Robert Bloch's Psycho

by Chet Williamson

  One such example was Judy Pearson, who jumped several inches straight up from her chair when Marie Radcliffe entered the break room. “Judy!” Marie said. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  Judy relaxed, or tried to. Her tiny frame seemed to shiver with the effort. “Oh, God, Marie, I’m sorry, I’ve been on pins and needles all day, what with Ronald Miller escaping, and the guys know that all that ghost talk scares the heck out of me, and they just kid me more now, and it’s starting to get dark, and it gets dark so early now I hate it, and…”

  Judy’s monologue was nearly unintelligible to Marie, though she was able to pick up bit and pieces. Judy never spoke much louder than a stage whisper, and when she was away from the hospital’s reception desk, the tempo of her words increased to rocket speed.

  “… and having to go into the coatroom alone, because nobody’s done at the same time as me, and the parking lot’s so dark, and then I get home and there’s nobody in my apartment—”

  “Judy,” Marie said, “I don’t blame you. I’m sure one of the guys would walk you to your car. I can ask Ben.”

  “Oh, would you? That would be great! I keep picturing Ronald Miller hiding under my car and reaching out and grabbing my legs and yanking me off my feet!”

  “He’s far gone from here, Judy.”

  “I just hope he didn’t go to my apartment; oh, God, I wonder if he knows where I live; you know the way he looks at every woman he sees, like he’d like to … oh, God, when the attendants would take him through the lobby past my desk, the look he’d give me…”

  “Well, be cautious, of course,” Marie said, “but everybody thinks he just wants to get out of the area, far away from here.”

  “Oh, God, as if the ghosts aren’t bad enough, now we have to have a … a monster on the loose…”

  7

  June 12, 1911

  To my great delight, Spiritual Repulsion Therapy has proven to be a successful treatment for those who have committed trespasses against their fellow men. When these patients are confronted in the deeps of the night with the spiritual manifestations of those they have wronged, the guilt they feel is nearly always a purging one, searing the evil from their souls as fire drives out impurities of the flesh.

  One patient, W.S., is a prime example of the efficacy of the treatment. W.S. was committed here by his father, a man of no little means, after the youth pummeled a Mexican girl to death because she would not yield to his advances. It is questionable as to whether or not he slaked his dark lusts after he had rendered the girl unconscious, but that is neither here nor there. What is certain is that he took an innocent life in a moment of rage.

  Being that the girl was Mexican, the authorities took the crime less seriously than if a white woman had been slaughtered, and it was arranged that W.S., in lieu of a prison sentence, would be committed here at the Ollinger Sanitarium. Of course this required that I testify that the act was committed as the result of a mental aberration, which I had no hesitation in doing. The beating to death of a young woman who had done nothing but withhold herself sexually is, by its very nature, the act of a madman. And it was my work to drive the madness out of that young man.

  We had numerous discussions before I utilized Spiritual Repulsion Therapy, and I found W.S. to be sly and dishonest in his intercourse with me. At times he told me what he suspected I wanted to hear, but his insincerity was obvious. In the few moments when I could draw from him the truth in his soul, I was appalled at what I found: a complete lack of guilt and responsibility for the death he had caused. I had no doubt that, were he to walk free again, it might not be long before he would take another life, perhaps even under the same circumstances, and that must not be allowed to happen.

  In total, W.S. received three treatments of Spiritual Repulsion Therapy, in ever increasing “dosages.” The first was audible only; the second visible only; the third a combination of the two. Specific sedatives in increasing doses were given W.S. in his evening meal each time, which made him not only less likely to have a response of attack, but made him more suggestible to the phenomena to which he was exposed.

  By the end of the third treatment, he was weeping tears of contrition, which continued until the morning, when an attendant came to take him to the dining room for breakfast. He begged to see me, and when I arrived (quite expectantly, I confess), he told me that he finally realized the gravity of his deed and repented of it. Dickens’s Scrooge, after the visit of the three spirits, was no more sincere than this poor lad, who had been struck to the heart by the therapy he had received.

  And it was then, with the thought of Scrooge in my mind, that I wondered if Mr. Dickens had been my ultimate inspiration for this therapy. Nothing I had heretofore done with this youth had proven as effective as the “visitation of spirits” he had experienced.

  At this point, I ended that so successful therapy and spent several months in more traditional channels. Just this week I pronounced W.S. cured, and today his father came to take him home. The youth has lost his rebellious, angry sprit completely, and now evinces a withdrawn, timid countenance, with more feminine than masculine emotions. Indeed, when his father came to retrieve him, he wept to see him, and when the father embraced the prodigal, the boy continued to weep and moan his apologies to his father, his victim, and the world. They left the facility, the father’s arm around the still-weeping boy.

  There have been a number of similar outcomes, some as dramatic, others less so but still successful. However, to be honest, I have experienced a few cases that were less than successful. While it is true that mankind’s primitive fear of the dead is a primary staple of my therapy, when that particular fear overwhelms all else, it can persuade what may be a mild aberration to become something worse. I wish to imbue my patients with moral responsibility for their actions, and if making them more timid and tractable is a by-product, then that is completely acceptable. But when the fear becomes so great that it turns to uncontrolled and incurable terror, the treatment is too harsh. It does no good to render a patient tractable, if they are also to become so distant as to be uncommunicative.

  Perhaps I shall relate some of these cases in the future, but they are too painful to revisit now. I must be optimistic regarding Spiritual Repulsion Therapy. Like any other treatment, mistakes can be made. Dosages can be too great. It may be found that some patients are more susceptible and suggestible to such therapy, sometimes too much so, and we shall be able to identify them anon. But this is a great experiment, and as with any experiment, there are bound to be sacrifices that must be made so that we can learn.

  I most sincerely pray that the sacrifices will be few.

  * * *

  What in the name of sweet baby Jesus was happening to this place? Myron Gunn wondered. Let one nut disappear, and it affects the whole damned fruitcake.

  Ronald Miller’s escape had made the good patients not as good, the bad ones worse, and the worst ones terrible. And the kicker was that they hadn’t caught the creep yet. That gave them all ideas that maybe they could escape somehow. And that just made them harder to handle.

  But, Myron was quick to remember, they were crazy, and their reactions could be crazy too. Take Wesley Breckenridge. Quiet little guy who had gone nuts and chopped up his wife one Christmas Eve, then put the pieces back together so that she was sitting on the couch when family company came. He brought them into the living room, then sat right next to her and held her hand, which wasn’t attached to anything else. Now that was a Christmas to remember.

  Wesley, however, had one of the strangest reactions to Miller’s departure. He was certain that the ghosts of the old sanitarium had gotten Miller somehow, but that wasn’t the strange part, since a lot of the patients (and even some of the staff) believed that. What made Wesley’s case strange was that he was convinced the ghosts who took Ronald Miller away ate him.

  “They got to get strength somewhere,” he said quietly when he explained his views to Dr. Steiner. “Ghosts gotta
eat too. I wanna get so skinny that they won’t want me.”

  Dr. Steiner had nodded his head, as though pretending Wesley’s theory sounded quite logical. Then he said, “I understand that, Wesley, but you have to eat something, or you’ll starve to death, and we don’t want that, now do we?”

  Myron thought, Hell, yeah, one less loony to deal with, but kept his mouth shut.

  “Wesley,” Dr. Steiner went on, “you haven’t eaten a thing in three days, and you’re not a very big person to begin with. In another day or so, your body will essentially start feeding on itself, and since you have very little stored body fat, your liver and other organs could be affected, and you could suffer permanent damage, even death. So you see, you have to begin to eat again.”

  Wesley shook his head. “Nope. Sorry, Doc, but I’m not gonna do it. I don’t want them ghosts to get me.”

  Dr. Steiner reasoned with Wesley for several minutes. Wesley admitted that he was hungry, and that, yes, certain foods would taste very good, but he wasn’t going to eat. Finally he promised to eat if a ghost showed up in his cell at night and refused to eat him because he was so thin. Then he’d have a little something. Not much, but enough to satisfy his hunger.

  “Wesley,” Dr. Steiner said with a smile, “we can’t afford to wait until a ghost comes and refuses you. You must eat. I would rather not order that you be force-fed, but if you refuse to eat I see no alternative. I don’t believe you’ve ever been force-fed, have you?”

  Wesley shook his head no.

  “It’s not very pleasant. Myron and some other attendants will have to place a lubricated tube into your nostril and down your throat into your stomach.”

  Wesley furrowed his brow.

  “And then they’ll slowly pour a semi-liquid, which is very soft and nutritious, down the tube until they’re assured that a certain amount is in your stomach.”

  Wesley frowned.

  “They won’t take out the tube right away, because they want to make sure that you won’t vomit up the mixture, so it will stay there for about half an hour. Then they’ll carefully remove the tube. This will be done every day until you decide to eat again.”

  The frown on Wesley’s mouth turned to a grim, straight line before he spoke. “You do what you gotta do. I’m gonna do what I gotta do. And I ain’t eatin’.”

  All right, Myron thought. At least this day won’t be a complete waste.

  * * *

  The disappearance of his nemesis, Ronald Miller, made Norman Bates feel much more at ease mingling with the other patients. Though he hadn’t as yet spoken to any of them, other than a single yes or no now and then, he had smiled and listened as some of them talked, and they had welcomed him into their circle. They may have thought his silence strange, but it was certainly no stranger than some of the more active quirks of other patients. A nontalkative man was a godsend for those who wished to expound upon their unorthodox theories and views, so Norman was found to be good and receptive company. His smiles and nods showed agreement, even if his words didn’t.

  Norman was getting more and more exercise as well. He spent time every day in the exercise yard when weather permitted, and when it rained or was too cold, Dr. Reed allowed him to walk the long corridors in the company of an attendant, climbing the stairs from floor to floor.

  He got to know the building better as a result, from the treatment rooms in the basement to the offices on the first and second floors, to the wards on all four floors. When walking inside, each attendant had instructions from Dr. Reed to walk with Norman for thirty minutes. Norman liked some of the attendants better than others. Ben was a good guy, he thought. Ben would talk to him about the weather or about the food in the hospital, joke about it, really, so that he made Norman laugh more than once. And he didn’t seem to mind that Norman didn’t talk back. Norman liked going for walks with Ben, and Dick, who Ben worked with a lot, was okay too.

  Some of the others, however, weren’t fun at all. They acted like it was a real task to walk Norman around, and although they were never really mean to him, he sensed their disdain.

  Even so, it felt good to stretch his legs, and Norman had gotten to like the daily routine of time in the social hall followed by a half-hour walk. It was almost fun to see the different people, doctors and nurses and attendants, through the building, and some of the nurses smiled at him. When they did that, he smiled back, but quickly looked down. He didn’t want them to think he was having bad thoughts about them, and he tried very hard not to.

  The basement, Norman thought, was a bit creepy. It felt damp down there, and it had stone walls, and some of the rooms were missing doors, so that there was just darkness inside when you passed. It reminded him of the cellar at home.

  One end of the basement had some treatment rooms, but the doors were always shut when he walked by, and he didn’t know what they did in there. It seemed less damp at that end, and he guessed that was why they put the rooms there. Down one basement wing was a large industrial laundry for all the sheets and blankets and uniforms and similar items used in the hospital. The machines were nearly always on, both washers and dryers, and Ben usually let Norman stop and look in the room while the machines whirled, spun, and clattered.

  It smelled clean in there, like soap with a hint of bleach, the way it smelled in his basement years ago when Mother washed the clothes and let him watch her put them through the wringer. One time, when he was five, he had curiously put up his fingers to the thick rotating rollers, and she had grabbed his hand and held it in her wiry grip. Don’t ever put your fingers in there, Norman, she had told him. It’ll suck your whole hand in. And then your arm. It’ll crush everything.

  In his other hand Norman was carrying a doll with a china bisque head, which he never let out of his sight. His mother grabbed it, said, I’ll show you, boy, and then let the wringer pull in the doll’s foot. Norman had watched, fascinated yet horrified by the way the rollers crushed first one leg, then the other, then the torso and arms. But when it reached the head it had stopped, and Norman heard gears grinding. Then the implacable machine jerked in the remaining cloth, threads ripped, and the china bisque head fell to the hard earth of the cellar floor and shattered.

  Norman had started to cry then, and his mother had shaken him and said, Better that doll than you, Norman! That’s a lesson you’ll never forget! Besides, you’re getting too old to play with dolls …

  She was right, of course. Mother was almost always right. She hadn’t spoken to him for a long time, and now that he had banished her from his psyche, he sometimes found himself nostalgic for her. It surprised him. There were bad times, but there were good times too. Still, the times had never been so good that he wanted her to come back. No, Mother was as dead as dead could be, and she could be alive in his memory when he wished it so, but in no other way.

  Today, as he walked down the hall, the attendant named Frank right behind him, he wasn’t thinking of his mother at all. He was thinking of seeing his brother again. Robert was coming tonight, and Norman was glad. Even though Robert had scared him with all that talk about killing people, Norman was sure that talk was all it was. Maybe Robert had just wanted Norman not to feel quite as bad about what he had done. It was a strange way to do it, since it made Robert look half crazy himself, but Norman understood that sometimes brothers did things for brothers that they wouldn’t do for other people. Maybe Robert was talking about how he wanted to kill people just to be nice.

  Now that was a silly thought, and it made Norman chuckle. Frank turned and looked at him. “What’s so funny?” he said.

  Norman dropped his smile and shook his head apologetically, then looked down. He didn’t want to annoy Frank and have him end their walk early. There were always things to see …

  * * *

  “Okay, Wesley, I gotta tell you, this is your last chance.”

  Wesley Breckenridge lay on his back on the metal table on which a towel had been placed. Even so, lying there in his underwear, he was cold. Aro
und each of his wrists was a tightened leather strap, and two attendants held them firmly at his sides. His legs were free. There was no pillow, so his head was slightly back, his nostrils raised.

  “You gonna eat or not? You can drink this stuff, y’know. Make it a lot easier for all of us, you included.”

  “Uh-uh,” Wesley said through chattering teeth.

  “Your choice.” Myron Gunn held a rubber tube, several feet long, in front of Wesley’s eyes. “This is it. No?” Wesley didn’t respond.

  “Open the door. It’s hot in here,” Myron said, and one of the attendants did, and returned to hold down Wesley’s left arm. Myron held the end of the tube and put it into a large jar of petroleum jelly. He pulled it out, removed the jelly from the hole at the end of the tube, then smeared the first few inches of the end with the jelly until it was covered, wiping his fingers on the edge of the towel that lay beneath Wesley.

  Then Myron Gunn stuck the greased end into a small flask of what smelled to Wesley like alcohol. “Gotta make sure we don’t get any germs down there. ‘Cause it’s gonna go all the way down.” Myron chuckled, then looked at the attendant standing at Wesley’s head, holding a leather strap. “I think we should just use lard to grease this thing—get a little more food down his throat.”

  The attendants laughed a bit, and Wesley’s throat hitched.

  “Now don’t start that yet,” Myron said. “I haven’t even stuck the tube in. But it’s time.”

  Myron nodded at the man at Wesley’s head, and Wesley felt the leather strap go across his forehead, holding his head tightly to the surface of the table so he couldn’t move it, either up and down or side to side. Then he saw the brown, greasy hose moving toward his face, and shut his eyes.

  He felt the end of the hose enter his left nostril first, going in a few inches until it stopped. The tip pressed against the back of his throat, tickling the root of his tongue, and he started to gag.