by Robert Bloch
“Is Mother here?”
Mick shook her head. “No, but she’s waitin’ for us.”
“Where?”
“In the cellar.”
So that’s where they went, Mick an eager leader and Terry a reluctant rear guard. She kept telling herself that she wasn’t chicken but that was a lie. She was worse than chicken, she was a pigeon too, falling for Mick’s hype about how exciting it all was. Maybe Mick got turned on because she put something over on her old man but as far as Terry was concerned forget it. Banging around in the dark and sniffing up all that stink from the paint fumes was no big deal. Okay, that moving statue in the motel office was a pretty cutesy idea and the one in the shower stall that didn’t move was kinda scary. But if that’s all there was to see ol’ Fatso Otto wasn’t likely to end up on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous just from selling tickets. He’d have to come up with more than that. Or come down with it, there in the cellar.
Trouble was when they got there the cellar was only a basement; a bare-walled, painted-over basement. It didn’t even have one of those big furnaces they used to shovel coal into in the olden days; must have a built-in heating system upstairs instead if they figured on keeping open in wintertime. Not that Terry gave a diddly-damn one way or the other; that was Fatso Otto’s problem, not hers. Her problem was that she was beginning to feel she had to go to the john and what was she doing futzing around down here in the first place?
“Okay,” she said. “We’re here. I still don’t see anything.”
Mick turned, her head bobbing in the flashlight’s halo. “That’s on account of this is only the basement. I said she was in the cellar, remember?”
“What cellar?”
“The fruit cellar. Down here.”
Mick angled her way behind the basement steps and Terry followed. It seemed to her that the flashlight beam was getting weaker while her urge was getting stronger. There sure as hell wasn’t going to be any john in the fruit cellar but maybe Fatso Otto had one put in on the first floor. If she knew him, it was probably a pay toilet. Right now she didn’t much care; all she wanted to do was take a fast look down here in the fruit cellar and then go upstairs and take a fast leak.
“Hey!” Mick’s voice jolted her. “What’s happened to your light?”
Terry blinked down at the dim outline of her hand clutching the metal cylinder. She rattled it, her thumb working the projecting switch. “Batteries must be dead,” she said.
“Mine’s okay.” Mick brandished her beam in her right hand. With the left she gripped the handle of the door beneath the bottom of the stairs.
“Why don’t you open it?” Terry said. “Whatcha waiting for?”
“Promise me one thing first,” Mick told her. “No screaming.”
“You got to be putting me on. I ain’t gonna scream.”
“Maybe not,” Mick said. “But I sure let out a good one when I come down here last night. ’Course I heard all those stories about how Norman Bates’ real mother looked like when they found her down here, but it still got me to makin’ and shakin’ because the dummy is so—like—yucky.”
“Won’t scare me none,” Terry said. “It’s just a statue of an old lady.”
“That’s what I thought.” Mick’s shadow nodded on the wall at the base of the stairwell. “But I forgot all the things Norman did to her.”
“Like what?”
“Like killing her, for starters. Giving her and her boyfriend some kinda poison in their drinks, I forget just what they said it was, but it must of been an awful way to die, because you can see it in her face. Or what’s left of her face.”
“I thought ol’ Norman fixed her back up again,” Terry said.
“He had to dig her back up first.”
Mick sounded as if she was having a ball telling her about this but Terry wished she would have waited until they were outside again. It was too hot down here, too stuffy, too dark, too closed-in; too damned much like the place ol’ Norman dug up his mother from.
“That must of been a couple a months afterward,” Mick said. “So by the time he got his hands on her again she could of been, like you know—”
“Do you have to talk about it?” Terry didn’t give Mick a chance to reply. “Besides, I know what he did to her then. Taxdermy.”
“Taxidermy, dummy!”
“So who cares? Bottom line is ol’ Norman stuffed her.”
“That ain’t the way he told it. He thought she was still alive. They used to talk to each other all the time—only he was talking to himself, of course. But after that detective started snooping around, Norman put his mother down here in the fruit cellar so’s nobody would hear her. Or see her.”
“Okay, okay! Let’s just look at the old bat and get outta here,” Terry said.
Mick let out a snicker. “Scared you, didn’t I?” Her left hand moved to the doorknob and her right hand tilted the flashlight so that when the door opened the beam would fall directly upon what waited within.
“Get ready for the gross-out!” she said.
And opened the door.
The muscles of Terry’s neck constricted preparatory to vocalizing her reaction at what she saw. But strangely enough no sound issued from Terry’s throat and it was Mick who screamed at the sight of what was in the cellar.
Or what wasn’t.
Because the fruit cellar was empty.
Terry peered through the open doorway, then turned to her companion. “Mick—”
Mick didn’t look at her; she was still staring straight ahead, but now her scream modified into intelligible response. “She’s gone!”
“So?”
Mick turned, shoulders shaking. “She was here last night, I know it because I saw her! You believe me, don’t you?”
Terry nodded. “All right, she’s gone. Do you have to get so uptight about it?”
“You don’t understand, do you?”
Terry thought she did. “This is a put-on, right? You want me to think you’re flaking out because Mother all of a sudden came alive and walked out of here?”
“That’s just it!” Mick could prevent herself from screaming now, but the hand holding the flashlight was shaking. And in the shimmer of its glow Terry saw a face contorted with fear. “She didn’t walk. Somebody took her! Maybe you were right when you said you heard somethin’. Maybe somebody came to snatch her up, maybe they saw us—”
Now Mick’s control of her voice seemed only momentary and Terry reached out to put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. Mick wheeled, shaking her head. “Come on, we gotta get outta here!” Her feet stumbled toward the stairs, then pistoned as she raced upward. The fringes of her flashlight beam faded away abruptly into the confines of the staircase above, leaving Terry trapped in the deepening darkness below.
“Wait—wait for me!”
But the frightened footsteps did not halt or heed. Terry floundered up the stairs, her left hand groping for a railing that wasn’t there, meanwhile thumbing frantically at the flashlight switch but without results. Except for one. As the hand holding the flashlight flailed forward, her knuckles struck the sidewall and the momentary twinge of pain relaxed her grip so that the flashlight fell.
The flashlight fell, and then the pain was no longer a momentary twinge. The pain, the new pain, lanced through her leg as the metal cylinder struck her ankle, then bounced off with a momentum gained from the force of the blow.
Terry gasped, wincing as her weight came down upon the injured ankle. Placing the palm of her left hand against the unseen wall of the stairwell, she stooped cautiously to run the fingers of her right hand across the swelling that was already beginning to bulge below the top of her Reebok. Her groping fingers loosened the lacing but could not ease the pain.
Gritting her teeth she reached the basement landing. Pain stabbed at a different angle here on the flat surface, but there was no sense moaning. No sense calling out, either, because she didn’t hear Mick’s footsteps on the stairs leading up to the first flo
or. Sure must of gotten out of here in one holy hell of a hurry; putting on about how brave she was, but underneath it had been Mick who was really chicken all the time. So what if somebody did bust in and steal that crummy dummy? They wouldn’t have any reason to stick around afterward.
Or would they?
Maybe Mick knew something she hadn’t talked about, maybe she had a real reason to be scared and that’s why she hoofed out of here in such a hurry. It wouldn’t hurt for her to do the same, Terry told herself, only she couldn’t because it did hurt. Moving up the basement stairs, she wondered if that damn flashlight had busted her ankle. Whatever, it sure hurt like hell. And groping her way down the dark corridor was like walking on a bed of hot coals.
Twice she had to stop, and the only thing that kept her going as she came around the edge of the upper staircase was the sight of the open front door ahead, with Mick standing in the corner beside it. Despite the increased intensity of the pain Terry increased her pace. As she did so the front door started to swing shut.
“Hey, grab the door!” Terry called.
Automatically her right hand reached forward to carry out her own command, but by now the door had already closed and Mick was turning in the shadows.
Only the figure emerging into the hallway wasn’t Mick. And the silvery thing in its upraised hand wasn’t a flashlight.
— 2 —
Amy Haines hit the last stretch around six o’clock but the sky was already dark as midnight.
It had been three days since she had left Chicago, two days since leaving Ft. Worth to start the drive back up again. What had impressed her the most during the fist two nights had been the sight of a skyful of stars—something that long exposure to urban illumination had obliterated from her vision and her memory. Tonight, of course, there were no stars above, but on the pavement ahead the raindrops sparkled and glittered before her looming headlights.
The rain was heavier now, pelting the pavement and splattering static across the signal band of the car radio. Amy switched it off with a sigh and concentrated on coping with the rush-hour traffic flow. The six o’clock peak load here was less than she’d expect to encounter at two A.M. on any Chicago expressway. And rain or no rain, she was making progress. Sometimes the long way around is the shortest way home.
At least that’s what she kept telling herself. There had to be some excuse for doing what she did; it would have been so much easier just to drive her own car straight down from Chicago instead of taking a flight all the way down to Ft. Worth, on the slim chance that there still might be something of interest there.
But Ft. Worth had been a disaster area, and aside from the star-studded spectacle of the previous nights’ skies there hadn’t been all that much to see during the long, exhausting hours spent on the road. And what she’d secretly hoped for hadn’t happened. She didn’t feel a bit like Mary Crane at all.
“Secretly”? “Foolishly” was a better word. How could she possibly expect to identify with someone dead and gone all these years? The world she lived in was dead and gone too; Amy found that out in Ft. Worth when she tired to find an entry point into the past. Her trip in the rented car followed the same route Mary Crane had taken, or as much of it as anyone had ever been able to determine, but over the passage of years the landscape, even the freeways themselves, had changed.
Besides, there was no resemblance between Mary Crane and herself. She hadn’t ripped off a bundle of cash from her employer and fled town, switching cars en route to avoid detection. Most importantly she had not stopped off to spend a night at the Bates Motel. Part of a night, really—a night that ended with the splashing of a shower and the slashing of a knife.
There were only two things she had in common with the unfortunate girl who had died before she herself had been born. Like Mary Crane on her last evening of existence, she was driving through a rainstorm—and she was on her way to Fairvale.
But she was on the freeway, not on a side road leading to the Bates Motel. And both the actual motel and the house above it were long gone, as was the transvestite who murdered the girl and, later, the detective who came seeking her.
Gone, but not forgotten. And there were things that she’d better not forget. The off-ramps, for example; here was a sign announcing the location of an upcoming exit for Montrose and Rock Center. Fairvale would be next, or so she guessed.
And correctly.
As the car spinned and spiraled down the ramp Amy’s sigh of relief was drowned in thunder. Turning right onto the county highway leading into town, relief gave way to anticipation, underscored by a flash of lightning that slashed across the sky the way Norman Bates’ knife had slashed across the—
But what put that into her head? This was no time for such thoughts, now that she was entering Fairvale itself. Rain and darkness dampened and dulled her first impressions of the town; at first glimpse and first glance it seemed no different from a thousand other small communities scattered throughout the heartland of midwest America.
Which, of course, was what made it so fascinating, she reminded herself. So many similarities between Fairvale and all the others, with only one significant difference—it had happened here. Here was where the knife slashed down.
Hard to believe and, of course, strictly speaking, the actual murders took place some seventeen miles away from Fairvale’s main street. But Norman Bates had gone to school in this town, he had walked these streets as an adult. Local citizens knew him as a friend and neighbor. He’d probably visited some of them in their homes here, done business in the local stores. From the looks of them, most of the residences and shops had been around back then. Fairvale itself was like something preserved in a time capsule.
Self-preservation, the first law of nature. Norman Bates had gone a step farther—he’d preserved his mother in himself. Which made him a time bomb, not capsule, a bomb that had long since exploded.
But now was not the time to think of that. Now was the time to peer ahead at oncoming local traffic and thank God that the windshield wipers were still working. Outside of a few drivers inside their cars there was no one to take note of Amy’s arrival at the courthouse square. She recognized it from photographs; the granite shaft of the World War II memorial, the Spanish-American War trench mortar and the Civil War statue of a Union veteran flanking it on either side of the block. Preservation was Fairvale’s way of life.
But the annex adjoining the main courthouse was comparatively new and so was the Fairvale Hotel in the next block on the opposite side of the street. The parking lot next to the building was almost empty and Amy slid into a space close to the overhang above the entrance. Even so, she wished she’d brought an umbrella, because just lugging her bag from the car to the shelter of the overhang was enough to expose her to the chill of the undiminished downpour.
But the lobby was warm and dry and, somewhat to her surprise, comfortably well furnished. There were no other guests visible in the area at this moment and no sign of a bellhop or porter waiting to relieve her of the overnight bag. But there was a clerk on duty behind the reception counter; a tall, gangling young man with a sallow complexion, green eyes, and hair the color of used kitty litter.
Placing his comic book to one side, he devoted his full attention to the needs and welfare of the arriving guest.
“Looking for somebody?” he asked.
“I’m Amelia Haines. I believe you have a reservation for me.”
“Oh.” The greenish eyes slipped sideways toward the discarded comic book, but only for a moment. “What did you say that that name was again?”
“Haines.” She spelled it for him as he consulted a register which apparently rested on a lower level beneath the countertop. Obviously the Fairvale Hotel was no more into computers than its clerk was into neckties.
But he did find her reservation and she had no problem signing in, except for the fact that she couldn’t fill out the space assigned to Name of Company. When she pushed the completed form across the counter the cle
rk glanced down at the card and noted the omission. “You’re not working for anybody, lady?”
“Self-employed,” Amy said. “Not that it’s any of your goddamned business.”
At least that’s what she would like to have said, but due to the somewhat delicate nature of her situation, she merely nodded. No sense making waves or even reaching across the counter to give this nosy young jerk a slight belt across the chops. She even managed a smile of pseudo-gratitude as she accepted the key to room 205.
No mention was made of bellboy assistance and she didn’t bother to ask; long before she crossed the lobby and reached the single elevator, the green eyes behind the counter were again eagerly attempting to decipher the lettering inside the balloons above the heads of the comic’s characters.
Room 205 was state-of-the-art, if one considers plastic décor an art form. But at least it contained the feminine essentials—a mirror, a closet, and a telephone. Amy glanced out of the window at the flat rooftop, wondering if it covered a restaurant or kitchen area below. She hadn’t bothered to ask if the hotel had a coffee shop and/or dining room, but she hoped so; the last thing in the world she wanted right now was to expose herself to what was happening beyond the window-pane. Closing the drapes obscured the sight but did little to muffle the sound of the rain drumming down on the adjacent roof.
The thing now was to get out of her travel-creased and still slightly dampened clothes, but what she really wanted to do this very moment was find out about food. Her watch told her it was eight o’clock and her stomach added as a postscript that it had received no consideration whatsoever since she’d stopped the car to gas up during the noon hour.
She picked up the phone and called the hotel operator. At least that was her intention, but his voice on the other end of the line was that of the comic book reader behind the reception counter. Restraining herself from apologizing for interrupting his studies, she asked about the dining situation.