The Riverhouse

by G. Norman Lippert

  The strength drained out of Shane’s body and he leaned back against the wall next to the window. He remembered riding home on his bike the previous evening, just as dusk was setting, remembered walking the bike around to the shed on the east side of the cottage and then looking up, looking for the round window hidden in the branches of the magnolia tree. That glimmer of light had been there again, reflecting sunlight from the dying day. But that hadn’t made sense, because it was cloudy. The sky was a huge blot of gray from horizon to horizon, masking the sun. The glimmer of light in the window was a candle, lit just inside, sitting on the windowsill. Impossible, of course. Shane had decided to go in and check it out that very evening. He would let himself into the attic via the door in the back of the studio, look for the strange, hidden space, and figure out what was making that weird light.

  But he hadn’t. Why hadn’t he? Once he’d gotten inside, he had just… forgotten. Was that all? Shane leaned against the wall, staring at the painting of the woman with the letter, and knew that wasn’t it. He hadn’t forgotten. He had been distracted. The muse had landed on him the moment he’d gotten inside. She wanted him to paint, and to paint at that very moment. The canvas was waiting on the easel; the background was finished. Now it was time to put in the main character, the woman. Shane hadn’t known what she was going to look like, or what she’d be doing, but the muse would take care of that, if he’d let her.

  But he’d resisted. He was stubborn about it. She didn’t control him, damn it. He wanted to shower and eat. He was tired. The painting could wait. Maybe he’d paint Saturday morning instead of work on the footpath.

  All that evening, the painting called to him, but he refused it. He was not the slave of the muse. He controlled the art, not the other way around. As he’d fallen asleep, he’d felt the muse loosen her grip on him, and he’d thought, I’ve won. I’ve shown her. I’m still the boss. But she hadn’t been letting him go. She’d just decided to take a different approach. She’d waited until he’d gone to sleep, and then she’d jumped on him all over again, animating him in his sleep, walking him like a zombie. She’d taken him to the well of creativity and used him to draw up bucket after bucket, bringing her vision to life. It was horrible to realize that the muse could be that powerful and persuasive. Is this how it always was for the starving artists? If so, Shane could begin to understand the hollow-eyed pathos that was so often apparent on their faces.

  He shivered and looked down at his hands again, at the red paint packed under his fingernails and layered darkly in the folds of his skin. He had painted the fireplace with his fingers. He knew it instinctively, just like he knew that the Wilhelm’s cook had been named Clara. He had completely foregone the brush and smeared the paint on with his bare hands. He had done it in his sleep, while he’d dreamed, and then he had stumbled back to his bed, leaving a smear of paint over the banister as he’d gone, and probably staining the sheets with bloody red handprints.

  Outside, the wind blew, moaning in the drainpipes and thrashing the trees along the bluff. The sound of it was horrible, almost like a voice, repeating the same word over and over, not quite clear enough to understand, but just clear enough to tease. The sound filled Shane with dread. He turned his back on the painting, tramping back downstairs and heading for the shower.

  Late that morning, Shane found the cordless phone on the counter in the kitchen. He used it to call Greenfeld’s office. The line rang half a dozen times, and then clicked over to Greenfeld’s voice mail. Shane wasn’t surprised. The recording offered to let Shane leave a message, and Shane was prepared to do so, but then the voice also offered Greenfeld’s cell phone number, “for urgent matters”. Shane considered it, and then hooked a pad of paper toward him on the counter. He jotted the number down and broke the connection. Immediately, he dialed Greenfeld’s cell number. Most likely, Greenfeld and Christiana were already at the museum getting things ready for that night’s show. He didn’t want to risk the message being missed until Monday. By then, it would be too late. Greenfeld answered on the third ring, sounding impatient.

  “Yeah?”

  “Hey Morrie, Shane Bellamy.”

  “I had a weird feeling I’d be hearing from you today. Tell me you aren’t calling to cancel on me, old buddy.”

  “Nope. In fact, I think you’ll call this good news. I’ve decided to go ahead and offer the house painting for sale, if anyone wants it.”

  “Well,” Greenfeld said, sounding genuinely surprised. “That is good news. He wants to sell his painting after all,” this, Shane could tell, was for someone else’s benefit. Christiana was probably with him. Shane imagined her looking at Greenfeld, her eyebrows raised. Greenfeld went on, “If you don’t mind me asking, what changed your formidable mind?”

  “I decided you were right, I guess. I was just being a little too artsy for my own good. There’s no real reason for me to hang onto it. I’m already working on another one.”

  “More good news,” Greenfeld replied. “Glad to hear it. Do you have an asking price in mind?”

  Shane shook his head in the empty kitchen. “Beats me. Ask Christiana. She’ll know better than me. But make it cheap. If I’m going to sell it, I want it sold. Understand?”

  “Clear as a bell,” Greenfeld said quickly. “Oh yeah, and what should we call it? We got title cards printed for all the other works already, but Chris has fabulous handwriting. She’s making yours herself. You have a name for that thing?”

  Shane thought about it, but only for a second. “Riverhouse,” he said. “That’s its name.”

  “Riverhouse. Straightforward and to the point. See you tonight with the work in hand. You sure you don’t want me to send Chris over to pick you up?”

  “I can handle it. Don’t worry. I’m not going to bug out on you. I’ll see you at five. Tell Christiana I said good luck.”

  “Will do, Shane. See you then.”

  Shane thumbed the red button on the cordless and saw that the battery was getting low. He carried the phone to the library and plugged it into the charger.

  He saw the red number one blinking on the top of the answering machine and was mildly surprised to realize that he had forgotten to play the message from several days earlier. When he had first seen the message light blinking, he had assumed it was Greenfeld calling to tell him he had received the photos of the matte painting. Now, though, he knew it couldn’t have been him. Greenfeld had said that he hadn’t gotten Shane’s email until very late on the night Shane had sent it—so late that he hadn’t even tried to call Shane until the next morning. If it wasn’t Greenfeld, then who could it be?

  He reached to press the “play” button, and then stopped. Did he really want to know who it was? After all, who else even knew he was living here? Probably, it was just a wrong number, or a telemarketer. They had a no-call list here in Missouri, but Shane had never taken the time to sign up for it. The cottage’s phone number was unlisted, so sales calls were a rarity, but not entirely unheard of. He didn’t want to hear it if it was just some annoying monotone voice asking him to call back for information regarding an amazing deal on aluminum siding or special subscription rates for many popular magazines.

  But there was more to his hesitation than potential annoyance, and he knew it. Shane was actually afraid to push the button. It was probably just some residual nervousness from his unsettling discovery that morning—the discovery of the painting he had worked on entirely in his sleep—but that didn’t make it any less worrisome.

  He told himself he was just being silly. It was only a phone message, after all, and probably just some annoying telemarketer. Maybe it was Greenfeld after all. Hell, maybe it was the city calling to tell him that his property tax was due, or to remind him that his work-from-home business license had expired. It was better to know for sure than to give in to some nameless, irrational fear. Before he could change his mind, Shane pushed the big gray button marked “play”.

  An electronic female voice said, “One… unheard
message.” There was a pause, and then a voice took a breath, loudly. “Hi, Mr. Bellamy, this is Janice Hayes from Price, Hayes and Whitaker. We’ve taken the liberty of sending all the remaining paperwork regarding your recent case to your current address. I just wanted to ensure that our records are all up to date. Feel free to give us a call if you don’t receive the package in the next week or so, or if you have any questions at all. Thanks much.”

  There was a clatter as the phone hung up and Shane sighed, reaching to push the “erase” button. His finger was almost touching it when the electronic voice came back on. “One… unheard message,” it said again, and Shane paused, frowning. There was a moment’s silence, a click, and then a thin, whistling sound, as if someone had called from a car with the windows rolled down. The sound wavered and grew louder, and there was something buried under it, a tinkling sound, like music on some distant radio frequency. Suddenly, it rose in volume, growing much louder than the tiny speaker of the answering machine should have allowed, and Shane jumped backwards, his hair standing up.

  “On the good ship… Lollipop!” the voice of Shirley Temple trilled giddily, threaded with static. “It’s a sweet trip to the candy shop! Where bon-bons play… on the sunny beach of Peppermint Bay!”

  Shane lunged forward, stabbing at the “erase” button, but his finger missed and the voice sang on, grinning, crackling through the tiny speaker, “See the sugar bowl do the tootsie roll with the big bad devil’s food cake!”

  Shane finally managed to hit the button, but the voice didn’t stop. It sang on, hurting his ears, making his eyes water with shocked dismay. “If you eat too much, oh-oh, you’ll awake with a tummy ache!”

  He stabbed the button again and again, to no avail. Finally, he dropped to his knees and scrabbled at the cords beneath the table, finding the power cord for the answering machine. He followed it to where it was plugged into the wall, next to the bookcase, and yanked it as hard as he could. It popped out of the wall, and for a horrible second, the singing still didn’t stop. It blared on, and Shane flailed forward, grabbing the machine with his hands, prepared to smash it on the floor, prepared to do anything to silence that inane, grinning voice.

  Before he could, however, the voice changed. The singing shut off, suddenly and completely, and then another voice spoke, sounding perfectly natural and normal, like any other voice on any other answering machine. It only said one word, but it was enough to freeze Shane in place, still clutching the answering machine, his eyes wide and wild.

  “Shane?” the voice said, and then fell silent. The lights on the machine blinked off. It lay there, dead in his hands, and Shane stared at it, his eyes bulging, his heart trip-hammering. He exhaled shakily, dropped the machine, and fell back into the corner next to the bookcase, shivering, feeling like he was going to be sick.

  It wasn’t that the voice had said his name.

  It was that the voice had been Stephanie’s

  Part II: Dear M

  Chapter Seven

  The art museum was a huge stone building perched atop a grand, treeless hill in the middle of Forest Park.

  Shane remembered reading that St. Louis’ Forest Park was second in size only to New York’s Central Park. He was very familiar with Central Park, of course, having spent many a summer afternoon there, riding his bike or just walking with Steph, watching the joggers and the beggars and the dog walkers. Even at night, Central Park was usually busy, full of activity. By comparison, Forest Park seemed like acres of rolling farmland, with vast tracts of mostly empty hills and manicured woods. The roads through the park meandered and looped back onto themselves, making navigation difficult.

  As he drove, glancing down at the map on the empty passenger’s seat and occasionally swearing to himself, he recalled that Forest Park had been developed to be the site of the 1904 World’s Fair. This was another detail that their real estate agent had impressed upon him and Steph during their swift tour of the St. Louis downtown. Over twenty million people had crowded the park during the international event, eager to view the sites, including a passable representation of Venice Italy, “human zoos”, displaying sallow-faced native Americans in their “traditional clothing and habitats”, and the world’s largest Ferris wheel, with individual cars the size of San Francisco trolleys.

  Shane had heard a strange legend about the Ferris wheel, related by an old woman at a junk shop in nearby St. Charles. The legend stated that the Ferris wheel, despite its incredible size and notoriety, had virtually disappeared after the World’s Fair, never to be seen again. Apparently, no one had claimed the gigantic amusement machine, since it was simply too big for most venues, and too expensive to transport, in any case.

  Thus, while the rest of the buildings were being disassembled and carted off piece by piece, leaving gaping holes in the landscape of the park, the workers had chosen the most obvious solution. They’d merely dumped the components of the massive Ferris wheel into those holes before they were refilled with earth, burying it anonymously throughout the rolling hills.

  Perhaps the cars themselves, large as they were, had been auctioned off one by one, converted into diners or storage units. Then again, perhaps they had all been buried in the bed of the ersatz Venice canal, which was now the floor of one of the park’s many lakes.

  According to the old lady in the junk shop, on one hot summer night in 2004, on the one hundred year anniversary of the World’s Fair, several dozen people claimed to see the Ferris wheel standing in the middle of one of Forest Park’s largest lakes, its lights glowing, reflecting in the water, turning with ghostly silence.

  It was a nicely creepy story, but one that didn’t amuse Shane at all as he finally followed the curving road up to the art museum, realizing he’d been looking at it up on its hill for twenty minutes while he circled, trying to decipher the signage. As he walked up the steps to the front doors, carrying his painting under his arm, he looked back at the monstrous statue of St. Louis that overlooked the park, one of the original remnants from the World’s Fair, left exactly where it had stood a century earlier.

  If he could talk, Shane thought sourly, looking up at the huge statue on its stony steed, he could tell where that Ferris wheel was buried. And if Forest Park is anything like Central Park, he could tell where a few other things are buried, too. Things that would be a lot less pleasant to dig up.

  The gallery showing was held in a small hall to the left of the main lobby. The room had high ceilings and marble floors, making Shane’s footsteps echo as he entered. The normal displays had been cleared out, and in their place had been hung a wild assortment of photography and paintings, each representing a different style.

  There was a cluster of people standing around a table in the back right corner of the hall, and Shane immediately recognized them as belonging to the worldwide clan of the starving artist. They dressed a little differently here than they did in New York—here, there was a greater emphasis on beads, beards and colors, implying a stronger hippie influence—but the posture and overall expression was immediately recognizable. The starving artists didn’t smile much, and even when they did, it didn’t affect their eyes. The eyes almost always looked the same; sad and empty, like burnt-out light bulbs.

  Several people turned to Shane as he approached, but none of them greeted him or smiled. A few of them were holding tiny white plates or flutes of champagne, but most seemed to have foregone the refreshments. They talked among themselves, quietly and morosely.

  “Mr. Bellamy,” a woman’s voice said from behind him. Shane turned to see Christiana approaching, her high heels clicking on the floor, echoing. She wore a simple black dress that stopped just above her knees. It swished distractingly as she sped toward him, unsmiling, her hands held out. For a moment, Shane thought wildly that she was going to hug him, and then he realized that she was reaching for the painting under his arm. “Yours is the last installment. You’re just in time. Have you met everyone?”

  Shane allowed her to take the pain
ting from him. “I suppose I have,” he said, glancing back at the small group around the white table. “Er, what am I supposed to do?”

  “Well, you can follow me to make sure you approve of the display. We’ll be putting your work on an easel instead of hanging it on the wall. Right over here, at the entrance to the next hall. It’ll function as a barrier as well as a focal point. Sorry, the rest of the wall space was used up by the time your piece became available.”

  “I suppose I should be the one to apologize,” Shane said. “I didn’t want to cause any trouble by coming in so late. Morrie was sort of insistent. I never would have even known about the showing if it wasn’t for him.”

  “Yeah, I know how Morrie can be,” Christiana said, hefting the painting. The two of them positioned it carefully on the easel. “When he gets an idea in his head, he’s a bit like a bulldog. Small but stubborn.”

  “Well, stubborn is a quality I generally respect,” Shane said diplomatically.

  “Yeah, me too. But it’s like anything else, isn’t it? Location, location, location.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Christiana shook her head, as if she’d only been talking to herself. “Never mind. There’s your title card. Everything spelled right?”

  Shane peered at the small white card attached to one of the legs of the easel. In neat printed letters, it read

  “River House”