Speaking in Tongues

about psychiatry but most were fantasy novels and science fiction. Some were pretty weird. Stacks of comic books too—Japanese, a lot of them. Megan flipped through several. Totally icky—girls being raped by monsters and gargoyles and aliens. X-rated. She shivered in disgust.
    The name inside the books and on the front of the comic books was Pete Matthews. Sometimes he’d written Peter M. It was written very carefully but in big block letters. As if he was a young kid.
    Megan looked through the files, most of them filled with psychological mumbo jumbo she couldn’t understand. There were also stacks of the American Psychiatric Association Journal. Articles were marked with yellow Post-its. She noticed they’d been written by a doctor named Aaron Matthews. The boy’s father? she wondered. His bio gave long lists of credentials. Dozens of awards and honorary degrees. One newspaper clipping called him “the Einstein of therapists” and reported, “He can detect and categorize a psychosis from listening to a patient’s words for three or four minutes. A master diagnostician.”
    In between two file folders was another clipping. Megan lifted it to the light. It showed Dr. Peters and a young man in his late teens. But wait . . . The doctor’s last name wasn’t Peters. The caption read: “Dr. Aaron Matthews leaves the funeral home after the memorial service for his wife. He is accompanied by his son, Peter.” Matthews . . . the one who wrote those articles.So he must have been a doctor here. That’s how he knew about the hospital—and that it would make a perfect prison.
    Megan studied the picture again, feeling crawly and scared. The doctor’s son was . . . well, just plain weird. He was a tall boy, lanky, with long arms and huge hands. He had thick floppy hair that looked dirty and his forehead jutted over his dark eye sockets. He had a sick smile on his face.
    Leaving his mother’s funeral and he’s smiling?
    So this was his room—the son’s. Maybe Peters—well, Matthews—kept the boy locked up here, a prisoner too.
    Her eyes fell to an official-looking report. She read the top page.
    EMERGENCY INTAKE EVALUATION
    Patient Peter T. Matthews presents with symptoms typical of an antisocial and paranoid personality. He is not schizophrenic, under DSM-III criteria, but he has, or claims to have, delusions. More likely these are merely fantasies, which in his case are so overpowering that he chooses not to recognize the borderline between his role-playing and reality. These fantasies are generally of a sadoerotic nature, with him playing a nonhuman entity—stalking and raping females. During our sessions Peter would sometimes portray these entities—right down to odd mannerisms and garbled language. He was often “in character,” and quite consistent in hisrole-playing. However, there was no evidence of fugue states or multiple personalities. He changed personas at his convenience, to achieve the greatest stimulation from his fantasies.
    Peter is extremely dangerous. He must be hospitalized in a secure facility until the determination is made for a course of treatment. Recommend immediate psychopharmacological intervention.
    Stalking . . . rape.
    Megan put the report back on the desk. She found a notebook. Peter’s name was written on this too. She read through it. In elaborate passages Peter described himself as a spaceman or an alien stalking women, tying them up, raping them. She dropped the book.
    Tears again.
    Then another thought: Her cell! This Dr. Matthews, her kidnapper, had locked her up not only to keep her from getting out but to keep his son from getting in. He was—
    A creak, a faint squeal. A door closed softly in a far part of the hospital.
    Megan shivered in terror.
    Move it, girl! Crazy Megan cries, in a silent voice as panicked as uncrazy Megan’s. It’s him, it’s the son.
    She grabbed a pile of things to take with her—several of the magazines, file folders about the hospital, letters. Anything that might help her figure out who this Dr. Matthews was. Why he’d taken her. How she might get out.
    Footsteps . . .
    He’s coming. He’s coming here . . . Move it. Now!
    Holding the files and clippings under her arm, Megan fled out the door. She ran down the corridors, getting lost once, pausing often to listen for footsteps. He seemed to be circling her.
    Finally she found her way and raced into the room that adjoined hers, the “rat room.” She rubbed the