Ratcatcher
by V.J. Chambers
They are unwanted. Youths that stitch together bits of ragged lace to sell in parking lots and huddle in vans, snorting away the cold in snowy lines. They follow the rock band The Wrenching from show to show.
No one notices when they disappear into the darkness.
No one except The Wrenching's lead singer, Shane Adams, who just wants his fans to go home. He thinks they're in danger. "I play," he says. "They follow. They die."
This macabre thriller takes its cues from the Pied Piper folk tale, also known as "The Ratcatcher of Hamelin."
RATCATCHER
© copyright 2011 by V. J. Chambers
http://vjchambers.com
Punk Rawk Books
Smashwords Edition
Please do not copy or post this book in its entirety or in parts anywhere. You may, however, share the entire book with a friend by forwarding the entire file to them. (And I won't get mad.)
Ratcatcher
by V.J. Chambers
Chapter One
Sweat ran down Shane Adams’ forehead. He gasped mid-lyric as it slid into his eye—stinging, but he couldn’t wipe it away, not while he scrambled to make the next chord change on his guitar. He blinked hard and kept singing, “Doesn’t matter. You are empty inside.”
In front of him, a mass of bodies twisted and writhed to the sounds of his minor chord dirge. They were sweaty too. In their baggy ripped corduroys and tattered t-shirts, they gave it back to him as hard as he put it out. He sang. Half of them were singing along as they danced in this tiny bar, barely the size of a living room, where one wrong step could send him tumbling off the postage-stamp-sized stage he played on. The energy of the crowd rose with the cigarette smoke into the lights. Shane breathed it, and it was ecstasy.
He finished the song, ripping out the last few chords, and stood breathless in front of them, soaking up their cheers. Shane loved it. He lived for it.
“One more song,” yelled the crowd. “One more.”
Shane fitted his fingers to the strings on the neck of his guitar, ready to oblige them, when he saw the owner of the bar, Ray Giulio, shaking his head. Shane’s hand fell limply to his side. He really needed to stop playing. After all, that song had been his third “last song.” He just couldn’t stop. He couldn’t say no when the audience begged him for it. Begged for him to play more. Begged for more of him. How could he say no to that? But it was after midnight on a Thursday night, and the city had a noise ordinance in effect on weeknights. Due to Shane’s music, Ray had already paid four fines. Ray had told him straight—if Shane got him slapped with another fine, Shane couldn’t play at Giulio’s anymore. Shane’s music was a draw. The kids loved him. But they didn’t buy enough drinks for it to be worth another fine to Ray.
Shane got it. He didn’t want to fuck up his gigs at Giulio’s. He sometimes got offers to play elsewhere, but he only had a following in his hometown. It just wasn’t the same playing for bars full of strangers, where no one took notice of him, where people sat and talked over his music. Shane needed this. He needed the crowd screaming at him, dancing until their heels bled. The crowd at Giulio’s was what kept him alive.
So he slid the guitar off his body and spoke into the microphone. “Gotta stop, guys. It’s late.”
The crowd booed. From the back, someone yelled, “Fuck you, Adams.”
Shane shot a pleading look in the direction of Ray, but the bar owner had already brought up the canned music on the sound system. It was over.
Shane unplugged his guitar and turned around to face the other guys in his band. They were packing up too. He felt good. Exhilarated. But he could have kept playing. Half of him still wanted to. He could hear the audience at his back, pleading and cursing for more music. He wanted to turn around, plug the guitar back in, and give them one more song.
“You still want in on the shrooms?” asked his bassist, Chris Dearborn.
Shane grinned. There was nothing like the prospect of hallucinogens to improve his mood.
* * *
A few hours later, Shane decided to go outside for a minute to get some air and smoke a cigarette. He and the guys from the band were hanging out at Chris’ house, all tripping. He stood on the porch, reeling from the effects of the mushrooms.
He blinked hard, trying to keep everything he looked at from twirling and interweaving. Didn’t help much. Mushrooms weren’t like acid. A good blink could sometimes banish an acid hallucination. But on mushrooms, he was stuck with the fact that little turtles squirmed their way across the front steps. That arms unfurled from the air, reaching for him. It was cool, he kept telling himself. He liked it.
Shane threw down his cigarette—it was burned down to its filter—and tapped another one out of his pack. He lit it.
And the glow from his lighter began to spread, forming an ever-extending ball of orange light. Shane blinked hard. He knew it was useless, but he needed to try to see normally anyway.
The globe detached itself from his lighter and floated into the air above his head, all the while growing larger and larger.
Shane looked at his cigarette, considering putting it out and going back inside. He looked back at the ball of fiery light, which was starting to bulge in certain places, like a balloon with too much air in it.
A tendril of fear wrapped itself around Shane’s spine, but he didn’t move. He just gazed wide mouthed at the balloon of light.
One of the bulges was beginning to look less as if too much air caused it and more as if something inside the ball was pushing on the fire-colored membrane. A hand maybe. As if something was trapped inside, like—
The ball burst open. Smoke poured out, acrid, burning the back of Shane’s throat. Beams of light emitted from inside the ball, illuminating the smoke like a smoke machine at a rock show.
Shane tried to move then. He tried to back up. To go back inside. Maybe make himself vomit. Maybe he hadn’t digested all of the shrooms. Maybe he could get himself out of this crazy world of hallucination. Maybe—
Shane stumbled instead. Fell hard backward. He tried to untangle his limbs, but the fireball was approaching him now, and there was an opening in it, ragged at the edges from its bursting. It was like a mouth.
A scream built in his throat, but it was on him then. Tasting him.
Chapter Two
Ten years later...
Whitney Eros could hardly contain her excitement at having scored an interview with Shane Adams of The Wrenching, a band garnering a lot of press these days. She was actually on her way there now, driving in the rental car. In a very short time, she would be meeting Shane Adams. She’d been trying to get this interview for months—actually nearly a year. It had been ten months ago that she’d originally contacted Adams’ publicist, only to receive the reply, “Shane isn’t doing any interviews at this time.”
This was not a response Whitney was used to hearing. She had quite a name in the rock industry press and for good reason. Whitney had interviewed anyone who was anyone in rock music in her career as a freelance writer. Her secret was her contacts. Whitney had dropped out of college during her sophomore year due to normal post-adolescent angst, and had by luck or divine providence scored a job running sound for the Freakazoid Tour, which featured all the current edgy rock bands. Whitney had some experience, having run sound boards a local club in high school and for her college theater department. But the Freakazoid Tour was huge.
Whitney, barely twenty-one, had managed to spend off hours hanging out with some of her favorite bands, and forming friendships, even briefly dating Dave, the bassist from Cries in the Night. It hadn’t lasted long because Dave was married. When Dave’s wife gave birth, he realized how much he really loved his wife and kicked Whitney to the
curb. Shortly after that, Whitney threw her back out lugging around sound equipment and had to cut short her career as a sound tech.
She went back to college and majored in Communications with a minor in Journalism. After graduation, she found herself alone in a strange city, with no job, and no money. On a whim, she called Jimmy Reiss, lead singer of Paper Dolls and Anarchy, who had once taught her the proper way to inhale nitrous oxide, and said, “You probably don’t remember me, but...”
(Getting his phone number was a whole different story, which involved talking to Dave’s wife, who freaking hated Whitney, and practically crucified her with swear words.)
Jimmy did remember her. And he turned down an interview with Rolling Stone to give her an exclusive. Rolling Stone bought the article from her instead.
After that, it just snowballed. Whitney had never thought she could get so much mileage from her little stint working the Freakazoid Tour, but it had served her well. Rock musicians who hadn’t even been on the Freakazoid Tour sought her out. They liked the way she interviewed. Readers liked it too. Whitney knew how to get things musicians wanted to talk about and fans wanted to hear about.
That was why the repeated denials from Shane Adams’ people had been so strange. She’d gotten on a first name basis with Adams’ publicist’s secretary (Linda), who would always say, “I don’t know why he’s saying no. Any rock star would kill for you to interview them.” In fact, Adams’ publicist, who also represented some other bands, would occasionally try to entice her into covering somebody else.
But it was Shane she wanted to interview. The Wrenching hadn’t been part of the Freakazoid Tour when she’d worked it. They were newcomers. No one had even heard of them back then. Shane didn’t know or associate with anyone she knew. But for the most part, that wasn’t a barrier for her anymore. She was known as Whitney Eros, the journalist, not Whitney Eros, the cute little sound chick who played strip poker in tour buses. In any case, she wanted to be known as a journalist to Adams. He intrigued her. His music intrigued her. His lyrics. His image. His looks. Truth be told, she was half in love with him, the way thirteen-year-old girls got with musicians they liked. Whitney had posters. She had all his albums. She knew all the words to his songs. So what he wouldn’t meet her anywhere and insisted she come to his home in the middle of rural Tennessee? Whitney was really, really excited.
She’d flown in and rented a car at the airport. Now she drove through a canopy of foliage—thick trunks reaching for the heavens, leaves dark shadows against the sky. It sure was beautiful here. Maybe that was why he decided to live here. She was trying to follow a set of handwritten directions she’d taken down over the phone from Adams’ publicist. She’d only made one wrong turn so far, had easily seen her error, and had retraced her steps. According to the directions, she was fairly close now. The next driveway on her right would take her to Shane Adams’ home.
Within a few minutes, she made the turn. She was lucky to have seen it. It was shrouded in trees and blackberry bushes, a narrow gravel road. Once she got on the driveway, though, she gasped at the sight of Adams’ home. It was enormous. It had turrets and towers. It was like a castle made of white brick. A few feet into the driveway, it switched from gravel to pavement. It was as if Adams didn’t want anyone to know that his mansion was back here, so he’d disguised it from the road. Whitney felt like she’d gone through the other side of the wardrobe or something. Adams’ house was like a different world.
No one met her at the door. Instead, there was a note. “Whitney Eros,” it read. “I’m upstairs.” Whitney touched the note. It came off the door.
Clutching the note, she tried the doorknob. It was unlocked. So she swung the door open, half expecting it to creak on its hinges. It didn’t. This house was new. She stepped into a large foyer, complete with cathedral ceilings, a dangling chandelier dripping with crystal, and a sprawling, spiral staircase. Whitney glanced down at the note again and then headed up the stairs. The house seemed so empty. And so cold. She couldn’t even imagine the air-conditioning bills.
There was crimson shag carpeting at the top of the steps. The wallpaper was red with a satin sheen. Again, she thought of royalty, but the art on the walls—huge abstract paintings of dancing, grinning skeletons—gave her a touch of the creeps. She peered about her, noticing an open door.
“Hello?” she called. To her horror, her voice trembled.
“In here,” said a deep voice. The voice that she heard so often, blasting from her car stereo. Shane Adams’ voice. Whitney’s heart caught in her throat.
She bit her lip and walked through the open door. The red theme persisted. Same shag carpet, same red walls. Even the ceiling was red. Shane was sitting in front of a large picture window in a plush red armchair. He was wearing a white wife-beater tank top. He was bent over a glass coffee table, which was strewn with carefully laid out lines of cocaine. Whitney watched as Adams’ drew one into his nose, sucking every last white crystal up through his rolled-up dollar bill. She was shocked. And it took a lot to shock her. She’d seen all kinds of rock star excess. But rock stars usually didn’t do lines at interviews. Certainly Adams didn’t want her to report on his drug use. Didn’t want it emblazoned on magazine covers. Adams looked up at her, wiping his nose with the back of his hand.
“Want to do a line?” he asked.
Whitney laughed—okay, she giggled. She was nervous.
Adams gestured to a seat opposite the coffee table. “Have a seat.”
Whitney did and began digging through her bag for her tape recorder and notepad. Her heart was beating away in her chest like a drum line.
Adams gestured to the lines of cocaine again. He raised his eyebrows questioningly.
Whitney shook her head. “Uh, thanks, but I stopped a long time ago.”
Adams shrugged. He had short-cropped dark hair and dark eyes. His muscles moved conspicuously in his tank top. Jesus Christ, he was gorgeous. Whitney looked away.
“Tell me when you’re ready,” said Adams.
“Ready?” She was confused.
He nodded at the tangle of her bag in her lap. Whitney smiled in understanding and quickly extracted her materials. Tucking the bag under her chair, she faced him. “I’m ready.”
Adams did another line.
“Um,” said Whitney. “Should I start?”
Adams rubbed his nose again and leaned forward. “I decided to give this interview because of the kids that disappeared.”
Whitney drew an enormous blank. What kids? “What?” she said.
“The kids that disappeared,” he said. “After my concert. That’s why I cancelled two shows on my tour.”
He’d cancelled shows? Jesus, she should have known that. She hadn’t had enough time to do any proper research. The publicist had called, told her she had the interview, and she’d leapt at it. She felt as if she’d been on the plane here within five minutes. In reality, it had been a couple of days. She should have been better prepared. She should have—
“You don’t know about it,” said Adams.
His voice was so flat. So disappointed. Whitney tried to smile. “I’m sorry. I’ve been wanting to interview you for such a long time. I’m a huge fan. I guess I just thought I knew everything there was to know about what was going on with your band. I didn’t know that you’d cancelled concerts.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Well.”
“What happened? With the kids?” said Whitney.
“No one knows. They’re just gone. But I only want to play music. I want people to be safe, you know? So, I wanted to give this interview, so that I could tell people to go home. Stop following the band around.”
Whitney was aghast. The Wrenching was an extremely popular band, often compared to The Grateful Dead and Phish. Not because of the The Wrenching’s music, which was totally unlike the music of either of the two bands, but because The Wrenching had an enormous following of dedicated fans. A literal following. Like the Deadheads of the seventies and eigh
ties, The Wrenching’s Entourage followed the band from city to city, camping out in parking lots and fields, selling homemade merchandise, food, and drugs to pay for tickets and support themselves. If it weren’t for the Entourage, The Wrenching wouldn’t be the band that they were. Whitney couldn’t believe the words that had just come out of Shane Adams’ mouth.
“You want me to quote you saying that your fans should go home?” Whitney repeated. “You want me to put that in print?”
“Yeah. It’s too dangerous. I don’t want them to get hurt.”
Whitney took a deep breath, trying to process this information. “What makes you think there’s even a connection between the disappearances of the people and your band?”
Adams shrugged. “Will you print it or not?”
Whitney laughed. “It’s not gonna make much of an article. ‘Crazy drugged lead singer ruins his own career.’ Sound like a good headline to you?”
“I don’t care about my career, damn it. I care about my fans. I don’t want them to get hurt. And if they keep following me, they will.”
“Is this about ‘Get the Fuck Out of Hamelin’?” Whitney asked.
“Get the Fuck Out of Hamelin” was The Wrenching’s breakout single. Its lyrics urged, “Follow me into the woods,” and culminated in a pounding chorus of, “Die, die, die, little children.” It was this song that had gotten The Wrenching on quite a few activist groups’ hate list.
“There’s a reason I wrote that song,” said Adams.
A reason? Well, Whitney had always thought it was a little weird. “And that reason is?”
“It’s what I do,” said Adams as if it were obvious.
“What is?”
Adams looked at Whitney as if he thought she were particularly stupid. “I play music. Kids follow me. They die. My music kills them.”
Whitney floundered. “How does it do that?” she finally asked. Besides, Adams was making quite a leap here, wasn’t he? First the fans had simply disappeared. Now, they were dead?
Ratcatcher Page 1