Speaking in Tongues

pound.
    Squick, squick.
    Right above where she was stuck. Two of them, it sounded like. Then more, gathering where the wall met the ceiling.
    Then she looked into the corner of the room—at an animal’s nest. It rustled and a creature appeared, staring at her with tiny red eyes.
    Oh, fuck, they’re rats! Crazy Megan blurts.
    Megan began to sob. The noise of their little feet started coming down the wall. She stifled a scream as something—a bit of insulation or wood—fell onto her skin.
    Squick. Squick squick squick. Walking along the ceiling, several of them gathering above her, curious. Maybe hungry. Hundreds of terrible creatures moving toward her stuck body—cautiously but unstoppably.
    More rats. Squick.
    Twitters and scuttling, growing closer still. There seemed to be a dozen now, two dozen. She pictured needle-sharp yellow teeth. Tiny gray tongues.
    Closer and closer. Curious. Attracted to her smell.She’d just finished her period a day ago. They’d smell the blood. They’d head right for it. Jesus . . .
    More scuttling.
    Oh . . .
    She closed her eyes and sobbed in terror. It seemed that the whole wall was alive with them. Dozens, hundreds of rats converging on her. Closer, closer. Squick squick squick squicksquicksquick . . .
    Megan slapped her palms against the wall and pushed with all her strength, kicking her feet madly. Then, uttering a dentist’s-drill squeal, one rat dropped squarely onto her. She gasped and felt her heart stutter in terror. She pounded the wall, wriggling furiously. The startled animal climbed off and she felt the snaky tail slip in between her legs as he moved back up the wall.
    “Oh,” she choked. “No . . .”
    As she struggled to free herself and scrabbled her feet on the bathroom floor, another animal tentatively reached out with a claw and then stepped onto the small of her back. The paws gripped softly and began to move. A damp whiskered nose tapped on her skin as the creature sniffed along her body.
    Her arms cramping, she shoved hard. Her foot caught the edge of the toilet in the bathroom behind her and she pushed herself forward two or three inches. It was just enough. She was able to wriggle her hips free. The rat leapt off her and Megan burst into the adjoining room. She crawled frantically into the far corner, as four rats escaped from the wall and vanished through the open door, joined by their friend in the nest.
    She sobbed, gasping for breath, brushing her palms over her skin frantically to make sure none of themclung to her. After five minutes she’d calmed. Slowly she stepped back to the vent and listened. Squick squick squick . . . More scuttling, more twitters. She slammed the grille against the vent opening. The rest of the rats vanished up the wall. An angry hiss sounded from the hole.
    God . . .
    She found some stacks of newspapers, removed the grille, wadded up the papers and stuffed them inside the wall to keep the creatures trapped inside.
    She collapsed back on the floor, trying to push away the horrible memory of the probing little paws, filthy and damp.
    Looking into the dim corridor, cold and yellow, windows barred, filthy, she happened to glance up at a sign on the wall.
    PATIENTS SHALL BE DELOUSED ONCE A WEEK.
    That sign—a few simple words—brought the hopelessness home to her.
    Don’t worry about it, Crazy Megan tries to reassure.
    But Megan wasn’t listening. She shivered in fear and disgust and curled up, clutching her knees. Hating this place. Hating her life, her pointless life . . . Her stupid, superficial friends. Her sick obsession with Janis, the Grateful Dead and all the rest of the cheerful, lying, fake-ass past.
    Hating the man who’d done this to her, whoever he was.
    But most of all hating her parents.
    Hating them beyond words.

Chapter Twelve
    The forty-minute drive to Leesburg took Tate and Bett past a few mansions, some redneck bungalows, some new developments with names like Windstone and The Oaks. Cars on blocks, vegetable stands selling—at this time of year—jars of put-up preserves and relishes.
    But mostly they passed farmland.
    Looking out over just-planted land like this, some people see future homes or shopping malls or town houses and some see rows of money to be plucked from the ground at harvest time. And some perhaps simply drive past seeing nothing but where their particular journey is taking them.
    But Tate Collier saw in these fields what he felt in his own farmland—a quiet