24.
~ Norman Bates wasn't sure what to expect when he arrived back in White Pine Bay.
The bus took him directly to the Bates Motel and dropped him off there. The bus driver looking worried about the skinny, awkward looking young man who said he was going home to stay with his mother. Norman had told the old man he could walk, and there was no need to make a special stop, that he didn't want the driver to get into any trouble. That he appreciated being taken right up to the parking lot and let off.
The summer heat coming down harder than any summer he remembered here before. Mother hadn't watered her garden and were there new trees out front? He didn't remember them. Certainly not flowering trees like the one by the front window. Had mother put that there?
Norman stood there looking and feeling a little confused. Everything was different. As if he'd been gone for decades and not a year a half. The motel was dilapidated. In desperate need of repair and maintenance. The yellow paint his mother had picked out when they first moved here was faded and chipped. There was an ugly ice bag cooler on the side of the office now. The kind you'd find at a tacky convenience store with a sign that advertised ice was three dollars a bag.
Mother would never have allowed that. She'd liked her motel to feel less like a motel and more like a home. There was a large soda and vending machine for candy off to the side as well. Another thing Mother didn't allow. She always had complimentary coffee and little snack cakes in the office. She'd even kept a mini fridge full of bottled water for their guests.
What was going on here? Why was the motel so ugly and cheap looking?
It was that Sheriff Romero. Norman just knew it. He was the one who convinced her to make these changes. To take down the hanging flowers she's always watered so carefully every morning. To let the outside furniture start to rust from not being looked after.
The whole place had gone to seed and it was all Sheriff Romero's fault.
Norman spotted movement in the motel office and hitched up his suitcase. Whoever was in there, wasn't Mother. Or Sheriff Romero. Not unless they had gotten a limp in the past year and a half.
"Only have room 4 ready." came the groaning, indifferent voice from the desk. "Hadn't had a chance to clean the other rooms up yet."
Norman hadn't seen any cars in the parking lot. It was always Mother's way of cleaning the rooms as soon as the guest left. She never left anything dirty for long.
"Who are you?" Norman asked bluntly. "Where's Norma Bates?"
The older man behind the counter was balding, but that hadn't stopped him from neglecting haircuts just as easily as he had neglected the motel. He also seemed keen on neglecting personal hygiene. Norman could smell him from here. He was exactly the kind of gross little troll Mother wouldn't allow to even stay at her motel. So what was he doing here?
"I'm the manager. You want a room? Room 4 is all I got available." the troll said.
"Where's Norma Bates? This is the Bates Motel." Norman asked.
"This is the Bates Motel. I don't know who Norma Bates is."
Norman looked around the office and saw the back room, Mother's pristine office, a place he and Emma spent so much time in, was trashed. The man had taken to living here. Moved in a mini fridge and hot plate. Was probably camping out in one of the rooms to.
"Who hired you?" Norman fully expected to hear the name Alex Romero. If figures the Sheriff would hire this obscene little man to run his mother's clean motel into the ground.
"Look, kid." the troll growled. "You want a room or not?"
"I want to know who hired you, or I'm calling Sheriff Romero right now. I'll have you arrested for trespassing." Norman said curtly.
It was an empty threat. Romero would do nothing for him and he knew it.
The troll seemed to think this was funny.
"Don't you think a lot of yourself." he chuckled. "Fair enough. A guy named Dylan Massett hired me."
Norman must have looked surprised because the old man showed him a smile full of rotting teeth.
"Yeah, used to come down once a month, from Seattle but doesn't anymore. Is happy the place is barely breaking even and I stress barely." the man said.
"I see." Norman said sadly. "Sheriff Romero… he comes and checks on things?"
"Sheriff Romero?" the troll asked. "Don't know who that is. We have Sheriff Greene here, kid. If it makes you feel better, she hates this place. Wants to get it shut down."
"I don't blame her." Norman said sadly.
"What about the house? Is Norma Bates up at the house?" he peered out the back office window and saw the old house looming just as frightful as before. It seemed out of place on the big hill like that. With all the warm, summer flowers blooming and the grass growing wildly around it.
Norman could still picture himself and Mother there on the day they moved in.
"No one lives there, kid." the troll growled hatefully. "I'm paid to run this place and keep the house on lock down. I don't ask questions and I get a place to live and small paycheck. Hardly enough to make it work my time though."
Norman figured it was why he made all the add ons.
"Sorry, I didn't get your name." Norman said feeling his head go slightly dizzy. A blackness was enveloping him. Something he couldn't control. It was like drowning. It hadn't happened in a while. Maybe being back in this place with it's familiar sights and smells was triggering it. A blackout, a blackout was coming and he couldn't stop it.
"Earnest. People call me Earnest." the troll said looking at Norman with a peculiar expression. "Although my mother named me Constantine."
Then Norman saw her. Saw her at last. She was standing in the doorway of the office. She looked as fierce and beautiful as ever. Her eyes like the sea and she was looking strait at the man who had wrecked her motel.
"Oh, Mother…" Norman shuttered feeling himself falling away. "Mother, don't."
~ When Norman came back again, it was late at night. His clothes were different and he could smell the coppery richness of something organic on his skin. He was inside the house now. It was dim and the air felt very stiff and old.
He thought he could hear someone upstairs, but realized that was just the wind. This old house loved to creak and groan.
He'd passed out on the couch and taken a pleasant enough nap. He'd dreamed about old paper, and old pictures. He wasn't sure why.
The neon blue of the motel sign outside, gave him enough light to make out the living room he knew so well. Sadly, he saw things looked different. The sheets were back over the furniture again. The thick plastic that prevented any damage from sun or dust. They looked ghostly. Their features obscured and you couldn't help but be a little afraid of what was under them. Afraid of things that might be hiding there.
His taxidermy animals were left in place, but the family pictures were gone. Even that tacky big TV was gone. No loss there.
Norman turned on a lamp beside him and it snapped on cheerfully flooding the room with a familiar brightness. Everything looked as it should. He almost expected Mother to come down the stairs and gently scold him for being up so late.
"Come on, Norman." she'd say. "I don't want you to get sick, you need your rest. You know how I worry."
"Oh, Mother." Norman sighed happily and looked down at his hands. His hands looked a little dirty, but he'd wash before he made himself something to eat.
He would make himself something to eat, then sleep in his own bed tonight. In the morning, he'd start to work on the motel again. That awful man from the office was gone now and things would soon be as they should.
~ Norman never worried what Mother had done with Mr. Earnest Constantine or Constantine Earnest. Whatever his name was. It hardly mattered now. The foul little man had been dismissed and it was all for the better.
He'd been living in room one. Treating it as his own little hovel. The rest of the rooms were neglected, and dirty. Mother would have died of embarrassment if she saw them. Norman wouldn't let her see them. He would fix them for her.
First thing was first. Norman stripped all the sheets and did a wash. The former manager had installed a coin operated washer and dryer in the motel laundry room, but Norman found the key and soon had all the linens tumbling in a nice wash.
Mother's favorite laundry soap was still in the house and that's what he used. He wanted the sheets to smell like her if possible.
He left all the rooms open to air. There was a sickly smell to all of them. He knew the smell. It was that foul stench that made him feel funny. Norman Bates knew too well what people did in motels that had gone bad. Mother wouldn't have liked that.
Next, he went room to room with garbage bags and tossed everything that didn't belong. The disgusting things dirty people left behind.
The last job was the worst. The bathrooms. The guests had always left them a mess and it seemed humans hadn't been living here in this motel at all. It took him lots of hot water, baking soda and vinegar to scrub out the bathrooms. Again, he went from room to room. Taking as much time as he needed. He wanted the job done right.
By the time he was done, the sheets were ready. He started on the towels then. Worried that some were so filthy they couldn't be saved.
He put in the new shower curtains Mother had ordered just before she'd married that awful Romero and they were lovely. Norman didn't like the idea of them being clear though. People could see through, to the person in the shower. It felt obscene.
At last he vacuumed the rooms and just as dusk was coming, he flipped on the motel sign. The buzzing of neon charging into life made him happy. The blue flooding the parking lot and he remembered when Mother had first shown him the new sign.
She'd been so happy then. Certain they would be successful. Well, they would be again. Norman would see to it.
~ He'd started cleaning out that filthy office when the first guest of the evening came. A gross looking older man with an even fouler looking woman.
"Room please." the man had said slapping a twenty dollar bill on the counter. Norman looked at him strangely. The fee for a room as eighty dollars a night and they normally never had cash paying customers. Not in this day and age.
"Were's Ernest?" the rough man asked when Norman didn't take his money.
"I'm afraid he doesn't work here anymore." Norman said stiffly. He realized just what this man was planning to use that room for. What that gross woman in the car was. Mother wouldn't approve. She wouldn't want them to stay here. The Bates Motel was a family place. A respectable place.
"Oh." the man said. "Well, a room if you don't mind."
"I'm afraid I can't help you." Norman said harshly. "There's another motel on the other side of town. Maybe they can help you. Besides, our prices are clearly marked. It's eighty dollars a night or four hundred for the week. That's the most popular deal for our guests who are here for all the sights-"
"Earnest lets us have a room for a couple of hours for twenty bucks if I pay in cash." the man snarled.
"We don't rent room by the hour." Norman Bates said coolly. "This isn't that kind of establishment. Not anymore."
"Where's Ernest?" The man demanded.
"He was let go." Norman said. "Maybe you should leave now. Or I'll have to call Sheriff Greene. Explain about your… visit."
Norman hadn't been used to standing up to bullies. Although he'd had to do a fair amount of it at PineView. There was a shocking about of people who thought they could bully him. At first they could, but soon learned better. Mother always made sure he was protected.
Norman followed the man out of the office. He could smell the rain was coming.
He could see the lights were on in the big house up the hill. See mother peering out at him from her bedroom window. The lacy curtains moving and her slender figure, as graceful as a ballerina, slipping away like a ghost.
The man and his whore had harsh words for Norman Bates but Norman didn't mind. Mother was happy. Happy that her son had chased off that disgusting man. She didn't want him staying at her motel.
Norman spent the evening cleaning out the office and turning away disreputable guests who payed with cash. Apparently, that seedy manager was taking all that cash for himself. Norman had found his stash. A shoebox full of weathered tens and twenties was in the safe in the office. A safe that was still using his mother's birthday as its' combination.
Norman counted out over five thousand dollars in cash and decided he would make a trip to the village tomorrow. Mother had let her pantry get nearly empty and Norman would have to go grocery shopping.
It was a comfort to have cash money. He could maybe see about buying some yellow paint from that new hardware store he'd seen. Mother would bee so happy her motel was being fixed up.
Now that that Romero was gone, and Dylan had left them, they could finally be together.
"Everything will be fine, Mother." Norman said. "You'll see."