Sons of Death

Chapter 2: The Boy and the Rat

Chapter 2

~ The Boy and the Rat ~

Meriwether untied his shoe and let it fall to the ground beside him. He took his foot in his hands, kneading his frozen flesh and bleeding toes. It looked like he was going to go barefoot from now on. He should have purchased a new pair months ago, when the rubber along the bottom of the left shoe disappeared in a slick of mud. The winter in which had lost everything had warmed into a mild spring, then a muggy summer. That summer had drained all the money from his pockets. Now, as the summer chilled into a cold fall, he was left with a lopsided pair of boots. To make matters worse, a growth spurt was beginning to tighten the shoes.

"Ow, that hurts," Meriwether moaned.

Reaching into his coat, which had also begun to tighten, Meriwether thumbed the couple of coins he had managed to accumulate. It was difficult to find work around here. He had possessed the smarts to leave Cottonsmouth and skirt the forest for a couple of days until he reached Eerie. Those first couple of days had been rough. He didn't eat anything; that was for sure. A couple of times he attempted to stone a squirrel for a meager roast, but they were proved to be too quick.

To make matters worse, the cold nearly froze him to the point of immobility. He scrounged together whatever sticks lay at the edge of the forest, which proved to be few, to build a fire each night. Better wood rested farther inside the forest, but he couldn't fathom venturing in there.

Meriwether put his foot down and moved to rub his fingers together. Something tickled his foot, startling him. Yelping, he drew his legs into the air and stared wide-eyed at the ground. The stump of a rat's tail could be seen disappearing into a pile of leaves. Cursing, Meriwether calmed himself and settled back on the log he'd found.

That strange rat, the one with the severed bloody tail, had followed him from his house. When he first encountered the vermin, he speculated it was simply another rat with half a tail. The fact it continued to appear time and time again, scuttling over his boots and sitting beneath him as he swallowed up a moldy bread roll, convinced him it was the same one. There was also the way it gazed at him with those eerie eyes, as if it had something to say. He was still contemplating, however, whether this was the same rat he'd seen dead on the sidewalk that fateful day. That was a thought.

Meriwether stared up at the sky. The light had almost faded, only slight traces of blue remained at the edges of dark clouds. It was almost time for him to emerge into the world. When he first arrived in Erie, Meriwether had not worried any about being seen. Until the newspaper he snagged from the gutter one day included a small column on the murder of a Mrs. Abby Soros, as well as a picture of himself with the word "MISSING" beneath it.

He cut his hair after burning the newspaper in a nearby oil lamp and made a good effort to stay low from then on. In his desire to keep hidden, Meriwether also decided it was best to move only during the night. This limited his options for employment to a tavern attendant or a watchman. Being too scrawny for a watchman, Meriwether was forced to take a job at the tavern.

Sighing deeply, Meriwether stood up from his log. He whistled a quick tune, then whispered a quiet "Dorian" towards the leaves nearby. The rat-affectionately named after his favorite literary character- poked its ugly head out from the underbrush. It chewed a dead roach between its yellow teeth, bits and pieces of the insect's exoskeleton clinging to its whiskers. Meriwether grimaced, feeling his stomach turn, and headed off towards the road at his left. Dorian followed after him. Meriwether could hear his little feet crunching over the leaves behind him, a tiny echo of his own footfalls.