The Sphinx (24 page)

The sniffing
and prowling continued for almost tea minutes, as Lorie and her lion-mate got
to know each other. They rubbed faces together, and Gene couldn’t miss the
expression of ecstasy that Lorie had when she nuzzled against the tawny fur of
her animal lover. She was intensely sexually aroused, far more than he’d ever
seen her before, and she could hardly keep herself from tearing at the turf
with her nails in the frenzy of her excitement.

“Gene,” she had
said at the circus. “I’m so excited.”

He heard a
rustling noise. It was only when Lorie turned around, and he saw her glistening
thighs, that he understood what had happened. She had urinated, so that the
odor of her urine would arouse her mate. The lion growled, and sniffed at her,
and began to lift himself up behind her.

Lorie was tall
and strong, but the male lion was enormous. She stood there on all fours, with
her back arched, as the huge shaggy beast raised itself up on her, its red
lion-penis quivering, and tried to penetrate her half-human body.

He heard her
scream. It was a high-pitched, unnatural scream, more like an animal than a
girl, but all the same it was the scream of someone badly hurt. The lion had
dug its hooked claws into her shoulders, so that the blood ran down her pale
arms. Then it forced itself deeper and deeper inside her, and jerked its sinewy
body in the frenzied grip of animal coupling.

Gene felt
nausea rising in his throat, but he couldn’t look away. Thrust after thrust, the
lion worked itself in Lorie’s body up toward ejaculation; and then, with an
uncontrolled shudder, it shot the lion-sperm into her, immediately dropped
back, and turned away with a rumbling growl.

Lorie collapsed
on the ground, bleeding and shaking. The male lion circled around her, but it
was plain that he wasn’t interested in her any more. What he wanted now was his
promised sacrifice. What he wanted was raw meat and flesh, and that was why
Gene was there.

Gene lifted
himself up as high as he could without attracting attention. He had his breath
back now, and even if he couldn’t run as fast as a lion, he could probably make
it to the wall if he had a good start.

He was waiting
for the prowling lion to circle around the other side of Lorie, and then he was
going to make a break for it.

But, just as he
was about to pick himself up and run, the lion stopped circling and raised its
huge head. Mrs. Semple turned, too, as if she was listening for something.

There was
something. Someone was stumbling across the lawns crying out as they came. Gene
peered through the shadows, and through the oaks, he saw a figure, blindly
crashing through the twigs and the branches, and hoarsely shouting out: “
Lorie! Loriet Ce’st ton pere! Lorie, ma
cherel Ma petitel C’est ton pere!
”

The lion moved
off with frightening speed. It ran slowly at first, but as it crossed the lawns
it was running quicker and quicker. M. Semple, bunded by the discharge of
Gene’s rifle, couldn’t even see it coming, although he could probably hear it.
It was as fast and as heavy as a small car, and it seized his right leg in its
jaws in one barreling bound. Even from where he was lying, Gene could hear
sinews tearing, and the lion, guzzled and snapped and growled as it wrenched the
Frenchman this way and that, tearing at his legs and his belly and biting
savagely into his face.

Gene heaved
himself up, and ran.

Mrs. Semple,
who was alertly watching the lion, didn’t notice him for the first few seconds.
But then she turned and saw him sprinting as hard as he could toward the wall,
brushing the twigs and branches away from his face as he ran. With a snarl, she
turned around and began to run swiftly after him, trying to cut him off from
the wall by running at an angle.

The wall was
further than he’d thought. From where he was lying, it had only looked like
thirty or forty yards, but now it seemed to be miles away, through the thickest
brambles and weeds.

He caught his
ankle on a root, and it pulled off his shoe, so that he was running on one
bruised, stockinged foot. His second wind was giving out, too, and he was
snatching at the air for breath.

He could hear
her, the running she-lion. She was very close. This time, she knew that he was
trying to make his final break, and she was loping after him at full speed. He
could even hear her deep, even panting.

He was going so
fast that he collided with the wall when he reached it and banged his head. The
rope wasn’t there–he must have misjudged by fifty or sixty yards. He turned
quickly, and he could see the white, lithe shape of Mrs. Semple running toward
him, only twenty yards away. He sucked in a deep breath and began to sprint
alongside the wall to the place where he thought he might have left the rope.
He trailed his fingers against the wall in case he missed it in the darkness.

Mrs. Semple cut
across the corner, through the bushes, and made up ten yards of ground. She was
snarling now, and when he glanced over his shoulder he could see her glittering
eyes and her drawn-back mouth with its razor-sharp teeth.

Something in
his mind said: it’s no good. The rope’s not there. You’re never going to make
it.

She’s only
twenty feet behind you now, and you’re never going to make it.

He squeezed his
eyes tight shut, lowered his head, and surged as much strength into his running
legs as he-could. He ran so fast that he even gained a couple of feet on Mrs.
Semple. But he knew he didn’t have the stamina or the training to last out. Any
second now his body was going to say no, and that would be the end.

His trailing
hand touched the rope. The rope!

He slowed to a
stop, and scrabbled at the rope for a grip. Shrieking for breath, exhausted and
sweating, he pulled himself upward, kicking against the wall to help him scale
the bricks. And at that moment, in a streak of pale viciousness, Mrs. Semple
reached him and leaped up at his legs.

He kicked her,
very hard, in the face. It was his stockinged foot, and he felt the wool tear
on her teeth, and he knew that she’d drawn blood. Swinging around on the rope,
frantically trying to keep his grip, he-kicked her again, and this time she
dropped back for a Second to give herself the ground to spring up at him again.

With two or
three massive heaves on the rope, Gene leached the top of the wall. He felt
Mrs. Semple’s claw-like nails ripping at his calf muscle, but he lashed out
once more, and she fell back.

He carefully
stood up on the top of the spiked coping-stones, balancing for a moment, and
then jumped into the welcome darkness of the grass environs of the estate.

He rolled over,
hitting his knee, but he was able to pull himself up to his feet and run
through the verge on to the roadway. Only a quarter mile away he saw lights,
and that meant safety. Coughing and spitting phlegm, he started to trot along
the road toward them.

Halfway down
the road, he could see that the lights were coming from the sitting room window
of a large, white colonial house. He could see the cars parked in the driveway
outside, and the hedges around the front garden, and he could even make out
people moving about the room.

His trot slowed
to a fast walk. He was almost there.

But had not
reckoned with the speed of the lions. As he walked quickly toward the lighted
house, he heard a pattering noise behind him on the asphalt surface of the
road. He turned his head, and only a hundred yards away in the darkness he saw
Lorie and her male lion, running toward him with tireless strides, side by
side.

“Oh, God,” he
whispered, and started to run. But he was so exhausted from climbing the wall
that he could hardly make his legs move. The house, which had seemed so near,
suddenly seemed a mile away. He couldn’t stop himself from coughing, and that
slowed him up even more. He regretted every damned cigarette he’d ever smoked
right then. His lungs felt as if they’d been washed out with blazing kerosene.

He was fifteen
feet from the hedge around the house when they caught him. The lion didn’t
spring on him right away, but circled around him, growling and snarling, and
Lorie circled around him too, spitting viciously, her bare hands and feet
padding on the roadway.

Gene shambled
to a stop, and froze. He raised his left arm a little way to protect himself,
in case the lion leaped at his face, but knew how useless it was.

“Lorie,” he
said hoarsely. “Lorie, for God’s sake.”

Lorie just
snapped at him, her curved teeth shining in the Bghl from the house. My God,
thought Gene, I’m twenty feet away from safety and civilization! Those people
are going to come out here to walk their dog tonight and find me ripped apart
and strewn all over like that poor nine-year-old kid. He felt more desperate
and panicky than he could ever remember.

“Lorie, please
Lorie, listen will you! I know you’re-Lorie! I know you’re in there someplace!
Call it off, Lorie! For Christ’s sake Lorie, call it off!”

The huge male
lion stepped back, its body tensing ready to spring. Its eyes slitted as it
focused on him, and its massive jaws pulled back ready to tear his flesh away
from his bones.

“Lorie”
screamed Gene. “Lorie, call this monster off me! Lorie, I love you! Call him
off!”

Lorie ran
around him, and growled at the male lion. The male lion hesitated for a moment,
its muscles relaxing. It lifted its proud, enormous head and looked away,
almost as if it was too disdainful to be bothered with Lorie, or even with
Gene.

Gene stayed
right where he was, trying to keep himself from trembling. “Lorie,’’ he
whispered.

“Please, Lorie.
If you ever felt anything for me. Please.”

The lion made a
half-hearted jump in Gene’s direction, and Gene couldn’t help jerking nervously
back, but Lorie butted the lion with her head, affectionately and gently, and
the beast turned away hi mid-jump. Then, without any further hesitation, it
turned around and began to run off, at a measured and even pace, along the
road.

Gene watched
It’ go. In a few moments, it was out of sight in the darkness. He turned
around, and Lorie had gone, too, but he didn’t know where. He slowly and
painfully walked along the length of the hedge around the house, and pushed
open the front gate. He went up the neat path to the bright green front door,
and knocked.

He waited two
or three minutes before the door was answered. Then it opened up, and a tall
gray-haired man in an expensive suit stood there with a martini in his hand.

“Well, hi,” he
said expansively. “What happened to you?”

“Lions,” Gene
said, and collapsed.

He went, out of
a strange sense of compulsion, to Mathieu’s funeral. It was a dry, bitterly
cold day, and there weren’t many people there. The leaves had curled up under
foot, and they crunched as they walked toward the grave like soldiers walking
through Post Toasties. The sky was clean and blue, and the few Wispy clouds
were very high up.

Both Mrs.
Semple and Lorie were standing by the grave. They were tall, and together, and
dressed in black, with veils over their beautiful faces. The gravestone was
simple, and probably hadn’t cost very much. It read: Mathieu Besta, From His
Loving Friends.

Gene had come
late, parking his white New Yorker by the cemetery gate. Maggie came with him,
wearing a smart, new black coat that he had bought her specially. They came up
the sloping path toward the funeral party, and nobody looked their way. There
was a feeling that, remotely and perhaps unfairly, they were unwelcome guests.

The priest was
just finishing the service. Mrs. Semple reached down, took a handful of cold
dry mud, and threw it on the lid of the coffin. Lorie stood there, silent and
unmoving, with her hands across her stomach as if she was already heavily
pregnant.

“She’s very
beautiful,” whispered Maggie. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen her this close.”

“Beauty,” said
Gene, “is very often skin deep, and no farther.”

Maggie frowned
at him. ‘I can tell you’re a politician. You talk in clichés.”

He smiled
absently. “Someone else said that to me, a long time ago.”

Mrs. Semple and
Lorie left the graveside without even looking his way. Whatever they had
between them was now in the hands of attorneys, and Gene had already been told
that Lorie would agree to a painless and inexpensive divorce. All she had asked
for was sufficient money to support a child, if, as she suspected, she was
pregnant.

Gene and Maggie
stood there a little while longer, and then walked back down the path to the
car.

“You know’
something,” said Gene, as they drove back into the morning sunlight toward
Washington.

“What’s that?”

“It’s always
the people who can’t defend themselves who get the blame.”

“People? Or
animals?”

“In this case,
animal. Singular.”

“But he did
kill M. Semple. Or Mathieu Besta, or whatever they wanted to call him.”

“Sure. But who
let him out? He was nothing but a dumb beast. He probably would have preferred
to stay in his cage for the rest of his life, coming out now and again to get
prodded by some ringmaster, and retire with grace and dignity and false teeth.”

“I don’t know
how you can laugh about teeth after what you went through.”

Gene shrugged.
“To tell you to truth, it doesn’t seem too real these days.”

“Is that why
you came today?”

“Maybe. I felt
some kind of responsibility, too. I sometimes think that if it hadn’t been for
me, that poor guy would still be alive.”

Maggie took off
her black straw hat. “Sure. And you’d be dead.”

Gene slowed the
New Yorker up for a red light. The morning sun cut across the car, and lit up
Maggie’s hair. Across the street, tattered and faded, was a poster for Romero’s
Traveling Circus, with a vivid picture of a lion leaping through a hoop. In the
next car, a pale-green Buick, a man with a snap-brim hat was arguing with his
wife, his cigarette waggling between his lips.