Free This River Awakens by Steven Erikson

from the move – some of them still packed.
    After a moment I moved quietly forward, around the large freezer and into the laundry room. A basket of dirty clothes caught my eye and I thought of rat nests. A tingling feeling crept over me. Suddenly certain that pairs of black marble eyes watched me, I removed the first of the traps from my backpack. Pull back on the stiff bar, set the catch, place the cheese on the pan. Simple, but be careful, Father said, ’cause these aren’t mouse-traps. These can break your fingers.
    The concrete floor was cold under my hands and knees. I slid a trap down between the washer and dryer, reaching until it was against the back wall. A second one went behind the furnace, then I left the room and approached the small plywood door under the stairs.
    If rats could build secret cities, they’d build them in the crawlspace. I crouched down and slowly opened the door. The basement’s light exposed only a few feet into the crawlspace. On the concrete floor was a scatter of bits of cotton-like material that I thought might be insulation, clots of hair and dust, and rat pellets.
    Gotcha.
    The image of the dying rat in the living room came back once again. Its death had left me feeling dulled inside, and now the sensation returned. Something older than pain, older than hurt. Something like those parents might be feeling even now about the son who’d been killed on the highway. A dullness that wouldn’t go away. And yet, here I was, armed with traps and poison. I had been given the job of killing rats.
    Father would be checking on them. I wouldn’t have to see the results. Somehow, that made things easier. I removed the plastic bag containing the poisoned cheese from my backpack and opened it. A strong, bitter smell wafted up, burning the back of my throat – Father had said don’t touch, just spill a few out. I tilted the bag on its side and dumped out on to the crawlspace floor a clump of powdery cubes. With the corner of one of the traps I broke up the pile and flicked pieces into the darkness. Then I shut the door.
    For the main floor, I was only supposed to set traps in the closet and the storage room. Once I had done this I ascended the stairs to the second floor. There were five rooms, each with a closet; and a hallway with a linen closet. I was to ignore the twins’ room.
    For some reason, I felt certain that there weren’t any rats above the main floor. Though I hadn’t yet explored the attic, I envisioned a single, large empty room with an arched roof. A room with no hiding places.
    At the top of the stairs, I gazed down the hallway. Ahead and to my right was the door to the guest room. We’d never lived in a place that had a guest room before now. The thought of having guests seemed strange. Who? Nobody ever comes to visit us. Mother’s relatives live in the old country. Father’s relatives never even write him – they might be all dead, the way nobody ever talked about them. I’d had sleep-overs when we’d lived in the city, and Debbie had done the same, but at those times everyone slept in the same room. Maybe guest rooms were just rooms that happened to be empty.
    I walked into the guest room. No furniture, of course. We barely had enough to fill our own rooms. It seemed vast, too large to be a part of the house. Opposite me were two windows. I went over and looked out of the one on my right. Below ran the garage’s sloped roof, its green tiles battered and the gutter full of rotting leaves. Beyond the garage the driveway wound its way into and through the line of firs that marked the yard’s boundary. Through the branches was another yard, and another house. I had no idea who lived there.
    A third window, to my left, looked out on the front yard. In the city I’d never imagined that someone could own so much land – except for farmers, but that was different. I counted seven trees, all thick-limbed and tall and widely spaced. This wasn’t a farm, just a house, on a