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George Hadley looked in at the changed scene. ‘Go to bed,’ he said to the children.
They opened their mouths.
‘You heard me,’ he said.
They went off to the air closet, where a wind sucked them like brown leaves up the flue to their slumber rooms.
George Hadley walked through the singing glade and picked up something that lay in the corner near where the lions had been. He walked slowly back to his wife.
‘What is that?’ she asked.
‘An old wallet of mine,’ he said.
He showed it to her. The smell of hot grass was on it and the smell of a lion. There were drops of saliva on it, it had been chewed, and there were blood smears on both sides.
He closed the nursery door and locked it, tight.
In the middle of the night he was still awake and he knew his wife was awake. ‘Do you think Wendy changed it?’ she said at last, in the dark room.
‘Of course.’
‘Made it from a veld into a forest and put Rima there instead of lions?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. But it’s staying locked until I find out.’
‘How did your wallet get there?’
‘I don’t know anything,’ he said, ‘except that I’m beginning to be sorry we bought that room for the children. If children are neurotic at all, a room like that –’
‘It’s supposed to help them work off their neuroses in a healthful way.’
‘I’m starting to wonder.’ He stared at the ceiling.
‘We’ve given the children everything they ever wanted. Is this our reward – secrecy, disobedience?’
‘Who was it said, “Children are carpets, they should be stepped on occasionally”? We’ve never lifted a hand. They’re insufferable – let’s admit it. They come and go when they like; they treat us as if we were offspring. They’re spoiled and we’re spoiled.’
‘They’ve been acting funny ever since you forbade them to take the rocket to New York a few months ago.’
‘They’re not old enough to do that alone, I explained.’
‘Nevertheless, I’ve noticed they’ve been decidedly cool toward us since.’
‘I think I’ll have David McClean come tomorrow morning to have a look at Africa.’
‘But it’s not Africa now, it’s Green Mansions country and Rima.’
‘I have a feeling it’ll be Africa again before then.’
A moment later they heard the screams.
Two screams. Two people screaming from downstairs. And then a roar of lions.
‘Wendy and Peter aren’t in their rooms,’ said his wife.
He lay in his bed with his beating heart. ‘No,’ he said. ‘They’ve broken into the nursery.’
‘Those screams – they sound familiar.’
‘Do they?’
‘Yes, awfully.’
And although their beds tried very hard, the two adults couldn’t be rocked to sleep for another hour. A smell of cats was in the night air.
‘Father,’ said Peter.
‘Yes.’
Peter looked at his shoes. He never looked at his father any more, nor at his mother. ‘You aren’t going to lock up the nursery for good, are you?’
‘That all depends.’
‘On what?’ snapped Peter.
‘On you and your sister. If you intersperse this Africa with a little variety – oh, Sweden perhaps, or Denmark or China –’
‘I thought we were free to play as we wished.’
‘You are, within reasonable bounds.’
‘What’s wrong with Africa, Father?’
‘Oh, so now you admit you have been conjuring up Africa, do you?’
‘I wouldn’t want the nursery locked up,’ said Peter coldly. ‘Ever.’
‘Matter of fact, we’re thinking of turning the whole house off for about a month. Live sort of a carefree one-for-all existence.’
‘That sounds dreadful! Would I have to tie my own shoes instead of letting the shoe tier do it? And brush my own teeth and comb my hair and give myself a bath?’
‘It would be fun for a change, don’t you think?’
‘No, it would be horrid. I didn’t like it when you took out the picture painter last month.’
‘That’s because I wanted you to learn to paint all by yourself, son.’
‘I don’t want to do anything but look and listen and smell; what else is there to do?’
‘All right, go play in Africa.’
‘Will you shut off the house sometime soon?’
‘We’re considering it.’
‘I don’t think you’d better consider it any more, Father.’
‘I won’t have any threats from my son!’
‘Very well.’ And Peter strolled off to the nursery.
‘Am I on time?’ said David McClean.
‘Breakfast?’ asked George Hadley.
‘Thanks, had some. What’s the trouble?’
‘David, you’re a psychologist.’
‘I should hope so.’
‘Well, then, have a look at our nursery. You saw it a year ago when you dropped by; did you notice anything peculiar about it then?’
‘Can’t say I did; the usual violences, a tendency toward a slight paranoia here or there, usual in children because they feel persecuted by parents constantly, but, oh, really nothing.’
They walked down the hall. ‘I locked the nursery up,’ explained the father, ‘and the children broke back into it during the night. I let them stay so they could form the patterns for you to see.’
There was a terrible screaming from the nursery.
‘There it is,’ said George Hadley. ‘See what you make of it.’
They walked in on the children without rapping.
The screams had faded. The lions were feeding.
‘Run outside a moment, children,’ said George Hadley. ‘No, don’t change the mental combination. Leave the walls as they are. Get!’
With the children gone, the two men stood studying the lions clustered at a distance, eating with great relish whatever it was they had caught.
‘I wish I knew what it was,’ said George Hadley. ‘Sometimes I can almost see. Do you think if I brought high-powered binoculars here and –’
David McClean laughed dryly. ‘Hardly.’ He turned to study all four walls. ‘How long has this been going on?’
‘A little over a month.’
‘It certainly doesn’t feel good.’
‘I want facts, not feelings.’
‘My dear George, a psychologist never saw a fact in his life. He only hears about feelings; vague things. This doesn’t feel good, I tell you. Trust my hunches and my instincts, I have a nose for something bad. This is very bad. My advice to you is to have the whole damn room torn down and your children brought to me every day during the next year for treatment.’
‘Is it that bad?’
‘I’m afraid so. One of the original uses of these nurseries was so that we could study the patterns left on the walls by the child’s mind, study at our leisure, and help the child. In this case, however, the room has become a channel toward – destructive thoughts, instead of a release away from them.’
‘Didn’t you sense this before?’
‘I sensed only that you had spoiled your children more than most. And now you’re letting them down in some way. What way?’
‘I wouldn’t let them go to New York.’
‘What else?’
‘I’ve taken a few machines from the house and threatened them, a month ago, with closing up the nursery unless they did their homework. I did close it for a few days to show I meant business.’
‘Ah, ha!’
‘Does that mean anything?’
‘Everything. Where before they had a Santa Claus now they have a Scrooge. Children prefer Santas. You’ve let this room and this house replace you and your wife in your children’s affections. This room is their mother and father, far more important in their lives than their real parents. And now you come along and want to shut if off. No wonder there’s hatred here. You can feel it coming out of the sky. Feel that sun. George, you’ll have to change your life. Like too many others, you’ve built it around creature comforts. Why, you’d starve tomorrow if something went wrong in your kitchen. You wouldn’t know how to tap an egg. Nevertheless, turn everything off. Start new. It’ll take time. But we’ll make good children out of bad in a year, wait and see.’
‘But won’t the shock be too much for the children, shutting the room up abruptly, for good?’
‘I don’t want them going any deeper into this, that’s all.’
The lions were finished with their red feast.
The lions were standing on the edge of the clearing watching the two men.
‘Now I’m feeling persecuted,’ said McClean. ‘Let’s get out of here. I never have cared for these damned rooms. Make me nervous.’
‘The lions look real, don’t they?’ said George Hadley. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any way –’
‘What?’
‘– that they could become real?’
‘Not that I know.’
‘Some flaw in the machinery, a tampering or something?’
‘No.’
They went to the door.
