The Fisherman

The narrative remains in the past as Howard relates Lottie’s story. Most of the events of Lottie’s story take place in the Esopus River Valley, which is dammed and flooded in the early 20th century to create the Ashokan Reservoir and provide much-needed drinking water for the burgeoning metropolis of New York City. In order to ensure the potability of the reservoir’s water, about 11 towns are evacuated, and every tree and plant uprooted, along with every trace of human habitation except for stone and brick.

Lottie’s narrative shifts further into the past to state that in the 1840s, the Esopus valley is a thriving community. Hurley Station, a settlement dating from the early 1700s, is at this time the demesne of the wealthy Cornelius Dort, a descendant of one of the Station’s founders. Cornelius, a “shrewd businessman” whose cold, despotic personality make him widely disliked, suffers a personal tragedy when his much-younger wife, Beatrice, falls off her horse, miscarries, and languishes in a near-death state.

One day, as the neighbors watch in wonder, a stranger arrives at the Station and strides boldly up to Cornelius’s door. Short, shabby, and boyish-looking, with a black stringy beard, he has the look of a mountebank, especially given that the wheels of his carriage bear odd designs like hieroglyphics. To the surprise of many, Cornelius welcomes the stranger into his home, perhaps (the neighbors think) so the man can  work some miracle cure on his wife. However, Beatrice dies a few days later, and “the Guest” stays on. As the months pass, the two men can be seen strolling near the local spring, the Guest carrying a loop of string and expounding on something as Cornelius hangs on his every word. One of these words is “Leviathan,” the great beast mentioned in the Bible. Around this time, Cornelius begins sending mysterious hides to the local tanners, along with very specific instructions on how to cure them. These hides, the tanners whisper, are like “the skins of devils from hell.” (59)

Howard description of Lottie’s narrative continues. These strange events and others fuel rumors of diabolical doings at the Station. Locals claim that the number of storms has greatly increased, and children report seeing grotesque things at the local spring. During a thunderstorm, flashes of lightning illuminate the figure of Cornelius Dort walking side-by-side with a strange woman in a long black veil. After a colossal lightning storm in 1849 that seems to direct most of its fury at the Dort House, Cornelius’s Guest gradually withdraws from public sight. By the time of the Civil War, the local tanning and whaling industries have dried up, but Cornelius Dort has only gotten richer through his investments in munitions. When he turns 100, he is still as cantankerous and secretive as ever, but there have been no sightings of the Guest for many years.

When plans are finalized for the damming of the Esopus to turn the valley into a reservoir for New York City, thousands of immigrants flood in to help with the massive construction project. Among them are the Schmidt family: Lottie, her parents Rainer and Clara, and her two younger sisters, Gretchen and Christina. Rainer, a former professor of philology (the study of languages) at Germany’s University of Heidelburg, knows over half a dozen languages; in Europe, he was one of the leaders in his field. As for why the family was forced to leave Germany, Lottie thinks it has something to do with a book her father was studying, which led to a huge scandal and to the whole family being publicly shunned. Unable to support themselves, the family immigrated to the United States, where Clara’s sister ran a bakery in the Bronx. Finally, Rainer snagged a job as a stone mason at the reservoir project by lying about his qualifications. Now, the whole family has moved into the sprawling work camp in the Esopus valley not far from Wiltwyck, where Rainer struggles to learn his new tasks and Lottie and her mother find work in the camp’s bakery. Their neighbors and fellow workers at the camp are a mix of nationalities and speak a range of languages that Rainer knows (Italian, Russian, Swedish, Hungarian, and more).

In the fall of 1907, Cornelius Dort finally dies, and his wealth and property are immediately claimed by the Guest, who emerges from his long seclusion with a certified will that leaves everything to him. Some of the oldest villagers assert that the Guest, whose stringy beard is still black, hasn’t aged in 60 years. After coming into ownership of the property, he spends much of his time at the spring and on the banks of the Esopus, lowering chains and ropes into the water as if taking measurements. People also spot him wandering the valley at night with the mysterious woman in the black veil, or with a white-haired stranger who eerily resembles the late Cornelius Dort.

At a rough-and-tumble construction site like the reservoir project, fatalities are common, and one day, Helen, a Hungarian neighbor of the Schmidts, dies after stepping into the path of a mule-cart race. All accounts indicate that it was a deliberate act of despair by a friendless woman who was devastated by her husband’s infidelities. For the day and a half it takes for her to die, her husband, George, weeps violently, never leaving her side.

One night about a week later, the deceased Helen’s daughter, Maria, shows up at the Schmidt’s door with her younger siblings in tow. None of them have seen their father all day, and they are getting worried. Clara lets them spend the night and tries to reassure them. Then, in the wee hours, George, the father, comes to the Schmidts’ home for his children. Wearing a grimace on his face, as if he has committed a “terrible act” but is in denial about it, he tells Rainer that there has been a “miracle.”

Rainer sends the children home with their father, but soon afterward, a series of hysterical screams shock him and the other neighbors out of their sleep. Forcing their way into George’s house, they find him on his knees as if abjectly apologizing, his children sobbing around him. Perched on a chair in the center of the room is Helen, his dead wife. As George babbles on about a “miracle,” Helen raises her head, showing Rainer her eyes, which are “entirely gold, with tiny black pupils dotting their centers” (75). As the other neighbors flee in panic, Rainer and his friend, Italo, question George roughly about this “bad business,” and he finally tells them that “the man in the big house […] understands what it is to lose” (75-76). He claims that this man knows that people shouldn’t be punished for things they didn’t mean to happen. All that the man asks, George says, is for people to “drink” from his cup and add their strength to his. George adds that this man is a “fisherman,” then begins to laugh uncontrollably.

Around noon that day, Helen’s mangled body staggers over to Italo’s house, where Italo’s wife, Regina, has been sheltering Helen and George’s children. Regina confronts Helen at the front door and is unnerved by her “liquidy” speech, which sounds like an “animal” trying to master human language. Refusing to leave without her children, Helen reaches through the door and tries to catch Regina by the hair, wielding superhuman strength. Regina’s children and Helen’s children try to help shut the door. Some of them claw at Helen’s arm, and black blood dribbles onto the floor. Then Helen whispers something to Regina, who turns deathly pale. After waiting a moment, as if savoring her words’ effect, Helen turns and shuffles back home. Later, when Italo hears about Helen’s visit, he wants to go straight to her house and “put her back in the ground” (81), but he changes his mind in terror and disbelief when Regina tells him what Helen whispered. They decide to consult their German neighbor, Rainer, who is knowledgeable and wise. Italo tells Rainer what happened but refuses to say what Helen whispered, only that it is “a truth there’s no way she could have learned.” (83) Arguing that this woman is not Helen or even human, but a “devil,” Italo insists that they kill her. Though Rainer has always been the family “skeptic,” he finds himself agreeing that this version of “Helen” is demon and that something must be done.

That evening, more screams from Helen’s house bring Rainer and the neighbors running, but this time George is there all alone, in the throes of a wild fit. None of the men can restrain him, and his frenzied shouts are a “hodgepodge” of many languages: English, German, Italian, French, Spanish, and others. As his screaming subsides, he vomits an endless geyser of “brackish water” that covers the floor with tadpoles, each one with a “single bulbous blue eye.” (86) Horrified, the men stomp on the tadpoles in a frenzy, after which they find that George has died.

Back at home, Rainer tells his family that he believes the one behind all of this, the man in the “big house,” is “ein Schwartzkunstler”: a “black artist,” or sorcerer. When Clara tells Rainer that it falls to him, with his knowledge of the occult, to do something about it, Rainer says that he doubts “Wilhelm” would agree. Before now, Lottie had only heard the name Wilhelm whispered between her parents; now, the two of them argue aloud about whether Wilhelm (and Rainer himself) “understood” what they were doing. Sheepishly, Rainer admits that he has been looking through “the books” for an answer, but that they’re written in “code” and are therefore hard to read. Seeing that Lottie is deeply disturbed by their superstitious talk, they try to console her by explaining that these recent uncanny events represent only a slight “complication” of the rational world she knows. Clara tells her daughter that the “foolish man” George began something monstrous that will only get worse unless they stop it.

An undertaker in Woodstock sends his assistant, a young man named Miller Jeffries, to the camp to collect George’s body. Helen appears in the street as if out of thin air and whispers something to him. Immediately, Jeffries drives back to Woodstock, kills his employer with a shotgun, and returns to the camp, where he murders his girlfriend, a nurse. Before turning the gun on himself, he says, “She told me everything” (95). Most who hear this story assume that Jeffries’ last words referred to a confession of infidelity from his girlfriend, but Rainer and his family know that he meant Helen, whose demonic menace poses an ever-greater threat to the community.

This is confirmed later that night when Helen’s broken body shambles over to Italo’s house in another attempt to reclaim her children. Seeing her approach, Italo barricades the door with furniture, but this time Helen goes to the back of the house, where the children are huddling. She pulls a loose board out of the wall and snakes her arm through. Seizing Giovanni, one of Italo’s sons, by the hair, she flings him to the floor, where he lies motionless. Italo and Regina bash away at the grasping arm, showering the floor with more black blood. Finally, Helen withdraws. As Regina tends to Giovanni’s injuries, Italo follows Helen’s muddy footprints into the street, where her trail mysteriously vanishes.

The next day, Rainer suggests to Italo that Helen has been stalking her children in order to “regain the life she cast away” (98). He adds that he has some books that may help, but soon afterward, his daughter, Gretchen, runs up to tell him that Lottie has had an encounter with the “dead woman” and now won’t wake up.