Psycho

P
S
YCHO

by Robert Bloch

First published in 1959

10% of this book is dedicated to HARRY ALTSHULER,

who did 90% of the work

Norman Bates heard the noise and a shock went through him.

It sounded as though somebody was tapping on the windowpane.

He looked up, hastily, half prepared to rise, and the book slid from his hands to his ample lap. Then he realized that the sound was merely rain. Late afternoon rain, striking the parlor window.

Norman hadn't noticed the coming of the rain, nor the twilight. But it was quite dim here in the parlor now, and he reached over to switch on the lamp before resuming his reading.

It was one of those old-fashioned table lamps, the kind with the ornate glass shade and the crystal fringe. Mother had had it ever since he could remember, and she refused to get rid of it. Norman didn't really object; he had lived in this house for all of the forty years of his life, and there was something quite pleasant and reassuring about being surrounded by familiar things. Here everything was orderly and ordained; it was only there, outside, that the changes took place. And most of those changes held a potential threat. Suppose he had spent the afternoon walking, for example? He might have been off on some lonely side road or even in the swamps when the rain came, and then what? He'd be soaked to the skin, forced to stumble along home in the dark. You could catch your death of cold that way, and besides, who wanted to be out in the dark? It was much nicer here in the parlor, under the lamp, with a good book for company.

The light shone down on his plump face, reflected from his rimless glasses, bathed the pinkness of his scalp beneath the thinning sandy hair as he bent his head to resume reading.

It was really a fascinating book—no wonder he hadn't noticed how fast the time had passed. It was
The Realm of the Incas
, by Victor W. Von Hagen, and Norman had never before encountered such a wealth of curious information. For example, this description of the cachna, or victory dance, where the warriors formed a great circle, moving and writhing like a snake. He read:

The drumbeat for this was usually performed on what had been the body of an enemy: the skin had been flayed and the belly stretched to form a drum, and the whole body acted as a sound box while throbbings came out of the open mouth—grotesque, but effective. [Reprinted by permission of the author.]

Norman smiled, then allowed himself the luxury of a comfortable shiver.
Grotesque but effective
—it certainly
must
have been! Imagine flaying a man—alive, probably—and then stretching his belly to use it as a drum! How did they actually go about doing that, curing and preserving the flesh of the corpse to prevent decay? For that matter, what kind of a mentality did it take to conceive of such an idea in the first place?

It wasn't the most appetizing notion in the world, but when Norman half closed his eyes, he could almost see the scene: this throng of painted, naked warriors wriggling and swaying in unison under a sun-drenched, savage sky, and the old crone crouching before them, throbbing out a relentless rhythm on the swollen, distended belly of a cadaver. The contorted mouth of the corpse would be forced open, probably fixed in a gaping grimace by clamps of bone, and from it the sound emerged. Beating from the belly, rising through the shrunken inner orifices, forced up through the withered windpipe to emerge amplified and in full force from the dead throat.

For a moment, Norman could almost hear it, and then he remembered that rain has its rhythm too, and footsteps–

Actually, he was aware of the footsteps without even hearing them; long familiarity aided his senses whenever Mother came into the room. He didn't even have to look up to know she was there.

In fact, he
didn't
look up; he pretended to continue his reading, instead. Mother had been sleeping in her room, and he knew how crabby she could get when just awakened. So it was best to keep quiet and hope that she wasn't in one of her bad moods.

"Norman, do you know what time it is?"

He sighed and closed the book. He could tell now that she was going to be difficult; the very question was a challenge. Mother had to pass the grandfather clock in the hall in order to come in here and she could easily see what time it was.

Still, no sense making an issue of it. Norman glanced down at his wrist watch, then smiled. "A little after five," he said. "I actually didn't realize it was so late. I've been reading–"

"Don't you think I have eyes? I can see what you've been doing." She was over at the window now, staring out at the rain. "And I can see what you haven't been doing, too. Why didn't you turn the sign on when it got dark? And why aren't you up at the office where you belong?"

"Well, it started to rain so hard, and I didn't expect there'd be any traffic in this kind of weather.

"Nonsense! That's just the time you're likely to get some business. Lots of folks don't care to drive when it's raining."

"But it isn't likely anybody would be coming this way. Everyone takes the new highway." Norman heard the bitterness creeping into his voice, felt it welling up into his throat until he could taste it, and tried to hold it back. But too late now; he had to vomit it out. "I told you how it would be at the time, when we got that advance tip that they were moving the highway. You could have sold the motel then, before there was a public announcement about the new road coming through. We could have bought all kinds of land over there for a song, closer to Fairvale, too. We'd have had a new motel, a new house, made some money. But you wouldn't listen. You never listen to me, do you? It's always what
you
want and what
you
think. You make me sick!"

"Do I, boy?" Mother's voice was deceptively gentle, but that didn't fool Norman. Not when she called him "boy." Forty years old, and she called him "boy": that's how she treated him, too, which made it worse. If only he didn't have to listen! But he did, he knew he had to, he always had to listen.

"Do I, boy?" she repeated, even more softly. "I make you sick, eh? Well, I think not. No, boy,
I
don't make you sick. You make
yourself
sick.

"That's the real reason you're still sitting over here on this side road, isn't it, Norman? Because the truth is that you haven't any gumption.
Never
had any gumption, did you, boy?

"Never had the gumption to leave home. Never had the gumption to go out and get yourself a job, or join the army, or even find yourself a girl—"

"You wouldn't let me!"

"That's right, Norman. I wouldn't let you. But if you were half a man, you'd have gone your own way."

He wanted to shout out at her that she was wrong, but he couldn't. Because the things she was saying were the things he had told himself, over and over again, all through the years. It was true. She'd always laid down the law to him, but that didn't mean he always had to obey. Mothers sometimes are overly possessive, but not all children allow themselves to be possessed. There had been other widows, other only sons, and not all of them became enmeshed in this sort of relationship. It was really his fault as much as hers. Because he didn't have any gumption.

"You could have insisted, you know," she was saying. "Suppose you'd gone out and found us a new location, then put the place here up for sale. But no, all you did was whine. And I know why. You never fooled me for an instant. It's because you really didn't
want
to move. You've never wanted to leave this place, and you never will now, ever. You
can't
leave, can you? Any more than you can grow up."

He couldn't look at her. Not when she said things like that, he couldn't. And there was nowhere else for him to look, either. The beaded lamp, the heavy old overstuffed furniture, all the familiar objects in the room, suddenly became hateful just
because
of long familiarity; like the furnishings of a prison cell. He stared out of the window, but that was no good either—out there was the wind and the rain and the darkness. He knew there was no escape for him out
there
. No escape anywhere, from the voice that throbbed, the voice that drummed into his ears like that of the Inca corpse in the book; the drum of the dead.

He clutched at the book now and tried to focus his eyes on it. Maybe if he ignored her, and pretended to be calm

But it didn't work.

"Look at yourself!" she was saying (
the drum going boom-boom-boom, and the sound reverberating from the mangled mouth
). "I know why you didn't bother to switch on the sign. I know why you haven't even gone up to open the office tonight. You didn't really forget. It's just that you don't
want
anyone to come, you hope they
don't
come."

"All right!" he muttered. "I admit it. I hate running a motel, always have."

"It's more than that, boy." (
There it was again, "Boy, boy, boy!" drumming away, out of the jaws of death
.) "
You
hate
people
. Because, really, you're
afraid
of them, aren't you? Always have been, ever since you were a little tyke. Rather snuggle up in a chair under the lamp and read. You did it thirty years ago, and you're still doing it now. Hiding away under the covers of a book."

"There's a lot worse things I could be doing. You always told me that, yourself. At least I never went out and got into trouble. Isn't it better to improve my mind?"

"Improve your mind? Hah!" He could sense her standing behind him now, staring down. "Call
that
improvement? You don't fool me, boy, not for a minute. Never have. It isn't as if you were reading the Bible, or even trying to get an education. I know the sort of thing
you
read. Trash. And worse than trash!"

"This happens to be a history of the Inca civilization—"

"I'll just bet it is. And I'll just bet it's crammed full with nasty bits about those dirty savages, like the one you had about the South Seas. Oh, you didn't think I knew about
that
one did you? Hiding it up in your room, the way you hid all the others, those filthy things you used to read—"

"Psychology isn't filthy, Mother!"

"Psychology, he calls it! A lot
you
know about psychology! I'll never forget that time you talked so dirty to me, never. To think that a son could come to his own mother and
say
such things!"

"But I was only trying to explain something. It's what they call the Oedipus situation, and I thought if both of us could just look at the problem reasonably and try to understand it, maybe things would change for the better."

"Change, boy? Nothing's going to change. You can read all the books in the world and you'll still be the same. I don't need to listen to a lot of vile obscene rigmarole to know what you are. Why, even an eight-year-old child could recognize it. They
did
, too, all your little playmates did, way back then. You're a Mamma's Boy. That's what they called you, and that's what you were. Were, are, and always will be. A big, fat, overgrown Mamma's Boy!"

It was deafening him, the drumbeat of her words, the drumbeat in his own chest. The vileness in his mouth made him choke. In a moment he'd have to cry. Norman shook his head. To think that she could still do this to him, even now! But she could, and she was, and she
would
, over and over again, unless—

"Unless what?"

God, could she read his
mind
?

"I know what you're thinking, Norman. I know all about you, boy. More than you dream. But I know that, too—what you dream. You're thinking that you'd like to kill me, aren't you, Norman? But you can't. Because you haven't the gumption. I'm the one who has the strength. I've always had it. Enough for both of us. That's why you'll never get rid of me, even if you really wanted to.