The protagonist of the story maintains his innocence, proclaiming that it was "the rats, the rats in the walls," who ate the man. At least one other investigator, Thornton, has gone insane as well. He is subsequently subdued and locked in a mental institution. In the end, the protagonist, unknowingly maddened by the revelations of his family's past and driven by the stronger force of his own heritage, attacks one of his friends in the dark of the cavernous city and begins eating him. Upon investigating further (and as revealed in repetitive dreams), he finds that his family had maintained an underground city for centuries and that previous generations of his family fed on human flesh, even going so far as to raise generations of "human cattle," including some which had regressed to a quadrupedal state. After moving in, on several occasions, the protagonist and his cats, specifically his favorite cat, hear the eponymous rats scurrying behind the walls. Much to the dismay of nearby residents, he restores the Priory while plainly showing ignorance of the horrific history of the place. Narrated by the scion of the de la Poer family, who has moved from Massachusetts to his ancestral estate in England, known as Exham Priory, which had fallen into ruins. The Rats in the Walls" is a story by American author H.
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