Rat Hole

It’s a cottage on the white-cap hill. Alone among groves, alone among night.

Snow boils down from the sky, glittering under the hue of the iron-blue moon, padding down onto the footpath that climbs the hill up to the cottage.

           The wind carries a storm.

Candlelight lacquers orange onto the walls. Wax drips down the pricket. The door creaks shut, followed by soft footsteps through the landing.

           Quickly down the stairs like rolling thunder.

           The child stops. He holds himself on the last step. The pulse of the flame only pushes so far into darkness. One foot onto the hard stone floor. A second. He runs through the kitchen, ducking beneath hanging pots and pans, straight into the living room and to the fireplace. A deerskin rug holds his feet. He stoops and reaches through the iron grate to the chaffs of wood and tips the candle into the pit. A flame catches. A light grows.

           He places the candle on a chairside table. The grandfather clock tolls from the corner of the room, striking eleven. Back into the kitchen. The boy presses his face against the window. Cold glass stings his nose and cheeks. Snow falls in great rags. He can’t even spot a stone on the footpath.

How will Ma find her way home now, he thinks.

Up the stairs, candle in hand. Soft footfall through the landing. He stops at the door opposite his bedroom and knocks three times.

           “Sophie,” he whispers as he knocks. “Wake up. Ma’s not home.”

           Ear against the hard wood.

Her bedsheets slide over one another.

She must be awake. He knocks again. His third and final knock is cut short as the door opens. His sister stands in the doorway rubbing her eyes, squinting at the flame.

           “What?” She stands taller than him, but not by much; older than him, but not by long.

           Childish worry sweeps the boys face. “Ma’s not home.”

           The sleep in Sophie’s eyes disappears. She’s awake, expression hard, shadowed by flame. “She’s not?”

           He shakes his head. The candle shakes, too.

           “Did you check if she’s in her bedroom? She might’ve gotten in earlier.”

           The boy stares blankly. The idea hadn’t crossed him. Together they walk down the hallway behind the orange egg of light.

           “Candle?” she asks.

           “My light didn’t switch on.”

           “Powers out,” she says.

           They stop at the last door on the landing and stare at it. Both know not to cross the threshold. There’s a red stain dripped down the skirting board just a foot away from the hinges. It’s where a mouse died many years ago. No one saw how the animal died, but when Sophie walked upstairs, she saw mother with the carcass in her hands, holding the rodent by the tail, twirling it around her pinkie.

           “No one crosses this line,” she said, pointing to the red streak. Sophie held her breath until Ma opened the door, revealing the black maw that was her bedroom, then shutting it behind her.

Sophie stayed on the landing – breath held, having forgotten how to release it.

She could only think why Ma had brought the dead mouse inside the bedroom with her.

Sophie holds her brother’s wrist. He’s keen to cross the threshold and knock. But that would be breaking Ma’s rule. She looks at her brother and slowly shakes her head. She never told him about the mouse. Sophie just told him it was red crayon on the skirting board. Her brother believed her. He had no reason not to.

           “Ma,” called the boy. His voice wavered with the candlelight. “Ma.”’

           Sophie still holds his arm. When there’s no reply, she tightens her grip. He looks to her, but her eyes remain on Ma’s door.

           “Let’s wait downstairs for her,” she says. “She’s not home.”

           Sophie walks across the landing to the stairs. Her brother doesn’t follow. He’s still stood by the door, hollowed by what’s left of the warm glow. He’s staring at something she can’t quite see.

           “What is it?” she asks.

           “Droppings.”

           “What?”

           “Droppings. Animal droppings. On the floor.”

Sophie sits in the armchair with her feet rested beneath her. She watches the fire and watches how it paints shadows on the walls, waiting for the room to pale in light so the heat can catch on. The boy sits on the windowsill, head rested against the glass, holding his arms and stopping them from shaking. It’s as if the storm has carried inside. The harping wind whistles through the cracks in the stone wall, carrying with it motes of cold and spite.

           “It’s dark now,” he says. “She said she’d be home before that.”

           “She just went into town.”

           “She went into town yesterday morning. She said she would be back tonight.” His hands are trembling. He no longer looks into the dark outside, but finds his eyes in the reflection. They glisten with firelight. It’s the brightest they’ve been.

           “The night isn’t over,” she says.

           Hard dust falls into Sophie’s lap. She looks up at the wooden beam that crosses between the walls above her head. Then she hears it: light, scampering feet. A rodent’s tail slips off the edge of the beam. It catches itself before scuttling to the other end.

           “No,” she says, suddenly.

           Her brother looks over to her, confused by her random calling.

           “No what?”

           “Ma didn’t leave the house yesterday morning.”

           He goes to reply but stops. The wind whistles. He thinks back to the moment where Ma left the cottage, when the white light washed through the doorway and stung his eyes, when she disappeared behind a shut door and left him in the hallway.

           He can’t tell when she left: if it was an illusion or even a dream.

The two stand side-by-side in the basement doorway. His candle lights the stairs but loses the battle against the black. A glow from the fireplace now ebbs at their backs.

           The boy nudges his sister.

           “Go on, turn it on.”

           Sophie shakes her head. “No,” she says. “You have the light. I wouldn’t even see generator.” He looks at her pleadingly. Her face is stone, his heart a drum. “It’s ok, I’m here. Together.”

           The words are enough to soften him. His sister holds his hand and guides their way down the steps. Thick strands of web hang from the mottled ceiling, grazing by Sophie’s face, catching threads of the boy’s hair. The basement is a maze. Shelves loom – most of them empty – sitting in their years of dust. The boy treads behind his sister. She finds the way.  

           Sophie takes the candle from her brother. Without his light, he hugs her arm and she drags him along like a handbag. Her breath catches. She stops.      

           “What is it?” asks the boy.

           Her finger points. Tucked in the corner of a shelf, a large rodent lays with its tail curled around its young. Its black eyes gloss over the flame and the beast rears its pointed snout.

           “Let’s move,” says Sophie, pulling the weight of her brother.

           They stop at the generator. The boy looks around at the alien space. All he sees is darkness and car-engine sized dust-box with a faded red button.

           “You press it,” says Sophie, looking at the generator.

           The wind outside warps the silence inside, mouthing over the button-click and static jolt. Engine groans. It chokes back into its dead state.

           “What happened?” he asks.

           “What does it look like.”

           He doesn’t respond, but slinks to her waist and clings on like a body pouch.

           “Ow,” she says, wincing.”

           “What happened?”

           “Just be careful.” He can’t read her face. She gently pushes him off and runs a hand down her waist as if feeling for a spot. Then she smiles.

It brings him no comfort.

The boy is back on the windowsill.

           “She’s still not home,” he says. “And it’s too cold in my room to sleep. I want the heating.” He looks to his sister who watches the painted light. “Can’t we bring the fire into my room?” She doesn’t acknowledge him. “Why doesn’t the generator work? It’s cold in here.”

“Be quiet.” Her eyes onto the beam. His eyes follow. Scampering; scuttling.

“Where have they come from?”

“From outside,” she says. “They’re hiding from the storm.”

           He hops off the windowsill and lopes over to the fireplace and sits.

           “Sleep down here tonight,” she says.

           “I don’t want to. Not with them.” He points to an unlit corner. Some shape twists in the darkness. Sophie grabs the candle from the table and flashes it over the shadows. They’ve grown into a mass. A clump of rodents – pups – worming over one another to avoid the light.

           “Let’s not stay down here,” says Sophie. “Let’s go upstairs.”

           They leave the room as the rodents watch, gnawing at their tails, clawing at their litter, alone together in the light of the fire.

It wasn’t a mouse, Sophie recalls. The red streak was spurred from some other creature – from the gut of something bigger. No mouse gets that big. No mouse has bristles so thick and a tail so long. Like a tape worm breathing out from its body, toiling around Ma’s finger.

           No, that was a rat. A dead one.

           This home is a rat hole.

           “Can I sleep with you tonight?” he asks.

           His sister doesn’t hear him. She paws at her side, face knotted in pain. Her brother can’t see what she sees.

“I know how to work the generator,” she says.

           “How?”

           “There’s a master key you can use to reset the thing.”        

“Where is it?”

           Sophie points to her mother’s bedroom. “She carries it with her. She might’ve put it in there before she left.”

           “I thought we weren’t allowed in Ma’s room.”

           “She’s not home, is she.”

           “Won’t she know we took the key?”

           “Not if we put it back.”

The boy puts two hands onto the candle. They walk to the threshold. He looks at the red-spilled mark.

           “Did you draw this?” he asks.

           “No. It was a rat. A dead rat”

           He asks no more. Sophie follows the candlelight. If the warmth has breached over the threshold, then it means it’s safe, she tells herself. Safe enough to cross. And she does, jumping two-feet to two. She lands balanced like an acrobat and looks over her shoulder at her brother.

           The ground here feels no different, she thinks.

           He still doesn’t cross. He’s tempted by the door, but something keeps his feet at bay. He doesn’t know Ma’s rules – not as Sophie knows them. He knows not to cross the line, but what for? There’s no consequence. Not yet.

           Sophie holds out her hand. He looks at it – thinking – before grabbing on and stepping over. They stand among faeces, among ground not yet felt. Sophie tries the handle and it turns easily. There’s no lock. But not to her surprise. She didn’t expect for there to be one. To lock it would be to lock out all temptation. But if the handle turns, it invites them. It tests them.

           Ma’s rules tremble.

           Sophie lets the door go and it swings. Inside is as black as she remembers. Even the flame struggles to bleach the dark. The boy covers his nose. Something strong chokes his senses. Like fruit mauled by the sun. Carrion on the sidewalk. He looks behind to the stairs, waiting for the moment Ma’s head pokes over the top step. Sophie does the same, her hand rested lightly on her hip. She doesn’t hang around.

           “Hey, wait for me,” he says, tailing his sister into the room.

           There’s no bed, but a mattress lit in soft orange. Its sheets have fallen off the sides, spooling in unwashed dregs. Crumbs on the duvet. The light grows. Shelves: books fallen, edges torn. Wardrobe by the backwall. An oval mirror with a rose cracked into the glass.

A bedside table: an ashtray, lamp, something small and rotted. An apple-core of a body clouded by small flies. A stench visibly rises from it.

           “Do you hear that?” asks the boy.

           Sophie cocks an ear. It’s coming from the wardrobe. Not inside it, but next to it. Just out of sight. Sophie is drawn to it. She lifts a leg but stops, foot dangling mid-step. The dark is moving, shadows hiding. Rats – bodies of them – twisting over one another, grinding by the skirting board, shying from the light. Their noises sharp and calling.

           They seek one thing: what’s next to the wardrobe.

           Forget the key. The generator doesn’t matter. It wasn’t the key that Sophie sought, but this room. Her brother no longer needs the warmth. This room bears the hot stench of a hundred bodies.

           Sophie walks further, guided by curiosity. The rats are loud enough to obscure any trace of the storm. Nothing outside of this room exists anymore. Not even Ma. She stops. Her brother hides behind her. She’s stiff, corded by… fear? He cannot tell. But her voice betrays her.

           “Look,” she says. “Look. Look.”

           She points at what’s in front of her. A throne of bodies, alive and dead, bone and flesh, mounting into one pile of movement and stillness. Rats. Tails hang and whirl, fat bodies writhe and turn. Centred among the mass – laid on the seat of the throne, a cold-eaten corpse rotted black. It’s stomach untouched for time, but gouged through the middle. It’s blood dried. Dried on the seat, dried on the skirting board outside. A trophy.

           Tears stand in Sophie’s eyes. Her brother refuses to look.

           Something bumps from inside the wardrobe. Then, a long, drawn breath weeps out from within. Something inside lives – breathes. Something pushes against the doors weakly, not enough to open it, barely enough to let the candlelight in.

           Sophie stumbles back. The glow falls to the foot of the wardrobe. She hadn’t seen it when she entered the room – missed in darkness – but the tail of the throne and all its moving men extend to the bottom of the doors. Their weight holds them shut.

           She turns to her brother, shaking his shoulder.

           He squints, afraid to open his eyes.

           “She’s not coming home,” says Sophie. “Ma’s not coming home.”

           “She’s not?” His eyes open. They don’t even chase the rats. “Is she outside in the storm?”

           “She’s… somewhere.”

           The boy thinks of what she says, then a smile grows. It’s shaky at first, but turns into a grin. He reaches up to his sister and wipes the tears in her eyes. She can see him better now. She lets out a long, slow breath and sits on the mattress. The rats avoid her. They chase the dark.

           “She’s not coming home,” Sophie mutters to herself.

           She sets down the candle and slightly lifts her top. Her waist is a palette of blue and purple. The colours run up to her shoulders and down to her back. She looks at her brother. These colours haven’t hurt him. And they won’t. She presses her skin. Tender.

           “Ma’s not coming home,” Sophie says again.           

           He nods and sits. She holds him and rests her head on his.

           The wardrobe breathes and the wind outside moans.

           The candle glows over them together.