Something Worth Knowing
Written By: Nathaniel Macias
The dust rose in the lamplight with every pluck of the sunburst guitar. My fingers knew the strings well enough that they seemed to play themselves, singing notes to the ghosts in my bedroom while the television flickered through a slideshow of missing faces—each one with ideas, a life, and secrets I could only ponder. In disappearance, their stories would be something worth knowing.
As the sky began to darken outside my window, bleeding into the long, empty access road that tethered me to the rest of the world, I made my way to Rick’s.
Rick answered the door with his gray hair forced beneath a backward snapback and a football jersey three sizes too young. I stepped inside, and the painting stopped me.
The portrait depicted a meadow, picturesque in the way of postcards, except the colors had been pulled a few shades darker than they ought to have been. Mangy rats gnawed at what little remained of someone lying in the grass.
“I painted that,” Rick chuckled.
“We had rats in the barn when I was a kid,” I said, still staring at the darkened feast between the brushstrokes. “Trapped and sold them. The college in town always wanted more for its experiments.”
A loud, high-pitched buzzing split the room. A pretty and unhappy face interrupted the football game that had been playing, flashing across the screen while an announcer’s voice cut in.
Twenty-one years old. Iris Holloway. Last seen falling through a stage trapdoor in East Los Angeles while the audience applauded what they believed was part of the performance. She had been wearing a silver sequined costume. Police were searching subbasements and utility tunnels. Foul play had not yet been ruled out.
“I play a little guitar,” I said after an uncomfortable pause.
“How’s that coming?”
“Just a hobby at this point.”
He patted me on the back as if a hobby itself were an achievement.
“Bathroom,” was all he said before disappearing down the hall.
I was left alone with that damn shuffling that had begun to grow louder during the broadcast.
I waited for the sound of a flush, the creak of Rick’s heavy steps on wood—even his breathing should have been audible from where I sat.
The shuffling continued.
I turned toward it and saw a crawlspace door beneath the painting, its frame painted the same color as the wall, as though the house itself had forgotten it was there.
Rick now occupied a small corner of the meadow I hadn’t noticed before on his portrait. Jersey and cap, he stood watching the rats with a terror-stricken posture, his figure painted several shades darker than I remembered him.
After another minute of trying to make sense of Rick's “art,” I opened the crawlspace door.
My pocket light caught roaches scattering and candy wrappers strewn across the wood. Some were so old that their logos had been drawn by hand on wax paper; others were printed on plastic and looked as though they had been dropped there yesterday.
I held my breath and crawled forward, sweeping roaches and avoiding oily droppings on the slats as I went. I'd asked him about pests before moving in.
“If there’s room for walls,” Rick had told me, as though reciting some philosophical prophecy, “then there’s room for rats.”
I crawled toward what should have been the outside wall of Rick’s house. But when I pushed through, I landed in the dust of my own bedroom.
My own home, fifty yards away from Rick’s place.
All the furniture I had stored there had been carefully arranged—just not in the way I remembered leaving it.
The floor, the walls, my belongings, everything—seemed to be colored a few shades darker than it ought to have been.
The television was once again playing missing faces on a loop, their voices muffled through the speakers, a litany of names and dates that seemed to grow more distorted the longer I listened.
I heard a squelching sound as I neared the window. When I squinted through the glass, I saw nothing but trees and shrubs silhouetted by the moonlight—beautiful, still, waiting.
Then the first set of motion lights flicked on, revealing several hunched shapes pacing at the edge of the beam.
It was the sound of them swallowing in wet, jerky gulps.
A second set of lights clicked on, revealing them fully.
Man-sized and mangy, the rats snapped their heads toward the house. Patches of their fur had sloughed away, exposing bare pink skin beneath.
They were gnawing on what remained of people.
A strip of silver sequins flashed beneath one of the bodies. Near another lay a tattered snapback, discarded and pressed into the mud.
The rats began to chitter as they moved toward the window.
I backed away, avoiding every creak as I crossed the room to the vent through which I had entered.
The passage had been sealed with fresh boards from the other side.
I leaned against the wooded barrier as the chitters and squelches grew louder.
At least now, my story would be something worth knowing.
Nathaniel Macias is a student from El Paso, Texas, working toward a career in applied behavioral science and currently listening to “You Always Hurt the One You Love” by Clarence "Frogman" Henry.