Note: This story is the second in an anthology based on prompts from #inktober2020; you can read the first story here.
(Chicago, Illinois, 2009)
Kate sighed, puffing out her cheeks and willing her other self in the mirror to just get on with it. Finish this with poise. Get the information. Move on.
Her admittedly short stint as a journalist had taught her a few things. First, that some interviews were a wash from the moment the person opened their mouth. Second, that the only way out was through. And third, that the painstaking process of making it through was sometimes rewarded with an actual story. She had no idea how this one was going to reward her. In fact, she was certain it wouldn’t. She wasn’t writing for the National Enquirer, after all.
“This woman is crazy,” she muttered. “What a perfect waste of an evening.”
The voice came in from the grate near the ceiling, sibilant and soft.
“You could have been at home, reading.”
She started, then sighed in exasperation. “You know I hate it when you do that.” She brushed a lock of hair back behind her ear and supported herself with both hands on the sink, muttering, “You can’t keep doing that.”
“Sssorry, friend. Jussst trying to help.”
“Helping would be letting me do this on my own, thank you.” She turned on the faucet and let the water run cold over her hands for a few seconds. She had accepted the voices. They were just another part of life. But they were inconvenient, especially now.
She had been seven the first time she heard them, emanating from somewhere deep in the wall at their old apartment. They had asked her about her stuffed animal – a lumpy brown rodent with button eyes and a yellow felt crown that was constantly being sewn back on. She had been smitten with the story of the Nutcracker a year prior, when in a rare moment of luxury brought about by a Christmas bonus her father had taken her and her mother to see it at the Joffrey. She had combed her doll’s hair to match her own with help from her mother, and the memory of the hand-me-down ruffles, borrowed bows, and the glorious dancing had lingered well into the summer. Her doll was immediately renamed Clara. And then one day, she had persuaded her mother (with tears) to purchase a dubious-looking stuffed rat from the bin at the Salvation Army store. Her mother was flummoxed.
“Don’t you want a Nutcracker to go with Clara?” Kate was adamant. “I want the Rat King.” Her mother tried a different tactic. “Honey, this is just a rat.”
Kate stuck out her lip. “He needs a crown. I’ll make him one, and he’ll be perfect.” Her mother relented, and helped Kate to make the crown and sew it on his battered head. And in Kate’s eyes, at least, he was perfect. The voices had agreed.
“What a wonderful king.”
Seven-year-old Kate had nodded and continued dribbling water into his porcelain tea cup. “Yes, he is.”
“He sssseemsss kind.”
Kate smiled and patted his head gently. “He is.”
After a moment, the voices hissed, “You sssseem kind too. Would you like to be friendsss?”
Kate thought for a moment and concluded, “Yes, I would. Nice to meet you.”
Ever since, she had carried on hundreds of conversations with the voices in the walls. Her parents found it cute, then concerning. She quickly learned that imaginary friends have an expiration date, at least according to adults. After a few sessions with a child psychologist, who attempted unsuccessfully to link the voices to some hidden trauma in her life, she decided it was best to keep the conversations to herself.
Now, in her twenties, the conversations were sometimes the best she had in weeks. The voices were perpetually curious about her thoughts, but never pushy. They were wonderful listeners, and remembered everything. It was a perfect, secret friendship that Kate cherished… until recently. Over the last few years, she had been growing uneasy about them. She had spent hours poring over tomes on everything from psychological diseases to psychic phenomena. Nothing had fully explained her experiences. But she was intent on finding answers, someday. Until then, she had begun asking more questions than she answered. But the voices were slippery in their responses, and her life had to go on.
Speaking of, she had been in this Starbucks bathroom for much too long already. She shut off the faucet and dried her hands under the air dryer. She stood for a moment with her hand on the door handle and took a deep breath.
“You can do thisss, Kate.”
She whispered, “I know,” and left the room.
As she turned the corner toward her table, she heard the bells attached to the front door of the coffee shop jingle. She caught a glimpse of the woman’s dark grey coat and scarlet scarf vanishing around the corner. “No, no no no…” She snatched her coat and hat from the chair she had occupied seconds before, scrambling to put them on as she dashed out the door after the woman. She caught a glimpse of the scarf turning down an alleyway and called out. “Wait, Mrs. Wyatt, wait! I’m still here!” She skidded across a slick patch on the sidewalk, sidestepping missing concrete chunks and awkwardly turning into the alleyway. It was lit by a single flickering street lamp, and contained nothing but a few faded green dumpsters, some pallets stacked up against the left brick wall, and a heavy sewage smell emanating from the grates to the right and beneath the nearest dumpster.
She threw up her hands. “Just great. Susan will not be happy about this.” Her managing editor was fair, but had no patience for unfinished interviews – and this was her second this month. The last one, Henry Duke, had been pleasant enough in the first fifteen minutes, reminiscing about his father and grandfather freely. But halfway through the conversation, he had gotten nervous, constantly glancing out the window at a boy in a hoodie by the bus stop. The boy never looked at them, just stood there waiting for the bus. Mr. Duke kept fidgeting and fidgeting, until he abruptly stood up, spilling his tea across the floor and leaving in a flurry of apologies.
He had called her that evening, asking to meet again somewhere busier, but he had never showed up. Now this lady was gone, taking with her those stories of faceless stalkers and sinkholes in South Holland.
Kate rummaged through her coat, which was still in her arms and not on her back. She located her phone and pulled up her contacts. She still had the number. She dialed it, then jumped when a sudden ring came from behind the dumpster a few yards away. She craned her neck to see around the dumpster, but all she could make out was a long, dark object. She squinted. It looked like a sleeve.
Kate hesitated, then looked back over her shoulder. The street was well-lit, quiet. A well-dressed man was talking low on his phone at the bus stop, hunched over against the cold about twenty yards away. He glanced at her and turned away. An Uber slid by with a muffled whoosh, it’s headlights illuminating the short, iron-fenced trees in rhythmic flashes. A light snow had begun to fall. She took a deep breath, slipping her studio keys through her fingers to form claws, and advanced toward the dumpster.
“Mrs. Wyatt?” She heard a rustling, and the sleeve was pulled back. She stopped. “Mrs. Wyatt. It’s Kate. I was hoping we could finish our conversation.” There was an odd slurping sound, and a cardboard coffee cup rolled out and into a puddle.
She took another step.
“Hey there sweetheart, you looking for someone?”
She whirled around. The well-dressed man from the bus stop stood in the entry of the alley, smiling at her.
“Seems you could use some help. Looking for a Mr. Wyatt, eh?”
Kate mumbled, “Missus, actually…” But the man wasn’t listening. He ambled a few steps toward her. She backed away, secretly pulling out her phone and punching in the numbers 9-1-1.
“Well, I don’t know a Mr. Wyatt, missie, but I’m sure I can help you out in whatever way heoowwch!”
He kicked at a small black object that had appeared on his foot. It skittered under the dumpster. The man shook his foot, wincing. “Damn rats.” He turned his wide grin on Kate again. “Now, where were we?”
Suddenly Kate became aware of a scuttling under the dumpster, and small dark shapes wriggling out toward the man. The scuttling grew in intensity, and the man began kicking with renewed vigor, swearing through his teeth. “What the… Sorry, sweetheart, these rats are something else down here. What do you say we owch!!” A herd of pitch black shapes was crawling up his legs, trapping his feet. He jerked at his leg with both hands while slapping the dark crawlers away, howling each time a rat nipped him.
The dumpster creaked behind her, and she turned to see it fall backwards with a resounding crash as a wriggling, squirming swarm of black rose from beneath it in a wave. She screamed and stumbled back against the brick, but the swarm wasn’t aimed at her. It shaped its many roiling parts into legs and claw-like arms. She could see pinpricks of gnashing white teeth amid the black maelstrom of whipping tails and scrabbling claws, but the myriad of eyes was what burned into her mind. They were black, but not black like the absence of light. Black like hunger, like an open grave waiting to be filled. She could see the black pooling out around it, greedily.
The writhing mass whipped out a long tentacle of rat bodies with astonishing speed, throwing several rats out onto the pavement in the process, and wrapped it around the man’s body. His face was set in a silent scream, gaping up at this thing with an almost idiotic fascination. It lifted him bodily above it, and reshaped the top of the mass into a sharp-snouted, wide-eared, empty-eyed maw. For the moment he was airborne, he regained enough air for a piercing wail, which was immediately muffled in the thicket of furry bodies.
There was a deafening silence, punctuated only by a soft, far-off ticking, like millions of teeth being clicked together. The mass expanded and contracted, pulsating at intervals. Then the rats, en masse, turned toward her with a soft rustle, and whispered…
“He won’t bother you anymore, Kate.”
Kate gulped air and stumbled backward down the alley. Her phone clattered to the pavement, and she heard a long, low dial tone. The rat mass followed, every beady eye fixed on her. She felt their hunger, palpable, unsatiated.
“He issss no longer a threat. We would not let ssssuch vermin hurt our queen.”
She sat down hard on the pavement. The voices.
“You… You…” She couldn’t form the words.
The swarm surged toward her suddenly, and she screamed and threw her hands before her face. Her eyes were shut tight; she felt tiny puffs of freezing air inches from her palms. The air was thick, sweet, metallic.
“You find usss…. disssgusssting.” An odd tone of regret radiated from the rats. “Perhapsssss we will find another form.” The bodies began rustling and clicking, writhing around into different shapes, but stopped abruptly at the sound of footsteps and approaching sirens. She opened her eyes and looked. The mass had turned as one, and began shedding rats from its back, one by one, then in a slippery deluge of furry black bodies. They slid down between the slats of the sewer grate beneath the overturned dumpster, rolling over a discarded empty grey coat and red scarf. Kate jumped at the rattle as a jumble of clean white bones fell from within the mass. She shuddered.
A crowd had begun to gather at the mouth of the alley, peering in at this strange scene of an overturned dumpster, a terrified young woman, and a pile of bones. Two uniformed officers pushed their way through, and helped her up and out of the alley. The younger one dispersed the crowd while the older of the two led her to a well-lit bench and sat her down. He tipped his hat back and squinted shrewdly at her.
“Now, miss, I’d like to hear your story in your own words, but if you’re not up to it right now, I would understand.” Kate shook her head. She couldn’t understand it herself. How could she put it into words?
He smiled and nodded. “That’s okay. We’ll get you home safe and sound.” He turned to the other officer, who was on his phone, and spoke in hushed tones. Kate could catch snatches of the conversation.
“… hope she won’t… any trouble… not like him… leave witnesses… we’ll have a… see to the girl.”
He turned back and offered her his hand. “Miss, if you’ll just let me know where you’re living, I can drop you off there real easy.”
Kate stared up at him. For a moment she thought she saw his eyes flicker black. She bolted upright and walked away, calling over her shoulder rather shrilly.
“I’m fine! I can make my own way back.” She took off down the street, only once looking back to see the officer staring at her, his polite grin fixed on his face.
Inspired by #inktober2020 prompts #6-12 (rodent, fancy, teeth, throw, hope, disgusting, slippery)