Then, as if to confirm his direction, her maddening, mocking cry came again: “Down heee-eeeere, Norman!” As if she wasn’t afraid of him at all; as if she couldn’t wait for him to get there, in fact. Bitch!
“Stay where you are, Rose, ” he said. “Just stay put, that’s the main thing.” He still had the cop’s gun stuffed into the waistband of his jeans, but it didn’t loom large in his plans. He didn’t know if you could fire a gun in a hallucination or not, and he had absolutely no desire to find out. He wanted to talk to his little rambling Rose much more personally than any gun would allow.
“Norman, you look so silly in that mask ... I’m not afraid of you anymore, Norman ...”
You’re going to discover that’s a passing fad, you bitch, he thought.
“Norman, you idiot!”
All right, maybe she wasn’t in the building; she might already have gone through it to the other side. It doesn’t matter. If she thought she could outrun him on a level playing-field, she was going to get the surprise of her life. The last surprise of her life.
“You’re such a fool! ... did you really think you could catch me? Silly old bull!”
He moved to his right a little, trying to be quiet now, reminding himself that it wouldn’t help to behave like, ha-ha, a bull in a china shop. He stopped near the foot of the cracked steps leading up to the temple (that was what it was, he saw that now, a temple like in one of those Greek fairy-tales that guys used to make up back then when they weren’t too busy butt-punching each other), and surveyed it. The building was clearly abandoned and falling into ruin, but this place didn’t feel spooky; it felt weirdly like home.
“Norrr-munnnn ... don’t you want to taaalllk to me?”
“Oh, I’ll talk to you, ” he said. “I’ll talk to you right up close, you cunt. ” He caught sight of something in the high, tangled grass to the right of the steps: a big stone face in the weeds, staring raptly into the sky. Five paces took Norman to it, and he stared fixedly down at it for ten seconds or more, wanting to make sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing. He was. The huge tumbled head bore the face of his father, and his empty eyes snarled with idiot moonlight.
“Boo, you old sonofabitch,” he said softly. “What you doing here?”
The stone father made no reply, but his wife did.
“Norrrr-munnnn ... you’re so fucking SLOWWW, Norrr-munnnn !”
Nice language they taught her to use, too, the bull remarked, only now it was making its remarks from inside
Norman’s head. These are great people she’s got in with, no doubt about that—they’ve changed her whole life.
“Bitch,” he said in a thick, trembling voice. “Oh you bitch. ”
He wheeled away from the stone face in the grass, resisting an urge to go back and spit on it the way he had on the jacket . . . or to unzip his jeans and take a piss on it. No time for games now. He hurried up the cracked steps toward the black entrance to the temple. Each time his foot came down, it sent agonizing pain up his leg, up his back, into his violated lower jaw. It felt like only the mask was holding his jaw in place now, and it hurt like a mad bastard. He wished he’d brought the Charlie-David cops’ aspirin with him.
How could she do that, Normie? the voice came whispering up from deep inside. It still sounded like his father’s voice, but Norman couldn’t remember ever hearing his father sound so unsure of himself, so worried. How could she dare do that? What’s happened to her?
He stopped with his foot on the top step, face aching, his lower jaw feeling as loose as a tire with the lug-nuts working free. I don’t know and I don’t care, he told the ghost-voice. But I’ll tell you one thing, Daddy—if that’s who you are—when I find her, I’m going to unhappen it in a helluva hurry. That you can take to the bank.
Are you sure you want to try that? the voice asked, and Norman, in the act of starting forward, stopped again, listening, head cocked.
You know what might be wiser? it asked. It might be wiser to just call it a draw. I know how that sounds, but