The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires(88)
She examined the suitcase and realized the one with Francine’s body in it was rubbed clean. She scooped up roach powder and mouse droppings and used them to dirty the suitcase. It would do the job if he didn’t look closely.
Standing made her feel exposed, so she forced herself to lie down behind the draped mound of Mrs. Savage’s things. With her ear pressed to the filthy plywood floor, she heard the house vibrating beneath her. She heard doors opening and closing. She heard footsteps. Then she heard nothing. The silence made her nervous.
She checked her wristwatch: 4:56. The silence lulled her into a trance. She could stay here, he wouldn’t look for her here, she’d wait as long as she needed, and she’d listen, and when it got dark he’d leave the house and she could sneak out. She would be strong. She would be smart. She would be safe.
She heard the springs groan as the trapdoor opened, and light flooded the far end of the attic.
“Patricia,” James Harris said loudly, coming up the steps, springs screaming crazily beneath his feet. “I know you’re up here.”
She looked at the filthy blankets draped over the boxes and realized that even getting under them wouldn’t help. The furniture was too sparse to hide her. If he walked around to this side of the stacks he’d see her. There was nowhere to go.
“I’m coming for you, Patricia,” he called, happily, as he got to the top of the ladder.
Then she saw the pile of clothes on the edge of the attic where the plywood flooring ended. Several boxes had split open and disgorged their contents into a huge mound.
If she could burrow into that pile she would be hidden. She crawled closer, staying low, the reeking stench of rotting fabric scraping her sinuses raw. Her gorge slapped against the back of her throat. The footsteps coming up the ladder stopped.
“Patty,” James’s voice said from the middle of the attic. “We need to talk.”
She heard the plywood creak beneath his weight.
She raised the stiff edge of the pile and began to slither under, head first. Spiders fled from the disturbance, and roach eggs loosened from the fabric and rained down on her face. Centipedes fell out and squirmed against the hollow of her throat. She heard James Harris coming across the attic floor and she forced herself to fight down her gorge and slither in, moving carefully so she didn’t disturb the blankets draped overhead. His feet came closer; they were at the edge of the boxes now, and she pulled her feet in under the rotting pile of clothes and lay there, trying not to breathe.
Insects seethed across her body, and she realized she’d disturbed a mouse nest. Clawed feet squirmed over her stomach, writhed over her hip. She wanted to scream. She kept her mouth clamped shut, taking small shallow breaths through her nose, feeling the stinking fabric around her crawling with mites, roaches, and mice.
Desiccated insect husks lay on her face, but she didn’t dare brush them away. Spiders crept across her knuckles. She made herself hold very still. She heard another step and she could tell he was lifting the blankets draped over Ann Savage’s boxes, looking underneath, and she pretended she was invisible.
“Patricia,” James Harris said, conversationally. “Why are you hiding in my attic? What are you looking for up here?”
She thought about how he’d gotten Francine’s body into the suitcase, how he’d probably had to take his big hands and break her arms, shatter her shoulders, crush her elbows, pull her legs out of their sockets and twist them into splinters to make them fit. He was so strong. And he was standing directly over her.
The pile of rotten fabric shifted and moved, and she willed herself to become smaller and smaller until there was nothing left. Something extended a delicate, gentle leg onto her chin, then moved over her lips, delicately scraping them with its hairy legs, and she felt the roach’s antenna brush the rim of her nostrils like long, waving hairs. She wanted to scream but she pretended she was made of stone.
“Patricia,” James Harris said. “I can see you.”
Please, please, please don’t go up my nose, she silently begged the cockroach.
“Patricia,” James Harris said from right beside her. What if her feet were sticking out? What if he could see them? “It’s time to stop playing. You know how much it hurts me to go outside during the day. I don’t feel very good right now, and I’m not in the mood for games.”
The roach stepped past her nose, brushed over her cheekbone, and she squeezed her eyes shut, gritty in their sockets with all the rotting fabric flaking into them, and the roach’s progress across her face tickled so badly she had to brush her cheek or she would go insane. The roach crawled down the side of her face, over her ear, probing inside her ear canal with its antenna, then, drawn by the warmth, its legs began to scrabble into her ear.
Oh, God, she wanted to moan.
Please, please, please, please…
She felt the antenna waving, exploring deep inside her ear, and it sent cold shivers down her spine, and bile boiled up her throat, and she pressed her tongue against the roof of her mouth, and felt the bile fill her sinuses, and the legs were inside her ear now, and its wings were fluttering delicately against the top of her ear canal, and she felt it crush its body into her ear.
“Patricia!” James Harris shouted, and something moved violently, and crashed over, and she almost screamed but she held on, and the roach forced its way deeper into her ear, three quarters in, its legs scrabbling deeper, and soon she wouldn’t be able to get it out, and James Harris kicked over furniture, and she felt the blankets move.