A Rat-King is a grotesque feat of nature. It’s one single entangled mass of rats, joined together by the tails.
Entwined together, they create a giant super-rat. Rats and Rat-Kings are prevalent in folklore all throughout the world- rats, of course are known as beasts of plague and danger, and are almost universally hated.
Though some scientists dismiss the existence of Rat-Kings as folklore and fiction, historical data and specimens in museums point to another conclusion- that they do indeed exist.
It’s thought that rats intentionally tie themselves together to keep warm. Oils, liquids- and even feces help stick their tails further. The only problem is that rats stuck together probably can’t survive long together, and they are forced to either separate- or die.
In Germany, there have been tales of men tying rats’ tails together to earn a quick buck from them- at least, their dead bodies.
“He’s the son of the Rat-King.”
“Who?” I paused, confused. I’d been watching a man fishing off the side of a lake that looked more of a swamp- something about the guy had struck me as odd. I turned and looked at the elderly woman who had approached me.
“The guy you’re watching,” she explained. “We don’t know his name. We just know he comes by occasionally and fishes down there. Never comes up to town.”
I’m a journalist, see, and I’d traveled all the way from Maine to Louisiana to sink my hooks into a story- a local festival the small town of Camelia’s Creek was celebrating. I had a friend who’d grown up there, and I wanted to see them and shed light on the obscure little festival.
“Who’s the Rat-King?” I asked. “I’ve never heard of him.”
“Local murderer,” the woman seethed. “Active back in the day- Carlton Musakh was his name, I believe.”
“Interesting.”
“People started going missing here in the old days,” she continued. “Nobody knew why. They were just gone- gone over to the lake to fish- and suddenly- gone. They went out there,” she gestured to the strange man and the lake, “and then they were gone.”
“So what happened?” I pressed.
“That guy took em’ and killed em’,” she explained. “And we never would have caught him had a passing hiker not have been there- just there by coincidence, seeing Carlton drag a body off down to shed.”
“That’s good,” I commented. “But the Rat-King? Why’d they call him that?”
“Cause of the bodies,” the woman explained. “They found the bodies all tied up together. Gutted and knotted by the intestines- all scrunched up together and all. I heard blood was all over that small cabin of his. The sight of the bodies ties by the intestines reminded some journalist of a Rat-King, and that’s-”
“That’s why he was called the Rat-King,” I concluded.
“Precisely,” the woman nodded. “And I think you should come back to town with me- it isn’t safe to be down here. Local legend says that his son-” again, she pointed at the man fishing down at the lake “-has the same potential as murder as his father.”
She led me up, and I followed. Still, I had questions. More questions unanswered- and in that moment, I decided that the killer and his son- that would be my story. Whatever small-town festival was nothing compared to this.
A murder case that very much disturbed me. Men and women tied by intestines- and later, I’d learn that their stomachs were filled of rats, all entangled together, tied and bound by blood and feces.
“Wait, what does that mean?” I questioned. “Same- potential for murder?”
“We don’t know where he came from,” the woman sighed, still leading me up to the town. “We just know he showed up one day. He was young back then- just a. He didn’t attend school and would only frequent the alleyways. See, that’s where the rats lived.
“Okay?”
“And there he’d do things to the rats- terrible things. Almost a dozen times did we catch him tying their tails together and creating those grotesque demons- Rat-Kings,” the woman- who I’d later learn was named Elenor Green. “And he would set the monsters loose on people and they would hunt em’ down, tear right into our flesh.”
“Creepy,” I murmured. “But Rat-Kings don’t do that. And how? Aren’t the rats here gigantic?”
“Right,” Elenor agreed, nodding. “But somehow the kid still did it. Catching giant rats by the tails and tying them together to create monsters. About two dozen cats had vanished before something got the guts to confront him.”
“Then what?” I was taking notes now, albeit in my head. “Oh- and do you mind if I write about this- I work for a media company.”
“I don’t mind,” Elenor decided, thinking. I thanked her, and she continued her tale of rats and death. “The Sheriff back then- I believe it was Mills- he chased the kid out of town. Threatened him never to come back. And he never came back after that- the disappearances of the cats stopped, and the kid disappeared.”
“So where did he go?” I wondered. “Who took care of him- what did he eat?”
“Nobody knows. They say the rats took care of him. At that point we didn’t know he was Carlton’s son, but eventually old Madison decided to go look for him, about a month after he left.”
“Where was he?”
“The old shed down at the lake.” Elenor looked back at the lake- now just barely visible. The unnerving son of a killer was still there, fishing- and for a second I wondered if he was fishing for fish- or rats. “Madison went down there and came back hours later, a crazed look in his eyes. He couldn’t speak of what he saw down there- just that it was too horrible and devilish and begged for nobody to go down there.”
“I see.”
“But he came back with hair- the boy’s hair, and Sheriff Mill’s went down to the city and had it analyzed- he had suspicions the boy was Carlton’s son- so did we all. And unfortunately, we were right.”
“And nobody wanted to raise the boy right?” I inquired. “Why not?”
“He rejected education, ran away from everyone,” Elenor explained. “He only spoke and lived with the rats- to this day. We haven’t seen him with anyone but those things. I’ll bet he’s still tying those poor things together.”
“Creepy.”
Elenor paused, sighing in and then taking a deep breath. “We also had a kid go missing a few years ago. Just gone. He was going out to play with his friends- they were playing hide and seek or something. He ran to the lake to hide and never came back.”
“They didn’t arrest the man- Carlton’s son?” I asked. “He’s the only one down there.”
“No evidence,” Elenor confessed. “Not much you can do when someone just disappeared.”
“But the shed-”
“Sheriff Mills went into the shed to check it out- came back crazed, and then he spent the last two weeks of his life unable to speak. We couldn’t really do anything- we even tried to contact the higher authorities- but we’re too small of a town to be paid attention to.”
“That’s… not- not fair,” I protested.
She shrugged. “It is what it is. Since then we’ve barred anyone from going down to the lake. We don’t want anyone else going missing. That’s all there is to the story.”
With that, she left me off the side of a small little cafe bustling with activity. I found my friend, and I joined them, asking them how things were. Still, I couldn’t help but think about the son of the Rat-King and the story Elenor Green has bestowed upon me.
Maybe that’s why I decided to head down to the lake a final time, the day before I had to leave back to the newspaper in Kasden City.
I headed down there alone- not even my friend wanted to head down there with me. The man was still there, fishing, mumbling to himself- and his mumbles almost sounded like-like the squeaking of a rat.
I watched from a distance, seeing piles and piles of rats next to him. He really was fishing for rats.
He began to tie them together, slowly, and the massive rats screamed as he did so. Knotting them up and keeping them together, creating massive forms of rats. Of course- I made myself hidden, hiding within bushes and trees.
The man began to walk away now, and slowly, remaining hidden- I followed.
I followed until I saw him in front of a shed beaten and worn down by time- the same shed Elenor had warned me about.
I saw the man open the shed- and for a split second in time- I saw the grotesque forms of the things inside that had driven Madison and Sheriff Mills insane.
An amalgamation of rats- and the remains of a corpse, somehow undecomposed. Flies swarmed around the man as he entered- and the foul amalgamation inside moved as the flies deceased upon it.
With one hand keep the door open and the other hand carrying a tied mass of rats, he smiled, and then threw the rats into the amalgatic corpse pile- and-
The pile of corpses moved.
A mouth- a gaping hole opened and the rats was swallowed into the form. And then what happened next shook me to the core- he turned to look in my direction, smiled further, and mouthed.
“You’re next.”
That’s when I ran. I ran until I could run no longer, halfway between the town and the lake. I threw up right then and there- and then I ran further, back to the town- back to safety.
And that’s it. The end of my story.
I hope by telling the story of the town someone finally pays attention and stops him before more people die- and destroy whatever he was feeding inside the shed. I don’t know what that thing was but I’m glad I didn’t see enough of it to drive me insane.
Be careful if you’re traveling down there in Louisiana. You might just encounter the son of the Rat-King.