The Dungeon of the Dead

THAT NIGHT, A sound woke Nilly up. He pushed himself up and leaned on his elbow. In the darkness he could hear Doctor Proctor snoring from the other cot. But Nilly knew that wasn’t the sound that had woken him up. For a second he wondered if maybe it wasn’t the rumbling from his own stomach, because they hadn’t had anything to eat since those measly fish balls. But he dismissed that thought. Because Nilly had the distinct sense that he and Doctor Proctor were no longer alone in the cell… .

He stared into the darkness.

And all he saw was darkness.

But in the sole strip of light that filtered in through the keyhole, he suddenly saw something. A glimpse of white and fairly sharp teeth. Then they were gone again.

“Hey there!” Nilly yelled, throwing off his wool blanket, jumping off the cot, and running over to the door, where he flipped on the light switch.

Doctor Proctor’s snoring had stopped, and when Nilly turned around, he saw the professor standing on his cot in just his underwear, as white in the face as he was on the rest of his body, and pointing at the animal that was now visible.

“It’s—it’s—it’s a … ,” the professor stammered.

“I see what it is,” Nilly said.

“I—I—I’m scared to death of—of—of … ,” said the professor.

“Of that animal there?” Nilly asked.

The professor nodded, pressing his quaking body against the wall. “Look at the tee-tee-teeth on that beast.”

“Beast?” Nilly said, squatting down in front of the animal. “This is a Rattus norvegicus, Professor. A friendly, little Rattus norvegicus who’s smiling. Sure, it’s mentioned in a footnote in Animals You Wish Didn’t Exist by W. M. Poschi, but that’s just because it spreads the Black Death and other harmless diseases.”

The rat blinked at Nilly with brown rat eyes.

“I can’t help it,” Doctor Proctor said. “Rats give me the shi-shi-shivers. Where did it come from? How did it get in here?”

“Good question,” Nilly said, scratching his head and looking around. “Tell me, Professor, are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

Doctor Proctor stared at Nilly. “I—I—I think so.”

“And what are we thinking?”

“We’re thinking,” said the professor, totally forgetting to be afraid, and hopping down onto the floor and pulling on his professor coat, “that if it’s possible to get into a place, it must be possible to get back out of the same place.”

“Exactly,” Nilly said, holding out a finger that the little rat sniffed out of curiosity. “So I recommend that we pay close attention to our rat friend when he heads home.”