By Erik McHatton
The dingy room is brighter than thick burlap, so when the hood is yanked from Ratty Boy’s head, he can’t help but squint in the way of his namesake.
“Thanks,” he mutters to the formless blob before him as it wavers into the shape of a man wearing a tan overcoat and brown suit, offering up a cigarette. Ratty Boy pushes his lips out to accept. “Thanks again,” he says after a light and a puff.
The man is holding a folder open in his hands. He begins pacing. Cop, probably, thinks Ratty Boy, but considering the state of the room and the nature of his abduction, “probably” is likely nothing more than a desperate wish. Cops don’t snatch guys off the street and chain them to chairs in tiny, filthy rooms. This could be bad, as bad as it gets for a small-time guy like him. Maybe a rival dealer. Maybe the mob. Hopefully not that. Regardless, it is time to play out the string, try to catch a break. Ratty Boy is an excellent break catcher.
“Listen, man, you got nothin’ on me, ‘cept maybe a low-level dealing rap, and I can beat that easy. So why don’t you let me go, and we’ll call it a day? Save everybody some time.”
The man chuckles and closes the folder. “I’m not a police officer; you should know that by now. By the end of this, however, you might wish I was. You can call me Doctor.”
The man reaches into his overcoat and pulls out an amber vial filled with a red, viscous fluid. “This was found in your apartment. We have men tearing the place apart as we speak looking for the rest. It’s the same stuff we liberated from you when we grabbed you up. Now, Mr. Dancer, tell me where you acquired this substance, and things might work out in your favor here.”
Ratty Boy begins to sweat. Not a cop, okay, time to shift gears.
“Listen Doc, I can’t drop dime. You know how it works, right? I run my mouth, nobody trusts me. If nobody trusts me, my rep’s shot, and I can’t earn. You want me to quit dealin’ on your turf, fine, I’ll stop. Didn’t know I was stepping on anyone’s toes. The place is all yours, alright? No harm, no foul. Whadda ya say? Sound like a square deal?” Ratty Boy tries to look as earnest as possible while juggling the smoke jangling between his teeth.
The doctor punches him in the jaw. The cigarette loops through the air, leaving an embered trail in its wake, and lands, hissing, in a puddle of brown water by the wall. Ratty Boy spits blood.
“Let me make some things clear so that we can move past this awkward ‘getting to know each other’ phase. I’m not a low-life drug dealer. I’m not some thug enforcer. I’m a specialist on retainer hired by a group of powerful men who want this stuff off the street. You can either prove useful and save yourself some trouble, or you can be difficult and, pardon the cliche, we do things the hard way. Personally, I hope you choose the hard way. I’d really enjoy that.” The doctor’s jaw is clenched. His mustache bristles under flared nostrils.
Some kind of vigilante zealot. Great. Ratty Boy had been blown into unknown waters, his skippering skills to be tested. Heave-ho, my lads, heave-ho!
“You got a mean right hook for a doctor, Doc, but there’s no need for such aggression. I’m a reasonable man. You give me some assurances and we can work something out, no problem.”
“Assurances?”
“Yeah, you know, ‘leave my name out of it,’ ‘I walk out of here without any broken bones,’ stuff like that.”
“You seem like a reasonably intelligent man, Mr. Dancer. Does this strike you as the type of situation where you’ll be setting terms?”
Shit.
“I guess not.”
“Now you’re getting it. Where’d you get the stuff?”
“Doc, I can’t…”
The doctor hits him again, a hard left to the gut.
Ratty Boy coughs for well over a minute. This was just like Hill Circle. He might have to take a beating.
“C’mon Jonah, have a heart. The guy’s just trying to make a living,” comes a reedy voice from behind Ratty Boy.
A thin man with an equally thin face and greasy black hair hanging over his ears rounds the chair. He reaches over and takes the cigarettes from the doctor’s pocket and lights one, places it gently into Ratty Boy’s mouth.
“There we go. All better,” he says, smiling. Yellow teeth peek out from between his chapped, nicotine-stained lips.
“Thanks, my man,” says Ratty Boy. “I’d shake your hand but, well, you know.”
The new guy laughs, a wheezy, whistling affair, and claps Ratty Boy on the back. “Man, I like you.” He throws an arm over the shoulder of the doctor. “See, he’s alright. You don’t have to beat on him.”
The doctor shrugs his arm off and steps away. “Fine. You think you can do better, be my guest.” Moving over to a chair by the door, he opens the file again and sits down, stroking his mustache.
The skinny guy pulls over a third chair and turns it around—back facing forward—in front of Ratty Boy. He straddles it, eases himself down, and folds his arms across the top before placing his chin on his forearm. He flashes another mustard smile.
“See, my grumpy friend here thinks you’re a killer, that’s why he’s being so…short with you. But I don’t think you’re a killer, Ronny…mind if I call you Ronny?”
“Call me whatever you want, so long as your grumpy friend stays over there.”
The skinny guy lets out another raspy guffaw. “Alright then Ronny, I’ll try to keep a lid on him, but a lot of that’s gonna depend on you, capiche?”
“Sure, sure. Got it. Whatever you say.”
“That’s good Ronny, that’s real good. So, like I said, I don’t think you’re a killer, I just think you got mixed up in something you didn’t understand. A plain old case of being in over your head. Happens to the best of us. We gotta get this stuff off the street, though, that’s a fact. People are dying. Now, we don’t want to jam you up any more than we already have, so why don’t you tell us who gave it to you, and we can all be on our way. How’s that grab you?”
Ratty Boy takes a few seconds to look the skinny guy over. His skin is pockmarked, shiny, back bent with a distinctive hunch. His fingernails are dirty, and as cracked as the skin of his calloused hands. He has blood-shot eyes that dart quickly when he talks, the breath and tremor of a heavy drinker. Overall, he looks to be the exact opposite of his handsome, overly serious doctor friend. This is the type of guy he could work with, one with the same breeds of monkeys peeking over his shoulder. Look at that laddie boys! A fair wind’s blowin’ in.
Ratty Boy puts on a truth telling face. Straightens it up nice and proper.
“Hey, I got no problem helping you guys out, it’s just…” The doctor snaps the folder closed and starts to get up. The skinny guy holds up a hand to stall him. “It’s just, I don’t really know who the guy is.”
The skinny guy motions for the doctor to sit back down, which he does, with a scowl on his face. His hard eyes shoot daggers at Ratty Boy’s chest.
“Not off to a great start, ya’ dig? What do you mean you don’t know the guy? How could you not know your supplier?”
“It’s kind of a long story.”
“We have all the time in the world. You, however, might not,” says the doctor, cracking his knuckles theatrically.
“Suit yourself,” Ratty Boy says with a shrug just as theatrical. “See, for a good long while I’d been doing business with a guy who lives out on Hog Island, but he got busted back in January, so I had to start moving stuff for King Fischer to make ends meet. You know him? Works out of a bar downtown, King’s Court.”
The skinny guy smiles again. “We’re acquainted. Keep talking.”
“Well, King usually has a courier drop the product outside my apartment. Real hands-off operation. I get a package every week—ludes, Lucy, grass, blow—and I move it, then drop King’s cut in the mail slot out back of the Court. About a month in there’s this little box that comes separate from the usual one, has a note attached. There’s a little vial inside, just like the one you found in my place. Note says: Put on blotter. Half dosage of Lucy. Sell for triple. One per customer. No exceptions. I’d never seen the stuff before. It smelled like six kinds of shit, stank up the whole apartment, but it came with King’s package, so I don’t ask no questions, just did what the note said.
“Man oh man, the stuff sells like gangbusters. I no sooner talked it into the hands of a few of my regulars, when I got complete strangers bangin’ on my door at four in the morning just to see if I’ll sell them some too. I never seen anything like it.
“So, I drop off King’s cut the next week, like normal, and not long after I get home, he calls, gives me a hard time, says to just sell my stuff and keep my end, and to not overpay again. ‘Don’t do me no favors, Jack’ he says. I put two and two together and figure out the old man didn’t send the new stuff, and that’s why he got his panties in a bunch. Then, I got real paranoid, worried about who it was I’d been selling for, and if they’d want the cut I just gave King, but no one came by for it, so I thought maybe it was some kind of mistake and just tried to forget about it.
“But nope, there it was again the next week, with King’s delivery, in the same little black box. Same note too, only this time it also says: Keep the money. Never been one to pass up free money, so that’s what I did. They kept sendin’ it, so I kept sellin’ it.”
“And you didn’t wonder why someone would give up all that dough? Why they’d be so generous?” asks skinny guy.
“You look a lot of gift horses in the mouth? Because I sure don’t. Guys like me gotta take any advantage this old life gives ‘em. So that’s what I did. They wanted it, and I sold it to ‘em.” Ratty Boy spat the second smoke onto the ground. “So beat on me if you want. But that’s all I got to say about it.”
The doctor yanks something from the folder, bolts out of the chair, and advances on Ratty Boy. The skinny guy stops the doctor with a hand to the chest as Ratty Boy flinches. The doctor, face red, reaches over the skinny guy’s arm and holds a picture before Ratty Boy’s face.
“You got nothing else to say, huh. Well, what about this, you worthless piece of trash? You got nothing to say about this?”
Ratty Boy looks at the picture but has some difficulty making out what he’s looking at. The image is black and white, and appears to be, at first, a suicide of some sorts, most likely by shotgun. The body is propped up on a couch, head missing, gore splashed all over the neck and shoulders, the back of the couch, the lap. He leans forward, a sense of familiarity oozing up his back to the base of his skull. It spreads across his scalp. The end table beside the couch, the pictures on it, the carpet, he knows the place alright. He’s seen this body before.
They know, he thinks. Time to play it cooler than the other side of the pillow. Real trouble just showed its face.
“Why would I? Am I supposed to know who that is or something?” The weakness in his voice is definitely not cool.
“I’m gonna kill this asshole, Hunter, I swear to God,” says the doctor, throwing the picture into Ratty Boy’s lap before storming over and throwing himself back into his chair. The skinny guy picks it up.
“You’re gonna wanna stop playing dumb here, my friend. We know you know who this is. We know you’ve seen this before. We did quite a bit of leg work before we got to you, so please, before my friend here loses his mind and murders you, why don’t you do us a favor and start telling us the truth? Okay?”
The truth, one of Ratty Boy’s least favorite things. Such an inelegant concept. It offends him. But there are times when it can be useful. Now was most definitely one of those times.
“Fine, I’m familiar with the person in the picture, okay.”
“See, there you go. That wasn’t so hard, was it? Now, tell us about it.”
Boat’s going down boys! Time to swim to shore! Ratty Boy takes a deep breath, and dives over the rail.
“Alright. End of August I get a phone call at three in the morning. Normally, I’d tell the person on the other end to shove it, but when I pick up there’s crying and screaming on the other end, the kind of crying and screaming you don’t hang up on, not ever. Turns out it’s a regular of mine, girl named Felicia, and she’s telling me I got to come over, that her girlfriend took some of the new stuff and something real bad happened to her. Took me forever to get out of her what kind of bad it was, because every time she tries to tell me she breaks down screaming and crying again, but finally she manages to say that she thinks her girl might of overdosed.
“Now, I was real careful, followed the directions on the note to a tee, mostly because I didn’t want to piss off whoever was sending me the stuff, but also because I didn’t want to fool with no overdoses. Draws too much attention. I tell Felicia to calm down and that I’ll be over as quick as I can.
“When I get there, the place smells like shit and burnt matches, a bad fart kind of smell. Felicia just points to her living room then goes and sits in the kitchen. I walk in there and it’s just like that picture, the girl’s head’s split open like a sliced apple. I almost threw up. Probably the worst thing I ever seen, and I seen a whole lot of bad shit in my day, let me tell you.
“I go ask Felicia what happened. She says her girl—Roxanne was her name—she says Roxanne took two doses of the new stuff about an hour before Felicia called me. I got real hot at that, asked her how the hell she even had two doses since I only sold her one, and she says that Roxanne told her to save them up so that she could take two. Figured if one was as good as heaven, two would be even better. Even better than heaven. Can you believe that?
“Anyway, Felicia said that at first the girl was high like normal. Said she laid back on the couch, staring at the ceiling, but after about ten minutes she starts singing that old song they used to play in those flour ads on the radio, ‘You Are My Sunshine.’ Said she sang it over and over for almost a half hour before she went stock still, rigid is the way she put it, her legs stuck straight out, arms too, right down her sides. Said her eyes got real wide. Felicia checked on her, started shaking her by the shoulders, yelling her name, but she don’t say nothin.’ Finally, Roxanne turns to her and says, ‘It’s everything, Felly. E-very-thing. It’s beautiful.’
“So, Felicia figures she’s fine, just really high, and she relaxes, goes to the kitchen to make herself something to drink, but while she’s in there Roxanne screams bloody murder. So she rushes back to her and the girl has this look on her face like she was seeing about the worst thing you can imagine. Felicia starts shaking her again, and says Roxanne repeats the same thing as before, only this time it sounds like she’s scared out of her mind. ‘It’s everything, Felly! EVERYTHING. It’s HORRIBLE.’
“Apparently, that was when her head started growing.
“She starts making this weird gurgling noise, like something was stuck in her throat, but stopped when her head started plumping up like a biscuit in the oven. When it got about twice as big as it should be, these seams started appearing all down her face, blood trickling out. Felicia just stood there frozen because she couldn’t believe what was happening, thought maybe she was dreamin’ or something, which, I guess I don’t blame her, I’d have thought the same thing. Felicia said Roxanne’s lips were moving, but not touching, then one more time, real quiet-like she says, ‘Eh-ee-ting, Elly,’ and then, boom, all at once, her head just splits into all them pieces.
“That’s when Felicia called me.”
“What did you do after she told you all of this?” asks skinny guy.
“What do you think? I helped her clean up the apartment. We got the drugs and paraphernalia out of there, then I took her to my place. On the way we stopped by a phone booth and I called in an anonymous tip to the cops, told them I heard screaming coming from Felicia’s. When they questioned her later, she said she’d been with me all night at my place, and I backed her up.”
“So that was that then? You killed a girl and then got away with it scot-free. Good for you, I guess,” said the doctor from his chair.
“Look man, I didn’t know what that stuff was gonna do to her. I’d been selling it for months and nothing like that ever happened. How was I supposed to know?”
“You didn’t even bother to check?”
“And how was I supposed to do that? Do I look like I know a lot of chemists, man?”
The doctor gets up again, strides over and pokes Ratty Boy hard in the chest.
“But you kept selling it after that, didn’t you? You saw what happened to that girl, and you still peddled the shit all over town.”
“I…”
“DIDN’T YOU?”
“I didn’t….”
“YES, YOU DID!”
“No…you don’t understand. I mean I didn’t…”
“DON’T GIVE ME THAT. JUST ADMIT IT. ADMIT YOU LET ALL THOSE PEOPLE DIE SO YOU COULD LINE YOUR POCKETS. YOU GREEDY, LITTLE PIECE OF SHIT.”
The sharks are circlin,’ boys. Swim for your life!
“I DIDN’T HAVE A CHOICE, ASSHOLE. OKAY? I…I didn’t have a choice” says Ratty Boy, tears welling in his eyes.
The doctor backs down.
“What do you mean, you didn’t have a choice,” asks skinny guy, softly, placing a hand again on the doctor’s chest.
Ratty Boy wipes his chin on his shoulder.
“You want to know? Fine, I’ll tell you. I doubt it’ll do you any good anyhow.
“I’m not a monster. It’s like you said, I saw with my own eyes what that shit could do to someone, and it was enough. I didn’t want any part of it. I sell dope because I figure the world’s a shitty place, and people need a little bit of forget in their lives to get ’em through. If I can give it to ‘em and make a profit, that’s a big win-win for everyone, far as I’m concerned. I wasn’t gonna sell something that could do what that stuff does to a person. Not a chance. So I did stop sellin’ it. Those boxes came for weeks after that, and I threw every damn one of them in the trash. I swear to God. But then, one morning, I get a knock at my door. There’s a man there, and I know as soon as I see him that he’s the one that’s been leavin’ ‘em.”
“What did he look like?” asks the doctor, leaning in, calm once again.
“He was thin, and tall, at least a foot and half taller than me. He had this long black coat that went down past his shoes, all the way to the floor, and a black hat on his head, round with the brim pulled down over his eyes. His nose was long and thin, and he had a big grin from ear to ear, with way too many teeth. And his skin was dark, almost black. Not black like a Black man’s, though, but black, you know, like coal. Last thing I noticed was his fingers—long like the rest of him, with extra joints and sharp black nails at the ends—wrapped around one of those boxes.
“He held it out to me. His fingers opened up like spider’s legs. Then he raised his head, and looked me right in the eye. That’s when I knew.”
“Knew what?” The doctor again, eyes wide.
“Like the girl said to Felicia. Everything. His eyes were galaxies, full, and deep. Lookin’ into them was like being under the ocean, like I couldn’t breathe. He looked at me, and I looked at him, and we stood there in forever, and it scared the ever livin’ shit out of me. It felt like my body was drying up, like I was bones and dust, and then nothing at all as it ate me, swallowed me whole. It was a promise. He was promising that if I ever stopped selling his stuff, spreading his sickness, that he’d push all that everything into me, and I’d explode, just like that girl.
“But that wouldn’t be it. He was promising me more than just dyin.’ See, I always figured that once you die, it’s over. That there’s nothing. It all just stops, and it’s like before you were born. But looking into his eyes then I knew that what he was promising wasn’t the end. It was always, and I would feel it all. All the good, and all the bad too. All ways. And as good as you might think you could possibly feel, you can’t even imagine how bad it can get. How much suffering can be had when you feel ev-ery-thing, forever.
“Then he was gone. And he didn’t leave his name. The only things he left me with was tears in my eyes, piss in my pants, and the box in my hands, and you can bet I didn’t waste no time gettin’ rid of what was inside. I’m sorry all those people died, I really am, but I saw what was gonna happen to me if I didn’t do what he wanted, and it’s worse than anything you or anyone else could do to me, so yeah, I didn’t have a choice. It was me or them. I chose me.
“That’s all I got for you. And I don’t care if you believe me or not.”
The doctor and the skinny guy look at each other then back to Ratty Boy.
“We believe you,” says the skinny guy, patting him on the shoulder. “You did good, Ronny. You gave us everything we need.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
We did it boys, we made it to shore.
The doctor nods once and goes back to his chair to pick up the folder. “Thank you, Mr. Dancer, for your cooperation, however unwilling it might have been. We’ll contact the authorities to come and set you free once we’re clear.”
“What about the man? What if the boxes keep coming? You gonna do somethin’ about that?”
“We’ll take care of him, don’t you worry. We know exactly who he is, and how to stop him.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely. This kind of thing is our specialty. Goodbye, Mr. Dancer. I do apologize for the inconvenience. Truly. Hunter, shall we?” The doctor opens the door.
The skinny guy hesitates. “Give me a minute, Jonah. I want to give the place a good once over. Kingsport PD might not have your prints, but they damn sure got mine.”
The doctor huffs. “Fine, but be quick. We have a lot more to do.”
“I’ll be quick, alright. Just go, get the car warmed up.”
Without another word, the doctor leaves.
For several minutes the skinny guy silently makes his way around the room with a handkerchief, wiping things down. The guy’s vibe has changed, neck pricklingly so; something about the way he’s moving, how he’s holding himself. It’s enough to make Ratty Boy antsy. Eventually, this antsiness overwhelms him and he feels like he has to say something, if only to break the possibly imagined tension.
“Hey man, I just want you to know that you don’t gotta worry about me, alright? I know you guys are just doing what you got to do. No hard feelings. I ain’t gonna go to the cops or nothin.’ I know you got to cover your bases, but I’m just glad to be walkin’ outta here. I swear I won’t jam you up on this.”
The skinny guy stops in front of him, stuffs the handkerchief into his inside pocket, and pulls something else out.
“I know you won’t,” he says. He is transformed. His eyes are darker. His yellow smile is sinister, animal, and doesn’t come anywhere near his eyes. He’s holding the amber vial between his fingers.
“Lifted this off Jonah when he was screaming at you. Arrogant prick won’t even bother to check to see if he still has it until we’re well clear of here. By then it won’t matter.
“He’s a really smart guy, capable, but he’s also naive, and as I said, really fucking arrogant. He honestly thinks that we can stop this. But I know better.
“Your supplier has gone by many names over the centuries. I think the one that best describes him, my favorite, is ‘The Crawling Chaos.’ Because that’s exactly what he is. And like everything else that crawls in the dark—like us—he knows how to hide, how to move in the shadows.
“He survives.”
The skinny guy gets closer. He straddles Ratty Boy’s legs and places a hand on his head.
Ratty Boy’s mouth goes dry. His tongue feels too big for his mouth. His mind races. He scrambles. “Hey man, what are you doing? I told you I wouldn’t say nothin.’ I said I’d stop dealin’ the stuff. What more do you want?”
The skinny guy pats him on the cheek.
“And I believe you. I really do. But he’ll come back for you when the coast is clear, you can bet on that. Then we’ll be right back where we started. I like to be sure of things.”
In one quick motion he pushes Ratty Boy’s head further back while forcing his right eye open with two fingers.
“No man, please. Please! I won’t say anything. I won’t deal that shit ever again. I WON’T. I SWEAR TO FUCKING GOD, I WON’T!”
The skinny guy dumps the contents of the vial directly into Ratty Boy’s eye.
“I know,” he says, moving back and wiping his hands on his pants. “Later, ‘Ratty Boy.’ It’s a shame really. I think, under different circumstances, we could have been real pals.”
Ratty Boy sees the ceiling open above him. Something crawls out. A black smoky slime that slithers, and drips, works its way down and into his nostrils, into his brain. And as forever fills Ratty Boy’s head, as the waves of all ways wash over his shores and pull him under, the skinny guy gives a tuneless whistle and walks out of the room.
* * *
Erik McHatton’s passion for horror literature began in grade school and can be credited to an early fascination with the “Terrific Triples” horror collections of Helen Hoke. He began writing fiction seriously in 2019, and has since been published several times in print and online publications such as CHM Magazine, Vastarien, Tales to Terrify, and Lovecraftiana. His first fiction collection, “Straw World and Other Echoes from the Void,” will be published in 2025 by Undertaker Books. He currently lives in Kentucky with his beautiful wife and kids, along with dear friends and family; surrounded on all sides.
