53.
~ The younger man had gained at least forty pounds in the past few years, making him almost unrecognizable now. But the eyes were the same; that careful and secretive look Norman Bates always had.
It hardly mattered that Norman Bates was fatter than Alex remembered. It didn't matter that Romero had been drinking heavily and not eating well since Norma died. A strength came over him in that instant of seeing the younger man sitting in his kitchen. Of seeing the smug smirk and the sheer entitlement of letting himself into a house that he certainly couldn't call home anymore.
"No!" Norman cried when Alex pulled him up by the shirt and slammed him hard into a wall. Hard enough for some of Norma's crystal to shake off a high shelf and come crashing down.
"What did you do?" Alex growled in Norman's face. All the rage and fury was boiling over now. His heart beating so hard in his chest, he was afraid he might pass out. He wanted to slam Norman onto the ground. Knock the life right out of him. He wanted to watch him fade away and vanish completely.
"What are you… what are you talking about?" Norman stuttered. "Stop it!"
Norman tried to push Romero off of him. His only defense were long legs and arms. But he'd grown soft with his weight gain and had no upper body strength at all. Not when compared to Romero's rage.
Cruelly, Romero pulled him towards the basement door, opened it, and pushed him down the flight of stairs. He hoped, he prayed, that would be enough to kill him. He wanted Norman Bate's neck to break.
He heard Norman's heavy body thud down the basement steps and vanish into the dark.
"Owww!" Norman was sobbing. "What you doing!?"
Romero was on him then. Quickly rushing down the stairs to pull Norman up and hit him over and over until the younger man was bleeding.
"Stop." Norman croaked.
"What… what did… what did you do?" Romero was panting. Suddenly exhausted from the beating he was giving to his estranged step son.
"What did you do, you piece of shit?" He managed to get out before wanting to throw up.
He punched Norman hard and felt the younger man whimper and grow still. A silent sob bubbling up from him.
"How dare you come back here." Romero accused turning on the basement light. A naked lightbulb that swung back and forth casting erratic shadows all over the old furniture that was draped in plastic.
"Mother." Norman cried softly.
"You did it." Romero huffed and found the rope he was looking for. "It's all your fault."
He tied Norman up. Is hands behind his back first, then his feet.
Romero was slightly alarmed he was breathing so hard after. Like he'd just run a mile.
'Serve me right to have a heart attack and die right here.' He thought angrily.
Norman was crying on the cold basement floor. He was spitting out blood and Alex was slightly concerned he might throw up himself.
"You stay here." Romero ordered and climbed up the basement steps.
~ It took a long time for him to calm down. He drank some water and walked from room to room trying to control his breathing. Hoping he wouldn't have that vise like pain in his left arm. A sure sign of a heart attack.
That pain never came and he eventually felt better. It only felt like he'd had an intense workout. In a strange way, he felt, better. He felt the first ray of happiness since Norma died.
'Don't call the police.' He told himself. 'Who else would know he's even here? Does he have a car parked outside? A cell phone that can be pinged to him?'
Alex walked through each room. Lulu's play room now unused and unloved. The living room where Norma died.
'I could kill him.' He decided. 'I could do it. I could get away with it.'
He stopped pacing and felt a giddy thrill rush over him.
'I can. I will. I can make him suffer.'
He smiled at the idea. He felt better. He could die happy knowing he killed Norman Bates.
A loud, importunate knock on the back door pulled Alex from his gleeful plans.
"Who is it?" He shouted.
"Dylan. You texted me. Told me to come by." Came the response.
Alex blinked. That had been real? He'd been amusing himself with ideas of suicide for a while now. He told himself to text Dylan to come by so the young man could find his body. To let himself in so he could find Alex dead in the living room.
The key in the lock was turning and Dylan was opening the back door.
"Wait!" Alex shouted trying to stop his only good step son from coming in.
"What the hell?" Dylan snapped back at him. "You okay?"
"I'm fine! I…I forgot I texted you." Alex said quickly hiding his swollen, bloody hands behind his back.
"Damn, Alex." Dylan looked around the kitchen. The unwashed dishes, the messy countertop and the shades drawn over the window. Everything looked dark, depressing and filthy. Not Norma's house at all.
"I know." Alex said quickly.
"How are we supposed to bring Lulu back with all this?" Dylan asked holding up one of Alex's empty liquor bottles.
"I'll clean up." Alex agreed quickly. "I will. I'll… I'll clean it all up."
He had to get Dylan out of there. The young man already tossing trash in the trash can and pulling out the garbage bag from the can to take out.
"Who's white van is that out back?" Dylan demanded harshly.
Alex thought quickly. For the first time since Norma died, he thought quickly.
"A friend of mine is lending me his… van." He said lamely. "I might buy it from him. For the motel."
Dylan seemed convinced and thankfully more distracted by the state of the house.
"Mom would hate to see you like this." Dylan was saying. He'd reverted to calling Norma 'Mom' full time only after she died.
"I know." Alex agreed miserably.
"You can't do this to yourself. To her house. She loved this house." Dylan scolded.
Alex was ready to punch Norma's other son now.
"I… I will clean up." He capitulated.
"The motel needs to be reopened too." Dylan said. "The spring season is a month away. You need that income. It's important. Spring and summer are the only times the motel makes a profit all year."
"Look, I know!" Alex spat.
Dylan turned around and looked at Alex.
"Lulu, my baby sister, isn't coming back here, with the house like this." He said calmly. "Get it cleaned up. Get yourself sober. I'll hire a lawyer if I have to."
Alex nodded. Dylan's words stung. They were painful. He felt tears well up in his eyes. They could easily gain custody of his daughter. Especially with him like this.
But he could fix it. He could make everything right, if Dylan would just leave him alone to go back to the basement.
"It… I will fix everything." He promised earnestly.
"I'll text you. We're cleaning up and reopening the motel. Mom would want that. She'd want her house to be clean to. Her daughter to be looked after." Dylan ordered.
He took the over loaded garbage with him when he left. The kitchen door quickly dead bolted behind him by Alex.
~ Back in the safe, closeted and darkened reaches of the house, Alex rushed downstairs to the basement again. Norman was still tied up and crying. He hadn't tried to escape or even call for help.
'What do I do?' Alex thought in a slight panic. 'Gotta get rid of that van. More people will come by and notice it.'
He rolled Norman over and checked his pockets. No cell phone at all. Just a velcro wallet with come kind of cartoon animal on it. Not Norman's style at all.
Romero opened it to find cash and an outdated ID card.
"Who's Julian Turner?" Alex asked looking at the drivers licenses. Norman didn't answer.
He found Norman's car keys, made sure the ropes were still strong and bolted back upstairs with the speed of a young man.
Dylan had thankfully not decided to stay and inspect the property more. No one was around. Not even curious people from town were driving by to gawk at the house where Norma was murdered.
Alex started Norman's van and it died immediately.
"You little shit." He growled and had to flood the gas to get it to creep out of the back driveway and to the rundown camp grounds where they had found an abandoned RV at the start of the quarantine.
Norman's van had obviously been his home, Romero decided. It was full of dirty clothes and random trash. He pawed through the clothes, looking for a cell phone when he found a large silver purse. Something that didn't belong to Norman. There was scratched off lottery tickets, and an excessive amount of condoms.
"Erika Resse." Alex said looking at the Nevada drivers license stowed in the imitation Gucci billfold. The young, thin girl was smiling in her picture. Her date of birth not making her not too much over twenty one. Why would Norman have her bag? Why was there such an assortment of clothes all over the back of the van? Women's clothes, and what looked like a pink waitress uniform crumpled in the back.
None of that mattered now.
Not when he had work to do. Norman had half a tank in the van and an old oily rag made it the perfect wick to lit the van up with. No one would come to the fire; not right away. It had rained for days and this far into the woods, Romero doubted anyone would see a small fire. Something that would burn itself out quickly; especially if it started to rain again.
All that mattered was that evidence of Norman Bates was gone.
The van ignited and burned and Alex watched it burn from a safe distance before rushing back to the motel. He cut through the woods just as it started to pour down rain.
~ Norman had passed out or gone to sleep. He smelled dirty and looked even worse.
He didn't seem to mind the noises of Alex Romero digging in the basement.
The basement, the foundation of the house, was older than the house itself. Romero knew that before the big house had been built, another building had been there. Maybe a fort or mission, fitting for the time. That the Summers' family had just built their house on the old foundations. It was why the basement, was so large. Why it had well built rock archways and more space than a typical basement.
In the older part, near the original foundations, a few hundred years old now, Alex found the soft spot of dirt. Where Norma had mentioned she worried about the house shifting and that they might need to call a specialist.
Alex knew the foundation was fine. It outlasted whatever was here before, and would probably outlast the this house too. It would make a very fine and undisturbed grave for Norman Bates.
He dug into the soft soil. The rock wall going deep. Almost ten feet maybe. They had built things to last back then.
Alex was sweating, but he wasn't tired. Not at all. He felt more alive that ever. Never once did he waver in his work. The digging went on as if he could do this all day.
'Baby, I wish you were here.' He thought happily. 'I'm going to make it alright.'
~ Norman finally woke up. His head hurt and he could hear noises. His body hurt now too and he couldn't remember why.
"What happened?" He moaned and looked around the dark room. The place felt like a cave. A bright light in the distance. He couldn't see very well, everything was blurry. His vision had been giving him trouble for the past year now. It had been hard to drive Julian's old van all the way back home.
"You're awake." Came a gruff voice and Norman saw Alex Romero come frighteningly into view.
"No!" Norman shouted as the older, stronger man dragged him across the cold basement floor. "No, I don't want you! I want to see mother!" Norman cried.
"That's a laugh." Alex huffed and drug him to the old stone wall. Norman could feel wet earth all over him. Sour, damp ground that had just been left to rot.
"What are you doing?" Norman whimpered.
Alex looked calm now. He leaned on his shovel and looked down at Norman.
"Me? Well, I'm going to throw a cloth sack over your head. Then I'm going to bury you alive, Norman." He said plainly.
"What?"
"Yes. I'm going to put you in this hole I dug for you. Place rocks over your body, while you're still alive, and then throw the dirt over you. Then, I'm going to mix up some cement, and pour a nice concrete floor all over the basement here." He said.
Romero sighed.
"Yeah, it's going to take forever. You'll be dead before I'm finished, but it will look less suspicious that way." He said lazily.
"You can't do this." Norman shouted.
"I am doing this." Romero said coldly and pulled something out of his back pocket. "Look at her, you piece of shit." He growled and Norman blinked with his bad eye sight at the photograph he was trying to see.
"Look at them!" Romero shouted and Norman opened his eyes to see mother holding a laughing dark haired little girl in her arms. The two of them were dressed in matching pink outfits. The little girl holding a pink unicorn.
"That was at our daughter's second birthday. She wanted unicorns. Anything pink." Alex explained. His breathing becoming erratic.
"I don't-" Norman started to explain.
"You took my daughter's mother away. You broke into the house, you killed her. You did it. You couldn't stand for her to be happy. She was happy. She was happy with me. We had a life here and a baby together. You took my wife away, Norman. You took my daughter's mother away."
"No." Norman bleated. "No, I didn't do anything! I never hurt anyone."
"I want her face, my daughter's face, to be the last thing you see." Alex said and Norman felt a cloth sack being pulled roughly over his head.
"What are you doing?" Norman cried and felt his body being kicked roughly. He yelped as he fell into empty space and landed hard on the ground. He could smell the ground, the earth all around him. He was breathing hard from the panic of it.
"I… Mother!" He shouted.
"You mother can't save you now. No one can." Alex was saying and Norman cried pitifully.
He yelped as rocks, large ones, that had no doubt come from the very ground he was being buried in, fell on him.
"No!" Norman cried and he could feel the dizziness coming over him again. He was going to be sick. He was leaving his body.
"It's happening." Alex was saying and then Norman felt the soil covering him. He could feel the air growing tight over his face. The cloth mask doing little to filter out the heavy soil. Everything quite and calm. His air…. running out. Everything fading away.
~ An hour later, Alex woke up from a nap on the living room sofa. He liked sleeping in here now as opposed to the bed upstairs he had shared with his wife. He felt oddly closer to her this way. To sleep so near to where she'd died.
He could almost swear that it had all ben a dream. Norma dying, Norman coming back. The insane nightmare of the burial. But his body was dirty from digging and his hands were red and bloody. It had been real.
He felt awake now. Sober and awake.
He marched down to the basement, turned on the swinging, naked lightbulb, and saw his handiwork.
Norman Bates hadn't tried to crawl out of his grave. Everything was just as he left it. The freshly turned soil looked suspicious though. He'd have to mix that cement soon. The Summers had an old bag of it here in the basement. Old rock gravel too. He could put that over Norman's grave. Make it look old that way. More blended into the rest of the patchy concert floor. The Summers having only done spot repair to the basement floor over the decades. A definite weathered pattern of very old and just old.
Romero walked over Norman's grave and tested the soil. The springiness of it. It was right to bury rocks over the body. They made the solid not so loose. He would dump the rock gravel on it tonight. Go take a shower and doctor his hands. Then start on the cement mixture tomorrow morning. Bright and early.