The Riverhouse Read online

  Shane looked down at his work. A moment later he stood up, listening to the pop of his knees as they straightened, and tossed the stick aside. The sketch looked right. More important, it felt right. It felt the way the insistent image in his mind had felt. A long time ago, when the house was new, this was what it had probably looked like. Shane glanced up at the wreckage, and then down again at the drawing in the dirt. If his sketch was right, it had indeed been a rather inviting house at one time. He sighed and dusted his hands off on his shorts.

  As he walked back to his bicycle, Shane realized he felt good. Damn good, in fact; better than he had in months, maybe even since the day he’d won the bad luck lottery and lost both his job and his wife in the same three hour period. He tried to remember the last time he had created art for himself, and couldn’t. When he’d been a kid, he’d drawn for fun all the time, but not as an adult. Now, art was just work.

  He straddled his bike and looked back at the decimated ruin of the old house, smiling with bemusement. Was it possible that the foreman in his head had had nothing to do with the spontaneous house sketch? Was it possible, in fact, that that sketch had come directly from the fabled artist’s muse, whose inspirations Shane had spurned all these many years? Had she been the one responsible for that sudden persistent urge, like an itch in the center of his brain, an itch only satisfied by bringing the picture in his head to life? It had been a long, long time since she’d deigned to visit him. He’d forgotten how good it felt. The muse might be a capricious and fickle lover, but when she was good, she was very good. Shane could imagine how easy it’d be to become her slave, like the starving artists he’d seen so often back at Tristan and Crane. That wouldn’t happen to him, of course. He knew how to go to the well of creativity all by himself, using his rope and bucket to dip out what he needed, whenever he needed it. But it was nice to know that the muse didn’t hold that against him. It was nice to know that she could still show up from time to time, even if it only meant a rough sketch in the dirt, drawn with a sharp stick.

  Unlike making art according to the foreman in his mind, making art dictated by the muse had a sort of euphoric buzz associated with it. It created its own sort of endorphins, no less potent than those celebrated by Steph’s old tee shirt. And now that he’d gotten reacquainted with the muse, maybe—just maybe—she’d come back. As he pedaled on again, pushing into the heat of the autumn afternoon, feeling that strange, contented euphoria of creation, he thought that might not be such a bad thing at all.

  In fact, maybe that was exactly what he needed.

  Chapter Two

  That night, Shane fell asleep in front of the television, lying on the couch in the cottage’s little sunroom.

  The sunroom was a relatively recent addition, attached to the back of the cottage next to the patio with its ancient brick barbecue. Windows on three sides provided a stunning view of the river bluff during the day, but became blank black faces when darkness fell, hiding the cottage’s surroundings. Shane always pulled the blinds at night so he didn’t feel like he was in a fishbowl.

  He’d been watching an old movie on AMC, something with Cary Grant in it. He liked old movies, but they tended to lull him to sleep. There was just something about the black and white images, and the ponderous stroll of the dialogue, at least compared to modern movies. He had been particularly susceptible tonight, however, being weary from his bike ride.

  After the strange dirt sketch at the site of the old manor house, Shane had seemed to be nearly bursting with energy, and had not only ridden all the way to the floodwall gates of Bastion Falls, but had walked his bike up the grassy slope of the floodwall, onto the gravel maintenance path that ran around the top, and continued on, circling the entire town.

  When he’d finally gotten back home his legs had felt rubbery and he was so hungry that his hands had been shaking when he’d unlocked the front door. It was a good feeling, overall. It had been awhile since he’d been physically exhausted and ravenously hungry. He’d made himself a hamburger, frying it up in an iron skillet on the stovetop and sticking it between two pieces of toasted bread, slathered with mustard, just like his grandmother used to do for him when he was growing up. He had eaten it sitting on the patio, on one of the old teak deck chairs, looking down at the river and its marching, flotsam-filled current.

  Just as Shane was finishing his dinner, Tom had come padding around the corner of the house, tail sticking straight up, his nose twitching. He’d purred and twined around Shane’s feet, and Shane had tossed him the last bit of hamburger. Tom darted to where it landed, sniffed it to make sure it was, indeed, the source of that intriguing greasy aroma, and bolted it down in one bite. When Shane went back inside, he’d held the door open for a moment.

  “You wanna come in tonight?” he’d asked the big gray cat. “It’s just you and me from now on, Tom ol’ boy. Just us guys. Whaddaya say?”

  Tom had glanced at the open door, then up at Shane, and then dismissed them both. He’d sat down on the corner of the patio and began to lick his flank, washing himself. “Fine, be that way,” Shane had said, entering and letting the screen door clap shut behind him.

  He awoke on the couch during a late night commercial. Some guy in a denim shirt and a beard that looked like it had been drawn on with a Sharpie pen was yelling about his amazing new cleaning product. He had a bowl of water and was apparently washing something by hand in it, grinning up at the camera and blathering at the top of his lungs. Shane fumbled for the remote and thumbed the power button, making the guy disappear. His mama never taught him how to use his indoor voice, he thought sourly.

  He hated falling asleep on the couch. Whenever he woke up, he always felt surreal and half-drunk, and it was always hard to get back to sleep again once he made it to his bed. He swung upright on the couch and dropped his feet to the floor, groaning, and then froze, suddenly alert, as something clanked in the kitchen.

  He listened, waiting, staring through the sunroom door. There were no lights on in the rest of the cottage since he’d retired to the sunroom for the evening while it was still twilight outside. Now, the other rooms had descended into near total darkness. The sunroom lamp cast a bar of light across the wooden floor of the adjoining room, a tiny room that Steph had always called the library, since it held a book shelf, two chairs and not much else. As Shane’s eyes adjusted, he could see a very dim greenish glow emanating from the nearby kitchen, cast by the digital clock on the microwave. Nothing moved.

  Could it have been Tom? Could he have gotten in? It hadn’t been a loud noise, but it definitely hadn’t been his imagination. It had been a sort of clank or knock, like a cup being put down on the counter, or a plate in the sink being disturbed by a curious, scavenging mouse. Certainly that’s all it had been. The cottage was old, after all, and rife with mice and spiders, bats in the attic and even the occasional snake under the basement stairs.

  And yet, for some reason, Shane didn’t want to walk through the kitchen. It was irrational, and he knew it, but that didn’t make the feeling go away. In the wake of the television’s constant noise, the silence felt huge and thick. It didn’t feel like the silence of emptiness. It felt like the silence of something being very, very quiet.

  Shane was beginning to freak himself out. This was his cottage, damn it. He’d slept here dozens of times. There was nothing here that he hadn’t put here, and there was nobody here but him, period. And that was probably the real source of his discomfort, now that he thought about it; apart from last night, every other time he’d stayed here he had been with Stephanie. And that’s the first thing you thought when you heard that little knock in the kitchen, wasn’t it? a little voice in Shane’s head said. It sounded a bit like Dr. Taylor. You thought it was Steph, come out to make herself a cup of tea because she couldn’t sleep. And then you remembered: Steph isn’t here anymore, and she’ll never be here again. Steph is gone. Your marriage is dead. Dead as the manor house a quarter mile down the trail.

  Shane si
ghed and got up. Maybe that’s all it was. Surprisingly, what he felt was relief. The idea of his marriage being dead was a downer, for sure, but it was better than the second thing he’d thought when he’d heard that strange noise in the kitchen, when he’d remembered that he was, in fact, entirely alone in the house. That thought had been a lot worse, even if it had been entirely irrational.

  Shane reached to click off the floor lamp next to the couch. It snapped off and darkness flooded the room, pouring in from the rest of the house. And something—some thing that had apparently been standing in the darkness right outside the sunroom door, invisible in the shadows—hissed. The sound came from right outside the entry; long, diminishing, and strangely human, like a deep sigh, or a final exhale, expelled in one weak, sustained gust, rattling as the weight of the chest lowered, collapsing for the last time.

  Shane’s hair immediately stood on end and in the darkness his eyes shot wide open, straining. A dozen thoughts clambered into his head, all shouting possible explanations—Tom the cat, a leaking pipe, a gust of wind through a cracked window—but none of them worked, none of them fit, because there was no mistaking that sound. It was a human sound, but not a healthy sound. It sounded sick, deathly, pathetic, and that made it all the worse.

  Shane’s fingers were still on the switch of the lamp, but they were suddenly shaking so much that he couldn’t grip the tiny burled knob. He grasped and fumbled at it, his breath stuck in his chest, going stale.

  Shane had a vivid artist’s imagination, and he could all too clearly imagine the source of that awful, poison breath. He envisioned it moving—no, floating—across the floor of the sunroom, invisible in the darkness, reaching toward him with horrible long arms and fingers hooked into talons. He imagined the sort of mouth that could make such a sound; huge and gaping, dry, stricken into a grimace that could almost look like a grin of rapture, bearing down on him.

  And then, finally, Shane’s fingers grasped the floor lamp’s switch and he spun it. He turned it too hard, and the lamp clicked on and off instantly, like a bolt of lightning. He turned it again, barking a little yelp of fear, and light flooded the room.

  There was nothing there.

  Shane gasped a breath and looked around, eyes wide and heart pounding. He caught a glimpse of his own reflection, on the glass of the one uncovered window, the one that overlooked the patio. He looked pale and slightly insane, hunched in a sort of alert crouch, his right hand still buried under the shade of the floor lamp. The room was empty. He peered out, through the doorway that led into the library. It was dim there, but not completely dark. He could see the shapes of the room; the bookcase and one of the chairs, the little round table with the cordless phone on it, its power light glowing green. There was nothing there. There was no one in the house but him. That’s how it had been all night, of course, because he lived alone now.

  But what had made that awful sound?

  Shane drew a breath, and then, horrified that he was even giving voice to such a thing, he called out, tremulously, “Smithy? Is that you?”

  There was no answer, of course. In truth, Shane was quite certain that, whatever it had been, it hadn’t been Smithy. Probably there was no such thing as Smithy. It was just the personality that Shane and Steph had assigned to the house’s erratic idiosyncrasies. Probably. Smithy might be mischievous, but he’d never been scary. But there was something else. Whatever had made that horrible, ghastly sound had not been… what? What was the thing? Shane couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

  His heartbeat was returning slowly to normal. The house no longer felt watchful. It just felt empty. He left the light on in the sunroom and approached the doorway leading into the library. Nothing happened. Slowly, hating himself for being so squeamish, Shane reached around the doorway, found the wall switch for the overhead light, and clicked it on. Brightness flooded the room, chasing every shadow into the corners. The light not only made Shane’s previous fright seem a little silly, it made everything in the room feel strangely dull and lifeless, from the bookshelf to the oval rug in the middle of the floor. There were no lurking, gasping ghosts there, that was for sure. Whatever had made that noise, it was gone now.

  Was it possible that maybe it had been Tom the cat after all? Shane knew that cats could make eerily human noises, sometimes when they were in pain, sometimes when they were in heat. Maybe Tom was just outside, getting it on with some lady friend beneath the library window. Was the window cracked enough to let in such a noise? Shane looked, and sure enough it was, propped open with one of the books from the bookshelf, something called “the Diary of Mary Todd”. One of Steph’s old books, apparently.

  Shane drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, shakily, feeling some sense of relief. A small part of his mind insisted that that sound had been no cat, no way no how, but the rest of his mind shouted it down, like the lone peace protester at a war rally. Still, as Shane made his way through the kitchen, stripping off his shirt and running a hand through his hair, he left the library light on. He’d turn it off in the morning, but for now there was just something comforting about its harsh, banal glow. Nothing wrong with that.

  He got to his bedroom, stood at the foot of his bed, bare-chested and disheveled, heart still thumping dully from his strange experience in the sunroom, and realized something odd: he no longer felt sleepy. In fact, he felt a sneaking, unexpected energy. Something nagged at him, like a name he had recently forgotten, or a post-hypnotic suggestion.

  As he stood there, his shirt dangling from his fist, two things occurred to him simultaneously. The first was what it had been about the sound of that awful sigh, what had convinced him that it couldn’t be Smithy, even if Smithy was real: something in that horrible breath had been distinctly female. Strange that he should be able to recognize that, even in the midst of his shock, but he had. Smithy was a guy’s name, and if there was such an entity as Smithy, he was a male. Shane couldn’t know this anymore than he could know that that awful sigh had come from the throat of something female, but he went ahead and knew it anyway. Some things you just didn’t question.

  And the second thing that occurred to him as he stood there in the dimness of his bedroom, staring down at his bed, was that he wanted to paint. For the first time in decades, he wanted to paint at night; not to put in his shift and get the work done, but just for the sheer, unadulterated hell of it. He’d had a refresher taste of creating at the whim of the muse earlier in the day, in the dirt in front of the destroyed manor house, and he’d liked it. Maybe he could duplicate that experience now, tonight, just until he got sleepy again.

  He was turning away from his bed, leaving the bedroom even as he thought these things. He trotted up the stairs to the little studio, taking them two at a time. He didn’t know what he was going to paint, only that he wasn’t going to work on the matte painting that was still sitting unfinished on his easel. That was shift work. Tonight, he was just going to paint for himself, just for the thrill of creating.

  And who was he kidding? He knew exactly what he was going to paint. He’d already made the sketch. It was in the dirt a quarter mile away, but he could remember it very well.

  He could remember it perfectly.

  The next morning, Shane awoke at his normal time, just as the sun was coming up.

  He was a little surprised by this, considering how late he’d been up the night before, and how tired he’d felt when he’d finally fallen into bed. Apparently, the body’s long habits overruled temporary breaks in the routine.

  He threw off the covers and padded to the shower, not even feeling particularly groggy, like he had the morning before. That had been the morning after he’d moved into the cottage, the morning after he had “celebrated” the move with almost an entire six pack of St. Pauli Girl beer, in the dark all by himself on the back patio. Shane had never been a heavy drinker, and when he did drink, he always felt it the next morning. Apparently, however, staying up to paint had the opposite effect. Not only did he feel alert an
d chipper, he felt positively energetic.

  Maybe today he’d finally finish the matte painting. The moment he did, he’d take it off the big easel, prop it in the corner to dry—his symbolic gesture of fini—and head downstairs to call his new agent, a guy named Morrie Greenfeld who worked in a high rise office in downtown St. Louis. That would feel good. It would prove to both himself and Greenfeld that he was, indeed, a can-do artist, one who met the deadline, and with quality work.

  Shane had been a little worried about that as of late, and he hated to think that Greenfeld might have shared his worries. The matte painting was the first gig Greenfeld had arranged for Shane, even if it had been Shane’s portfolio and pencil sketch that had sealed the deal. Shane knew how these things worked. If he couldn’t produce the art and impress the client his first time out, Greenfeld wouldn’t take the time to tell him to get his butt in gear. Shane would simply not hear from him again. Sure there were other agents looking for artists—this was St. Louis, after all, not Manhattan—but when word got out that an artist was hard to work with, it was a hard reputation to live down. If Shane didn’t get this matte painting done quickly, and if the result didn’t amaze the client, his shift would probably become eerily, depressingly easy.

  Thus, Shane looked very forward to finishing this contract during today’s shift. The way he felt as he poured his coffee from the percolator and tramped up the stairs, he thought he just might do it, too. The foreman in his head was raring to go; he was back on track, blueprint in one hand, schedule in the other, and ready to make it happen.

  In the studio, Shane raised the blinds on the single window, turned around and stopped for a moment. He saw last night’s work, lit in the rays of the morning sun, and realized that if he did finish the matte painting today, calling Morrie Greenfeld would not be the second thing he’d do after taking the painting off its easel. Rather, the second thing he’d do would be to move last night’s new painting from where it currently sat, on the old easel in the corner, to the main easel under the M. C. Escher quote.