Eventually, the remains would drop onto the tumuli of bones left by the countless fallen. Perhaps the disconcertingly crunchy noise of their footsteps kept the villagers out of the woods. Without a doubt, treading on the litter left by a million tiny corpses was an uncanny business. Whatever the reason for their aversion, the trees remained free of human interference. They grew strong on their diet of festering meat.
It took longer than most had expected for newcomers to begin objecting to the rat-catcher’s charnel house wind-chimes. Specifically, it was the holiday-makers who rented the tastefully modernised investment cottages. These visitors took great offence at the stench of death and decay ruining their attempted picnics in the woods. They despised the baleful, rotting eyes gazing at them as they cautiously communed with nature. This was supposedly their time away from the stresses and strains of urban life.
The council realised that something had be done to protect their investment. The matter would need very careful handling. An unseemly, headline grabbing kerfuffle absolutely had to be avoided. Old Gurteen, as his name suggested, was no longer in the flower of his youth – and discrimination against the elderly never played well in the media.
So it seemed, one inclement morning towards the close of summer, as if Providence herself had taken a hand. A trio of touring cyclists collided with the silent old man as he made his daily rounds. They claimed that he had appeared from nowhere out of the mist. He was in no fit state to contradict them, lying battered, bruised and broken in a ditch. The village’s cottage hospital had become a cosy gift shop some time before. It was great for lacy gingham cushions and earthenware door plaques emblazoned with trite homilies. Less use, perhaps, to anyone sick or injured. Old Gurteen was bundled off to the smart new infirmary in town. The council assured the concerned inhabitants that he would receive the very finest of care.
With the rat catcher gone, the villagers became troubled. Not one of them quite knew why, but there it was. They had grumbled at the loss of the school, the cottage hospital, the Post Office. None of their prior losses had filled them with the growing sense of dread they now experienced. It only took a glance towards that small, neat cottage at the edge of the woods to evoke it. The locals had always considered it a terrible shame that Old Gurteen had no family of his own. Despite several attempted apprenticeships, none of the village’s youngsters had been interested. Ancient and venerable though the occupation was, it remained, admittedly, far from glamorous. Even the vicar – on his visits between parishes – found himself praying a little more fervently. Was the watchful gaze of his stony murine congregation a little more pointed? There had never not been a rat catcher in Muscoby. People talked in hushed, anxious tones about the end of the old ways.
The council, on the other hand, were secretly delighted. Their problem appeared to have taken care of itself. They were always very careful not to show their pleasure, of course. All of those dead creatures had to be in breach of some sort of health and safety legislation anyway. The small, neat cottage certainly wasn’t going to be up to snuff when it came to Old Gurteen’s eventual rehabilitation, either.
A cleaning crew was duly dispatched to the woods, all decked out in pristine white protective suits and face masks. Slowly but surely, they removed the detritus of the Gurteen family’s bloody and determined past, one cadaveric sackful at a time. Workmen busied themselves all over the cottage. They updated the plumbing, spruced up the paintwork, and cleaned out the sheds. They also thoroughly trampled the vegetable patch. They were determined to make everything modern, clean and sparkling for the old man’s return.
But things were not going well at the hospital, much to the council’s dismay. The longer Old Gurteen was away from the village, the more agitated he became. The once-quiet old man began to gabble constantly about needing to take care of the rats. The ward manager became increasingly irked. Every day, she fielded more and more queries from disgruntled patients and their families. There was much concern regarding the possibility of an infestation on the premises.
Moving Old Gurteen to a private room helped, initially. He became ever more mobile however, and took to wandering the wards and corridors at night. Invariably, a bright yellow plastic clinical waste bag was clutched tightly in his hands. The last straw came when an auxiliary nurse caught him stringing up a rat from the window latch with his pyjama cord. One of the sub-contracted pest control company’s traps lay discarded on the floor beside his bare, mud-spattered feet.
People were paid handsomely to be professionally concerned about Old Gurteen’s state of mind. They came to talk to him in their kindly yet earnest way. Their non-threatening, colourful ties and relentlessly cheery assurances did nothing to calm his disquiet or his babbling. A variety of board meetings were specially convened between the hospital and the council. Eventually, they decided that the poor old soul obviously had some form of obsessive compulsion coupled with worsening dementia. Clearly, he could not possibly be released back into the community. It was all for his own safety. Better by far to move him to the region’s special facility. He could be properly monitored. Also, he’d no longer be a nuisance to his long-suffering, council tax paying neighbours and their vacationing guests.
The “For Sale” sign appeared in the garden of the small, neat cottage at the end of the village just as the last bag of remains was removed. The long-standing denizens of Muscoby swore they heard the trees sighing. The holiday-makers had been tickled and repulsed in equal measure by the doom-laden mutterings of the locals. They packed up and went back to their real lives. Letting agents swooped down to carefully shut up all those second homes against the approaching winter. As they left, they each sneaked a surreptitious glance back towards the ancient grove, which seemed to glower back at them, and they shivered. The villagers started locking their doors. This greatly amused the few resident newcomers, who had always locked theirs anyway. Old Gurteen was firmly out of sight and out of mind. The local council slapped themselves on the back for a job well done, and went on about their civic duties with nary a second thought.
The winter was hard – the hardest in living memory. Folk only ventured forth to fetch essentials from town, and then only when the expensively upgraded road was clear. No one said much when the occasional pet went missing. After all, the snow was deep, and the winds bitter enough to cut you in two. Anything caught out in conditions like that was most certainly at the mercy of the elements, which weren’t particularly renowned for their clemency. If the odd sheep was lost too, well that was no surprise. Sheep were particularly stupid creatures. The birds also appeared to have migrated out of the valley, to avoid the plummeting temperatures. Not exactly surprising, no, but perhaps just a little worrying nonetheless. Those who were rooted in the valley found themselves whispering the children’s rhyme to themselves with ever-increasing frequency, brandishing it like a charm against the dark thicket which lurked below the high hills:
Scritch, scratch, catch the rat,
Hang him by his tail,
Scritch, scratch, good old rat,
Their appetites curtail.
No one came to view the small, neat cottage over the winter. The estate agents hadn’t been expecting anyone to. Even so, they were relieved when tentative nibbles began to come in as the weather released its stranglehold on the valley. On their first visit of the year however, they were quite dismayed. The woodland had encroached quite seriously upon the cottage’s garden. In fact, it almost reached the back door.
New photographs of the plot were taken. These were carefully posed, to minimise the looming shadows cast by the curiously trembling branches. Discussion after discussion followed. Should they hire a tree surgeon to trim back the unruly foliage? At the very least, should they knock down the asking price? The property would undoubtedly now require significant extra work. Each new visit showed nature to have snatched back a little more of the cottage.
T
he villagers’ sombre mood began to dishearten holiday-makers, as did the fearful scurryings from the surrounding woods. The trees were completely clear of putrefying spectators, but the newcomers still felt as if they were being watched. They no longer wanted to walk beneath the woodland’s eaves, strewing sandwich wrappers, drinks cartons and gnawed apple cores in their wake. Workmen eventually came in from the council, with chainsaws and chippers. They made a half-hearted attempt to tame the unruly weald. But the trees, so long apparently unmanaged, resisted all their efforts to contain them. The dismembered trunks flung forth twisting offshoots, transforming ancient woodland into vibrant new coppice. The encroachment intensified.
When the first hiker went missing, the news was greeted with a sense of inevitability. If anything, there was mild bemusement that it hadn’t happened sooner. The regional television news reporter carefully made sure never to turn her back on the trees throughout filming. She talked to the hiker’s friends on camera. They recalled how he had been sure there was a shortcut through the woods. In fact, he was convinced this would enable him to get speedily to the pub in the next valley over. He’d boasted that he’d be savouring a leisurely pint before they’d even got close to leaving the local.
The man’s remains were located quickly enough, which some said was a blessing for his family. There were murmurings of an undiagnosed heart condition, or some sort of fit. However, the inquest could draw no firm conclusions as to how he came by his untimely end. Nobody came to lay a wreath for him at the spot where he was found. Nobody could blame them.
Bookings fell off rapidly after that. The gift shop closed, and even the old Post Office tea shop reduced its opening hours. Grass grew through the cracks in the car park, and rain filled up the pot-holes. No one came to fix them. One by one, gaudy placards began to appear in the picture-postcard gardens. The one in the rat catcher’s cottage had long since been swallowed up. The woods marched slowly but inexorably across his vegetable patch and herbaceous borders. Eventually, they breached the neglected hedge and creaking gate, spilling out into the lane that led to the village proper.
Meanwhile, people came and went – or vanished, allegedly. Stories of a curse began to appear in the local papers. Occasional academics came to Muscoby, from colleges with a certain reputation, to view the historic little church. Sadly, the vicar had finally abandoned it, its silent inhabitants, and the entire village. The researchers always ended up gossiping with the locals, and pressing them for lurid details. There were few such details to be had. Across the county, in the facility, Old Gurteen forewent sleep. He was always watching, whispering mournfully to himself. Some said he was just as caught in his sterile little room as any of the rats he himself had trapped. If any of the academics had thought to speak to him, they might have heard a different tale:
Scritch, scratch, no more rats,
The children all shall wail,
Scritch, scratch, the wood’s come back,
The falling of the veil...
The days passed, then the weeks and months. Such stories as there were grew in the telling, and visitors stayed away in their droves. The council were unable to continue pretending that it was most definitely nothing to do with them. They sat for long hours in their chambers, debating and scheming. Finally, they declared there was to be a new plan for Muscoby. It would solve the region’s crippling summer water shortages, and put an end to the much-maligned hosepipe bans. The valley was perfect for a reservoir. No one was going to argue with the compulsory purchase of all those unloved, unwanted, overgrown little cottages. No one who actually counted, anyway.
There had never not been a rat catcher in Muscoby.
Now Muscoby is no more, drowned beneath a dark, forbidding mere. It’s not even much of a place to go fishing. They just can’t seem to keep the stocks high enough, despite their best efforts. Few boats ply the trembling surface of the lake, which shifts and stirs even when there is no wind to drive it. And if there’s the occasional accident, well, everyone knows the dangers of deep water. It will drag you down into its cold embrace, wrap you in its weeds, and string you up between the branches of its sunken forest, to watch the world above with baleful, rotting eyes.
ICKE
by Greg Stolze
Icke held his killing tool casually, tipping it up against a shoulder with his right hand. The box that accompanied it rested beside his foot. He looked out over the ocean and frowned. It was Friday, the eleventh.
At seventeen, he had a lot on his mind. From where he stood, all he could see was the open water, cold gray foam fading to clear as it touched the bleak gray gravel of the beach. But if he turned around, he’d see Wellesport.
The day smelled like dead mackerel.
Francis Icke (or “Icky” as he was almost always called at school) had been born in Wellesport. He had gone to Wellesport North Elementary, Wellesport East Jr. High, and was now in Wellesport Central High School. He was poor, and pale, and his eyes were a little too close together under his shelving brow. If that wasn’t grief enough, Icke had been dadless since age ten, and was scrawny, with a high, reedy, dissonant voice. He didn’t say much to anyone, and no one said much to him, except in the language of sneers and cut-away glances and bumps that were almost, but not quite, contemptuous shoves.
He sighed, looked down at his tackle box, and opened it. It unfolded smoothly into two ranked rows of small compartments, each one holding lures or hooks. It was like an amphitheater of tempting death, ocean-fishing tackle on one side, and lake and stream on the other. The sinkers and spare line and the fiberglass components of his lightweight stream rod were tidily stowed away. His gear was all top flight, either won in fishing competitions or bought with prize money.
Icke wasn’t good at much, and he didn’t understand much, but he was the best damn fisherman Wellesport had seen in generations. As he started towards the bait shack, he thought about Wendy.
♦
Wendy was the only person who was nice to him. At some level, Icke realized that even she wasn’t that nice to him. She didn’t sit next to him at lunch or anything. But nine days earlier, on Wednesday, he’d been assigned to be her partner in Chem Lab. Everyone else laughed, but she didn’t laugh. Didn’t even roll her eyes. There was something unseen going on with that, between Wendy and Mrs. Frye, the always-frowning Chemistry teacher. Was there an understanding between them? Did Frye think Wendy would help him and then he wouldn’t fail? Was Frye punishing Wendy for something? Or did she just think Wendy would be the least disruptive to pair with him? He didn’t get it.
But when he read the lab instructions and started to do it, she corrected his mistake without calling him stupid, and when she passed him a beaker her fingers touched the back of his hand. (As he checked over his excellent fish-killing tool, he looked down. He could remember the exact spot, on the little web by his thumb. Two fingertips, right there.) He said, “Thank you” when she handed him the beaker and she said, “You’re welcome”, just as polite as could be. When class ended he said, “Bye” and she said, “See you later.”
She didn’t ignore him or say, “Yeah” or “Whatever” or “Bye,” but “See you later.” He didn’t want to read too much into that, but he watched her walk away down the hall. It wasn’t until he heard the laughter that he realized he was staring, and blushing.
♦
With his rod assembled and bait in a bucket, Icke walked out to the edge of the dock. He didn’t cast yet. Instead, he sat and closed his eyes. He slumped and let things go away. The chill wind that was mostly passing right through his nylon jacket... He let it go. The growth pains in his shoulder and elbow and hip joints which meant that he was probably going to get even taller and thinner now, and be even hungrier... He let it go. The sorrow at being him, and the anger that everyone else was everyone else... He let it all slide out of him, until he wasn’t a boy in a body any more. He was something else s
omewhere else.
He’d been able to do it as long as he could remember. Mostly at night, when Mom and Dad were yelling. He’d slide away into bodiless silence, until he could relax into sleep. It wasn’t until a boring fishing trip on Stony Hill Lake that he’d realized where he was going when he left.
♦
Francis was eight years old, and his father rowed him out to the center of the lake to make a few attempts – asked how school was, if he wanted to try any sports. At one point, his dad said, “You know, your mother and I...” But then he couldn’t finish it, as if he couldn’t think of anything that applied to both of them.
For his part, Francis tried to talk to his dad about things that mattered – who was picking on him at school, and the console video game system he’d seen at the store when they were getting his winter coat, and his favorite TV show, but Dad didn’t seem to understand any of it. So after some desultory fishing directions that ended with Dad impatiently baiting the hook and shoving the rod into Francis’s hands, they settled into silence, staring out over the water.
“This is awright, is’nit?” Dad said, at one point. “Two men, out on the water, not needing to talk about anything.”
Francis had already been bored right out of his body when he felt a bright, quick presence. Then two more, and a deeper, slower one. He’d felt things like this before when he went Out, but this time he had his eyes open and was more awake than asleep. He felt forms floating in the space he occupied and in that moment realized that they corresponded, in one way, to what his eyes were seeing.
Cthulhu Lives!: An Eldritch Tribute to H. P. Lovecraft Page 16