I Hear The Mouse’s Whispers

Ever since I was a kid, I could hear the whispers of pests.

Fresh into my internship with the investigative task force, I tagged along with my mentor to the Lancaster estate. We were looking into the disappearance of the sole heir to the wealthiest family in Harbor Bay.

The head consultant sounded dead certain. "The kid was definitely smuggled out of the city. We need to expand the mountain search grid immediately."

The little Lancaster boy was the only male heir in eight generations. Old man Arthur, the family patriarch, had even put a ten million dollar bounty on the table for whoever found him first.

Everyone was rushing out of the city limits. I was the only one standing dead in my tracks.

Because I heard the rats.

I turned my head toward the corner and spoke up.

"No need to leave the city."

"The boy is right here."

The moment those words left my mouth, Arthur slammed his walking cane against the marble floor. He stepped forward.

"What do you know?"

The octogenarian's voice trembled. "You know where Oliver is?"

Every pair of eyes in the room snapped to me, sharp as daggers.

"He is in this mansion," I replied.

A split second of dead silence followed, and then the room exploded like water hitting boiling grease.

Preston, the head consultant, adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses and let out a scoff.

"You are just an intern. What proof do you have?" His tone dripped with unconcealed contempt. "We pulled all the security footage and cross-checked every toll booth record. The conclusion is unanimous. The boy has been moved."

"This little girl must be out of her mind for that bounty," Dexter, the private eye, chimed in. He crossed his arms, intentionally raising his voice. "The whole world is searching outside the city, and you insist he is in the house? Just to play the contrarian and snatch that ten million?"

The flicker of hope that had lit up Arthur's face vanished entirely.

"Young lady, the Lancaster bounty is not a game."

Richard, the boy's father, turned livid. He leaned in to whisper something to his assistant. From the looks of it, I was seconds away from being thrown out by security.

Only my mentor, Alistair, hurried over to my side.

He leaned down, dropping his voice so only I could hear. "Harper, did you find something again?"

His question yanked the room's attention back to us.

Dexter narrowed his eyes. "Alistair, you should know better than to indulge your student. Don't let her think one lucky guess with that cold case means she is psychic now."

Alistair ignored him. He kept his eyes locked on me.

I knew exactly why he believed me.

Two years ago, a dismembered body case on the outskirts of Harbor Bay had gone cold for months. I was the one who followed the squeaks of rats all the way into an abandoned bunker, unearthing a skeleton buried for five years.

After that, Alistair made an exception and took me on as an intern, even though I hadn't officially graduated college.

Right at this moment, two rats were chattering in the corner behind the baseboards.

"The little kid's blood still smells fresh. Hasn't faded yet."

"It has been three days. I am starving. Let's go feast."

I spoke up immediately, terrified of losing precious time.

"The boy is injured. He is still in this building. We need to search right now, he might still be saved."

Marcus stood three paces away. He was the tactical captain sent by the police department. He raised a hand.

"Hold your positions. Prepare for a full tactical sweep of the estate."

"Absolutely not!"

Richard shoved past his bodyguards and marched right up to Marcus.

"It has been three days! Every camera, every tire track, every witness statement points out of the city! And you want to tear my house apart?"

He whipped around to glare at me. "Do you have any idea what you are delaying? If Oliver really was taken out of the city, and we waste half a day here..."

Panic burned in my chest.

Just as Richard was about to order the search teams to roll out, a black-shelled roach squeezed through a crack in the molding.

"Basement. The little brat with the mole on his butt got shoved down there."

I jerked my head up, ignoring Richard's roaring entirely, and spoke over him.

"The boy has a mole on his right buttock. About the size of a quarter."

"The last person who saw him before he vanished was his mother. Am I right?"

Eleanor, the boy's mother, stood at the top of the second-floor staircase. One hand covered her mouth, and the other gripped the mahogany railing like a lifeline.

Arthur stared at me for a long time.

His cane slowly lowered back to the floor. "Search the house," the old man rasped.

Marcus personally led the team, tearing through the first-floor living room inch by inch.

"Not even a stray hair."

Dexter strolled out of a second-floor guest room, dusting off his slacks. "All this chaos just to entertain an intern's wild delusion of him being injured?"

Preston stood in the center of the living room, frowning at the thermal imaging on his tablet.

"The wall structures are completely normal. No irregular heat signatures detected. Captain Marcus, with all due respect..."

"Keep looking," Marcus muttered, not even looking up.

Richard paced the foyer, checking his watch at least twenty times.

With every passing minute, his face grew darker. He finally snapped at Marcus.

"Captain, I already have three private teams sweeping the southern mountains. If you don't produce results here soon..."

I was crouching on the floor tiles at the end of the ground-floor hallway.

While the Lancasters were busy arguing, a cluster of rats had gathered by the wall, muttering among themselves.

"Crawl east. There is a sweet, sticky smell coming from the bottom of that wall."

"Idiot, you have to squeeze into the hollow parts! The sweet smell is leaking from the brick joints."

They kept repeating the same direction.

The basement.

I stood up, stumbling slightly because my legs had gone numb.

Alistair quickly caught my arm. "Are you sure?" he whispered.

I looked down the narrow door leading to the basement and nodded.

"Head down to the basement," Marcus said, putting his tablet away and following my gaze. "Harper says search the east wall. Follow the roaches and rats."

The basement was larger than I imagined.

Nothing looked out of place.

But when I crouched down, I heard a faint rustling coming from the seams where the wall met the floor.

Marcus ordered a tech to tap the drywall. The echo was muffled and hollow, completely different from a solid structure.

Benson, the family butler, was summoned. He unrolled the vintage architectural blueprints of the estate. The diagrams showed there should only be a three-foot plumbing cavity behind this wall.

Richard stood at the top of the stairs, looking down. His expression was a stormy mix of rage and anxiety. Finally, he gritted his teeth.

"Smash it."

When the worker swung the sledgehammer, my heart pounded louder than the impact.

The first brick gave way, revealing a pitch-black void. A damp, chilling breeze wafted out.

I held my breath.

Then the second and third bricks shattered. The hole widened. Marcus shined his tactical flashlight inside.

Nothing.

Just a few rusted old pipes and a thick layer of dust.

Dexter stood less than two feet behind me. His mocking laughter practically pierced my eardrums.

"Absolutely nothing. You made the Lancasters demolish their own house just to look at some garbage plumbing?"

Preston had wandered downstairs at some point. He took one look, turned on his heel, and spat out a single word. "Absurd."

Richard stood on the steps, his knuckles popping as he clenched his fists.

Just then, the butler's voice echoed from the floor above.

"Sir, the housekeeping staff is asking for a word."

The four maids stood in a line in the parlor, their expressions ranging from annoyed to nervous.

Martha, a woman in her fifties, took the lead. She had worked for the Lancasters for over a decade and held the most authority.

She anxiously twisted the hem of her apron, glancing between Richard and me. Her voice was steady.

"Sir, the girls and I talked it over. We need to clear our names."

Martha swallowed hard. "This estate gets a comprehensive pest control sweep twice a day, at six in the morning and nine at night. We use top-tier bait and traps constantly."

"I have worked here for twelve years. Forget rats, I haven't even seen a stray ant. And this young lady comes in talking about rats leading the way and roaches giving clues."

A younger maid chimed in from behind.

"Sir, saying stuff like that makes it sound like we are just getting paid to do absolutely nothing."

Dexter let out a sharp whistle. "Hear that? Professional cleaners are on it every single day. Where exactly are you getting these clues? Straight from your own imagination?"

I stood frozen. Cold sweat drenched my back.

The combined glare of everyone in the parlor weighed on me like a mountain.

Richard turned to look at me, his eyes clouded with pure venom.

He closed the distance in three massive strides, his finger nearly poking through my shoulder.

"You are a total fraud. You just wasted three hours of our critical search and rescue window. Three hours! Do you have any idea what that means?"

"Mr. Lancaster, Harper isn't..."

Alistair tried to step between us, but Richard shoved him aside violently.

"Shut your mouth!"

Richard's eyes were bloodshot. "You told the cops to follow the rats to the basement. Because of that one stupid sentence, we wasted three hours in this house. Three hours is enough to sweep half a damn mountain!"

He whipped around to face Arthur. "Dad, I told you these people are just grifters after the reward money! But you insisted on bringing in some fringe consultant."

Arthur sat in his antique wingback chair. He closed his eyes and waved a hand dismissively.

It was a clear gesture. Throw her out.

A young man from the family's legal team stepped out from the crowd. He wore a sharp suit and held a leather folder.

"Miss Harper, we have documented your repeated attempts to intentionally mislead the rescue operation."

"Under civil law, we will be pursuing charges for obstructing an emergency response and malicious misdirection. The financial damages will be..."

"That is enough."

Alistair cut him off, a rare edge of fury in his voice.

"She is an intern. Every action taken was authorized by the experts on site. You cannot pin the entire blame on a single girl."

"Authorized?" Richard sneered. "Who authorized her? From the very beginning, she has been pointing fingers like a lunatic!"

He waved a hand dismissively. Two massive security guards marched toward me. "Drag her out. I never want to see her face again."

When the guards clamped down on my arms, I had zero strength to fight back.

Alistair trailed behind us all the way to the door, arguing heatedly, but Richard tuned him out entirely.

Dexter followed me with his phone out, recording the whole thing. He shoved the camera right into my face.

"Here we go, folks. Let the internet see what people will do for a ten million dollar bounty."

I was dragged through the hallway, across the marble living room. Every step pulled me further away from the basement.

Marcus hadn't moved an inch, but I saw his brow knit together. His gaze kept shifting between the smashed wall and my retreating back.

His lips parted, but he didn't say a word.

Richard followed us all the way to the foyer. His voice chased me from behind, cold and absolute.

"If anything happens to Oliver, I will make you pay with your life."

The heavy bronze front doors were swinging open, letting in a blinding strip of daylight.

Right before the doors parted completely, something caught my peripheral vision.

Down by the base of the basement stairs.

A gray rat squeezed through the crack in the door.

The guards were hauling me outside. One of my feet was already past the threshold, but my entire body locked up as if nailed to the floor.

The rat was moving too slowly.

Normally, a rat darting from a gap would vanish in a blur. But this one took two steps and froze. Its four tiny legs trembled, struggling to hold up a belly so swollen it practically scraped the tiles.

It crawled a few inches, then rested. Another rat popped out from the corner and nudged its head.

The gray rat let out two weak, raspy squeaks.

"Swallowed it. Swallowed it. Too heavy, can't crawl."

"Spit it out!"

"Can't. My stomach is totally jammed."

I threw my entire weight backward with a violent jerk.

The guard holding me hadn't expected a young girl to pack that much explosive force, and his grip slipped.

My knees slammed into the marble floor. The pain was so sharp my vision went black for a second, but I ignored it, scrambling forward on all fours.

Dexter's camera feed shook as he yelled. "Hey. She is making a run for it!"

By the time I lunged, the gray rat was desperately trying to squeeze into a corner seam.

I slid across the floor, slamming both hands over its back, pinning it flat against the freezing tiles.

The rat twitched twice and gave up. Its belly was bloated like a stuffed walnut, the skin stretched so thin I could see dark, heavy outlines underneath.

The entire room went dead silent.

Richard charged back from the foyer. He saw me kneeling on the floor, cupping a filthy gray rat in my hands. My face was flushed red, and my voice shook uncontrollably.

"You are still pulling this stunt!" Richard screamed.

Marcus and Alistair rushed over from the living room.

I clutched the rat, spun around, and stayed on my knees.

The security guard reached out to grab me, but I fiercely shielded the dusty little creature in my palms. I threw my head back, looking straight at Arthur.

The old man had quietly walked to the end of the hall, watching me from a dozen feet away.

"Examine it."

My voice tore from my throat, so ragged I barely recognized it.

"There is something inside this rat's stomach. I swear on my life, if I am wrong after you cut it open, I will gladly go to prison!"

Dexter burst into laughter from the back of the room.

"Are you insane? You want us to perform an endoscopy on a rodent?"

He shoved his phone closer. "Look at this, guys. The final meltdown of a scammer. That bounty really drove her crazy."

"Shut up."

Marcus finally spoke. He pushed through the crowd, knelt in front of me, and stared at the rat's unnaturally bulging stomach. He stayed silent for two seconds before looking up and calling out.

"Dr. Simon."

The forensic examiner stepped forward quickly. He took a knee, observed the rat for a few moments, and pulled a pair of forceps and a specimen tray from his kit.

Dexter opened his mouth to complain, but a lethal glare from Marcus shut him up instantly.

When Dr. Simon took the rat from my hands, I felt it give one last, feeble twitch against my skin.

The gray rat squeaked two final times.

"I ate so much. So full."

The scalpel sliced through the rat's belly with practiced speed.

The hallway was so quiet you could hear the faint, wet sound of skin parting.

Ten seconds later, the forceps reached into the incision and pulled something out.

It was a piece of reddish-brown flesh.

Everyone instinctively crowded closer, yet simultaneously took a half-step back, as if getting too close might infect them with something vile.

Dexter was the first to break the tension.

"Are you guys serious?"

He pocketed his phone and scoffed. "The kitchen in this mansion is massive. A rat snagging a piece of leftover meat is supposed to be a clue?"

He gestured toward the metal tray. "It is just a chunk of pork. Probably dropped on the floor during dinner prep."

Preston adjusted his glasses. He stayed quiet, but didn't argue.

Richard stood two paces away. His eyes darted between me and the dead rat. His mouth was a tight, hard line.

Marcus didn't entertain them.

He stared intently at Dr. Simon. The forensic examiner held the tray up to the light, inspecting it for a few heavy seconds. When he looked up, his brow was locked in a deep knot.

"The edges are cleanly severed. This wasn't torn naturally. And look here."

He gently nudged the tissue with his forceps. "The surface shows signs of dehydration, likely from formalin immersion. The rat's stomach acid couldn't break this down, which is why it swallowed it whole."

"Formalin?" Preston finally frowned.

The temperature in the room plummeted.

Arthur stepped forward from the back of the crowd. He ground the tip of his cane into the floor and spoke in a gravelly whisper.

"Find every single rat left in this house. Bring them all to me. Dead or alive."

The Lancaster bodyguards and Marcus's officers immediately scattered like hounds.

They tore through the living room, the kitchen, the pantry, the staff quarters. No corner was spared.

Fifteen minutes later, a shout rang out from the kitchen.

"Got one!"

A tidal wave of people rushed in.

An officer was kneeling behind the kitchen cabinets, holding up a snap trap. A small, gray rat was caught in the metal jaws. Its belly was slightly distended.

The rat was still twitching. It wasn't completely dead.

"Cut it open," Marcus ordered.

Dr. Simon went to work immediately.

The hallway descended into an unnatural silence, leaving only the wet slice of the scalpel.

Seconds later, the forceps reached inside and extracted something.

Half a human fingernail.

Eleanor shoved her way to the front.

She took one look, and it was as if someone had ripped the spine right out of her back. Her legs buckled, and she collapsed.

Richard lunged to catch her. As he looked down at the nail, the blood drained from his face, turning his skin a ghastly, ash-grey.

"Oliver's."

Eleanor gripped Richard's sleeve, her voice sounding like she was drowning.

Nobody in the crowd made a sound.

Arthur slowly walked forward.

Every step was heavy, dragged out. He stared down at that tiny fragment of a nail for a long time.

His lips trembled, but no sound came out. A profound, unbearable grief shattered his eyes. All the strength left his aged body, and he fell rigidly backward.

The crowd erupted in panicked shouts, rushing to catch the patriarch and carry him to a recliner in the parlor.

Total chaos took over the living room.

Richard handed Eleanor over to the maids and stood frozen in the parlor doorway, staring at his collapsed father. His eyes were bloodshot, his lips pressed so tight they were bone-white.

I stood on the outskirts of the crowd.

The bruises on my knees were throbbing with heat.

Alistair walked over and stood beside me. He didn't say a word, but he placed a warm, reassuring hand on my back.

Then, a sound caught my attention.

Over by the baseboard radiator, a fly buzzed against the metal casing.

"Smells so good behind the fridge. But I can't find it."

"Can't find it."

I slowly turned my head toward the kitchen.

Arthur regained consciousness ten minutes later.

Lying on the recliner, the very first words out of the old man's mouth were absolute. "Oliver is gone. But I want him found. Alive or dead, bring my boy back!"

That single sentence shifted the atmosphere in the estate from a rescue op to a murder investigation.

Marcus instantly locked down the property. He called in a full crime scene unit to tear the place apart, room by room.

I was the only one standing perfectly still, straining my ears to catch the whispers of the pests.

But there was nothing.

The rats and roaches had gone completely silent, as if acting on some collective instinct.

Even the fly was gone.

The mansion was as quiet as a tomb.

Alistair crouched next to me, speaking softly.

"Think back. When you heard the first rats, which part of the wall were they talking about exactly?"

I closed my eyes.

The conversation of the gray rat replayed in my mind like a tape recorder.

The brick joints.

Not behind the wall. Inside the wall.

My eyes snapped open.

"We shouldn't just be looking behind the walls. We need to look for gaps small enough for a rat to crawl into."

Marcus glanced back at me.

He didn't ask for an explanation. He just pivoted his orders. "Everyone. Look for hidden compartments."

An hour later, an officer shouted from the bottom corner of the first-floor hallway. "Found a hidden panel behind the wainscoting."

The officer knelt by the corner baseboard, using a screwdriver to pry off a loose piece of wooden paneling.

Behind the wood was a square cavity, barely the size of a hand.

Marcus shined his flashlight inside, sweeping the beam across the darkness.

Curled in the corner was a dead rat. Its stomach was completely flat, entirely desiccated.

But right next to the carcass, wedged deep in the crevice, was a piece of rubber.

When Marcus pulled it out with his tweezers, everyone stopped breathing.

It was the front half of a shoe sole. The edges were gnawed and torn, but the tread pattern was unmistakably clear.

A row of jagged teeth grips, and in the center, the faint logo of a cartoon crocodile.

Eleanor didn't come over to look.

She sat on the living room sofa, hands clasped over her knees, as rigid as a marble statue.

But Benson, the butler, leaned in for a closer look. When he turned his head, his lips were quivering violently.

"The young master loved those shoes. The crocodile ones. The Madam bought them for him at the city center last year."

Arthur sat motionless in his wingback chair, but his knuckles gripped the armrests until they turned white.

Marcus sealed the evidence bag, handed it to Dr. Simon, and stared at the location of the hidden panel.

It was in the hallway corner, less than twelve feet away from the smashed east wall in the basement. Only a load-bearing staircase wall separated them.

The secret compartment perfectly aligned with the hollow wall's trajectory.

If the sledgehammer had hit just three feet to the left, it would have cracked this exact compartment open.

"Too many coincidences," Marcus muttered, sounding like he was talking to himself, or maybe to me.

He stood up and surveyed the room. "Tear apart every single wainscot panel, baseboard, and ventilation duct in this house. There is more than one compartment."

For the next two hours, the house was methodically gutted.

Panels were ripped off, baseboards pried loose, and vent covers completely dismantled.

They lined up a table full of random debris, but only one item mattered.

Behind the furthest wall of the walk-in closet in the second-floor nursery, they found another hidden cubby.

It was empty, but stuck to the inner lining were a few strands of short, dark hair.

Eleanor held those strands in the palm of her hand for a long, agonizing moment. Her eyelashes fluttered, but she refused to shed a single tear.

Richard stood by the window, his back to the room, shoulders locked as tight as a coiled spring.

Arthur walked out of the parlor, glanced at the hair, and returned to his chair. He looked as if he had aged ten years in ten minutes.

I crouched by the tiles in the living room corner.

Everyone was busy moving. I was the only one listening.

Still, I heard nothing.

The only sound left in the entire estate was a low buzzing drifting from the back kitchen door. Flies.

A small swarm of greenbottle flies circling a specific spot.

I got up and walked toward the kitchen.

Just past the back door was a small utility room stacked with unopened water cases and cleaning supplies.

Tucked all the way in the back, flush against the wall, was a massive stainless-steel double-door refrigerator. The gap between the bottom panel and the floor was barely an inch high.

The flies were doing lazy laps right around that gap.

"It opens. The panel opens."

I crouched down.

The fluorescent light in the utility room was old, casting a sickly yellow glow that reflected blurry shadows on the fridge's steel surface.

I pressed my face near the floor and slipped a finger into the gap.

My fingertip brushed against a hard, cold edge. Metal.

"Captain Marcus," I called out over my shoulder.

Marcus was there in seconds.

He eyed the gap, dropped to a crouch, and shined his light underneath. After two seconds of dead silence, he looked up and yelled for backup. "Pull this fridge out of the wall."

It took four men nearly twenty minutes to haul the heavy built-in unit out of its alcove.

When the space behind it was finally exposed, every eye locked onto the floor.

The fridge had been resting over a large, iron-gray maintenance hatch. The edges were scratched, bearing fresh marks from being pried open recently.

Marcus grabbed a pry bar and wedged it under the lip. With a loud metallic pop, the hatch sprang open.

A foul, freezing draft rushed up from the dark.

The living room was immediately cleared of civilians.

Dr. Simon put on a fresh pair of gloves and a heavy mask. He laid on his stomach and lowered half his body into the hatch.

About ten minutes later, he pulled himself out. When he peeled off his gloves, his fingers were shaking.

He leaned in and whispered something into Marcus's ear. Marcus's face drained of color for a split second before snapping back to a cold, hard mask.

"We have recovered the entire right arm."

Marcus turned around. His voice wasn't loud, but every syllable cut through the room like shattered glass. "Confirmed to be the remains of a young child. Preliminary forensic analysis indicates professional dismemberment. The tool used was likely a bone saw or surgical scalpel. Time of mutilation is estimated at no less than forty-eight hours."