Cthulhu Lives!: An Eldritch Tribute to H. P. Lovecraft (16 page)

SCRITCH, SCRATCH
by Lynne Hardy

Nestled in its sleepy valley, Muscoby was largely invisible to the rest of the world. It was just a little too far from the nearest station to have become a commuter haven. Likewise, it was that bit too remote in winter for the trip to the nearest town. Somehow the village struggled on, in spite of its obvious disadvantages. As the old ones withered away and died, and their children departed in search of a more comfortable life, outsiders began to take an interest. The quaint little cottages were bought up one by one for ever-expanding property portfolios.

The local council, officially responsible for the village’s wellbeing, had studiously ignored its existence for untold years. That gave them, to all intents and purposes, the dubious status of being Muscoby’s very first absentee landlords. As word spread, they suddenly remembered that the village was there. People with gleaming teeth began to use ominous phrases such as “development plan” and “diversification of revenue streams”. Before long, the road into the valley had been improved. A marketing campaign appeared, making much of the area’s history and natural beauty.

Muscoby’s tiny church was of historical interest, true. Its ancient carvings of mice and rats were far older than the church itself. The valley
was
beautiful when the sun warmed it, even if that warmth never extended to the woods that ran back into the high hills. A tea shop appeared in what had been the Post Office. Ambitiously, a field at the very edge of the village was converted into a car park, in readiness for the expected influx of tourists. Pleasant walks were planned and leafleted, linked up to the greater hiking routes that criss-crossed the region. The walks all steadfastly avoided the woods, however. Everyone in the nearby town laughed at the villagers’ uneasiness, but there was an undeniable something about the robust trees that discouraged closer inspection. The impressionable suggested that perhaps it was the way they rustled, even when there was no wind.

And then there was the rat catcher.

No one knew how long there had been a rat catcher in Muscoby. Some claimed that there had never
not
been the small, neat cottage at the uppermost edge of the village. It was close to the woods, and the catch of the day was invariably strung up between the trees beyond like so much bedraggled, furry bunting. The village’s children used to run as close to the cottage’s door as they dared – back in the days when the village still had a school, and children enough to fill it – chanting their queer little rhyme:

Scritch, scratch, see the rat,

Bright eyes and twitching tail,

Scritch, scratch, chase the rat,

’Cross hill, and stream, and dale.

No adult of the village ever challenged the rat catcher’s presence or importance, no matter how bizarre his behaviour – not even the vicar. One of the past rat catchers, much to everyone’s embarrassment, had briefly entertained a dalliance with taxidermy. Several of his dioramas still existed, safely hidden from sight in the archives of the town’s museum. The public’s taste for costumed rodents engaging in popular social activities had long since waned. There had been some brief talk of mounting a new exhibition as part of the council’s promotional drive. Thankfully, common sense had prevailed.

The current rat catcher was a quiet man. The last of a long, long line, he carried out his duties with little fuss or fanfare. Every morning, Old Gurteen would patrol the fields and byways. He’d check and reset his traps, the corpses of his vanquished foes vanishing swiftly and silently into the sack he always carried with him. Then he’d wander into the woods, singing softly to himself, to hang the vermin from his lines by their tails. There they stayed, until nature took its course.

Eventually, the remains would drop onto the tumuli of bones left by the countless fallen. Perhaps the disconcertingly crunchy noise of their footsteps kept the villagers out of the woods. Without a doubt, treading on the litter left by a million tiny corpses was an uncanny business. Whatever the reason for their aversion, the trees remained free of human interference. They grew strong on their diet of festering meat.

It took longer than most had expected for newcomers to begin objecting to the rat-catcher’s charnel house wind-chimes. Specifically, it was the holiday-makers who rented the tastefully modernised investment cottages. These visitors took great offence at the stench of death and decay ruining their attempted picnics in the woods. They despised the baleful, rotting eyes gazing at them as they cautiously communed with nature. This was supposedly their time away from the stresses and strains of urban life.

The council realised that something had be done to protect their investment. The matter would need very careful handling. An unseemly, headline grabbing kerfuffle absolutely had to be avoided. Old Gurteen, as his name suggested, was no longer in the flower of his youth – and discrimination against the elderly never played well in the media.

So it seemed, one inclement morning towards the close of summer, as if Providence herself had taken a hand. A trio of touring cyclists collided with the silent old man as he made his daily rounds. They claimed that he had appeared from nowhere out of the mist. He was in no fit state to contradict them, lying battered, bruised and broken in a ditch. The village’s cottage hospital had become a cosy gift shop some time before. It was great for lacy gingham cushions and earthenware door plaques emblazoned with trite homilies. Less use, perhaps, to anyone sick or injured. Old Gurteen was bundled off to the smart new infirmary in town. The council assured the concerned inhabitants that he would receive the very finest of care.

With the rat catcher gone, the villagers became troubled. Not one of them quite knew why, but there it was. They had grumbled at the loss of the school, the cottage hospital, the Post Office. None of their prior losses had filled them with the growing sense of dread they now experienced. It only took a glance towards that small, neat cottage at the edge of the woods to evoke it. The locals had always considered it a terrible shame that Old Gurteen had no family of his own. Despite several attempted apprenticeships, none of the village’s youngsters had been interested. Ancient and venerable though the occupation was, it remained, admittedly, far from glamorous. Even the vicar – on his visits between parishes – found himself praying a little more fervently. Was the watchful gaze of his stony murine congregation a little more pointed? There had never not been a rat catcher in Muscoby. People talked in hushed, anxious tones about the end of the old ways.

The council, on the other hand, were secretly delighted. Their problem appeared to have taken care of itself. They were always very careful not to show their pleasure, of course. All of those dead creatures had to be in breach of some sort of health and safety legislation anyway. The small, neat cottage certainly wasn’t going to be up to snuff when it came to Old Gurteen’s eventual rehabilitation, either.

A cleaning crew was duly dispatched to the woods, all decked out in pristine white protective suits and face masks. Slowly but surely, they removed the detritus of the Gurteen family’s bloody and determined past, one cadaveric sackful at a time. Workmen busied themselves all over the cottage. They updated the plumbing, spruced up the paintwork, and cleaned out the sheds. They also thoroughly trampled the vegetable patch. They were determined to make everything modern, clean and sparkling for the old man’s return.

But things were not going well at the hospital, much to the council’s dismay. The longer Old Gurteen was away from the village, the more agitated he became. The once-quiet old man began to gabble constantly about needing to take care of the rats. The ward manager became increasingly irked. Every day, she fielded more and more queries from disgruntled patients and their families. There was much concern regarding the possibility of an infestation on the premises.

Moving Old Gurteen to a private room helped, initially. He became ever more mobile however, and took to wandering the wards and corridors at night. Invariably, a bright yellow plastic clinical waste bag was clutched tightly in his hands. The last straw came when an auxiliary nurse caught him stringing up a rat from the window latch with his pyjama cord. One of the sub-contracted pest control company’s traps lay discarded on the floor beside his bare, mud-spattered feet.

People were paid handsomely to be professionally concerned about Old Gurteen’s state of mind. They came to talk to him in their kindly yet earnest way. Their non-threatening, colourful ties and relentlessly cheery assurances did nothing to calm his disquiet or his babbling. A variety of board meetings were specially convened between the hospital and the council. Eventually, they decided that the poor old soul obviously had some form of obsessive compulsion coupled with worsening dementia. Clearly, he could not possibly be released back into the community. It was all for his own safety. Better by far to move him to the region’s special facility. He could be properly monitored. Also, he’d no longer be a nuisance to his long-suffering, council tax paying neighbours and their vacationing guests.

The “For Sale” sign appeared in the garden of the small, neat cottage at the end of the village just as the last bag of remains was removed. The long-standing denizens of Muscoby swore they heard the trees sighing. The holiday-makers had been tickled and repulsed in equal measure by the doom-laden mutterings of the locals. They packed up and went back to their real lives. Letting agents swooped down to carefully shut up all those second homes against the approaching winter. As they left, they each sneaked a surreptitious glance back towards the ancient grove, which seemed to glower back at them, and they shivered. The villagers started locking their doors. This greatly amused the few resident newcomers, who had always locked theirs anyway. Old Gurteen was firmly out of sight and out of mind. The local council slapped themselves on the back for a job well done, and went on about their civic duties with nary a second thought.

The winter was hard – the hardest in living memory. Folk only ventured forth to fetch essentials from town, and then only when the expensively upgraded road was clear. No one said much when the occasional pet went missing. After all, the snow was deep, and the winds bitter enough to cut you in two. Anything caught out in conditions like that was most certainly at the mercy of the elements, which weren’t particularly renowned for their clemency. If the odd sheep was lost too, well that was no surprise. Sheep were particularly stupid creatures. The birds also appeared to have migrated out of the valley, to avoid the plummeting temperatures. Not exactly surprising, no, but perhaps just a little worrying nonetheless. Those who were rooted in the valley found themselves whispering the children’s rhyme to themselves with ever-increasing frequency, brandishing it like a charm against the dark thicket which lurked below the high hills:

Scritch, scratch, catch the rat,

Hang him by his tail,

Scritch, scratch, good old rat,

Their appetites curtail.

No one came to view the small, neat cottage over the winter. The estate agents hadn’t been expecting anyone to. Even so, they were relieved when tentative nibbles began to come in as the weather released its stranglehold on the valley. On their first visit of the year however, they were quite dismayed. The woodland had encroached quite seriously upon the cottage’s garden. In fact, it almost reached the back door.

New photographs of the plot were taken. These were carefully posed, to minimise the looming shadows cast by the curiously trembling branches. Discussion after discussion followed. Should they hire a tree surgeon to trim back the unruly foliage? At the very least, should they knock down the asking price? The property would undoubtedly now require significant extra work. Each new visit showed nature to have snatched back a little more of the cottage.

The villagers’ sombre mood began to dishearten holiday-makers, as did the fearful scurryings from the surrounding woods. The trees were completely clear of putrefying spectators, but the newcomers still felt as if they were being watched. They no longer wanted to walk beneath the woodland’s eaves, strewing sandwich wrappers, drinks cartons and gnawed apple cores in their wake. Workmen eventually came in from the council, with chainsaws and chippers. They made a half-hearted attempt to tame the unruly weald. But the trees, so long apparently unmanaged, resisted all their efforts to contain them. The dismembered trunks flung forth twisting offshoots, transforming ancient woodland into vibrant new coppice. The encroachment intensified.

When the first hiker went missing, the news was greeted with a sense of inevitability. If anything, there was mild bemusement that it hadn’t happened sooner. The regional television news reporter carefully made sure never to turn her back on the trees throughout filming. She talked to the hiker’s friends on camera. They recalled how he had been sure there was a shortcut through the woods. In fact, he was convinced this would enable him to get speedily to the pub in the next valley over. He’d boasted that he’d be savouring a leisurely pint before they’d even got close to leaving the local.

The man’s remains were located quickly enough, which some said was a blessing for his family. There were murmurings of an undiagnosed heart condition, or some sort of fit. However, the inquest could draw no firm conclusions as to how he came by his untimely end. Nobody came to lay a wreath for him at the spot where he was found. Nobody could blame them.

Bookings fell off rapidly after that. The gift shop closed, and even the old Post Office tea shop reduced its opening hours. Grass grew through the cracks in the car park, and rain filled up the pot-holes. No one came to fix them. One by one, gaudy placards began to appear in the picture-postcard gardens. The one in the rat catcher’s cottage had long since been swallowed up. The woods marched slowly but inexorably across his vegetable patch and herbaceous borders. Eventually, they breached the neglected hedge and creaking gate, spilling out into the lane that led to the village proper.

Meanwhile, people came and went – or vanished, allegedly. Stories of a curse began to appear in the local papers. Occasional academics came to Muscoby, from colleges with a certain reputation, to view the historic little church. Sadly, the vicar had finally abandoned it, its silent inhabitants, and the entire village. The researchers always ended up gossiping with the locals, and pressing them for lurid details. There were few such details to be had. Across the county, in the facility, Old Gurteen forewent sleep. He was always watching, whispering mournfully to himself. Some said he was just as caught in his sterile little room as any of the rats he himself had trapped. If any of the academics had thought to speak to him, they might have heard a different tale: