The Riverhouse by G. Norman Lippert
Unfortunately, none of that was true. Wilhelm was still seeing Madeleine. Only this time, he was doing it much more secretly. The bastard could be as cunning as the devil himself when he really wanted to be.
It turned out he’d made up a system. Most days, he never saw Madeleine at all. He’d be outside, overseeing me and the grounds crew most mornings, then he’d be up here at the cottage by mid-afternoon. There was no telephone between the house and cottage, not then, and there was no way to communicate between the two. But that didn’t stop him, of course, not when he was in the mind for dickens. That’s when he came up with his little system.
You see, the cottage here is on the highest point of the bluff, and when Wilhelm looked out the little round window on the east of the studio, the one that looked down toward the Riverhouse, he could see the peak of the main roof coming up just over the trees. It was at an angle to him, and there was another window, almost exactly the same size and shape as his own, built into the top of the Riverhouse, right over the porch. He could see that window from his own window up there in the studio. And someone standing inside that other window, down at the Riverhouse, if they leaned to the side and looked just right, they could see his window up atop the bluff.
Wilhelm’s system was very simple. He’d told Madeleine to check that window every night, before she left. The window was in the attic of the Riverhouse, but there was no problem getting up there. The attic was probably the biggest room in the whole house, full of trunks and crates and endless bits and pieces that the Missus had bought on her trips and never yet found a place for. You got up to it by an angled stair at the back of the house, over the kitchen. Madeleine checked every day, peering out that window in the attic just like Wilhelm had told her to. And when he was in the mood for some shenanigans, he had a very simple sign he’d give her. He’d light a plain white candle and set it in the window on his side. If Madeleine saw it, instead of walking back home to town that night, she’d go up the other way. She’d steal up the trail to the cottage and meet him.
“If Wilhelm had been content with that, things might have ended differently. He might have kept his little secret until he got bored with it, until he sent Madeleine away and found somebody else to amuse him, but he was getting older and flighty by then. No one knows for sure what he was really thinking when he decided to run away with Madeleine. Maybe it was true that she really was the mother of his son, Hector. Maybe what Marlena had thought was true for her—that giving Wilhelm the son he’d wanted had secured his love for her—maybe that was true in reverse. Maybe Madeleine really had been the boy’s mother, and that had made Wilhelm fall in love with her. Maybe it broke his heart to see her acting as the nanny to the boy that really was her own flesh and blood.
Then again, maybe Wilhelm had other reasons entirely. Maybe he’d finally gotten tired of the charade, of the fame and success. Some people—most people probably—just aren’t wired to know how to handle that kind of thing. It spoils them from the inside out, takes all the flavor out of life. Hardly anyone believes that, of course, but I’ve seen it up close and personal. I remember it all. The parties and the drinking, all covering over the sadness and desperation. I remember Clearwater bawling on my shoulder like a baby, handing me a gold watch, begging me to take it, like it was a terrible burden, or some kind of mummy’s curse. I’ve seen what success and fame does to people. Maybe Wilhelm was smarter than any of us gave him credit for. Maybe he wanted a chance to taste life for real, outside of the gilded cage he’d built for himself. Wouldn’t surprise me one little bit.
Either way, it happened on May eighth of that year, the day before the first major flood came to the Riverhouse, lapping right up over the patio steps and filling the cellar four feet deep. Took me and my men two weeks to clean it up afterwards, but we didn’t say a word about it. Wilhelm was gone by then, and we figured we would be, too, soon enough. We were glad for whatever work the job still had to offer, slick and muddy and disgusting as it was. It was hard to feel sorry for ourselves, not when we were in the same house as poor Marlena.
“He’d left her a note. I only know that because the housekeeper, a woman we all called Mrs. Wren, told us about it. She’d seen the Missus reading it on the night Wilhelm left. She’d been standing there in the parlor, still as a stone and white as a sheet, reading that note, and Mrs. Wren said you could almost hear the poor woman’s heart breaking. The note revealed everything: Wilhelm’s continuing affair with Madeleine, the white candles in the window, and his plan to leave her forever, to leave her there, along with the Riverhouse and the cottage and everything in them. He was leaving her everything.
“But Wilhelm did take one thing with him. Besides Madeleine, he took the one thing that mattered most to him in the whole world. He took Hector, his son.
“Mrs. Wren told me that Marlena stood and stared at that note for two minutes straight, right there in front of the fireplace with the rain pouring down outside the tall windows. And then, all of a sudden, she let out something like a low scream—a sort of deep, gut-wrenching yowl, and she started toward the house’s front door. She still had the letter in her hand, and by the time she got to the door, she was nearly running. She yanked that door open so hard it hit the wall and left a mark in the plaster, a deep dent in the shape of the door knob. She ran out into the rain, still picking up speed, her feet splashing in the grass as she rounded the house, heading toward the back.
I knew where she was heading even if Mrs. Wren didn’t. Marlena was heading for the trail, meaning to run all the way up the trail to the cottage. I don’t think she could stop herself. I think she meant to find them if she could. Some part of her just got stuck on that tiny hope—that desperate hope that they had stopped up at the cottage for some reason, and were still there, Wilhelm and Madeleine and Hector. Maybe she thought that if she caught up to them, she could talk some sense into him. Maybe she thought she’d be able to say just the right word to change it all.
“I don’t know if she made it all the way there that night, what with the rain and the mud and the rising floodwaters, but some part of me always kind of believed she did. I think she made it all the way up to this cottage, probably panting fit to fall over, wet to the skin, covered with mud and dead leaves. I think she made it inside, all the way up to the studio, her face probably covered with her own tears by then, though nobody’d be able to tell, wet as she was with all that rainwater. I always expected that she found the place empty and dark, except for thing. I knew Wilhelm, after all. I know what kind of man he was. I think she found that white candle still a-burning on the windowsill. He’d probably had it lit for Madeleine, lit it for her to follow as she carried little Hector there to meet him. And after she’d gotten there, he’d just chosen not to put it out. What did he care?
“And as crazy as this sounds—after all, I’d have no way of knowing this, no way at all—I don’t think Marlena put that candle out either. I’ve seen her that way in my dreams sometimes. Truth is, part of me loved that poor woman. Not like she loved Wilhelm, mind you, and not more than I loved my own wife, but I loved her anyway, with a sort of pitiful, sad love. Because she didn’t deserve none of what she got dealt. She may have gotten a little unhinged in the years afterward, and a lot of people may have made fun of her about that, but none of them knew her like I did. None of them saw what she’d gone through, and the loss she’d felt.
“In my dreams I used to see her standing there in front of that little round window, her face lit in the glow of that damned white candle. I’d see her looking out, thinking in her addled, fevered brain that maybe, just maybe, that candle was magic. Maybe if she kept it burning, it’d bring them all back to her. She’d of known it was crazy, but that wouldn’t have mattered, not one little bit. By then, crazy was about all she had left to hold onto. Maybe that candle would bring them back to her, just like it’d brought Madeleine and Hector to Wilhelm as he’d waited there in his studio for the last time. In my dreams, I used to see Marlena just standin
Earl finished his uncharacteristically long monologue and drew a deep sigh, as if the story had exhausted him.
His voice had grown dry and rough again as he’d progressed, so that by the time he was done it had attained that gravelly rasp that is the strict domain of very old men and lifelong smokers.
Shane shuddered as the evening wind cooled. It pushed aimlessly around the patio, rustling the leaves and singing momentarily in the back door screen. Brian had long since finished his beer, but both Shane’s and Earl’s were still a third full. Earl looked down at the bottle in his hand for a long moment, and then finally raised and emptied it expertly, his Adam’s apple clicking up and down on his stubbly neck.
In the wake of the story, Shane felt strangely detached, almost ethereal. After all, listening to Earl hadn’t been like hearing a story he’d never heard before. A lot of the details had already been familiar to him, if only vaguely. The effect of Earl’s story was similar to what someone might feel after watching half of a movie with the focus and sound out of whack, leaving the picture blurry and muffled, only to have the projectionist come back from a long bathroom break and fix the film, bringing everything into crisp, clear focus.
Shane had known a lot of the general details already, had picked them up from his paintings and his dreams, from the secret osmosis of living with the ghost of Marlena herself. Very little of Earl’s story had surprised him, not even the very end. Shane had found Hector’s rattle in the woods, under the bench, probably dropped by the boy himself as the nanny, Madeleine, had carried him along the trail on that fateful night. Maybe Madeleine had heard the rattle drop, but had been in too much of a hurry to stop for it. Or maybe it had been raining even then, drowning out the sound of the little rattle. Maybe Hector himself had been crying, upset at being carried out into the darkening woods and the cold rain. Either way, the rattle had fallen, tumbled into the flowers growing around the bench, and Marlena had probably run right past it on her way up to the cottage, had likely splashed it or even stepped on it during her hectic passage. The rattle had lain there for the intervening decades, glittering hotly throughout dozens of summers, frozen in the dark of endless snowfalls, just waiting for Shane, of all people, to come along and find it in the science fiction year of two thousand nine.
The ghost had recognized that rattle. It must have been an incredible shock for her to see it in Shane’s fist that night, held up like a tarnished talisman. It must have struck her as deep magic; that familiar silver rattle, suddenly appearing in front of her. Shane wondered how much of her ghostly forbearance of him was due to the cosmic serendipity of that night in the sunroom, the night he’d happened to have that rattle in the pocket of his sweat pants. Maybe quite a lot.
Brian was the first to speak after Earl fell silent. “So how’d old Mrs. Wren know what the letter said?”
Shane expected Earl to snap at his grandson again, but he didn’t. He was still staring down at the river below the bluff, watching as it gathered into dusk.
“She didn’t. Not for sure, at least not then. We all just sort of pieced it together for ourselves. Mrs. Wren knew about the windows and the candles, Wilhelm’s damned system. She’d seen Madeleine sneaking upstairs every evening right before she left for home, seen her peeking askance out that window, looking for something.
"I expect one of those evenings, Mrs. Wren herself stole up there and peeked, too, after Madeleine had gone. She saw that candle probably, and figured it out.
"Later, Marlena told Mrs. Wren about the letter, of course. Those two women were about the same age, and Mrs. Wren was probably the closest thing the Missus had to a friend, even though she was a townie, like the rest of us. Later, after Wilhelm had been gone long enough to prove he wasn’t ever coming back, Marlena told Mrs. Wren everything. She needed to tell someone, I expect, and Mrs. Wren was safe.
"She herself never told the whole story to anyone else except me, and that wasn’t until some years later. And I never told anyone except the two of you. Never had much of a chance to, really. Nobody ever wanted to know about Marlena and Wilhelm in the beginning. Everybody seems to have pretty much forgotten about those early years, before the poor woman started slipping her gears.
"I think that’s a big part of the reason I decided to tell you that old story, Shane Bellamy. When you first showed up at my door, I thought you were just like the rest of the muckrakers, come to dig up more stories about how the old lady went crazy, all shut up in that big house. That’s all people care about nowadays.
"Once you’d left, though, I thought about it, and it dawned on me that you didn’t know anything about all that. It occurred to me you really were just curious about the people, not the craziness, about Gus Wilhelm and Marlena herself, when the house was new and none of the ugliness had happened yet. I hope I was right about that, because if I wasn’t, I’ll feel like a damned fool.”
Shane shook his head. “No, you were right, Earl. When we first came out here, my wife and I, the real estate agent told us a few stories about how the place had been rumored to be haunted, and said that there was an interesting story about the house itself, even though it had long since been sold off and converted into duplex apartments. She didn’t tell us about any… what did you call them? Insanity stairs?”
Earl grimaced and pushed himself upright in his seat. “Probably not a surprise she left all that out. That stuff’s only interesting if you don’t live right on top of it. Your agent was probably Darcy Harrold, right? I know her from way back. She probably figured she’d have a harder time selling the place to you if you knew the real story about this property and the Riverhouse. Darcy may be a chatterbox, but she knows when to shut up when a sale is on the line, oh yes. She doesn’t have those billboards with her picture on them up on the west side of town for nothing.”
Shane stirred on the low stone wall. “You don’t have to tell me any more than you want to, Earl. You’ve told me plenty already, and I’m grateful for it. But I do have two questions if you’ll indulge me.”
Earl looked up at Shane, his bushy eyebrows low on his brow. He nodded slowly, not really promising anything.
Shane drew a breath. “What ever happened to Wilhelm? Where’d he and Madeleine end up?”
Earl chuckled weakly. “Not here, that’s all anybody really knows for sure. Some people say he wound up out west, in California. They say he’d changed his name and become some kind of art teacher out there, at U.C.L.A. or Berkeley or some such.
"There’re stories about how he became a sort of pop culture icon in the sixties, the sage old hippie with his own harem of adoring teenage girls and pothead disciples. Every few years, some yarn goes around the locals that a long lost Gus Wilhelm portrait’s showed up, found at some garage sale or flea market out west, painted long after he left our neck of the woods.
"Sometimes it’s a portrait of Madeleine and Hector, all grown up and mysterious, signed by Wilhelm with his real name, like he was blowing a raspberry at history itself. One time, a decade ago—this one was my favorite—they said it was a portrait of Elvis that showed up, found in a storage garage in San Bernardino, complete with a diary and sketches by Wilhelm himself, penned in his own hand.
"Maybe those stories are even true, who knows? Point is, nobody knows for sure where he and Madeleine and Hector ended up. The stories come and go. People like me, people who were here back in the day, we really just don’t care. Good riddance.”
Brian nodded somberly. “Good riddance to bad rubbish.”
Earl glanced at his grandson and smiled crookedly. “There’s hope for you yet, boy.” He leaned over and clapped Brian on the knee. For the first time, Shane noticed that Brian was not exactly the young man he had originally thought him to be. Despite his dead end job and ta
“All right, Mr. Shane Bellamy, we’ve talked your ear off long enough,” Earl said, leaning back slowly in the deck chair. “You said you had two questions. Go ahead and ask the last one, if you want.”
Shane considered it, and then looked the old man in the eye. “I understand why you might have hated Gus Wilhelm, Earl, after your story. I even get why there might be some bad blood between the town and the estate, considering everything, considering the rumors and scandal. But there’s one thing I don’t understand.”
Earl studied Shane’s face. Unsmiling, he said, “What’s that?”
“Why did you hate the house so much? Why were you so happy when Riverhouse got torn down?”
“I’d have thought it was obvious,” Earl said. His voice had degenerated into a deep rumble, almost a growl. Shane had a feeling that the man hadn’t spoken so much in one sitting in decades. “I hated that goddamn place because of what it did to Marlena. It was all she had left after that bastard left her, like I said, and she clung to it like it was a life buoy. She clung to it even though it was poisoning her. It started sinking its fangs into her the moment she got that note, the moment she ran up to the cottage that night and found them gone, all gone.