SAZHAAK

SAZHAAK
by J. Herrera Kamin

At night the rats scurry under the floorboards, above the rafters and behind the peeling plaster. Little claws click-click-clicking against our skulls. I can see them. Knots of darkness clothed in mangy fur. Black marble eyes. They gather in the moldy nooks and crevices of our centuries-old house. They watch us through the cracks in the walls.

They’ve lived in this house for longer than humans have. They know everything that’s happened under this roof. That’s what they tell me, at least.

I asked Miles about them once.

“What rats?” Miles said.

He won’t admit he sees them too.

He turns fifteen this year. My son is a strange one, skinny and flighty. I’ve seen him without his shirt on lately, the grey skin of his chest all sickly, his ribs poking up through. When he’s not at school, he spends his days shut up in his bedroom. Sometimes he leaves the door ajar, but whenever he sees me coming down the hall he pulls it shut and locks it.

He only comes out when he has to leave for school in the morning. “Gotta go!” he gasps as he rushes out the door.

The front door slams. I’m alone in the house again.

Miles is a good boy. He’ll turn out all right. And it’s not a terrible life we’ve got, in this big old house. Maybe the place is a bit too big, and a bit too old. But it’s a house with a roof, and most evenings there’s food in the fridge.

Miles hasn’t been eating well, though. I’m starting to see it. Big black circles under his eyes. Clothes hanging loose from bony limbs. He moves slowly, much slower than a boy of fifteen should.

I knock on his bedroom door, ask him why he’s not eating the stew I’ve prepared. It’s the last of the food bought with this month’s cheque.

“I know it’s no feast, sweetie, but you need to eat.”

Miles opens the door wide enough to peer out. I hold up the steaming pot so he can see it. He frowns at the sludge of old beef, half-cooked chunks of potato and scabby onions. His thick red hair falls in front of his black eyes.

“Don’t worry about me,” he murmurs through the narrow gap in the door. “I mean, I’m not hungry. I—I got a new job. At a restaurant near school, just—just picking up a few shifts after school. They feed me there, so I’m not hungry.”

“Please eat, Miles,” I growl. “Why don’t you trust me?”

Miles looks at me like he’s looking through me, like he’s trying to will me into nonexistence.

“Because,” he murmurs. “You come knocking, in the dark.”

Then he ducks out of sight. The slam of the bedroom door, the familiar click of the lock. It’s the click that does it. The world starts to slip again. The feeling is unmistakeable. So I turn around, and make my way back down the hallway to the living room.

In the living room I find a couch which is as big as a continent. Sometimes it’s there and sometimes it’s not, but now it’s here, so I fall headfirst into it.

But it’s already gone, all of it—the couch, the living room, the house itself. All gone. The daze sets in. I’m treated to a kaleidoscope sky filled with spiralling clouds, birds wheeling through the infinite heights, children laughing distantly. No flesh to hold me prisoner. No bones to pin down my soul.

But then it fades and I find myself seeping bit by painful bit back into my meaty suit, and the children’s laughter becomes a low, throaty giggle in my ears. I realize I’m pounding on my son’s bedroom door, I’m muttering things to myself over and over. Miles’ muffled voice jars me from the reverie—

“MOM! PLEASE!”

 Is he crying?

“Please, please stop! Please go back to bed! You’re doing it again! Please!”

I fall back. Press a hand to my temple—my knuckles are bloody from the knocking, blood smeared on my son’s bedroom door.

Behind the walls, beneath the floorboards, above the rafters, the rats flock with their clicking claws and vengeful squeaks. I turn and fumble through the dark, shouting at them all to be quiet for once, to leave me and my son alone.

The rats don’t listen.

I crawl back to my bedroom, but the rats won’t leave me alone. They come to fetch me from my bed. In the midnight gloom the walls of the house ripple like curtains, the floorboards open and the rats emerge, a whole hoard of them scampering and scuttling around under my skin, through my veins, along the ridges and valleys of my bones, pulling me apart, dragging me shred by shred down into the darkness under the house.

There’s a vast echoing cavern down here, and it’s teemingwith rats. Not hundreds or thousands but hundreds of thousands of rats scampering in and out of the gloom. They’re congregating around something, a snarl of shadow in the depths of the cave.

I squint. The shadow turns to me: a hulking stone rat as big as a wolf. It’s got white-hot embers for eyes.

“Who are you?” I demand.

The answer comes from all directions: “Sazhaak.” The rats cackle their hissing cackles. “Sazhaak.”

They bring offerings to the giant stone rat. Scraps of bread and rotting meat, bits of hair and fabric. Sazhaak fixes his searing gaze onto me—and I wake to the sound of the front door slamming.

Sunlight blasts through the living room windows. I’m lying on the couch which is as big as a continent.

I’m alone once again.

+++

For several days I’m not even sure that Miles is home. He refuses to speak to me, hides behind his locked bedroom door. I go outside and circle the house, try to sneak a look in through his bedroom window. But he’s pulled the blinds shut.

I miss him more than I can bear. My only son. I love him. Have I told him so recently? He needs to know. “I love you!” I shout, pounding on the bedroom door. “I love you, Miles!”

There are still dried brown stains on the door, from my knocking the other night.

Miles.

I sit in my bedroom with the door locked and the windows closed, against the wall with my knees pulled to my chest, rocking back and forth, over and over.

“Miles… Miles… Miles…”

Then I remember: the boy’s starving. He needs to be fed. If I don’t feed him, who will?

I check the mailbox for the envelope that arrives every month, on the first day of the month, like clockwork. It hasn’t come yet.

It must be a new month by now.

I wander down the street, knocking on all the doors as I go. The only person who answers is a woman named Leanna, who lives at the end of the block. Leanna is new to the neighbourhood—moved in last week, apparently. She invites me inside her house, offers me tea. I explain to her that I need something to feed my son.

She gives me a small bag of flour, a smaller bag of sugar, some milk, a stick of butter, some potatoes and carrots. And sends me on my way.

I spend the afternoon making the dough, kneading it into a pie shell. I picture Miles returning home, his beady eyes lighting up as the aroma of baking pastries washes over him.

But there’s no meat.

I take the butcher’s knife from where it hangs above the stove. For a moment I ponder chopping my arm off, grinding it up in the meat grinder. “What kind of pie is this?” Miles will ask. “Mommy Pie,” I’ll say.

Click-click-click. Tiny claws clicking on floorboards.

Kitchen knife still in hand, I follow the sounds into the next room. I spot the grungy little thing, matted grey fur, cold black eyes perched on the dining room table, raised up on its haunches. Glaring.

“Sazhaak,” it hisses.

“GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!” I scream. The butcher’s knife swings on its own, cleaving into the clump of fur and bones before it can get away. Specks of rat blood spatter onto my face, and the creature’s severed hindquarters land on the dining room table, its tail twitching like a worm.

“Perfect,” I murmur.

+++

I’m only half-finished the pie by the time Miles gets back from school, or from work—wherever it is he goes to these days. I surprise him in the lobby, leaping out of the closet and grabbing his wrist tight with both hands before he even realizes what’s happening.

“Don’t go to your room yet!” I shriek. “Not just yet! Come!”

Clutching my son’s wrist with both hands, I lead him down the hall into the kitchen to show him my handiwork. Six mangled rat corpses rest at the bottom of the pie dish, flies buzzing around them. “Don’t worry about the smell,” I reassure him. “Once it’s baked right it’ll be delicious.”

But Miles’ face is drawn, his eyes wide. He’s so much skinnier than he was before. His skin’s almost grey in places, yellow in others. I seem to remember his hair being thick and ginger, but now it’s black, streaked with grey and white. The circles around his eyes are a deep shade of purple, his eyes tiny and beadier than ever. They’ve got no irises or pupils, they’re just little black marbles embedded in his skull.

“Mom?” he squeaks, his voice almost a whimper.

“Yes, sweetie?”

“Mom?” he echoes. “Are you still in there? Anywhere?”

He bows his head, then scurries out of the room without another word.

A door slams. I can’t be sure if it’s his bedroom or the front door.

Miles.

Tears stream down my cheeks as I dice the carrots and potatoes, throw them into the pie dish with the mangled rats. I toss the whole thing in the oven. “Dinner in an hour!” I wail as I sink to my knees, my body shaking with sobs.

+++

Sazhaak is furious. He screams at me all night, his eyes glowing vengefully. I wake in a cold sweat, my pyjamas clinging to my bones, and beneath the floorboards and above the rafters and behind my thinning forehead they swarm. The clicking squeaking rustling din reaches an unbearable crescendo.

“SHUT UP! SHUTUP! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WILL YOU JUST SHUT UP!”

Next thing I know I’m turning on all the lights, grabbing the butcher’s knife from where I left it in the kitchen. I run through the house, swinging the blade ferociously, hacking at the walls, stabbing at the floorboards.

I’m drenched in sweat. Gasping for breath. But I can still hear them! Squealing in terror. Chattering, crying out in their puny voices. And when they emerge—that’s when I get them. Sinuous wiry bodies darting out of the holes in the walls, zipping and zigzagging across the floor, until the gleaming butcher’s knife falls like the wrath of a war god, splitting them in half, spilling blood and guts.

Sazhaak stares me down the whole time, his gaze branded onto the undersides of my eyelids.

“I’m not afraid of you!” I roar.

The floor’s slippery with blood and guts, the walls caked in spattered red. I hack the lock off Miles’ bedroom door and burst into the room. But he’s not there.

In his place is a large, plump rat, sitting on his bed. It’s bigger than any rat I’ve ever seen in my life. Bigger than I believed a rat could ever get. It’s the size of a house cat, a small dog. And the wretched rodent stares up at me, its black eyes so wide with terror I can see their white edges.

“Sazhaak,” I growl. “You’re mine.”

The rat’s matted fur bristles. “Don’t!” it shrieks, in a voice it must have stolen from Miles. But it’s too late: I swing the meat cleaver into its neck. The thing called Sazhaak gurgles its last horrified breath and bleeds out all over my son’s bedsheets.

+++

I pay a visit to Leanna at the end of the block again. I pound on the door with the dull end of the butcher’s knife. “I just need a bit more flour!” I shout into the unresponsive wood. “I’m making more pies!”

Leanna won’t answer the door. I knock again and again. Nothing.

I return home and set about gathering the rat corpses, tossing them into the kitchen sink. There isn’t enough room for all of them. Soon they spill over onto the floor. My ears ring with the ceaseless drone of flies. But for once the skittering and scuttling behind the walls and under the floorboards is gone.

They’re gone. At long, long last, the rats are silent.

Miles?

There’s a knock on the front door. “Miles!” I exclaim.

Opening the door, I find myself face-to-face with several men I’ve never seen before. They don’t ask for permission to enter. One of them shows me a metal badge.

I’m shoved against the wall, my hands pinned behind my back, cold cuffs clamped around my wrists.

“Where’s your son, ma’am?”

I tell them I don’t know, but I’ve prepared his lunch for school. It’s in the kitchen. “He’s not gonna starve, at least!” I reassure them. “Don’t let them say I let him starve!”

One of the men goes to investigate the kitchen. The other two leave me cuffed to the banister as they inspect the rest of the house. Soon the screams fill the house.

 Behind the walls, beneath the floorboards, the rats seethe. They crouch in the gloom. They bear witness as I saw with the chain of my handcuffs at the semi-rotten bannister. “Sazhaak,” they hiss as the withered wood splits.

I wheel around just in time to see three of the men sprinting toward me. One of them raises a hand—points something at me—something slams through my chest, and then there’s just pain, white-hot pain and a howling wind in my ears as I fall back against the wall…

But there’s no wall. It’s all just kaleidoscope skies and spiralling clouds. Children’s laughter echoing in the distance.

I listen for Miles’ laugh among them. It’s not there.

I can’t see the men anymore, but I can hear them nearby, talking in hushed voices. I beg them to take care of my son. He’ll be home from school any minute.

“He’s a good boy,” I tell them. “He won’t be any trouble. Just make sure he’s fed. He isn’t eating enough. He’s too skinny. You’ll take good care of him, won’t you? Won’t you?”

Fiction © Copyright J. Herrera Kamin
Image by D. Strohl

J. Herrera Kamin is a writer from Vancouver, Canada, specializing in speculative fiction. His work has appeared online and in print, most recently in Scare Street’s Night Terrors anthologies, Red Cape Publishing’s D is for Demons, and Midnight Street Press’s Hellfire Crossroads #7

Twitter: @jHerreraKamin