The Riverhouse

by G. Norman Lippert

  Shane lay half collapsed in the marshy weeds on the side of the driveway, boggling up at the sky and the empty wood all around. There was a dull thump as the doors of the truck unlocked. He glanced toward the sound, and then scrambled to his feet. The passenger’s door opened easily and Christiana lolled out into his arms, as if she’d been leaning on it. Her eyes were still unfocussed, but the rain seemed to revive her slightly. Shane held her up, helping her to her feet next to the truck. Lightning pulsed overhead, and the mark on her cheek looked very clear, very red, the blood smearing and diluting in the rain.

  “Marlena,” Christiana said, her voice hauntingly clear and firm, despite her blank gaze. “Goodbye, Shane. She says… she says… she says to tell you goodbye.” And then in an awful, childish voice she sang the word over and over, “Goodbye... goodbye…”

  Shane held Christiana in the darkness, tears of frustration and anger welling in his eyes, mixing with the rain. He shook her in his arms.

  “Chris, wake up! It’s me! It’s over. Come on, wake up!”

  She blinked, and then shook her head, clearing it. Her brow furrowed and her mouth turned down into a grimace of perfect disgust, as if she’d just tasted something horrible. Her eyes flickered and locked onto his face.

  “It was her,” she said thickly. “I saw her. She… she talked to me. She was… oh God Shane, she was awful. So awful.”

  She shuddered violently in his arms and he hugged her to him. “She’s gone now. It’s all over. She’s gone.”

  She looked up at him then, apparently unsure whether to believe him or not. Her eyes were clear now, but the bloody scratch on her cheek remained, livid on her pale skin. She seemed unaware of the mark Marlena had made, at least for now. The shape of the scratch was unmistakable. It burned on Shane’s vision like an accusing finger, like an omen whose warning had come one decision too late, one step beyond the point of no return.

  M, the mark said, red in the occasional glare of the lightning. Dear M.

  “So what will you tell Morrie and the people at the office?”

  Christiana didn’t answer right away. She was standing in the bathroom, brushing her hair, dressed for work except for her blouse. Shane sat on the end of the bed, staring gloomily toward the window. It was just past dawn. The light outside was a mesmerizing combination of pink and gold, lighting the tattered clouds like stage props.

  “I’ll tell them I scratched my cheek on some thorns when I was walking back from my car, after I got stuck in the mud.”

  Shane glanced toward the bathroom. He was about to admit that that was an extremely plausible explanation, and then stopped, reminding himself that she’d had plenty of opportunities to hone that particular skill. He felt a vague, but pervasive, sense of guilt. It spread like poison, seeming to take up far more space inside him than should be possible. Instead, he asked, “Does it hurt?”

  She shook her head, still looking at herself in the mirror as she put on her earrings. “No. I don’t remember it hurting at all. I didn’t even know she was doing it.”

  “What do you remember about it?”

  Christiana put her hairbrush in the drawer below the sink. Shane watched her from his vantage point on the end of the bed. The rest of the cottage was morning-dim, but the bathroom overheads lit Christiana brightly, highlighting the tan skin of her shoulders, shining on her black hair. Apparently satisfied, she took her blouse off the hanger hooked over the shower curtain rod and slipped into it. She either hadn’t heard his question, or didn’t intend to answer it. She came out of the bathroom, clicking off the light, and sat down next to him on the bed. Silently, she began to put on her shoes.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. The words sounded stupid to him; meaningless and tiny.

  “Sorry for what?” she asked, not looking at him as she buckled the strap on her right shoe. “Did you summon her, somehow?”

  Shane shrugged. “I think maybe I did. Somehow.”

  “By painting her?”

  “I think so,” he said, nodding slowly. “But maybe just by being here. Maybe by not leaving.”

  She finished putting on her shoes and turned on the bed, looking directly at him. She studied him for a moment in the dawn light. “You warned me about her. I didn’t really believe you then, but I do now. It’s pretty hard to deny at this point. I’m still here, aren’t I? You aren’t the only one making a choice, Shane.”

  “Maybe it’s the wrong choice.”

  “Maybe, but we’re making it together, all right? You’ve chosen to stay, and I’ve made my own choice. I’ve chosen to trust you. You can see that, can’t you?”

  Shane looked at her. He could see it. He nodded again.

  She pressed her lips together, and then leaned forward, kissing him lightly on the lips. Her own lips were warm, soft, but distracted. He could tell that she was already thinking about her day, about the phone calls she had to make, the details she had to arrange. Shane was amazed at how quickly she had bounced back to the mundane sanity of the everyday after her harrowing experience in the truck the previous night. Then again, he thought to himself, what was the alternative? He’d seen the same tendency in himself, when Marlena had first appeared in the cottage. The mind seemed to rebel against the bizarre, burying it away, latching onto the normal and rational like a life buoy. Christiana didn’t want to talk about it, or even think about it, and Shane didn’t blame her. He wouldn’t force it on her. In some small way, he was envious of her.

  He followed her into the kitchen and gave her the keys to his truck.

  “It’s touchy,” he said as she opened the front door. “First gear especially. It’ll try to stall on you if you aren’t really easy on the clutch.”

  “I learned on a stick shift, sweetie,” she said, kissing him on the cheek. “I’ll manage.”

  A minute later, Shane watched his truck dip down the gravel drive, swaying in the muddy ruts. The fallen tree still lay in the ditch on the left side where he’d eventually hauled it, its root ball half ripped out of the earth. Christiana beeped the horn once and was gone. Shane peered up at the sky. It was no longer raining, and the clouds were breaking apart, showing glimpses of a deep blue morning sky. The air was wet but warm, pushing through the trees and swishing in the grass of the yard. It was probably only a short reprieve—the weathermen on the radio were predicting more, and worse, storms in the coming days, but for now, the break in the weather was a welcome relief. Shane went back inside, closing the screen door but leaving the main door open, letting in the fresh air.

  He got dressed for the day, made himself some coffee, and stepped out onto the back patio to drink it. The river below the bluff rode high in its banks, brown and fast, dotted with sticks, logs, even the occasional uprooted tree. It wasn’t at flood levels yet, but it soon would be. The cottage would be safe, high on the rocky bluff that overlooked the river bend, but Bastion Falls would surely close down. The Valley Road would be impassable. Nature would do its thing, as it always did, but the cottage would survive, as it always did.

  Shane found that he didn’t care anymore. He almost wished the flood would come all the way up, that it would wash away the cottage and everything inside, including his paintings of the Riverhouse, and Marlena, and even the Sleepwalker.

  He didn’t care about finishing it. Not anymore. All that mattered was that Marlena had hurt Christiana. Not much, of course, at least not yet. But Shane had been working under the assumption that Marlena was not capable of physically touching a living person, that if he was vigilant, and watched over Christiana carefully, he could protect her.

  Now, he knew that that had all been a mistake. Marlena had indeed touched Christiana, had made her mark on her. It was a warning, in much the same way that the chalk drawing on the cellar floor might have been a warning. Next time, Marlena seemed to be saying, next time I won’t stop at a scratch on the cheek. Next time I’ll finish what needs to be finished…

  Shane remembered sitting on the patio with the newsprint sketchp
ad on his lap, drawing furiously, making crayon snapshots of Marlena’s fractured, final days: the Insanity Stairs, overlooking the strange sieve drain in the basement of the Riverhouse; the hall of empty rooms, their windows painted over, their doors forever locked and nailed shut. Mostly, however, he remembered the clever image painted on the wall at the opposite end of that dark hallway, the one that showed Marlena’s family as if in a sort of magic mirror—herself with Wilhelm and baby Hector, but with the faces all left blank, smooth and featureless, like white balloons.

  Shane put his coffee down on the stone wall next to the barbecue. He felt vaguely sick. He turned to go back into the cottage, and then couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. The place had a hold on him, a sort of mental death grip. He could feel the pull of it, and yet he resisted, simultaneously captivated and revolted. It was like waking up after a night of hard drinking, finding yourself in bed with someone you’ve never met before, someone horrible, disgusting, someone with whom you might have done almost anything in the stupor of drunkenness.

  Shane backed away from the cottage, staring up at it wide eyed. He’d believed that the Riverhouse was the real danger, the source of Marlena’s contagious madness—and that might even have been true. But the cottage was the sister of the Riverhouse, the older one, the very first. The two structures beat with the same blood, shared the same legacy. Why else had Marlena fled there when the Riverhouse, the site of her original haunting, had been torn down? How could Shane not have realized that the same madness that tainted the Riverhouse also flowed through the cottage, pulsing darkly, making its own numbing gravity?

  Finally, slowly, he went back inside, leaving the sliding door open behind him. He looked around, as if seeing the place for the first time.

  Everything was different. He could almost believe that everything he thought of as home, everything that made the cottage feel like his, was just a thin mask, stage dressing over something far older, something that didn’t belong to him at all. He moved through the kitchen, feeling the silent pull of the place, pushing back on it, trying to keep his new awareness alive. Christiana’s car keys sat on the counter next to an empty Coke can. He picked them up and slipped them into the pocket of his jeans.

  A moment later, he stopped at the base of the staircase, looking up toward the studio, the place where he had created all three of the paintings in the Shane Bellamy Insanity Stairs series. The third one was as yet unfinished, its power still only half formed, but he could feel it up there, lit in the morning sunlight that streamed in from the window over the stairs. It called to him, demanding his touch. It wanted to be finished, wanted the story to be complete, for the circle to be closed.

  Shane shuddered, violently, as if someone had poured a pitcher of ice water down his back. He backed away from the stairs, his eyes wide, and turned toward the hallway. He passed the cellar door. It was open, and he glanced down. Christiana had washed the chalk drawing off the floor, but she hadn’t erased it completely. Vague discolorings on the concrete floor still picked out the main shapes. They looked different, somehow, as if the drawing had changed, cycling over to some new destiny, something possibly worse than the one that had first appeared there. Shane thought the shapes now showed the Riverhouse, pale and looming against a stormy gray background. He tore his gaze away, not wishing to see anymore, not wanting to know.

  He was sure he had left the front door open, letting the morning breeze in, drawing some of the rainy mustiness out of the front rooms, but it was closed now. Closed and locked. Shane moved toward it, gripped the handle and unlatched the bolt. He glanced aside as he pulled the door open, and then stopped, his hand still on the cold metal of the doorknob.

  The Riverhouse painting had changed again. Marlena was no longer sitting on the steps of the portico, shielding her eyes against the sun, looking up at her approaching visitor. Now she was standing, one foot on the bottom step, the other on the brick drive. On her face was a smile of heartbreaking happiness, as if she’d finally recognized the person who was coming to meet her, and was delighted at their arrival.

  Shane stared at the painting, expecting it to begin moving right before his eyes, the figures coming alive like characters in a movie. They didn’t, of course, but that didn’t make the scene any less frightening. The painting was very much alive, moving only when he wasn’t looking, approaching an irreversible climax.

  The shadow in the lower right of the painting, the one stretching out onto the brick drive, was very dark and long now. Whoever it was, they were almost inside the scope of the painting. Once more, he forced himself to look away. He didn’t want to know, didn’t want to see any more. He’d seen too much already. The voice in his head—the quiet, timid one, the Voice of Reason—had been right all along. This wasn’t his story. It belonged to someone else—something else. Something powerful, and frightening.

  Shane walked out the front door, moving like a man in a dream. He thought about packing some of his things, some clothes and toiletries, but that was silly. He couldn’t go back inside, not now, not once he had begun to walk away. He should have done this weeks ago, maybe even months ago.

  He stepped out of the shadow of the porch, into the bright haze of the morning sun, and squinted. The grass was wet. It soaked through his canvas shoes almost immediately but he didn’t slow down. The driveway sloped toward the hill in front of him, cutting through the trees, looking like a highway. He angled toward it, stepping onto the muddy gravel.

  The cottage was behind him, pulling at him, trying to draw him back. He resisted, and was shocked to realize that it was very hard to do. His resolve was hardly rock solid. It was flimsy, weak, but for the moment, it held. He thought again of Marlena reaching forward with her skeletal right hand, her nails grown to obscene talons, scratching lines on Christiana’s living cheek. Lines were the language Marlena understood. She was an artist, after all, like her husband. She had spoken to Shane in the best way she knew how. She had drawn him a picture. That time it had been a warning, he thought to himself. There wouldn't be any warnings next time.

  Not this time, he thought, remembering the words scrawled on the bottom of the last crayon drawing, embedded in the cheap paper so deeply that they had torn it. Not this time, Stambaugh had said, cackling in the chair next to Earl’s bed, his hands wet with the old man’s blood.

  Shane quickened his pace, descending the hill. The sun was over the tree line now, sparkling brightly on the wet weeds and the bare branches of the trees. Christiana’s Saturn sat crooked on the side of the driveway far below, barely ten yards from the mailbox and the River Road. Shane could see the rutted tracks where she had slipped off the drive, the front left wheel bogging down in the soft earth that bordered the trees. The mud had already begun to dry around it, lightening in color, turning thick. Shane thought he could push the car back up onto the gravel, at least enough to give the front wheels the traction to back out. He’d drive Christiana’s car into downtown St. Louis, meet her at Greenfeld’s office, maybe take her to lunch.

  She’d told him she trusted him, and that was a responsibility he meant to take seriously. The first part of that responsibility was never bringing her back to the cottage again. Not after last night. Not after that final, warning mark, drawn in Christiana’s own blood.

  Shane looked up. Someone else was walking along the driveway, coming up the hill, halfway between him and the Saturn. The figure was wearing a pair of old green coveralls with a handkerchief hanging limply from the front pocket. A pair of worn work boots gritted on the gravel as the figure plodded toward him.

  Shane’s feet continued to carry him forward, but his brain seemed to have shut down, revolting against what he was seeing. It couldn’t be who it seemed to be. This wasn’t his imagination. This wasn’t some flashbulb vision revealed in a flicker of lightning. Shane could hear the scrape of the boots, hear the puff of the man’s breathing as he climbed the hill.

  They both stopped walking at the same time, and the figure raised its h
ead, looking up at Shane.

  “Earl,” Shane said weakly.

  He wasn’t an old man, but he was still plainly recognizable. His face was grim, hopeless, but resolved.

  “It’s too late,” Earl said, and his voice was just as old as Shane remembered, despite the younger features, despite the pate of thick black hair. “It’s too late now. You have to finish it. Understand?”

  He stopped, still looking up at Shane, his eyes piercing. He drew a long, deep breath and shook his head slowly. “I’m sorry.”

  Shane felt rooted to the spot. Distantly, he heard himself ask, “Sorry for what, Earl?”

  “Sorry I didn’t tell you everything when I had the chance,” Earl said, and he began to turn away, as if his job was done and he meant to go back. As Earl turned, however, Shane saw that there was something wrong with his profile, something strange about the back of his head. It was horribly lumpy, and bald. It wasn’t the back of his head at all. As he finished turning, Shane saw, and his breath stalled in his chest: the back of Earl’s head was another face, grinning up at him madly, full of manic glee. Stambaugh stood on the driveway now, watching, his eyes dancing, daring Shane to come down the hill and meet him. Behind Stambaugh, the Saturn sat in the sun.

  Shane heard something, a wheezy lilt, and realized Stambaugh was singing to himself. He was singing “the Good Ship Lollipop.”

  Hopelessness filled Shane. It welled up in him and poured out of him, spreading away like a ripple, covering everything in sight. The sun seemed to dim, as if a cold cloud had passed in front of it. Maybe it even had. Shane didn’t look to see.

  He turned around. Slowly, he began to trudge back to the cottage. Stambaugh’s singing voice, horribly cracked and off-key, followed him. He thought he could still hear it even when he got back inside, even when he went up to the studio and stood in front of the unfinished face of the Sleepwalker. He only stopped hearing it when he finally dipped the brush, reached forward, and began to paint.