Of Fat Rats, Mad Cats, and A Cowardly Collie

 

In her weathered farm house for only two months, and already Ellie’s list of pros and cons weighs heavy on the con side. Pro: back to nature, homage to Tinker Creek pilgrims she tells herself. Con: her two slightly crazed barn cats come and go through holes known only to them. Then there is the rat. And the suspicion the place is haunted.

“I’m a Romantic,” she tells friends. “The view is to die for.” Truth be told, its the cheap rent.

Someone had died in one of the upstairs bedrooms, but that doesn’t stop her landlord from renting out his old home place. And yet . . . he can’t seem to discard anything the deceased had touched. Furniture, stacked to the ceiling of the death chamber, blocks the door that cracks open a mere five inches. Most nights her cats racket about in there for hours, chasing mice—at least she hopes it’s mice.

Each time storms rake her ridge top, the power goes off. So far it has come back on before she panics. This night, as the sun sinks below her hilltop road that winds into Slippery Ridge, West Virginia, the lights cut off good. And no storm for miles around to account for the power loss. A dusky October evening turns gloom-shot.

“Damn!” She calls to the cats, “Where did I put that flashlight?”

No response from the absent menagerie.

She pulls a match pack from her jean’s pocket and strikes a match, grateful that she hadn’t given up smoking. Again. This week at least. Its gleam lights the way to the gas stove in the kitchen where she ignites the burner. In the warm glow she finds a flashlight in the junk drawer.

“Yes!” What a relief—the batteries work—so far great luck. But then she recalls where her landlord had pointed out the fuse box. In the cellar.

Except for the wind that whistles through loose siding and a looser roof, an eerie silence envelopes the house. The Ever-Sure’s beam leads her down steps to a landing at the cellar door. As she opens it, her cats’ screeches rise from the black depths. Something else rustles and bumps through the debris of the dank room.

Stay calm. She takes a deep breath, only to choke on a smell like dirty wet socks. Ah, light switch! Flip the light switch. Nothing happens. “Right,” she says to the fusty murk. “New fuse, then light.” She points the flashlight directly to the wall opposite the door then down the thirteen rickety steps, the same oily brown as the wall. Past moldering paper bags and empty potato sacks, she makes her way, taking care not to knock over a rusted bucket filled with screws and bent nails. The first creak reminds her that the lower steps wobble. She stays to the left and leans against the foundation wall. Its rough-hewn logs and earth mortar snag her denim shirt.

Turning to the right Ellie plays her light on the far wall and locates the fuse box. Before her in the center of the cramped, wet space stands an oil furnace. It replaced a coal furnace, the reason for the now unused coal bin with its chute door to the outside. She breathes in the acrid odor of ancient coal dust and newly dripped oil. In best horror film tradition, she squiggles the light all around at the mouth to Hell where a freakishly fat rat nests among the chunks of old coal. She hears her cats in there growling at what must be the rat—so huge that even her collie Barney ran the night it had slunk through the unbolted cellar door. Her shriek and a tossed unabridged dictionary drove it back to its lair.

This time she growls, making her voice sound like a malfunctioning threshing machine.

Satisfied that Ratzilla won’t attack, at least not before she gets to the fuse box, she sidles around the furnace to the wall with the fuse box and sagging wood shelves. The flashlight reveals dust-caked Mason jars crammed with what looks like some sort of biology class experiments floating in barnyard formaldehyde. Maybe peaches and green beans. All turned brown and fuzzy.

The shelf beside the fuse box holds a tiny paper container with new fuses.

“Thank God.” Holding the light in her left hand, with her right she extracts a fuse and places it between her lips. The cold glass and metal feel good but taste bitter. She opens the fuse box door, wrangles out the burnt fuse, and pops in the new, praying it works.

“Topeka!” she screeches in her best George of the Jungle voice. “Light!”

The one naked light bulb, a dusty sixty watts screwed into a socket in a scarred crossbeam, reveals the true horror of the cellar. Wet crawls up the grey, formerly white-washed walls. It slicks the rough-finished cement floor that edges into dull brown earth. Old wooden chests and paper boxes sit helter-skelter, their contents tumbling over the sides. Along the triangular wall beneath the steps hunch sacks of putrefying roots smelling of toe fungus. Their juices seep across the floor like tobacco spew. Almost anywhere she looks spider webs sag with long-dead flies.

The furnace crackles into life. She jumps, her heart pounding. Before she can catch her breath, the cats tear out of the coal bin, leap debris, and race up the steps. She dodges the old tin wash tub hanging from the beams and scurries after them around bags, ropes, and kerosene lanterns.

She shakes her head, marveling at the mystery of her landlord’s life and all the crap he had abandoned. Upon reaching the top of the stairs, she flips the light switch, slams and locks the cellar door, then turns off the failing flashlight.

Barney stands there, waving his tail.

“Coward!” she scolds, but kneels down to hug him just the same. She makes a mental note to stuff a towel under the door . . . later, after a glass of wine . . . and a cigarette.

 

 

L. N. Passmore

 

L. N. Passmore bids you to come visit Lisnafaer and her other green worlds.