The Revenant Throne

A Small and Scary/ Big & Beastly story

A Substack horror event, organized by

Garen Marie

. Above image by

Keith Long

The Revenant Throne

By John Royal Warren & Vienna Nicole

One lock. It was a screen door fixed up with chicken wire and it had, simply, one lock. It’s all that was needed, truly, since it had always been enough to guarantee rodents couldn’t get in to our small green house. My father built it when I was six in our back yard. For the first year we saw no problems. Then, one morning there were scratches around the hook latch, signs of some small nocturnal creature trying to get at our greens.
My father taught me about the soil, the nutrients in the manure, and the patience it takes to garden. I was a little girl with a patient father who made me feel like every step was an achievement. From my first sprout to my first little leaf on the vine. We had come so far and we weren’t going to let a rodent undo what we’ve built.
It was on a night we had spring rains. But we lived in Iowa, that middle of America, surrounded by prairies, hills, and country side. With mid-western farmlands as far as where the waning hours of day rested the sun. A place where the rain falls all evening and you can stare at it like a sketch upon canvas where the pen was taken up by nature herself. But the rain never comes alone. whole trees buckle and collapse in the wind storms. Our little green house was lucky to have survived.

When me and dad checked on it in the morning, it was standing strong without a scratch except we found that the latch had been tampered with. The door had also been barricaded by part of a fallen tree. It was big enough to keep the door shut tight but small enough in size for my beefy dad to lift it on his own. As we opened the door a stampede of raccoons tried to make a break for it. My father was big, that didn’t mean he wasn’t fast and he shot down to catch one of them. The rest of the stampede didn’t even look back.
My father looked at me with the rodent squirming in his hands and said, “That’s the difference between us and them. They are so feeble minded and so low on the food chain, they have no choice but to leave their own behind. Humans don’t need to do that.”

We put a new lock on the green house and thought that would be the end of it. Months later they returned. We had no idea how they were picking the locks. When we added more they started breaking them. Ripping the screws out and devastating the wood. They were problem solving in a way that baffled my father. They would have to be working together in a way that is impossible for raccoons. Somehow, someway, they were coordinating. Common country raccoons, thinking their way around every lock we used and destroying our vegetation. How I miss those concerns. How small they seem now. I wish I stayed in Iowa.

A woman sits on the floor at the back of sleeping quarters made for guests on a cruise ship. The fabrics are torn and decayed, from the bed sheets to the mattress and the curtains. Decrepit from age. The light had burned out years ago. Mold plagues the base boards and a sickly dark grime has crept down to stain the walls. She holds a head lamp flash light in the palm of her hand shining it on the five other people who join her. They all wear a similar uniformed jumpsuit.

She has a low-pitch voice, finessed in leadership to keep a respectful cadence, “I’m not going to risk any of your lives to tow this ship. If a few smart raccoons in Iowa can work together to figure out how to bypass locks, than those rats -”

“Those aren’t rats Captain!” Another woman interjects.
“Those are demons Brooke!” A man adds.
“Those rats…” Brooke continues, “are going to figure out how to get through that door eventually. We need to get out of this room before they come in. And when we do, all that matters is getting back to our boat.”
They open up an emergency flare gun case. One of the men break out the window. One by one they climb out. At a twelve foot drop down there is a balcony below the window. Once they all are out of the window, they jump, together.

A rising sound of harmonic skittering approaches. Talons scratching the floor with the rhythm of a Trojan army. The sounds get closer, echoing off of every wall. The sound is so loud it’s like the air rushing past the ears when cliff jumping joined by that fear of anticipation of your body hitting the water.
“Go! Go! Go!” Brooke commands, not inclined on waiting for the arrival of what is coming. She pushes the other five ahead of her so she may take up the rear, looking out for everyone and making sure no one falls behind. As they head for a stair well that leads down to the next level Brooke can hear the roaring sound, undoubtedly close. Uncomfortably close. Her curiosity makes her impulsively look back. It was only a glimpse. It was enough to know the danger, and at the same time it was too much to take in.
“Why the hell did I do that?” She screams to herself, “What the hell was that?”
In that glimpse she saw not chaos. That expected unruly stampede of rodents, where their bodies crash over each other like a greasy avalanche of fur, was in all horrible truth, not there.

After battling ominous weather on the high seas, the brooding skies and restless ocean had finally subsided when Brooke and her tow boat crew came upon “The Revenant”. It was a harrowing calm. When they boarded the cruise ship it was supposed to only be a ghost ship then. They had to pass through it before they could begin towing it. An $800,000 dollar payday for it’s scraps. The abandoned cruise ship had been lost for 40 years till it appeared on their professional radar.
Once they stepped foot inside, they shot down to the boiler room together as per their protocol. The sight of the ship was a mystery in of itself, for it to have survived as upright as possible despite the decades of neglect. “Watch where you step, we can only imagine how poor her condition is,” Brooke warns. Trekking deeper into The Revenant left the crew with an unease, what was expected were years of corrosion and mold, but never like what they bared witness to. The decay of it all seemed to have been accelerated somehow. The pipes leading to the boiler room also felt few and far between, as if someone had been here before and scavenged for parts. The humidity seemed unbearable the further in they got, the air tasting of metallic and rot, yet not a trace of organics could be perceived. Just beyond the doors to their destination a hum could be heard. “Shhh, listen,” Brooke urges in a hushed tone. The hum is rhythmic, like many voices buzzing over each other, indistinguishable. Their collective footsteps echoing along the metal corridor, interrupting the sound of wet movement as chittering and murmurs seep through the cracks of the rusted boiler room doors. Fate had left them defenseless, unprepared for the horrors lurking ahead.
They all walk in, to then immediately freeze up at what they see.

Hundreds of rats. A sovereign nation. Covering the floors. Dark stained fur. Ever present teeth. A monstrous infestation. They are mutated. A feral ecosystem. And they all look up at once. Staring at Brooke and her crew. The room is dim except for the mustard light with an ember like glow coming from some energy source beneath the grated floor. It gives life to the reflective light in hundreds of pairs of eyes. Brooke becomes slack jawed and her lungs curdle under her chest, because… they have human eyes. Small yellow pupils inside the whites of tiny, glossy, hard boiled quail eggs. The horde blocks the glow and most of their body is in a black dramatic shadow obscuring them in darkness. The way they came to a halt gave the impression they previously were buzzing with commotion. A pulse that stopped too quickly to have an understanding of what they could of been doing. The team stares shaken by the incredible sight, and the colony that seems to have no end, stares back. Soon their eyes disappear as they turn away from the crew, transforming their presence into a dark and vast blanket.

“What are they looking at?” Brooke asks aloud. They were all so focused on the glowing floor the rats covered that they didn't think to acknowledge the dark corners against the walls or near the back. The darkness is an atmosphere, concealing everything in sight beyond 12 feet. In the musk of a hideous abysmal void, the yellow reflectors of two eyes open. They are all the way at the back but they are the size of valley balls. Two more sets of eyes open beside them and then another set in a second higher row. All of them are shared by one head, and it sways minutely before raising closer to the ceiling. 10 feet, then 15, then 25. A mountainous king of the rats who takes reign in the dark solace of their kingdom and it’s citizens.

The team begins reaching for the doors. A tyrannical & deafening barking booms from the creature’s maw. Course yellow electrical light tears through the dark from multiple sources and the eyes of a feral nation look to the team once more. It all happens so fast as Brooke and her team scramble. Their survival need not allow them to linger on the details for any longer.

That’s when they ran and they would have went back to their boat but in their panicked state short sighted decisions were made, leading to multiple mistakes. It wasn't long before they discovered they were being chased and as they ran out of options they found refuge in that guest quarter. Backed into a trap. Like a strategic ploy. Checkmated.

Now, in their last hope for survival, they make a run for their tow boat. Brooke can hear the skittering of hundreds of feet that don’t match her own feet’s rhythm. Her fear amplified after looking back for what she saw was the most terrifying sight she had ever witnessed. In that glimpse she saw not chaos. What chases them is a legion. Rows of rats in a uniformed, and chilling organized army. Charging in an ancient Greek phlanx formation with elite discipline. Brooke’s stomach turns in terror to even contemplate this is a coordinated assault. They wield electrical weaponry, spears headed with blades sparking of wild conducted voltage. They wear helmets and their segmented armor clanks as the overlapping plates tap together.

At that ephemeral glimpse Brooke also observed ambling behind the formation were men sized creatures with skin of red gore. Difficult to tell if they were born this way or if they were scarred to look so shocking. Sleepless souls without eyelids appearing as though their eye balls were on the verge of falling out. Mad, lipless, skullish faces with grinning appearances as their teeth are ever bearing. Harnessed to their backs were saddles. Rats as big as toddlers sat almost atop them, guiding them, like mahouts riding elephants into war.

There are corridors deep in time long before humanity stamped it’s first footprints on beautiful mother earth, where rats had already claimed dominion over the crevices, mountain passes, and byways of the globe. These resilient creatures were the makings of necessity and adaptation. We forced them into the underbellies of ancient cities and the wild outskirts. Their existence, stretching back hundreds of thousands of years, served as nature’s subdued history written in obscurity when their existence is one that speaks to a profound lesson. Life’s tenacity.

They are the ones who watched the rise and fall of empires brought on by a more celebrated species. Conscious of it or not, their evolution has allowed them the strength to return for the usurpation of their once held throne. Brooke’s senses summon unventured feelings as she considers that these are calculated minds and mankind’s long-held dominion will crumble beneath their claws.

“We are invaders,” Brooke considers. “This is their world and we are trespassing.” Her team starts to climb down to board their boat. But they wont have enough time. Brooke can see that. But she still holds the flare gun. Before she can fully turn around, she already has it aimed at The Revenant’s army. Firing, igniting parts of the formation into flames. Brooke pulls the trigger till there are no more flares. Red smoke fills the narrow halls of the tender. The rat army is forced to smoke out, passing through tendrils of acrid smoke that choke the air. Brooke turns back to make a mad dash for her boat. She stops. All of time becomes suspended.

There is this vivid memory she has of her father. A precious vignette of days long past when the green house was their sanctuary. Sometimes, just enjoying the quiet in their modest backyard. Light played upon verdant leaves and the air bore pleasant earthen aromas of tilled soil. She recollects on when he would make her feel the dirt. His thumb almost as big as her six year old hands, rubbing the soil into her palm. Warm, and grainy as it crumbles down rejoining the fertilizer. She remembers smiling together, truly the markers for keepsakes in a humble life. In that moment surrounded by dew-kissed pedals and tender foliage she can almost render the soft murmur of their laughter. Her wonderfully fragile moment with her father, where she remembers absolutely, what peace felt like. It’s those memories that make her think that life, is what you find, when you realize their was more to all of this, than what mankind has intended for us. Mankind’s ambitions, their kingdoms, their armies, who they hurt, who they oppress. Animal and man alike. Stealing the humble, sweet, joys of life and it’s freedoms. Hindering the rest of the world with it’s influence. All to keep their thrones.

All hope is relinquished within her as she stares out at her boat on the water, with her crew aboard it, already departed from The Revenant, without her.

Ocean breeze carries into the tender port drawing back the flare smoke and she inhales deeply with swelling eyes as she is left stranded and doomed. “Why wouldn’t they leave?” Brooke analyzes internally. Her tears bleed hot streaks from wide, boggling, fixed eyes. “What took us millions of years of fending off predators, took of one rodent species a few decades without the hinderance of man. What other species will thrive in isolation? Evolve without our meddling and usurp us? How long does the human race have it’s throne at the top of the food chain? We were just the unlucky one’s, to have found the kingdom of the worlds next rulers.”

She could feel the warmth of the sun as it bowed low behind the distant ocean horizon. It’s generous beams, tinged with hues of molten gold and the deepest crimson, reached out like soft, diffused brushstrokes across the water. She appreciates one last sight of natures art. Before The Revenant’s army reaches her, undoubtedly to tear her limb from limb with ferocity, she says to herself, “I wish I stayed in Iowa.”

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