Robert Bloch's Psycho

 

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To Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, and Richard Matheson, whose stories grabbed my imagination and never let go

 

We're all not quite as sane as we pretend to be.

—Robert Bloch,
Psycho
(1959)

Hieronimo is mad againe.

—subtitle of Thomas Kyd's
The Spanish Tragedie
(1587)

 

PROLOGUE

In a small town in the Midwestern part of the country, a boy closed the magazine he was reading and looked for the hundredth time at the garish, brightly colored cover. On it was the face of a man in a half mask. His hair seemed a mass of brown flames leaping from behind the mask's top edge, and his mouth and jaw were fissured with scars. There were several words in the magazine's title, but the most prominent was
MONSTERS
, the letters appearing to be carved on a tombstone.

It was the boy's favorite magazine. He'd found the fifth issue on the newsstand several months before, and this was now the tenth. He thought he'd like to send away for the back issues when he had some extra money. The magazine was filled with stories about and photographs of the famous monsters of the movies, and the man who wrote most of the stories was like a kid himself, the boy could tell. He just
loved
those movies the way the boy did, at least the few he'd seen.

“Dad,” he said to the man sitting in the easy chair and reading a copy of
The Saturday Evening Post
with John Kennedy on the cover. “Could I maybe stay up tonight to watch the movie?”

“What movie
?
” his father said, his eyes still on the
Post
. “
Horror Theater
?”

“They've got
The Phantom of the Opera
tonight,” the boy said. “It's the
silent
one.”

“You're a little young to stay up that late,” his father said.

“I'm twelve—”

“Eleven.”

“In a few months, I was gonna say.”

His father put the
Post
in his lap. “Tell you what. The week you turn twelve, you can stay up Friday night to watch the movie.
If
it's okay with your mother, and if you promise to sleep in the next morning.”

“Deal!”
the boy cried, and ran into the kitchen, magazine in hand, to persuade his mother. He hoped that there would be a really scary movie on
Horror Theater
the Friday night after his birthday. Something with a monster like
Dracula
or
The Phantom of the Opera
or
The Wolfman
or
The Mummy
.

Or, if he was lucky, something even worse. Something he'd never known about before, never dreamed of. The scariest creature he could imagine.

A monster that would haunt his dreams.

 

1

“How's that?… How's
that,
you godforsaken
monster?
”

Myron Gunn, the head attendant, shoved the doughy man down onto the bed with all his prodigious strength. The man's head hit the padding on the wall, and his face twitched, but that was the only reaction he made. His stubby-fingered hands fell to his side, his head drooped on his thick neck, and his gaze locked once again on the floor.

“Whatsamatter,
Nor
-man?” Myron said. “Did you bump your little head? Maybe Mama can help, huh? Mama kiss it and make it better? You wanna let Mama out, huh? Yeah, I'd like to meet her—like to put a little fear of God into her.” A small cushioned chair sat under a table with rounded corners, and Myron pulled it out and perched on it, leaning toward the man, who sat silently and still.

“I know what you are, you miserable little faker,” Myron said softly. “You and your double-identity crap. You're a killer. Satan got into you, boy, not your dead mama. Satan made you what you are. He made you a murdering
monster.
”

Myron leaned still closer, lowering his head to try and see the man's eyes, to actually
see
the monster in them. Maybe, he thought, he could even see the Devil.

*   *   *

That October of 1960, the State Hospital for the Criminally Insane housed a collection of monsters. Murderers and rapists and men guilty of torture and mutilation all lived within its thick stone walls. Every patient there posed a danger to society, and every patient there would probably leave only in a casket, if he wasn't quietly buried in the small cemetery on the hospital grounds.

Although they were called patients, the residents were really all inmates, prisoners. This wasn't the kind of facility to which one committed oneself, or was committed by one's family or loved ones. It hadn't served that purpose since it had been known as the Ollinger Sanitarium, which had closed its doors over forty years earlier. The courts committed these present patients, with the understanding that while they were too sick to execute or place in a regular prison, they were also too sick to ever walk free again.

The courts made such a decision in the case of Norman Bates, who had the deaths of four people on his hands, or at least four of which the state was aware. The swamp near the Bates Motel hadn't been thoroughly dredged after the discovery of the car that had belonged to Mary Crane, Norman's third victim, and rumors spread that there were other cars and other victims sunk deep below. Still, there were no unaccounted-for disappearances in the area, and the four murders Norman had indeed committed were enough to lock him away for the rest of his life.

The first two victims, Norma Bates and Joe Considine, had died twenty years earlier. Norman had poisoned his mother and her lover when he learned that his mother was planning to sell their motel and run away with Considine. Norman didn't like that. He loved his mother. He loved her so much that he couldn't bear her absence, loved her so much that, after the law accepted his staged scenario that Norma and Joe had died together in a suicide pact, he couldn't let her go. So Norman, who counted taxidermy among his hobbies, had disinterred Norma's corpse and preserved it, keeping it in the old house next to the motel, treating his mother as though she were alive, allowing her to dominate him in death as she had in life.

Mother
was the one who killed Mary Crane when she came to the motel. She killed her because she knew that Norman was attracted to her, that Norman
wanted
her, and Mother couldn't allow that to happen, couldn't allow that filthy bitch to seduce her boy.

What Mother hadn't counted on, however, was that Mary Crane had stolen money from her employer, so much money that they sent a detective on her trail, a man named Arbogast, who snooped around and learned that Mary Crane had come to the motel. He almost found Mother, but Mother found him first and killed him too.

Then more people came, too many—Mary Crane's sister and the man Mary was going to marry, and Mother tried to kill them, but the man was too strong, and he caught her, and then the police took her away, took them
both
away, her and Norman.

*   *   *

And it was she and Norman now, together, sitting in this little room, listening to this man say terrible things about her and her boy, taunting them, trying to make Norman talk to him. But she wouldn't let him.

She
was in charge now, not Norman. Not that bad boy who had read those filthy books and peeked through a hole in the wall at those bitches, and told them, actually told that prying, nosy doctor before she had been able to take over, that
she
had killed those people.

Still, he was her son, and she loved him, and she would do what she had to do to keep him safe, even if he lied about her. And if the only way to keep him from lying was not to let him talk at all, well then, that's what she would do. She would talk if she absolutely had to, but there was no point in talking to this big, stupid man who kept telling her and Norman about God and the Devil. She knew his kind. He talked about God, but he had the Devil inside him. He liked hurting people, and he liked hurting Norman. And she would do nothing to make him hurt Norman more. She would be as quiet as a mouse.

*   *   *

“Cat got your tongue,
Nor
-man?” Myron Gunn turned his head sideways and leaned in closer until his face and that of Norman Bates were only inches away. “Mama don't want Norman to come out and play? Huh?”

Myron bumped his forehead against Norman's nose, and Norman winced. A small whimper escaped him.

“I believe that'll be enough, Mr. Gunn,” came a voice from the door. Myron Gunn looked up and saw Dr. Reed standing in the doorway, a clipboard in his hands.

“Oh, hi, Doc,” Myron said, slowly getting to his feet. “Just making sure Norman was settled in okay. He doesn't seem to like his weekly physical very much.”

“Thank you for accompanying him back,” Reed said, “but bringing him to his room is all that's necessary, as you well know.”

“Absolutely, Doc,” Myron said, still as assured as he had been with Norman. Dr. Reed didn't scare him. He'd been at the hospital too long and was too sure of his place to back down to a relative newcomer like Reed, and a pretty boy to boot. Reed was a good name for this guy, since he was built like one. Myron would just like to see Reed try and manhandle some of the bigger patients the way Myron did. Those sick sons of Satan would have him on the ground before he could blink. No, Reed could complain about Myron's little love taps to the patients as much as he liked, but Myron was here to stay.

Myron stood up and patted Norman Bates gently on the arm, relishing the man's second wince. Then he sauntered past Reed, brushing the thin doctor's shoulder with his own just enough to put him off balance. “Sorry, Doc. Tight quarters,” he said as he continued down the hall.

*   *   *

Myron Gunn, Felix Reed thought, was just the kind of man who gave the state hospital, and state hospitals everywhere, the reputation for brutality and callousness that it bore. There were too many people like Gunn in the mental illness profession. If it was Reed's decision, he'd have dismissed the hulking fool immediately.