by Brian Hodge
When he used to ask her what she meant, she would always brush the hair from over his eyes and hold him close without answering. Without conscious thought, he brushed the hair from his eyes.
He pushed the painful thoughts aside. Time to get a move on. The night had managed to find him far from home. He hated the night, because the rats came then and they might try to get into the apartment. His dad was there alone. He picked up the pace, his footsteps throwing lonely echoes down the alley—pat pat pat—increasing to a run as he weaved around an overturned garbage can.
At first he didn't see the rats. He plowed into them before he realized what they were, and they lazily abandoned the contents of the can, only to return like a swarm of blowflies disturbed on a summer day. Fear kicked Joey in the gut, driving the breath from his body. He did his best to make himself part of the wall when the biggest rat he'd ever seen crawled out holding a gobbet of something bloody.
The thing was a monster, a twisted crippled mass of scar tissue with fur the color of pissed-on snow. Joey watched it drag its bloated body up onto a fire escape and hobble along as it tried to flee with its prize. But the smaller rats were quicker. They were waiting at the other end.
Drawn by the smell of blood, they crept across the swaying span. The sheer weight of them caused the rusted metal to groan in protest. Their hunger drove them, made them edge nearer the bared fangs, their eyes wet with equal portions of need and fear as they sidled up to death.
They hesitated, working up their courage. And then, like a single-minded organism that knew a part must die so the whole might live, they lunged forward.
The white monster killed five.
It caught them by the throat and flung their wriggling bodies from the fire escape like a child digging through a drawer in search of a missing sock. One bounced off the wall by Joey and he recoiled from the wetness that splattered his face.
Anger overcame fear.
"You want something to eat? I got something right here. How about a little metal pizza, you fuckers!" He scooped up a garbage-can lid and flung it in a flat, vicious arc.
A squeal of agony died beneath the clang of metal and the white rat's hindquarters were almost severed in two. It should have died right there, but instead it began a frenzied dance, around and around, its body held together by a piece of skin no bigger than a string, leaking wet black stains onto the pavement.
What happened next was inevitable. Joey had seen it many times before—the writhing bodies descended, a magician's scarf fluttering in the night.
"Step right up, ladies and gentlemen!" Disgust was in his voice as he broke into an impromptu impression of a carnival barker. "We're only doing one show tonight, so you'd better get your tickets quick." He scanned the imaginary crowd, getting into the part. "How much, you ask? It's a steal. One thin dime—yes, sir, that's right, ten cents gets you in." He ripped an invisible ticket, his eyes never leaving the rats.
"Watch close now. It's showtime!"
He swept an arm outward and the scarf of flesh parted on cue. Not a trace of the injured rat remained. The other five were gone, too.
"Rat magic, ladies and gentlemen. Now you see it."
He tipped an imaginary derby and bowed to the imaginary applause.
"And now you don't."
Joey smiled but the fear returned to his eyes when he felt their eyes bore into him. En masse they rose to their back legs, noses sniffing the air expectantly. His fingers strayed once again to his face, searching until they found a small blemish, a scar that marred his features.
"What the hell do you want from me?" His words were smothered by the night. And they came at him like rain pouring from a downspout, their claws scrabbling for purchase on the cobblestones as they gathered speed.
"Oh man, something definitely weird is going down here," he said, "very weird." He turned and fled from the alley, his footsteps pounding a tattoo down the street. His side stitched with pain as he raced on, doubling him over.
His building came into sight and he risked a quick look around before ducking in. A sign was nailed to the door. Only one word, it summed up the building: The word was Condemned.
The landing was pitch black, but that didn't stop Joey. He knew every creak, every loose board in the place. Taking the steps three at a time, he raced to the second floor. A rustling came in the dark. For a timeless moment he knew the stairs were covered with rats. Hundreds, maybe even thousands, of rats.
—that they were creeping downward—
—that they were only inches away—
The thought that one might touch his face caused his heart to squirt sideways. He floated in the blackness, frozen by terror when he recalled how quickly the rats had scrambled down the fire escape.
"This is crazy, muy loco," he muttered, yanking out a book of matches. When he tried to strike one, his hands began to shake. What if it was true? What if they really were waiting?
On the third try the match flared, burning his nose with the stink of sulfur. He lit the entire book and heaved it up the stairwell.
Only shadows flickered on the walls.
Mocking him.
Then he saw a flash of yellowish white and for an instant he thought the huge rat had returned. But it was just a newspaper caught in a draft, flapping down the hallway like a lost and weary ghost searching out a room for the night. His laughter died with the light. The sight of all those rats in the alley had gotten to him.
He bolted the remaining distance.
Softly he eased into the apartment and tried to swallow the soured cotton that clogged his throat. His eyes slitted before they adjusted to a kerosene lamp guttering in the corner. The glow barely disturbed the shadows. That was okay with Joey, because the place wasn't much to look at anyway, just a bare room with a stained mattress on the floor and a couch so old its bones poked through.
His dad was a pile of rags asleep on the mattress, snoring gutturally, and Joey breathed a sigh of relief. Everything was okay. He was home now.
Yet the fear refused to die.
Somewhere, out of sight, came the sound of claws.
He tried to locate the furtive scrabbling. He couldn't.
It seemed to come from everywhere.
"Come on, Papa," he urged, his voice cracking, "we've got to get out of here." As he reached over to shake the figure huddled beneath the filthy blanket, his foot bumped something. It tipped over with a clatter… and the scratching grew louder… grew frantic… as though a signal of some kind had been given.
With animal quickness, Joey's hand darted out and grabbed the object. He turned it over, fascinated by the dull oily sheen that reflected back. Then, without warning, his head throbbed, clenching his skull in a vise of pain so intense he was rocked back. In an instant the tremor passed. He gave his head a shake before turning back toward his dad, before smiling and hefting the object in his hand.
Flipping it high in the air. Watching as it spun.
End over end.
Once. Twice.
Watching as it came to rest in his hand.
Staring at a wine bottle—an empty wine bottle.
"You said you'd quit," Joey accused, his voice going soft as he caressed the bottle. "When I took you in, you swore on Mama's grave."
Agitation swept across his face, chasing all other emotions before it like leaves before the wind. He bit into his lip and a dot of blood appeared, the head of a black worm crawling out onto his chin. He blinked back tears and fought for calm. His eyes were those of an angel betrayed.
Only this angel carried more than hurt; he carried the fires of hell.
"You promised!" he raged, "No more drinking!"
The words were a spray of blood that caught the old man by surprise, making him stumble backward. The hunched-over figure pawed at the drool that had splattered his face. His eyes were riveted on the bottle in the boy's hand.
Joey raised it as though he meant to lash out, but then the pain stretched him taut as high voltage surging through a po
wer line. He gasped and the bottle slipped from his fingers. It hit the floor with a pop and shattered into hundreds of shards, which glittered in the light, shiny eyes watching him. He doubled over, spewing blood and saliva. His guts were on fire.
He ripped open his shirt, and his skin, crisscrossed with scars, rippled when a spasm shot through him, a spasm that disappeared and then reappeared, causing his face to contort into a skull-like mask.
The scars turned an angry red.
"Papa, what's wrong—"
The vise that held Joey's head closed another notch, the pain adding tinder to the fire of his rage. He fought, but he was helpless, consumed by a blackness filled with hunger sounds. He listened to screams chasing themselves into silence, leaving behind echoes that taunted him, promising remembrance of things better forgotten.
The black fire grew hotter. Hotter.
Devouring him.
Arching backward, Joey raked at the scars that puckered into hungry mouths. His fingernails ripped down his flesh and long white furrows trailed in their wake. Blood seeped into the empty grooves, water beading up on a frosted glass.
Joey felt as if he were here and, yet, someplace not here, as if he were flickering in and out like a TV that couldn't quite pull in the signal.
And now he could hear claws.
Lots and lots of claws.
Scratching.
Growing louder.
The sound was coming from inside the room, and yet he knew it couldn't be. The room was empty.
"It hurts," Joey said, gasping. "Hurts bad. Make it stop. Please…."
The old man reached out, but his hands were unable to complete their journey. They stopped short, two pale moths fluttering against an unseen window. He began to cry.
The claws were getting louder.
Joey struggled upright, his fingers groping outward until they found his dad's face. They began exploring the ravages etched there by time and drink. His touch was gentle. Soothing. He seemed beyond the pain that had torn him just moments before.
"Papa, you know you should never drink. You've made Mama angry, and now she's going to make the blackness come." His voice was plaintive, tinged with sadness. "I don't like the blackness. Bad things happen then."
Sighing, Joey pulled back his fingers and began tracing the profusion of scars that decorated his own young body, as though they were a road map that would lead him to understand how he had come to this place. His fingers undulated along. Rising over peaks. Sliding down valleys. Riding the huge, misshapen lumps that had appeared.
Then a sound came.
Indistinct.
Muffled.
An ice pick punched into a bag of wet leaves.
The sound came again, louder this time. A scar bulged, then burst open as a head emerged from the torn flesh and looked blindly around the room.
When the old man saw the head belonged to a rat, he screamed—a raw, harsh sound. He scrambled toward the door. When he realized it wouldn't open, he tried to scream again, but all that came out was a mewling noise, and then, after a moment, that too died.
Only his eyes moved, darting back and forth, flickering with incomprehension, blank, like those of a dog Joey had once seen on the subway tracks, pinned in the oncoming headlights.
Somehow knowing its life was forfeit.
Not quite knowing why.
Joey went rigid, and another rat burst free. And another. The illusion of life was peeling away from the boy, like layers of rotten bandages, to reveal the shrunken husk beneath. Dark things were swimming inside his stomach cavity, small, as though far away, slowly growing larger as they fought their way to the surface.
Then every scar on his body erupted, spilling rats out onto the floor. Faster and faster they came—a row of fire hydrants wrenched open all at once—crawling from Joey, blood slicked, spewing out with wet smacking sounds, an ocean of dark vomit that seemed endless until, at last, the room was covered with rats… a swirling mass, a whirlpool with claws and teeth that eddied toward his dad, slowly at first, then with greater speed, flowing over him, pulling the old man down.
"Help me, Joey," he pleaded, "please." His mouth gaped open and a rat darted inside. A violent flurry of activity followed. It emerged with something pink and bloody in its jaws. The old man saw his own tongue and screamed, his straining mouth forming perfect oval after perfect oval as the muscles in his neck knotted in agony, but no words came out.
Only sounds.
Wet sounds.
"You can scream louder than that, Papa. I did. I screamed a lot louder, but it didn't do any good. You know why? Because there was no one to hear me." His voice was a sigh, a distant cold wind on the road of memory. "After Mama died, you said I could go with you. You said you'd never leave me, only you got drunk and locked me in the room. And when you went away… the rats came…."
The words tumbled out, tortured remembrances of a child with the smell of the grave clinging to him. "I tried to fight them off… but there were too many. Too many. They bit me." His eyes were reproachful. "They kept on biting me, and then they crawled up inside of me. Don't you want to know how I know that?"
Joey stared at the feeding rats while bitter emotions raged across his face. Yet his voice was calm, devoid of emotion as though he were talking about someone else.
"Because I was still—alive."
A hand darted up from the midst of the wriggling bodies and grasped Joey's jacket. It was all of the old man he could see, the rest was covered over. He pried the bloody hand loose and held it for a moment. The gnarled fingers locked onto his wrist, clutching at him as they tried to maintain their grip. But the hand was too slippery. Inch by inch it slid free until it could no longer hold on.
The hand fell back, rose, fell again, each movement slower than the last.
One last time the twitching fingers broke the surface, a drowning swimmer flailing toward shore the old man reached out for Joey.
His reach fell short.
And he was gone.
"Rat magic, ladies and gentlemen," Joey whispered, sorrow holding him in a cold, white embrace. "Now you see it…."
He tipped his imaginary hat, but, this time, there was no imaginary applause. His shoulders hitched and the sounds he made were those of an animal in pain. A single tear rolled from his eye and dripped to the floor, yellow and viscous as pus from a festering sore.
Suddenly he doubled over, struck by an unseen hand. His hands darted to his stomach and he felt movement. Something was still down there. It was huge and restless, and it had claws. His insides were being ripped and torn with incredible savagery. The pain was beyond imagining.
He was being torn in two.
Joey felt, more than saw, the thing inside him crawl out and drop to the floor. The body landed with a meaty thud and lay there twitching. Then it began moving toward the feeding rats, leaving a trail of glistening wetness. With each passing second, the dark shape was growing stronger.
It rose, shook itself like a dog after a bath. The darkness sprayed outward in countless drops. Covering the walls.
Mesmerized, Joey stared at the huge, crippled monster with fur the color of pissed-on snow. The misshapen head swiveled and looked at him. Their gazes locked and the malice in the rat's eyes was tangible.
The leathery lips peeled back from the teeth, not in anger, Joey realized but in a smile.
And what Joey had been unable to remember came rushing in. He was overwhelmed by the flood of memories.
"Don't punish me," Joey pleaded. He tried to tear his gaze away from the monstrous rodent, from the eyes that bored into his head and filled his brain with hot coals. "I wasn't trying to hide the old man from you. It's just that sometimes I forget how things really are… that they're not really Papa."
A silent communication passed between them.
"It won't happen again. Please… I promise I'll get more of them for you. The streets are full of winos." Joey backed toward the door, his halting steps those of a windup toy broken beyond r
epair. He ground to a stop. His back pressed up against the wall and he could go no farther.
The eyes pinned him there, filled his entire world, filled it with fear and pain. He began shivering, sobbing for a breath that refused to come. His legs buckled and he saw the floor rush upward and slam into his face. Blood trickled from his busted nose, and when he tried to climb to his feet, his legs refused to obey. He began a frenzied dance, around and around, leaking wet black stains onto the wood… slowing slowing… until a final shudder wracked his body.
Until darkness began taking him.
The boy looked up and saw the huge rat studying the pulse ticking in his throat. Slowly it reached toward him with claws that could disembowel another rat… paused… and soft as a whisper, gently brushed the hair out of his eyes.
Only now it wasn't a rat. Joey saw the man who held him, but Joey's eyes were dimming and he couldn't make out the man's face.
It was a pale blur, receding.
John Warrick gasped and struggled to separate from the dying boy, but couldn't. The night sounds outside the apartment ebbed and flowed in time with Joey's laboring heart. Stopped. Came once again. And then ceased as the heart beat for the last time.
There was silence, a letting go. It was like a sigh in an empty room. All that Joey Estevez had been began drifting away. His fears, his hopes, his dreams.
John again tried to separate himself from the dead boy. Again he couldn't. His mouth opened in a soundless scream when he was pulled deeper and deeper into the blackness that was Joey's mind. John felt himself being sucked down, free-falling away from the light. His own heart began to slow. Missed a beat. The will to fight back was meting away and he knew it would be so easy to go along for the ride. His heart stuttered again and this time it took much longer to resume.
The light was very far away now, no bigger than a dime, growing smaller. Smaller. Images and sounds from Joey's life rushed past John, a fast-moving endless train with scenes from the boy's life splashed across the sides of the boxcars: Dirty rooms, darkened backseats of cars, grunts of men having sex with him, some of them angry, some of them crying, his mother singing a lullaby to him when he was very young, a park on a winter morning, pristine and white, achingly beautiful. Rain pounding on the roof. A fire crackling. The distant echoes mixed, lapped over each other like rippling water.