Read Online Robert Bloch's Psycho by Chet Williamson - Free Book Online Page A

walked quickly toward the closest table with magazines on it, and looked over the offerings. There were copies of Life, Look, Reader’s Digest, and National Geographic. He picked up a Geographic and walked between the standing men, careful not to brush against any of them, and sat in one of the captain’s chairs. Without looking up again, he opened the issue and started reading at random, trying to concentrate on the words and pictures rather than the fear he felt from being in this room with these people.
    He had hardly covered a page when he felt the presence of someone sitting down in the chair next to him, and smelled breath so foul that it might have been air drifting out of a newly opened grave.
    *   *   *
    Ronald Miller recognized Norman Bates as soon as he walked into the social hall. He’d seen his photograph in the newspaper they allowed the inmates to read every Sunday, and had read as much of the story as they dared to publish. In fact, Ronald had torn out the article when no one was looking, folded it up, and stuck it down his underpants. He hid it in one of the books in his cell and read it late at night, by the dim light that seeped in through the slot in his door.
    They weren’t allowed to watch the news on television, so Ronald never knew if more details had come out about the story. It didn’t really matter. He had made up his own details. He knew that Norman Bates had killed a young woman named Mary Crane and a detective named Arbogast, but he didn’t give a damn about Arbogast. He thought about Mary Crane a lot. Ronald had never killed anyone, but he’d wanted to. He admitted to himself that he just didn’t have the guts, because he didn’t want to die.
    Prison was okay, though. He’d been in prison before, and the state hospital was a whole lot better. He didn’t think he was crazy, though he pretended to be. The insanity plea was always a winner if you could sell it. The danger was that you could stay in stir indefinitely, but when his lawyer told him about the lengthy sentence he could serve as the result of seven violent rapes in as many months, the wacky ward started looking pretty good.
    So he lost no time in setting up a profile as a crazy bastard who’d rape anything that moved or had legs he could get between, including guards and fellow cellmates. Finally they’d put him in solitary and shoved his food through the door, and he’d talked to a lot of nice old doctors who tried to be professional but were scared as hell that he’d jump them next. He played it sweet, though, and got the gig he wanted. It wasn’t paradise, but as long as he played it cool, so did the guards, and Ronald wasn’t above a little ass kissing and wheedling to make things better for himself.
    Problem was, you couldn’t talk to most of the nutcases in here. They’d start out like anybody else, but eventually they’d begin talking screwy. But he had his memories to keep him company and, when that wasn’t enough, his imagination.
    And his imagination dwelt on what Norman Bates had done—what Ronald had always wanted to do. He liked hurting women, and he especially liked the feeling of having power over them. That was why he got so mean when he raped them. But to kill  … well, that was something else altogether. That was the ultimate power, wasn’t it? And to kill them while you were taking them … that meant taking everything, and Ronald couldn’t imagine a better feeling than that. He really wanted to know what it was like.
    In his waking dreams, he’d seen Norman Bates doing exactly that, plunging in the knife while doing what Ronald did, in all the different ways and permutations. Ronald could hardly think about it without getting himself all excited.
    And now here he was, in the same room, in the chair right next to Norman Bates, who had done things Ronald had only dreamed of. He had to talk to