Wild Stories

by Colin Thompson

  ‘Exactly,’ said Derek.

  Everyone stopped what they were doing and listened. The house was completely silent. Even the ticking of the kitchen clock had stopped.

  ‘She’s probably taken the dog for a walk,’ said Derek’s mum.

  ‘But there’s always some sort of noise,’ said Derek.

  ‘Nn nttthhhnnk mmms nggn mmmggyy,’ said a voice from the shadows.

  ‘For goodness sake, Neville,’ snapped Derek’s mum. ‘How many times have I told you not to talk with your mouth full?’

  ‘Nnnnggyy, nnnmm.’

  ‘NEVILLE!!!’

  ‘Sorry, Mum.’

  ‘Come here, and bring that sock.’

  ‘What sock?’

  ‘Neville, don’t try and pull the wool over my eyes.’

  ‘He’s too busy pulling it over his own eyes,’ sniggered Derek.

  ‘I haven’t got a sock,’ said Neville.

  ‘Well, what were you chewing then?’ said their mum.

  ‘Er, umm, a sausage,’ lied Neville.

  ‘Show me.’

  ‘Er, I’ve eaten it all.’

  ‘Well, in that case,’ said his mother, ‘you won’t want any supper, will you?’

  Neville started crying. In the dark corner his small shadowy shape could be seen shaking as his tears fell on to the floor. The sun came in through the cellar window and landed on his little wet feet. His mother went over and put her arms round him.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said, tickling his ears.

  ‘I do try, Mum, honest,’ he sobbed. ‘I just can’t stop myself.’

  ‘But where do you keep getting them from? Socks don’t grow on trees.’

  Neville went silent and hung his head. He shuffled his feet and clung to his mother with his eyes tight shut.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Squirrels,’ said Neville, hiding in his mother’s apron. He told her that when the squirrels next door ran along the clothes line to get to the bird table, some of the washing fell on to the lawn.

  ‘Are there any knickers?’ whispered Neville’s brother, Trevor.

  ‘TREVOR, I HEARD THAT!’

  ‘Sorry, Mum.’

  ‘And stop sniggering, you lot,’ said the mother rat.

  ‘Sorry, Mum,’ they all chorused.

  In the house, the larder was empty apart from an old jar of bottled fruit on the top shelf. It had been ages since they’d had a really good meal. They couldn’t remember when they’d last had a lump of lard or some chocolate. The old lady had gone in the autumn so there had still been plenty to eat out in the garden. It was winter now and food was beginning to get scarce.

  Derek peered cautiously round the larder door. The kitchen was deserted and smelt damp. He sniffed the air for clues but there was nothing, just the stale emptiness. In the old days there had been a warmth in the air, a soft mixture of sponge cakes and old lady’s perfume and toffees, but now it was all gone. The other rats followed him nervously as he ran across the kitchen and out into the dark hall. Most of them had never been up into the house before and they felt frightened. Everywhere was so big. They were in a land of giants where the ceilings seemed as far away as the sky.

  A thin layer of dust had settled on everything like dirty frost and the house was as silent as the middle of the night. Even the wheel in the electricity meter had stopped moving. Behind the front door was a tumbled pile of letters and newspapers.

  ‘We’ll eat those later,’ said Derek as he led them up the stairs. Neville, who was little more than a baby, bounced up and down by the bottom step.

  ‘I can’t get up,’ he cried.

  ‘Well, go back down to the cellar,’ said Derek.

  ‘I’m frightened,’ cried Neville.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Derek. ‘Mum and Dad are down there.’

  ‘Take me,’ wailed Neville.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m frightened of the light,’ cried the baby rat.

  Derek climbed down and led him through the bright kitchen into the larder. By the familiar hole that led down to the cellar, Neville clutched his big brother’s fur and whispered: ‘I wasn’t really frightened.’

  ‘I know you weren’t,’ smiled Derek.

  ‘If there are any socks up there,’ said Neville, feeling brave again, ‘you’ll save me one, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Derek. The baby rat ran down the tunnel into the cellar while Derek went back and led the others upstairs. Without him to lead them they had felt nervous and hadn’t moved until he’d got back.

  ‘It doesn’t look as if there’s much to eat up here,’ said Derek, as they went from room to room.

  All the furniture was still there but the old lady had taken everything else. The cupboards were bare and so were all the drawers apart from hairpins and talcum powder. They chewed their way into the mattresses but there was nothing there. They chewed their way into the armchairs but all they found was one boiled sweet covered in hairs and a lot of fluff. It was the same in every room, a squashed toffee here and a soggy crisp there, but nothing else. It wasn’t until they got to the bathroom that they found any real food.

  ‘It must be another larder,’ said Derek. ‘The old lady must have kept food up here in case she got hungry in the middle of the night.’

  ‘Oh, wow, this is fantastic,’ said Trevor as he nibbled all the bristles off the lavatory brush.

  ‘I bet it’s not as good as this,’ said Derek, licking a hole right through the middle of the soap.

  ‘No, this is the best,’ said Derek’s sister Tracy, sucking the flannel.

  ‘You haven’t tried this yet,’ said someone else, chewing the lino round the toilet.

  There were so many wonderful things to eat, it was difficult to know where to start. There were half-used tubes of toothpaste that tasted like strawberries, and roll-on deodorants that tasted like old armpits. Down the side of the bath there were bars of soap covered with delicious fluff and when Derek ate a hole in a laundry basket he found a sock for his baby brother. It was better than the socks Neville got from next door because it was very old and hadn’t been in the washing machine. The old lady’s bathroom was like a fancy restaurant with exotic meals from all over the world.

  Over the next few months, the rats stripped the house. Even the oldest rat, Uncle Trubshaw, who had eaten nothing but oven scrapings all his life, was persuaded to come up from the cellar, and ate three hot-water bottles. Young Neville, with a bit of pushing and shoving, managed to get upstairs where he vanished into the laundry basket. When he came out a fortnight later he was incredibly fat and smelt very strange.

  But all good things come to an end and after a few months there was nothing left but some unpleasant strips of green elastic and a shrivelled brown thing covered in hairy mould. Neville ate the elastic but nobody would touch the hairy thing.

  ‘I’m sure I saw it move,’ said Uncle Trubshaw and after that no one, not even Trevor, who had eaten the underneath of the toilet seat and one of those things you put in the water to make it go blue, would go near it.

  They searched in the darkest corners, eating more and more indigestible things until there was nothing left they could get their teeth into. They ate the letters on the front doormat and then they ate the doormat. Neville tried to eat the telephone but cut his tongue on the ‘3’ button. In the dining room there was wallpaper covered in strawberries but it tasted like two-hundred year old mildew. They cleared the tiniest crumbs from the kitchen and licked every last drop of spilt gravy until the whole room sparkled and looked cleaner than it had done for fifty years.

  It was quite a long time since the old lady had left and the dampness that had begun in the cellar had now reached the roof. Any warmth that the sun put in through the windows was soaked up straight away and everywhere felt cold and clammy. Down in t
he cellar the rats huddled together in their nests and began to grow thin.

  ‘Winter will be here again soon,’ said Derek’s mother. ‘We should be warm and fat and ready for the snow, not feeling cold and hungry.’

  They had spent so long inside the house that by the time they went back to the garden all the summer’s fruits and berries had been taken by the other animals. To make matters worse, next door’s cat had discovered their tunnel out of the cellar and spent hours waiting in front of it. It was only safe to go out late at night when the cat was indoors.

  ‘Are we all here?’ said Uncle Trubshaw.

  ‘I think so,’ said Derek. ‘There should be twenty-three of us.’

  ‘Twenty-two,’ said his mother, coming in from the garden. ‘I’m afraid next door’s cat just got Trevor as he was trying to climb up the clothes line.’

  ‘Oh, not Trevor,’ wailed Neville.

  ‘There, there,’ said his mother. ‘It’s one of those things. It happens to us rats all the time.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ snivelled Neville.

  ‘Well, what is it then?’ said his mother, stroking his ears.

  ‘I lent him three caterpillars last week and he hasn’t paid me back yet,’ said Neville.

  Over the next couple of weeks things went from bad to worse. Humans came to the house, stomping round the bare floors in big shoes. Down in the cellar the rats crept in behind a loose brick and hid until the thunder above their heads moved away. The humans left but the rats were too frightened to go back upstairs except in the middle of the night. Besides, there was nothing up there for them now.

  All they had to eat were a few soggy cardboard boxes and a packet of firelighters. Soon they were reduced to grubbing round in the garden for the other animals’ leftovers. As the weather got colder and colder the rats got thinner and thinner. Next door’s cat got Derek’s dad and then three of his cousins. No matter how careful they were, the cat seemed to be one step ahead of them. As autumn turned to winter, the cat stayed indoors by the fire but by then there were only six rats left.

  ‘It looks like you’re the head of the family now, young Derek,’ said Uncle Trubshaw.

  ‘But you’re the oldest, Uncle,’ said Neville. ‘It should be you.’

  ‘Nay lad, I’m too old for all that,’ said Uncle Trubshaw. He wasn’t too old at all, he was too crafty. He knew that whoever was head of the family would have to sort out the problem of the cat and find them some food.

  ‘Has anyone got any ideas?’ said Derek.

  ‘Me, me!’ shouted Neville, jumping up and down.

  ‘Well?’ said the others.

  ‘Why don’t we go out into the street and–’ he began, but Uncle Trubshaw went pale and shook his head.

  ‘Out of the garden, you mean?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Neville.

  ‘Nay, lad,’ said Uncle Trubshaw, ‘I’ve never been out of this garden all my life and I’m not going to start now.’

  ‘Have you got a better idea then?’ said Derek.

  ‘Aye, lad,’ said the old rat, ‘I have.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We have to kill the cat.’

  ‘Kill the cat?’ said Derek. ‘You must be mad. How on earth are we going to do that?’

  ‘Aye, lad, we have to kill the cat,’ continued Uncle Trubshaw, ignoring Derek’s question. ‘And when we’ve killed it, we can eat it.’

  ‘Oh, that’s revolting,’ said Neville, sucking the insides out of a woodlouse.

  ‘It’s ridiculous,’ said Derek, and the others agreed.

  ‘Neville’s right,’ said Derek’s mother. ‘We have to leave here. While you were all out today there were more humans in the house.’

  The next day Derek squeezed through the metal grating in the cellar floor and wriggled through the narrow pipe until he was in the drain under the street. The drain ran down the middle of the street and into an enormous tunnel as tall as a man. Derek could tell it was as tall as a man because just as he was about to jump down into it, a man went by carrying a torch.

  There was a lot of wonderful food floating down the middle of tunnel but Derek ignored it and followed the man towards the centre of town. From the distance a thousand new and exciting smells rushed towards him. Other rats looked out of side drains as he passed. Some smiled and waved but most just looked and then disappeared.

  ‘Psst,’ said a voice as he passed. Derek ignored it and carried on after the man.

  ‘Oi, Derek,’ called the voice. Derek spun round and there was his little brother Trevor.

  ‘Trevor!’ he cried and ran over to him. Trevor was fat and bright-eyed and made Derek look even thinner and scruffier than he was.

  ‘Mum said the cat got you,’ said Derek.

  ‘It did, but I dribbled on its tongue and it spat me out,’ said Trevor. He led Derek down the narrow drains until they came to a round brick chamber. There were other rats there and they were all sleek and well fed.

  ‘See that pipe,’ said Trevor, pointing towards the top of the chamber. ‘That leads up to the best Italian restaurant in the world and out the back are the best dustbins in the world.’

  ‘There’s enough for all of us,’ said one of the other rats.

  ‘Yes, no more toilet seats for me,’ laughed Trevor.

  Derek went back to the old house to fetch the remains of his family. That night they went round the garden and said goodbye to all their friends and the following morning they left the old house forever. Even Uncle Trubshaw went with them. He moaned and complained and shook like a leaf but, although he was frightened of the outside world, he was even more frightened of being left alone.

  ‘I’m only coming to make sure you get there safely,’ he said. ‘I’m not staying.’

  He said it every day for the rest of the winter, but by the spring when he was fatter and fitter than he’d been for years, he made sure he only said it when there was no one to hear it.

  Delilah the Spider

  Delilah the spider sat very still in the corner of the window and waited. There was a fat bluebottle buzzing round the empty room and she knew if she waited long enough it would get caught in her web. A window is the best place for a spider’s web because flies spend half their lives crashing into the glass. If they are outside they keep trying to get in, and if they are inside they keep trying to get out.

  Insects are very stupid, thought Delilah, but very tasty.

  A couple of mosquitos that she was saving for lunch wriggled in their silk prison and a bluetit hung on the window trying to peck them through the glass.

  Birds are very stupid, too, thought Delilah, but I wouldn’t want to eat one.

  It was a beautiful clear autumn morning and when the sun had warmed the air Delilah had gone outside and laid three hundred and twenty eggs. They were wrapped in a soft yellow cocoon under the window sill, sheltered from the wind and rain. Next summer they would hatch and her babies would eat their way down the honeysuckle into the garden. Some of them would wriggle through the gap into the house and Delilah would probably eat them.

  Babies are very stupid, she thought, but very tender.

  When she had finished laying her eggs she had come back into the house and eaten her husband, Nigel.

  Husbands are very stupid, she thought, and very slow.

  The bluebottle flew round and round the bare light bulb and then dived straight into Delilah’s web. It hung there caught by its leg and buzzed furiously. The louder it buzzed and wriggled the more it got caught and the more it got caught the louder it buzzed.

  ‘Look, stupid fly, do you think you could keep the noise down?’ snapped Delilah. ‘I’ve got a terrible headache.’

  She raced across the silken ladders and rolled the fly up into a parcel, but even when she had wrapped it tight it kept buzzing, so she ate it.


  The mosquitos will keep till tomorrow, she thought.

  There were other spiders in the room, but none on Delilah’s window. She had chased them away into the dark corners where all they ever caught were dust mites and midges.

  ‘Spiders are stupid,’ said Delilah.

  ‘You think everyone’s stupid, don’t you?’ said a little brown spider called Norma from behind the skirting board.

  ‘That’s the only intelligent thing you’ve ever said,’ replied Delilah.

  ‘I think you’re horrible,’ said the little brown spider.

  ‘Two intelligent remarks in one day,’ sneered Delilah. ‘If you’re not careful your pathetic little brain will explode.’

  Norma said nothing, not because her brain had exploded, but because she was busy thinking of a way to get rid of Delilah.

  It was bad enough now the house was empty, without Delilah making everyone’s life a misery. There was no one to open the windows so hardly any flies came in. Without humans there were no smells of sticky jam and pies to attract them. What few bits of food the old lady had left had been eaten by the rats. It was all right for the spiders out in the garden, but as everyone knows there are thousands of spiders to every square yard and they certainly wouldn’t make room for all the house spiders.

  ‘It’s not as if she’s anything special like a tarantula,’ said Norma. ‘She’s just a common house spider like the rest of us.’

  ‘She’s got the best place in the room and won’t let any of us near it,’ said Norma’s neighbour Sybil.

  ‘You don’t have to tell me,’ agreed Norma. ‘Look what happened when Edwina tried to make a web at the other end of the window.’

  ‘Well yes, I know,’ said Sybil. ‘She got eaten. I mean, Delilah even ate her own husband.’

  ‘Something will have to be done,’ said Norma with a firm stamp of several feet.

  Something had to be done. That was obvious. The rest of the spiders, from the coal black shadows of the cellar to the draughty slates on the roof, all managed to live together with no trouble. Sometimes if a strange spider came too close to another’s web it got eaten but that was perfectly natural and no one got upset about it. The spider doing the eating had a friendly word with its dinner and everyone knew where they were.