The Rats in the Walls

Overview

Alfred Delapore - American, ruined, proud - rebuilt Exham Priory in England where his line had vanished in horror generations earlier. His cat howled at walls. Workmen found bones that were not quite human and vaults older than Rome.

Beneath the priory lay a pilgrimage of temples - Roman, Druid, Saxon - stacked over a grotto where Delapore's ancestors farmed something in the dark and fed it. The rats in the walls were choir and witness.

Narrative Record

Excavation opened corridors where Delapore heard chanting in his blood. The cat slaughtered rats that screamed almost in words. In the deepest grotto, survivors found pits, altars, and bones scored by teeth that had chewed for centuries.

Delapore descended alone and emerged - or something wearing his certainty did - screaming that the gods took him and would take him back. The priory was dynamited; the valley replanted; the sound in walls persists in local refusal to rent adjacent farms.

Witnesses & Aftermath

Workers fled; the cat was celebrated in Arkham papers as hero and omen. British authorities blamed madness; Miskatonic acquired Delapore's letters.

Narragansett cats are now standard in archive field kits for subterranean surveys. Three American families with similar priory restorations were stopped after 1924.

Archive Notes

Bring cats; trust their refusal. If excavation reveals stacked temples, stop digging - depth is not antiquity, it is appetite. Delapore's last words are not metaphor. Rats in walls mean something is being fed.