver and its unpleasantly soft shadow, and brought both toward his face.

It was so much colder than it looked that his head snapped away from it, twisting his neck. He tried to hold it just close enough to hear the dial tone, but even when he pressed the earpiece against him it was silent as ice. He stared at it until he was convinced that he wasn't holding it upside down, then he groped for the coin. A sign in front of him said he should wait for the tone before inserting any money, but couldn't the sign be wrong when so many people appeared to have done their best to correct it? He had to hear his mother, had to tell her where he was, but where was he? He fished out the coin, slid as much of it into the icy slot as he could while pinching it between his nails, hung up the receiver and held onto it for a few seconds before lifting it again to his face. It was still dead, and he was losing his grip on the coin, his only coin. He snatched it from the slot and slamming the receiver onto the hook, blundered out of the booth.

There had to be other phones nearby. He hurried past the display of his mother's quivering nerves. He was going to phone, he told her in his head and then outside it, though he wasn't sure how his voice sounded or even, once he'd said it, what he'd said. He was making for the distant city, which should be full of phones—except that the city was on fire, the sky above the charred roofs glaring almost white. No wonder he heard police cars bewailing the situation and ambulances whooping for glee, but where were the fire engines? Maybe they had all burned in the fire; maybe his father's shop had too. The idea felt colder than the night, so that the warmth of the conflagration faded from his chest, leaving him alone. He had to phone his mother to find out whether she was safe. He could ask the women ahead of him the whereabouts of the nearest phone booth.

They were bearing down on him as last as he was walking toward them, past a bus stop which was composed almost entirely of glass or of none at all. He'd begun to tiptoe on seeing them until he remembered that he needn't—mustn't, in case they realised something was wrong with him. He was beginning to wish he hadn't left the house before the medicine the nurse had given him had finished working, but his friend had said the phone in the house was no use. He set about opening his mouth while he had time to prepare to ask where the phone was, a phone, where he could phone, where was a phone, from, where to phone from... A car hurtled by on the wrong side of the road, and he remembered everything had been turned around. His words would come out that way if he didn't control them. "Noph," he pleaded, "rhew noph," not knowing which way around that was or how to turn his sounds into the words that were struggling in his head.

In any case, he didn't think he wanted to speak to the women after all—he wanted to stop seeing how they looked. The orange veils which hung from the streetlamps were collecting on their pouchy faces, dragging them down until he was afraid the flesh was about to slither into the collars of their fur coats, leaving only skulls to bear their crinkly blond wigs. As he saw the skin beneath their eyes growing darker and thinner, preparing to tear, he dodged into the road in front of a car which should have been in front of him, and recoiled onto the sidewalk. He heard the skulls mocking him with a shrill dry giggling which included the clack of their teeth, but he mustn't let them distract him. He'd come abreast of the side road which had produced the furred women. Some indeterminate distance along it, past the remains of streetlamps and several attempts at trees, was another phone booth.

The sound of a plane drove him along the side road. It wasn't the warm lingering rumble he remembered from Florida; it sounded as though the jet was ripping the sky in half. The trees cringed lower, and he ducked so that the end of the rip in the air would pass over him. A house noticed him and flared at him, its vicious light gouging the roadway with the shadow of a tree, but he had to stay on the sidewalk, beneath the meagre shelter of the torn foliage, until he reached the booth. He seized the glimmer of a handle in both fists and heaved the door open far enough for him to be able to worm his way in.

The lid thumped shut behind him, silencing the plane. He felt for the coin and held onto it while he waited for the interior of the booth to become sufficiently visible to let him key his number. Now he could see the receiver trying to climb the wall beside a huddle of digits, next to which was a notice he might be able to decipher if he pressed his face against it, though surely he wouldn't have to read it—his eyes were already trembling with the attempt to distinguish what else was in the booth with him. Under the notice was a shelf on which someone had left a Tesco supermarket bag, the contents of which appeared to be poking out a small head.

It must be a doll. He could distinguish one of its hands now, raised above its ear as though it had tried to pull the plastic away from its face to stop it suffocating. Someone had grown tired of their baby doll—maybe they'd outgrown it—and so they'd dumped it in the phone booth. Why would they have bothered putting it in a bag? Maybe it was stolen and they'd had to hide it, and would be coming back for it, in which case he ought to use the phone while he could. He was able to see the digits now, as clearly as the top of the doll's head with a barely visible hint of fine hair on its scalp. Were dolls usually that realistic? Perhaps only when they were so expensive people stole them. All he had to do to prove it was a doll was examine its eyes, and then he would be able to phone. He reached a hand into the cold stagnant dimness, and caught hold of his elbow with his other hand to encourage himself to reach farther, and hooked one finger over the top of the supermarket bag. The back of the first joint of his finger touched something bulbous and unmoving and not quite as firm as it ought to be: an open eye.

He clutched his mouth and staggered back against the door, trying to unhook his finger from the bag. The plastic slithered down the face, exposing the small dead eyes and snub nose and the mouth, gaping toothlessly as though the baby had cried its last inside the bag. He still hadn't freed his finger. As he floundered backward the baby reared at him, waving its raised hand. If it fell on the floor because of him, he wouldn't be able to bear it. He pushed it away from him, and one fingertip dug into its mouth and touched the dry wrinkled fig of its tongue. He heard its head bump against the wall as he fought his way out of the booth, rubbing his hand on his track suit as though he might never be able to stop.

The sidewalk steeped in dimness appeared to be inching away from him in both directions, carrying the ashen shops of the main road into the fire which had spread from the city centre, withdrawing some undamaged streetlamps farther down the side road. That couldn't be happening, he tried to convince himself. It was only a nightmare he was somehow having while he was awake. Everything he saw was an image in his head. Perhaps that had been all the baby was.

Though he wanted to believe that, he was walking faster than he meant to in an attempt to leave the idea behind. If everything he saw was only an image, how could he grasp what it really looked like? How could he ever see properly again? He struggled to unthink the idea, because he could feel it parting his brain, digging its point deep between the folds of rubbery flesh. He was running now, jumping over any patch of sidewalk which looked capable of tripping him, dodging into another side road when he caught sight of several teenagers perched on a wall, swinging their robot legs while they waited for someone to stray close enough to kick. All the satellite dishes which sprouted from the manure of the houses were flexing their stems, so that he was afraid they were about to swing in unison to find him. Then he faltered, because dancing toward him along the sidewalk was yet another phone booth.

He had to use the phone, however the booth looked. Only the light of a half-dead streetlamp was making it dance. There couldn't be another baby in it, and if there was he would know it was another of his nightmares, although wouldn't that mean he could trust nothing he saw? He had to speak to his mother so that he would know she was safe from the fire. He forced his hand toward the handle of the block of reddish gelatin beneath the dark crimson tube that kept trying to twitch itself brighter. The gelatin jumped and shuddered as he touched it, and so did he. He peeled the door open, the handle squirming in his grip, and made himself step into the booth.

The soft flap of a door wouldn't quite close. He felt on his back the breaths of the mouth he was in. Every few seconds he saw its pulse, blood suffusing the phone and keypad and the rest of the interior. At least he could see nothing on the shelf, even when he fell to his knees and thrust his face into the alcove. He could use the phone—he wasn't in some carnivorous trap which lifting the receiver would set off. He shoved himself to his feet, trying not to touch anything except himself. He took out the coin with his right hand and used his left to unhook the receiver.

He mustn't mind how soft it was. When he brought it as close to his face as he could bear, he heard the dial tone. He inserted the coin into the raw wound, whose edges reddened and winced as he did so, and poked the numbered squares of gelatin with the tip of his forefinger. The mouth around him took another breath, and a phone began to ring.

It had to be at home. He was almost certain he'd entered the right number, even if he'd felt the keys shift as he found them. In a moment he would hear either his mother or the answering machine—either would reassure him that he was still capable of dialling the right number. One pair of rings which sounded so distant and artificial they were hardly even an image of themselves, two, three, and he was preparing himself to expect the machine when a deafening clatter sprang out of the earpiece at him.

The mouth sucked in a breath which turned it red, and the door wobbled toward him. The trap had been sprung. Only the clatter which the mechanism had made saved him. He dropped the receiver, which fell to the length of its tentacle and swung to catch him. He was already throwing himself backward at the door, baring his teeth at its squeal of frustration. Before the receiver had stopped ranging about in its blind search for him, he was on the sidewalk. He was ready to flee—in which direction didn't matter—when he realised that he had to retrieve his twenty pence.

Blood was pulsing out of the booth onto the surrounding sidewalk. Maybe he'd injured it; the door squealed every time it took a breath. He waited for the receiver to grow tired of its search, but it looked as though it was never going to be still. He grabbed the edge of the quaking door with both hands and wrenched it so wide it screeched in agony. He'd broken its jaw, because it stayed like that as he lurched at the receiver and fumbled it into its socket. He dug his fingers into it and lifted it again and slammed it down. There was still no response—no sound of his coin coming back.

He thumped the coin box with his fist before he had time to wonder what it would feel like. It sounded like metal, and felt almost like it too, but the impact didn't dislodge the coin. The money had to come back, he hadn't made a call. He dug a finger into the return chute, and his fingernail sank into something soft which clung to it. He'd fallen for the trap.

When he snatched his finger out of the hole, part of the booth came with it. a pinkish string which pulsed red as it stretched. Not until he was out of the booth did it snap, leaving several inches dangling from his finger. He dashed along the sidewalk in search of anything he could bear to wipe the finger on—not the bloody pointed teeth of the fences, not a stray newspaper which, when he tried to pick it up, spilled small bones, a baby's bones. By the time he found a streetlamp against which to scrape his fingertip, he'd turned a corner and the booth and the distant main road were gone.

He stopped dragging his fingertip down the stony pole once he thought it hurt enough. He almost sucked the finger until he wondered what he might be putting in his mouth to sneak into his stomach and grow there. He was suddenly afraid that his finger would be too painful for him to be able to place another call, and in any case, how could he when he'd lost his only coin? Maybe if he asked to phone from someone's house, and he peered at all the houses crouching on both sides of him as his rapid mechanical trot carried him along a narrow concrete footpath seared bare by lamps. The oil-flare light was too intense to let him distinguish which sets of curtains were lit from within, and when he took a desperate chance and veered toward one of the houses to which the overhead lines were attached it immediately sprang at him, blazing. He stumbled onward, over the litter which the concrete had begun to extrude to catch his feet, and as soon as he had any control of his movements he sent himself toward another house. When it leapt out of its crouch, glaring at him, he knew that any house he approached would do so. They were lying in wait for him—they were controlled by whatever lived at the centre of the overhead web, the thing which grew more aware of him each time he triggered a house. He saw the lines trembling stealthily, and knew it was coming for him. He sprinted for the road at the end of the footpath, beyond which the web mightn't reach. Echoes scuttled in pursuit of him between the fences, or were they above him and not echoes at all? They halted, baulked, as he almost sprawled on the sidewalk beyond the path.

The place looked familiar—familiar enough that he was instinctively aware of some difference. He stared about, feeling his skull shift inside the flesh, and saw to his left a leaning fence supported by its gate. He'd come back to his friend's house, and there was no longer a van outside. It had taken away the people he wouldn't have wanted to meet. He'd turned left from the house, yet here it was on his left, so which way around was he now? All that mattered was that he'd found his way back to where his money was and, better yet, where his friend would be able to give him the message from his mother now that their enemies had gone. He ran to the gate and hauled it open farther, and propped up the fence again before scampering along the path to ring the bell.