Willard (Ratman’s Notebooks)

by Stephen Gilbert

  “I think she’s going to get married,” he said.

  “Is that so?” I replied, smiling benevolently.

  Since I have become Managing Director I have naturally had to alter my manner with the staff, the girl included. No more soup at lunch-time. I go out to quite a good restaurant. I have to consider my position. Once we are married I shall go home. A restaurant is really too expensive for every day, though going home in the car will cost quite a lot too.

  Still these horrible dreams. Every night I have them. Sometimes Jones. Sometimes the rats. Sometimes both together.

  Tonight I’m alone at home. So restful just to sit at the fireside by myself and write my notes. I don’t mean I’m not looking forward to the time when the girl is sitting opposite, maybe doing her knitting, all nice and cozy, just the two of us . . . Or maybe she’ll be out in the kitchen, bustling about, washing-up perhaps, though she should be finished that by this time.

  The only thing is I won’t be able to sit like this writing my notes. Sure as fate she’d be leaning over me. “What’s that you’re writing, darling?

  “And you’ve been keeping notes all this time and never told me?

  “Oh, that was very naughty of you! You’ll have to show me them all, right from the very beginning.”

  And she’d make me. She’s very strong willed. The only way to oppose her is by subterfuge. What she’d be looking for of course would be me writing down how beautiful she was. “My love is like a red, red rose,” and all that sort of guff. It’s not just that she wouldn’t find what she was looking for. It’s what she would find. I wonder what she’d do. It’s funny. I haven’t an idea. So I won’t take any chances. I’ll buy a special deed-box, of which I’ll keep the key myself, and leave it in the safe-deposit in the Bank with all my old notebooks inside. I don’t care what anyone finds out about me after I’m dead. I expect that if I do have children they’ll burn the lot. Save a scandal. “To think that Father was that awful Ratman! Don’t tell poor Mother. I’m sure she never had any idea.” And of course she won’t have. Not if I can help it.

  Of course if I’d just a little more sense I’d burn the lot myself, but there’s something about something you’ve written. I mean it’s yourself, isn’t it? And then suppose even your children found it, and didn’t destroy it. They might think it was too interesting to destroy. They’d lock it up again and say, “Oh, well, it would be no harm in letting this be known in a hundred years’ time, when we’re all dead. By that time it’s not going to matter to anyone.” Then in a hundred years’ time it would come out and go to a museum as an historical document. Parts of it might even be published.

  GREAT TWENTIETH-CENTURY

  MYSTERY SOLVED AT LAST

  The story of Ratman, who terrorized . . .

  Something like that. Perhaps with my photograph. I must get my photograph taken and put it in the box. You never know. My family mightn’t bother to keep my photograph. I remember after Father died Mother threw out a lot of old photographs of his relations.

  I’ll buy the deed-box tomorrow.

  The most awful thing has happened. Ben is alive. Not only is he alive. He’s here, now, in this room watching me. He’s not alone either. The cellar’s full of rats again. Not all the rats I set out with when I went to kill Jones. But some of them, and a lot of others I never saw before. Not furry-tails at all, just a gather-up, miscellaneous rats Ben has fallen in with on the way here. He’s lost his sense of racial discrimination, or class consciousness. “A rat’s a rat for a’ that,” he says to himself, and doesn’t care any more whether tails are worn scaly or furry.

  It’s no sense joking, all the same. I’m in a hole, and I don’t quite know how to get out of it. The girl will be home on Monday.

  I came back from the office today, gay as a lark. I put the car in the garage, picked up the deed-box all wrapped in paper and string, and proceeded towards the front door. I looked in the sitting-room window as I passed and there was Ben on the back of the sofa. I stopped dead. He saw me. For a bit we just looked at each other through the glass. He’s as thin as a rake, and all the others are as thin as he is. At that point I didn’t know about the others. I thought it was just Ben. There’s no doubt what they’ve come for. Food. Ben and his lot look as if they haven’t had a good meal since they finished up Jones. And the gather-up they’ve brought with them probably haven’t had a good meal ever.

  I thought of a lot of things as I stood there. I’ve got so accustomed to not having the rats that it was almost as if I’d never had them. I was like any ordinary citizen arriving home and finding a rat in the parlour. The ordinary citizen has his instructions staring at him from every hoarding in the city, “At first sign of rats, telephone the police and ask for Rat Destruction. Don’t try to deal with them yourself. Even if you only see one, there may be more which you can’t see. Remember! Rats Kill!”

  But if I phoned Rat Destruction they’d be out like a swarm of bees. They’d be over the whole place, looking for rats. And they might find my rat-head mask, and they might find my notebooks.

  Suddenly I had a flash. Why not poison him? You can get poison. It’s free as a matter of fact. They give it to you at the Center. People put it down who haven’t rats at all, just in case. It’s the public-spirited thing to do. Major Robinson has bait down all over his garden, though he says he’s never seen a rat within a mile of it. They’ve passed a law making it an offence if you have rats not to report them. This is because, in spite of all the danger, a lot of people don’t like to report they have rats. They’re afraid of getting a bad name among the neighbours for being dirty or something.

  I thought to myself, “Surely I can put up with Ben for one night. I’ve put up with him plenty of nights before.” So I unlocked the door and went inside.

  “Hello, Ben,” I said. “You’ve been away a long time.” I put out my hand to stroke him, but he snapped at me.

  I went back to the hall and hung up my coat and hat in the cloakroom. Things didn’t seem just too bad, I could surely deal with Ben by himself. But something made me open the cellar door and go down there. It was full of rats. They looked at me, all this starved lot of them, just as if it might have been a lot of cannibals looking at their next meal. I couldn’t get up the steps and shut the door quick enough. One thing was very clear. I’d have to get it into their heads that I was the meal provider, not the meal.

  I shot straight out, not going back to Ben in the sitting-room. Outside the front door I stopped to think again. Would I not be better after all to phone Rat Destruction? It was going to be a risk going back in there. Then I thought again of the mask, and the notebooks.

  I got out the car and started on a round of shops that stay open after the usual shop-hours. I bought two loaves in the first. But I thought they looked at me rather. So in the next I just bought one, and in the next and the next, and the next . . . When I thought I’d enough I went home. I’d got a bit of cold boiled ham for Ben. He’d always been fond of cold ham, but usually I hadn’t let him have any—just if I’d some over and it looked like it was going a bit mouldy. However, the thing just now was to appease him. I needn’t have bothered. He’d appeased himself in the larder without considering his friends and relations. What’s more he’s lost his manners. There was rat dirt over everything. Perhaps he’s just showing me he doesn’t care any more. The result was I kept the bit of ham and part of one of the loaves for myself as there was nothing in the larder I cared to touch. I flung the remaining loaves down into the cellar and the rats were on them like a pack of wolves.

  So here I am watching Ben, and Ben watching me. He could kill me during the night, but I don’t think he will. He wants to keep me for the sake of a comfortable home. He knows that without me the food won’t come rolling in, and by the look of him I should think he’s had enough of foraging for himself. I’ll buy grain tomorrow and I’ll mix poison with it. By the next day they should all be dead. If there are any half-dead I should be able to finish them
off with a spade or something. It’s wonderful how desperation gets rid of squeamishness.

  Tomorrow in the office I think I’d better tell them I won’t be in the following day. If all goes well I’ll be conducting a mass funeral and I don’t want anyone coming out to see what’s happened to me.

  Now I’m in the attic—putting in time . . .

  Till what?

  Well, they’re doing nothing yet.

  I wish to heavens I hadn’t told the office I wouldn’t be in tomorrow. I wish I’d told them instead to come and look for me if I wasn’t in at the usual time. Even that mightn’t have been any good. I wish I’d never come home tonight. But I did. I brought the grain and the poison.

  When I got in I went straight to the sitting-room. I don’t know why. Ben was on the table this time, my notebook open in front of him. He cocked his head sideways so that one eye was fixed on what I had written and the other was half-watching me. Then he gave a kind of shake to his head as if to say, “I’ve read it all. I know what you’re up to.”

  I made a grab and got the notebook. Ben jumped off the table and on to a chair. From that on to the floor and under the sofa. I came up here. Meant to get the mask and the deed-box with all the notebooks. Then clear out.

  Not quick enough. The rats had come up after me. A solid mass of them crossing the landing. Just got the door shut in time.

  I can’t reach the skylight. Too high. Have to sit it out and hope.

  Leave that door alone, damn you.

  They’d gnaw the door down if I didn’t keep yelling. Maybe somebody will hear me—

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  E.M. Forster called him “a writer of distinction”, and reviews of his first novel, The Landslide, referred to “a little classic” and “an original and graceful work”.

  Stephen Gilbert was the author of 1968’s Ratman’s Notebooks, a short novel about a lowly office worker and social outcast named Willard who befriends the rats living in his crumbling home and eventually trains them to do his bidding, exacting revenge on his boss and his despised mother. In the end, one particular rat named Ben proves a little too smart, and causes the other rats to turn against Willard and attack him.

  The novel was first adapted into a film in 1971 and the cult horror classic, renamed Willard was later remade in 2003 in a project starring Crispin Glover.

  Gilbert’s other novels include Monkeyface about an apeboy adapting to life in the suburbs of Belfast, and The Burnaby Experiments, about a millionaire’s experiments with psychic phenomenon.

  Stephen Gilbert, novelist and businessman: born Newcastle, Co Down 22 July 1912; married 1945 Kathleen Stevenson (two daughters, two sons); died Whiteabbey, Northern Ireland 23 June 2010.

  Table of Contents

  BACK COVER

  TITLEPAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  WILLARD

  START READING

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR