Venus and Her Thugs: Fifteen Weird Tales by Nicholl J. A. & Nicholl J. A

Author:Nicholl, J. A. & Nicholl, J. A. [Nicholl, J. A.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: science fiction, dystopian fiction, H. P. Lovecraft, wierd fiction
ISBN: 9781940933849
Publisher: Counter-Currents Publishing
Published: 2017-12-06T05:00:00+00:00

LIONS

After almost a month, Callum still cowered whenever the Mercedes pulled up outside his family’s imposing new home in Glen Orchid, one of the city’s leafy green, old-money suburbs. In his imagination they were not essentially different to real lions, although being made of stone might make them all the more implacable. Their blind white eyeballs were the worst, because you could never tell if they were looking down at you, ready to spring as you passed between them; and every time the boy passed between them he closed his eyes, with a sensation of being swept inexorably in their direction like a dead leaf on an autumn wind—or more accurately, in terms of his imagination, like a miniature little boy in an enormous bath, towards a plug hole.

All of his five, going on six years he had been living in a city apartment that was big in its own right, but nothing compared to this place; then one day after school Jade, his au pair, took him here and made him understand that his old home was his no more. He could not understand why she seemed excited about it, or why his parents had done this to them. Callum was not a baby anymore; he could follow cause and effect, and he had seen the boxes and the walls and floors getting barer as they piled up, and he had overheard his parents’ conversations. But still he had started crying and struggling against his seatbelt as soon as he understood. When the lions came into view for the first time he had actually stopped, too afraid to move or make a sound.

Separating the yard from the street was a very high cypress hedge, with a remote-operated gate in the old-fashioned wrought iron style. The tessellated surface of the driveway was long and still full of dead weeds that the gardener, who came a couple of days a week, had recently poisoned. The yard was lush with diverse foliage and flowers. Callum imagined that he was living in the midst of a mysterious forest in which hungry predators stalked.

This afternoon Jade had to carry him, patting him on the back and shushing him like a baby from the carport onto the sandstone terrace from which the edifice loomed; otherwise he would have been pulling at her dress and crying. It was lucky the boy was so small for his age. He thought that the lions must have been, in some possibly paraphysical sense, on their trail, and that they would be lucky to make it inside. It was odd, he almost knew: even as he looked back down the driveway he did not expect to actually see the lions. They would never bound into view just like that.

Now it was, “Don’t worry, sweetie pie, we’ll be safe inside,” and then, “Whoops-a-daisy!” Jade dropped her key, smiling again as she put him down to pick it up. “You’re getting such a big boy!” she panted, while Callum clutched at her leg to keep from being sucked down the drive, and she patted his wispy head, ever-patient.

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