Chapter 7 The Swamp

Norman felt sick when he saw the blood on his mother's clothes. 'Mother, oh God! Mother! 'he cried. 'Blood! Blood!' He ran down the stairs from his mother's bedroom, out of the

house and down the hill to the motel. He couldn't believe it. His

mother a killer? It wasn't true...

But when he finally ran into the girl's room, he saw that it was true. The girl was lying in the bath with her eyes still open, dead. And his mother was the killer. He stood outside the bathroom, feeling sick and afraid. He tried to think, but he didn't know what to do.

He thought about calling the police, but then stopped. He mustn't call them. Not now. Because his mother wasn't really a killer. She was sick. You were not a real killer if you were sick in the head.

No, he must stop people from knowing. He had time. The girl was alone. Nobody knew she was there. The best thing to do was to throw away the body. But how?

Then Norman had an idea. He turned off the bedroom light and the shower in the bathroom. Then he took the plastic curtain from the shower and opened it out on the bedroom floor. Next, he took Marion's body out of the bath and pulled her slowly onto the plastic curtain.

After washing the blood from the floor and walls in the bathroom, he picked the body up inside the plastic curtain and carried it out to her car. He went back to the bedroom and put everything that belonged to the girl inside the suitcase. He put that into the car with the body. He looked round the room one last time. He saw the newspaper next to the bed, picked it up and, not knowing about the money inside it, he threw that into the car too.

Then he got into the car and drove away towards a swamp not far from the motel. When he arrived, he got out of the car and pushed it into the swamp. He watched nervously as it slowly went down. It took a long time, but finally it disappeared.

Norman smiled. 'Mother's safe now,' he thought. 'Nobody will ever learn what happened to the girl.'