The wheels of the train were churning like race horses when they slipped off the track

and ran askew.

The first car, flecked with fading green paint, tipped over on to a woman building a snowman with her
two children, who were dressed in matching winter coats and mittens. She slid a few inches until she ran
into a pine tree whose boughs looked like they were burdened with powdered sugar.

Paxon's disappointment at the scene was evident in the way his lips bowed, the corners sinking
downward. He picked up the girl and righted her, checking to see if she'd suffered any damage. Hand-
crafted, she'd been a Christmas gift that his father had sent through Fed Ex. When Paxon was satisfied
she still looked brand new, he unhooked the train car that'd wrecked the scene and flipped it over. One
wheel had bent at the axis. When he tried fixing it there was a sharp crack. The wheel swung once and
hung halfway off.

"Shit," he said, and let the car roll from his hand on to the green felt-lined table.

"Hey, I heard that," His mother, Kiran, said from beyond the partition that separated them. "Do you
want to get sent to your room?"

Coming around the half-wall, Paxon leaned an arm on it and watched as his mother folded clothes fresh
from the dryer. They were gingerly placed into a basket as if any more than a delicate touch would rip
them.

"My train broke," he said, looking down at the ground. "I'm sorry."

She glanced over.

"Well, alright, but watch your language from now on. I don't like when you use those words."

"I know."

With one more shirt flopping down into the basket, she picked it up and tucked it under one arm.
Watching as her son kicked at the basement floor, her thin, pale lips broke into a smile.

"I bet you're hungry. How about we go upstairs and I make you some grilled-"

From behind her there was a loud popping noise. There came, like a rising operatic note, a shriek that
entangled with it. His mother almost dropped her basket when she whirled around to see a light gray
body squirming in a wooden trap that had been set near a crack in the basement wall. It kept crying out,
each noise getting softer, its tail lashing.

Without a second thought, Paxon launched himself from the partition and crouched over it.

"Paxon!" Slamming down the laundry basket, she marched over and grabbed him by the hand he'd been
reaching out with. "You better not have touched it."

It took a few seconds, but when Paxon turned back around his face was streaked with the glistening
trails of tears. He shuffled back in his mother's grip, and in his other hand he cradled the trap, a limp
body flopping from it. The rat's neck was twisted at a grotesque angle, its eyes bulging from their
sockets.

Kiran slapped him hard enough across the face from him to yelp in pain and drop the trap.
"Go to your room. Now! I'm calling the exterminator again. I swear this is the third time in a year."

"No, mom, no-"

"If you don't go to your room right now," his mother said, releasing him gently, opposing her tone, "I'm
going to take your Playstation and your trains away for a month."

With a forlorn look towards the barbarous trap and its innocent victim, Paxon turned away and ran up
the steep basement steps, wiping his eyes as more tears welled up and spilled over.

Later that night, with the moonlight cutting slits into his action figures, and Legos, and television set,
Paxon crept out of bed. His mother's door was partially ajar, her snoring drifting into the hallway. The
wooden floor beneath Paxon's sneakered feet creaked in protest as its elderly back was tread upon. He
hoped her snoring dampened the sounds as he wound around the curvature of the staircase to the door
set near the kitchen. He had to climb up on the counter and retrieve the key from the top of the fridge
to open it, and was almost sold out by his terrier, Shags, as claws clicked on the kitchen floor and a high
pitched whining sounded like an alarm in the silence. Black, scruffy-furred paws tinged gray with age
reached for him, then came down scrabbling at the wooden cabinets. The dog treats were also on top of
the fridge, so Paxon grabbed the box and tossed a handful down. He winced as they clattered like bones,
which befitted their shape.

His breath stilled in his chest as he waited for a noise from upstairs, but none came.

The basement door had been locked since his mother had realized he'd been sneaking down there in the
middle of the night. She'd found out when Shags had been sitting at the top step whining to come down,
her legs no longer able to handle the steep staircase with her age. Kiran had been exasperated that first
time, thinking he'd just wanted to go down and play with the toys stoked in the rec room. But the
second time she'd been furious when she realized he was leaving food out for the rat that lived in the
wall. She'd dragged him up and to his room, muttering how the exterminator owed her money back for
an inadequate job.

Now he had learned to carry Shags down and lock the door behind them. In his free hand, he held a box
of cheese crackers. He let Shags go and gave him a chew toy, then went and crouched by the shadowed
corners of the basement, scattering crackers around the floor.

And waited.

He didn't know how long it was before he heard the first scratch of claws against concrete. But the
twitching nose appeared from a crack that was almost like a chasm before a skinny brown and white
body slithered the rest of the way out and did the rodent version of a gallop as it approached the food.
Grabbing one of the treats up in its forepaws, it sat up and nibbled, staring at Paxon as if they were
having a conversation.

In a way, they were. The boy could feel its appreciation and exuberance as he could his own emotions;
and he could feel it wanted to share such emotions with him as if he were a rat himself. He held out his
hand slowly, the rodent still nibbling as he stood unflinching. It scrubbed his delicate paws over its
muzzle and nose when it did, then grabbed up another snack. This time, though, it approached Paxon's
hand with hesitant steps. Every so often it would lift its snout toward him, whiskers twitching, eyes
meeting his. Then it closed the gap and took up roost on his palm, settling the cracker there before
sitting up again.

An offering.

Paxon stood, making care that the rat stay firmly rooted in his palm, and drew said palm close to his
chest. The rat tilted its head toward him in a way that was all too human. This had happened too often.
The first time, he thought he'd been sleepwalking and dreaming. But by the second and third time he'd
become both unnerved and curious, knowing he had a connection to the creatures straight out of one of
his superhero comics.

"If only you could talk," he said aloud, shivering at the way his voice echoed against the silent walls. If
not for the rats, the crooks and crannies and old, crumbling concrete of the basement would've invoked
deep set fear in him. It was too dark and humid, its corners like pathways into the unknown.

Something twitched in one of them, a shape that was a lighter patch of black in the darkness. Those
patches seemed to edge themselves along the floor, creeping past the dark, making the shadows grow.
Paxon saw the blackness lash like a whip and new it was the tail of a rat before the form took the shape
of one. As if it were embedded in tar, the shadows clung to a body as black as pitch. Opaque, white orbs
emerged, their glowing stare eerie as they settled on Paxon.

Talk...with us, it hissed out, its voice like smoke flowing through a grater. Talk. You will...save us.

The rat in Paxon's hand let out a squeal so loud the boy shuddered. Then it launched itself down, claws
grabbing secure holds on Paxon's pajamas as it met the floor and squirmed back into its dwelling.

Tell the woman.

More shadows were congealing, heads emerging like Siamese twins being surgically split apart, bodies
following. A dozen white orbs were staring at him. His body was quaking as if someone had put him on
one of those carnival rides where gravity decreased, his feet peddling back.

Tell...do not get rid of...us. Stop. Stop...her. We must live. Survive. We...survive

Paxon's screech was enough to wake his mother as he stumbled up the basement stairs. Shags' barks
were shrill and concerned as she followed him.

Kiran met Paxon at the top of the second floor staircase, her eyes gummed with sleep, bags puffy
beneath them as they made the skin there look sallow.

"You were in the basement?" Her tone was outraged.

Paxon still hadn't stopped shaking, and he grabbed hold of her, letting out great sobs.

"There's something down there," he gasped out. "They came- they were like ghosts. They said-"

She pried him off of her and held him at arm's length.

"You're too old to believe in this stuff. What's wrong with you?"

"I saw and heard them. I wasn't dreaming."

"Paxon." Kiran crouched and looked into his red-rimmed eyes. "I'm getting tired of this. You've been
sneaking in the basement to feed our vermin problem for months. The more you feed them, the more
they stay. And they'll have babies. Do you know that? And now you're telling me there are ghosts down
there."

"Not ghosts!" Paxon balled his hands into fists and gave his mother a hard look. "They were like ghosts.
They spoke to me out loud. They told me not to let you kill them. They were real."

"You've just pushed me too far, Pax. I'm sorry." She straightened and laid a hand on his shoulder,
squeezing tight. A little too tight, as Paxon whimpered. "I want you to talk to someone. We'll find a good
doctor. I know it was hard when your father walked out and didn't come back. It was hard for me, too. I
talk to someone as well."

The boy just kept shaking his head, his tongue stuck to the bottom of his mouth as he tried to protest.
But his chest felt tight and his throat constricted.

"I want your game system and then I want you to go to bed. I'll call you in sick to school and we can deal
with this better in the morning."

As it turned out, morning was no better.

Xxxx

They never stayed with one doctor more than a session or two. Paxon was pin-balled from one listing in
the phonebook to the next, Kiran always searching, always circling names, always calling. Gunther kept a
wide berth, the conversations between him and Kiran over the phone brief, the visits awkward and
strained like grainy meat through a rusted, vintage grinder. Within months Paxon started to dread and
resent his father's visit, the silence that dragged on and on as if they were trapped in a room with no
doors or windows sharpening his resentment. Missing the presence of his father became something
tidily folded, tucked away in a mental draw to fade so abruptly it was a shock to open said draw and find
it nestled there.

He wasn't allowed in the basement by himself anymore, padlocks with clockwork tumblers barring him,
keys hidden somewhere in the sanctum of his mother's room, where he couldn't trespass. His trains
became neglected, even when the padlocks snapped and clicked from the twisting teeth of said keys.
Like his father, the basement and his trains became a wavering apparition in his mind over time.

Still, not of it stopped the rats. They clawed and scratched their way through the walls. Even though
Paxon hadn't been able to ward off the exterminator, he hadn't been relied on Paxon's connection with
the creatures, the warnings and commands he could give them with the psychic links they shared. They
always listened. Always. They couldn't disobey him, couldn't ignore his words or thoughts.

And they came from his closet, huddled in the darkness of the holes they'd chewed and burrowed in,
watching over him when he slept like guard dogs. They expected nothing in return, asking not for food
or water or even attention.

But then there were the ghost rats. The Rodentia, they called themselves. Where the other rats couldn't
speak directly to him, could only communicate in body language and squeaking and the occasional clack
and whistle, the ghost rats spoke. They were made of darkness; they were made of the overspill that
bled from fear and nightmares, like the extract of both made tangible.

And they came to him, as if he were some magnetic pulse that they could cling to and swathed in their
thick, black-furred bodies and tails made of plumes of smoke that reminded him of the cigarettes his
mother occasionally smoked- he hated that, wanted to crush the packs she left on the counter or coffee
tables. Sometimes those packs were found torn and chewed, the brown tidbits of tobacco trailing like
puny footprints along the carpet and floor. His mother never blamed him. Not with the indentations of
teeth designed to chew through even the toughest of materials and hides clear on the cardboard.

Years later, he realized he should of kept these incidents secret. He hadn't. He'd been too honest. He'd
tried to explain. He hoped someone believed him in the way he craved to be released from the isolation
and ostrachization his...powers pulled him through the undertow with. Other kids in school didn't
exactly avoid him, but they knew he was off, the way he would zone out, sometimes not hear what was
being said. Those were things he couldn't hide, for sometimes the Rodentia were a presence in his head
that squirmed through the canals and tunnels that the maze of his brain was. There were acquaintances
he had. Leo Jameson didn't call or hang out with him outside school, but he always made an effort to
include him on the playground. It was like that with a lot of his classmates. He wasn't an outcast or
unlikeable. They just kept their distance.

When he turned ten, a psychiatrist dug into his head with a scalpel and scraped out the symptoms of his
condition and churned and weaved and molded and diagnosis. Delays in speech when spoken to,
claiming his connection to the rats quivered on a psychic chain, insomnia too early in life. Schizophrenia,
they claimed. Childhood. He'd need pills. Children's hospitals were suggested. His mother balked, fought
with such a rabidness against it that he called her 'The Pitbull' for weeks. Kiran's spirit eventually wore
thin over time, though. His father took no part in the machinations of the doctor, only listened to the
situation with a detachment that spurned and stoked and invoked a tidal monsoon of further resent in
Paxon. His dislike of the man grew into a type of hatred by the time the decision to institutionalize him
came when he was thirteen. By that time, the rodentia were breeding, growing in numbers, becoming a
swarm. They distorted and warped his world when they came to him, the pills lessening the
disorientation, but not enough for him not to break out in cold sweat and his heart to palpitate when it
happened. It drained him like a vampire latching on to his flesh, sucking that penny-taste-ladden
essence right out of him until he was nothing but a body flopping to the floor. Control was like an oiled
rope, bristled and worn enough to give the illusion of being graspable, but a tease when it came to that
reality, greasy twin turning to greasier palms.

Within the walls of the Gumtree Institute, the force inside Paxon soared and surged, became the pistons
of a muscle car pumping horsepower into his mind. And he was just as much of a gas guzzler, gulping it
down by the mileage of passing days, and the kinships he found, and the friendships he forged.

Within those walls, he became the Ratboy.