Robert Bloch's Psycho (14 page)

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. Around 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.

“I think that side's a little too tight,” Myron said. “Got an awful lot of hose to get down there. Let me try the other.”

The tube slipped back out of Wesley's nose, and he gasped at the sudden pain. His sinuses felt like they were exploding, and there was burning behind his eyes. He opened them and saw the tube moving toward him again, and again he squeezed shut his now tearing eyes.

The rubber tip probed into his right nostril now, and it hurt, but not as much as the first time. “Aw, that's a
lot
better,” Myron said as Wesley felt the tube snake down the back of his throat, deep, deeper, and he choked again.

“Just
swallow,
” Myron said. “Nothing to it if you just swallow.”

Wesley tried, and it helped, but the sensation was one that he had never before experienced, even in a nightmare, and the tears dripped from the corners of his eyes.

“Now, you don't have to cry—this is gonna be
good
for you.”

Wesley opened his eyes, and through his tears he could see Myron Gunn looming over him, with still many inches of tubing in his hand. “Isn't that deep enough?” one of the attendants said.

“Nope. It's gotta go in up to this line,” Myron said, pointing on the tube to a red line still several inches from Wesley's face. “Gotta get in the stomach, otherwise he could puke it all up, and, my friend, we don't want that. Now watch and learn…”

Wesley shut his eyes again and tried to pretend he was somewhere else. He thought about being outside on a summer day, sitting next to his wife before the terrible thing happened, and trying to remember how pretty she was, but it was difficult to do that as the tube continued to roll into him and tickle its way down his own tube, the one that led from mouth to stomach.

“All right, up to the line,” Myron said after what seemed hours. “You can open your eyes, Wesley. You don't want to miss this.”

Wesley opened them slowly, and saw Myron holding a glass quart jar filled with a thick greenish liquid in his left hand. In his right, he was holding above his head the end of the tube, which now had a plastic funnel inserted in it. “Dinnertime,” he said, and he raised the jar up to the tube and poured in the green mixture.

Wesley didn't feel it going into his nose or down his throat at all, but he could feel it when it slopped into his empty stomach. It felt cold, not having been first warmed by his mouth and gullet. His stomach started to revolt against it, and he began to panic, wanting to reach up and grab the tube and rip it from his nose, but the attendants held his hands tight, and the man at his head pressed down even harder.

“Now, now,” said Myron Gunn. “This is what you get when you won't eat your dinner like a good boy…” Myron's voice became softer and more dangerous. “…
and
when you chop up your wife with an ax.”

Wesley opened his eyes and saw the hate in Myron's face.

“That's right, Wesley. This is what you get for your sins. This is how you only
begin
to atone for what you did, you little monster. Think this'll drive the demons out of you? Maybe not, but it's a good start.”

And Myron Gunn poured the rest of the green liquid into the funnel until it was full.

*   *   *

Norman heard the moaning a long time before he and Frank reached the open door. He slowed his walk so that Frank got ahead of him and looked back. “Come on,” Frank said. “Just guys doing their work.”

Norman followed, getting closer to the sound that was coming from a door ahead on the left. Frank stopped when he got there and looked in. “Hi, guys,” he said, and Norman heard the men inside respond, but the moaning didn't stop. He walked to where Frank, his arms crossed, was standing, and looked into the room.

Norman gasped. A nearly naked man lay on the table, held down by the others, while Myron Gunn held up a funnel and tube, a tube which, Norman saw, led into the man's now bleeding nose. The man was fighting against the three who held him, all his spindly muscles straining against the straps, but to no avail.

Then Myron Gunn fixed his gaze upon Norman, and Norman froze at the sight of his basilisk glare. “Well, well, if it isn't
Nor
-man,” Myron drawled, and gave Norman a smile that was no more than a smirk at the corner of his mouth. “Have you had your lunch,
Nor
-man? Maybe you'd like to join our boy Wesley here. I think we could rustle up an extra tube somewhere, couldn't we, boys? Whaddya say, Norman?”