Page 34 of A Case of Possession
“What? Why?”
“Rats.”
“Darling, they’ll hardly come in,” said Leonora with amusement, and stared at him as he grabbed her arm. “What on earth are you—” Her gaze flitted beyond him and she gave a squawk. “Oh, how disgusting.”
Crane turned and saw the rats coming out of the wall.
They looked like the usual vermin, grey-brown, matted, pink-clawed, but they were fighting their way out of a crack in the skirting, not with the desperation he’d seen in rats fleeing a fire, but with a mad aggression that brought the wordrabidto mind. The first tumbled through into the room with another rat’s nose butting hard against its bare fleshy tail, and as it found its feet it looked up at the two horrified humans, and opened its mouth in a yellow-toothed hiss.
Crane lunged for a fire iron. “Unlock the door. Now!”
“But it’s just afucking hell!” said Leonora, as the rat grew. It swelled visibly in front of them, eyes bulging black, claws convulsing, huge incisors gnawing the air. Leonora made a high keening sound in her throat as the rat’s muscles bulged and inflated under the scabious skin. She bolted to grab the key from the side table, even as Crane brought the poker down hard on the rat’s deforming, bubbling skull. It hit the floor at the second the key did, slipping out of Leonora’s shaking hands, but that meant nothing, because there were five more of them in the room now, each growing monstrously, terrifyingly fast.
“Open it, Leo!” Crane caught the second rat in the jaws with the poker as it sprang, and brought the iron down on the third rat’s spine as it leapt past him towards Leonora, but that wasn’t enough or anything like it to stem the relentless tide. There were more of the things pouring into the room, lunging towards Leo, two on her now, teeth and claws ripping and scrabbling at her dress as she struggled with the key in the lock. Crane slammed the poker down on a monster’s head until he felt bone give, grabbed another rat two-handed and hauled it off the heap of squirming animals, flinging it away. It rebounded off a table, which crashed to the floor taking a bowl of flowers with it, and leapt straight back at Leonora.
Stephen, Stephen, where are you when I need you?
Leonora was screaming, blood blooming through her muslin dress, as she wrenched the door open. A rat landed on her back. She shrieked with agony, fighting her way forward, and Crane waded into the stinking furry mass and pushed at the door, almost closing it on her as she crawled out. He pinned another of the monstrous creatures against the doorframe with his foot to stop it following Leo and, as she disappeared through the gap, slammed the door on it repeatedly till the foul thing went limp.
His back to the door, he was confronted with fifteen or so dog-sized rats. They looked at him with bulging, mad eyes, unmoving, and Crane stared at them with a strange fatalistic calm, which turned to absolute astonishment as they all simultaneously turned and rushed back to their tiny hole of entry in the skirting board, shrinking as fast as they had grown.
It took him half a second to register that he wasn’t going to be torn to pieces, and then he realised there was a terrible noise on the other side of the door.
Crane jerked it open to reveal Leonora’s two cousins, her aunt and three servants, all shrieking with useless fear. Leonora was on the floor, desperately struggling with the rat on top of her, trying to force its yellow incisors back as it lunged at her neck. He grabbed the thing by tail and haunches, pulled it off her bodily and, for want of a weapon, swung it brutally down against the floor with his full strength, again and again, till something inside it broke.
He dropped the carcass. His ears were ringing. Or no: everyone was screaming.
Leonora was bleeding freely from neck, shoulders and arms, her dress and flesh torn, making a dreadful sucking noise in her throat. Crane knelt by her. “Leo? Leo, talk to me!”
Her eyes were wide and blind with panic, and she grabbed for him with bloody hands, her grip tightening convulsively as a terrible shudder ran through her body.
“Someone should send for Dr. Grace,” quavered Leonora’s aunt inadequately, as the stunned group of onlookers clutched each other and made horrified noises.
“I’ll take her to a doctor.” Crane scooped her up. “Get everyone out of the house. Now.” He didn’t hear footsteps as he ran down the hall, so he yelled over his shoulder, “There may be more rats!” and heard the panicked cries as he wrenched the front door open and tumbled out into the street.
There was a hansom just a few yards away. He shouted at the jarvey. The man looked round, his eyes widened at the sight of the torn and bleeding woman, and he raised his whip to urge the horse on, but a flurry of magpies rose from the railings and took off past him, chattering wildly, their wings skimming his face as they swooped by. The jarvey recoiled in alarm, and by the time the six birds had disappeared, Crane had the carriage door open and was hauling Leo in.
It still cost him valuable seconds of argument and a ludicrous ten pounds to make the jarvey take them to Devonshire Street. The man at least whipped on his horse with alacrity, but even so the ten-minute journey seemed longer than the nights Crane had once spent in a condemned cell waiting for execution. Leonora lay still at first, but as the cab passed up through Piccadilly she began to twitch violently, and she was thrashing around so hard he could barely hold her when the cab jolted to a halt.
“Dr. Gold’s surgery,” said the cabman, yanking open the door. “And—oh my Gawd.”
Crane looked down at Leo in the daylight and swore with spectacular foulness. Her face was, unmistakeably, hideously, swelling, like a bladder inflating under her skin. Her lips were drawn back over teeth that looked very large and very yellow.
Crane dragged her out of the cab, the jarvey’s obscenities ringing in his ears, and stumbled up the steps to the door, where, for want of a free hand, he kicked the door violently until an affronted-looking nurse opened it.
“Dr. Gold,” he gasped, but she was already calling urgently, “Doctor!”
A dark, curly-haired man stuck his head out into the hall. “What’s the pr— Great Scott! Bring her in here. Quick, man, on the couch.”
Crane put his bloody, convulsing burden on the consulting room couch. Dr. Gold told the nurse, “Hot water, now,” grabbing for cloths to stanch the bleeding. “What happened to her?”
“Rats. Giant rats. The ones your wife—”
“Hold her.” Dr. Gold stepped away from Leonora, took two steps to the door and bellowed, “Esther?Esther!” He hurried back to the couch as the nurse brought hot water in, and shooed her away. “Right, you know about my wife’s job? Fine, makes life easier.” He spread his hands over Leonora, and Crane saw his eyes darken as his pupils expanded. “What’s your name? Hers?”
“Crane. She’s Leonora Hart.”
“How long ago did this happen?”
