Rats in the Cellar

By Robby Charters

By going into a forbidden part of his house, Oscar Wild Daugherty has become lost in a network of multiple universes. He really wants to get home. Now, his only friends are other copies of himself, also lost, and a cat who is obviously more than just a cat.

It’s all the same house, but in different worlds, each slightly different. All of them are a dystopian nightmare of one sort or another. In most of their worlds, the electricity is off as often as on, school is closed half the time, and the police only protect those who can pay them. His parents, though lucky enough to have jobs, earn barely enough to survive. In some worlds, his dad has become a crook and his mum is loosing her sanity. That is upsetting to Oscar. Also, his uncle is a paedophile and a predator.

In some worlds, his country is on the brink of a war that could go nuclear, and in others, they’re hopelessly divided by radical political views.

All Oscar can hope to do is exchange one dystopia for another. He only wants to find a universe where his neighbourhood isn't likely to be nuked, where he's safe from his paedophile uncle, and he has a loving and stable set of parents. He also wouldn't mind living as a twin to one of his other doubles. But the cat has bigger plans...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robby's eBook Formtting
• Release date: Apr 14, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005636821

Robby Charters

I live with my wife and my son, sometimes in Thailand where I was born and my wife is from, sometimes in Ireland where my dad is from. In Thailand, I taught English as a second language. Here in Ireland, I work from home, turning people's manuscripts into e-books. Wherever I am, I write.

Book preview

Chapter 1

IChapter1

Oscar's room was at the end of the corridor next to the stairs to the top floor.

He had never been up there before. Just standing at the foot of the stairs was spooky enough. He wondered why they even gave him this bedroom. He was just a kid, and everyone else felt just as creeped out as him! No one ever went up there, nor down to the cellar.

But it was the middle of the night, and he was sure someone had just walked past his room and up the stairs.

He got out of bed and went out. There was definitely someone up there - Mummy? Daddy? Megan? At least he wouldn’t be all by himself. He stepped slowly up the carpeted stairs up to the landing, and turned around to go up the next few steps.

These ones weren’t carpeted. Why didn't he know that? He’d never seen them before, that's why.

At the top, he found a corridor just like the one on the floor his bedroom was on, except again, no carpet. He could just hear whoever-it-was, walking in the farther end.

He walked towards where he heard the faint footfalls, but now he didn't hear them. The corridor turned to the left.

Those stairs he had been warned about went up from this floor, the ones that didn't go anywhere, they were just there. They had been declared unsafe - nobody knew why, or who declared them unsafe. But nobody asked.

So where did the other person go - whoever it was?

Now he was standing in front of those very stairs. That alone sent shivers down his spine. No one was up there, no one was in the corridor, he hadn't heard any doors being locked or unlocked. And something emanated from those stairs.

He ran back down the corridor and down the half carpeted stairs, and burst into his parent's room.

‘Oscar, what do you want?’ groaned Mum.

‘Can I sleep between you the rest of the night?’

‘You're eight years old. You're a bit old for that,’ said Dad.

So, Oscar climbed back into his own bed and pulled the duvet over his head, ready to cry.

Just then, the cat jumped up beside him, curled up into a ball next to his head and began purring.

That was just what he needed. He was soon sound asleep.

They didn't see the cat again after that for a long time.

The house was the oldest in the neighbourhood. Nobody was sure when it was built. Some said it was Victorian, but it had all sorts of features that no one had ever seen before. The main corridor leading from the front door was unusually wide, considering the size of the house, so it could almost pass for a foyer. The downstairs ceiling was high, and probably had a crystal chandelier back in better days. The few who did venture to the cellar reported that the plumbing was different from anything they had ever seen. Whatever sort it was, they never had plumbing issues.

One especially odd feature was those stairs that seemed to go up to the attic from the top floor, but there was no attic in that part of the house. Also there was the stairwell down in the cellar, leading yet further underground, but also seemed to be a dead end. When they shone a light down, it didn't look like it went anywhere. No one thought it was safe to venture down. No one enjoyed being in those parts of the house anyway - just ‘too spooky’, or ‘bad vibes’. Nobody could put a finger on it. Even the previous owner had recommended boarding up both stairways.

They hired a man to do that, but he simply left, leaving all his tools behind next to the upper set of stairs. No one actually saw him leave the house, but they never saw him again, and the job was left undone.

The cellar went unused, as the age of giant coal furnaces was long past and the kitchen had plenty of space for both washer and dryer. The two main floors had room enough for a family of four (five when Uncle Milton lived there), and even there not all the rooms got used. Oscar was told never to play on either set of the dead-end stairs - not that he ever wanted to.

No one envied the Daugherty family for living there. Some of the older residents of the neighbourhood thought it used to have the reputation of being haunted. It had sat empty for long periods of time. One family that lived there about 100 years ago was thought to have disappeared.

Some were under the impression that the name of the street, Oldhouse Road, referred to that house.

But Oscar's family did just fine there, as long as they stuck to the two main floors. No one ever ventured to the cellar or the third level except the cat.

The cat had just appeared in the house about the time Oscar was six, and lived with them a while, sometimes disappearing for long periods, and then coming back. Oscar was fond of that cat. It was fond of Oscar, and seemed to have the knack of knowing when Oscar's nerves needed soothing. But after that night that Oscar wandered upstairs, it disappeared again and so far, hadn't returned.

A year went by.

Today Oscar had the house all to himself as school had been closed for a few days - again. When it first happened he would get lonely, but now he was used to it - sort of.

At least Mum and Dad were lucky to have jobs. So many people had lost theirs, but even then, they were paid so little they both had to do overtime to pay the bills. Dad had two jobs. Both of them had to travel clear across the city just to get to work.

Right now, Oscar was knocking about the house looking for something to do while the power was off, and he couldn't play computer games. His device had run out of charge, and he couldn't charge it. Last time the power had stayed off three days.

He had a few toys, like the Lego set, the metal aeroplanes, cars and action figures, but that got boring after a while.

He would have taken a walk in Forest Glen, but the weather was bad. So, he took a tour of all the rooms in the habitable part of the house.

At the other end of the corridor from Oscar's, was Megan room. She was away at University, where she was most of the time since before Uncle Milton was carted off to prison. Oscar made sure he didn't touch any of her stuff, or she'd get upset when she got back - not that any of her stuff interested him anyway.

He walked from there into Uncle Milton's room, right next to his own. He really didn't like it in here. It was empty and dreary - not spooky like the upstairs and the cellar, just dreary - with a bit of Uncle Milton's weirdness left in it. All his things were packed in boxes, being kept safe for him - all except for the pictures, but they had been taken down and stacked facing the wall - mostly of naked people, from what Oscar remembered.

Oscar wasn't sure what Uncle Milton was in for. Before he was taken away, there seemed to be some issue between him and Megan; and her moving to the University residence hall seemed to solve the problem.

Oscar was glad not to be sharing the empty house with Uncle Milton, as he felt uneasy around him. Megan being home, however, would have made the house a little less lonely.

Megan came home on holidays, and other times when the Universities and schools had to be closed because of political problems, and riots, and pandemics - maybe war…

Daddy said that if it weren't for the prospect of war with 'our noble neighbours', the nation would have been plunged into a civil war caused