Jeffery Deaver - Speaking In Tongues

Jesus, Crazy Megan says respectfully. Good job.

With a gasp of joy she sat up, seeing faint light through the hole. She shoved her head into the opening, looking into another room. The plate had apparently covered an old heating vent. There was a thin grille on the other side about a foot away. On her back, she guided her leg into the wail and kicked. The grille fell clattering to the floor. She froze. Quiet! she reminded herself. He could be nearby.

Then she started crawling through the opening, headfirst. Her shoulders were broad but she managed to ease them through. She had to reach down, cramping her arm, and cradle her breasts to keep her nipples from scraping on the sharp bottom edge of the vent. One inch at a time she forced her way through the vent. As she eased through she examined the other room. There were bars on these windows too. But the door was open. She could see a dim corridor beyond the doorway.

Another ten or twelve inches. Then twelve more.

Until her hips. They stopped her cold.

Those fucking hips, Crazy Megan mutters. Hate ‘em, hate ‘em, hate ‘em. You just couldn’t lose those ten pounds, could you?

I don’t need any of your crap now, okay? Megan thinks to her alter ego.

The vent on the other side of the wall was, it seemed, slightly smaller than the one in her room. Megan tried wriggling, tightening her muscles, licking her fingers and swabbing her sides with spit but she still remained stuck-halfway between each room, her butt dead center in the wall.

No way, she thought to herself. I’m not getting trapped here! A terrible burst of claustrophobia shook through her. She fought it down, wriggled slightly and moved forward an inch or two before she froze again.

Then she heard the noise. Squick , squick.

The scuttling of claws in the wall above. Accompanied by a high-pitched twitter.

Oh, my God, no. The squirrels.

Her heart began to 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 them clung 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.

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 salvation. Something he did, yet not of his doing, something that would let him survive, if not prosper, graciously: the silence of rooted growth. And if at times that process betrayed him-hail, drought, tumbling markets-Tate could still sleep content in the assurance that there was no malice in the earth’s heart. And that, the former criminal prosecutor within him figured, was no small thing.

So even though Tate claimed, as any true advocate would, that it made no never mind to him whether he was representing the plaintiffs or defendants in the Liberty Park case, say, his heart was in fact with the people who wanted to protect the farmland from the roller coasters and concession stands and traffic.

He felt this even more now, seeing these rolling hills. And he felt, too, guilt and a pang of impatience that he was distracted from his preparations for the Liberty Park hearing. But a look at Bett’s troubled face put this discomfort aside. There’d be time to hone his argument. Right now there were other priorities.

They passed the Oatlands farm and as they did the sun came out. And he sped on toward Leesburg, into old Virginia. Confederate Virginia.

There weren’t many towns like this in the northern part of the state; most people in Richmond and Charlottesville didn’t really consider most of northern Virginia to be in the commonwealth at all. Tate and Bert drove through the city’ limits and slowed to the posted thirty miles per hour. Examining the trim yards, the white clapboard houses, the incongruous biker bar in the middle of downtown, the plentiful churches. They followed the directions Tate had been given to the hospital where Dr. Hanson was visiting his mother.