Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 130, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 793 & 794, September/October 2007

A Rat’s Tale by Donna Andrews

© 2007 by Donna Andrews

Agatha Award-winner Donna Andrews is the author of two mystery series, one published by Berkley, featuring an artificial intelligence as the sleuth, and the other from St. Martin’s Press, featuring amateur sleuth Meg Langslow. The latest in that series is The Penguin Who Knew Too Much. “A Rat’s Tale” was inspired, says Ms. Andrews, bu the fact that she herself is a packrat.

I had a bad feeling when the doorbell rang. Of course, I never like hearing the doorbell. I’d known for a while that someone could file a complaint with social services or the health department at any time. As soon as they stepped through the door, the game would be up. The old man would be off to some home and I’d be out in the cold.

And I kind of like the old man. Maybe I should resent him for killing off the rest of my family, but that was a long time ago. And he’s mellowed since. It’s been ages since he put down any poison. Could be he’s realized I know better than to eat it, but I think these days he enjoys the company. He still mutters “Goddamned rats!” whenever he sees me, but there’s no venom in it anymore.

So when the doorbell rang, I scuttled over to the door and got there before he did. He has to follow the paths, and I can run along the top of the magazines, in the places where they don’t quite reach the ceiling or where I’ve gnawed tunnels through them.

By the time he reached the door, I was already perched in one of my observation points — a nice, comfortable nest I’d hollowed out in the old National Geographics that flanked the door, with a couple of convenient peepholes.

“Who’s there?” the old man said.

“It’s Ron.”

I flattened my ears at that — Ron, the old man’s nephew, worried me. So far he hadn’t tried to get the old man to move out or clean up, but I figure that was because he was afraid it would end up costing him money.

The old man opened the door.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“It’s freezing out here,” Ron said. “Can’t we talk inside?”

The old man stared at him for a few moments, then pushed the door partway closed, to give himself room to turn around, and began shuffling back down the path. Ron pushed the door open again and slipped in. He stood in the hall taking shallow breaths for a few seconds, the way he always did. Humans never really seemed to appreciate the rich, nuanced collection of odors the old man had created here in the house. Even the old man probably didn’t really appreciate it — he’d just stopped noticing.

I hoped Ron would puke, like last time, but he fought it back. He closed the door and followed the old man down the path.

I scrambled to follow. I had to go more slowly than usual. The old man couldn’t hear the rustling noises I made while crawling over and through all the newspapers and magazines, but Ron’s ears were keener. And despite my caution, he must have heard me.

“I still say you’ve got rats,” he was saying as I arrived at my observation post in the kitchen.

“No, I don’t,” the old man said. “And if I did, they’d be my rats, and none of your business.”

The old man sat down in his usual place — a little cave hollowed out between the stacks of Reader’s Digests and flattened cardboard boxes around the kitchen table.

Ron looked around, confirmed that there wasn’t anywhere else to sit — just as there hadn’t been the last dozen times he’d been here. He leaned against the kitchen counter, careful not to touch any of the junk precariously piled there.

“What do you want?” the old man asked.

“Doesn’t it ever occur to you that maybe it’s a good thing to have someone check on you every once in a while?” Ron said. “What if some of this junk fell on you? You could die before anyone found you.”

“I’d still die before you lifted a finger to help me. What do you want?”

“I need some money,” the nephew said.

“Tough luck.”

“I’ve got people after me!” Ron was sweating slightly, and the room still had its usual frigid winter chill. “If I can’t make my interest payments—”

“Tough luck,” the old man repeated. “I don’t have any money, and if I did, I wouldn’t give it to you.”

Not the first time they’d had this argument. Usually, it went on until Ron lost his temper and stormed off, calling the old man names over his shoulder. I’d have found it annoying, but I’d noticed that the old man seemed quite cheerful for a day or so after their arguments.

This time, Ron gave up almost immediately.

“You damned useless old miser,” he said.

The old man gave a couple of wheezy chuckles and then went back to the Cheerios he’d been eating for lunch when Ron arrived.

“Shut the door on your way out,” he said, between spoonfuls.

Ron was staring at the old man’s mouth as if it fascinated him, watching the jaws work and then the Adam’s apple bobbing when he swallowed.

“Useless,” he muttered.

He stood up and took a step toward the kitchen doorway. I felt relieved.

Then he reached over and took something off one of the mountains of junk. A rolling pin. A few things slid off the pile — some plastic butter tubs and some folded brown-paper shopping bags. The old man glanced up. He didn’t see the rolling pin — Ron hid it behind his body, and stood looking up at the junk, as if waiting until things stopped falling to take the path back to the front door. Once the danger of an avalanche had passed, the old man focused back on his Cheerios.

Ron turned around and whacked him on the head with the rolling pin. The old man’s head went down on the table, and the bowl of cereal tipped onto the floor.

Ron stood there looking at the old man for a few seconds. Then he reached out and grabbed a rag off one of the piles and wiped the end of the rolling pin he’d been holding. He threw the rolling pin down at the old man’s feet and the rag back with the rest of the junk. He grabbed a broom and poked at the junk around the old man until he brought enough stuff crashing down to almost hide him.

“Useless old miser,” he said.

For the next hour or so, he ransacked the house. He started by checking the places the old man used regularly — the kitchen drawers that would still open. The freezer. The medicine cabinet in the one usable bathroom. The area around and under the old man’s bed. I alternated between keeping an eye on him and checking on the old man, who wasn’t quite dead yet. He was still breathing, and occasionally he’d mutter for help.

After Ron ran out of easy places to look, he tried tearing into a few of the piles of junk, but he had to give that up rather soon, since there was no place to put the stuff he pulled out.

“I’ll show you, you miserable packrat,” he muttered.

He went back to the kitchen and pulled things off the pile until he could reach the old man’s pocket and take out the house keys.

“Help me,” the old man muttered. I couldn’t tell if Ron heard. He just piled some of the junk back on top of the old man and left.

Once I was sure he was gone, I got to work. I ransacked the kitchen for food, dragging everything I found down into my tunnels in the walls or beneath the crawl space. I figured I’d have to move eventually once the old man was gone, but the more food I could scavenge, the longer I could put that off.

The old man finally died around nightfall. As I scuttled around his cooling body, I realized that even though he was, technically, also food, I was curiously disinclined to do anything about it. True, he was thin, and would probably be fairly tough and stringy, but I’d eaten worse. Maybe it was sentimental of me — the old rat and the old packrat who’d lived so long together becoming friends, or some such nonsense. More probably a good instinct — after all, if whoever found the old man saw rat bites on him, they might go into high gear with an extermination program before I had a chance to relocate.

It was near midnight when I heard a key in the door. I crept to an observation point.

Ron again. He came in with two big boxes of black trash bags. He opened one box, pulled out a bag, and walked through the trails for a few minutes, as if he couldn’t decide where to start. Then he settled on the old man’s bedroom. He began picking up stuff, looking through it, and stuffing it into the trash bag.

Slow work. At this rate, it might take him almost as long to empty the house as it had for the old man to fill it. Decades. I had a feeling he’d give up long before he even made a dent in the junk.

And then I had an idea. I checked out all my observation points, and studied the nearby junk. I found a few places where I thought I could start a landslide if I pushed, pulled, or gnawed the right thing.

I started with the front door. I had to do a bit of gnawing at the base of the stacks, out in the open, but I timed my forays for right after Ron had returned from taking a bag outside to his car. After his fifth trip outside, I waited till he was back up in the bedroom and set off my booby trap.

A year’s worth of the Washington Post came crashing down in front of the front door. I leaped across the path to the other side, and by the time Ron came clumping down to investigate, I’d added a decade’s worth of National Geographics to the pile.

“What the—” Ron exclaimed. Then he shook his head. He went back to the bedroom and returned with one of the boxes of black plastic bags.

When he got to the foot of the stairs, I set off my third avalanche. That kept him stunned for long enough for me to dump two more piles of junk on him. By this time, the path through the front hall had all but disappeared. It was just a disorganized heap of books, magazines, and junk, with Ron squirming feebly at the bottom.

“Help me,” he kept whispering. “I can’t move. Somebody help me.”

I went back to the kitchen and snuffled around the old man’s feet for the last couple of Cheerios. I sniffed his sad, naked ankles, but he continued to be absolutely unappetizing. Curious.

Ron, on the other hand, was fat and sleek and quite tempting. As soon as he was dead—

Though that could take a while — why should I wait? I decided I’d go and see if he was telling the truth about not being able to move. And if he was, I planned on making sure his last few hours — or days — were far less enjoyable than the old man’s.