Flight to Darkness Read Online Free PDF Page B

Hell with my legs.”
    “ Tell me you love me,” she
said.
    “ I do. I love you.”
    “ Say my name with it.”
    “ I love you, Leda.” I could feel it
all welling up inside me like damming the Mississippi
river.
    “ Tighter, Eric!” She sat up,
frowned.
    God, I thought, I did something
wrong.
    She stood, glanced sharply at me, then walked
toward the door. Her crepe soles whisked heartlessly.
    “ 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