Page:Weird Tales volume 38 number 03 CAN.djvu/46

 miles from the construction site. I had to get out, somewhere, anywhere.

So several days later when the hospital doctor and the psychologist asked me to sign a paper agreeing to go to a "sanitarium," I complied happily. I knew this was a—well, to put it bluntly—an insane asylum but I also knew that I wasn't crazy. But if I stayed here, that rumbling metal monster would get me.

The place to which I allowed myself to be committed voluntarily was no state booby hatch. We'd had a little money put away upon which I now felt free to draw. And the semi-private sanitarium was thankfully out at the other side of the state several hundred miles away.

REMEMBER the day I left Northville. The day had been hot, the sky was suffused with mistiness, and as we went out into the street to get into the taxi that would go to the station, I noticed that one of those sudden summer storms was coming up. My traveling companion was a male nurse, or maybe I should say, attendant. As we trundled away from the hospital, the beginnings of a feeling of relief stole over me. The streets grew darker suddenly, and then in the distance there was a rumbling. At first, like on that horrendous night, I could not identify the sound, but suddenly the fear came to me, catching me by the throat, that it was Big Mike, that he was after me, that he'd never let me leave Northville.

I guess maybe I leaned forward a bit on the taxi seat, for when there was a flash of lightning, big fat droplets of water exploded against the taxi window and I sank back with relief, I noticed that the attendant was looking at me closely. Of course, the rumbling had been thunder. Probably Big Mike was up beyond the other end of town shovelling away busily, all thoughts of me gone from his metal mind.

Still I was glad to get on the express, glad with every mile that clicked off as we headed across the state. The male nurse—his name was Simpson, I learned—was a nice enough fellow, but he was always eyeing me as though he half expected me to do something strange. The joke, of course, was on them, for I was escaping from something or someone who had had it in for the Meglunds, whether Ronsford's ghost or not, I didn't know or care. I just knew there was some terrible menace back in Northville. It had gotten Ed and I didn't want it to get me. Also, my "condition" had cut short the noisy police questioning. I can say with a clear conscience that I had nothing directly to do with the death of Ronsford.

Oh, I suppose I knew what was going to happen, my husband being the kind of man he was, brooding around about wanting to operate that damn shovel, and nights he'd skulk around outside in the woods between the little rented cottage and the construction site. But honest to God, I never knew the real story. Ed didn't last long enough to tell me. Sure, I heard him digging out there one night in the soft earth and it was the next day that Ronsford was just gone. But Vilma not the one to stick her nose into other people's business. That steamshovel job brought more money, too, and that was okay my me. You think a girl wants to grow old and never have any of the nice things? You're crazy. Let Ed be the big shot and run the steam shovel, I thought. I'll take the extra dough, and if he keeps his mouth shut, I'll keep my mouth shut. So I couldn't be implicated