Robert Bloch's Psycho (13 page)

“Left?”

“He escaped from his room, Norman. And then he apparently got outside and somehow made it over the fence.”

“He's … he's not here anymore?” Norman knew that he should be upset about someone as bad as Ronald Miller being on the loose, but he couldn't help but be glad that Miller wasn't there to bother him.

“He's not, Norman. So I think you can feel more comfortable in the social hall, yes?”

“Do you think they'll catch him?” Norman asked.

“I think they will, Norman. But when they do, it's going to be a long time before he's in the social hall again. If ever. Okay?”

Norman smiled and nodded. “I do want him to be caught, Dr. Reed, it's just…”

“I understand perfectly. Things will be a little more pleasant with him not around, is that what you mean?”

“Yes. It is.”

“Are you ready to go then?”

Norman was.

Once in the social hall and knowing that he was going to be free of the presence of Ronald Miller, Norman actually walked around the room several times. Though he didn't engage in conversation, he listened to some. A few were completely nonsensical. One was about Communism and how “Communists are running this asylum, goddamnit!”

Another conversation dealt with Ronald Miller's escape, although that wasn't what these two patients considered it. “Escape, my ass,” said one. “Nobody escapes from here. I seen 'em try, but it don't happen. You know what
did
happen, don'tcha?”

“Whut?” said the other man. He wasn't looking at the first. He was looking at the ceiling, as though he was watching things crawl across it.

“Ghosts,” the first said. “Those damn ghosts got him. I hear those bastards all the time.”

“Naw.”

“Yeah. Talkin' and wailin' and cryin'; hell, ain't you heard the stories? How long you been here?”

“Five weeks.”

“
I
been here near five
years.
Heard about 'em when I first came in, then started hearin' 'em for real. They're way old, y'know?”

“How old?”

“Like way-back-turn-of-the-century old. When this place was a crazy house afore the state got it. Was private. For crazy rich folk. 'Stead of us crazy
poor
folk, ha!”

The first man watched the second man move his gaze back and forth across the stained ceiling tiles for a while. Then he said, “You'll never catch 'em, y'know. They crawl right into them little holes in the tile.” But the second man kept watching.

Norman looked upward but saw nothing moving on the ceiling, even though the other men seemed to.

“Boy, that's one's fast, huh?” said the first man.

“And
big,
” said the second. “I don't fer the life of me know
how
they get in them little holes…”

Norman sat down in one of the easy chairs and thought that maybe he wasn't all
that
crazy. At least he didn't believe in ghosts.

*   *   *

But ghosts were on the minds of more people than just Norman Bates and two mentally disturbed men in the social hall. Among the patients, nurses, and support staff, the old stories were rearing their heads again. The facility had been considered haunted by the superstitious for many years, going back to its early days as the Ollinger Sanitarium. Many locals worked in the state hospital, and since the tales of hauntings and horrors were a half-century old, these residents of Fairvale and environs had grown up with those stories, shivering at them under their covers when they were children. Even though they may never have experienced any direct confrontation with the supernatural in the state hospital, their atavistic instincts convinced them of the
possibility
of such things.

In the years between 1918 and 1939, when the facility was deserted and only high stone walls kept out vandals, it was a favorite place for young roughnecks to come with their ladies, to both terrify the womenfolk and demonstrate their own courage by going right up to the gate and shouting at the spirits that still dwelt within to show themselves.

The spirits never did, though the animals that had found their way onto the grounds through chinks too small for humans often played proxy for the reluctant ghosts, and their rustles in the high grass and sudden bursts of speed when startled by human voices frightened many, even the roughnecks, to their great chagrin. So it was that the actions of these unseen but all too real creatures preserved and maintained the authenticity of the legends of the unresting dead, legends that once again became the subject foremost in the minds of many at the State Hospital for the Criminally Insane on this day.

One such example was Judy Pearson, who jumped several inches straight up from her chair when Marie Radcliffe entered the break room. “Judy!” Marie said. “I'm sorry—I didn't mean to startle you.”

Judy relaxed, or tried to. Her tiny frame seemed to shiver with the effort. “Oh, God, Marie,
I'm
sorry, I've been on pins and needles all day, what with Ronald Miller escaping, and the guys
know
that all that ghost talk scares the heck out of me, and they just kid me more now, and it's starting to get dark, and it gets dark so early now I hate it, and…”

Judy's monologue was nearly unintelligible to Marie, though she was able to pick up bit and pieces. Judy never spoke much louder than a stage whisper, and when she was away from the hospital's reception desk, the tempo of her words increased to rocket speed.

“… and having to go into the coatroom alone, because nobody's done at the same time as me, and the parking lot's so dark, and then I get home and there's nobody in my apartment—”

“Judy,” Marie said, “I don't blame you. I'm sure one of the guys would walk you to your car. I can ask Ben.”

“Oh, would you? That would be great! I keep picturing Ronald Miller hiding under my car and reaching out and grabbing my legs and yanking me off my feet!”

“He's far gone from here, Judy.”

“I just hope he didn't go to my apartment; oh, God, I wonder if he knows where I live; you know the way he looks at every woman he sees, like he'd like to … oh, God, when the attendants would take him through the lobby past my desk, the
look
he'd give me…”

“Well, be cautious, of course,” Marie said, “but everybody thinks he just wants to get out of the area, far away from here.”

“Oh, God, as if the ghosts aren't bad enough, now we have to have a … a
monster
on the loose…”

 

7

June 12, 1911

To my great delight, Spiritual Repulsion Therapy has proven to be a successful treatment for those who have committed trespasses against their fellow men. When these patients are confronted in the deeps of the night with the spiritual manifestations of those they have wronged, the guilt they feel is nearly always a purging one, searing the evil from their souls as fire drives out impurities of the flesh.

One patient, W.S., is a prime example of the efficacy of the treatment. W.S. was committed here by his father, a man of no little means, after the youth pummeled a Mexican girl to death because she would not yield to his advances. It is questionable as to whether or not he slaked his dark lusts after he had rendered the girl unconscious, but that is neither here nor there. What is certain is that he took an innocent life in a moment of rage.

Being that the girl was Mexican, the authorities took the crime less seriously than if a white woman had been slaughtered, and it was arranged that W.S., in lieu of a prison sentence, would be committed here at the Ollinger Sanitarium. Of course this required that I testify that the act was committed as the result of a mental aberration, which I had no hesitation in doing. The beating to death of a young woman who had done nothing but withhold herself sexually is, by its very nature, the act of a madman. And it was my work to drive the madness out of that young man.

We had numerous discussions before I utilized Spiritual Repulsion Therapy, and I found W.S. to be sly and dishonest in his intercourse with me. At times he told me what he suspected I wanted to hear, but his insincerity was obvious. In the few moments when I could draw from him the truth in his soul, I was appalled at what I found: a complete lack of guilt and responsibility for the death he had caused. I had no doubt that, were he to walk free again, it might not be long before he would take another life, perhaps even under the same circumstances, and that must not be allowed to happen.

In total, W.S. received three treatments of Spiritual Repulsion Therapy, in ever increasing “dosages.” The first was audible only; the second visible only; the third a combination of the two. Specific sedatives in increasing doses were given W.S. in his evening meal each time, which made him not only less likely to have a response of attack, but made him more suggestible to the phenomena to which he was exposed.

By the end of the third treatment, he was weeping tears of contrition, which continued until the morning, when an attendant came to take him to the dining room for breakfast. He begged to see me, and when I arrived (quite expectantly, I confess), he told me that he finally realized the gravity of his deed and repented of it. Dickens's Scrooge, after the visit of the three spirits, was no more sincere than this poor lad, who had been struck to the heart by the therapy he had received.

And it was then, with the thought of Scrooge in my mind, that I wondered if Mr. Dickens had been my ultimate inspiration for this therapy. Nothing I had heretofore done with this youth had proven as effective as the “visitation of spirits” he had experienced.

At this point, I ended that so successful therapy and spent several months in more traditional channels. Just this week I pronounced W.S. cured, and today his father came to take him home. The youth has lost his rebellious, angry sprit completely, and now evinces a withdrawn, timid countenance, with more feminine than masculine emotions. Indeed, when his father came to retrieve him, he wept to see him, and when the father embraced the prodigal, the boy continued to weep and moan his apologies to his father, his victim, and the world. They left the facility, the father's arm around the still-weeping boy.

There have been a number of similar outcomes, some as dramatic, others less so but still successful. However, to be honest, I have experienced a few cases that were less than successful. While it is true that mankind's primitive fear of the dead is a primary staple of my therapy, when that particular fear overwhelms all else, it can persuade what may be a mild aberration to become something worse. I wish to imbue my patients with moral responsibility for their actions, and if making them more timid and tractable is a by-product, then that is completely acceptable. But when the fear becomes so great that it turns to uncontrolled and incurable terror, the treatment is too harsh. It does no good to render a patient tractable, if they are also to become so distant as to be uncommunicative.

Perhaps I shall relate some of these cases in the future, but they are too painful to revisit now. I must be optimistic regarding Spiritual Repulsion Therapy. Like any other treatment, mistakes can be made. Dosages can be too great. It may be found that some patients are more susceptible and suggestible to such therapy, sometimes too much so, and we shall be able to identify them anon. But this is a great experiment, and as with any experiment, there are bound to be sacrifices that must be made so that we can learn.

I most sincerely pray that the sacrifices will be few.

*   *   *

What in the name of sweet baby Jesus was happening to this place? Myron Gunn wondered. Let one nut disappear, and it affects the whole damned fruitcake.

Ronald Miller's escape had made the good patients not as good, the bad ones worse, and the worst ones terrible. And the kicker was that they hadn't
caught
the creep yet. That gave them all ideas that maybe
they
could escape somehow. And that just made them harder to handle.

But, Myron was quick to remember, they were
crazy,
and their reactions could be crazy too. Take Wesley Breckenridge. Quiet little guy who had gone nuts and chopped up his wife one Christmas Eve, then put the pieces back together so that she was sitting on the couch when family company came. He brought them into the living room, then sat right next to her and held her hand, which wasn't attached to anything else. Now
that
was a Christmas to remember.

Wesley, however, had one of the strangest reactions to Miller's departure. He was certain that the ghosts of the old sanitarium had gotten Miller somehow, but that wasn't the strange part, since a lot of the patients (and even some of the staff) believed that. What made Wesley's case strange was that he was convinced the ghosts who took Ronald Miller away
ate
him.

“They got to get strength somewhere,” he said quietly when he explained his views to Dr. Steiner. “Ghosts gotta eat too. I wanna get so skinny that they won't want me.”

Dr. Steiner had nodded his head, as though pretending Wesley's theory sounded quite logical. Then he said, “I understand that, Wesley, but you have to eat
something,
or you'll starve to death, and we don't want that, now do we?”

Myron thought, Hell, yeah, one less loony to deal with, but kept his mouth shut.

“Wesley,” Dr. Steiner went on, “you haven't eaten a thing in three days, and you're not a very big person to begin with. In another day or so, your body will essentially start feeding on itself, and since you have very little stored body fat, your liver and other organs could be affected, and you could suffer permanent damage, even death. So you see, you
have
to begin to eat again.”