THE VELDT Read online

  "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 it 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.

  "I don't imagine the room will like being turned off," said the father.

  "Nothing ever likes to die—even a room."

  "I wonder if it hates me for wanting to switch it off?"

  "Paranoia is thick around here today," said David McClean. "You can follow it like a spoor. Hello." He bent and picked up a bloody scarf. "This yours?"

  "No." George Hadley's face was rigid. "It belongs to Lydia."

  They went to the fuse box together and threw the switch that killed the nursery.

  The two children were in hysterics. They screamed and pranced and threw things. They yelled and sobbed and swore and jumped at the furniture.

  "You can't do that to the nursery, you can't!"

  "Now, children."

  The children flung themselves onto a couch, weeping.

  "George," said Lydia Hadley, "turn on the nursery, just for a few moments. You can't be so abrupt."

  "No."

  "You can't be so cruel … "

  "Lydia, it's off, and it stays off. And the whole damn house dies as of here and now. The more I see of the mess we've put ourselves in, the more it sickens me. We've been contemplating our mechanical, electronic navels for too long. My God, how we need a breath of honest air!"

  And he marched about the house turning off the voice clocks, the stoves, the heaters, the shoe shiners, the shoe lacers, the body scrubbers and swabbers and massagers, and every other machine he could put his hand to.

  The house was full of dead bodies, it seemed. It felt like a mechanical cemetery. So silent. None of the humming hidden energy of machines waiting to function at the tap of a button.

  "Don't let them do it!" wailed Peter at the ceiling, as if he was talking to the house, the nursery. "Don't let Father kill everything." He turned to his father. "Oh, I hate you!"

  "Insults won't get you anywhere."

  "I wish you were dead!"

  "We were, for a long while. Now we're going to really start living. Instead of being handled and massaged, we're going to live."

  Wendy was still crying and Peter joined her again. "Just a moment, just one moment, just another moment of nursery," they wailed.

  "Oh, George," said the wife, "it can't hurt."

  "All right—all right, if they'll just shut up. One minute, mind you, and then off forever."

  "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!" sang the children, smiling with wet faces.

  "And then we're going on a vacation. David McClean is coming back in half an hour to help us move out and get to the airport. I'm going to dress. You turn the nursery on for a minute, Lydia, just a minute, mind you."

  And the three of them went babbling off while he let himself be vacuumed upstairs through the air flue and set about dressing himself. A minute later Lydia appeared.

  "I'll be glad when we get away," she sighed.

  "Did you leave them in the nursery?"

  "I wanted to dress too. Oh, that horrid Africa. What can they see in it?"

  "Well, in five minutes we'll be on our way to Iowa. Lord, how did we ever get in this house? What prompted us to buy a nightmare?"

  "Pride, money, foolishness."

  "I think we'd better get downstairs before those kids get engrossed with those damned beasts again."

  Just then they heard the children calling, "Daddy, Mommy, come quick—quick!"

  They went downstairs in the air flue and ran down the hall. The children were nowhere in sight. "Wendy? Peter!"

  They ran into the nursery. The veldtland was empty save for the lions waiting, looking at them. "Peter, Wendy?"

  The door slammed.

  "Wendy, Peter!"

  George Hadley and his wife whirled and ran back to the door.

  "Open the door!" cried George Hadley, trying the knob. "Why, they've locked it from the outside! Peter!" He beat at the door. "Open up!"

  He heard Peter's voice outside, against the door.

  "Don't let them switch off the nursery and the house," he was saying.

  Mr. and Mrs. George Hadley beat at the door. "Now, don't be ridiculous, children. It's time to go.
Mr. McClean'll be here in a minute and … "

  And then they heard the sounds.

  The lions on three sides of them, in the yellow veldt grass, padding through the dry straw, rumbling and roaring in their throats.

  The lions.

  Mr. Hadley looked at his wife and they turned and looked back at the beasts edging slowly forward crouching, tails stiff.

  Mr. and Mrs. Hadley screamed.

  And suddenly they realized why those other screams had sounded familiar.

  "Well, here I am," said David McClean in the nursery doorway, "Oh, hello." He stared at the two children seated in the center of the open glade eating a little picnic lunch. Beyond them was the water hole and the yellow veldtland; above was the hot sun. He began to perspire. "Where are your father and mother?"

  The children looked up and smiled. "Oh, they'll be here directly."

  "Good, we must get going." At a distance Mr. McClean saw the lions fighting and clawing and then quieting down to feed in silence under the shady trees.

  He squinted at the lions with his hand to to his eyes.

  Now the lions were done feeding. They moved to the water hole to drink.

  A shadow flickered over Mr. McClean's hot face. Many shadows flickered. The vultures were dropping down the blazing sky.

  "A cup of tea?" asked Wendy in the silence.

  Scan Notes:

  [01 mar 2000—scanned by someone as .txt]

  [06 oct 2007—proofed to proper HTML by ECS (Escaped Chicken Spirits)]