History Literature / TheRatsInTheWalls

* ArtisticLicenseBiology: It'd be extremely difficult to maintain a breeding population for generations that relied entirely on inbreeding, since the chances of dying young from genetic abnormalities or being sterile would greatly increase with each generation (see: Tutankhamun and Charles II), rendering the idea that the lineage would have survived long enough to become ape-like quadrupeds highly unlikely (and that doesn't take into account the fact humans would make terrible livestock due to a very slow breeding cycle, and the diseases that would surely set in from keeping so many people packed together in squalor for centuries). Terrifyingly averted, since the de la Poers ''don't''. Early in the book it's noted that the people of Anchester resent the de la Poers for "the occasional disappearance of villagers through several generations." With the revelation of the grotto, the reader discovers what those villagers, and who knows how many others, were used for.

'''Professor Leeds''': [[OhCrap They're gong the wrong way.]]

'''Professor Leeds''': [[OhCrap ''They're gong the wrong way.'']]

'''Professor Leeds''': [[OhCrap 'They're gong the wrong way.']]\\

--> The war ate my boy, damn them all… and the Yanks ate Carfax with flames and burnt Grandsire Delapore and the secret… No, no, I tell you, I am not that daemon swineherd in the twilit grotto! It was not Edward Norrys' fat face on that flabby, fungous thing! Who says I am a de la Poer? He lived, but my boy died!… Shall a Norrys hold the lands of a de la Poer?… It's voodoo, I tell you… that spotted snake… Curse you, Thornton, I’ll teach you to faint at what my family do!… ’Sblood, thou stinkard, I’ll learn ye how to gust… wolde ye swynke me thilke wys?… Magna Mater! Magna Mater!… Atys… Dia ad aghaidh's ad aodann… agus bas dunach ort! Dhonas's dholas ort, agus leat-sa!… Ungl… ungl . . . rrrlh… chchch…

* DaylightHorror: The limestone grotto under Exham Priory is partially illuminated by faults in the cliff face outside. This does nothing to subdue the horror of the explorers who stumble upon it. Also [[DiscussedTrope Discussed]] by the narrator, when he mentions a person who went mad after some unnamed discovery at the Priory "in broad daylight".

* DespairEventHorizon: The climax implies this is what happens to the protagonist, as the horror of what he's uncovered combined with the loss of his family, finally brings him over the edge. When he attacks one of the supporting characters, he rants about how "[[UsefulNotes/WorldWarOne the War]] ate my boy, damn them all, and [[UsefulNotes/AmericanCivilWar The Yanks ate Carfax]] with fire and burned Grandsire Delapoer".

* WhatHappenedToTheMouse?: What happened to the rats? The titular rats. A horde of rats that burst forth on the countryside centuries ago is part of the legend of Exham Priory. But at the time of setting, in the 20th Century, Delapore hears rats scrabbling and scratching inside the (stone) walls of the castle. Even his cat Nigger-Man hears them and reacts, fiercely. Poison is set out for them, to no effect. But the rats never appear in the story -- they are not even present in the cavern below the priory where so many hideous things are revealed. (Delapore later again hears rats in the walls of the insane asylum, but that can be dismissed as a madman's hallucination.)

* YouDirtyRat: Played with, the rats aren't actually evil themselves, but the heralds of something much darker. They're still treated as dangerous and monstrous; shortly after the narrator's ancestor wiped out the de la Poers and set fire to the castle, their abhuman "cattle" trapped in the underground city were devoured by rats, resulting in a population explosion which then proceeded to swarm the countryside in a "historic orgy of devastation which the peasants will never forget."

* OutlivingOnesOffspring: The narrator lost his son, Alfred, in World War I. For most of the story, the narrator doesn't dwell too much on it, and it appears to be mostly an innocuous background detail to explain how he knows Edward Norrys, who was a friend of his son and the two of them met on the front. But it gets a dark twist later, when the narrator snaps and attacks Norrys, [[HiddenDisdainReveal revealing that he resented him for surviving the war]], because Alfred didn't.

A rare Creator/HPLovecraft story that does not contain any overt supernatural elements, other than the mention of ancient worship and the imaginings of an increasingly unreliable narrator. After his son dies from injuries sustained during [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarI the Great War]] a man leaves New England, with his [[CrazyCatLady nine cats]], to purchase and restore his ancestors' hereditary lands in England. Helped by a friend of his son's, who just happens to be the nephew of the man currently in possession of the land, he discovers generations of mistrust and suspicion aided by local traditions of horrible, nasty deeds attributed to the land and his ancestors specifically. Then the cats start acting weird, the narrator starts having troubling dreams and the newly renovated ancestral home may be overrun by an army of nocturnal rats. And things just go downhill from there...

* BlackSpeech: As the protagonist realizes the truth about his family's history, he starts to deliriously rant in antiquated, medieval English and then in Roman-era Latin. Eventually his speech degenerates into guttural, wordless grunting implied to be a primordial pre-druidic tongue.

* CannibalLarder: Basically the entire hollowed out limestone cavern found underneath the Exham Priory but also specifically the ancient English building Capt Norrys inspects and presumably many more, which not only served as a CannibalLarder, kitchens and disposal grounds for the degenerate, cannibalistic De La Poer family, but also contained ''breeding pens'' where the family had raised generations of human "cattle", some of which so inbred that they had regressed to walking on all fours as shown by the bones remaining in the ruins.

* ArtisticLicenseBiology: It'd be extremely difficult to maintain a breeding population for generations that relied entirely on inbreeding, since the chances of dying young from genetic abnormalities or being sterile would greatly increase with each generation (see: Tutankhamun and Charles II), rendering the idea that the lineage would have survived long enough to become ape-like quadrupeds highly unlikely (and that doesn't take into account the fact humans would make terrible livestock due to a very slow breeding cycle, and the diseases that would surely set in from keeping so many people packed together in squalor for centuries). Terrifyingly averted, since the de la Poers ''don't''. Early in the book it's noted that the people of Anchester resent the de la Poers for "the occasional disappearance of villagers through several generations." With the revelation of the grotto, the reader discovers what those villagers were used for.

** The Atlanta Radio Theater Company version names the cat "Voodoo", in memory of the narrator's cousin who was disowned by the family for converting to UsefulNotes/{{Voudoun}} and becoming a priest.

* FormerlySapientSpecies: The La Poer family sated its [[IAmAHumanitarian cannibalistic appetites]] by breeding "human pigs" in immense underground food pens. The breeding stock was so inbred and twisted towards the end that some of them had devolved into quadrupeds, and they had largely lost the capacity for thought.

* ArtisticLicenseBiology: It'd be extremely difficult to maintain a breeding population for generations that relied entirely on inbreeding, since the chances of dying young from genetic abnormalities or being sterile would greatly increase with each generation (see: Tutankhamun and Charles II), rendering the idea that the lineage would have survived long enough to become ape-like quadrupeds highly unlikely (and that doesn't take into account the fact humans would make terrible livestock due to a very slow breeding cycle, and the diseases that would surely set in from keeping so many people packed together in squalor for centuries). Terrifyingly averted, since the de la Poers 'don't'. Early in the book it's noted that the people of Anchester resent the de la Poers for "the occasional disappearance of villagers through several generations." With the revelation of the grotto, the reader discovers what those villagers were used for.

* ArtisticLicenseBiology: It'd be extremely difficult to maintain a breeding population for generations that relied entirely on inbreeding, since the chances of dying young from genetic abnormalities or being sterile would greatly increase with each generation (see: Tutankhamun and Charles II), rendering the idea that the lineage would have survived long enough to become ape-like quadrupeds highly unlikely (and that doesn't take into account the fact humans would make terrible livestock due to a very slow breeding cycle, and the diseases that would surely set in from keeping so many people packed together in squalor for centuries).

** The Atlanta Radio Theater Company version names the cat "Voodoo", in memory of the narrator's cousin who was disowned by the family for converting to UsefulNotes/{{Voudoun}} and marrying a black woman.

* InTheBlood: Implied, it seems that the de la Poers have a hereditary predilection towards madness and evil, even the single surviving branch had a few black sheep, despite its progenitor being a significantly nicer person than his ancestors (the main character mentions an uncle who had gone off the deep end and run off to become a voodoo cultist). It's also implied that the Priory itself, or rather the caverns it was built on, was the cause of this curse, as the narrator mentions that there was no record of any sort of evil in his family before his ancestor was given the land by Henry III in the 13th century.

* UnfortunateNames: That cat. As noted above, he's named after one of Lovecraft's own cats.