Speaking in Tongues

journey I came to myself in a dark wood, where the straight way was lost.
    Recalling the story too: the author’s guided tour of hell.
    “Listen,” the attendant said, startling him, “you stop on your way back, okay? Let me know what happens.”
    LeFevre nodded and shook the man’s oily hand. He climbed into his car and sped along Palmer Road. In an instant, civilization vanished behind him and the world became black bark, shadows and the waving arms of tattered boughs.
    The things we do for love, LeFevre thought. The things we do for love.
    •   •   •
    Aaron Matthews pulled the Mercedes into a grove of trees beside the asphalt and climbed out, looking back over Palmer Road.
    No sign of the white car.
    He was sure he’d tricked the boyfriend just fine when he’d sped off the highway beside the truck. The kid was probably in West Virginia by now and even if he managed to figure out which exit they’d taken and backtracked he’d have no way of knowing which way Matthews had gone into the maze of back roads here. Although Matthews had been coming to the deserted hospital for the past year, ever since he’d brought his son here, he’d made a point of never stopping for gas or food at the service station or grocery store near the exit ramp off I-66. He was sure the local hicks knew nothing about him.
    He climbed back in the car and continued on to the Blue Ridge Mental Health Facility.
    Just past the cleft where the road passed between two steep vine-covered hills, the ground opened into the shallow bowl of a valley. Through a picket line of scabby trees a sprawl of low, decrepit buildings was visible.
    BRMHF had been the last destination for the hard-core crazies in the commonwealth of Virginia. Schizophrenics, uncontrollable bipolars, borderline personalities, delusionals, souls lost forever. Security was high—the patients (that is, inmates) were locked down at night in secure quarters (padded cells). The eight-foot chain-link fence enclosing the ten-acre grounds was “designed to provide comfortingboundaries to patients and nearby residents alike” (it sported a live current of 500 volts).
    The hospital had served its purpose well until two years ago, when it had been closed down by the state, and the patients were shipped to other facilities and halfway houses. BRMHF was soon overgrown with foliage and the place was forgotten.
    Dr. Aaron Matthews was intimately familiar with the hospital; the patients here had found him a confidant, confessor, judge . . . a virtual father over the course of nearly four years. When he thought of home he thought first of this hospital and second of the Colonial house in Arlington, Virginia, he’d lived in with Margaret and their son, Peter.
    Matthews now braked the Mercedes to a halt and examined the place carefully for signs of intruders though a break-in would have been very unlikely. The current to the fence had been shut off long ago but the chain link was intact and the grounds were patrolled by five knob-headed rottweilers, as raw and brutal as dogs could be, teeth sharp as obsidian; they hunted in packs and once or twice a week killed one of the deer that often strolled through the gate when it was open.
    He listened carefully again—no sound of approaching cars—and unlocked the two tempered steel locks securing the gate. He drove inside and parked.
    Then he lifted Megan from the trunk and carried her inside, pushing through a door with his shoulder. He’d reversed the locks on the doors—you could simply push in from the outside but couldn’t get back out without a key.
    He stepped into the lobby.
    Asylums smell far more visceral than do regular hospitals because even though their province is the mind, the by-product of mental pathology is piss, shit, sweat, blood. This was still true of the Blue Ridge Facility years after its closing; the air stank of bodily functions and decay.
    Through these murky halls Matthews carried his prize in his arms. Feeling every ounce of her weight—though it wasn’t the weight of a burden; it was the weight of treasure: a golden or platinum artifact, solid and perfect.
    Matthews carried Megan into the room he’d fixed up for her. He laid her on the bed and undressed her. First the blouse and the bra. Then jeans and panties and socks. His eyes coursed up and down her body. Yet he touched her only once—to make sure her pulse was regular.
    Taking her clothes, he left the room, locked her door with a heavy