Robert Bloch's Psycho

by Chet Williamson

  Finally Norman heard one of the annoyed attendants tell several curious and yammering patients, “All right, I’ll tell you what I know—Doc Goldberg has left. He may be back, he may not, I don’t know. Nobody else knows either. Doc Steiner’s in charge for the time being, and that’s about it.”

  Norman walked slowly to the nearest empty chair and, ignoring the voices all around him, sat down and thought about the way he was feeling, just the way Dr. Reed had told him to. He had to confess to himself that his first emotion was relief. If Dr. Goldberg really was gone, there would be no confrontation with him, no demands to engage in a conversation, and, he hoped, no further threats of those terrible shock treatments.

  But the other emotion that nearly overwhelmed his relief was fear. It seemed too coincidental that right after his brother Robert told him that he didn’t have to worry about Dr. Goldberg, the man would disappear. Had Robert gotten rid of Dr. Goldberg the way Norman imagined he had gotten rid of Ronald Miller and Myron Gunn and Nurse Lindstrom? With Goldberg’s death, Norman was safe, but at what cost? Had he turned Robert into a murderer?

  If he had, he knew that Robert would be caught eventually, and he didn’t want to lose the brother that he had only just found. At the same time, how could he let Robert keep killing? He knew all too well how one murder could lead to another.

  He had to talk to Dr. Reed again. What the doctor had said about it being impossible for Robert to be responsible for these disappearances made sense, and Norman had told himself a hundred times that it was only his imagination working overtime. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling. There were too many coincidences. Yes. He’d talk to Dr. Reed. At his session today. He’d tell him everything, about his dream last night, and how Robert had told him that no one would give him shock treatments, and how Robert would protect him, and how every time Robert had said that, someone who could hurt Norman had died, and …

  Norman.

  Oh, no, Norman thought. I didn’t hear that. It was just imagination, my stupid imagination …

  You’re a fool, boy.

  Norman tried to ignore the voice in his head, tried to stay on his previous train of thought: he would tell Dr. Reed about his fears, and Dr. Reed would say, Yes, but how could Robert have done these things? and he would explain that Robert—

  He’s lying to you, boy.

  He would explain that Robert couldn’t have done anything, that he couldn’t have gotten into the building—

  You never could tell when people are lying to you, could you, Norman? You believe anything …

  Dr. Reed would prove to Norman that it wasn’t his brother, that it couldn’t be, not Robert—

  You believe what you want to, no matter what your eyes and ears tell you. You never could put two and two together, Norman.

  Shut up! Shut up, Mother! I’m not listening to you!

  Don’t you want to hear the truth, boy?

  Not from you! I don’t want to hear anything from you!

  Norman, I—

  NO! You already got me into enough trouble, didn’t you? You killed Mary Crane! You killed the detective! You’re not lying to me again!

  Norman, you know good and well that it wasn’t me who killed that girl, it was you and your dirty thoughts, your—

  “Shut up, Mother! Just shut the hell up!”

  He shouted so loudly that it made his throat rasp with pain, so loudly that all the talking in the social hall died away as everyone turned to look at Norman Bates sitting alone in a chair, his head down, looking at the floor, shrieking at someone who had died years earlier, murdered by her own son’s hand.

  Norman realized what he had done and looked up to see all the faces, the dozens of pairs of eyes, staring at him, the madmen embracing him as one of their own, and the sane eyeing him with concern and a touch of fear. He tried to say, I’m sorry, but it came out as only a harsh croak. Then he tried to smile, to show everyone he wasn’t insane, he wasn’t talking to voices in his head.

  But it was too late, and two attendants came over to him, their attitudes officious though not menacing. Norman kept smiling, though as they got closer he couldn’t meet their gaze and looked down at the floor, still smiling. He wanted to appear friendly, but was afraid that the tense grin made him look cacklingly insane. Still, he maintained it as his only defense.

  “You okay, Bates?” the larger of the two attendants asked.

  Norman, still looking down, tried to nod, but felt as though he were wearing a neck brace. Still, he managed a slight up-down jerk of his head and an audible grunt that he hoped signaled an affirmative response.

  Do you know what you look like, Norman? You look like a grinning idiot.

  Be quiet, Mother. Please be quiet.

  You look like a madman, boy, with your toothy grin and your rolling eyes. These men will think you’re insane. And they’ll be right.

  Norman pressed his eyes shut and clenched his fists. He had made her go away in the past and he could do it again. He just had to believe in himself, the way Dr. Reed had taught him. Mother wasn’t there, not really. Norman was there. He was the only one. And he would be Norman. He would be what he was when he talked to Dr. Reed … and what he was when he talked to Robert. Yes. That was it. Think of Robert. Think of talking to him.

  Norman felt himself relax. The tension left his neck and shoulders. His fists unclenched. He opened his eyes and turned and looked at the two attendants. “I’m fine,” he said in clear and distinct tones. “I’m sorry for causing a disturbance. I just had … an unpleasant memory. I’ll try and keep myself under control in the future.”

  The two attendants looked at each other as though Norman had just spoken to them in ancient Greek, and Norman himself was amazed by his own fluency. These were more words than he had spoken in months to anyone other than Dr. Reed and Robert.

  “Well, okay,” said the larger attendant. “See that you do.”

  They walked away and Norman saw that nearly everyone had stopped looking at him. They were all talking again. That was good. He had learned something today. Maybe he had even made a breakthrough, as Dr. Reed hoped he would. He would tell Dr. Reed about this during his session today.

  Norman felt proud of himself. He considered asking his mother who the crazy one was now, but chose not to, not so much fearing the venom of her reply as dreading any reply at all.

  * * *

  Marie Radcliffe hadn’t told anyone about what she had found in Dr. Goldberg’s office. After her shift ended, she’d driven away with Ben Blake, who dropped her at home. Despite warnings to the contrary, he’d told her as much as he knew about what had occurred with the intruder in the basement.

  When she was finally alone in her apartment, it was three-thirty in the morning and she was exhausted. Still, there was no way she could sleep after what had happened at the hospital.

  Slowly, she tried to put it all together. When she remembered Dr. Goldberg’s demeanor earlier in the evening, she couldn’t conceive of his being alarmed in any way. On the contrary, he had been relaxed, a bit piqued over Dr. Berkowitz’s desire to avoid shock therapy, but that was all. He’d seemed joyfully anxious to delve into his opera and the evening’s work, not at all apprehensive.

  It was possible that he’d gotten a phone call, but unlikely, since he’d told Marie that he had the switchboard shut off calls to his office after seven o’clock. So what else could have warned him that someone was after him and caused him to flee—before he had listened to more than five sides of Die Meistersinger?

  What bothered her most was the presence in Dr. Goldberg’s office of the piece of petrified wood she’d given to Norman Bates. Try as she might, she could come up with no scenario to explain its presence there on the floor. As far as she knew, Norman had never set foot in that office. When Goldberg had talked to him, it had been in Norman’s room. Could Norman for some reason have given the stone to Goldberg?

  That made no sense to Marie. She was aware of the way that Goldberg’s visit and dem
ands had upset Norman, and the idea of his turning over a symbol of his own strength and self-assurance to the man who threatened him was unthinkable from a psychological viewpoint. Could Goldberg have been aware of the stone and Norman’s attachment to it, and confiscated it? Though Goldberg’s techniques could be cruel, taking away Norman’s good luck piece would have simply been unnecessary cruelty, if Norman had even been foolish enough to reveal the stone to Goldberg in the first place.

  Another alternative was that somehow Norman had gotten into Dr. Goldberg’s office, as utterly impossible as that sounded. She remembered cautioning Norman about not letting the stone fall out of the shallow pockets of the patients’ uniform pants he wore. It might have done just that, particularly if Norman had been doing something … active in the room.

  She tried to separate her personal feelings of warmth, even affection, from the situation. Regardless of what horrors Norman had perpetrated, he was sick, not evil. He reminded her of a big, awkward child who had been used by the occupying spirit of his mother, even though it had been his hands that had done the killing. But still, she had to think of him as a past and prospective killer, no matter how much she liked him.

  Supposing Norman had been in Dr. Goldberg’s office? What had he done there?

  What would he have wanted to do?

  He feared Dr. Goldberg because Goldberg was anxious to begin shock treatments on him. But would he have feared him to the point of killing him?

  Marie thought about the other people who had disappeared. Ronald Miller, Myron Gunn, Nurse Lindstrom—all people who had posed threats to Norman Bates. And now Dr. Goldberg, who posed still another.

  But even if Norman had the motive, how could he have had the means? This wasn’t just a hospital, it was a maximum-security prison as well. He would have had to get out of his locked room, get past the attendants, perform the killings, and get rid of the bodies while not leaving any evidence, then somehow get back to his room. It was impossible.

  Still, every one of the four people who had vanished was a person whom Norman Bates would have wanted to disappear. And a possession of his had been in Goldberg’s office the night he disappeared.

  Marie knew she had to talk to someone about this, and the only person she thought she’d feel comfortable telling it to was the one person who felt about Norman the way she did, and that was Dr. Reed. She’d been tempted to tell Ben, but she was hesitant to place Norman in a delicate position, and it really wouldn’t be professional. Dr. Reed was Norman’s doctor, and she was Norman’s nurse, and this was a patient-oriented issue. Best to talk to Reed first and see if there was an explanation before she started telling others about it.

  Marie got undressed, grabbed a quick shower, and climbed into bed. She held the piece of petrified oak in her hand, looking at it in the light of her bedside lamp. Finally she turned off the light, but held the stone for a long time before she fell asleep, its round smoothness warm against her hand.

  April 14, 1918

  Disaster has struck. Utter and complete disaster. The state board of inspection has withdrawn the license of the Ollinger Sanitarium. My life’s work, my greatest dream, crushed by the loose words of one who found here a cure for his malady, a thankless, ungrateful creature whom I released and proclaimed returned to vibrant mental health, one of the most successful recipients of Spiritual Repulsion Therapy, that J.R.

  Oh, why should I hide names anymore, especially his? This Judas, this traitor. Joseph Ridgway is his name, a near–charity case whose father put him here for the act of unnatural sex with his own sister, who then drowned herself. The youth refused to admit his guilt, rather blaming his father for all that had occurred, but after his therapy he was quickly cured of all his illness and subterfuge, admitted his guilt, and was eventually released.

  Somehow he gained the help of one of my most trusted aides, Clarence Brewer, a man who knew all the mechanical workings that abetted my therapy, and together they went to the state board and convinced them that what I was doing here was not only quackery but criminal fraud. My former assistant even told them of the secret ward in which are kept the pitiful sacrifices that had to be made for what I hoped to be the ultimate success of my therapy.

  But now, alas, thanks to the thankless, the success of that therapy shall have to come in the lifetime of another more fortunate than myself. Board inspectors came only a week ago, in the company of both Ridgway and Brewer, who first revealed to them all the physical secrets of my therapy, and finally took them to the formerly hidden ward in the basement.

  That they were shocked would be an understatement. I admit, conditions in that ward had deteriorated significantly, but these were special cases, why couldn’t they understand that? I tried to explain that these patients were beyond caring whether or not they were smeared with their own filth, that the constant screaming of patients in the next cage had nothing to do with whether they slept or not, that they were completely indifferent to the quality of food they ate. Could they not see that?

  I was forced to turn over my records, and the board contacted the families of every patient, informing them that the sanitarium was being shut down and that they would have to move their relatives to another facility within seven days. They came, but I could not bear to face them. I had enough funds left to pay part of my staff for that final week, and they were the ones who took the patients to their families when they arrived. I remained in my quarters.

  There was only one man who breached my privacy, the husband of a patient. He broke in my door, struck me across the cheek so that I fell to the floor, swore that he would see me hanged, and, if that did not occur, that he would whip me to death. He kicked me in the ribs before he left. Barbarian.

  By the end of the seventh day, all the patients except four had been removed. These were all in the basement ward. There had been no responses from their families, who may have thought that the board would move them to a state facility, thus sparing them the expense and trauma of finding a private sanitarium. The board was not so merciful—or merciless, as one might think of it.

  For the greatest mercy that could be shown to these unfortunates would be to end their dreadful existence. Such lives are not lives at all, but mere existence in an earthly hell, tortured by the demons of one’s own mind. I regret the conditions of these poor creatures, but I begin to think that their condition has become my own as well.

  Abandoned, misunderstood, martyred, on the brink of the Great Abyss with no hopes of rescue. What lies ahead for me is shame, dishonor, arrest, imprisonment in a place even worse than what houses these dregs of society, even death itself at the hands of such as my recent attacker.

  I cannot face such a future. That I, who wished only for the betterment of mankind, should be driven to this end makes me question the existence of the Deity. I see only one way out of this situation.

  The last of my staff has just left the building. I have paid everyone what they were owed. My debts, at least the financial ones, are settled. The only living souls within the walls of the Ollinger Sanitarium are myself and the four caged denizens of the basement ward.

  When I finish writing this final entry in my journal, I shall place it with my books, there to perhaps be read in years to come by some new pioneer in the field of mental health. If it inspires him to revisit and refine my therapy for the uses of a new generation of patients, then I shall not have lived in vain. I do not wish to leave it as a suicide note, however. In that case I fear it might be used only in the courts that investigate this final action, and then be forever buried in some legal storehouse. Far better to place it among my reference volumes and trust to an unforeseen future.

  As for my final act, there is an underground gas pipe to the kitchen, a short section of which runs through a corner of the basement ward near the ceiling in the northwest corner. I intend to enter the ward, seal up the door (there are no windows to be concerned about), and then use a crowbar and a hacksaw, if necessary, to break that gas pipe and let the gas r
ush into the ward. In a short time, I suspect that the residents and I will drift off into a sleep from which we will never awaken. This will be a blessing for those souls that have known no rest for so long, and the final palliative for my own torments.

  I have no idea if anyone shall find us or not, or if the state board, now that the patients are released, will simply ignore this facility and allow it to sink into ruin. If so, I could not have a more appropriate tomb. Yet I suspect that those who invested their money to have the sanitarium built will find some use for it, in which case the dead will eventually be discovered. I will be discovered, with my poor patients, who trusted me to heal them.

  I now write the final sentences in this journal and place it among my books. May he who someday finds it be wiser than I. And may whatever God exists have mercy on whatever part of my spirit may survive my death.

  Adolph Ollinger

  16

  When Marie Radcliffe arrived at work the next afternoon, the first thing she did was go to Dr. Reed’s office. He was seated at his desk with the door open, working on some case files, but looked up when she knocked.

  “Marie,” he said. “Come in, please. Have a seat.” She entered and closed the door behind her, earning a curious look from Dr. Reed. “Strange times indeed, aren’t they?” he asked, shaking his head.

  “They are,” she said, sitting in the chair on the other side of the desk. “I take it there’s been no news about Dr. Goldberg?”

  “Not a word. But a lot of rumors. The most popular one seems to be that he was actually another Adolf Eichmann.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, it sounds crazy,” Dr. Reed said, “but it’s really caught fire. The idea is that the man who broke in was an Israeli, and that Goldberg wasn’t really Goldberg. When he knew they were on to him, he took off.”

  “I … don’t see how that could have happened,” Marie said. “There was no way for the doctor to know about the man. And I would have seen Dr. Goldberg leave. I went to his office as soon as they caught the man in the cellar.”