Full Dark, No Stars

On several occasions I cal ed the attention of my co-workers to these vermin. They claimed not to see them. Perhaps they real y did not. I think it far more likely that they were afraid the Sewing Floor might be temporarily closed down so the ratcatchers could come in and do their work. The sewing crew might have lost three days’ wages, or even a week. For men and women with families, that would

have been catastrophic. It was easier for them to tel Mr. Hanrahan that I was seeing things. I understood. And when they began to cal me Crazy Wilf ? I understood that, too. It wasn’t why I quit.

I quit because the rats kept moving in.

I had been putting a little money away, and was prepared to live on it while I looked for another job, but I didn’t have to. Only three days after leaving Bilt-Rite, I saw an ad in the paper for a librarian at the Omaha Public Library—must have references or a degree. I had no degree, but I have been a reader my whole life, and if the events of 1922 taught me anything, it was how to deceive. I forged

references from public libraries in Kansas City and Springfield, Missouri, and got the job. I felt sure Mr. Quarles would check the references and discover they were false, so I worked at becoming the best librarian in America, and I worked fast. When my new boss confronted me with my deception, I would simply throw myself on his mercy and hope for the best. But there was no confrontation. I held my job

at the Omaha Public Library for four years. Technical y speaking, I suppose I stil hold it now, although I haven’t been there in a week and have not ’phoned in sick.

The rats, you see. They found me there, too. I began to see them crouched on piles of old books in the Binding Room, or scuttering along the highest shelves in the stacks, peering down at me

knowingly. Last week, in the Reference Room, I pul ed out a volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica for an elderly patron (it was Ra-St, which no doubt contains an entry for Rattus norvegicus, not to mention slaughterhouse) and saw a hungry gray-black face staring out at me from the vacant slot. It was the rat that bit off poor Achelois’s teat. I don’t know how that could be—I’m sure I kil ed it—but there was no doubt. I recognized it. How could I not? There was a scrap of burlap, bloodstained burlap, caught in its whiskers.

Snood!

I brought the volume of Britannica to the old lady who had requested it (she wore an ermine stole, and the thing’s little black eyes regarded me bleakly). Then I simply walked out. I wandered the streets for hours, and eventual y came here, to the Magnolia Hotel. And here I have been ever since, spending the money I have saved as a librarian—which doesn’t matter any longer—and writing my

confession, which does. I—

One of them just nipped me on the ankle. As if to say Get on with it, time’s almost up. A little blood has begun to stain my sock. It doesn’t disturb me, not in the slightest. I have seen more blood in my time; in 1922 there was a room fil ed with it.

And now I think I hear… is it my imagination?

No.

Someone has come visiting.

I plugged the pipe, but the rats stil escaped. I fil ed in the wel , but she also found her way out. And this time I don’t think she’s alone. I think I hear two sets of shuffling feet, not just one. Or—

Three? Is it three? Is the girl who would have been my daughter-in-law in a better world with them as wel ?

I think she is. Three corpses shuffling up the hal , their faces (what remains of them) disfigured by rat-bites, Arlette’s cocked to one side as wel … by the kick of a dying cow.

Another bite on the ankle.

And another!

How the management would—

Ow! Another. But they won’t have me. And my visitors won’t, either, although now I can see the doorknob turning and I can smel them, the remaining flesh hanging on their bones giving off the stench

of slaughtered

slaught

The gun

god where is the

stop

OH MAKE THEM STOP BITING M

From the Omaha World-Herald, April 14th, 1930

LIBRARIAN COMMITS SUICIDE IN LOCAL HOTEL

Bizarre Scene Greets Hotel Security Man

The body of Wilfred James, a librarian at the Omaha Public Library, was found in a local hotel on Sunday when efforts by hotel staff to contact him met with no response. The resident of a nearby room

had complained of “a smel like bad meat,” and a hotel chambermaid reported hearing “muffled shouting or crying, like a man in pain” late Friday afternoon.

After knocking repeatedly and receiving no response, the hotel’s Chief of Security used his pass-key and discovered the body of Mr. James, slumped over the room’s writing desk.

“I saw a pistol and assumed he had shot himself,” the security man said, “but no-one had reported a gunshot, and there was no smel of expended powder. When I checked the gun, I determined it was a

badly maintained .25, and not loaded.