Hickory, Dickory, Dock.
I opened my eyes. As always it was dark. The clock had stopped ticking but I could still see the rats run about it. I got up, shuffled over and turned the hour hand to ‘1’. The clock clanged once, though it sounded rusty and old, almost as if the bell inside had corroded.
I looked about the tiny room, which had become mustier than ever. I wondered where mother was, for I had not seen her since yesterday.
Well, I was hungry and I knew that my neighbors always have candies to give away. I crawled out to the tunnels then climbed a ladder to the ground above. The sky was dark, but the streets were filled with twinkling stars held together on strings. All about me were children as well as grown men and women dressed as kings and queens or animals. I saw fairies walk hand-in-hand with goblins, and little knights run about shouting and brandishing wooden swords. Everything looked strange and magical.
Yet even among these beautiful magical crowd there were rats -pink-eyed, brown-eyed, black-eyed- that swarmed over their feet, their clothes, their shoulders and their hair, as though they were lying dead by the side of the streets. I looked into the drains and all along the street but I could not find a single dead body. Maybe the police had come and cleaned them all up.
Then I saw, in front of me, in the middle of the road, a throng of wagon-like vehicles and two men sitting on high gnarly seats peering through a black box on either side.
Though there was a great crowd, the surrounding area was dead quiet, except for a man and woman arguing. I watched with them then jolted back when the woman slapped the man and stormed away.
A man sitting level to them shouted, “Cut!” There was a burst of claps. He continued, “Okay everyone, break till tomorrow, 5 a.m. sharp. Happy Halloween.”
The area came alive with people carrying or rolling away heavy items into giant sized crates. I stood there gawking, transfixed, and my hunger was temporarily forgotten.
“Hi kid,” a stout bearded man said, looking down at me.
“Hello,” I said back shyly.
“That’s a great looking costume. Who made these clothes for you?”
I looked down at my threadbare jacket and musty shirt. “My mother,” I said.
He walked in a circle around me, touching my jacket now and then. “Wow, this is really good. Very authentic.” Then he asked, a little perplexed, “Why don’t you have candies?”
“I haven’t asked for any yet, sir.”
He laughed then walked over to a table where a glass bowl brimmed over with chocolate bars. He returned and passed me three. “There you go. Special just for you.”
I stuffed them into my pocket, but they fell out. Again he laughed and reached for a small bag on a tray that a young woman was carrying as she walked past.
I put the bars into the bag then looked up gratefully. He said, “Tell your mother to call me, okay?” and passed me a small piece of card.
“Mother doesn’t talk to people.”
“Okay. I can understand that. Where do you live?”
“In the sewers,” I said. Then on seeing the frown on his face, I quickly explained, “It’s dry where we live and nobody bothers us.”
He squatted down in front of me and looked up kindly, “That’s alright, kid. I’ll visit tomorrow, okay. Maybe I can get your mom a job as a seamstress.”
I smiled, a job, a real job for my mother. “Thank you, sir,” I said and meant it with all my heart.
I walked away and went farther down the street. Everyone was kind, and everyone admired my clothes. Then I returned home. The man went by in a green vehicle and waved just as I climbed down the hole in the ground. I held up the fat bag of candies for him to see. He waved back and disappeared round a curve. I could sense him smile, happy for me.
I walked down the edges of the drain for a few yards then climbed through a hole in the wall which had a board loose. When I finally reached our hole, I saw mother, lying on her side, exhausted from another day of looking for work. I decided not to wake her yet and tell her about the seamstress job. Instead I pulled the blanket over her and shushed the rats away.
Hickory, Dickory, Dock my mother used to say to me whenever the rats scared me. I wanted to turn the clock to ‘1’ again but I felt too tired. I ate one of the bars the man gave me, but before I could finish it, I fell asleep.
“Ted!” a woman called, “the sewage workers are here.”
Ted Summers looked up from the costume drafts and grinned. “Hi guys,” he said as he shook the hands of two burly men in orange-strip yellow coveralls. “Thanks for helping me out with this.”
“Are you sure you want to go down there?” Thomas, the elder of the two, asked. “I must say, I have worked here over twenty years and I have never met any civilians down there.”
“Well. I promised the kid I will talk to his mom.”
After they briefed him on safety and other precautions, Ted climbed down the hole with them. He was surprised to find the sewer cleaner than he had imagined.
The three men searched for two hours but came up with nothing. Then just ten yards from where they came down, Ted pointed to a boarded up hole and asked, “Where does this go?”
Robert, the younger man, said, “Nowhere, I guess. Some of these places were sealed up to control the rat population. Should be sealed tight.”
Ted jiggled the boards and one came loose, swinging on a single nail. “Can we get in?” he asked.
“That hole is too small to fit anyone,” Thomas said.
“He was a tiny little kid. And very skinny.”
The two sewer workers shared a look. “Well, I suppose,” Thomas said. “No kid should be living down here anyway.”
The men pulled the planks free and went in one after the other into the crawl space. It was a short tunnel, at the end of which, they found a mildewed cell sized space occupied by two skeletons –an adult’s and a child’s. Rats scattered at their approach.
Ted stared at the jacket and shirt he had admired the night before and just as he began to think that it was a Halloween prank, he saw the plastic bag ‘Szechuan Takeout’, which was now almost empty of candies.
He looked at the boy’s hand and recognized the chocolate bar wrapping. Then he looked at the floor and saw empty candy and chocolate wrappers scattered about, each appearing chewed through by rats.
“I never asked him his name,” Ted said to no one in particular.
A crash startled them. Thomas shone his torch into a dark corner. “Grandfather clock. Ain’t no use to nobody now.”
They returned to the surface and reported their find. City officials sent them to a hospital with a strict reprimand. A forensics team was sent down and a month later, Ted learned that the skeletons had been down there since before World War II, most probably around the time of the Great Depression. Both skeletons showed signs of suffering from acute pneumonia. Ted put the report away in a special place in his drawer.
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