Outpatient - A Story of Horror and Madness by Clifford Beck - HTML preview

Chapter 14

Two hours after leaving her apartment, Nancy found herself on the southern end of Route 27.

She had driven into the storm about 45 minutes ago, but the rain did not slow her down, and Nancy continued driving at around 65 miles an hour. She held the wheel with an iron grip, focusing on the road ahead as though she were staring down a wild animal. Thirty minutes later, she saw flashing red and blue lights in the distance that forced a horrifying image into her mind. It displayed itself to her consciousness as if she were sitting front and center in a movie theater. She saw Catherine's car lying off the side of the highway, trailed by a long black skid mark. The front of the car was crumpled against a large pine tree midway up the windshield, which had been shattered upon impact. Some fifteen feet into the woods lay a yellow vinyl tarp that had been partially pulled back, while several police officers aimed their flashlights at a scene that would stay with them forever. Nancy's mind flashed from one disturbing image to the next like a series of photographic stills, and she now saw beneath the tarp. As the images revealed themselves to her, Catherine's body lay on the rain-soaked earth, twisted into a misshapen tangle of broken limbs. Her entire face was badly scraped after impacting against the pine tree's thick, unforgiving bark. Her nose rested against her cheek after being partially torn away by its collision with the pine tree's unmoving bulk, while the ground beneath her head soaked up the blood that had streamed from the middle of her face.

Nancy began crying as she pulled her attention from the horrific images in her mind and back to the highway. Within a few minutes, she found herself slowing down as she approached the roadblock that had been set up in front of Catherine's car. She stopped her car and, after pulling the emergency brake, jumped out and was stopped by a police officer.

"I'm sorry, Miss," he began. "But this part of the highway"s been blocked off."

"But I know whose car that is!" Nancy replied with a great deal of urgency.

The officer looked at her with a slightly stunned expression, then motioned her over to the car.

"Come on over here," he said. "Maybe you can answer some questions for us." The officer led Nancy over to the car, and she immediately noticed that it was completely undamaged.

"It was found that passing motorists were just sitting here, still idling with the headlights on," the officer said.

"In this weather, it's a wonder no one hit it. Someone could've been killed." Nancy bent down to look into the still-open driver's door while the officer aimed his flashlight into the car.

"We turned it off, trying not to disturb anything inside," the officer said as Nancy scanned the inside of the vehicle.

"You want to tell us about this?"

"Are there any footprints leading into the woods?" Nancy asked.

"No," the officer replied. "Is there something we should know about this person?" Nancy stood up and turned to the officer with a bit of hesitation.

"Well, it's a long story," she said. They stood next to the car as the rain continued to fall while Nancy explained Catherine's condition to the officer, who wrote down as much as he could in his notepad.

"And what did you say that was called again?" the officer asked. "Schizo, what?"

"Schizophrenia," Nancy replied. "She has paranoid schizophrenia."

"Do you think she could be dangerous or become violent?" asked the officer.

"Really, I don't know," she replied. The officer continued writing in his notepad and had he looked up into Nancy's face, he would have known that she was lying. She didn't want Catherine to be treated like a common criminal or some kind of escaped lunatic, and if the police had the chance to approach her, she wanted to be there as a calming, familiar face. "Are you sure there aren't any tracks going into the woods?" Nancy asked.

"We didn't find any," the officer replied. "But the storm probably washed away any tracks that may have been in the area."

"What about a search party?" Nancy asked. The officer shook his head.

"Not in this weather," he said. "It'd be impossible to find anything in these woods right now, especially at night, and we can't take the chance of risking other people for only one person."

Nancy knew that the officer was right, but she couldn't help feeling somewhat appalled by the idea of simply giving up on another human being, regardless of the circumstances.

"Look, I'm sorry about your friend," the officer said. "But, if it makes you feel any better, we did call in a helicopter to search the surrounding woods. It's not likely that they're going to see anything through all of this dense cover, but there may be a few small clearings they can search." Just as the officer finished his words, he heard the distant buzz of an approaching helicopter, and within moments it was roaring over their heads. Its blades slashed through the night air while a

large searchlight pierced the dark sky like a hot wire through butter.

"Do you have any idea where she may have gone?" the officer asked.

The sound of the helicopter beating its blades against the cold air forced the officer to yell to be heard.

"Catherine would have gone someplace where she felt safe!" Nancy replied. She had also found herself yelling as the helicopters circled for another pass.

"How long are you going to keep looking?"

"It's hard to say," the officer replied. "There"s a second front coming in."

"You can't just leave her out there!" Nancy protested.

"I wish the weather was more cooperative," he said. "But we're doing everything we can."

Nancy nodded her head and returned to her car. She sat in the front seat with her forehead resting on the wheel and her hands on the sides of her head. Trying to maintain some semblance of clarity, she was suddenly struck with what the officers had missed.

"Someplace safe," she whispered to herself. She realized now that the police were so busy looking for Catherine that they had overlooked the obvious. Nancy started her car, backed up about ten feet, drove around the roadblock along the left side of the highway, and headed north. She had a strong feeling that Catherine may have tried to make her way home. Even in this weather, she may be driven enough by fear and paranoia to try to get home on foot. Nancy turned her high beams on and, as she drove up Route 27, began searching the sides of the road. The Carrabassett Valley was known not only for its beauty. But its dense pine forests and not a summer went by without a few hikers getting lost. And it was always expected that some of them would never be found.