The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires(37)

Mrs. Greene ran to Miss Mary’s armchair but froze as the heavy rats skittered across her bare feet, their sharp nails scratching her skin, their hairless tails cold against her flesh. A few of them stopped and sank their claws into her pants leg and began pulling themselves up. She did a frantic, high-stepping dance to shake them free.

Razor blades shredded her toes. She reached down to pluck a gray rat out of her pants leg and it caught one of her fingers in its mouth. Sharp teeth met bone, and cold prickles of nausea flooded Mrs. Greene’s gut.

Ragtag barked and raged, drowning in a living carpet of rats. One clawed its way onto his back, and another three hung from his ears. Mrs. Greene saw his tan fur go dark with blood. She threw the gray rat against the curtains, losing skin from her fingers as it went. Then she turned to Miss Mary.

“Ohuh, ughuh!” Miss Mary screamed, as a hairy river rose up her legs and pooled in her lap.

Rats came over the back of her chair, flowed down over her shoulders, got tangled in her hair. She raised one arm, holding the photograph she’d been pressing to her leg high up in the air, but the rats hauled themselves up her sleeves, went down the open collar of her nightgown, crawled up her neck, and covered her face.

Rats covered the carpet, the sofa, they crawled up the curtains, they darted across the white sheets of Miss Mary’s hospital bed, they dashed along the windowsill, they filled the room. But the bathroom door was still closed. If she could get them both in there she would be safe.

Mrs. Greene felt hot needles pierce her belly button, and she looked down and saw a rat clinging to her waistband, nose beneath her shirt, and something inside her broke. She saw a squirming pile of rats where Miss Mary and Ragtag had been and she ran for the bathroom, grabbing the rat on her stomach with one hand and hurling it away, even as it sank its teeth into her belly button and she felt it tear with a sound she would never forget.

She hit the bathroom door with her body, turned the knob, and fell inside, then slammed the door on the rats behind her and leaned back, holding it closed as claws scrabbled against it from the other side. Covered in rat hair that made her sneeze and gag, she slid to the floor.

Sloshing came from the toilet and she heard the unmistakable sound of something losing purchase on the porcelain, sliding down, and thrashing in the toilet water. Mrs. Greene grabbed the shower head on its flexible hose and turned the knob to full hot. She stepped up onto the closed toilet lid just as dozens of rats began to push at it from below. She turned the steaming, hissing shower head on the scrabbling claws beneath the crack in the door, on the rats flattening their skulls and trying to squirm under, and their high-pitched screeches made her eardrums throb.

She squatted on top of the toilet lid in the tiny, hot bathroom, feeling the water beneath the lid boiling with rats as steam filled the bathroom, and after a while she couldn’t hear Miss Mary’s shrieks through the door anymore.



* * *



—

They sang “Happy Birthday” to Grace around 10:30 p.m., and then the party began to break up. Patricia suggested they stroll down to Alhambra Hall, just to get some fresh air, but Carter said he had to go in early so they went right home.

“What’s that smell?” Carter asked as they opened the front door and stepped inside.

The house smelled so strongly of wild animals and urine that Patricia’s eyes began to water. Even though she’d left the mushroom lamp on the hall table turned on, it was dark. She flipped the light switch and saw the mushroom lamp lying in pieces across the floor.

The smell got stronger in the den, the floor dotted with brown pellets and puddles of urine. The sofa was shredded, the curtains hung in tatters. Her first thought was that vandals had broken in. She and Carter walked fast for the garage room and stopped short in the doorway.

A giant had picked up the room and shaken it hard: chairs turned over, tables on their sides, medicine bottles scattered among dead rats, their corpses dotting the carpet. And in the middle of all this wreckage, Mrs. Greene knelt over Miss Mary, caked in blood, clothes torn to rags. She raised her head from the old woman’s lips and pressed down hard on her chest, performing perfect CPR compressions, and then she saw them and cried out in a cracked and terrible voice, “The ambulance is on its way.”





CHAPTER 13


Three of Miss Mary’s fingers had been stripped to the bone. She would need reconstructive surgery to rebuild her lips. They weren’t sure about her nose. They thought they could save her left eye.

“Uh-huh, uh-huh,” Carter said, nodding rapidly. “But Mom’ll be okay?”

“After we stabilize her she’ll need several surgeries,” the doctor said. “But at her age you may want to consider whether that’s even wise. After that, with extensive rehab and physical therapy she should be able to return to her normal life, in a limited fashion.”

“Good, good,” Carter said, still nodding. “Good.”

The doctor left and Patricia tried to take Carter’s hand and reconnect him to reality.

“Carter,” she said. “Do you want to sit down?”

“I’m good,” he said, pulling his hand away and running it over his face. “You should go get some rest. It’s been a long night.”

“Carter,” she said.

“I’m fine,” he said. “I think I’ll actually go by my office and catch up on some work. I’ll see Mom when they bring her out of surgery.”