Marie Radcliffe was concerned about Norman Bates, and when she saw Dr. Reed in one of the corridors, trying to lend some order to the chaos, she asked him if he wanted her to check on Norman. “Not necessary,” the doctor said. “I just did, and the thunder and lightning don’t seem to be bothering him at all. His light’s off and he’s sleeping like a baby. Let’s not disturb him.” Reed looked at his watch. “How long are you all here?”
“They asked the overtime people to stay until midnight. The storm is due to move out around then,” Marie said. “Although most of the patients are tractable at this point.”
“They seem to be. I think I’ll head home. It’s been a long day, and there really isn’t anything else for me to do here. Maybe I’ll grab a burger at Delsey’s if they haven’t been washed away. Did Ben stay tonight?”
“Yes,” Marie said with a smile.
“Good. Then you’ve got someone to walk you to your car.” He grinned. “Someone who might do a far better job than me.”
She laughed. “At least I remembered my umbrella today.”
“I doubt you could have left your house without it. See you tomorrow, Nurse.” And Dr. Reed disappeared down the hall toward his office.
* * *
Despite Marie Radcliffe’s optimistic estimate, it took until nearly midnight for all the patients to settle down. Dr. Goldberg received the reports from Nurse Lindstrom and Myron Gunn, told them to dismiss everyone except the night staff, then retired to his office, where he would spend the night, as he often did.
Myron had always thought that was pretty cushy, to have a big office with a daybed and a bathroom with a shower. If he had that kind of setup, he would never go home to that dry, unloving bitch Marybelle, and he would bring Eleanor into his office with him too, and they could make love on something other than a big pallet of towels.
As he and Eleanor separated, she to find and dismiss the overtime nurses, he to do the same with the attendants, he thought that tonight might be a good time for him and Eleanor to get together in the basement again. It was much later than when they regularly left the hospital for the night, so there would be fewer snooping eyes. He had already called Marybelle to tell her that he didn’t know when he’d be home, and Eleanor had no one to call anyway. They could do it the whole night if they really wanted to.
The more he thought about it, the more he wanted it to happen. Eleanor was a hell of a woman, and sometimes he thought he really loved her. She understood him in a way Marybelle never had, and he could see spending the rest of his life with her. It was a much prettier picture than growing old with Marybelle. That woman would continue to dry up until all that was left was hide and bones, and eventually even that would turn to dust and blow away. But it would be a long, long time before that happened.
Maybe Jesus wouldn’t mind too much if he left Marybelle. Maybe he’d understand, even if Pastor Oley Crowe wouldn’t. It’s not like he’d be the first member of the First Baptist Holiness Church to get a divorce. Chuck and Joanie Medford had split up a few years back after Chuck caught Joanie with the Fuller Brush man, and Chuck still came to church and everybody treated him okay, even though they said behind his back that he deserved it for marrying a woman twenty years younger than him. And Jimbo Peters divorced his wife so he could marry the bookkeeper at his Ford dealership, and nobody groused about it much, especially after he donated enough for the church to buy a new electric organ.
Well, it wasn’t a decision he had to make right away. He and Eleanor had been doing the deed for years now, and she never pressured him much. Might as well take your happiness where and when you can. Tomorrow would take care of itself.
At last he rounded up all the overtime attendants, most of whom had gathered in the staff break room, which was filled with cigarette smoke by the time Myron got there. He dismissed them all, and gruffly, almost grudgingly, offered thanks for their work, as though embarrassed that he needed their help to subdue the patients during the storm.
As they filed out, he got a cup of coffee from the machine and sat sipping it. He suspected that Eleanor would come to the break room looking for him. He could have gone to her office, but he didn’t want to act like a dog in heat. And besides, after all the activity of the evening, he welcomed a chance to just sit down with a cup of java before exerting himself again, no matter how pleasurably. He stretched his muscles, thinking that he wasn’t as young as he used to be. Hell, he wasn’t young at all anymore. Fifty-two. All the more reason to think about making whatever changes he needed to make before he became too set in his ways.
By the time Eleanor came in, he had finished his coffee, and the brief rest had reinvigorated him. She stopped in the doorway when she saw him, and smiled a close-lipped, sultry smile.
“Evening, ma’am,” he said. “Buy you a cup of coffee?”
She leaned back into the corridor and looked both ways, then stepped back into the room, walked over to him, put her hand on his shoulder, and squeezed gently. Clever girl. She was thinking exactly what he was.
To further prove her cleverness, she was carrying a clipboard with papers on it, something they could look at and discuss if anyone saw them in the corridors. “So here we are,” Myron said, “just staying late and taking care of business after a crazier than usual night.”
“Working hard to make the State Hospital for the Criminally Insane as safe and efficient as it could possibly be,” Eleanor said.
“We ought to get citations,” Myron said, in a rare moment of humor.
“We ought to get some reward for such a hard night,” she said, squeezing his shoulder again.
“You know,” Myron said, getting to his feet, “maybe we ought to check the basement to make sure we didn’t miss anybody down there. Hate to have someone think they had to stay when they could be on their way home.”
“You’re all heart, Myron,” Eleanor said. “Let’s go do a good deed.” And they walked together out of the break room and down the hall toward the stairway that led to the cellar.
* * *
Though she had been in the cellar thousands of times since she began working at the state hospital, Eleanor Lindstrom never really liked it. The stone walls and the hard floor were oppressive. It always felt like a dungeon to her.
She especially didn’t like it at night, which she realized was ridiculous, since there were no windows down there, so day and night were both the same. Still, it felt different at night, and she always recalled the stories she had heard over the years about the ghosts of insane and demented men and women who inhabited the building all those years before. She tried to tell herself that the living creatures who resided there now were far worse than any ghosts, but she still couldn’t keep the short hairs on the back of her neck from trembling when she had to go down there alone at night.
Now, thank God, she wasn’t alone. Myron, the strongest and toughest man in the entire facility, was with her, so she didn’t need to fear ghosts or patients. And, she reassured herself, she didn’t need to fear being discovered making love by any wayward nurse or attendant. No one ever came down here this late, not until the laundry people started showing up at six in the morning.
The laundry area was far less disconcerting than the other parts of the cellar. For one thing, it was warmer. Heat from the washers and dryers gathered and remained in the rooms, so that even hours after the machines stopped running, it was still balmy.
The surroundings were less depressing as well. The rooms were painted white, and when Myron flicked on the overhead lights, the brightness, the smell of fresh laundry, and the memories of past lovemaking sessions eased Eleanor’s mind. She could feel the tension flow out of her as Myron embraced her from behind, and she took in a deep breath of relief.
Together they walked toward a pallet of white towels. They were worn and thin, but an abundance of them made for wonderful softness beneath. When they stopped, Eleanor was surprised when Myron kissed her, not hard and roughly, with his usual brutal need, but almos
t tenderly, as though …
No. She wouldn’t allow herself to think that. She would take this for what it was, nothing more, no matter how much she wanted it to be. Still, she kissed him back with as much passion as she felt coming from him. Holding her, he looked steadily into her face and started to unbutton her uniform blouse. She almost drew back, and he saw the question in her eyes. “Let’s be naked,” he said with a rasp in his voice as he continued to undo the buttons. “Let’s finally be naked.”
They had always made love partially clothed before, both for the sake of convenience and out of concern for being discovered, but there was no rush and no one to discover them now. Eleanor looked up at the shining fluorescent lights. “It’s so bright…” Her protest was feeble, but Myron acted on it. He went to the bank of switches and turned off nearly all of them, so that only the constant light from the corridor illuminated their love nest.
Then he returned and continued to undress her while she did the same to him. When they were wearing only underwear, Myron lowered Eleanor to their bed of towels, lay over her, then slipped off her panties, while she helped him with his shorts.
“Dear Lord,” he whispered, “you’re so beautiful. I had no idea how much.”
“Oh baby,” she said, pulling him down toward her, “oh, my sweet man…”
They really made love then. It wasn’t just sex, as it had been so many times before. She felt something different in him, something new, and she realized with joy that while things might never be what she wanted them to be, they would be much better from now on. When the moment came, she closed her eyes and let the feeling take her. It was wonderful, and she felt Myron shudder at the very same time, shiver like everything in him had poured out at once and left him weak and exhausted.
And lifeless.
Startled, she opened her eyes and in the dim light she saw Myron’s face above hers, in a familiar rictus that had always signaled his moment of arrival, but now, she saw, meant something quite different. Blood was trickling from Myron’s open mouth, and his eyes were wide in shock. He coughed once, and warm blood splashed into Eleanor’s eyes, blinding her, so she didn’t see him roll off of her, but nonetheless felt him withdraw from her and list like a mass of dead flesh off her right side, off the pile of towels, flopping onto the cold cement floor.
Eleanor rubbed her eyes and blinked wildly, trying to clear her vision, but Myron’s salty blood stung them too badly. She could just make out a human shape standing above her, shadowed against the light from the corridor. Her ears were filled with Myron’s gasping as he struggled to breathe, and then words came out in whispers, borne on the shallowest of breaths: “… Oh, Jesus … so sorry … f’give me … f’ my … sins … Lord … oh…”
The last sound dropped into the darkness that surrounded Eleanor, and the shape began to descend upon her, shutting off the light from the hall; descend upon her, as Myron had done with his gift of love, but the gift this shadow carried was much, much different.
With a sudden burst of strength, Eleanor threw her body to the side and fell off the pile of towels directly onto Myron. The huffing groan he gave told her he was still alive, and she felt the wetness of his blood as she tried to push herself away from him and scuttle farther from death on her hands and knees. His hand grasped her ankle as though clinging to her meant clinging to life, and she kicked hard with her other leg, felt her heel hit his face, heard the crunch of bone, and for an instant hated herself for having done it. Then self-preservation took control once more, and, now free, she crawled farther into the darkness with no plan but to hide, like a child escaping the bogeyman.
There was no place to hide. She heard footsteps behind her, and pushed herself to her feet, planning to run, but she saw only a dark wall ahead of her. Fight, then. She was naked and vulnerable, but she could fight.
She whirled around, arms raised, fists clenched, ready to strike. But it was already too late. The shadow was in front of her, and she felt one hand grasp her neck and the other hand drive into her soft stomach that long, sharp thing whose shape she had glimpsed. She felt it worm its way up like a living creature inside her, and her fists fell to her sides. When the knife slipped out and the hand released her throat, the rest of her fell as well, down to the hard floor. She died within two seconds of her head striking the cement.
* * *
Myron Gunn wasn’t so lucky. The knife had entered his back, severing his spinal column and rooting about in his left lung before it was withdrawn. He knew why he was dying. God had sent an angel of death because of Myron’s sins, because he had not only betrayed his wife by becoming an adulterer, but also because he had fallen in love with Eleanor, and the thought had come to him, sure and strong, of leaving Marybelle for her. That had been the last straw for Jesus, Myron was certain. You couldn’t keep defying the laws of God with impunity. His sins had found him out at last.
He was lying on his back now, looking up into the blackness of the ceiling. It seemed as though dark clouds were gathering up there. Though he could no longer speak, he prayed silently that those clouds would break open into the sunshine of heaven.
But instead, a darker cloud drifted across his view, a black moon that he realized was his killer’s head. It descended close to his, only inches away, and then, in spite of all his other pain, Myron felt something tickling at his nostril. At the first prick, he knew it was a knife.
And as the blade slipped up into his nose, he remembered Wesley Breckenridge, and he prayed harder than he had ever prayed before.
* * *
The man drove the car down the nearly deserted road, the high beams on. When he saw the sign for the motel he slowed. He’d seen it before, but not at night, and was concerned he might miss the turnoff.
There it was, the long strip of rooms, the office at the one end, and up above stood the house, abandoned now, the windows empty eyes in the gaunt face of peeling boards. He drove the car around the back of the motel and up the gravel drive toward the house. But he didn’t stop there.
The driveway went around the rear of the house and stopped at a dilapidated wooden shed that had been used as a garage. The man looked carefully and discerned, just beyond the shed, a pair of grooves in the brown grass, worn nearly flat by tires over the years. The path led into a field. On a clear night, the lights of the car might have been visible from the road, but rain was still pattering down, and a dense fog had formed in the wake of the night’s earlier, savage storm, so the man used the low beams, and the rough road was visible if he watched intently.
At last the car reached the edge of the swamp. There was an incline leading down to its miry surface, and the man suspected it was the same place at which Norman Bates had dumped the car belonging to Mary Crane. The man stopped the car several yards from where solid ground turned to quagmire, pushed the “neutral” button on the automatic transmission, pulled the parking brake, and opened all the windows. Then he got out, closed the door, and reached back through the driver’s window. He grasped the steering wheel and turned it until the tires were aimed straight ahead into the muck.
He opened the door, took off the parking brake, and pushed the “drive” button, getting out quickly and slamming the door shut. Then he ran behind the already moving vehicle and pushed with all his might, helping the transmission move the car slowly forward toward the thick mire of the swamp. He pushed until the front tires went in, and continued to push as the entire front of the car started to submerge. Not until the tips of his shoes dipped beneath the muddy surface did he stop pushing.
By then, gravity was doing his work for him. The car was going down, though slowly. He watched as the swamp muck poured in through the open windows, making the car even heavier. He had no doubt it would sink fully. It had worked for Norman, so why not for him?
Still, he felt a bit of trepidation, the same tension Norman had felt, no doubt, when the sinking of the car slowed to almost a standstill. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if the car was discovered, but it
was bound to make things easier if it wasn’t.
Ah, it was going down faster now. It was incredible, he thought, how deep the drop-off must be between ground and swamp. Only the top of the trunk was showing. It was as though it was driving down a very steep ramp in the swamp. Finally there were what sounded like a phlegmatic inhalation of breath through a gigantic throat and a series of thick bubbles from displaced air far below, and the car was gone.
The man smiled and pulled up the collar of his waterproof coat as further protection against the rain. His hat had kept his head relatively dry, but he had a long way to walk through the wet, chilly weather. Still, he was glad for the rain. It would certainly erase all the tire tracks by morning.
He hunched his shoulders against the wind and started to walk toward the road.
* * *
Norman Bates awoke and switched on the light. Despite the warmth of his room, he was trembling with cold. He’d had another dream, but this one had been less explicit than the previous one about the figure bathed in blood.
In the dream from which he had just awakened, he couldn’t recall where it had taken place, but it was certainly not the ovoid room in the earlier dream. All he remembered, all he had seen, really, were two faces, faces that were strangely familiar but that he couldn’t place. They seemed out of context, somehow, and he thought about when he was a boy and had seen his schoolteacher, Mrs. Hoffman, at the grocery store when he’d gone in with Mother. It didn’t make sense to see Mrs. Hoffman anywhere other than the schoolhouse, and he had stood there stunned while she smiled down at him and Mother asked what on earth was wrong and why was he acting so moony.
Was it like that now? Norman wondered. But he was sure the faces were from where he was now, the hospital, and not his life before. If it wasn’t a different place, then, could it be something else? Could it be…?
Robert Bloch's Psycho Page 13
