A scream rattles through the night.
Norman, sitting at the kitchen table as is his wont, bolts upright. He runs to the front door, grabs his corduroy jacket from the coat hook and hurtles down the steps to the motel. Somewhere, an owl hoots. Crickets chirp in the long grass. Norman skids to a halt in front of the cabins. All is quiet.
Twelve cabins, twelve vacancies. Despite the flashing sign, no one has accepted the invitation to stay. It's been empty all week. The cabin windows are dark eyes peering at him, questioning what he's doing in the driveway at this hour of the night.
He walks slowly past each cabin, ears pricked for any strange sound. The owl hoots again. Norman decides he heard the owl. They have different calls, and sometimes they scream. His heart slows. A smile creeps across his lips, lit only by the flickering sign.
He goes back to the house, admiring its stately profile against the indigo sky as he climbs the steps. Sometimes he hates the house, but on occasion he finds it beautiful, almost as beautiful as it used to be when flowers bloomed and fresh paint gleamed. When the sound of his mother's voice was a welcome thing.
"Where have you been, boy?"
Her voice is harsh and grating. He hates it, like fingernails down a chalkboard.
"Outside, mother."
"What on earth for?"
"I thought I heard something. But it's all right- just an owl."
She snorts meanly. "What were you expecting?"
"I don't know, mother!" He hears his voice rise, a petulant child whining.
"A woman. I'll bet you thought it was a woman." Her reproving tone scratches at the inside of his mind.
"I didn't know what it was, mother! It could have been anything! An owl, a woman, burglars! Why don't you just go back to sleep and... and..." and mind your own business! But he's afraid to say it. It only makes things worse.
She starts to laugh. At first a dry giggle, then a witchlike cackle, and finally gusty chortles that make him feel three inches tall. "You're crazy, Norman. Running around in the middle of the night, afraid of your own shadow. No wonder you need me. I don't think you'd last half a day on your own."
Norman trudges back to the kitchen. He doesn't want to go upstairs. Her musky odor fills the top of the house, soaks into the walls, invades his nostrils with the stench of oppression. He fills the teakettle and lights the hob. He sits waiting for the water to boil while the house closes in around him.
The scream rings out again, cutting through him like a knife, and his mother's laugh is no balm for his wounds. Norman pours water over a Lipton's teabag and stares into the cup as the water turns brown. There's too much outside of him, and too much inside of him, and nothing ever stops- even in the stillness of the night.
There are two girls at the bottom of the swamp. He knows, because he put them there.
Dead people don't scream.
But living people do.
Norman drinks his tea from a trembling cup.
The owl hoots. His mother chuckles. Norman screams, but this time in silence.