The July Selected Story is by Jal Nicholl

Please feel free to email Jal at: jalnicholl@gmail.com

LIONS
by J.C. Nicholl

After almost a month, Callum still cowered whenever the car pulled up outside his family’s imposing new home in one of the city’s leafier suburbs. In fact, he cowered much of the time, whether the stone lions on the gateposts were visible or not.

In his imagination they were not essentially different to real lions; in fact, being made of stone they might be all the more implacable. Their blind marble eyeballs were worst because you could never tell if they were looking at you—looking down, ready to spring as you passed between them; and the boy passed between them any time he closed his eyes, with a sensation of being swept inexorably towards their gateway 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.

It was strange. He had been living in one place, the only residence he had ever known; then one day Jade took him to the house with the lions. He wasn’t a baby anymore; he could follow cause and effect. It now made sense that she and his parents had been putting things in boxes for the past few days. He had started crying and struggling against his seatbelt once he had understood.

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 the gardener had recently poisoned. The yard was lush with diverse foliage and flowers, none of whose names he knew. Callum imagined he was living in the midst of a mysterious forest in which hungry and unearthly predators stalked.

Jade had to carry him, patting him on the back and shushing him like a baby as they approached the grand entrance—otherwise he would have been pulling at her dress and crying all the way. He thought that the lions must have been in some (perhaps paraphysical) sense on their trail as they approached the portico with its big stone steps. It was odd, he almost knew: even though he could see behind them as she carried him towards the door, he didn’t expect to actually see the lions. They wouldn’t bound into view just like that.

“Don’t worry, we’ll be safe inside…whoops-a-daisy!” Jade dropped her key, smiling again as she put him down to pick it up.

It was a great relief to be inside—except for those massive bay windows and all the little arched ones that ran all along the front wall of the ground floor. Through their stained panels the garden outside seemed a kaleidoscopic nightmare, hot and dark like the embers that might have been seen in the house’s various fireplaces, if anyone had yet cared to build a fire.
Later, when it grew nearly dark, he would see his own reflection superimposed upon the shadowy garden that was the lions’ habitat. Glass would be no match for stone, he knew, when the time came. Also, if he looked too long into those funhouse mirrors, it quickly became difficult to tell what was outside and what inside.

Later on he was in bed, somewhere between sleep and waking, when suddenly he heard a roar—yes, a roar—that shocked him into full consciousness. It was followed by footsteps inside the house, the distant tapping of what might (but only might) have been shoes on wood, muffled by carpet as ineluctably they came up the stairs. The house was still a vast, mysterious entity to Callum, and when the lights went out it became a hellish maze in which you could potentially get lost forever in a world of night. If this reinstituted trial bedtime separation from Jade had proven a partial success it was due solely to his fear of the house, which kept him from screaming just yet.

Of course it was probably just one his parents—but how could he know? All he knew at this moment was that someone or something was coming up the stairs, towards him. It sounded like a person, but then it was easy to imagine a lion walking upright on two legs; in fact, that idea was the most frightening of all. Those steps had hit the downstairs floorboards heavily like stone. The smiley face nightlight offered no comfort.

Now, as whatever it was neared his bedroom door, he couldn’t hold back. He screamed and until in a moment a light came on outside his open door and something or someone was on him while he struggled, screaming still.

*****

Brian woke, exhausted. Once Callum had got over his alarm at whatever it was this time, there hadn’t been any more noise; even so, he found he couldn’t get back to sleep immediately, despite the pills. He thought with annoyance about Jade. Was she doing her job properly? He would have gone and tucked the boy in himself, but had found himself literally too tired to move. Paralyzed by the succubus of work.

What was wrong with the boy? He was six years old and still incontinent; still spoke like an infant just learning to string his words together. No, mustn’t be too hard on Jade, going to school with him every day as well, an au pair and integration aid package deal. Not many could do that without going crazy; but of course some women were exactly like that with kids. A dubious gift, in Brian’s opinion. She was a pretty girl, too, with her big, dark eyes and articulate, pixie features; but always so neat and conservatively dressed, and she didn’t get out much. You never saw her with friends, let alone a boyfriend. Brian had begun noticing these things of late, since he and Cathy had more or less stopped having sex, one of which was the seductive way Jade sometimes looked at him. Not that he would ever do anything about it.

Was that Cathy returning from her Friday night drinks? Would she join him in a minute? Brian’s thoughts trailed off as the pills resumed their efficacy. Soon he dreamt of a satisfactory resolution to his marital difficulties—one that involving both women. It made a pleasant change from dreaming about work.

Cathy hadn’t come to bed at all. That didn’t surprise Brian; she often went to sleep in the living room, in front of the TV, after coming home late from work—it was an old habit. But now he suspected that she was actually sleeping in the spare bedroom adjacent, which was something he didn’t want to acknowledge. Brian loved Cathy; she knew it, and he knew that she knew. It had always been that way, and there had always been an eclectic kind of distance between them as a consequence.

Looking out the back window through a screen of golden birch leaves, he sipped his coffee. At least they owned this place outright, having subdivided and traded in a couple of investment properties, as well as cashing in some intangible assets. It probably hadn’t been the smartest investment decision; for a change this one had been more emotional than rational. Still, at least they weren’t in debt.

Now he heard someone coming downstairs, Jade no doubt; but when she appeared in the doorway, it turned out to be Cathy in her dressing gown, a towel over her head.

“Oh, good morning, honey. I thought…” He felt absurdly like someone caught doing something he shouldn’t.

“Morning.” She went straight for cupboard, took down the cereal, then went for the fridge. He had subtly to get out of her way, while she avoided his eye.  

He wanted to ask her about last night, but didn’t want to sound suspicious or resentful. “How about breakfast out this morning?”

“Not today, Brian; there’s a lot I still have to get done before next week.”

Often at times like these, Brian remembered the song lyric “If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, don’t make a pretty woman your wife.” It was a private joke that sometimes gave him solace. Today he felt resentful. She should be more supportive during the difficult time he was going through, though he understood how it affected her as well. At least she could make a little time for him on the weekends.

“I suppose I should have booked in advance; it just seems like we don’t spend any time together lately. I mean Callum as well.” It was as if they were in the midst of some argument already. No, she must have slept badly. “Come on, don’t be a workaholic—”

“With all of this audit stuff going on I honestly don’t know how you can get up early and be so bloody cheerful.” She was looking squarely at him now. “And soon I might be the only person here with a salary coming in, so excuse me if I’m becoming a ‘workaholic.’”

Brian was a CFO currently under pressure from an internal audit investigating the possibility that his department had been reporting exaggerated earnings. It was a serious matter that had the potential to embroil Brian and the company both in very costly legal trouble. That his position was at stake was only the start.

“How can you talk to me like that? I’ve supported you to get to where you are today. You owe me—”

“Supported me? How much do I owe you? Go on, tell me and I’ll pay!” It was true that they had always maintained separate bank accounts, besides the shared one into which they both paid equally for household expenses. Her earnings even now, as HR manager at the same company, were well below his, and it was true that she hadn’t had her Masters degree when they met. His position at the company had probably not hurt her career, either.

“Cathy, please. That’s not what I meant I have no idea why we’re arguing like this. I only wanted to take you and Callum out to breakfast.”

Rather than sign the proffered truce, she decided to open up a new front. “Fine then, I’ll go and wake Callum up now he’s finished screaming and kicking and tell him you want to take him out for a babycino. When I came home last night he was crying out in panic and you were fast asleep with your earplugs in. You knew I was going to be home late; you knew it was up to you to look after Callum.”

His wife didn’t know about the sleeping pills; Brian regarded them as shameful, a womanish vice. “ But Jade…”

“She had the night off, remember? If I hadn’t come home when I did I bet he’d still be lying up there with his pyjamas soaked through!”

Brian looked to one side for a moment, noticing that the time on the microwave was wrong, as he recalibrated his emotions. “So you’re pissed off with me because you had to spend some time comforting your child while his permanent babysitter was away for the first time this year?”

It was often like this, though seldom as bad. Forced to stand up for himself with Cathy, Brian found himself reproaching her by rote, as if she were giving him his lines. She swore and left the room, which no doubt had been the inevitable issue from the start. Then he did likewise, in the direction of the front door.

He walked out and strolled down the driveway with the attitude of a man attempting to reassure himself. The birch trees and roses, etc., were lovely in the morning sunlight, and the air was warm. It was annoying about the dead weeds, though; when was the gardener coming back for them? He could hear birds together with the trickling of the fountain and traffic noises that were far enough away to cause no mental disturbance. The street was a quiet one despite its proximity to the suburb’s main shopping strip.

What alerted him to the missing statue was the piece of it that was left on the footpath, the spattering of marble chips and dust. He looked up; the sun was in his eyes, so he crossed to the other footpath to get a proper look. The lion on the left was entirely gone. The other had a really extraordinary, sun-like mane, vast and almost moving. It had the stylised power of an Assyrian statue, a higher level of art that was usual in such ornaments.

His dignity shaken by the exchange with his wife, the vandalism struck him as a personal affront. Rage grew within his bosom as the anonymous insult sunk home. This was possibly the best neighbourhood in the city. He would call the police. He would call the council and demand that they install some speed bumps, too. His day was ruined—worse: it was an omen. He was going to lose his job and his marriage. It would happen in slow motion, step-by-step, but the end result would be as senseless as this overnight act of vandalism. “Bastard!” he yelled, kicking the gatepost as hard as he could. He surprised himself. Then he bellowed again, as the pain of a fractured toe rewarded his effort.

*****

Cathy had felt for a long while like a slightly green twig flexing, not quite ready to snap. She understood Brian’s thinking about the move: mistaking the symbol for reality, he thought investing in a substantial home would solidify their shaky marriage bond. It certainly had got so that she avoided being around him at home in that poky little apartment.  So what the hell, she had thought. She had come to think of their warehouse apartment as small, which it wasn’t—but its open plan design made for a lack of privacy.

Now the last bit of the sap of uncertainty was gone, and she looked forward to a clean break in the near future. Her solicitor thought there was a chance that she could get the house, or at least the best part of the sale proceeds. Done right, the thing could be kept out of the courts, anyway. Anecdotally, it seemed that lots of men would sign away anything to avoid painful legal proceedings and, who knows, to impress their ex-wife with their magnanimity. Cathy thought she knew Brian’s character. It was a strange thing, she reflected, that a man at the top of the business hierarchy could be so weak.

*****

Callum was acting yet more strangely than usual since the vandalism of the lion statue. He refused to go outside at all, even when Jade offered to carry him. He interpreted the lion’s disappearance as implying that it had decisively come to life and was now at large. Now and again he even claimed sightings. Then he would cry in hopelessness, certain that someone, himself or another member of the household, was sure to be eaten, sooner or later.

“Where’s the lion now, do you think? Where’s he hiding?” Jade asked.

“I don’t know,” he said slowly, frightened by his own admission. Then he pointed to the window above the kitchen sink that looked out on the back garden. “There.”

“So he moved from the front and now he lives in the back?”

The little boy nodded his little-old-man head. He was thin yet jowelly and his white hair looked as if it were thinning. But she had faith he would grow up some day into a strapping man like his father. Since a childhood car accident had robbed her of the prospect of having children of her own, she had always taken an emotionally harzardous interest in the children she worked with, and sometimes other members of the family as well. 

“Callum, you know, lions don’t really like to eat people.”

“Yes they do!” He said with great conviction.

“How do you know?”

He thought about it. A child of few words, his only answer was a pained look that combined equal parts fear and confusion.

“Did you know, when I was a little girl I fell into the lions’ cage at the zoo, and a big scary lion came up to me and sniffed me all over. I had a lolly in my pocket and I gave it to him so he wouldn’t eat me, and he didn’t.”

“Did he eat the lolly?” Good, she had him. She was the only person in the world with whom he could have a conversation like this; with anyone else he was more than halfway towards becoming a mute.

“Yes.”

“Lions don’t eat lollies. They eat people.”

“Let’s see then. Maybe we can make friends with him like I did with the lion at the zoo. We’ll leave him something sweet, maybe a piece of cake, and if he eats it we’ll know we don’t have to be afraid.”

So Callum rather intrepidly allowed Jade to lead him outside, where they placed a piece of the chocolate cake that Jade had made the previous day on one of the stones that bordered the garden bed to one side of the disused garden shed that lay some distance from the house, towards the back of the yard.

The following morning the plate was empty and a note was left underneath written in capitals:

THANK YOU FOR CAKE
YOU ARE A GOOD BOY
PROMISE I WON’T HURT YOU
LION

*****

Shortly afterwards Cathy and Brian had the argument that would end their marriage. Brian had given a presentation to the internal audit panel and had found some of their questions difficult to answer. He was then summarily informed of their decision to suspend him on full pay. 

“I just don’t know what I’ll do while this is going on,” he said to Cathy. He was sitting in the downstairs living room closest to the front entrance, where she could not avoid encountering him on entering the house, and was halfway through his second bottle of wine since coming home mid-afternoon. He had begun disburdening as soon as she walked in, his tone slightly acrimonious as she had not bothered even to text him “good luck” or “how did it go?”

“Well you knew it was coming. At least they’re still paying you.”

“I’m sorry, did you say ‘they’re’ or ‘we’re’?”

“What?”

“You can’t just throw me out—much as I know you’d like to!”

“What are you talking about?” Had he gotten wind of her plans to divorce him?

“You may be the head of HR, but you’re not on the Board!”

She rolled her eyes. “Have another drink, Brian.”

He already had the bottle raised to top up his glass; but rather than follow her instruction, he stood up and said, “Fuck this, I’m leaving.” He meant for fresh air, but his heart thrilled to the unthought-of possibility of misconstrual. Perhaps he could regain her respect just by staying in a hotel for a night or two.  

She was about to reply, but intuition told her no. A drink-driving conviction for him might be a useful reference point in the near future.

He blundered about for a while in that stiff, uncoordinated way he had developed since hurting his toe, grunting irritably as he searched for his keys. She listened from upstairs and couldn’t help smiling to herself. Where did he think he was going?

He didn’t return. Presumably he had come back during the day to pack the suitcase that was gone from his cupboard. Jade had been out shopping at the time. That was a surprise, especially since the fight hadn’t really been all that bad. She saw nothing of him the following day—she was at work, of course, but then he was not there when she returned, and nor were many of his belongings. To be sure, it was more as if he had packed for a medium-term trip than for a permanent move.

*****

Callum interpreted his father’s disappearance along predictable lines. “You said! You said!” he cried.

He and Jade were sitting together on the floor of Callum’s bedroom. It was an overcast, windy day and looked like getting dark early. The little boy would jump every time a gust blew, which was often; they were loud and angry sounding up here, and the tree outside his window was the wind’s harp, the wind a barely discarnate evil spirit. 

“Remember, he said he wouldn’t hurt you.”

“But Daddy…”

“I know,” she said. “Let’s go outside and see if we can find them.”

Callum looked, if possible, yet more perplexed and frightened at this suggestion.

“We’ll dress you up nice and warm and go outside and see if we can find Daddy. Maybe he’s with the lion, eating cake!”

“No!”

No amount of cajoling would make Callum accede, so Jade did what she never had before, and raised her voice at him in anger. All she did was say his name. He was so astonished that he gave no further resistance, but allowed her to dress him and lead him downstairs and out the back door. Then she walked him by the hand up the rear garden path towards the old shed. Since he kept clinging at her skirt, she picked him up.

“He’s a nice lion, really, and he just wants to meet you,” she said, grinning, her eyes wide, as she put him down.

She knocked three times on the door, then inserted the key in her hand into the shiny padlock and pulled the bolt aside. She led Callum in by the hand.

A weak fluorescent tube light revealed his mother. She was sitting in a chair with a gag in her mouth and the lion stood behind her. He had an enormous mane that encircled his angry face with its heavy brow and broad features. He was dirty and wearing ragged human clothes. He looked like the man who had scared Callum once by coming up really close to him and Jade and asking for money, except he was obviously a lion. The shed smelled like a lion’s den. On the workbench to their right was laid out a variety of mostly sharp tools and mounds of dirty, greasy rags. No, it was blood.  

Callum was too petrified to scream or look away.

But the lion directed his snarl at Jade. “What are you doing? Take him away from here!”

“But you said you were almost finished and that was an hour ago!” Jade’s voice had gone up in pitch like a little girl’s.

“Out!” The man’s hand was visible when he raised it, pointing towards the door. Callum saw that it was bloody. He screamed.

So was his mother, everywhere. She made no sound that he could hear, not even a muffled cry, though her eyes were wide open.

“Don’t be afraid, sweetheart,” Jade whispered into his ear as she carried him out. “He’s cross now but he’ll be nice again soon. The lion’s your real father and I’m going to be your real mother. We’re going to be a real family!”

J.C. Nicholl has published poetry and review essays in many places online and in print. He lives in country Victoria (Australia) with his wife and their dogs, and teaches English at the school down the road.