The Burial of the Rats

The Burial of the Rats by Bram Stoker is a story by Bram Stoker. Plot Summary: Leaving Paris by the Orleans road, cross the Enceinte, and, turning to the right, you find yourself in a somewhat wild and not at all savoury district. Right and left, before and behind, on every side rise great heaps of dust and waste accumulated by the process of time. Paris has its night as well as its day life, and the sojourner who enters his hotel in the Rue de Rivoli or the Rue St. Honore late at night or leaves it early in the morning, can guess, in coming near Montrouge-if he has not done so already-the purpose of those great waggons that look like boilers on wheels which he finds halting everywhere as he passes.

"Bram Stoker, the master of horror and dark mind behind the most famous vampire novel in history-Dracula-brings us to the edge of our chairs again with a tale of a different variety. Here the horrors are not vampires, nor are they werewolves. Here the horrors are poverty and vicious, snarling rats.

A young man finds himself (foolishly) wandering beyond the city walls of 1850s Paris, making his way into the dust piles and garbage gatherings of the paupers. Living among the rags and the war-torn are giant, beady eyed rats. Hideous beasts that clean a dead (or dying) human body down to its skeleton before the flesh is even cold.Add to that a swampy quagmire and some curious psychic insights, and you have a masterful tale of the macabre that is not for the feint of heart.