Point Pleasant (22 page)

“That’s just it, Nic! It called
you!
People all over town are saying they have seen it or heard it. It doesn’t normally appear to
this
many people unless something big is about to happen! What if that something happens at the Harvest Festival? You said last night you saved the mayor because it was worth dying for. What if something does happen? What if there’s some huge disaster at the festival and then
you
have to live with the knowledge that you could have prevented it?”

“Ben,
stop
.”

For a moment, Ben was transported back thirteen years to when Nicholas had uttered those same words to him in the darkness of Cardinal Lane. The sheriff’s eyes flickered with a cold anger that inspired the same sense of smallness Ben was accustomed to experiencing when he spoke to Andrew.

“Just fucking stop,” Nicholas continued. “You sound insane. Absolutely insane. And as a leading member of this community, I
cannot
—no, I
will not
be associated with this kind of talk.”

Nicholas’ inflexible carriage and pinched features stung at something deep inside of Ben. He spun around finally and rubbed a hand over his face. “You were right. You are different. You’re an entirely different person now.”

Nicholas snickered. The sound of it echoed like a sharp slap to the face in a quiet room. “And you’re still the same
little boy
caught up in a ghost story.”

Ben was certain that his features betrayed more hurt than he wanted to exhibit when he faced the sheriff, but he was too tired to mask it.

Something about Ben’s expression must have affected Nicholas because he stepped forward and stretched out a hand as if he meant to take Ben by the forearm. Ben jerked away before Nicholas could touch him.

“I’m gonna go,” he said. “I don’t belong here. Not in this house or in this town. Thanks for the beer.”

“Ben,” Nicholas started. His voice was thick with a range of emotions that Ben did not care to analyze:
anger; regret; disappointment that the person he had wanted to kiss for the last ten or so years turned out to be as fuckshit crazy as the farmers he dealt with on a regular basis.

“Don’t bother,” Ben said. “Bye, Nic.”

Ben left Nicholas in the kitchen. He headed to the front door, yanked his coat off the hook, and grabbed his bag.

Outside, a gust of cold wind bit at Ben’s cheeks as he crossed over to the square, but he did not bother pulling on his coat. The scent of the Camaro’s leather seats offered little comfort as he drove back to Cardinal Lane in a blur.

The Wisehart house was dark. When Ben found the resolve to get out of the car, he stood on the sidewalk in a numb haze. The sight of the well-kept front yard and its neatly trimmed hedges was unbearable. The yard would never again see such careful consideration as it had received from Andrew Wisehart.

Ben went inside and dropped his things by the door. He loitered in the too dark, too quiet entry hall. Even the house seemed to be in mourning.

Andrew’s office was adjacent to the kitchen; it was as immaculate and orderly as ever. His favorite armchair was in the same corner that it had occupied for as long as Ben could remember. The office was the only room in the house that boasted the stale smell of tobacco.

Ben flicked on the small light by the armchair and sank down into the seat. He ran his fingertips over the worn leather of the right arm and thought of his father in the chair a few nights before when they spoke on the phone.
You can always come home.

Ben wished he had stayed in Boston. If he had, perhaps his father would be alive. Perhaps Ben doomed him by returning.
It
had called
him
, not Andrew.

An almost empty pack of Marlboro Lights and a silver Zippo lighter were perched on the small table by the chair. He took one of the cigarettes and the lighter and put the filter between his lips. The paper crackled when he lit the end and inhaled a deep puff of smoke. Ben had never been a smoker, but, in that moment, he wanted the cigarette. He needed to feel close to his father. His throat rebelled at the sting of the burning tobacco, and he coughed before he took another drag.

The house stood as a reminder of the parts of himself he would never get back. Ben felt loss.
You’re a thirty-three-year-old orphan, Benji
. He let out a mirthless laugh. His voice echoed in the small room; it sounded hollow even to his own ears. A wedge of ash formed at the end of the cigarette. Ben flicked it over the tray on the table.

He wished that he had not spent the previous night with Nicholas. He wished that he had not gone for that drink after his release. He wished he had said no and spent the evening with his father.

Ben took the ashtray and shuffled to Andrew’s desk. A bottle of pricey whiskey was hidden away in the bottom drawer just as Ben had anticipated. He swallowed down as much of the amber liquid as he could stand in one go and dropped into the desk chair. He ashed the cigarette and inhaled a further lungful of self-destruction from the filter.

The rush of nicotine knotted Ben’s stomach and he stubbed the butt of the cigarette in the tray. Little lines of smoke wafted up as the fire died out. He wrinkled his nose at the smell and took another long gulp of whiskey.

“You always had the good stuff, Dad,” Ben said to the empty room.

He surveyed the contents of his father’s desktop and glowered at the three framed photographs that Andrew kept there. On the far left corner of the desk was a photo of Andrew with Kate at her graduation from law school. In the middle was Andrew with Caroline on their wedding day. On the far right was Andrew with Ben.

The occasion of the photograph escaped Ben for a moment. At last, he realized it was from his sixteenth birthday. It was the day Andrew had given him the Camaro. Ben leaned closer for inspection and stared down at his father’s grin.

“I was such an asshole,” he said aloud. “I should have come back sooner. And often.”

Ben’s shoulders shook as his entire body gave under the weight of the reality that he would never be able to say these words to his father. Tears he had refused to shed all afternoon darted down his face. He slumped over the desk and rested his head on the leather desk pad.

When he finally sat upright again, his neck was stiff. Ben grabbed the bottle of whiskey and took another long draught from it before he resumed his place in the armchair. He breathed in the complex scent of its old leather mixed with the hint of Andrew’s familiar cologne and the stench of stale cigarettes.

The insistent ringing of the doorbell jolted Ben into consciousness. He bolted up from the chair. His left leg tingled from where it had fallen asleep.
He
had fallen asleep. He checked the clock on the opposite wall and blinked to clear his blurry vision.

“It’s ten o’clock, asshole,” Ben called out, but he doubted he could be heard from the front of the house. He kicked his foot out a few times to clear the pins and needles before he limped to the front door.

The bell rang again, and Ben grumbled as he peered through the peephole and saw Nicholas. Ben considered telling him to fuck off, but he was in no rush to end up back in a jail cell. He opened the door and tried to appear as sober as he could manage given that his head was still swimming in whiskey.

“What?” he asked when he swung open the door. Nicholas gazed down at him, and Ben was pleased to see the other man looked miserable. “Let me guess,” Ben said as he held up a hand. “I’m under arrest again.”

There was something dark in Nicholas’ right hand, which he thrust forward. Ben recognized his suit jacket; he had forgotten the garment in his haste to leave. He grabbed it, but he was careful to not touch the other man’s hand.

“How thoughtful,” Ben said, his tone dry. “Goodbye.”

“We need to talk, and we’re not doing it in your front yard.”

“Why not?” Ben asked. “We did before. Oh, but you’re the big, bad sheriff now. Appearances are important.”

“Ben.”

“Fine. Say what you want then leave. I get it. You need to have the last word. You always needed to have the final say.”

Nicholas rolled his eyes and pushed inside. He kicked the door shut behind him. “You’re drunk.”

“I bet you fucking
aced
your detective skills test, Nolan.”

Nicholas’ sigh bubbled with deep frustration. “Fuck you, Ben.”

A slow smirk crept across Ben’s lips. “No,
you
won’t. Too bad for you. I’m a screamer.”

Nicholas strode forward to stand almost nose-to-nose with Ben, but Ben refused to flinch.

“You don’t scare me, Sheriff.”

“I’m not here to scare you.”

“Then get out of my face before we have a problem.” Ben marveled at how menacing he managed to sound.
Look at you, Benji
.
Drunk as fuck and no shits given.

Nicholas clenched his jaw, but he retreated. “I don’t want to have this conversation while you’re drunk.”

“Then go home. I’m going to. Send me a postcard, tell me all about it then.”

“You’re leaving?” Nicholas asked, flaring with disbelief. “You’re fucking leaving
again?
”

“You know what? That’s none of your goddamn business.”

Nicholas moved forward once more, but Ben shot a warning glare, and the sheriff stilled.

“Ben, you can’t go,” Nicholas said. He sounded like a diligent believer in Santa Claus who had just been told that there was no such person.

“Can you leave now?” Ben asked as he rubbed a hand over his forehead.

Defeat radiated from the sheriff’s countenance. He did not attempt to mask the vulnerability. “You’re right, okay?”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re right,” Nicholas repeated. “There’s something fucked up here, and we bury our heads in the sand because it’s the only way you can live in a town like
this
with something like
that
.”

Ben shifted uneasily as he registered the distress in Nicholas’ voice.

“It was decided a long time ago, long before I even became an officer, that the
situation
was something that needed to be controlled and contained. Any sightings would be recorded for posterity but never investigated. Comments would not be made to the paper. The
situation
is always to be handled with grace and dignity. Basically, it doesn’t happen.”

“The truth is flapping its wings down River Bend Road, Scully,” Ben whispered, his voice hushed with a note of conspiracy as he slumped against the wall behind him.

“Ben, this is beyond me,” Nicholas said, scrubbing a hand through his hair. Little tufts of it stuck out at odd angles when he dropped his fist. “This goes straight up to the mayor and the Town Council. I
know
it exists. Do you think I would forget? I can’t forget. I could never forget that night.”

He moved into the dark living room and started to pace. Ben stayed in the hall as Nicholas strode from the Eames to the fireplace and back again.

“But I can’t talk about it. I can’t even acknowledge it, or it would be my head on the guillotine. I’d lose my job. I wouldn’t be able to find another, Silas would see to that. I’d have to move, and I don’t want that. This is
my
town. This is my
home.
I love the people here. If I lived and died here, I’d be happy. I know you don’t get that, you’ve gone from here to there without a care, but I’m not like
you
. Point Pleasant is where I belong.”

“I’m getting real tired of people telling me I don’t belong here anymore,” Ben started. “First Dad, then Lizzie, now you. Everyone looks at me like I’m an alien from the planet
He-Should-Go-Fuck-Himself.
How
nice
for you all to belong here. How
nice
for you to actually
know
where you belong. Where you fit, and slot in, and can always come back to.
How fucking nice.
Don’t
you
dare presume to know what I do and do not care about.”

Ben remained in the doorway and scowled at his old friend. He felt like the old watermark on his parents’ coffee table: a lingering stain that marred the surface of an otherwise beautiful piece of furniture.

“And you know what else?
Bullshit
, Nic. Fucking
bullshit
. If you love this town and the people so much, you’d do something to protect them regardless of what happened to your job. This thing pops up and history shows that people die. People fucking
die,
Nic. And you want to pretend nothing is out there for the sake of happy townspeople who don’t know up from down?”

“No one ever made that connection before,” Nicholas said. He eyed the wall on the other side of the room as if something about its pale green tone had captivated him. “I went to the station after you left. I went through all the files we have on the sightings. And you were right. Every one of the witnesses experienced some kind of personal tragedy within days of their encounter. Donna Everton drowned in the river, Ray Johnson drove his truck into a tree, died on impact, and Mason Ingles fell off the roof of his house and broke his neck.”

Ben arched an eyebrow at the familiar names.

Nicholas cast his chin down at the rug beneath his feet. “I didn’t know. I didn’t realize.”

“Well, now you do,” Ben sighed. “So what are you gonna do about it?”

“I have no idea.”

“That was my reaction,” Ben said. “Then I went to Tucker.”

“Bill? Why?”

“Because he’s the
only
one I knew who’d believe me.”

Nicholas ran a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry, Ben. My hands are tied.”

“Who the fuck are you?” Ben demanded, huffing out a sound made of equal parts frustration and disgust. “What happened to the kid that threw rocks at this thing? Is he still in there somewhere? Because he’d know this is all bullshit. It’s the illusion of safety, harnessed and wielded by some mediocre men in positions of power they have no business with! It’s not
real
, Nic. It’s a fucking construct. The people in this town are
real
. The husbands and wives. The brothers and sisters. The shop keepers and the soccer moms. The
kids
at the elementary school
.
All of them, and they’re going to be at the festival. And you’re just gonna stand back and watch something happen to them because your ‘hands are tied?’”