The Judge's House

The CampfireThe openingFree

Malcolm Malcolmson was a math student at Cambridge. He had a big exam coming up, and he needed quiet. Total quiet. No friends, no parties, no distractions.

So he went to a little market town where nobody knew him, and he found the perfect place. A big, old, empty house. Heavy stone, with tall chimneys and small barred windows. It had been empty for years. The rent was almost nothing.

The landlady at the inn in town was horrified. "Not the Judge's House," she said.

The house had once belonged to a judge. A cruel, hanging judge, who sent people to the gallows and enjoyed it. He'd been dead for over a hundred years. People in town said that something of him was still in that house.

Malcolmson laughed. He was a mathematician. He said he had no time for ghosts. He moved in that afternoon.

The big room downstairs was where he studied. It had a fireplace, an old oak table, bookshelves, and on the wall, a big dark painting, so covered in dust you couldn't see what it showed.

And there was a bell rope. A thick old rope hanging from the ceiling in the corner, down to the floor. It used to ring an alarm bell on the roof, the landlady said. In the judge's time.

The first night, he worked late, by lamplight. And as the house got quiet, the rats started.

He'd never heard so many. Running in the walls. Scratching under the floor. Squeaking behind the paneling. Dozens of them. Hundreds. It was like the whole house was full of rats.

He ignored them. He worked.

And then, at midnight, the rats went silent. All of them. At once.

And he looked up and saw a rat on the oak chair beside the fireplace. A huge rat. Bigger than any rat he'd ever seen. Sitting perfectly still. Staring at him with cold, intelligent, evil eyes.

He threw a book at it. It didn't move. He threw another. It ran up the bell rope and vanished into the dark of the ceiling.

As soon as it was gone, the rats in the walls started up again.