Ratcatcher

by Chambers, V. J.

  “That’s true,” said Whitney. “There’s some external evidence to back up his claims. But his solution that everyone stop following his band around... If he really believed that, why wouldn’t he just stop touring?”

  Tim shrugged. “I don’t know. But, he does sound crazy, as I’m sure his record company recognizes, and his music provides a lot of people a lot of money. So I’m sure he’s under quite a bit of pressure to keep playing.”

  “I guess so,” said Whitney. “But I don’t think that means he’s not crazy. He does a lot of drugs. You should have seen how much coke he snorted during our interview.”

  “And you didn’t publish that?”

  “I edited it out of the third or fourth draft, thinking that it might help the article get published. Then, when I started to talk to that Rinehart woman, the article went in a different direction.”

  Tim nodded. “Here’s my thought. Shane wants the article to be read by his fans, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “I mean, that’s who he really wants to read it.”

  “Yes. Where are you going with this?”

  “What if there was a way to get everyone to read it, but not necessarily publish it.”

  “Huh?”

  “If you’ll allow me, I’ll print out stacks and stacks of copies of that article. And then I’ll go on tour with the Entourage and pass the damned thing out.”

  “Why on earth would you do that?”

  “You think if I did that, Shane Adams would talk to me about Lark?”

  “You feel that strongly about that girl he’s dating?”

  “She destroyed my brother.”

  “Tim—”

  “No. I know it sounds crazy. I don’t care. It’s important. And it’s not like I’m doing anything else right now, considering I have no job. Do I have your permission to distribute the article?”

  Whitney laughed. “Um...” She stared at Tim. She did want people to read the article. She really did. “Sure. As a matter of fact, I happen to not be doing much of anything either. I’ll go with you. I’ll help.”

  Chapter Ten

  Things were not going well in the world of The Wrenching, Lark mused as she sat in the back of Shane’s tour bus alone. Shane was out trying to score coke from the roadies, and Lark had declined accompanying him. The rest of the week’s shows had been cancelled due to the fact that Chris and Shane refused to play together. Everybody from Mandy to Kirk to Randy had come to Lark and asked her to try to talk some sense into Shane. Lark had tried, but she was pretty pissed at Chris too. He had a vendetta against her for no reason she could understand, and she didn’t think it was particularly fair. Shane said that if Chris apologized to both him and Lark and promised not to say or do anything else, then he’d play on stage with him again. Lark felt this was a fairly reasonable request. So when anyone came to her and appealed to her to talk to Shane, she said she’d try, but that she thought the person they needed to be talking to was Chris.

  Both the tour and the Entourage had gotten on the road and traveled south. Though they were missing three shows, they were still booked to play in Kentucky the following Tuesday night and most people were hopeful they could clear up the misunderstandings between the two original members of The Wrenching before then. Lark hoped so too. She wasn’t entirely sure what would happen to her if the tour got completely cancelled.

  Between the last two Wrenching tours, she’d hung out in Baltimore, working as a waitress and crashing in a studio apartment with five or six other kids. She didn’t think she wanted to do that again. Dating Shane had changed something within her. She realized she’d been wandering through life numb since Jimmy’s death. Now, she was starting to wake up again, to feel again, to be human again. Things that used to be acceptable to her weren’t. So she wanted something better for herself. However, she didn’t know if she could respect herself if she stayed with Shane, which was what he clearly expected her to do. If she went back to Shane’s mansion in Tennessee and lived with him, she’d be doing something too close to what Chris had accused her of. She’d be taking advantage of his wealth.

  She hadn’t told Shane that she didn’t know if she could go back with him. He kept saying things like, “When we get back to my house, we’ll...” And then he filled it in with a host of activities. But Lark didn’t know. She was tempted to take him up on his offer. Shane was good to her, and he was gorgeous. But in some ways, the way she lived with Shane wasn’t much different than the way she’d lived with Matt Dimsky and boys like him. Sure, she didn’t feel as though she was trading sex for someplace to stay or for protection or for drugs. Shane really cared about her. That was different, of course. But it looked the same.

  The only thing that really was going right was her relationship with Shane. They were having regular sex now, and it was lovely. Shane had been sleeping without pills for the past several nights, due mostly to the fact that Lark talked him out of doing coke after about eight o’clock in the evening. Distracting him with sex was working for now, but she didn’t think it would forever.

  The door to the tour bus opened and Shane came back inside.

  “Hey,” she greeted him. “Did you get it?”

  “Yeah,” said Shane. “Fucking roadies jacked up the price, though. I swear. You know, if I could just go out in public and try to get these drugs myself, I could get it for cheaper.”

  “Well, you’re richer than God. I think you’ll survive,” said Lark.

  Shane laughed. “Oh. Lark do you know some guy named Damien?”

  Lark nodded. “Yeah, that’s Rainey’s boyfriend.”

  “Why don’t you go talk to him? Security detained him because he was looking for you, and he won’t leave until he talks to you.”

  Lark stood straight up, worried. “Do you think something’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know. Just don’t bring him back to the bus, okay? Please?”

  “I won’t!” Lark said, and she practically dove out of the bus and rushed to the security checkpoint. Damien was there all right. He was handcuffed.

  “Can you take those cuffs off him?” Lark asked one of the guards. “He’s my friend.”

  “And you are?” the guard asked.

  “I’m Shane’s girlfriend,” she said.

  “Whatever,” said the guard.

  Lark glared at him, but she went to Damien. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “It’s Rainey,” said Damien. “She’s disappeared.”

  * * *

  “Can’t we do something?” Lark asked Shane. “She’s my best friend.”

  Shane was pacing in the tour bus, holding two of the rats. He hadn’t spoken at all when she related to him that Rainey was missing. He still wasn’t speaking.

  “Shane, you’ve got to have some kind of clout here. I mean, you’re Shane Adams. Can’t you talk to the police or hold a press conference or something?”

  Shane stopped abruptly. He put down the rats and he started laying out some lines of coke.

  “Shane, you can’t ignore me,” said Lark. “Talk to me, please. For all I know, my best friend is dead, and you’re not saying anything!”

  Shane did a line. He rubbed his nose and looked at her. “The police can’t help your friend,” he said. “And the press won’t listen to me. You know what happened with that article.”

  “What was that article about anyway?”

  “It was about me telling everybody to go home!” Shane said. “To stop this shit from happening!”

  “Look, we’ve had this conversation before. You can’t blame yourself for the fact that something is happening to people. It’s not your fault. And everybody doesn’t need to go home. Somebody just needs to catch whoever’s doing this.”

  “I know who’s doing this,” said Shane.

  Lark paused for a minute. “You do?” she finally asked. What the fuck did that mean, anyway? When she’d met Shane, he was dressed up like a crazy bible-thumping guy. Maybe he had split personalities o
r something. Maybe he was doing this. Maybe he was...what? Killing people? No. She couldn’t believe that. “So, who’s doing it?”

  “I don’t think he has a name,” said Shane. “He’s just...smeared, smoky, ashy air. He eats pain.”

  What?! Shane was starting to sound crazy again. Lark was at a loss for a response. What was she supposed to say to something like that?

  Shane did another line.

  “Shane, maybe drugs are not really the best thing for you to be doing right now.”

  “Fuck you,” he said darkly. “You don’t understand. No one understands.”

  Lark was stung. Shane had never told her to fuck herself before. “I could try to understand. If you explain it to me.”

  Shane got up. He went into the bedroom and reemerged with a children’s picture book. He threw it at Lark. She tried to catch it, but she missed, and it landed next to her on the couch. She picked it up. Looked at it. “The Pied Piper of Hamelin?” she read. “Like the song? ‘Get the Fuck Out of Hamelin?’“

  Shane shrugged.

  “So your song is about the Pied Piper?”

  “I am the Pied Piper,” said Shane. “I play and the children follow.”

  Lark chewed on her bottom lip. “Well, I guess so. Sort of. But you’re not making sense, Shane. I’m still confused.”

  “Do you know the story?”

  “Well, sure. Some guy played a pipe and a bunch of kids followed him into a land where there was a bunch of ice cream lakes or something.” She was having trouble remembering the cartoon version she’d seen once when she was a kid.

  “It’s in the book,” said Shane.

  “You want me to read the picture book?” Lark said incredulously.

  “Fine,” said Shane. “I’ll just tell you. The city of Hamelin had a rat problem. They tried everything, but they couldn’t get rid of the rats. They were everywhere. Anyway, a man came by one day and he said, ‘I’ll take care of your rat problem.’ The leaders of the city were skeptical. They asked him how he’d do it, and he said he’d play his pipe. They laughed at him. So, he said that he’d do it anyway, and that they wouldn’t have to pay him unless he got rid of all the rats. They thought that was a pretty good deal, so they agreed.

  “The next day, the piper came into the city and began to play his pipe. All the rats came out of hiding and followed him wherever he led, which was right into the lake, where they drowned.

  “The leaders of the city couldn’t believe it, but they were happy to have the rats gone. However, when the piper came back and asked for his payment, they refused to give it to him. The piper was angry and vowed revenge. He came back later and played his pipe again. This time, instead of the rats, all the children followed him. He led them out of town, and they were never seen again.”

  Lark wrinkled her nose. “That story seemed a lot happier in the cartoon. It’s kind of creepy.”

  Shane nodded.

  “So that’s why you have pet rats, because you think you’re the Pied Piper?”

  Shane shook his head. “No, the rats... the rats happened later. Maybe it was his idea of a joke. Sort of reverse the legend. I don’t know.”

  “I still don’t understand, Shane.”

  “I can’t tell you,” he said. “You already think I’m nuts. You’ll never believe me.”

  “I told you about Jimmy,” said Lark. “You have to trust me too.”

  “I want to, Lark. I want to. But if you think I’m crazy, I’m afraid you’ll leave me. And I don’t know if I could manage it anymore. Without you.”

  That statement both exhilarated and terrified Lark. On the one hand, it was so wonderful to be needed. On the other hand, it was terrifying to have that much responsibility over another human being. “I don’t think I’ll leave you,” she said.

  “Do you promise?”

  “Tell me, Shane.”

  He looked away. “It started a long time ago. Before I was famous. I was tripping on mushrooms and I had this hallucination. A big ball of orange light. It sucked me inside...”

  * * *

  Ten years ago...

  Shane thought he must have passed out from terror. When he woke up, he was in a long stone corridor, lit only by scattered candelabras on the wall. They were held in place by crude metal fixtures, rusted with age. Cobwebs clung to the ceiling and all the corners. The air was filled with smoke. It made it hard for Shane to breathe. He looked around, trying to take it all in. This was a freaky hallucination. It was so detailed. He’d never seen anything like this before on mushrooms. Unless he’d really been taken someplace. Was this a joke? Had the guys dropped him in some...what was this place? A castle?

  He picked himself up from the floor, swatting at his clothing, because the place just felt dirty. It was too dark for him to really see if his clothes had been dirtied or not, however. That was when he saw him.

  He was sitting at the end of the corridor on a throne of sorts, but Shane couldn’t tell what the throne was made of. It looked almost like smoke or ash or something inky and smeary and black. He was shaped like a man, but he was also comprised of this strange smoky, ashy matter. Wisps of him rose from his hands when he moved them. Something kept him together, but barely. He was insubstantial, pieces of him kept floating into the air, making the air smokier. Shane coughed.

  The way the ash man looked was unsettling enough. But once Shane took him in, gazed at him full on, he began to feel anxious and frightened. Something in Shane’s entrails felt as if it came untied. His heart raced. He started sweating. His mouth went dry. Shane wanted to run. He looked behind him, but the corridor disappeared into the darkness, seeming to go on forever.

  “Come closer,” said the ash man on the throne, and his voice was deep. Gravelly. Compelling, but gentle.

  Shane took a step forward. The awful feeling in his intestines intensified. He took another step forward and immediately felt sick to his stomach. Mushrooms did that sometimes, he rationalized. This was all just part of the trip. Maybe he was starting to have a bad trip or something. He’d heard of them, but he’d never experienced one. Whatever was going on, he didn’t think this experience qualified as much fun. He made it a few more steps before he had to stop and throw up the contents of his stomach. His vomit splattered against the cold stone floor. Shane stared at it for a moment.

  “Closer,” said the ash man again, seemingly unaffected by Shane’s being sick, and Shane kept walking.

  Shane couldn’t walk quickly. Every step he took made him more and more uncomfortable. By the time he was standing in front of the ash man, he was lightheaded and dizzy. Sweat was pouring out of him, soaking through his shirt, but he felt cold all the way down to his bones. His stomach was queasy, and his eyes and throat stung from the smoke in the air.

  He looked up at the ash man, who was huge this close, maybe eight feet tall. His eyes were glowing orange embers and, when he opened his mouth, smoke billowed out of it. Shane tried to swallow, but his mouth was too dry.

  “Hello, Shane,” said the ash man.

  Shane reasoned that it would make sense that his hallucination knew his name. After all, this thing was a figment of his mind. Who knew his imagination was so powerful when coupled with hallucinogenic drugs? This was downright creepy. Shane wondered idly how much longer it would be before the mushrooms wore off. It couldn’t be much longer, and he hoped it was soon. He wanted this to be over. Now. He was not having any fun at all.

  The ash man leaned forward. Shane retched, but there was nothing left for him to throw up. He glared at the ash man. “I wish to hell I wasn’t hallucinating you,” he said, hoping that vocalizing something like that might make this whole bad trip go poof, deflate like a balloon or shrivel up and crawl away.

  “I am not a hallucination,” purred the ash man.

  Shane hated his voice. He half-laughed. “Oh, right,” he said. “So what are you then?”

  “I am the devil,” said the ash man.

  Shane laughed again. This hallucination
was really getting weird.

  “Actually, that is not what I am, but it is close enough. I am intrigued by your mythologies and fables. The devil is much like me. But what I am is not important, Shane.”

  “So if you’re the devil, are you going to offer me fame and fortune if I sell you my soul or something?” Shane asked and then he coughed several times. The smoke was really getting to him. He felt as though his lungs were covered in thousands of tiny pinpricks, each bleeding furiously.

  “I have no use for souls,” said the ash man. “I need bodies.”

  “Oh,” said Shane. “Great. Souls aren’t cutting it these days, huh? You gonna steal my body then? It’s going to be difficult to make me famous without a body. What’s really in the deal for me?”

  “Would you like to make a deal?” asked the ash man.

  Could he really be hallucinating this feeling in his lungs? What kind of trip was this anyway? What kind of mushrooms had those been? Something very uncool was happening. When Shane got his hands on the guy who’d sold them these shrooms—

  “Well?”

  He might as well play along. “What kind of deal?”

  “You bring me bodies. I give you fame.”

  “How am I supposed to bring you bodies?”

  “I will take them myself. From those who listen to your music. I will make your music irresistible to anyone who listens to it. They will follow you, worship you. And from those who do, I will take a small few. Not all of them. Just a few.”

  “And what are you going to do with their bodies?” Shane asked, wondering why in the fuck this kind of shit was even in his head. He’d listened to “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” too many times or something. He wondered if soon he’d be playing in a contest to see who was the best guitarist.

  “They will work for me. If you desire, I will let you keep the souls. I do not need the souls, just the bodies.”

  Shane laughed again, even though it was painful. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll keep the souls.”