Flight to Darkness (5 page)

“
Leda,” I said. “Don’t go. Where’re
you going?”

She didn’t answer. She closed the door and I
heard her going down the hall. You damned fool, I told myself. You
did something. What the hell did you do? You’ve ruined it. That’s
how you ruin it. I cursed and smashed the bed with my
fist.

Then suddenly I knew I loved her. I was in
love with her. It was no good, but that’s the way it
was.

The walls of the room eventually grew smaller
with darkness and I fought sleep because to fight sleep was to win
out over the dream.

Daily we grew closer and I became stronger,
but she wouldn’t come to bed. Because someone might come into the
room. I knew I had to get well.

There was little mail from home. None from
Mother, and Frank’s letters few and addressed to Prescott. Whatever
news they held for me was brusque. He said he had run the loan
business into some money. My father’s crazy dream. All I saw was
Frank running out of money. Mother was close to death, Frank said.
Any light shock could take her away.

Frank ignored my questions. Sometimes I
wondered a bit insanely if he was alive, if I hadn’t killed him
after all. Maybe that’s why I was in the hospital. At these times I
needed Leda.

And all the time, night and day, I fought the
dream. I had to leave the hospital, get to work, get back to my
sculpturing. I wanted to do Leda in stone. Inch by inch I learned
her body by hand. Her mind. She had crawled into my mind. She was
insidious and she kept me on a cliff of desire.

Then I was up and around. Stronger. Making my
visits to Prescott’s office alone now. I used canes. The dreams
were bad and I told Leda all about them.

She spoke of Frank. “I can’t see what you hold
against him. Looks to me more like a go-getter than you. Looks like
he’ll have plenty of money.”

“
Wish you’d get money out of your
head, baby.”

“
I like money.”

“
What else do you like?”

She looked at me. “Not like. Would
like.”

It was Sunday afternoon and we had planned to
spend it on the hospital grounds together. She met me outside the
building. I had looked forward to this for a long time. Being with
her, alone, out of sight of people. But I hadn’t looked forward to
what I got.

I still used two canes. But I walked all right
and felt fine. I felt as if I could tear down a brick
wall.

I knew the moment I saw her. . . .

She was wearing a dress. Not a nurse’s
uniform. It was a black dress with a zipper all the way down the
front in a fold of white. Her eyes were foggy and heavy-lidded and
she wore high-heeled shoes and sheer nylons and her hair was thick
and blinding.

“
We’ll walk over there,” she said.
She was urgent, almost grim.

I couldn’t speak right. My throat was thick. I
was all bunged up inside and ready to burst. She brushed against me
and we looked at each other. Her eyes were hot and her lips damp.
We walked on down across the lawn, the green softness, until we
were in a thick copse of fir and the walls of the hospital were
shielded from view.

“
Leda,” I said. I held her and
dropped the canes. She moved her body against me. “Let’s sit down,”
I said, and the ground was soft and warm with the sun up there and
the shadows.

She was suddenly mute. There was an expression
of intense anxiousness on her face. She stood beside me, looked
down at me, her eyes burning. She dampened her lips with her
tongue, reached for the zipper on her dress. Her hands shook. The
zipper screamed and the dress opened as she came down toward
me.

There was nothing beneath the dress. She kept
staring at me, peeling off the dress, staring with that mute,
terrific anxiousness.

I cursed her. She was a complete savage,
bursting with passion, lustful, wanton, wild. At first it was like
drinking hot red wine. Then the whole world shuddered and rocked,
with the trees thick and mingled with her hair and the smell of it
with the sunny shade, a dark blinding explosion.

She was absolutely mine. The dream.

“
You planned this. Your clothes,
everything,” I said finally. I held her close and quiet. She nodded
against me.

“
Yes. I’ve been crazy inside.
You’ve made me crazy. Darling, make me sane again.”

I did.

Prescott, the dream, the attempt to uncover
the why of the dream, the mostly failure, the realization at last
that the hospital was no more help. Leda and the long waiting and
now we were going home. My home. And I would face the
dream.

“
I’ll be right with you,” Leda told
me from the bedroom of the Dark Mesa. “Quit thinking the wrong
way.”

“
Sure.”

“
Don’t be afraid.”

That was easy to say. . . .

She came out of the bedroom looking wonderful
in a gray dress trimmed with gold, carrying a short coat. She shone
all over.

She put the yellow robe in a suitcase along
with some other things, then faced me, smiling. “I’m ready,” she
said.

I didn’t move from the couch. I was scared way
down inside. I felt like hell. Because things were coming closer
and closer.

“
Eric,” she said. “You’ll be all
right. It’s the getting started. This is your first day away from
the regime.”

“
Yeah.”

“
You’ll be all right.”

“
Okay. I’ll be fine.” I rose,
squeezed her hand. “You just want to start right now, without
anything?”

Her luggage wasn’t heavy, and as we walked
outside into the fine summer day, Leda was beautiful and laughing.
The car was new and bright and I was free and going home. It was
just too good, that’s all. It was just too good.

Chapter 3

That day in Alabama was sponsored by the devil
and conceived in the blood-hot womb of hell. There was no way to
recognize Leda’s remote connection with its birth. It was her
first-born of a brood of damnable days succeeding each other only
in their hellishness.

And me—I just went along, like
always.

Eight days after leaving the hospital in
California, we reached Sordell, in southern Alabama, on a Tuesday
evening. The trip had been fine, but my head rocked right now. So
we picked out a tourist court called the Seven Pines. There were
really countless pines, but maybe there had been seven in the
beginning. There was a small pond called a lake.

The dream was persistent and with every mile
nearer home I had more trouble quelling the desire to turn tail and
run. It was like living in a vacuum of intense fear. Leda’s hot
nearness was the only antidote.

Our cabin, rustic, set up against the shore of
the lake; surrounded by pines, was the last one in a semicircle of
twenty.

“
It’s okay,” Leda said. “You’ve
been driving a lot. Let’s stay here a couple days, rest up.” She
flashed a smile and looked sidewise out of her deep blue eyes. “We
can play around a little, too. If you get what I mean. We don’t
want to be grabbing at each other like a couple of kids when we
reach your home. From what you tell me of your brother, he might
not like it.”

“
Hell with Frank! We’ll stay,
though. I feel like a sick dog—headache.”

So we decided to leave on Thursday for the
last stab to Cypress Landing, Florida. And I didn’t feel sick just
because of the headache. I was putting off the last of the trip. I
felt like getting drunk, hauling Leda into bed, and staying there
for the rest of time.

The owner of the Seven Pines, a portly,
florid-faced, tobacco-chewing, overall-clad man named Woodruff, was
pleased we were staying. Anybody would be pleased to have the likes
of Leda staying around if only for scenery. She was wearing shorts.
Leda did plenty for shorts. She had the solid, full, long shape it
takes to fill them right. I’d told her so.

“
You’re just biased,” she said.
“And don’t tell me it’s the artist in you!”

Only two other cabins were occupied, and the
owner lived in a combination house and lunchroom with his wife,
Amelia. She was a long, thin, wrack of a woman, without hips or
breasts, and with black hair combed flat to her skull like an
Indian’s. She didn’t like Leda, but she tried to like
her.

The convertible was parked in front of the
cabin. I was tired and my head ached like hell. Leda felt fine. She
always felt fine. She hadn’t been out of shorts now for days now
and in the cabin she thrust herself into a black play suit. It had
green lizards climbing and cavorting on it. The shorts were very
short, Leda’s legs very long. Still, she rolled the rims of the
shorts high and tight.

“
All I want’s a shower and bed,” I
said.

“
Better eat something. Your energy
quotient’s probably down.”

“
Quit playing the
nurse.”

“
I never played much nurse with
you, did I?” Her eyes were bright beneath those dark lids of hers
and the tan she’d picked up on the trip looked good. In bed nights
her body was warm and velvety. “Get that look out of your eyes,” I
said. “You feel so good, take the car and run into town. Pick up
some tooth paste. I need some shaving cream and blades. Maybe I can
grab a nap.”

She came over and shoved herself against me.
We kissed and it was good. I pushed her away, saying, “Go ahead
now.”

It was already dark outside and through the
open window the smell of rain yawned among crimson curtains. Leda
stuck her lower lip out, jammed her hands into her pockets. It only
made the shorts more so. “Okay, stick-in-the-mud. I’ll go have a
cup of coffee in the lunchroom and tease the Woodruff’s first. You
can rest!”

She was like that. I grabbed her and she
melted up against me, her mouth soft beneath the pressure of my
lips. Her movements were frank, yet secret with desire—sly in a way
that yielded a rich harvest of quick passion. That old feeling of
choking urgency came over me and her eyes went smoky. Then she
tickled me hard beneath my arms, whirled toward the
door.

“
I’ll be back, lover-boy,” she
said. “Ta-ta!”

I jumped for her but she flung the door wide.
Just outside, in the saffron glow of light from the cabin, she made
a face at me and stuck out her tongue. I watched her hips as she
went over to the car. They were something to watch and I never
tired of it. The longer I was with Leda, the more I hated her and
the more I loved her, wanted her.

The car drove off up the drive. I went inside,
stripped, took a shower. The water was tepid, probably pumped from
the lake. My head ached worse than before and I couldn’t chase the
big worry.

I slipped on a pair of shorts and stretched
out on the bed. I wanted to sleep. But each time I dozed, I snapped
myself awake again. It was the old grim taunt, every night, every
time I wished for sleep.

I feared sleep. Because with sleep came the
dream.

We were nearing Florida and I knew we’d have
to meet my brother. There was an actual fear in my heart. I didn’t
know what I’d do; I didn’t know. I was scared to even think of
it.

I envied Leda for the way she felt. Exuberant,
full of zest. It was hard to believe she’d ever been a nurse. But
then, remembering, it was hard to put my finger on any nurse-like
quality in Leda. Those long months at the hospital in California,
after Korea, were jumbled, hazy.

I turned off the lights. The bed felt good. I
tried to blank out my mind so I could sleep.

I must have finally succeeded.

The lights were on in the cabin. All of them.
And bright. I woke up like that, with the door of the cabin open
against the rain. A man stood in the door. His back was to me, but
he wore a blue cop’s uniform.

I sat up. Another man was in the corner of the
room, also uniformed, and still another bent above the bed. He was
in plain clothes.

“
This Garth?” he said toward the
door.

“
I reckon so.” It was Herb
Woodruff’s voice, from outside in the rain. “That’s Mister Garth,
leastways.” The cop at the door stepped aside and Woodruff thrust
his head inside, his jaws thrusting around a cud of tobacco. The
shadow of his head loomed large and motionless for a brief moment
against the wall. “These folks want to see you for a spell,” he
said.

“
What for?”

The man in plain clothes beside the bed
grunted. He wore a gray felt hat, freckled with raindrops, shoved
back on his head and he had both hands in the pockets of his gray
suit. He sported a dark red tie with a Windsor knot. There was a
thick gold watch chain webbed across his bulging vest. I hadn’t
seen a vest in a long while.

I glanced at my watch on the night table.
Eight-thirty. It was raining hard. Diamond drops of water glistened
on the dark uniforms.

“
My name is Redfern,” the man in
the gray suit said. He had a dry, papery voice. He had ageless eyes
and they sneered at me. That’s the way he looked at the
world.