Point Pleasant (27 page)

“Take this. You’ll need it. It’s why you came.”

The bag contained several small bundles of herbs, each tied together with knotted twine.

“Sage,” Ben observed.

“Burn it,” Marietta instructed after she resumed her seat. “The smoke will guide your way and keep the path clear. You know about salt. Keep that close too. And iron.”

“Iron?”

“An old piece of pipe, a fireplace poker, whatever you can get your hands on. Iron burns.”

Ben pretended to understand, but his head felt like a jumbled Sudoko puzzle with all the numbers filled into the wrong boxes. Marietta considered him closely. Once again, she seemed to be listening to something only she could hear.

“You’ll get a sign,” she said. “A familiar face will return.”

“Why do I need a sign? And who the hell is supposed to return?”

Marietta was quiet as she leaned in to touch his hand. Ben’s body jolted forward with the painful, prickling shockwave that ran through him as if he had punched a wet fist into an electrical socket. “
Trust
.”

Pressurized heat swelled like the inside of a parked car on a summer afternoon. The ticking of the clock in the corner halted, and the dark walls seemed to close in as the surge of energy from Marietta to Ben threatened to consume him.

He yanked back and scrambled off the sofa, tripping over the frayed edge of a rug as he stumbled away from Marietta’s touch.

“What the
hell
was that??”

Marietta folded her hands in her lap and shifted with unease. “Don’t swear, Benjamin. That was
it
.”

Ben spun and checked all around the room as if he would somehow be able to see whatever
it
was.

“I should go,” he said suddenly, needing to make a relatively graceful exit before he ran screaming from the woman’s presence.

“Remember what I said,” Marietta chided and rose from the sofa.

Ben clutched the bag of sage in his fist and followed Marietta to the front door. “How much do I owe you, ma’am?” he asked once he had stepped over the line of salt.

Marietta shook her head. “Nothing for now. You have work to do.”

She shut the door without another word, and Ben stalked across the street to the Camaro. When he climbed inside, he studied the house for several long seconds. The curtain over the front window was pulled back enough for Ben to see that Marietta was observing him. She appeared to be talking to
someone
from the way she kept gazing to the empty space at her right side and then back out to Ben.

Ben drove to the other end of Main Street and parked in front of the diner. He closed his eyes and pressed his forehead to the steering wheel.

A sudden knock on the passenger window jerked him from his reprieve. Nicholas was bent down next to the Camaro.

“Fuck!” Ben yelled.

Nicholas blinked twice in succession, opened the door, and slid inside. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Everything.”

Nicholas closed the car door and regarded Ben with caution. “What happened?”

“I went to see Marietta Abernathy.”

The incredulous look on Nicholas’ face was almost
funny
.

“No, Nic, she’s as real as you can fucking get. She told me all this stuff, stuff she shouldn’t know. She was
talking
to someone. Someone I couldn’t see. And then she touched me and it was like…” Ben said, but he could not finish the thought.

“What did she say?” Nicholas asked, and dry skepticism edged his tone.

“Crazy talk! I don’t know what any of it means! She said I had to learn to listen but not with my ears. That
it
wants to talk, I just can’t hear it with my ears.”

Nicholas rolled his eyes. “Yeah, okay.”

“She said a familiar face will be a sign.”

“Whose face? And a sign of
what
?”

“I don’t know. T
rust
, apparently,” Ben said, and he could hear the bafflement in his own voice. “I’m supposed to trust the monster in the woods? Yeah,
no
.”

Nicholas sighed, and Ben realized that though the sheriff was in the car with him, his thoughts might as well have been at the furthest point of River Bend Road. He turned back after a moment. “Did you talk to Lewis? Or Warren?”

“Yeah, it’s been a pretty fucked up morning.”

“You have no idea.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sightings,” Nicholas said. “All over town.”

“Where?”

“At the elementary school. Again. The school bus pulled in this morning, full of kids.
It
landed on the roof of the bus and just sat there. At least twenty people saw it perched there like it was waiting for something. Then it just flew off. The kids in the bus were hiding under the seats. Had to pry some of them out when we got there. They kept covering their ears and saying it wouldn’t stop screaming at them, but the driver said he didn’t hear any screams except from the kids.”

“Jesus,” Ben murmured.

“Then I got a call from the mayor’s office,” Nicholas continued. “Silas is frantic. Said he was signing papers at his desk and glanced out the window.
It
was there. His office is on the third floor of Town Hall, Ben. It was just hovering outside his window as if it was waiting to be noticed. Silas said it just stayed there and watched him. Said he couldn’t look away like he was hypnotized. Then it disappeared.”

“Guess maybe he’ll change his tune about the whole cover-up bullshit,” Ben said after a moment.

“I’m not sure,” Nicholas replied, and his face was pinched tight with a pensive frown. “We’ve been getting calls all morning from people saying they saw it in their backyards. Town meeting’s been called for four P.M. Before sunset. Everyone wants to get home before dark settles. School’s out for the rest of the day.”

“You’ve been busy, then.”

Nicholas’ radio emitted an obnoxious tone, and a male voice rose from its speaker.

“Sheriff, 10-20.”

Nicholas slid the radio from his belt and pressed a button before he spoke. “10-6.” He returned the radio to his belt and tilted his chin in the direction of the Sheriff’s Department. “I need to go. I just finished taking Axel’s statement. I’ll try and find Harper and talk to him if I can, but I’m not sure I’ll have the time.”

“I’ll take care of Harper,” Ben offered. “Axel saw it?”

“He refused to talk to anyone else about it,” Nicholas confirmed. “He’s got a habit of sleeping in the square after he’s imbibed from his taps. Figures people think he’s a bit of a lush and wouldn’t believe him.”

Ben stared down at the steering wheel as a looming sense of dread flooded through him. Nicholas brushed his fingertips over the knuckles of Ben’s right hand, and the contact yanked Ben from his thoughts.

“I’ve really gotta go, but we’ll talk later. You can tell me about Lewis and Warren then. And Harper if you can get him to talk.”

“Yeah, okay,” Ben replied. “Be careful. Salt and iron keep it away, apparently. And here,” he said as he reached into the paper bag at his side. He tossed Nicholas a bundle of sage. “Burn this, cleans the air or something.”

Nicholas caught the small bundle and scoffed in disbelief. “Yeah, okay.”

“I’m serious, Nic!”

Nicholas’ huffed a heavy breath through his nose and relented. “I’ll keep it close,” he said. “Bye, Ben.” He climbed out of the car and jog toward the square.

Ben headed down Main Street on foot. The street was quiet and empty. Chapman’s proved to be just as desolate. The store smelled of the lemony fresh evidence of a recent floor mopping. Two idle cashiers stood behind two registers. There was an older woman Ben did not recognize. To her right was a tall, gangly man with dirty blond hair and the kind of hunched posture that would have inspired a sharp prod and accompanying lecture from Andrew Wisehart. The man stared off at the frozen food section as if in a daze.

The woman beamed at Ben with a welcoming joviality that felt entirely out of place given the stark atmosphere outside the store. “Afternoon!”

“Afternoon, ma’am,” Ben said, noting her name tag read: Janice. “I’m looking for someone. Grant Harper?”

The man turned and furrowed his brow. “That’s me.”

“I’m Ben Wisehart. Listen, do you think we could talk somewhere private?”

Harper shifted from his left foot to his right. “I’m working,” he said and gestured to the cash register.

“Go on, sugar,” the woman called over. “Ain’t nobody here. I got the store.”

Harper shrugged to Ben. “Yeah, okay, I guess.”

“Cool, thanks. Should we step outside?”

Harper shook his head and cast a quick, squeamish peek out the wide storefront window. His gray eyes flickered up to the equally gloomy sky. “Nah, let’s go in the back.”

The storeroom reeked of the musty redolence of old cardboard and freezer burn. “You used to live here,” Harper said when the swinging door shut behind them and whooshed against the cement floor.

“Yeah, used to,” Ben confirmed.

They stood in an awkward silence as they assessed one another.

“Look,” Ben said. “The sheriff was going to talk to you, but he’s occupied.”

“Don’t,” Harper said, blanching. “I don’t want to talk about whatever you’re about to ask me.”

“I figured. I don’t wanna open up some old wound for you, but I really need to get your side of the story.”

Harper moved to the door. “So you can make fun of me like everybody else?
Fuck off
.” His tone was biting and defensive as if he had become all too accustomed to mockery from curious townspeople who wanted to meet the boy who had been kidnapped by the monster in the woods.

“Hey,” Ben said. “I’m not here to mock you. I saw it once.”

Harper skidded to a halt and twisted around. “Then you should
know
better than to talk about it. Talking about it makes it show up.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“I do,” Harper glared. “So just shut the fuck up about it already.”

Harper disappeared through the doorway, but Ben followed.

“So that’s it? You’re just gonna shut up about it and act like everything’s fine?”

“You should leave,” Harper said, facing Ben again. “I’m not talking about this with you, or the sheriff, or anyone.”

“That’s fine,” Ben sighed. He held up his hands in surrender. “I’m leaving.”

Ben wore a reflective frown as he trudged out of Chapman’s. He had not really expected the young man to talk about such a traumatic event, and he could even understand Harper’s reluctance.
Talking about it makes it show up
, though. What did
that
mean?

All the evidence seemed to point to the fact that
it
showed up when bad things were about to happen, not because you had talked about
it
. Ben thought of Nicholas and the sightings all over town that morning.
They
had talked about
it
the previous night.

Ben’s wristwatch told him that it was noon, but he was in no mood for lunch despite his promise to Mae. He thought of Marietta and the burst of sensations that crept through his body when she touched his hand. He shuddered, recalling the feeling of being swallowed up by something far bigger than him.

A police cruiser drove past. Daniel was behind the wheel and absorbed in whatever conversation he was having with the person on the other end of his radio handset as he headed toward the end of Main Street. Ben returned to the Camaro and wondered if there had been another sighting.

The eerie atmosphere of Main Street rattled Ben’s nerves like marbles in a rusty tin can. Most of the cars that had been parked along the sidewalk that morning were gone. The only vehicles on the roads seemed to belong to the police.

Another Mason County Sheriff’s Department cruiser drove by with its windows rolled down. A blonde officer steered this one. Her radio crackled when she passed, and her sirens suddenly blared. The car sped out of sight.

A gentle vibration thrummed against Ben’s chest as he pulled his keys out of his coat. He reached into the breast pocket of his suit jacket for his phone. There was an alert for a missed call from a local number. He furrowed his brow, wondering why his phone had not rung, but he was glad to see there was a number connected to the call. He tapped the little green voicemail icon on his screen and held the phone up to his ear.

The robotic female voice of the answering service told him, “
You have ONE message from TODAY at 11:47 A.M
.” The line went quiet and then a gruff voice spoke up on the recording. It was Tucker.

“
Wisehart,
”
he said
,
“
it’s Bill Tucker. I found some info. Give me a call, I think I have
—” Tucker’s words were buried underneath an onslaught of white noise.

Something skittered under the dim streetlight in the corner of Ben’s mind. He was certain that he could hear another voice. He adjusted the volume on the phone, replayed the message, and listened with intent.

“
Wisehart, it’s Bill Tucker. I found some info. Give me a call, I think I have—
”
the recording said again. The static followed, and Ben clenched his hand tight around the phone.

There
had
been something else; it was barely audible over the din of the static, but there was
something
.

A voice.

“
Benjamin Wisehart.
”

The voice was quiet but firm. It said nothing else, only Ben’s name. It was deep and monotone like a rumble from a volcano, but it shifted into a higher pitch. The voice sounded distorted in a way that reminded Ben of a CB radio bleeding frequencies together to mix two conversations into a disconcerting flurry of words.

At 11:47, Ben had been sitting on Marietta Abernathy’s velvet sofa.

It’s trying to tell you. It wants you to know. You just have to learn how to listen. Not with your ears.

“Holy shit!” Ben exclaimed, and he was thankful Main Street was deserted.
It’s a fucking EVP.

Electronic voice phenomenon, as Ben knew from the research he had put into
The Corpse
and also his fondness for the absurdity of television shows like
Ghost Hunters
, was tied up in the idea that spirits and non-corporeal entities could not speak directly to humans on a corporeal plane. However, some believed that recording devices could capture those disembodied voices. Ben played the message a third time and wanted to laugh at the fact that
he
had an actual, honest-to-god EVP on his voicemail.