How’d they get in here so fast? Where did they all come from?
Something bumped her leg and she looked down to see Ragtag, body stiff, facing the door, lips curled back to expose bared teeth, mouth open, tongue cramped in a fold, making a deep, nasty sound. The dirty smell of the rats rolled into the room, paralyzing Mrs. Greene with fear. She still remembered that night when she was a little girl, waking up with something squirming beneath the blankets, something bald and fleshy and cold slithering over her shins, and her sister screaming, high, long, and loud, like she’d never stop, until their mother came in running, pulling the covers back to find a hairy rat fixed to her sister’s belly button, chewing its way in.
That childhood nightmare came screaming at her as the huge black rat on the steps went from stone still to a black blur, leaping off the stairs, racing at Miss Mary across the empty carpet, moving so fast she screamed.
And Ragtag was there, snapping the black rat up in his jaws and savagely shaking his head. She heard something snap, and a keening squeak muffled inside a furry throat, and then the enormous rat was on the ground, body contracting, going limp. But as its corpse twitched, the flood of rats bulged in the doorway, then broke and poured bonelessly down the steps, flowing around the box fan, coming for the three of them.
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.”
Patricia gave up and drove home a couple of hours before dawn. When she pulled into the driveway her headlights swept across the yard and the shadows seethed and scattered, fading back into the dark bushes: hundreds and hundreds of rats. Patricia sat in her car for a minute, lights on bright, then got out and ran for the front door.
* * *
—
Dead rats littered the den. There were even more in the garage room. She didn’t know what to do. Bury them? Put them in the trash? Call Animal Control? She knew what to do if too many people showed up for supper, or if someone arrived early for a party, but what did you do when rats attacked your mother-in-law? Who told you how to cope with that?
She decided to start with the garage room. Her heart contracted painfully when she saw Ragtag’s limp corpse stretched in the middle of the carpet. Poor dog, she thought as she bent over to pick him up.
He opened one eye and his tail thumped feebly against the carpet.
Patricia wrapped him in an old beach towel and drove to the vet’s office at twenty-six miles per hour. She was waiting when he showed up to unlock his office door.
“He’ll live,” Dr. Grouse said. “But it won’t be inexpensive.”
>
“Whatever it takes,” Patricia told him. “He’s a good dog. You’re a good dog, Ragtag.”
She couldn’t find an unlacerated part of him to pet, so she settled on thinking good thoughts about him as hard as she could all the way back home. When she got out of the car she heard the phone ringing inside the house. She took it in the kitchen.
“Mom died,” Carter said, biting down hard on each word.
“Carter, I am so sorry. What can I do?”
“I don’t know, Patty,” he said. “What do people do? I was ten when Daddy died.”
“I’ll call Stuhr’s,” she said. “How’s Mrs. Greene?”
“Who?” he asked.
“Mrs. Greene,” she repeated, not sure how to better describe the woman who’d tried to save his mother’s life.
“Oh,” he said. “They put in some stitches and she’ll have to get a rabies series, but she went home.”
“Carter,” she repeated. “I’m so sorry.”
“Okay,” he said, dazed. “You too.”
He hung up. Patricia stood in the kitchen, not knowing what happened next. Who did she call? Where did she begin? Overwhelmed, she dialed Grace.
“How unusual,” Grace said, after Patricia explained what had happened. “At the risk of sounding insensitive, we should get started.”
Relief flooded Patricia as Grace took over. She called Maryellen, who arranged for Stuhr’s to pick up Miss Mary’s body from the hospital, and then she told Patricia what to do with the children.
“Korey will have to start soccer camp a few days late,” Grace said. “I’ll call Delta and change her ticket. As for Blue, he’ll need to stay with friends. You don’t want him seeing the house like this.”
Grace and Maryellen searched for someone to clean the house, which was now crawling with fleas and reeking of rats, but they couldn’t find anyone to take the job.
“So much for the professionals,” Grace said. “I called Kitty and Slick and we’re coming tomorrow. It’ll take us a few days but we’ll make sure it’s done right.”
“That’s too much,” Patricia said.
“Nonsense,” Grace said. “The most important thing right now is to clean that house until it’s safe. I’ll make a list of furniture and drapes and carpets and all the things you’ll need to replace. And of course you’ll stay at the beach house with Carter and the children until we’re finished.”
On the other end of things, Maryellen organized the visitation, helped with Miss Mary’s burial insurance, and got Miss Mary’s obituary written and placed in the Charleston paper and in the Kershaw News-Era. The only thing she couldn’t do was promise an open casket.
“I’m so sorry,” she told Patricia, sitting in Johnny Stuhr’s office. “Kenny does our makeup and he doesn’t think there’s enough left to work with.”
Miss Mary’s service followed upstate rules: no jokes, no laughter, and all the scripture from the King James Bible. Her coffin sat at the front of the church with no flowers on it, lid screwed down tight. They had to go back three hymnals to find the hymn Carter said was Miss Mary’s favorite, “Come Thou Disconsolate.”
Packed into the hard pews of Mt. Pleasant Presbyterian, Carter sat next to Patricia, hunched and miserable. She took his hand and squeezed, and he gave a limp squeeze back. For years, his mother had told him he was the smartest and most special boy in the world and he’d believed her. Having her die like this, in his house, in a way he couldn’t even really explain to people, was a kind of failure he’d never experienced before.
Korey took things harder than Patricia expected, and tears ran down her cheeks throughout the service. Blue kept standing up to see the coffin, but at least he’d brought A Bridge Too Far to read and not a book with a swastika on the cover.
After the graveside service, Grace opened her home and took all the quiches, and ham biscuits, and Kitty’s casseroles, and Slick’s ambrosia, and all the cold-cut platters people had brought by and laid them out on her dining room table. There was no bar because that wasn’t what you did for a funeral, and they made the children go down to Alhambra to play because having them horsing around in the front yard didn’t look right.
As one old face from Carter’s past after another brought him over to their children, told stories about him, made him smile, Patricia saw him coming back to life, assuming his natural place as the center of attention. After all, he was the small-town boy who’d worked hard and become a famous doctor in Charleston—that was his real identity, not the little boy whose mother died in his garage room in a way that made people do double takes when they were told.
Monday morning, Patricia drove Korey to the airport and was touched at how hard she clung to her for a moment before dashing out of the car, her huge red, white, and blue duffel bag knocking against her legs. Then she drove to the beach house, packed their bags, and moved them back into Pierates Cruze. The house smelled of bleach, and the downstairs looked empty and sounded hard. Anything with upholstery had been thrown out and would have to be replaced. But they were home. And the air conditioning finally worked.
Now Patricia had to do what she’d been dreading: she needed to check in on Mrs. Greene. She’d been hurt badly and hadn’t attended the funeral, and Patricia felt guilty she hadn’t gone to see her earlier.
The problem was getting someone to go with her.
“I couldn’t possibly,” Grace said. “I have to clean from the funeral party, and Ben needs me to drive up to Columbia with him for a meeting. I’m overwhelmed.”
Next she tried Slick.
“We all love Mrs. Greene,” Slick said. “She’s such a wonderful cook, and she’s strong in her faith, but Patricia, you would not believe how frantic we are with this new deal of Leland’s. Did I tell you about it? Gracious Cay? He’s been talking to investors and all those money people and things are just wild. Did I tell you…”
Finally, she tried Kitty.
“I’m just so busy…,” Kitty began.
“We wouldn’t stay long, Patricia told her.
“It’s Parish’s birthday next week,” Kitty said. “I’ve been run ragged.”
Patricia tried guilt.
“What with Ann Savage, and now Miss Mary,” Patricia said. “I don’t feel comfortable driving so far alone.”
It turned out that guilt worked. The next day Patricia drove down Rifle Range Road toward Six Mile with Kitty in the passenger seat, a pecan pie on her lap.
“I’m sure there are some very nice people who live out here,” Kitty said. “But have you heard of super-predators? They’re gangs who drive real slow at night and flash their headlights and if you flash back they follow you to your house and shoot you in the head.”
“Doesn’t Marjorie Fretwell live around here?” Patricia asked.
“Marjorie Fretwell once sucked a copperhead up in her vacuum cleaner because she didn’t know what to do with it and then she had to throw the whole vacuum away,” Kitty said. “Don’t talk to me about Marjorie Fretwell.”
They turned off Rifle Range Road onto the state road that led back into the woods around Six Mile. The houses got smaller and the yards got bigger—wide fields of dead weeds and yellowed finger-grass surrounding trailer homes mounted on cinder blocks and brick shoeboxes with crooked mailboxes out front. Electrical lines drooped across front yards crowded with too many cars that had too few tires.
Narrow roads, no wider than driveways, branched off the state road, plunging past chain-link fences, disappearing into groves of scrub oak and palmettos. Patricia saw the green-and-white reflective street sign for Grill Flame Road at the head of one of them, and she turned.
“At least lock your doors,” Kitty said, and Patricia hit the door lock button, making a comforting clunk.
She drove slow. The road was potholed and its asphalt edges crumbled off into sand. Houses crowded around it at odd angles.
A lot of them had been torn up during Hurricane Hugo and rebuilt by carpetbagging contractors who’d left before their work was complete. Some had heavy plastic stapled over their window frames instead of glass; others had framed rooms left unfinished and exposed to the weather.
No one’s yards were landscaped. All the trees were encrusted in vines. A skinny black man in shorts with no shirt sat on the front steps of his trailer drinking water out of a plastic one-gallon jug. Some little children in diapers stopped running through a sprinkler and pressed up against a chain-link fence to watch them drive by.
“Look for number sixteen,” Patricia said, concentrating on the potholed road.
They nosed forward beneath a scrub oak whose branches scraped the roof, then emerged into a big, sandy clearing. The road made a loop around a small, unpainted cinder-block church shaped like a shoebox. A sign out front proclaimed it to be Mt. Zion A.M.E. Neat little white and blue houses surrounded it. Down at the far end, some boys ran around a basketball court in the shade where the trees started, but here in front of the houses there was no shelter from the sun.
“Sixteen,” Kitty said, and Patricia saw a clean white house with black shutters and white, pressed-tin porch columns. A sun-faded cardboard cutout of Santa’s face sat inside a plastic holly wreath on the front door. Patricia parked at the end of the drive.
“I’ll wait in the car,” Kitty said.
“I’m taking the keys so you won’t be able to run the air conditioner,” Patricia said.
Kitty gathered her courage for a moment, then heaved herself up and followed Patricia outside. Instantly, the hot sun pierced the crown of Patricia’s head like a nail and bounced off the Volvo, blinding her.
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires Page 12
