On the Trail of an Untouchable Rat (1)

Wherein our protagonist, Clifford Engram, Paranormal Investigator learns San Francisco may have no future…

I hate trying to find Ratso. It’s not just that he lives in the part of the Tenderloin which gave that district its reputation.

This year the homeless litter the area like beer cans after a ten-year family reunion where most of the members are in AA and are going to “call their sponsor” in the morning. This part of the area is prone to random violence, aggressive behavior and even the occasional soul-napping.

I found his nasty little apartment stepping over a dead guy in an alley. I knew this particular nest as one of his boltholes when he owed people money. My angel’s key tripped the lock and opened the four bolts on the other side of the door. Ratso and I have a curious relationship. I didn’t have to be there long to know this place was cold; no fresh cigarette smoke. Only the stale, lingering odor of cheap cigs done in too small a space.

This place reeked of dust, mold, and scattered psychic effluvia, the scent of perversions and other abominations of nature. A practiced eye could spot the flickering of things that corrupted the soul of the user wrapped up in the crumbling paint layering this room. No tourist spot was this hotel. Only the profoundly unhappy found their way here.

Ratso was a smoker. A heroic smoker. The kind of smoker who lit a new one with the one he was putting out. His cheap plastic ashrays were everywhere and overflowing with cigarettes. Didn’t mind filling ’em. Just hated emptying them.

With a face that was mostly planes and angles, a nose too long and a nervous facial twitch, he ended up with a moniker which befit his face. Lawrence ‘Ratso’ Wright was tall and gangling.

Maybe it took more energy to get his cadaverous-thin body back and forth in this too small apartment. Clothes were scattered everywhere but nothing recently worn. Bathroom, dry as a bone. Refrigerator, filled with moldy-topped things better not thought of. All the easy stuff done, it was time to go to phase two.

A quick handsign and burst of chi later, all of Ratso’s little hiding spots lit up, each with a sense of how long its been since he had touched it last. Nothing new, nothing easy at any rate. I hated looking through old places like this. Their magical pedigree always left something to be desired.

This building had been around since the fifties and had all kinds of sloppy secondhand spell residue dripping through it. None of it was dangerous or active, just a kind of magical slime residue you could sense on everything in a place like this. It left you with that same impression, too. Like you’d been slimed and needed to get away as quick as you’re able.

I wasn’t surprised to find he’d gone. You see, sneaking up on Ratso, was actually very hard to do. Ratso lived in the most dangerous part of the Tenderloin and while he wasn’t much of a scrapper, to see him, he never worried about being mugged or hurt on his way home.

Because he can see the future.

He never gets mugged or even inconvenienced in any way, always someplace else when that particular unfortunate event would have taken place. If he saw himself getting knifed in a particular alley, someone might be, in the future, knifed in said alley, but it wouldn’t be him. He was just like that — gifted in a very screwy way.

Unfortunate accidents happen to people who crossed his path, just like a black cat. No seriously, like the mythical bad luck-causing black cat of legend. They had “accidents.” Very painful ones.

This loan shark lent Ratso some cash and when the money wasn’t paid back, he sent out his goons to remind Ratso who he was. Now this guy was new to the neighborhood so he didn’t know, like the locals did, not to lend to Ratso. Ratso was pretty much living on a subsistence diet in the criminal activity department.

You see, while Ratso could see the future, he had a gambling problem. Not a problem for a guy who can see the future? You would think he would be the most popular guy in town right? Here’s the rub: He can only see his future and perfect enough to save his life, but not always well enough to profit from it.

He can only see what is going to happen to him. Not always what’s going to happen everywhere. He tries to ensure he is someplace where he can see a possibility of a good thing and capitalize on it. He spends a lot of time at racetracks hoping to see himself in the future on a winning scoreboard. Evidently it works one time out of three. Unreliably, or so I’m told.

Ratso has money, some of the time. He borrows against his ability, the rest. The locals figured out they couldn’t depend on his ability and stopped lending him money, most of the time. He was a genuinely likable fellow, in a rodent-cute, kind of way. Someone would eventually relent and give him something. But never anything they couldn’t afford to lose, because while Ratso would pay his debts when he won, he was usually more out than in. Thus he paid some people, and not others, in a rotation only a scientist who studied probability (and Ratso) could predict.

Normally, I wouldn’t be bothered with a small-time operator like Ratso. He kept to himself and his gift was, as much a benefit for him, as it was a curse. He didn’t rub the Agency wrong enough to find a more permanent solution. There are always seals which could be used against a gift like his. But we have too many cursed people and not nearly enough masters to create viable seals to protect them and us.

Instead, he works for me as an informant when I need a little information in the lower echelons of our mutually hidden world. Our arrangement is, he keeps a keychain I gave him. When it gets warm, he goes to a drop and picks up a note, with an address.

If the note had a number, he could call me. He never did. He’d just amble up with a cigarette in his shaking, sometimes drug-addled hand wherever we were poised to meet, ask if there was some food gonna be happening, and we’d chop it up about the neighborhood and any new players I would need to worry about.

I was making my rounds in San Francisco. I dropped my card and told Ratso to call me. He did. But his call was strange, he sounded completely off his meds. He said the local gangs were changing. Something that made him really afraid. Nothing made Ratso afraid. It might make him angry. Or frustrated. Or if he couldn’t kick a habit, he might be intoxicated. But afraid? Not gonna happen.

In his call, Ratso said someone had beat him up and told him the streets belong to them now. His words were slurred like his lips were swollen. His last words were chilling: “Leave, man. You don’t want none of these people, they ain’t Human, not even close. I know we got a standing deal and I’d honor it if I could, but I can’t fuck with these people. I gotta go. Don’t look for me.”

That sudden click, no talk of food or restaurants, no cash requests, plus the contents of that call confirmed why I was sent here in the first place. What I heard was the impossible.

Why? You remember those goons I was talking about a while back? The one’s sent by the loan shark? This new fella hadn’t learned it was expensive to collect on a debt from Ratso. His two boys would find out firsthand. Upon spotting him in a stupor on Market Street, they made the mistake of getting out of their car to do a snatch-and-grab.

They were conveniently hit by a bus out of control in downtown where they had picked up Ratso’s trail. They both survived with fractured pelvises. Ratso didn’t even see them. Or the next pair who found themselves pinned in their car when a construction vehicle backed up unexpectedly.

You didn’t surprise Ratso. Ever. Something was changing and I was sent to investigate because the Seer Branch couldn’t see the future for this area. That’s never good.

Since I was coming this way, I was asked to talk to some local sources who provided more questions than answers. I left his apartment, mindful to lock it up just the way Ratso left it.

Stepping over the body blocking the doorway, I stepped into the overcast and slightly foggy afternoon, pondering the real question at hand: Why was a man who could see the future, hiding or missing? A man known for being almost untouchable in almost every way imaginable.

What could drive the Untouchable Rat to ground?

Whatever just crept into the city was not some ordinary evil. Like his namesake, Ratso’s power for realizing danger was occurring and already being gone, had made him legendary. Police raids? Vampire attacks? Wandering succubi dining on the souls of hapless men? None of these things ever happened to Ratso. When he sat in a restaurant, should he look flustered and leave suddenly, members of the Hidden community vanish seconds later. It was just smart.

Ratso was the supernatural canary in a coal mine. And now that canary was missing…

If you feel compelled to continue the search, welcome to: Part 2

On the Trail of an Untouchable Rat © Thaddeus Howze 2016. All Rights Reserved

Thaddeus Howze is a writer, essayist, author and professional storyteller for mysterious beings who exist in non-Euclidean realms beyond our understanding. Since they insist on constant entertainment and can’t subscribe to cable, Thaddeus writes a variety of forms of speculative fiction to appease their hunger for new entertainment.

Thaddeus’ speculative fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies: Awesome Allshorts: Last Days and Lost Ways (Australia, 2014), The Future is Short (2014), Visions of Leaving Earth (2014), Mothership: Tales of Afrofuturism and Beyond (2014), Genesis Science Fiction (2013), Scraps (UK, 2012), and Possibilities (2012).

He has written two books: a collection called Hayward’s Reach (2011) and an e-book novella called Broken Glass (2013) featuring Clifford Engram, Paranormal Investigator.

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