Shane thought he could understand that feeling.
He climbed slowly to his feet, too weak to raise his voice, to attempt to stop Earl. What good would it do anyway? It was too late. Christiana was gone. He stood swaying on his feet in the rain, Christiana’s blood staining his shirt. Slowly, he turned toward the dark house. Marlena’s garden shears lay open on the portico, slick with blood. Shane remembered painting those garden shears, placing them in the shadow of the porch next to Marlena’s hand. In the painting, she had just finished pruning the rose garden and was resting, her face turned up, one arm raised to shield her eyes from the sun. He had given her those shears, placed them into her hands.
But it was she that had killed with them.
For the first time, Shane felt a spark of anger welling deep inside him. It was small, but persistent. As he looked down at the bloody shears, the anger swelled. His face was still stained with tears, his eyes red and swollen, but the anger emboldened him. The murderer of his love was inside that house, waiting for him. Marlena might end up killing him, too, but somehow Shane didn’t think so. She loved him. For the first time, he was glad of that. After all, love is a two-edged sword. Shane knew that now as well as anyone. Maybe, just maybe, he could use that sword himself.
He walked slowly up the portico steps, stepping over the bloody garden shears. He reached for the door but before he could touch it the handle turned by itself. The door swung open silently, revealing a mass of dark shadows, deep and still, waiting for him.
Shane didn’t pause. He entered the house, feeling the silent warmth of its rooms engulf him, welcome him, draw him in. Behind him, the door closed. He didn’t look back.
The house seemed larger inside than it had appeared from the yard. The rooms felt twenty feet high, dim and silent, thick with shadows. He moved through the hall and crossed into the main parlor. The fireplace was there, but it was dark and cold, filled with gray ash. The curtains were pulled back from the high windows, letting in the glow of the stormy evening. Shadows rippled in that light, cast by the sheeting rainwater, and the shadows gave subtle motion to the entire room. The portrait of Woodrow Wilson stood on the mantel, towering over Shane. The old rejection note was still pinned to the top right corner, now yellowed and brittle with age.
“I’m here,” Shane said to the room. “You got what you wanted. Here I am.” He hadn’t raised his voice, but the silence of the rooms magnified it. He sensed his words echoing throughout the Riverhouse. “I’m here, but not because I want to be. I’m only here because you took away everything that mattered to me. I’d rather be dead. I don’t love you. I hate you. I hate everything about you.”
The Riverhouse seemed not to care. His words echoed through the rooms and came back to him, sounding small and weak, meaningless. And then, attached to his words, trailing behind them, another voice spoke.
“Five, ten, fifteen, twenty,” the voice sang. It was a smiling, female voice. It was the voice of his mother. “Twenty-five, thirty… thirty-five, forty…”
It wasn’t his mother. It was Marlena. Her voice came from all around, disjointed, echoes of echoes.
“I don’t love you,” he said again, but he didn’t sound like he meant it. He sounded like a petulant little boy who’d been denied a treat. He tried to remember the bloody gardening shears, the pitiful, diminished shape of Christiana’s body, but the memory was slippery. It was hard to concentrate on. And Marlena sounded so pleasant, so warm and comforting. The echo of her voice continued.
“Forty-five, fifty… ready or not, here I come… I hope you didn’t hide too well, sweet boy. I’m going to find you, and when I do, I’m going to tickle you! I’m going to tickle you and hug you and never let you go…” She was happy. Shane had never seen or heard Marlena happy. He realized, with some dismay, that it was a wonderful sound. An entrancing sound. He would do almost anything to keep that smile in her voice. Not because he was afraid of her, but because… because he loved her. He always had. Almost from the moment he had first seen her, pathetic and lost in the shadows of the cottage. He had pitied her, and he had wanted to make her happy. He still did, despite everything. Of course he did. She was his mother.
“But you took away what I loved,” he moaned, trying to cling to the vision of Christiana’s lifeless body. “You ruined everything. I loved her, and you killed her.”
“I know it doesn’t seem fair,” Marlena’s voice came, echoing distantly through the rooms, sourceless and directionless, full of sympathy. “I’m sorry it hurt you, my dear son. What hurts you, hurts me. But it was necessary. Someday you’ll understand. Someday when you get a little older. Sometimes, grown-ups have to do things that they don’t want to do.”
Shane nodded. He wanted to believe her. And yet, deep down, he couldn’t. Something was wrong. Something about the echoing words was like sweet poison. Marlena wasn’t his mother.
But perhaps she could be, a voice whispered from the back of his mind. Shane recognized it. It was the voice of the entity he had first met in his studio, the one that had held the Sleepwalker painting in its invisible grip and squeezed all the air out of the room with its suffocating weight. It was the voice of the Riverhouse itself. Perhaps she could be your mother. After all, what do you have left? Is this not pleasant? Is it not comforting? What more does a heartbroken boy want than the unconditional embrace of a mother’s arms?
Shane nodded again. It was true.
“I’m going to fiiind you,” Marlena sang. Her voice was delightful, like silver bells, like birdsong on a spring morning. “And then it will be my turn to hide, and you can find me. We can play together forever, you and I. Oh, I’ve been looking for you for so long, sweet boy. It’s so nice to have you home again. So nice to be back together again, here in the Riverhouse.”
It was nice to be home, Shane thought dreamily. He stopped and shook himself in the darkness, trying to break the hold of her words, of her smiling, comforting voice. This wasn’t his home. It wasn’t a home at all. It was a tomb, full of restless ghosts. It was the grave of his would-be fiancée. He heard Christiana in his memory. Something is very wrong, she had said. He clung to those words, repeating them in his thoughts like a wake-up call. No matter how it feels here, he reminded himself, no matter how it feels in these haunting, silent rooms, it isn’t right. It is horribly, poisonously wrong.
Go to her, the whispering voice of the Riverhouse prodded. Forget what you think you know. What does it matter, now? Go to her. Let her find you. You can’t be so cruel as to deny her, can you?
Shane blinked in the darkness. He looked around, at the looming furniture, the gaping, dark fireplace, the unnaturally tall windows with their streaming, watery glass. It all seemed so huge because he was so small. He was just a boy, barely a toddler. This was a grown-up’s world, a world that didn’t make a lot of sense to him. His mother would help. As long as he had her, none of it would seem strange or scary. He would go to her. He would climb into her arms, and everything would be all right. He began to move, to walk, to seek her singing, happy voice.
I know things, a voice said in his memory. The voice belonged to someone he used to know, someone named Christiana. Who was she? A playmate? Where was she now? Tears welled in his eyes, because he knew he loved her, but knew he would never see her again. Had she moved away? Had she gotten hurt somehow? Or lost? I know things, she’d said to him, and then she’d told him what she knew. Shane thought of her words. They seemed a little funny, but pointless. Christiana had told him a secret. It was about the woman who was singing even now, happily moving through the Riverhouse, looking for him, calling for him.
“I’m going to tickle you…” she called, teasing. “I’m going to tickle you and hug you…”
The spell broke and an overwhelming sense of pity came over Shane, and with it came a realization. Marlena had killed Christiana, but Marlena was also a victim. She was a prisoner and a slave of the Riverhouse itself. Shane looked around. The room still seemed unnaturally tall, but it n
o longer loomed over him as if he were a child. He walked, crossing the room and passing in front of the portrait of Woodrow Wilson. He passed through the entryway into the kitchen. It was dense with shadows, stacked with cupboards and glass-fronted cabinets, all painted the color of green apples. There was an alcove in the back of the kitchen, between the sink and the huge ice box. He moved toward it, knowing what he’d find hidden around the corner. After all, he had painted the Riverhouse. It existed in his mind. He knew where to go.
“Where are you, you silly boy,” Marlena called again. Her voice sounded a bit more distant. “I hope you aren’t hiding anyplace you know you aren’t allowed to be…” There was a hint of worry in her voice. It pained Shane to hear it.
Go to her, the voice of the Riverhouse soothed. Comfort her. She is worried. She is afraid. She has waited so very long…
Shane ignored the pull of Marlena’s echoing words. It was very hard. Instead, he turned the corner into the alcove and found what he’d expected. A flight of narrow stairs climbed up into darkness. They were very steep, uncarpeted; the servant’s stairs. He began to ascend them.
“I hear you,” Marlena called. “Don’t be a naughty boy, now. Come to your mama. Come to my arms. Let me tickle you. Let me hug you. I’ve missed you so much…” Her voice was even more distant now. Shane climbed slowly into the darkness at the top of the stairs. There was a small landing, and then two more stairs to the left. They led to a long hallway, layered with shadows. Doors lined both sides. Shane knew without touching them that they were locked, nailed shut, their keys thrown into the river. He knew that the rooms beyond those locked doors were painted black, from floor to ceiling, covering even their windows. He began to walk down the hall. It was cold. His breath puffed ahead of him. He began to shiver.
Go to your mother. She is heartbroken without you. Don’t be so cruel. She loves you. And you love her.
It was the voice of the Riverhouse, and it was louder. It came out of the darkness like chimes from a broken bell. Shane was getting closer to it, nearing what passed for its brain. After all, the house was only as strong as the hands that had built it. Shane was nearing its center, approaching its secret, pulsing core. He walked on, his eyes straining at the darkness.
At the end of the hall, barely visible in the shadows, was a painting. It was life sized, rendered with painstaking realism. Shane had seen it before, but only dimly, represented in a child’s crayon drawing on cheap newsprint paper. The painting showed a family, a mother and father, and a young child between them. Their faces were perfectly blank, like white balloons.
Shane approached the image, not knowing what to expect. The Riverhouse ended beyond that image. There was no place left to go. Marlena’s voice echoed to him still, but very distantly. He couldn’t make out her words, but he could sense her tone. She was worried, bordering on outright alarm. Her boy had gone where he wasn’t supposed to go, where no one was allowed to go. He had gone to the place of danger, to the cold dead heart of the Riverhouse itself. She herself didn’t even go there, but she would go there now if she had to. She would go there to save him. She was coming even now, her panic driving her faster and faster, despite her own fears. Shane sensed her approach.
He got to the end of the hallway. Even close to, the painting was utterly perfect. He couldn’t see as much as a single brush stroke in the meticulously painted figures.
They began to move. They parted, the woman moving to the left, the man to the right. The boy stayed by his mother, held her pale hand. As they moved aside, Shane saw the room beyond. It was Gustav Wilhelm’s studio. He stepped forward, entering the portal of the painting, and as he passed through it, the coldness of the hallway fell behind him. The wooden floor of the studio met his feet and he looked back. The painting stood on a tall canvas now, leaning against the wall next to the stairs. It looked exactly as it had at the end of the hall of the Riverhouse, but inverted. The figures had moved back together again, blocking the way back. Shane turned around slowly.
Gustav Wilhelm stood at the work table, leaning against it, his arms folded over his narrow chest.
“Welcome, son,” he said. The tone of his voice didn’t seem particularly welcoming, however. He seemed to be angry, in fact, but Shane sensed that this was the kind of man who was very practiced at holding his anger in, honing it, sharpening it to a point. “You’re a stubborn young man, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, should I? Like father… like son.”
“I’m not your son,” Shane said weakly. The force of the man’s black gaze was like a weight, pushing him down into the floor.
“You are very naughty not to go to your mother,” Wilhelm said, his eyes locked on Shane. “But it does not matter. She comes here to meet you. Perhaps it is best this way. Perhaps it is best that it end this time with all three of us together. It will allow me to see the look in her eyes when it happens. It will be so much more… satisfying.”
Shane recognized the man’s voice. He’d been hearing it in the back of his head ever since he’d entered the Riverhouse. “You,” he said.
“You must think me mad,” Wilhelm said, turning now and waving a hand dismissively. He walked toward a back corner of the studio. “Being murdered by your wife will do that to you. Being forced to occupy the scene of your death, to watch your body rot and molder before your eyes, caged for decades in your own crypt, it does have its effects. You couldn’t possibly comprehend it. Under the circumstances, I think I’ve held up remarkably well. In many respects, in fact, I think I’ve gotten rather better.” As he spoke, he moved some of his leaning canvases, looking for something. He nodded to himself, and lifted a particularly large painting from the stack. He turned it around and placed it in the front, showing it to Shane.
“See? Much more evocative than my previous works. Don’t you think?”
The painting was meticulously detailed. It showed a complicated mangle of metal glinting in the sunlight. Shane recognized it immediately. It was Stephanie’s Honda, lying upside-down next to a stretch of highway. A starburst of broken glass had turned the windshield milky white, but Shane could see the shape of her head behind it. Blood had stained some of the glass pink. It glimmered in the sunlight.
“Breathtaking, isn’t it?” Wilhelm said, admiring his work. “There are more. Some of them feature Mr. Stambaugh. Useful man, once I’d gotten my will into him, pried his mind open a bit. Amazing how that sort of crack can be passed on through generations. I liked Mr. Stambaugh a lot more than I do his grandson, but a tool is a tool. Both of them at least know how to get a job done, wouldn’t you agree?”
Shane shook his head, unable to take his eyes away from the horrible painting. He’d thought it had been Marlena who’d marked Stephanie, orchestrated her death, but he’d been wrong. He should have known. He remembered the dream he’d had, months earlier, after he had first found Marlena’s ghost haunting the cottage. The dream had ended with Shane lost on the footpath, caught in the shadow of something huge and horrible, something that towered over the trees, watching him, studying him like a butterfly pinned to a corkboard. It had been the Riverhouse, grown massive and bloated. But even that had only been a disguise. It had been Wilhelm all along. He had been behind it all, moving beneath the surface like a disease, manipulating and coaxing, weaving his own master plan of revenge.
“I knew she would take a fancy to you,” Wilhelm said, as if reading Shane’s thoughts. “I knew she would see the similarities in you, the ways you were so like our son. And I knew you would not reject her. You both needed each other, albeit in different ways. I hardly had to do anything. I knew she would inspire you to paint. And I knew you would want to please her. All I had to do was influence and suggest, hint and whisper. It was very simple: take away your wife, give you the silver rattle. Always secretly. Never seen. It was remarkably easy to keep my secrets. Marlena built the wall, closing me off, so she would never again have to look at what she’d done. And it worked. She never saw me here, never sensed me, because
she never dared to look.” He sighed contentedly to himself, shaking his head slowly. “But now she comes, of course. Your ‘mother’. She will know the truth, yes, but it will be too late. She always feared I’d return, you see, even when she’d been alive. She lived in terror of it. If only she’d understood the truth. I wasn’t going to return. How could I, when I’d never even left?”
“You hate her,” Shane said, merely giving voice to his own realization.
“Of course,” Wilhelm said, laughing a little. “Wouldn’t you? She took everything from me. And now I will return the favor.”
Shane stood rooted to the spot by the studio stairs, unable to move, almost unable to breath. I will return the favor. Marlena wouldn’t kill the man she believed to be her son, but Wilhelm would. It had been his plan from the beginning.
“You understand now, don’t you?” Wilhelm said. He stepped toward the round window and sat on the end of the bed. It squeaked slightly, and Shane was chilled by the sight of the skeletal figure cocooned in the sheets. Wilhelm’s ghost rested its hand on the shoe of its corpse’s skeletal foot. “She denied me everything. My lover, my son, and my life. You can relate, I think. At least in part.” He smiled crookedly at Shane.
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