Free The One Safe Place by Ramsey Campbell Page B

Western. Marshall folded the paper so that anyone he met would see it, and ducked one shoulder through a strap of his bag to walk home.
    Presumably Victoria Park became Fallowfield where the grounds of houses turned into mere gardens and the houses split amoeba-like into pairs. Trees mopped the sidewalks with shadows as a breeze ruffled the upstanding hairs at the back of his head, reminding him to tame them once he arrived home. He turned right by a house the same colours as his uniform, and right again where a large russet dog of several breeds started to bark as it threw itself against a jangling gate. "Only me, Loper," Marshall said, and patted its smooth head as Mrs. Satterthwaite, who designed costumes for the theater, called the dog into the porch.
    Two hundred yards around the corner the street came to a dead end, and one of the white houses which ended it was home. A magpie like a fragment of a piebald house was perched on the second-floor railings, first floor if you were British, but as Marshall approached it clattered into the sky, leaving the street deserted except for several large cars lazing in the sunlight. He unlatched the gate and went up the jigsaw of a path between the flower beds where he and his parents had each put in one new plant, though his seemed determined to keep its flowers to itself. He was resting the newspaper and his schoolbag against the oak door while he inserted the first of his keys when he heard a car door slam behind him. "Hey, lad," a man said, closer to him than the slam had sounded. "Yes, you. Hey, you, lad."
    Marshall turned the key in the mortise lock as he looked over his shoulder. A man was gripping the gate with both hands and pressing his stomach against it. Below his red eyes his face was a mass of stubble and spreading flesh. "Can I help you?" Marshall said as he thought his parents would have.
    The man jabbed a fist at Marshall and stuck a finger out of it. "What the fuck you think you're doing with that?"
    Was he accusing Marshall of having his keys? He sounded drunk, in which case he shouldn't have been driving the black Peugeot which was parked outside the house. Marshall glanced away from him in order to insert the Yale key, and came face to face with the identikit picture which he appeared to be posting on the door. "That's right, take a fucking good look," the man shouted. "Don't you tell me that's me."
    The key scraped across the circular plate of the lock and dug into the wood. Surely someone would want to know what was going on, the man was making so much noise and taking so much time about it. "I'll have him for saying I look like that," he shouted ponderously, and Marshall heard the gate clang against the garden wall. "Donald Fucking Travis Booksell. When's he home?"
    He wasn't close enough yet to prevent Marshall from unlocking the door if he did so at once. That wasn't his hand on the nape of Marshall's neck, only nerves. Marshall forced himself to slow down for the second it took him to locate the slot in the plate and slide in the key before withdrawing it the fraction of an inch that would allow it to turn without a struggle. It turned, and the newspaper face grimaced with the crumpling of the page as he shoved at the door with it, and felt breath stirring the hairs on the back of his neck. "Get in, lad, don't muck about," the man muttered. "We'll wait for him."
    The door yielded less than a foot and stuck, wedged by the day's mail. Marshall could slam it, dodge around the man, cry for help)—except that as he pulled the door toward him, fingers dug into his shoulder and a fist like a veined knobbly hammer was thrust into the gap between door and frame. "Don't fuck with me, lad, less you want a kicking," the man said, and used Marshall to shove the door wide.
    The vestibule was more spacious than two phone booths, but now it felt small and dark. The impact with his knees and right shoulder seemed to have knocked his mind out of his body, because all he could