Robert Bloch's Psycho (3 page)

There was no one else in the break room. They got two coffees from the machine, lit their cigarettes, sat, and looked through the wide windows. It was already dark outside. The time change had occurred a week earlier, stealing another hour's worth of sunlight, and the moon shone upon the fenced-in stretch of lawn that was used as an exercise yard for the patients. On the other side of the chain-link fence that was topped by concertina wire, pine trees grew so thickly that they smothered the moonlight as soon as the beams touched them.

“Halloween's coming,” Ben said. “Your kids excited?”

“Hell, yeah,” Dick said with a chuckle and a plume of smoke. “Gettin' their costumes ready for trick-or-treat. I told Marge they just oughta wear the outfits the patients wear here—hard to think of anything scarier than some of these freaks.”

“That's the truth,” Ben said. “Tough to believe, looking at some of these guys, that they did what they did. Bates, for example.”

“Yeah. Seems gentle as a kitten when Marie feeds him. But when you think about what he did—not just killing those people, but digging up his mother and … Jesus.”

“Pretty sick,” Ben said. He took another puff. “I know
I'd
behave if Marie fed
me
.”

“Aha. I
thought
your mind wasn't just on your work when she's around. You should ask her out.”

“I did. We have a date next weekend.”

“Well, good for you, Benny boy. She's a good-looking woman. And nice too. Sometimes I think she's
too
nice for this place. You never know when these characters are gonna explode.” He inhaled deeply and let the smoke come out, watching it as it burst against the window. “I always think they go a little funny this time of year. Maybe it's Halloween, or the weather, I don't know.” He paused, then said softly, “Maybe it's the ghosts.”

“Sure.”

“Seriously. You've heard the stories.”

“Ah, Dick, you get those stories around any old building, especially one that's got a history like this.”

“Yeah, but there were ghost stories way back when it was the Ollinger Sanitarium,” Dick said. “The patients saw ghosts
all
the time.”

“Maybe that's why they were in a sanitarium. Look,
our
patients see things, don't they? But did
you
ever see any of the things they do?”

“Okay, you got a point. Still, where there's smoke—”

“There's less than a minute
left
of smoke before we get going.” Ben laughed, then sucked down the last half inch of his Lucky and butted it out in the metal ashtray. “Finish that smoke and down that coffee.”

Dick emptied the contents of the cardboard cup down his throat and extinguished his Camel. “Yeah, time to feed the
next
nut…”

 

2

Myron Gunn had the Devil in him again. He had wanted so badly to give that evil bastard Norman Bates more than a piddling head bump. Truth be told, what Myron really wanted to do to Norman wasn't very Christian, and it wasn't something that he could tell Jesus in the quietness of his heart or even tell Pastor Oley Crowe of the First Baptist Holiness Church. Neither one of them would appreciate the details.

The problem was that now Myron Gunn had a meanness in him. His daddy, rest his soul, had said he had the
Devil
in him when he got this way, but Myron knew that wasn't true. It was a meanness due to seeing injustice and not being able to do anything about it. If Jesus hadn't been able to drive the moneychangers from the temple, even
he
would've had that kind of meanness in him and would've had to do
something
about it.

It just made Myron so mad sometimes to see these monsters treated like they were staying at the Ritz. Take Norman Bates. That bastard didn't need special treatment, all that sweet talk and chocolate cake—he needed bread and water and daily whippings to drive Satan out of him once and for all. At the very least he needed a smack upside his head like Myron had tried to give him before Reed walked in on them.

And now Myron was left with the meanness inside and no patients to work it out on. Fine, he'd just do what he often did when he had some meanness to get out of him. And he straightened his collar, smoothed back his blond hair streaked with gray, and headed for the nurses' station.

*   *   *

Head Nurse Eleanor Lindstrom was sitting in her small office, going over the daily nurses' reports that chronicled anything out of the ordinary. It was seven thirty, there were blessedly few incidents, all the nighttime meds had been doled out, and she was looking forward to getting home, having vodka with some lime juice, and watching
The Real McCoys, My Three Sons,
and
The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show.
That Tennessee Ernie was a good-looking man, and by that time she'd have enough vodka inside her that she could imagine snuggling on the couch with old Ern' while he sang to her.

She had just slapped the thin report folder shut when there was a knock on her office door. “Shit,” she muttered, wondering what-the-hell problem was going to keep her from her drink and shows. “Yes?” she said, and the door opened to reveal Myron Gunn standing there, a thin smile on his face.

“Had a question for you,” Myron asked in his deep bass voice that sounded sandpapered by whiskey and cigarettes, though Myron neither drank nor smoked, to Eleanor's knowledge, since she'd never smelled booze or tobacco on his breath.

“Yes?” Eleanor said again, hoping, but trying not to smile, trying to remain
professional.

“Think there might've been some inappropriate activity in the laundry,” Myron said. There was a little flame in his eyes, and Eleanor felt a flame lick up in her as well. “I'd like to show you, see what you think. If you have a minute.”

“Of course,” she said, and stood up, following Myron out past the nurses' station into the hall. Two nurses on the evening shift were talking to each other, barely looking up as Myron and Eleanor walked by.

Myron led Eleanor to a stairwell, and they went down two flights to the basement, where the laundry was located. Laundry workers finished at five, so no one was there now. The laundry was all clean, and the carts would be wheeled up to the wards in the morning, where the nurses would change the bedding and give the patients clean uniforms. Now, all those clean, soft sheets were lying on pallets, ready to be loaded into the carts.

Myron stopped walking next to a pallet, turned, and faced Eleanor. He looked angry. “What is it?” she said.

“Reed. He saw me … disciplining Norman Bates.”

Eleanor felt the anger seep from Myron Gunn like a hot wave. It excited her, because she knew what his anger would lead to if she stoked the fires correctly.

“Skinny little bastard,” she said, moving closer to Myron. “What does
he
know? He doesn't realize what you have to deal with every single day, the strength you have to show to tame these monsters.” She put her hands on his upper arms, and could feel the corded biceps beneath the fabric of his shirt. “He could
never
do that. All he does is talk, just talk…”

“That's right,” Myron said. “He couldn't do a thing, one of these guys tried to mess with him. Little sissy boy, he'd just cry and curl up like a ball. You gotta be
mean
to deal with them.”

“And strong,” Eleanor said, moving her body against his. “God, Myron, you're
so
strong…”

And then his hands were cupping her face, forcing her head to his, crushing his mouth on hers, and she let herself be pulled down, down onto the clean white sheets …

*   *   *

Several minutes later, he was still lying on top of her, the meanness gone out of him. Her womanly body, firm yet soft where it mattered, supported him the way that his bony wife's never had, and she seemed to have no trouble breathing, even with his weight on her chest. She was as strong as he was, and that was saying something.

He propped himself on his elbows and kissed her, as much from affection as from duty. Eleanor understood him in ways his wife never could, and he appreciated her, the way she allowed him to take out his meanness on her, the way she listened when he talked, told him what he needed to hear, gave him what he wanted when he wanted it.

But now was the dangerous time, when he felt as vulnerable as he ever did, when she would suggest how good it would be if they were together all the time, when she would hint, and hint only, God bless her, that it was easier in these modern times to end a loveless marriage.

What she didn't understand, and what he'd tried to explain to her, was that once a man took a woman in the sight of God, he couldn't put her away from him. The Bible said not to do that, and Myron didn't have any intention of disobeying God's laws. Sure, there was that commandment about adultery, but Myron thought that God surely knew what his marriage was like, how he and Marybelle hadn't had relations in nine years, and that a man
needed
certain things.

Myron had never been with a whore, but when, seven years earlier, he'd sensed that Eleanor Lindstrom's needs were just as great as his own, he'd made an arrangement with Jesus. If he honored his marriage by staying with Marybelle, then Jesus would look the other way when he found ease with Eleanor. And he would honor that arrangement by working even harder to bring whatever justice he could to these
truly
evil men around whom he worked. Thank God that Eleanor, his secret lover, felt the same way about these satanic creatures that he did.

But now that he
had
found ease and gotten that meanness out, it was time to part, before he said something to Eleanor that he'd regret and that might haunt him later. Just as he pushed himself off of her, there was a loud
clunk
from a dark corner, and Eleanor stiffened under him.

“What was that?” she whispered. “Somebody there?”

“Relax,” Myron said, getting to his feet. “Just a heat pipe—no door over there. Nobody's here.”

Eleanor sat up and readjusted her clothing. “Sometimes this place … at night, y'know?”

“What?” Myron said, zipping up.

“Oh, the stories. As long as you've been here, you must have heard them.”

“Sure, I've heard them all, and I don't believe a one. I've been all over this hospital, all hours of the day and night, and never saw or heard a thing that I couldn't explain. No ghosts here.”

Eleanor stood, smoothed down her dress, and ran a hand through Myron's hair. “I wouldn't even be afraid of ghosts, as long as you were around.”

“Who needs ghosts when you've got a building full of devils,” Myron said. Eleanor started to laugh, and Myron looked at her. It was a hard look that told her he wasn't joking, and her laughter stopped.

*   *   *

Three floors above, in the office of Dr. Isaac Goldberg, superintendent of the state hospital, an opera recording was playing on the console, and Dr. Felix Reed was sitting otherwise alone in the room. Reed thought it might be Verdi, but he wasn't sure. He hadn't heard anything he recognized since he entered.

Judy Pearson, Dr. Goldberg's personal secretary, had told Reed to make himself comfortable, and that Dr. Goldberg would be there soon. He had apparently gone to the staff dining room, as he occasionally did, to eat and mingle with the evening shift. Judy, a girl in her early twenties without any personality that Reed could detect, offered him coffee, which he accepted.

As he sipped it and listened to (maybe) Verdi, he checked the clock on Goldberg's desk against his own watch. It was five minutes past eight on each instrument, and Goldberg had asked Reed to be there at eight. The tardiness was typical of Goldberg, and Reed expected it. Still, it would never do to be late himself. Goldberg demanded punctiliousness from all his underlings.

So Reed sat and listened to opera and looked around the office. Goldberg had several symbols of his faith displayed. A brass, seven-branched menorah sat on one of the many bookcases that covered the walls, and a framed Star of David made of intricately inlaid polished stones hung between the windows behind the desk.

Reed stood and browsed the floor-to-ceiling bookcases, as he usually did when he had to wait for Goldberg. Nothing had changed. It was still the same combination of essential texts in the field mixed with classical literature and philosophy, much of it in German.

Reed then surveyed the framed diplomas that are part of the decor of every medical man's office. In Goldberg's case they were few, only a couple advanced degrees from American psychiatric schools in the late 1940s. There was nothing from Goldberg's early years in Vienna before the war. The Nazis hadn't allowed doctors to take their diplomas into the death camps.

The door to the office opened and Goldberg entered, holding a cup of coffee. Even at the end of the day, his shirtfront and suit still seemed crisp and freshly pressed, his full beard neatly trimmed and bristling. “Felix!” His voice was loud and heavy with the accent of Mitteleuropa. “Sit! Please. Do you need more coffee?”

“No thanks, Dr. Goldberg, I'm fine.”

Goldberg sat behind his wide desk as Reed perched on the edge of the chair opposite. “Perhaps a cookie?” The older man opened a desk drawer and brought up a package of Oreos. “I love them, eh?”

“Not for me, thank you, but you go ahead.”

“I will. A tiny dessert.” As Reed watched, Goldberg took an Oreo, separated the two halves, dunked the dry one in his coffee, popped it in his mouth, chewed and swallowed, and then ate the other half with the sweet filling without dunking it first.

“Now,” he said, touching a white handkerchief to his lips, “I trust you have closely observed my method of eating an Oreo cookie, and that you have come to some conclusion about my psyche as a result.”