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.

Then loud stomps moved away from her, and she heard the springs moan, and the roach fluttered its wings, trying to force itself deeper, but it was jammed, and she felt like it was fluttering its front legs against the side of her brain, and she knew James Harris was only pretending to go down, and then there was a bang and the floor jumped, and silence, and she knew he was waiting for her.

She got her left hand ready to catch the back legs of the roach before it disappeared into her ear, and she listened, waiting to hear James Harris give himself away, but then, far away, deep down inside the house she heard a door slam.

Patricia scrambled out from under the pile of clothes, feeling mouse droppings shower from her body, tearing at her ear, and she couldn’t catch the roach, and it panicked and squirmed, pushing its way into her ear, and she grabbed her soft tissue all around it, and crumpled her ear closed. Something crunched and popped and warm fluid oozed deep inside her ear canal, and she pulled out the mangled corpse of the roach, and scraped the hot gunk out with her little finger.

Spiders crawled from her hair onto her neck. She slapped at them, praying they weren’t black widows.

Finally, she stopped. She looked at the pile of old clothes and knew that even if he came back, there was no way she could make herself go under them again.

She watched the louvers get dimmer on the side of the attic facing the back of the house, and get brighter behind the louvers facing the harbor, and then the light turned rose, then red, then orange, and then it was gone. She began to shiver. How was she going to get out? What if he stayed in the house all night? What if he came back up after she’d fallen asleep? What if Carter called home? Did Blue and Korey know where she was?

She checked her watch. 6:11. Her thoughts chased themselves around and around inside her head as the sun went down and the heat leached out of the attic. She felt thirsty, hungry, scared, and filthy. Eventually she put her feet back under the moldering pile of clothes to keep them warm.

Occasionally, she dropped off to sleep and would wake up with a jerk of her head that made her neck snap. She listened for James Harris, shivered uncontrollably, and stopped looking at her watch because she’d think an hour had passed and each time discovered it had only been five minutes.

She wondered what had happened to Slick, and she wondered why he had come back early, and why he had risked going out in daylight, and inside her cold, gummy head, these thoughts went slower and slower and melted together and suddenly she knew it was Slick.

Slick had told him she was here. That was why Slick hadn’t come. She had called James Harris in Florida because her Christian values couldn’t stand to bend the rules, and Patricia had found something, she’d found the something, she’d found Francine, but Slick didn’t care about that, she didn’t care that Patricia had told her James Harris was dangerous, she just cared about her precious, lilywhite soul.

She looked at her watch. 10:31. She’d been up here for seven hours. She had at least that many more to go. Why had Slick betrayed her? They were supposed to be friends. But Patricia realized she was on her own again.

It took a few minutes to identify the noise beneath her, coming through the floor, repeating itself again and again. Patricia wiped her nose and listened, but she couldn’t tell what it was. Then it stopped.

“What?!?” James Harris yelled. Even far away and muffled by the walls, it still made her jump.

The sound had been the phone ringing. She heard footsteps running downstairs, she heard the front door open and slam, then silence.

She sat, heart pounding, teeth chattering. Then her skin crawled: someone was scratching at the other side of the trapdoor. He was coming up again, finding the eyelet, pulling the trapdoor down. She was too tired, too cold, she couldn’t move, she couldn’t hide. Then came a noise like the end of the world as the trapdoor cracked, the springs screamed, and James Harris came up the ladder.

CHAPTER 31

“Patricia?” Kitty whispered.

Patricia couldn’t understand what Kitty was doing with James Harris.

“Patricia?” Kitty called louder.

Patricia pushed herself up on her elbows, then onto her hands, and looked over the top of the boxes. Kitty stood halfway inside the attic. Alone.

“Kitty?” Patricia said, her dry tongue sticking to the syllables.

“Oh, thank God,” Kitty said. “You scared me half to death. Come on.”

“Where is he?” Patricia asked, thoughts coming thick and slow.

“He left,” Kitty said. “Now mush. We need to be gone before he comes back.”

Patricia pushed herself up off the floor and reeled toward Kitty, knees popping, spine cracking, feet screaming with pins and needles as the blood poured back into them.

“How?” Patricia asked.

“Gracious Cay caught on fire,” Kitty said. “Mrs. Greene called and told me I needed to come get you out.”

“Where is she?” Patricia slurred, reaching the trap door.