It Nests Below

“Why are you looking at my girlfriend?”

“I’m fixing your sink,” I replied.

This guy had a familiar look about him that made me nervous. He was twitchy and always scratching his skinny little arms, his eyes darting to every corner of the room. I tried to stay neutral with my head tucked away under the kitchen counter. The sooner I fixed this problem of theirs, the sooner I’d be out.

“I hear about guys like you. You got keys to everyone’s room and like to go sneaking around, installing cameras in the toilet and shower. I saw photos of one camera hidden in a screw. I ain’t stupid I know what you fucks get up to.”

“Can you go get me a drink baby? Please? Something from the vending machine, maybe? This baby’s making me so damn tired.”

It was his girlfriend who spoke. She’d been slouched on the sofa the entire time I was there. She looked sad mostly, but also a little afraid. She must’ve known her man pretty well because I could see the guy’s head working overtime after she spoke. He was torn between wanting to chew me out and looking after his pregnant girlfriend. The whole time I stayed down under that sink, twisting pipes free and pulling rancid black filth into the bucket below. It was hard to stay focused, but I knew things could escalate quickly. A few long seconds passed before the door slammed shut.

“Sorry about him,” the girl said, groaning as she sat upright. “Can you fix it before he gets back?”

I shoved my fingers deep into the final clog and began to pull it loose.

“I think this is the last of it—ah fuck!”

Something sharp had slipped right past the rubber glove and into the soft flesh of my thumb while I’d been trying to scrape the blockage free. I whipped my hand out of the pipe and immediately tore the glove off, squeezing the flesh until a tiny bead of red blood appeared on my skin.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Something sharp in the pipe,” I said before sucking the blood clean. With my good hand I grabbed a screwdriver and used that to pull the final clump of food and hair free. It plopped into the bucket with the rest of the blockage, a single silver shape glistening amidst the filth.

“Do you have kids?” I asked, pulling the strange object free. It was an old paper clip, or maybe a hair pin, bent and twisted into a funny shape that was like overlapping circles, almost like a broken keyring.

“This is our first,” she said while patting her belly.

“I found this down there,” I said while holding it up, but she only shrugged.

“I didn’t put it down there,” she replied. “But if it’s all fixed, I’d finish up and clear out before Jason gets back. He’s uh… he’s not well.”

I nodded, slid the strange thing into my pocket, and began to collect my tools.

-

Everyone hated the basement. Most residents didn’t even use it, but it was still always full of old junk. The few elderly people who’d stuck around were the main culprits. They often arrived with a hoard of old possessions in tow and only gathered more as time went on. Looking around I saw more than a few old urns down there and I knew from experience not all of them were empty. People held onto things, sometimes without much reason.

“In the back!”

Mrs Harpes was calling from atop the stairs, her round little body blocking most of the light. Taking a deep breath, I clicked my torch on and began to walk deeper into the mire of mouldy boxes and crumbling furniture stacked ceiling high.

“I saw it Mr Thomas, I swear on my life I saw it down there.”

“I’m sure you did Mrs Harpes,” I cried back.

“I’m not making it up,” she repeated. “I saw him down there, the furry bugger, big as hell and chewing up my old clothes.”

Buried deep in the back, close to the old boiler, was a stack of wet cardboard boxes that had Property of A Harpes scrawled across it. The very bottom box had a hole chewed right through one corner, and a dozen little raisin-sized droppings were scattered near the entrance.

“Yup there it is,” I cried out. “You were right Mrs Harpes. I’ll make sure to lay some traps this afternoon.”

She shouted some answer but my attention was pulled elsewhere when I heard a scratching come from a shadowy cluster of overturned boxes just ahead. Down there in the dark, the light of day seemed very far away and I felt the need to be anywhere else, to go clambering back up the stairs to feed Mrs Harpes some lame excuse. That basement was a warren of shadows and I couldn’t help but picture what might be hiding just out of sight.

Of course, deep down I knew what was out there, persistently scratching away. What else could it be? I gripped my torch tight and walked onwards, turning the corner just in time to see a black hairy body squeeze itself through a tiny gap in the wall.

“Fucker,” I groaned, shuffling closer to the gap that had been gnawed right through Victorian brick. Something had been scratched into the floor, worn down over and over with what seemed like thousands of permeations. It lay right in front of the hole like some kind of signpost, no larger than my palm, and its shape was eerily familiar. On a whim, I took the thin piece of metal out of my pocket and held it up, gazing at the impossible resemblance it bore to the shape on the floor. Six or seven overlapping circles, bound closely together like a loop of rope. The two shapes were identical copies of each other, just rendered in different mediums.

I told myself it was kids who must’ve done it, a random act of vandalism. But when I shone my light into that hole a pair of beady red eyes glared back at me and I couldn’t shake the feeling it had been watching me appraise its work.

-

“There are, simply put, a lot of restrictions on the use of poisons this close to a park.”

“Al, look at this.” I leaned forward and pulled the child-sized bed away from the wall, revealing a thousand little black droppings in the space behind it. “Tell me this is okay.”

“Look,” he put his hands up, “you don’t need to do this. I’m with you.”

“No,” I said, firmly. “See this? This is where she keeps her toys.” I patted the top of a small toy trunk before grabbing either side and pulling it away. The skirting board that ran along the floor had been chewed through entirely until there was a foot-wide hole.

“There are rats literally coming outta the fucking walls Al. Help me out here. Why can’t we do anything about this?”

“You’re new here,” Al replied. “I just can’t approve any of the purchase requests you’ve been making lately. This is government housing for Christ’s sake. What happens if one of these little brats ends up having an allergic reaction to the stuff you spray? Do you have any idea how much red tape we have to jump through to fix this.”

“So we just let this carry on, do we? All part of a better Britain, yeah?”

“Don’t be like that,” he cried. “I’m not saying you’re on your own. Far from it! You must do some work online, right? Do you google stuff when you’ve got to fix something?”

“Yeah…?”

“Well then why should your property get worn out doing government work? Coffee machines, orthopaedic chairs, laptops, tablets… hell, one guy down in Southampton has an emotional support ferret in his cubicle! We just… we just gotta be creative, that’s all. Some purchase orders will slip right through the government machine. Poison isn’t one of them. I’ll see what I can do and get back to you. You just get me a list of what you need.

“Mind you,” he added, nudging a pile of damp mouldy laundry with one of his tan leather shoes, “it’s not like they’re exactly helping themselves here, is it?”

“Did you catch him!?”

We both turned to see a little girl staring at us from behind the bedroom door, her fingers clutching the jamb nervously.

“He was under the bed!” she whispered.

“I’ll leave this to you Chris,” Al said before giving me a little mock salute. He smiled widely at the little girl as he sidled past and hurried away. “Just get me that list,” he cried before the front door shut.

“I found where he’s coming from,” I told the little girl. “And I’m going to fix it so that he can’t get through anymore.”

“His whispers are scary,” she replied, sheepish eyes fixed to the floor.

“Well pretty soon that won’t be a problem.”

“He lives down there.” She pointed at the floor. “He told me. Do you think he’ll be mad if he can’t come over anymore?”

“Nooo,” I cooed. “And even if he does, I won’t let him come back and do anything… bad.”

“He says he’ll find me anyway,” she replied, her eyes glancing up to the hole behind me. Something in it must have held her gaze, something that seemed to grab a hold of her and keep her staring with an almost dreamlike expression. I suddenly became aware of that little gap in the wall, feeling its presence at my back like it was an aching black hole. I hadn’t felt afraid of it at first, but now the hairs on my reck rose and a chill ran across my shoulders.

I clicked my torch and turned around to find two red eyes glared back at me from the darkness. They lingered for no more than a second before receding into the dark, their disappearance accompanied by a curt chitter.

“He doesn’t like you,” the girl cried in a lilting sing song voice before suddenly bursting into laughter and running away.

I went to my knees and began to hammer a plank of wood across the hole with nervous urgency.

-

The old man was apoplectic, all purple in the face and spitting everywhere. He howled with rage at the direction of his neighbour’s door, unaware she wasn’t even in.

“That damn cat keeps leaving fucking rats in my home!” he cried. “You ain’t allowed no animals in here! I told her so! I told her over and over and this is exactly why. It’s unsanitary is what it is. It’s disgusting is what it is!” He seemed oblivious to my discomfort as I stood there awkwardly.

“Well Mr James, whatever is happening, I’ll make sure it stops right here and right now,” I told him. “Does that sound fair to you?”

I made sure to catch his gaze and hold it when I asked the question. He paused his shouting for a few seconds and when he replied, his tone was a little more even.

“Right now?” he asked. “Not in three weeks? Or six months? Or in some distant fucking future when the council finally decide to ‘effect repairs’?”

“Right now,” I said. “I have my tools. I have materials. It won’t be pretty but I’ll make sure it holds. I won’t leave until you’re happy with it.”

He chewed the air for a few moments as he thought this over.

“Alright then, it’s through here.”

He took me into his squat little living room, the bedroom visible through an open door. The scene in there wasn’t pretty, but it was the spare room he pointed me to and I was thankful I wouldn’t have to kick his old underwear around while looking for rats.

Still, his spare room was so filled with old junk he had to push the door open with his shoulder. There was a bed in there somewhere but you’d be hard pressed to find it under the lifetime’s worth of books, photos, documents, and bags of old clothes. I had to eek my way in one foot at a time, being careful where I stepped so as to not go tumbling over.

“No need to stay standing up,” I said as he hovered by the door. “I’ll come get you when it’s done. If there’s anything you’re not happy with, I’ll make sure to fix it for you.”

“Right,” he grumbled. “Fine. I’ll be out here in my chair.”

I returned to the job and began to whittle my way through the mountain of crap. I happened to know that the lady next door really did have a cat, but I couldn’t bring myself to turn her in, not when I thought the building could use another thirty cats just to keep the rat population down.

“I doubt you did this anyway,” I said to myself as I mused around the windowless room. No attic access, no air conditioning… how did the cat get in here? I wondered. I figured there had to be a heating vent somewhere so I started kicking old clothes away until I found it tucked away at the back of the room. “Big enough for a rat,” I muttered when I saw it, “not much else.”

A closer look revealed that the vent had been pushed free of its screws—God knows how—and it popped out with a gentle pull from my fingers. The stench coming out of that hole was haunting, and I took a deep breath before putting my face anywhere near it.

I nearly screamed when I saw something right out a nightmare staring back at me. Wretched and animalistic, its expression was twisted into a desperate howl of anguish.

“Oh no,” I hissed as my eyes took in more of the scene. This thing was clearly dead. Its skull could barely fit in the hole, and all manner of bones must have been broken so that it could be squeezed down there. It looked a little like a monkey, but its teeth were too sharp and its face was too pointed. Somehow, my curiosity built up just enough for me to overcome that initial pang of terror, and I gingerly reached in to pull the monster free.

It came out with a sickening sound of suction, its fur matted and dripping thick blood that fell to the floor in clumps. Free of the vent, the skeleton of the creature unfurled like a rotten flower and its ears finally unstuck from the back of its head.

It was a cat.

Jesus Christ, it was the cat, the one from next door. Its paws had been bound with what looked like human hair, and its eyes ritually torn out. The broken jaw kept flapping around as I held it out at arm’s reach, and something fell out from under its tongue and onto the floor. It looked almost exactly like an earthworm, but it just stayed there, all coiled up and perfectly still.

I leaned in and saw that it was a bundle of rat tails, several of them, all wound together in strange overlapping circles and pinned tight with ribbons of muddy brown hair.

-

The kids were down in the basement, or so I was told. I knew that teenagers liked to go down there and smoke, but the call I’d received from Mr Anders mentioned little kids playing with toys which just didn’t seem right. Maybe it was because that place scared the hell out of me, but I couldn’t quite picture little kids bundling down there like it was some secret playground.

The old man hadn’t said exactly where the kids were playing down there, and the basement was larger than it appeared at first sight. But I found myself straying straight towards the old hole I’d filled up a few days before. I’d thrown a fair amount of poison down there and then filled the gap with rubber cement and insulation foam, before hammering in one hell of a piece of wood. I told myself that meant the place was free of rats, but I felt very little surprise when I found the barrier torn to shreds and the foam and cement ripped free.

But that wasn’t all. The scratchings had multiplied until dozens of those repeating frayed circles covered the floor and wall for over a metre in every direction. And I guess Mr Anders had been right, because an old children’s toy had been laid out and plugged into an unfurled extension cord.

It was a little play mat with different words and colourful shapes arranged in a neat grid. I’d seen them before when my niece was just a toddler. Her mother had used it to teach her to read. You could press any one of the soft pads and a pleasant voice would read the corresponding word and accompanying image. Why the hell anyone had dragged it down there, I couldn’t say, but it crept the hell out of me to see it laid out the way it was in front of that hole.

I traced the extension cord to a socket on the opposite wall and went to turn it off when a robotic female voice came from behind.

Present.

Present.

Give.

Present.

I swung around and saw an enormous rat glaring at me, its black fur glistening in my light. The fucking thing was huge, easily the size of a possum, with its hindquarters hidden out of sight in the encroaching shadow. I’m not normally scared of rats but the thought of that thing lunging at me with its scissor-sharp teeth left me feeling like I was staring down a mountain lion.

Present.

Give.

It thwacked the pads like an impatient child and I would have laughed if I wasn’t paralysed with fear. I could feel it rising anyway, this manic need to either start bawling my eyes out or cackle hysterically. Instead I swallowed both the madness and the fear, and went to unplug the cord with shaking hands.

Ouch!

You.

Ouch!

Ouch!

You.

I took the plug from the socket and looked back towards the mat.

The rat was gone.

-

“Did you see this guy?”

The words pulled me from my thoughts of looping circles and ragged teeth. My dreams had taken a dark turn over the last few days and not just because of the infestation. A few days before the same little girl I’d helped with the rats in her room had gone missing and left her mother in a state of grief-stricken distress. In fact, it had left most of us who knew her a little shaken up.

“Sorry?”

“Ms Ruthers mentioned a strange man in the lobby last week.”

I was speaking to a policewoman who wore plain clothes, and I knew from TV that meant she dealt with heavy stuff like dead people and stolen children. She looked like every teacher I’d ever had, only with not nearly as much patience.

“Uh yeah,” I said. “He came in screaming about his dog. Said he’d been sleeping round back, in the alley, when something took his dog through one of the vents that lead into our building. I actually tried to help him, tried talking to him, but he was just beside himself and wouldn’t listen to reason. He only left after Al, that’s my boss, threatened to call the police.”

“Can you describe this man?”

I did, going into great detail about his face and clothes, and I even managed to get some security footage to send over just in case. I was doing my very best to be helpful, but I think she could tell something was playing on my mind. Maybe she figured it was nothing or maybe she could just read people well, because she never asked me directly but I found myself stopping her on the way out my door just so I could spill the beans.

“Um, look, this might be nothing. But, uh, last week I called you guys up about a dead cat. I’m sure there must be a report somewhere but you should know the cat was… I mean, someone had killed it. They’d pulled its eyes out, broken its jaw, and… something was stuffed in its mouth.”

Her eyebrows rose.

“In its mouth? What do you mean?”

I reached into my drawer and took the little bundle of rat tails out, along with the bent piece of metal, just in case. Side-by-side, their identical structure was even more pronounced and it became apparent just how careful their construction must have been.

“I found this in a drain,” I said. “And this same shape was made of rat tails in the cat’s mouth.”

“And you reported this?”

“I did,” I said. “It’s tied with human hair, just like the cat’s feet were. It’s the weirdest fucking thing but… it almost feels like, ritualistic? I don’t know.” I suddenly felt stupid just for saying the words out loud. “I just thought that if there is some sick freak hanging around, maybe he killed this cat first or something.”

“It’s not stupid,” she said. “It’s good you mentioned it. There’s no way the original report would have made its way to me and you’re right, this does feel ritualistic, doesn’t it? My name is DCI Myles, by the way.”

DCI Myles reached into her pocket and took out a card that she handed to me.

“If you see anything else like that, any other dead animals or anything that makes you wonder about who, exactly, might be living here, let me know. We need all the help we can get.”

-

“Mr Anders,” I said, banging on the door. “Open up. We need to speak with you.”

DCI Myles was beside me along with two stern looking uniformed officers.

“You know I really don’t think this is right,” I said looking back at them. “Mr Anders is a miserable bastard but… he isn’t… not… not that.”

“You said it yourself, the cat was in his apartment,” she replied. “And we traced some internet searches to this flat that would make you seriously reconsider your opinion of the man, Mr Graham. You have the key we asked for?”

“Of course,” I said, holding the master key up before inserting it into the lock. It turned and a latch clicked, and I found myself suddenly pushed out of the way as the three police officers marched ahead to make their arrest.

“This is the police! Stephen Ande… Jesus fucking Christ!”

I rushed in, slowing momentarily to take in the horrific stench but powering through anyway. I nearly ran right into the back of the two larger officers, while DCI Myles stood a little ahead of them, mouth open and eyes wide.

“They… they… they…”

A dozen black rats poured out of the room and swarmed around our feet, their greasy fur streaking our clothes and smearing our shoes with filth. One of the officers began to kick and scream, and he nearly went down except his friend managed to reach out and steady him. The thought of him falling into that river of gnashing claws and writhing muscular vermin terrified me, and I had to resist the urge to panic.

“Stay calm,” I said. “They’re just fleeing. Just… just let them go.”

When they finally passed I was surprised to see DCI Myles still standing in the same place, having not moved an inch even as dozens of nasty little vermin had clambered over her ankles.

“They… they… they…”

She looked almost catatonic, and that alone left my stomach lurching towards my feet. She didn’t seem like the sort of person who could be terrified so easily. Then again, I realised, maybe it hadn’t come easy at all. The room behind her was dark, the curtains pulled. I couldn’t see what was in there. While the other two officers saw to each other, I slid past and peeked inside with my torch.

I didn’t even know what I was looking at, least not at first. The shoes on his feet let me know it was Mr Anders lying on the floor but the podgy old man was otherwise unrecognisable. His living room had been cleared out and his mutilated body had been laid out like some kind of display, his limbs and entrails encircling his dismembered torso in several overlapping loops all wrapped up in thick clumps of soggy human hair. All around him were hundreds of small scratchy circles that had been engraved in the floor with pockets of rat droppings contained in each one.

“Praying.”

DCI Myles had spoken and I practically jumped out of my skin.

“They were praying,” she said. “Scratchy little voices. Scratchy little voices all whispering. I heard them. I heard what they said. They were all laid out like… like a service, all around him.”

I looked back at the scene and felt my gorge rise. Moving the torch a little further ahead I finally found Mr Anders’s head, or at least I figured it was his given that it had been picked clean to the bone. It was an ivory skull gleaming harshly in my light, placed at the head of the circle, although a little farther back.

“He’s preaching. Good God he’s preaching and I can hear him!”

DCI Myles spoke but I did not look back. The skull was occupied. Something stood over it, wrinkled pink paws clutching at his brow and leaning forward like a priest giving a sermon. It must have been the same rat from the basement for it was huge, holding the man’s head between both paws like it was getting ready to pass a basketball. For a moment it stared us both down, bearing those wretched fangs in the light, each one as long as a human finger, before it chittered and fled into the darkened corners of the living room.

“Oh God,” Myles screamed, collapsing to the floor and seizing all of my attention. “Oh God it nests! It nests below!”

I suddenly found myself feeling very afraid, and my terror grew white hot when I heard two voices cry from the hallway behind us. I had almost forgotten about the other officers until they shouted back, but far from offer help their robotic cries only made me feel like I was spiralling deeper into madness.

“It nests below!” They screamed in unison, answering the woman’s calls like a religious prayer.

-

“You shouldn’t be out here,” I said as I turned back to face the young boy. He’d been sat out in the hallway scrawling pictures when I first passed, and even though I had far bigger problems on my hands, I couldn’t quite leave him out there. “It’s uh… you should have a grown up with you. It’s not safe.”

“Mum’s in the flat,” he said.

I knew his mother, and she wasn’t going to win any parent-of-the-year awards. Still, I felt like I should try anyway.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go back in with her?”

He looked at me like I was an idiot.

“Is she… is she not feeling well again? Like last year?”

Last time I’d had to call an ambulance for her, the needles were still stuck in her arms.

“You could say that,” he replied, eyes fixed on the paper laid flat on the floor. He was holding a black pencil in his fist like it was a dagger, dragging it across the page so hard I wondered if he might mark the floor. “Will the police come back?” he asked.

“Probably,” I said. “I think the detective just needs a break. They say it happens from time to time with police officers. They work so hard to keep us safe that sometimes they just need a rest. Did your mother ask you to ask?”

He shrugged his little shoulders.

Something compelled me to walk back the way I’d just come and sit next to him. I’m not the most paternal of people but something about the last few days had left me feeling like I should try a little harder to look after these people.

“Let’s get you back to your mum,” I said while reaching over to put an arm over his shoulder only to freeze partway when I saw what he’d been drawing. It was a ragged black circle repeating over and over as he’d scored the pencil onto the page so hard it had torn parts of it away.

When he spoke, it was in a whisper.

“Anything can pray,” he told me, smiling like it was a secret. “Repeating the same few sounds over and over. We prayed before we talked or even walked. We prayed to be safe. We prayed to be dry. We prayed to be strong. Our first prayer was to leave the trees, to escape the snakes and birds who snatched babies. We prayed over and over and over and over. When you need to pray that badly, you invent words to fill the aching need. It doesn’t matter what you do, just that you do it again and again until you make a groove in the world using your mind.”

His fist was still circling that page and I let my eyes follow the pencil, going round and round until my head grew dizzy and a whining buzz filled my ears. Something about his voice had wormed its way into my head, and I became faintly aware of a warmth trickling down my ears.

“We scavenged before we hunted,” he said. “Our need for safety made prayers, made worship, made songs and music and chants and words and language and eventually, our prayers made us think… but he came first, before it all. Before we were strong or smart, and we just forgot him like he never even mattered, when he was the one who made us this way.

“He came first.” The boy added as he handed me his drawing. Something had gripped my mind so tight I couldn’t even think of a reply. ”He came first,” he repeated the words a little more sternly and without realising how or why it was even possible, I found myself answering them.

“It nests below.”

The boy smiled as he ran a finger in circles on my forehead, blessing me silently. The strangest thing was, I almost felt thankful to him.

“I need your help,” he said. “Follow me.”

-

The rats were chasing their own tails. Dozens of them covered the floor, wearing grooves deep into the ancient khaki carpet. They all looked like they were going mad, trapped in place while going round and round and round…

All except one. It stared at me from where it was perched atop the boy’s mother. She had been stripped, bound, and then presumably killed. How fast it had been or how painful, I couldn’t say. By the time I saw her, the thick ropes of braided hair were the only thing stopping her limbs being scattered by the furious currents of swirling rats. And now their leader was using her opened rib cage like some kind of pulpit or stage, staring down on the masses below him.

Even worse, the rats were not alone. There were children in there, down on all fours, going round and round just like the vermin by their feet. I might have expected them to trample some of the furry little monsters but they never did. The rats always parted just in time. In fact, none of the hundreds of occupants ever bumped into each other, or even came close to it. There was no order to their movements, but it wasn’t quite chaos either. And if I looked too long I felt the first flickers of the aura of a migraine start to fade in from the corners of my vision.

The boy took my hand and led me to the dog-sized rat.

“He doesn’t like you,” the boy said, and this time it wasn’t a threat or even a tease. He was just saying it. “You don’t need heat, or comfort, or food to fill a starving belly. You want. All of you grown ups want so much. But your bones don’t ache with need like ours do.”

The rat chittered and as one every single thing in that room looked up and answered him. The children cried,

“It nests below!” and the rats squeaked inanely.

Just as quickly the frantic circling resumed and I realised with growing horror that I had answered the cry as well.

“But compromising for the sake of a need is a sacred act,” the boy continued. “And he is willing to give you a chance to take part in this rite.”

He reached out and blessed my head once more, his grubby finger tracing circles on my brow.

“It nests below,” I whimpered, feeling tears at the corner of my eyes at the realisation that I no longer controlled my own mouth.

“He does,” the boy hissed, leaning forward until I could see the rot setting in his teeth. “But the nest is small. And cold. And wet. It needs so much. And just as he once answered our calls, we must now answer his.”

-

“Fucking hell you did a good job with the rats,” Al said, staring at the sack of rotting meat I’d just thrown into a dumpster. “How many are in that?”

“Too many to count,” I replied.

“Well I’m glad to see that poison I got you worked out. Must have been serious stuff. Where did you use it?”

“The basement, mostly,” I answered. “It’s uh, it’s all clean though. All of it. Spick and span ready for the new residents.

“I’m glad to see you’ve got your eye on the bigger picture!” he cried. “Most people don’t think like that. But yes, all ready. First one’s coming in next week, from what I hear.”

“Look I don’t want to throw a wrench in anything,” I said. “But, I’m pretty sure I found where the rats were coming from and I could use some help sorting it out.”

“Hang on now Chris I’m not a fucking handyman. I’m management.”

“I just need someone to hold a torch is all,” I said. “I mean do you really want to risk the new contracts?” I asked, leaning it and speaking quietly. “First we had all the missing kids, then like a third of the residents just upped and left without paying us a penny in rent… come on, I played ball didn’t I? I dealt with the rat problem just like you asked. Help me out here. I just need some light.”

“Alright,” he grumbled. “But I better not catch anything down there.”

-

“Jesus Christ!” he hissed. “Chris are you fuckin’ serious? What are you doing knocking holes in walls like this!”

“I needed to find where they were coming from,” I answered. “Turns out it was this old door that leads into the sewers on the other side. This thing is Victorian and it’s been here a while, bricked up but here nonetheless. Anyway, as you can see it’s just wood and the rats kept going through the bottom and that’s what gave them access to all the walls. Look.”

I pushed the door and it swung open, leading right to a dripping wet tunnel darker than any place I’d ever seen before. “It goes right into the sewers. I just need some light on it while I brick it up properly.”

“You’re thorough, I’ll give you that,” he said. “Give me that thing.” He reached out and I handed him the torch. The light fell on my back and I watched my shadow rise up ahead of me. Taking a deep breath, I steadied myself and stepped through the doorway. Already the scratching in my ears felt deafening. I knew it was about to get a lot worse.

“Oh wow,” I cried out, my acting less than convincing. “Al you need to see what’s through here pal. These sewers are ancient. They must go on for miles.”

“I ain’t stepping into no fucking shit pipe Chris, c’mon, use your head here. Just do what you gotta do.”

“Alright,” I said, closing my eyes and taking another deep breath. “Is that a kid?” I cried out. “Al there’s a kid down here. I think… I think it’s one of the ones they never found.”

“Oh fuck,” he cried out. “Well go after him! Go on! The little fucker must’ve been hiding down here all along.”

I turned back and looked at him like a slackjawed idiot.

“You got the light Al.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” he hissed, pushing past. “You should have been running already. You might have even caught him. Where did he go!?”

“That way.” I pointed to the left where the tunnel branched off. “Down there and to the right.”

Al stormed ahead and I followed.

“At least it’s rat free,” he hissed. “You musta really done one hell of a job laying that poison.”

I didn’t answer, resolving only to follow in silence. Surely they could take it from here? I thought. Surely I don’t have to see it all again.

I was thinking this same thing over and over when I suddenly bumped into the back of Al. We’d reached the chamber far faster than I was expecting.

“What the fuck…?”

The torch fell upon the nest and I could see the terror paralysing Al. It riveted him to the spot like a bolt of lightning. It was horrific, but also beautiful. A hulking mess of rotten bodies chewed and pulped like papier mache, the nest was part roiling wasp hive and part mass-grave. Sunken faces and bleeding eyes stared back at us, mouths hanging wide open. The missing residents hadn’t even just been tangled together, but actually melted into each other’s flesh using a process I simply couldn’t bear to think of.

Standing in front of the nest was the rat. It had grown, yet again, even larger, looking some misshapen Alsatian.

“What the fuck is that thing,” Al hissed. “Chris where am I? What’s going on?”

He was white as a sheet, and I couldn’t blame him.

“Does that thing live down here? Is that… is that its nest!?”

“No,” I replied.

The rat chittered and I cried out,

“It nests below!”

Al looked more than confused. He looked like the world had lost all order. All sense. And who could blame him? It wasn’t so much the chorus of chitters that echoed from the darkness. It probably hadn’t even been my own voice speaking from behind.

No.

It was the voices of the people in the nest, the ones with missing eyes and pulled teeth and broken bones and exposed muscle, their limbs intersecting each other’s torsos like some impossible puzzle, like they’d been broken down and poured into some God-awful mould.

They had answered too.

“He is just their priest,” I said, pointing towards the enormous rat. “What he worships lives down here.”

“What have you brought into this place?” Al gasped. “What the fuck have you brought into my building?”

“It was always here,” I replied.

The god reached out from within its nest and Al was dragged screaming into the darkness, dropping the torch as he begged hysterically for me, for anyone, to help.

When it was finally over I reached down and took the torch. It caught the rat’s eyes and they shone back at me like two burning coals. For a moment I thought it might attack, but it only dipped its head in a rare acknowledgement.

It chittered something in its newborn language.

“It nests below,” I replied before turning to leave.