The Riverhouse

by G. Norman Lippert

  “Mama!” Hector cried, clutching the stern gunwale with his little hands.

  “Hector!” she called back to him, still reaching, her hands opening and closing, willing the distance between them to disappear. It grew instead. The boat rocked precipitously as Madeleine tried to row. It was no use. The current was far too strong. Lightning flickered across the low sky and thunder roared. Something large was moving along the center of the river. In the flash of the lightning, it looked monstrous and dark, like the back of some mythical sea beast. Marlena clutched her face helplessly as the object bore down on the tiny boat. Madeleine looked up and saw it coming, but Hector never looked. His eyes stayed locked on his mother where she stood on the dock, growing smaller, screaming his name.

  It was a tree, huge and black, still festooned with a canopy of spring leaves. The uprooted end preceded it down the river, pulled along under the inertia of its own weight. It towered over the tiny boat, pushing a froth of splashing water in front of it. Madeleine let go of the oars and reached for Hector. Marlena saw no more, because the tree blocked her view at that point. She didn’t hear the sound of the tree striking the boat, but she saw the prow of the little craft suddenly jerk to the side. It plowed under the mass of roots, dragging at the water. An instant later it was gone.

  Marlena screamed. She clutched at her face, pulling furrows into the smooth skin of her cheeks, her eyes bulging and wild, unbelieving. In the torrential darkness, she screamed, and screamed, and screamed.

  Shane felt weak under the weight of such loss and grief. It plugged all too neatly into the loss and grief he himself had experienced. He stepped backwards, away from the round window and the storm that raged beyond it. His heel bumped the pile of bricks and he nearly fell backwards. Instead, he half turned and caught himself on the ragged edge of the hole in the wall. The bricks were brittle and dry under his grip. The last hands to touch them, he realized with dull horror, had been Marlena’s. She had built this wall herself, closing off this little corner of the world, hoping she’d never have to think of it again. Had Earl known? Had he seen the wall when it was only half finished, seen what it was meant to hide? Maybe he had, and had kept Marlena’s secret. He had loved her, after all. He might not have known the whole story, but he’d have figured out enough. Maybe he had even helped her finish it.

  And yet it hadn’t been enough. Like the classic Edgar Allen Poe story that Shane had read in college, the tell-tale heart had continued to beat, haunting Marlena, driving her slowly into the embrace of madness. She’d watched the cottage through the window in the attic of the Riverhouse, sometimes seeing the light of that damning candle, teasing and mocking her. She’d built the Insanity Stairs, with their bizarre window, overlooking the huge sieve drain installed in the basement floor. And Shane now knew why. In Marlena’s tortured mind, another flood could bring back to her that which she had lost. Maybe it would return her beloved sweet boy to her. But if it did, it might also return Madeleine. Marlena knew that she had to be wary, to watch with vigilance. If Madeleine came back with Hector, she might not be as easy to get rid of as Marlena’s husband had been. Madeleine might be less willing to die this time around.

  Shane climbed back through the hole, into the light of his own version of the studio, smaller than Wilhelm’s, but otherwise very similar. He felt dazed, sick, horrified with what he had seen. Aimlessly, he moved toward the stairs.

  Christiana had said that Marlena hated her because she, Marlena, loved Shane, and had wanted him for herself. But was that all there was to it? In the light of what he now knew, he wondered. It had made sense when he’d believed that Wilhelm had betrayed and abandoned Marlena, running off with his lover. That was the story that the world had believed, and why not? It fit perfectly with what everyone knew of the hedonistic, arrogant painter. Now, however, Shane knew that it was all a lie. A happy lie, as Wilhelm himself might have called it, covering up a much uglier truth. In light of that, did it make sense that Marlena might love Shane as a replacement for the husband who had betrayed her?

  The stairs leading down into the lower half of the cottage were wet with rain. Shane’s feet squeaked on the wooden steps as he descended, hanging onto the banister, his thoughts reeling.

  Earlier, he had asked himself what part he had been meant to play in the unfolding story of the Riverhouse. Even then, he had partly doubted Christiana’s simple take on the tale. Marlena’s jealousy was just too seamless, her rage too vehement for it to be mere romantic jealousy. But what was it? What was he missing?

  Shane turned the corner at the bottom of the stairs, stepping into his bedroom. He stopped, swaying slightly on his feet, and stared into the stormy darkness. Lightning flickered outside the window, painting stark shapes onto the walls, throwing his dresser into relief. Something glittered on the dresser, shining in that bright, silvery glow. Shane looked at it.

  Rattle fell, Mama, he thought.

  A hard shiver coursed down his spine, shaking him. He moved toward the dresser, reached, wrapped his fingers around the silver rattle. It jingled merrily as he picked it up.

  She doesn’t love me as a husband, he thought, his eyes slowly widening with revelation. She loves me as a son. She loves me as her sweet boy.

  “She loves me as Hector,” he said to himself, his voice thin with wonder.

  Lightning flickered again and thunder followed it, booming and rolling across the sky. Shane held the rattle, remembering the first time he had seen Marlena, remembering how he’d held the silver rattle up in front of him, as if to ward her off with it.

  All she’d ever wanted was her son back. She’d ended her days wishing only to live with him, to watch him grow, to hear his happy laugh and rambunctious play fill the rooms of the Riverhouse. And then, long after her ghost had grown mad with loss and regret, a man showed up, a man with artistic skills, a man who himself had lost the ones he loved, a man whose heart was ready to be filled again. It was as if they’d been meant for each other—a match made in hell. And as the final perfect touch, he’d had the silver rattle, the favorite toy of her long dead son, to prove it.

  He thought of the paintings he had created, the ones he thought of as belonging to the Shane Bellamy Insanity Stairs series. They were all of a unique style, a strange blend of realism and modernism, each overlaying the other, sometimes complementing, sometimes warring. He’d never painted anything like it before, and now he understood why. It was simply a part of the role he had been meant to play. His art was now a mix of both Gustav Wilhelm’s haunting realism and Marlena’s free-form abstraction, both blended together and reborn at the hand of their would-be son. Shane had indeed played along. Without even realizing it, he had played his part exceptionally well.

  Even in his visions of Marlena, she had never appeared as his lover or wife. She had seemed huge, towering, sometimes indulgent and sometimes commanding, but always, as he could now see, imminently maternal. She didn’t want to punish him. She loved him. But even the best mothers sometimes had to discipline their children. It was for their own good.

  He kept the rattle in his hand as he walked back into the light of the hallway. It all made so much sense now, and yet there was no comfort in it. When Shane had believed that Marlena’s passion for him was that of a jealous lover, it had seemed frightening, but somehow manageable. Lovers may be passionate, but they could also be fickle, or sullen, or maybe even reasoned with. A mother’s love, however, completely superseded reason. A mother’s love was instinctive, powerful, and ultimately undeniable. A mother would do anything to protect her children. Anything at all.

  Shane leaned on the kitchen entry. His half of the sandwich still sat on the counter, still wrapped in paper. He stared at it, and then beyond it. Christiana’s empty Coke can sat next to the sink, near a small stack of papers and folders that she had brought with her from the office. Shane rested his gaze on her things, thinking. Something about the sight nagged him, set off little warning bells in the back of his mind, but he was too distracte
d to pay any attention to it.

  How did Christiana fit into it all? If Shane was meant to play the role of Marlena’s lost son, what role did Christiana have to play? Was there a role for her at all?

  Shane stopped. He finally looked at the collection of Christiana’s things, taking them all in: the Coke can, the small sheaf of folders and papers, a Post-it pad with a series of phone numbers scribbled onto it.

  Two sets of keys lay on the counter next to the Post-it pad. The set with the leather key fob was Christiana’s. The other was Shane’s. They were the keys to his pickup truck.

  Shane’s eyes widened as his thoughts sped up to a blur. He pushed himself away from the kitchen entryway, his eyes still nailed on the keys. He had heard her leave, hadn’t he? He had heard the front door open and close from his seat up in the studio. It had slammed shut because the wind had caught it. But he hadn’t heard the truck start. He hadn’t heard the squeak as she released the emergency brake.

  He hadn’t heard those things because she hadn’t taken the truck. She had walked to her first appointment.

  I’ve got a few hours to kill, she had told him, but I’ve got plenty to do in the meantime. I’ll probably leave again pretty quick. Wish me luck.

  Shane walked slowly, dazedly, around the corner of the hallway, heading toward the front room. He didn’t want to see, but couldn’t stop himself.

  The painting of the Riverhouse had changed once more. Marlena was still standing, smiling, one hand held out in greeting, but the shadow in the lower right of the canvas had finally revealed its owner. Shane had always suspected it would be him, but of course it wasn’t. Christiana stood in the foreground, dressed exactly as Shane had seen her an hour earlier. Her back was to Shane, but he could clearly see her shape, the tanned curve of her calf below her skirt, the curled fingers of one hand, the glossy black of her hair. Christiana had gone to the Riverhouse after all. Shane should have known that she would, especially after her own encounter with the reality of Marlena’s specter. She had gone to settle things, to talk reason with her ghostly nemesis. She believed she was going to meet merely a jealous rival. Instead, she was walking into the vengeance of a bereft mother, one bent on preventing her loss from happening all over again.

  Shane drifted helplessly toward the painting, cold to the bone. Terror sank over him, settling onto him like a lead weight. The mark Marlena had made on Christiana’s cheek wasn’t a warning, he suddenly realized. It was a mark of identification. Perhaps Marlena had meant it as a final hint, a clue to help him understand what was really happening between them all, and what was truly at stake. M, the mark had read. It didn’t stand for Marlena.

  It stood for Madeleine.

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Shane didn’t think. He was out the front door and running across the soggy lawn almost before he realized it. Of course he could never catch up to Christiana—she could have easily made it to the Riverhouse and back by now—but he was beyond the reach of such rational thoughts. All he knew was that the woman he loved was walking into a deadly trap, and he had to get to her. It was already too late, but that didn’t change anything. If only he had known. If only he’d paid more attention. The signs of Christiana’s intentions had to have been there, if only he hadn’t been so distracted. After all, the Riverhouse painting had known all along. Perhaps, in some unknowable way, the painting had even caused it to happen.

  Shane dashed through the storm, so blinded by the darkness that he was forced to navigate almost entirely on instinct, relying on his memories of the yard and the mouth of the path. He sensed the trees closing around him as he entered the woods.

  A flash of lightning lit the world for one bright second, revealing the footpath ahead of him, and even in his distress, Shane saw the changes. The stones that formed the path were no longer partially obscured by decades of moss and weeds. They were utterly pristine, as if they had been laid only yesterday. They shone in the brilliance of the lightning like a highway cutting through the forest. Shane ran on, his feet kicking up splashes and his breath coming in harsh bursts. Shortly he came to the first clearing, the one that overlooked the bench where it leaned amongst the overgrown hydrangeas. The bench didn’t lean, however, nor were the hydrangeas overgrown. Now, they grew in a neatly cropped arc around the back of the bench, which sat straight and clean, without a speck of rust. Shane stumbled to a stop, bewildered and disoriented.

  “Chris!” he called, cupping his hands to his mouth. There was no answer, of course, but for the steady roar of the rain and the low creak of the trees. A glimmer of light caught his eye alongside the path. He looked down and saw something reflecting dully. It was a knife. Its blade was clean, spotless; its handle polished black. Shane considered picking it up, and then decided against it. If it hadn’t worked for Marlena, it wasn’t going to work for him. He threw himself forward and ran on.

  The entire forest seemed to be subtly changed all around. At first, Shane couldn’t figure out what it was. Some trees seemed to be in slightly different places. Others seemed noticeably smaller. Even the landscape was vaguely different; steeper in some places, more level in others.

  With a sinking dread, Shane began to grasp that the woods had transformed back to what they’d been on that fateful night so many decades ago, the one during which Marlena had run this same path. With that realization, something else occurred to him: Marlena had changed the circumstances this time around, subtly but meaningfully. She had realized her fatal mistake—that of waiting at the cottage for Madeleine and Hector. Surely, she had spent years replaying that night in her mind, examining every detail, weighing every consequence. She would have realized that it had been an error to simply wait at the cottage once her husband was dead. If, instead, she had gone directly back to the Riverhouse, she might have been able to meet Madeleine there, might have been able to confront her even before she, Madeleine, had learned of her missing purse, before she had realized that her lover’s plan had been found out. If Marlena had done that, she could have saved her Hector.

  Tonight, she meant to rectify that one mistake. This time, she’d waited at the Riverhouse, waited for Christiana—the new Madeleine—to come to her. It had been Marlena’s plan all along. Not this time, she had said. If only Shane had known what she’d meant. If only he hadn’t been so distracted, so hopelessly enthralled by the story as it unfolded before him, coming out of the end of his paintbrush like a genie coming out of a lamp.

  He tried to convince himself that he’d been bewitched by the Riverhouse, and yet he knew that he had not been completely duped by it. He had allowed himself to be entranced, had willingly embraced it, almost from the beginning. He’d thought he could control it, firmly believed that he could walk right up to the cliff’s edge and look out at that awesome, awful chasm of the world’s end, and not fall off. Little had he known that someone had been sneaking up behind him the whole time, arms outstretched, waiting for him to get right up to the ledge—waiting to give him a push.

  He ran, and as he did, things moved in the woods all around. They weren’t real, and yet they didn’t appear ghostly or insubstantial. Most of the things were people. They moved throughout the wood randomly, with no reference to one another. Some laughed raucously, ran, capered amongst the trees. Others walked with their heads down, their mouths moving as if in deep conversation, their hands gesturing vaguely. All of them were dressed in the clothes of a dead era, complete with straw hats, watch chains, and even a few monocles. They drifted aimlessly through the trees, mostly far off, but some near to hand, close enough to touch. None of them seemed the slightest bit wet, and none of them noticed Shane as he ran past, his breath rasping, his eyes wild, searching.

  Some of the strange things in the woods weren’t people, however. The Model A truck sat on a rocky rise that overlooked the footpath, its engine idling roughly, looking like a brooding beast. Further on, an antique record player, a Victrola, sat on a tall table right in the middle of the path. A black funnel poked from the t
op of the player, shaped like an enormous lily. Shane slowed as he approached, sidling to get past the inexplicable machine. The record was turning quickly, so fast that Shane couldn’t read the label, but as he passed it, he could hear the music it was playing, dimly, almost like a memory. It was “the Good Ship Lollipop”, of course, sung by the irrepressibly happy Shirley Temple.

  The last thing Shane saw on the path was a tall and imposing figure, towering over the flagstones like a vengeful spirit. It was the angel statue, but somehow larger, its upraised hand now looking like a command rather than a benediction. Its face looked terrible in the shadows, full of grim purpose. Shane passed it, still running, his shoes soaked and smacking wetly. His feet slipped on the steps as they led down, around the gully, and emptied onto the grassy plain below. Shane stumbled into the clearing and almost ran head first into Christiana.

  “Chris!” he cried, reaching for her, his voice caught between a laugh and a sob.

  “Shane,” she said dazedly, looking up at him. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came looking for you!” he answered, grabbing her shoulders and holding her. “I came to find you! When I realized you’d come here…” he stopped and looked at her more closely. “Why are you still here? You left so long ago!”

  “Did I?” she replied, looking around. “Seems like it’s only been a little while. I got kind of turned around, I think.”

  “Why did you come here, Chris?” Shane asked, and then shook his head. He knew the answer already. “We have to get out of here. We have to go back.”

  “I’m trying,” Christiana said, finally seeming to rouse. “But I can’t. I’m stuck on this side. The stream…”