Considerably to my surprise I started toward him, but just then Officer Hart endeared himself to us all forever by wrapping his arms around Mr. Angus like a bear, one hand closing on the wrist of the hand holding the knife.
I veered past him (I vividly recall changing the length of one of my strides so as not to step on the glove) and reached Marcia just in time to steady her as, turned quite white, she swayed, her eyelids fluttering.
I heard the knife clatter to the floor. I turned, my arms around Marcia, and we both saw Mr. Angus seem to shrink and collapse in Officer Hart’s ursine embrace, his face going gray as if he were an empty glove himself.
That was it. They found the other glove and the long silver wig in a locked suitcase in his room. Marcia stayed frightened long enough, off and on, for us to become better acquainted and cement our friendship.
Officer (now Detective) Hart tells us that Mr. Angus is a model prisoner at the hospital for the criminally insane and has gone very religious, but never smiles. And he—Hart—now has the glove in a sort of Black Museum down at the station, where it has never again been seen to move under its own power. If it ever did.
One interesting thing. The gloves had belonged to Mr. Angus’s father, now deceased, who had been a judge.
THE CLOSER OF THE WAY
by Robert Bloch
I would like to think Robert Bloch is most noted as the man whose novel Psycho made Alfred Hitchcock famous; I know it made Hitchcock money. Bloch’s fiction first appeared in Weird Tales during the 1930s and his work was greatly influenced by his literary mentor, Howard Phillips Lovecraft. He was the first recipient of the World Fantasy Award for life work, an honor he richly deserved. Recent years have seen a paucity of short stories from his pen as a result of his many commitments to novels, movies, and television, but Bob, ever generous with his time, kindly wrote the following story specifically for this book. The main character is one Robert Bloch, a man who—well, read on . . .
To this day I don’t know how they got me to the asylum.
The events leading up to my committal constitute a mystery which defies the probe of memory, and so it shall remain.
Family and friends spoke, at the time, of a “nervous condition,” but that is undoubtedly a polite euphemism. They preferred to call the asylum a “private sanatorium” and my incarceration was referred to as “convalescence.”
But now that I have no family—and no friends—I can at least speak freely and frankly of my situation.
I was insane.
God, what hypocrites we’ve become! The higher the incidence of insanity in our society, the more the word itself has been tabooed. In a world gone mad it is no longer possible to speak freely of madmen; in this era of lunacy there are supposedly no lunatics; the craziness compounds because we refuse to admit that anyone is crazy.
“Mentally ill.” That’s the phrase which Dr. Connors used. “Paranoid schizophrenia” was another and more highly clinical description. Neither of which really conveys an accurate impression of the horror inherent in the reality—or the unreality.
Insanity is a long nightmare from which some never awaken. Others, like myself, eventually open their eyes to greet the dawn of a new day, rejoicing in renewed awareness. It’s a wonderful feeling to realize that the nightmare has ended. Makes you want to sing, as I did.
“Yes, we have no bananas—”
Dr. Connors eyed me dispassionately. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he said.
“That I’m all right again.” I smiled. “Bananas—the current slang for insanity. It’s a land of a joke.”
“I see.”
But Dr. Connors didn’t really see anything.
When I assured him that I was no longer disoriented, no longer hostile or afraid, he merely nodded. And when I told him I was ready to go home, he shook his head.
“There are some problems we must work through first,” he said.
“Work—that’s my only problem,” I told him. “I’ve got to get back to work! Do you realize what staying here has cost me?”
Dr. Connors shrugged. “Your work is one of the problems we’re going to be talking about. I think it may help us to find the cause of your difficulties.” He opened a desk drawer and took out a book. “I’ve been reading some of the things you’ve written, and there are a number of questions—”
“Okay,” I said. “If you want to play games, suppose you let me have the first guess. The book you have there, the one you’ve been reading—it’s Psycho, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t look so surprised. Everybody seems to start out by reading Psycho. And reading things into it. I’ve been through this sort of inquisition so many times that you don’t even need to ask the questions. We can both save valuable time if I just give you the answers.”
“I’m listening.”
“First of all, I don’t hate my mother. And she never dominated me. My family background was perfectly normal—I had no hangups as far as my parents or my sister are concerned. My mother was a social worker and teacher, a very intelligent woman who encouraged me to write. I loved her dearly, but there was no oedipal fixation involved.
“Secondly, I have never been conscious of any homosexual tendencies, never felt a desire to experiment in transvestism. Or taxidermy, for that matter. I know nothing about motel operation, or hiding cars and bodies in swamps.
“So you can see I’m not Norman Bates. And as for identifying with other characters in the book—I never embezzled any money from an employer, never ran away, never conducted a long-term clandestine liaison. For that matter, I’ve always preferred a tub bath instead of a shower.”
I smiled at Dr. Connors. “The idea for the book came to me after reading about an actual murder case. I didn’t use any of the real-life participants as characters, nor the real-life situation. What set me off was wondering how a man living in a small town all his life, under constant scrutiny of his neighbors, could manage to conceal his crimes of violence. What I did—call it the case entry, if you will—was to construct a psychological profile of such a man, just as you do in your work. Once I felt I understood the character and his motivations, the rest was simple.”
Dr. Connors nodded. “Thank you for your cooperation. You’ve anticipated and answered all of my questions except one.”
“And that is—?”
“Let me put it this way. I imagine you read up on quite a few murder cases as a matter of course; it would be the natural thing to do, in your line of work.”
“That’s true.”
“And some of them are pretty sensational, aren’t they? Mass murders, bizarre slayings, ritual killings, weird deaths occurring under strange circumstances?”
“Also true.”
“Some of them, I’m sure, are far more shocking and violent than the particular crime which, in your words, set you off?”
“Right.”
“Then my question is simply this. Why did this one murder intrigue you? Why did you choose it rather than another?”
“But I’ve already explained—it was wondering how the killer managed to conceal his activities and get away with it—how he was able to avoid suspicion, lead a double life.”
“That’s interesting. The problem of concealment, avoiding suspicion.” Dr. Connors leaned forward. “Do you lead a double life?”
I stared at him for a long moment before answering. “Forgive me for saying so, but you’re out of your mind.”
“Perhaps. But being out of my mind doesn’t matter. It’s getting into your mind that’s important.”