The Lighthouse

She went down the three steps and through the cloakroom to check the pantry. She had her hand on the latch when she thought she heard something inside, a kind of shuffling or skittering movement. A chill seemed to make the same sort of movement on her back, as if someone had drawn a bony finger downward along her spine. She listened for a moment, standing rigid, but there wasn’t anything else to hear. Her imagination acting up, producing more horror fantasies about rats in that abandoned well under the pantry floor. That, and nerves.

She opened the door, reached inside for the light switch. It was way over near the shelves on the left; you’d think the people who had built the place would In the darkness something moved across her hand-something alive, something that chittered.

A cry froze in her throat; she jerked her hand back, banged her knuckles against the inner wall. Her dragging fingers touched the switch plate. Reflexively she flipped the toggle upward.

Scurrying things on the floor, on the shelves. A bag of sugar ripped open, spilling whiteness like granulated snow. Yellow eyes glaring, fangs bared, little clawed feet snicking against wood.

Rats!

The pantry was full of rats!

Her throat unlocked and she screamed, a shriek of revulsion and primal terror, and then recoiled backward, pulling the door shut with a crash. But one of the rats got through. She saw it, felt it slither across her boot-huge, half as big as a full-grown cat, gray fur matted and riddled with mange. She threw herself sideways, up against the wall, and the rat turned at the noise or movement to confront her. It came up on its hind paws, its mouth wide open as if in rictus, its fangs gleaming and its yellow eyes full of evil. Another cry tore out of her, strangled and mewling this time. Dimly she beard Jan yelling, felt herself flattening against the wall, clutching at it in a blind groping for escape.

But the rat didn’t attack her, it wheeled and skittered the other way, into the cloakroom just as Jan appeared from the kitchen.

He saw it, shouted something, and the rat veered away from him, over to the wall where they kept their shoes and boots and galoshes. Through a kind of haze she saw it rear up again, backed against the wall just as she was-cornered rat, trapped rat, its eyes not yellow but red now in the gloom, like the eyes of a demon. Saw Jan yank his furled umbrella off a hook on the wall, the one with the heavy brass handle shaped like a falcon’s head. Saw him lunge at the rat, flail at it with the brass end. Heard the thing squeal as it fought him like a drunken boxer, heard it squeal again, a different kind of sound, one of pain and rage. Saw blood, and more of Jan’s wild swings, and the grimace of frenzy on his face She shut her eyes, twisted around toward the wall, and jammed her hands over her ears to shut out the thuds and grunts and squeals. She had no idea when the violence ended. She was still standing, face to the wall, eyes shut, hands pressed to her ears, when she sensed his nearness. And in spite of herself, she shuddered when he touched her.

He turned her, pulled her against him-not gently. “Are you all right? It didn’t bite you?”

“No, no… ”

“It’s dead. I killed it.”

She had nothing to say. She buried her face against the rough cloth of his coat and held him, not so much for comfort but because she was afraid to look at him up close this way, afraid that the remnants of his savage fury would still be visible. The rage was still in his voice, in the throbbing rigidity of his body.

“More of them in the pantry,” he said. “I can hear them. How many, did you see?”

“I don’t know. Several… I don’t know.”

“All right. I’ll get them out of there.”

“How? You can’t kill them all-”

“I will if I have to.”

He turned her again, so that they were side by side and his arm was around her shoulders. She didn’t took at what lay bloody and mangled on the floor of the cloakroom as they passed through it. Just let him guide her through the kitchen and into the living room, sit her down near the wood stove-the second time today she had let him lead her away from the scene of an outrage. Deja vu. And things happened in threes, didn’t they?

She glanced up as he started for the door. He was still carrying the furled umbrella in his left hand, and when she saw the blood on it she swallowed against the taste of bile and looked away again. “Jan, be careful. Don’t let one of those things bite you.”

“I won’t.”

The front door opened, banged shut again. She got up and went to the stove, stood close to its warmth. She was oold; it was all she could do to control her shivering.

From back in the pansy, she heard the squealing again.