Flight to Darkness by Gil Brewer

know what’s up about that
hit-and-run. They don’t say anything.”
    “ Where are you, Garth?”
    “ You know where I am.”
    “ You mean you’re still out there?
At the San?” He was politely incredulous.
    “ Yeah, that’s right.”
    “ Good God.” His manner changed
subtly. Not much, but just enough to be noticed. “Well, well. Did
you get your car all right?”
    “ What? Listen. What about that
hit-and-run business?”
    “ Why, hell, Garth. That’s what I
mean about the car. They should have told you. Allen withdrew all
charges. Said he wasn’t sure about anything. When they won’t place
charges, we can’t do anything.”
    I stood there hanging onto the phone as if it
were a piece of dead wood. My insides turned over and I felt dizzy.
Then my head began to clear.
    Redfern said, “We turned the car over to that
there girl. The one you called your wife, only she wasn’t. Turned
the car over to her and your brother. Say, did she go away,
Garth?”
    It burned down inside. I seemed to sense a
smile in his voice. I swallowed what I wanted to say. “Yeah,” I
said instead. “You turned the car over to them. They’re no charges,
like you say?”
    “ Like I say.”
    I glanced toward Jim. He was over in the
sitting room talking with Janie. Miss Watkins had her back turned
to me and was busily sharpening pencils.
    Redfern said, “Is there anything—” and I laid
the phone down carefully on the desk and walked quietly out the
front door into the blazing sunlight.
    Then I ran like hell.
     
     

Chapter 8
     
    I knew that if they caught me now, chances
were I’d be kept in that locked room forever. A man who was
suspected of being out of his mind, as I was, didn’t stand a
chance. There’d be no way of my explaining how I felt. I could say
over and over again, somebody’s doing this to me. I’m all right.
There’s nothing wrong with me. I know that. And they’d just sit and
listen and walk away and make motions at their temples to their
friends.
    It was a mean fix. So I ran hard, down the
walk to the street. The river was over there and for a brief
instant I thought of diving in, trying to swim away. But those
things were done in the backwoods, not here, where they’d just go
around the block and pick me up when I came out dripping and
exhausted.
    I spotted a car at the curb. It was an old
Ford coupe with a smashed fender.
    “ Eric!”
    It was Jim, coming hell-bent down the walk
after me. Miss Watkins was yelling at the door. I made for the
coupe, yanked the door open and dived inside. The keys were there.
Luck was changing. Maybe.
    I got the car started as Jim landed on the
side and pulled at the door. I cut a sharp left fist and caught his
forearm. He let go, running beside the car as I drove
off.
    “ That’s my car, Eric! Man, don’t do
it!”
    His face bobbed red and mad beside the car,
his eyes not pleading but mad, too, and his mouth a dark yelling
hole in his head, as he ran along, leaping hedges and staggering on
the curb.
    I ripped the wheel left, not caring now, and
Jim dived for it. I didn’t hit him, but he hit the dirt, hard. As I
whipped around the corner I glanced in the rear-view mirror. Jim
was kneeling half up, still yelling at me. Then all I could hear
was the roar of the motor and the rattle bang of the smashed fender
as I headed for the main road.
    The car ran smoothly. It was a hot afternoon.
The sun was white.
    They’d be after me. I had to ditch the car. I
was wearing overalls. I had no money. So far as I knew I was judged
a mental case. That would bring out a posse in this country; maybe
a mob with shotguns, muzzle-loaders, and what-have-you, all yelling
and ready to get the madman who had escaped from the Riverview
Sanitarium.
    I knew something else. Something I had refused
to admit to myself and something no one had been willing to
answer.
    Why was I being held at the sanitarium?
Because somebody’d had me committed. Otherwise I’d have been free
to go and they