Ratcatcher

by Chambers, V. J.

“If I can’t talk to Lark ‘like that,’“ said Tim, “then you need to stop saying negative things about my brother.”

  “It’s the truth,” said Shane. “Just like the fact that the ash man is real is the truth. And you’re blind.”

  “My brother was a wonderful guy,” said Tim. “At least until he met Lark. Whatever he did to her, she deserved.”

  “Look,” said Chris. “Let’s just calm down. I think we can all agree something weird is going on here, can’t we? And we’re going to have to do something about it.” Because if these dreams didn’t stop soon, Chris was going to...

  “I agree with Chris,” said Lark. She shot a withering look at Tim. “See, I don’t always agree with Shane.”

  “Do something?” said Shane. “Like what?”

  “Well,” said Lark. “I think that we should do what the police officer said yesterday. You guys need to hire a big security firm to come in here and remove the Entourage.”

  This was an about-face from yesterday. Why was Lark changing her tune? “I thought you felt sympathetic towards the Entourage,” said Chris. “I thought you were one of them, and you didn’t want anything bad to happen to them.”

  “I did,” said Lark. “I still do feel sympathetic, but I talked to one of my friends last night, and he...he scared me. They seem obsessed with getting inside, and I don’t know what they’re going to do once they get in here.”

  Chris sighed. “I don’t know if just getting rid of the Entourage is going to solve the problem,” he said.

  “It’s definitely not,” said Shane. “My fans are still dying. Three rats showed up at the door this morning. That means more and more people are dying.”

  “Maybe Lark’s doing it,” said Tim. “Maybe she’s killing your fans.”

  “Fuck you,” said Lark to Tim. “Why don’t you just leave? Why are you here?”

  Why didn’t Lark just leave? Why was she here? But Tim wasn’t helping things. He was just making it worse.

  “That’s ridiculous,” said Shane. “How could she? She’s always with me when it happens.”

  “She leaves when you’re asleep,” said Tim.

  “And turns them into rats?” Shane said.

  “Maybe,” said Tim. “There’s something about her I don’t like. Maybe she is the fucking ash man guy or whatever you’re calling him.”

  Chris stared at Lark. Was that possible? If that were possible, why did the ash man want him to— He shuddered. “Shane’s right. This is ridiculous,” he said. “It’s also unproductive.” Chris was having a hard time thinking. He was too drunk, and he hadn’t slept well. He rubbed his face with his hand. “Let’s just say for the sake of argument, that Shane is right, and the devil is taking the bodies of his fans.”

  “He’s not the devil,” said Shane.

  “Well, what else would you call him?” Chris asked.

  Shane shrugged.

  “If that’s what’s going on,” said Chris, “then we should get someone to help us who can help with that kind of thing. Who would that be?”

  No one said anything.

  “Maybe a priest or something?” Chris asked.

  “What? They’ll perform an exorcism?” Shane asked, clearly not impressed with the idea.

  “I don’t know,” said Chris. “Maybe.”

  “He’s not the devil,” said Shane.

  “What is he?” asked Chris.

  “He’s...bad,” said Shane.

  “He’s supernatural,” offered Lark.

  That actually was a good word, even though Lark had been the one to offer it. “Fine,” said Chris. “He’s supernatural. Who do we get to help us with the supernatural?”

  “Ghostbusters,” said Lark, giggling.

  “Seriously,” said Chris, glaring at her.

  “We’re talking about supernatural help, and you’re asking me to be serious?” she said.

  “We have to try something, don’t we?” said Chris.

  Tim spoke up. “Ryan,” he said. “Maybe.”

  “Who’s Ryan?” asked Shane.

  “Whitney’s ex,” said Tim. “The guy who left the message on her cell phone. He was into all that kind of stuff.”

  “Oh, right,” said Shane. “The psychic, right?”

  “Yeah,” said Tim.

  “Let’s call him,” said Chris.

  “You guys want to call a psychic?” said Lark. “Come on. All of that shit is just a crock, anyway. I can’t believe we’re seriously talking about this.”

  Chris wondered why Lark was so against it. At this point, he was ready to try pretty much anything. He sometimes felt as though he was losing his mind. If this Ryan guy could help, then why not? “He did know that Whitney was in danger,” he said. “That proves he’s at least somewhat legit, doesn’t it?”

  Tim shrugged. “Whitney said that she never believed any of the stuff that he said, but that he was really serious about it. He believes that he’s the real deal. They used to argue about it a lot, apparently.”

  “What do you think?” Chris asked.

  “I never met the guy. I have no idea. But I don’t think it would hurt to call him,” Tim said.

  “It’s silly. That’s what I think,” said Lark.

  “What should we do instead, then?” Shane asked her.

  “I told you,” she said. “Let’s get the Entourage off the lawn. And then we’ll...you know, go from there.”

  Shane shook his head. “I think we should call the psychic.”

  “Me too,” said Chris.

  “Can’t hurt,” said Tim.

  Chris turned to Lark. “You’re outvoted,” he said. He felt a bit of satisfaction doing it too. It was nice to do something—anything—she didn’t like. He flashed again on the way it had felt to have his mouth on her breast, her warm flesh only separated from his tongue by a thin t-shirt. Yeah. He fucking hated her. He really did.

  “I’ll go get Whitney’s phone,” said Tim.

  Chris poured himself some more whiskey. He watched Lark and Shane, waiting for Lark to say something, but she was quiet. Shane reached over to take her hand. “It’s just something to try,” Shane said to her.

  She smiled at him. “I know. It’s fine,” she said. “It won’t hurt anything.”

  Chris rolled his eyes. She really did say whatever she could to pacify Shane, didn’t she? And she was banging Shane. Shane had all that soft skin to himself. He could put his mouth anywhere. Everywhere. No wonder she’d been able to control his best friend so completely.

  Tim reappeared with the cell phone. “Who should call?” he asked. “I would do it, but I feel a little weird, because he’s Whitney’s ex, and...” He trailed off, shrugging.

  “I’ll call,” said Shane. “It should be me. I’m the one who brought all of this on all of you.”

  “Shane,” said Lark.

  “No,” said Shane. “It’s true. Give me the phone.”

  * * *

  Shane hung up the phone and looked at the other three who were waiting expectantly. “He’s coming. He’ll be here this evening,” he told them.

  “What’s he going to do?” Lark asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Shane. “But he said it was good that I called him. He said that we were in over our heads.”

  Chris stood up from the table. “Well, great. He’ll be here this evening. What do we do until then?”

  “I’m hungry,” said Lark. “I don’t think we have any food.”

  Shane went to explore the cabinets. “I’ve got some soup,” he said. “And cans of green beans. And pasta. No sauce though.”

  Chris came up behind him. “You have olive oil,” he said, searching through some other cabinets. “And oregano. That would be okay with pasta.”

  “Cool,” said Shane. He sat down. Chris followed suit. They both looked at Lark.

  “What? Just because I’m the only woman, I’m supposed to make the food?” she demanded.

  No one said anything. Lark sighed. “Fine,” she said. “T
wenty minutes, there will be pasta.” She got up and began searching through Shane’s cabinets for pots and pans.

  Feeling guilty, Shane got up again. “How can I help?” he asked.

  Lark waved him off. “It’s really not a two-person job. You guys go watch TV or something. It’s fine.”

  “Are you sure?” Shane asked.

  She was sure. Shane and Tim did exactly that. They sat in Shane’s living room, flipping through channels. Chris sat by the window, looking out at the Entourage. In a few moments, he came into the living room. “Hey Shane?” he said. “Would you come look at something?”

  Shane turned the remote over to Tim and ambled out to see what Chris was talking about. Chris pointed through the window at the cop cars that were parked in front of the house. The doors were open and the cars were empty.

  “Where are the cops?” Shane asked. “Did something happen?”

  Chris pointed again. Amidst the waking members of the Entourage, he caught sight of a uniform. The policemen were both standing in the crowd with the fans. The fans looked a little different this morning, Shane thought. For one thing, they weren’t talking. They were standing in little bunches, but no conversation was going on. They always looked a little dirty and unkempt. After all, they didn’t shower often and they camped out in vans and tents. But now, they looked a little more ragged. One girl in particular was standing facing Shane, staring at the house. Her black ratty dreads were falling over her face, but she didn’t lift either of her tattooed arms to push them out of the way. Her head was cocked sideways, as if she were sizing up the house. And her eyes... From what Shane could see of them, she looked, well, blank. But...hungry.

  Shane looked at Chris. “What do you think the cops are doing?” he asked.

  Chris looked at Shane. “Do you have tools?”

  “Tools?”

  “Like screwdrivers and hammers and nails?”

  “Yeah. I have a nail gun. Why?”

  “I think we should take down the doors on the bottom level and board up the windows,” said Chris.

  “Why?” said Shane.

  He turned back to the window. The girl he’d been watching before suddenly lifted her arm and punched the air. She let out a piercing, angry shriek and started running straight at the house. And everyone followed her. Hundreds of fans tore at the house, arms raised, screaming as loud as they could. They collided with the house, fists pounding against the walls. What was worse, the policemen came with them. Shane could see that both of the uniforms were behaving exactly the way the other fans were. He swallowed.

  Tim and Lark both appeared in the foyer.

  “What’s going on?” Lark asked.

  Shane looked at Chris. “I’ll go find the tools,” he said.

  * * *

  While Shane, Chris, and Tim worked on taking the doors off the rooms in the first level and nailing those doors over the windows, Lark called the police again. Officer Rayne promised to send over as many men as he could spare as soon as possible. He mentioned the idea of hiring private muscle to Lark again. Lark responded that Shane was a little busy at the moment, boarding up the windows, but that she’d be sure to tell him that he should do that just as soon as he was done. Rayne said he’d call in the state police.

  The men were getting the windows boarded up as fast as they could, but they couldn’t stop a few of them being broken. Fans swatted panes of glass out of their way, reaching their lacerated hands inside and trying to climb over the shards into the foyer. Lark screamed.

  Tim and Chris pushed a door up against the fingers and began nailing. Shane’s nail gun that made the process go pretty quickly.

  But they were getting behind. Someone was going to get inside and soon.

  Around that point, they heard the sirens. The scuffle escalated outside, but the police were pulling the fans away from the windows.

  A short calm ensued, while Shane, Chris, and Tim finished nailing up the windows. Now the house was very dark inside, and they couldn’t see what was going on. The four ascended the staircase and went out on Shane’s balcony.

  They stared down at Shane’s lawn. Cop cars, lights blinking, were scattered around the property. Police were forcibly restraining fans. The fans were fighting back, kicking, clawing, and screaming. They were being dragged to cop cars in handcuffs, still struggling.

  “Fuck,” muttered Shane. “Fuck.”

  Lark put her hand on his back, hoping to comfort him. She surveyed the scene in front of her. It was crazy. Then she noticed something. One of the cops had stopped fighting with the two fans he was trying to restrain. He turned instead and began going after one of his fellow police officers.

  Lark moved her hand to cover her mouth in horror. “Look,” she whispered. “That cop—”

  And she was cut off by a gunshot, because the cop in question had pulled his gun and shot his fellow officer in the head. The man slumped to the ground. The cop shot two more officers and then he was joined by another cop, who was attacking his own. The melee continued, cops switching sides, until there was nothing left on the lawn but a mob. And they were coming for the house again.

  * * *

  They watched silently for what seemed like hours. The mob of rabid fans and police officers weren’t able to break into the house, but they were all trying as hard as they could. Finally, Chris left the balcony. No one asked where he was going, and no one made any attempt to follow him.

  Chris went down the stairs into the kitchen. It was filled with smoke. The ash man was standing in the middle of the kitchen. He was tall. His head nearly brushed the ceiling. Chris stared at him for a second. He was used to seeing him in his dreams. He guessed that the madness that was going on outside had finally caused him to crack completely. Now he was seeing the ash man in real life. He was hallucinating. He’d come down here for the whiskey, so he just picked the bottle up from the table.

  The ash man fixed his burning eyes on him. Chris felt his stomach leap into his throat. He wanted to back away, but he couldn’t move.

  “What do you want?” he asked the ash man hoarsely. “You want some whiskey?” He uncapped the bottle, took a long swig from it, and offered it to the ash man. The ash man took the bottle.

  His hands melted through the glass and the liquid spilled onto his skin, immediately catching on fire. The whiskey bottle exploded in flames.

  Well. That sucked. But Shane kept more whiskey in a cabinet in the kitchen. Chris went to the cabinet and took out two more bottles.

  The ash man pointed at Shane’s kitchen knife rack. “You know what I want,” he said, his deep voice booming against Chris, making his head pound.

  Chris moved slowly to the knife rack. He set down the whiskey bottles on the counter and eased the largest knife out. It was at least eight inches long. Wickedly sharp. It glinted dully, even in all the smoke. Chris held it in his hand, staring at it. Yes. He guessed he did know what the ash man wanted. He remembered the images from his dreams. A bloodbath. Slashing. Stabbing. Blood spurting onto his hands, gushing out of wounds he was making.

  Chris shook his head violently. The images made him feel sick. He led go of the handle of the knife and it clattered to the floor of the kitchen.

  Then he picked up the bottles of whiskey and tore out of the kitchen, not looking back.

  When he arrived back on the balcony, the other three were exactly where he’d left them. He offered them the whiskey bottles wordlessly. Shane took one. Lark took the other. They both took long draughts from the bottles and passed them to someone else.

  After several revolutions of the bottles, Shane said, absurdly, “I thought there was an open bottle of whiskey in the kitchen from this morning.”

  “Yeah,” Chris said. “It burned up.”

  Everyone nodded, as if that was a perfectly sane response to Shane’s query.

  They looked back at the mob beneath them, human bodies smashed against the sides of the house, moaning and raking their nails against the walls.

&nbs
p; “What’s happening?” said Lark.

  No one said anything.

  At some point, the state cops arrived. The scene was similar. There was a brief period of time during which it seemed as though they might get the upper hand and drag the crazy mob away. But then, they all also began to turn on themselves and within an hour or so, the mob around the house had only grown. There were more bodies lying on the lawn as well.

  There was no more talk of hiring private muscle. They all assumed the same thing would happen.

  Within a few hours, some news vans showed up. Chris guessed this was big enough that people knew about it now. They watched as the reporters kept their distance, waving cameras around the gathered mob.

  Finally, they couldn’t stand it anymore. They went inside, drank more whiskey, sat staring aimlessly into space. Chris didn’t want them to go downstairs. He was afraid the ash man was still there. But the kitchen was empty. Chris checked. Maybe he’d imagined the whole thing. Except there were singed spots on the floor and there was a burn spot in the ceiling from the flaming whiskey bottle.

  Chris didn’t say anything to them about what he’d seen. What was the point? And besides, no one was saying anything. Things were too strange for anyone to speak. The world had turned upside down. Chris was pretty sure there would be no more talk of whether or not they believed Shane or whether or not this was actually the work of the supernatural. He believed. And he was frightened. He wasn’t sure that they were going to get out alive. The boards on the windows wouldn’t hold forever. Once those people got inside...well, they’d already proved they were ready to kill each other. There were dead people on the lawn.

  There was a burning smell still lingering in the kitchen, though. Chris peered around the room again, trying to make sure it was only leftover ash man singes, and nothing else. He noticed a pot of water on the stove. That was right. Lark had been going to make pasta! Chris started for the stove to turn it off and—

  Shane’s cell phone rang.

  Chris hesitated, then crossed the kitchen and turned off the stove. There was dried pasta water all over the stove from the pot boiling over. It was a mess. But he’d worry about it after he checked in on Shane and everyone else.

  He found them in the living room. Shane was chattering on his cell phone with Ryan. Ryan was a few miles away from the house, and he was on his way.