The Burial of the Rats

The Burial of the Rats is a story that Stoker wrote while on his honeymoon with his wife in Paris. The story takes place in the “dust heaps” of Paris, which seems to be some sort of junk yard where soldiers from the French Revolution convene. The man in the story wanders around exploring Paris and comes upon this village of dust heaps, soldiers, and an old woman. The old woman tells him a story about going into the sewer and finding rats that eat people, and he realizes that her plan is to feed him to the rats and steal his expensive rings.
The man leaps for escape, and a large chase ensues. These people were very set on capturing him for some reason. In the end, the man finds help from some police men and they go in search of the thieves who had been trying to murder him. They find the old woman dead; her bones picked clean by the rats. The rats had also killed one of the thieves.
The rats in the story fit the bill of the horror monster because they are both terrifying and disgusting. Rats do not normally eat people unless they are threatened or starving and desperate. This story would be a fantastic marvelous story because the flesh-eating rats were real and there was no supernatural explanation given for their disgustingly abnormal eating habits!