Hilary dipped her nose in a slight gesture of acknowledgement, as one might do to recognize an inferior, and walked away at an imperiously slow pace.
“Hurry up!” Giles growled.
As she vanished through the gap into the next garden, Skit flew down from above and landed on the steps beside Giles. “Let’s give her a little head start,” Giles said, grabbing Terry’s tail as he started off after Hilary.
A few seconds later, as Giles and Terry entered the garden on one side, Hilary was leaving on the other. She stopped, looked around, and turned back to them.
“I don’t see any candy,” she hissed across the yard. “Are you sure it was he …”
The orange tom pounced. Giles heard her bones snap, or at least he imagined he did as the cat landed right on her back. Either way, it was a happy sound. Hilary’s face was slack, expressionless. The cat bit into her neck and twisted so violently that her head came off in its mouth, and her body soared into the darkness nearer the house.
Terry surprised Giles by chasing the cat as it ran after Hilary’s corpse. That wasn’t part of the plan. He wasn’t done with Terry, yet.
“Terry!” he called. “Get back here! It’ll kill you, too!”
Terry vanished through the wall to Tom’s garden.
Giles cursed the oaf, and slipped over to the sidewalk while Skit took to the air. There were more humans coming towards him, but they were far enough away that he wasn’t worried about them, yet.
Overruling his survival instincts, he ran towards the humans along the brick wall. When he reached the smashed pumpkin, he looked into the yard. Terry was on the lowest of five steps leading up to the building, standing over Hilary’s body, while Tom sat on the step above, playfully swatting at him. Terry’s right ear was torn, and his shoulder was red with blood.
“You stupid, stupid rat!” Giles whispered.
A tiny squeak answered from beneath a shattered dome of pumpkin rind. He lifted the edge, and drew a surprised breath. The prettiest little whiskered face he’d ever seen, looked up at him beneath perky round ears. It was a mouse.
With the humans almost upon him, Giles left Terry to his own devices and crawled under the pumpkin shell. The little brown mouse scooted away from him, dropping the pumpkin seed she had been nibbling.
“It’s ok, little one. Sit still. I’ll protect you.” He picked up her discarded seed and handed it to her. As she took it, their eyes met, and Giles was lost. Such beauty had never before existed in tiny black orbs. She was utterly beguiling. His only intention had been to keep her quiet until the humans had passed, but looking into her deep, lovely eyes, all he wanted was to keep them safe; to protect this fragile piece of perfection so that he could stare at her forever.
The cat screeched outside, and the dog they heard earlier started barking again. If Skit was right, it was a Yorkshire terrier in the next yard. The terrifying beasts were designed by the devil to kill rats, and Giles liked to keep tabs on such creatures. The mouse looked away when the dog barked, and Giles was free of her spell.
“Don’t be scared,” he said with uncharacteristic bravery. “I have a plan. I’m Giles, King of the Alley Warren. What’s your name, my sweet?”
If his title and bravery impressed her, she gave no sign. She only squeaked in reply.
Suddenly, the world became a whirling blur of confusion. The pumpkin rind had been shoved aside, and he looked down from high above it as the little mouse fled into the cat’s yard. It would kill her with a single swipe of its claw. Giles wanted to help, but he couldn’t get back down to her. Instead, he only went higher.
A giant human face appeared below him as he spun. “You should have hid better, little fella,” it said. “Your tail was poking out from under that pumpkin. Well, you’re gator–bait, now. A guy at the serpentarium pays good money for rats like you.”
The human dangled him by his tail. Giles jerked sideways, lunging at the human’s fat fingers, but he couldn’t reach.
Below, the cat was deciding whether to play with Terry or the new mouse that had just run into its yard. It showed Terry a bit more respect than earlier, so he must have given it that red scratch on its chin. As Tom’s attention turned to the mouse, Terry hopped down from the step, and slipped out of the cat’s yard.
And into the terrier’s.
Without warning, all of the lights around Giles went dark. It was almost warren–dark, which rarely ever happened on the surface world, even in the deepest night. A feeling of peace and safety overcame him as a human stepped out of the swirling blackness behind his captor. Giles had never known humans to feed on each other, but this one lowered his face to the first human’s neck, and sank his pointy teeth into his flesh.
His captor didn’t even cry out. It just dropped Giles, and stood there, letting the darker, friendlier one feed on him. The barking dog whimpered, and fell silent, and the cat cowered near the building’s door. Giles landed pretty hard, but he wasn’t hurt. He felt an odd kinship with the second human. Looking up at its face, he heard it speaking in his mind.
There were no words, but he knew this was no ordinary human. He was a creature of the earth, too; a friend to rats and burrowers. His new friend turned into a dark mist and vanished as he had come, leaving the first human in a daze with blood leaking down its neck.
The lights came back on, and shadows leapt away from them in all directions down the deathly silent street. No dogs barked, no humans laughed or screamed. It was utterly still for several seconds. Giles hoped the mouse was using this opportunity to get away. Tom was coming out of his stupor, and next door, the dog whimpered. Maybe his plan wasn’t going so well, after all.
He raced through the wall and saw his mouse sneaking along the base of the steps, unknowingly watched by the cat from the step above. A strange feeling overcame Giles, and he raced through the grass to the paved walkway and leapt at the cat, teeth bared and ready for action. The cat was quick, though, and swatted him with its paw, knocking him sideways. Luckily, its claws were retracted. It wanted to play.
“Run!” he yelled at the mouse, and of course, she ran towards the dog’s yard.
As she approached the wall to pass through, the dog on the other side resumed its yapping. Terry bowled through the gap, barely noticing as he knocked her flat and trampled her on his way towards the cat. Right behind him, the rat terrier squeezed through, saw Terry, and gave chase, a freshly gnawed leather leash dragging behind.
The cat arched its back and hissed (rather rat–like, Giles thought), the dog crouched and growled at the cat, and Terry stood on his back legs, looking very large and fierce as he gnashed his teeth. Giles saw the mouse on the opposite side of the garden, with the dog, the cat, and Terry between them. He fought the urge to go get her and carry her away. He knew nothing about her, but with a face like that she had to be as sweet as bakery trash.
But too much was riding on his success to throw it all away for a girl.
Or was it? He pictured the two of them in a tiny den on a farm, as he had imagined earlier, but the thought vanished as the fur started flying. Terry maneuvered to keep the cat between himself and the dog, and it seemed to work. The two surface beasts fought each other for the privilege of killing him.
Terry seized Hilary’s severed head, and slipped away from the battle, but the cat wasn’t giving up its prize so easily. It bit hard and deep into Terry’s leg, opening up an opportunity for the dog to attack. The terrier bit the cat’s tail, tugging, and shaking ferociously. The cat yowled and spun to claw the dog, but Terry was lodged in its mouth, dangling from its fangs. The tip of the cat’s tail came away in the dog’s mouth, and Terry fell as it jumped back to the top of the wall.
The terrier gave chase, forgetting about Terry, to run back and forth beneath the cat. Terry limped over to Giles, his bloody leg dragging behind him, but he still had Hilary’s head. The barking continued as they made their way slowly through the maze of potted plants and garden gnomes in the last yard, to the drainage gra
te where Skit patiently waited.
“You are a true beast, Terry,” Giles said, full of brotherly pride. “What kind of rat squares off against a dog and a cat? It just isn’t done, you know. Now look at you. Covered in your own blood, and limping like a three legged spider.”
“I’m alright, Giles. I just did what you would’ve if you wasn’t busy with that mouse. Who is she, by the way?”
“Her? Oh, well … Nobody. I just met her.” His eye itched, and Terry took his reflexive wink as something meaningful.
“Oh, she’s spy. Like Skit, here. I get it. Shhh.”
Giles was torn between disgust for his brother’s stupidity and gratitude for his simple, honest loyalty, and his nearly insane bravery. He chuckled and turned towards the grate, where Skit gave him the All Clear sign.
“Come on, then. Can you walk?”
Terry put Hilary’s head in his mouth so he could walk on three legs. That’s when they got their first good look at his wound, and saw that the cat’s broken fang still impaled his leg.
“No wonder that hurts” Terry said. He grabbed the fang to pull it out, only to squeal in pain. “I can’t, Giles! You’ll have to do it.”
An angry hiss came from above them, and Terry rolled aside as the bloodied, but not beaten Tom pounced.
Giles dove into the drainage pipe and starting crawling, as the screams and sounds of battle erupted once more behind him. Skit had already gone ahead to scout, since he was now trespassing in the Sewer Rats’ territory, but Giles wasn’t worried. No rat messed with an Alley Rat, much less their king.
He passed connecting pipes, and thought he heard other rats moving about, but the way noises bounced around in the there, they could have been miles away. When the pipe finally emptied into a square drainage channel under the street, he could tell something was following him.
Since it wasn’t very likely to be Terry, it had to be either the Sewer Rats or the monster with the hypnotic red eyes. Not keen to meet either, he raced to the place Terry called the gates of Hell.
∼ ∼ ∼
Part 3: The Gates of Hell
Giles’ front paws hit dirt where the concrete had cracked and broken away. The telltale packed earth of a rat tunnel doubled back beneath the channel. This had to be the Road Rats’ warren. Whatever was chasing him had fallen behind, but it was still coming. He could reach the serpentarium pretty quickly if he just kept going, but he didn’t want to lead anyone to his treasure.
Let’s see if you follow me into an enemy burrow.
He squeezed through the opening. The scent of rats dominated the tunnel, with other scents layered beneath. Pleasant scents. Something tasty. Something … Beautiful? Could it be? Was this her pack’s lair?
The tunnels twisted around rocks and concrete, and in a couple of places had flat concrete ceilings. He even found several stashes of the food Skit had told him about. It was dry, crunchy, and delicious. This warren must have a connection to the serpentarium! He wanted to stay and gorge himself. He hadn’t seen any of the rats or mice who lived here, which was odd, but he didn’t relish eating himself to sleep, and waking up to be a meal for them.
He followed the intersecting tunnels where the mouse’s divine aroma was strongest. She had definitely been there, and not very long ago. Could she have gotten back here before him through one of those side tunnels, or was this an older trail? It led him deeper than most rats like to tunnel, but he was rewarded with several other food stashes along the way.
The tunnels eventually took him up through the bottom of a cracked cinder–block, with another small hole through the wood and soft–rock walls of a human building. The smells changed dramatically as he left the earthy tunnel for the disgustingly clean tile floors that humans favored.
He found himself in a gap between a towering plastic bin and the wall he just exited. To his left, a small pile of food had poured onto the floor from a hole that been industriously gnawed through the plastic.
The other scents included both the strange and the familiar; humans, other animals and their waste, and water. It was the smell of danger. There were sounds, too. Skit said there would be no humans, but there was no mistaking their noises. He ignored the food, and peered around the edge of the bin. The smell of excrement and waste water was overpowering.
An open glass door to his right led into another room, far too large to even see the other side, but the smaller glass room was lined almost to the ceiling with cages. Two humans, dressed up like the smaller ones out on the street, were opening the cage doors. There were too many to count. As they opened column after column of cages, ghostly white faces with pink eyes and white whiskers peeked briefly through the open doors, and then pulled back into their cages, out of sight.
Giles backed up into the crevasse behind the food bin. That was the creepiest thing he’d ever seen. What had happened to all of those rats? Were they monsters? Ghosts? He shivered, and forced himself to look again.
“Why don’t they try to escape?” one of the humans asked.
“They’re probably scared of us. They’ll run away as soon as we’re gone. Trust me,” the other one said, its voice deeper and more confident than the first.
“Come on,” the first one said. “We’re here to free you. Don’t be scared. We won’t hurt you.”
“You know they don’t understand English, right?” the other said. “Keep quiet and hurry up. I’d rather not be here when the cops show up.”
“I want to get out of here before the snakes show up. We should have done them last.”
“Well you shouldn’t have opened the poisonous cages. That cobra could kill someone. With the back door jammed open, it could get outside and bite some poor trick–or–treater.”
“You said no animal should be a prisoner to humans. It’s their world, not ours. What right do I have to decide which ones should be free, and which ones have to stay in this concentration camp?”
Giles heard the last few sentences, but he was so happy to see Skit crawling across the ceiling, the words didn’t register.
The roach held perfectly still until the humans followed their mobile beams of light out of the rat cages.
“It’s about time!” Giles said. “Is there another way out of here? Something was following me through those tunnels, and I’d rather meet it on my terms, preferably with some of our pack between us.”
Skit crawled through the wedged open door into the cavernous room beyond. Aside from being warmer and much more humid, Giles felt the familiar, comforting presence he noticed earlier when the shadowy man appeared. Skit seemed to sense it too. His antennae waved around excitedly, probably trying to find its source.
“Lead on, Skit! I want to see those hiding places you found, too. It’s going to take ages to get this food out of here.”
Skit gestured towards the dozens of pink eyed mutant rats peering down at him through their opened cage doors.
“Them? I don’t want those freaks touching my food! Look at them. They’re disgusting. If I had a sick kit that looked like that, I wouldn’t even eat it. Yech! Like the human said, they probably don’t even understand English. Now move! Show me the way out of here.”
Giles followed his friend across the huge, damp room, but stopped at the tiled edge of a pool. The water was so far down, he had trouble seeing its surface. It wasn’t just a pool, though. It was like an entire sunken lake, complete with plants and even trees, on a muddy shore at the far end. It looked rather inviting. Giles was a good swimmer, and hadn’t been in warm water for a long time. He leaned against the slick metal post sticking up from the floor, and breathed in the warm, moist air.
Skit buzzed to get his attention, but some sort of commotion drew his attention back to the ghost rat room. It sounded like they had all decided to run for freedom at once. Somewhere out of sight, a human screamed. It wasn’t one of the laughing, fun–to–be–scared screams that he had been hearing all night, either, but he didn’t care. They were just humans. As far as he knew, they didn
’t really feel pain, anyway, at least not the way rats did.
An eerie sensation crawled up his spine, and he turned to see one of the most frightening monsters he could imagine gliding towards him across the floor. The snake was longer than most humans. As he turned to face it, it lifted its head high above him and opened hood–like flaps on either side of its neck. It swayed with hypnotic rhythm, tasting the air with its flicking forked tongue.
Giles froze. He knew it could strike at any moment, but he couldn’t stop watching it. Skit broke his trance by flying down in front of the demon–snake’s face, easily dodging its strike. He landed on the floor, and quickly took to the air again, dodging yet another strike.
Giles finally found the will to move as the snake turned back to him. He climbed around the back of the metal post where it he hoped it couldn’t reach, but his grip slipped on the slick metal, and he fell.
He caught himself on the rough edge of the tile, dangling by a one back paw and one front. Looking up for something to grab, he noticed the hanging rectangular lights swinging, as pasty ghost rats ran along them, leaping from one to another until they were right above him.
Skit tried to keep the snake distracted, but it finally decided to ignore the little pest in favor of the larger, easier meal. It slithered between the bars, flicking its evil forked tongue as it looked down at the dangling King of the Alley Rats.
Giles looked back and forth between the distant water and the very near snake. He had almost decided to let go when his dear, stupid, brave brother, Terry, started climbing down a line hanging from the light box with the cat’s fang between his teeth.
The snake coiled around a metal post, and leaned out between them. It looked down at Giles and opened its scary hood. Directly above it, Terry dove with the cat claw in both hands, pointed downward. Giles lost sight of his brother behind the beast’s hood, but a moment later it lunged awkwardly over the water. Terry hung from the back of its head by the embedded cat fang.
It crawled back up to the floor with Terry still clinging to its neck. His legs were wrapped around it, and his hands gripped the fang as he bit repeatedly into the reptile’s scaled neck.
Tales From The Mist: An Anthology of Horror and Paranormal Stories Page 16