Chapter 14 The Cellar

When Lila came back down to the bottom of the stairs, she looked through the window by the front door and saw Bates. He was running up the hill towards the house. She had no time to ask herself about Sam. She had to hide.

As Lila ran towards the kitchen, she heard Bates at the front door. Suddenly she noticed some stairs.They seemed to go down towards some kind of cellar. Without thinking, she ran onto the top stair and waited.

Bates stood still for a second. He couldn't see Lila, but he knew she was in the house. Probably upstairs, looking for his mother.

Lila stood up when she heard Bates upstairs in his mother's room. Now she could escape and find Sam. But she couldn't stop looking at the cellar door below her. Maybe the mother was down there? Perhaps Marion and Arbogast were prisoners down there? She had to go down to learn the secrets that were hiding behind that door.

It was dark inside the cellar, and there was a strange smell of dead animals and oil. She stood still for a few seconds. Then she thought she could see a light on the opposite side of the room. It was coming from underneath a door. She walked slowly towards it in the dark, past tables full of glass bottles, knives and tins. At last, she came to the door and opened it slowly.

It was a small room with one light in the ceiling. In the middle of the room there was a wooden chair facing the opposite wall, and on the chair there was a woman. Lila looked at the back of her head. She seemed to be asleep.

'Mrs. Bates?' Lila said quietly. She didn't want to frighten her. 'Mrs Bates?' she said again, moving slowly towards her.

The woman didn't answer. Lila touched her shoulder. Lila turned the woman's chair round and looked down at her face. The first thing that she saw was the woman's teeth. They were large and yellow. And then Lila realised that the old woman had no eyes. She was looking down at the dry, brown face of a dead woman.

Lila screamed. She turned to run away but stopped. There was a tall, shadowy shape by the door. The shadow had long grey hair and wore a flowery dress. As it moved into the light, Lila could see the face: a white face with a terrible smile and mad, shining eyes.

Then she saw the knife. She wanted to scream again but her mouth was dry and she felt too weak. She moved back as the mad old woman ran towards her, laughing wildly, the silver knife in her hand, ready ...

Then another person ran into the room and jumped on the mad woman from behind. Sam! He put one arm round the woman's neck and with his other hand he held her wrist, fighting for the knife. The woman fought hard, screaming wildly. But Sam was too strong for her.

Lila watched them as they fought. And then something unbelievable happened. As Sam pulled the old woman to the floor, the long grey hair slowly fell to one side of her head. Lila suddenly realised that the face wasn't the face of a woman. It was Norman Bates! And he was screaming like a woman!

Lila pressed herself against the wall. She felt sick. And Norman Bates's mother, a dead woman -with no eyes, watched with a wide smile on her brown face. She seemed to be laughing at her son as he lay screaming on the cold, stone floor.

Chapter 15 'Look at that Fly on My Hand'

Some time later, Sam and Lila sat with Jud Chambers in his office. The room was full of people, all of whom were listening to a man who was talking to them about Norman.

'I got all the story,' Doctor Steiner said. 'But not from Norman. I heard it from his mother.'

'I don't understand,' said the sheriff.

'I know it's difficult, but I'll try to explain,' Doctor Steiner replied. 'You see, there is no Norman Bates. Not now. There never was one Norman Bates. He was half Norman, half his mother. Now he's all his mother. He'll probably never be Norman again.'

'Did he kill my sister?' Lila wanted to know.

The doctor looked at her sadly. 'Yes. I'm sorry. He killed Arbogast too. If we look in that swamp near the motel, I think we'll find both of them. We'll probably find other dead people too. Pretty young women, just like your sister.'

The doctor looked at all the serious faces in the room, and began to explain: 'We have to remember that, ten years ago, Norman killed his mother and her lover. He lived alone with his mother and she was the boss. Then she met another man, and Norman was jealous. He thought that his mother loved this other man more than she loved him, so he killed both of them. A short time later he went out one night, dug his dead mother out of the ground, brought her back to the house and hid her in the cellar. He looked after her like one of his stuffed birds.

'But keeping his mother's dead body was not enough. Norman soon began to think like his mother, to talk like his mother, to be his mother. She became half of him. Sometimes he was Norman, sometimes he was his mother, and sometimes he was both at the same time. He had to talk to himself.

' He was never all Norman, but he was sometimes all mother.

When he liked a girl, the mother side of his head became angry. His mother was jealous of him because he was jealous of her when she had a lover.'

Doctor Steiner turned to Lila. 'When he met your sister, he thought she was beautiful. He wanted her. That was a problem for the mother side of him. There was a fight inside his head between the two of them, but his mother won because she was stronger. So he suddenly became his mother, and his mother killed Marion. When Marion was dead, Norman woke up after a kind of deep sleep, and really believed that his mother was the killer. He put your sister's body in the swamp because he loved his mother, and wanted to save her from the police.

'When clanger came too near, Norman put on his mother's clothes. He walked round the house, sat in her chair by the window and talked in her voice. He tried to be his mother, and now he is. The fight inside Norman's head is finished. The stronger person has won. He is now his mother.'

'And what about the money?' said Jud Chambers. 'Who got that?'

'The swamp, 'Doctor Steiner replied.

Somewhere in the same building, two policemen were standing guard outside a door. Behind the door there was a small white room with no furniture or windows. Norman Bates was alone in that room. He was sitting very still, with a strange smile on his face.

Perhaps this person was Norman Bates: he had Norman's face, Norman's body, Norman's clothes. But it was really his mother who was alive. Norman was really dead now.

'It's sad when a mother has to tell the police about her son,' the voice inside Norman's head was saying. 'They'll put him in Drison now. He in orison. A bad boy, who looked

through holes in the wall and killed people. He thinks that / did all those bad things. He tried to tell that to the police. But they know it wasn't me. I've never done anything bad. I was like one of his stuffed birds. I could only watch. I couldn't stop him. I couldn't move.

'Look at me. I can't even move a finger. And I'm not going to try. I'm going to sit here very still. I'm not going to move. I'll never move again.

'They're probably watching me now. They'll see the sort of person that I really am. I'm a kind person. The sort of person who can never hurt anyone. Look at that fly on my hand for example. I'm not going to kill it. I can't.

'I hope they're watching. Then they'll see, and they'll know. And they'll say:"Look at her. She's a good woman. She can't even kill a fly.'"

Date: 2016-03-03; view: 794