Point Pleasant

by Wood, Jen Archer

  “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.

  “Holy shit,” Ben said to himself. “Listen without your ears.”

  If it had broken into Tucker’s message while Ben was talking to Marietta, perhaps around the same time she had delivered her cryptic words, maybe it really did want to tell him something.

  Emboldened, Ben tossed his phone to the side and started up the car. He drove out to River Bend Road with his hands gripped tight around the steering wheel, though a part of him wondered what the hell he was thinking going out to ground zero alone.

  Something is stirring. We won’t survive, none of us will, if you don’t trust it. Break it. Figure out how to listen, and it will tell you how.

  Ben passed Tucker’s farm and steeled himself. The road, as always, stretched out in a serpentine crawl of asphalt bereft of other vehicles. He rolled the Camaro to the shoulder and parked in the place he had come to identify with the creature.

  The forest was still. He rolled down the window and listened. There was no sound.

  Ben took a breath, climbed out of the car, and popped the trunk. He grabbed the bag of salt and dug his fingers into the plastic to tear a hole in the top. Large chunks of salt scattered against the dark interior of the trunk when he shifted the bag and pulled it up into his arms.

  Ben edged around the perimeter of the Camaro with the bag tilted downward and poured a thick ring of salt around the vehicle, though he left about five feet of walking room on all sides. He returned the salt to the trunk and took his laptop from his messenger bag on the backseat and his phone from the front.

  Ben propped his laptop on the hood of the car. He glanced at the forest around him to ensure he was still alone as the computer started up. The little half-eaten apple logo disappeared, and his desktop loaded. From his dock, he clicked on an icon for a dictation program he sometimes used for translating his handwritten notes into a digital format. It also featured a recording function. He clicked the little red ‘Record’ button and sauntered to the border of the salt circle where he waved his phone in the air.

  “This is probably the dumbest thing I have ever done in my life. But what the hell, right? Ben Wisehart, present and accounted for.”

  The line of trees on either side of the road was clear. Ben was certain this was the same area, thereabout, that he and Nicholas had burst from on their bicycles so many years ago.

  “Hello? Anyone home?”

  Ben checked his phone. Nothing. “Look, I’m not gonna stand here all day. You wanna talk? Let’s talk, asshole!”

  Silence met him, but he had expected nothing else. “Who are you? What are you?”

  The wind blew sharp and chilly air against Ben’s face. There was a delicate vibration from his phone. He had a voice message even though the phone had not rung.

  Ben took a deep breath and tapped the ‘Call’ button. He held the phone to his ear and listened to the robotic woman’s automated message.

  The line changed, and Ben heard the sound of the wind blowing in the recording. After a few seconds, there was a loud sizzle of static, and the voice from before spoke again. It was deep at first, then high as if it had been recorded on auto-tuning software. The distorted voice spoke a single, concise sentence.

  “You are asking the wrong questions.”

  Ben tapped ‘End’ and stared out into the forest. “Then what question should I be asking, huh?” he called out. There was no response from either the woods or the phone. He clenched his jaw. “Why are you here?” he asked with a raised voice. “And what do you want?”

  The phone vibrated once more, and Ben checked the message. The voice was mellower with lilting hints of an elevated pitch. “I fell,” it said. “I want to go home.”

  “Where the hell is home?”

  The phone buzzed. Another message. “Not there.”

  Ben felt his skin crawl. “Yeah, okay,” he said. “Then go home. Trust me, you won’t be missed.”

  Buzz. He played the next message.

  “I need your help.”

  “Oh, sure,” Ben said, uttering a mirthless laugh. “What do you want, a ride?”

  Buzz. “You are insolent.”

  “And you killed my father, you asshole. You think I’m going to help you? I’m going to find you and put a fucking bullet through your head. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll find another way. But I’m not helping you, so you can go straight back to wherever the fuck you came from.”

  Buzz buzz buzz. “I warned you,” it said, and the anger of its tone made Ben blench.

  “Fuck you,” Ben said and kept his voice low and spiteful.

  The phone vibrated once more. Ben considered throwing it to the ground to smash it into pieces. The wind blustered, its whip strong and biting, and grains of salt scattered across the blacktop. He scowled and pressed the voicemail button.

  “Stay in the circle, Benjamin Wisehart. Do not leave the circle.”

  The air grew colder, and Ben jumped as the Camaro’s radio roared to life in a blare of static and shrieking screams.

  “What the fuck?” he called out as the radio’s static cleared enough for a single word to resound throughout the shrill noise.

  “Benji,” said the voice of Ben’s dead father. And it laughed.

  “Fuck you! Just FUCK YOU!” Ben yelled as he spun to face the forest behind him. The wind continued to howl and the static from the Camaro grew louder than what should have been possible from the car’s old speakers.

  The phone buzzed, and Ben held it to his ear.

  “Not me,” the voice on the phone said, its tone low and dark. Ben’s heart sank at the words. “Stay in the circle, Benjamin Wisehart,” the voice repeated. “It will protect you.”

  Ben’s eyes widened with steady horror. “Not you? Who the fuck is it, then?”

  Andrew’s wraithlike laughter continued from the Camaro’s radio until it descended into a torturous scream. Ben backed awa
y from the car. The wind blew harder, and the air seemed to grow heavier.

  His phone buzzed again, and Ben stilled at the edge of the circle as he fumbled to press the correct button. “It is manifesting.”

  Ben’s grip on his phone faltered, and he nearly dropped it as he spun around to try to see what exactly was manifesting. What if not the thing he was communicating with on his phone.

  “What the fuck is that??” Ben called out. The phone hummed once more.

  “You must leave. Get in your car. When silence falls, drive. I will hold it back. Now, Benjamin Wisehart!”

  Ben leapt forward, grabbed his laptop off the hood of the Camaro, and tossed the computer and the phone onto the passenger seat. He slid into the car and winced at the loud, endless shrieks and screeches that rose from the radio as he slammed the door. He covered his ears with his hands in an attempt to stifle the deafening shrill. The branches of the trees on either side of the road shook with the force of the gale.

  Everything and nothing seemed to happen all at once. The wind ceased just as the noises from the radio came to a sudden halt. All was silent.

  Ben cranked the engine, threw the car into gear, and U-turned out of his spot on the shoulder of the road. The Camaro’s tires screeched in loud protest, but Ben hit the accelerator and sped down River Bend Road with his hands gripped around the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles paled.

  “What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck,” he mumbled to himself as he zoomed past Tucker’s farm. “What the everloving fuck?!”

  Ben forced himself to slow down when he made a left onto Main Street. He drove all the way to Cardinal without once looking in his rearview mirror. His thoughts lingered on a story from Sunday school about the wife in the Old Testament who turned to spy the devastation of Sodom only to end up a pillar of salt as punishment for her curiosity.

  Ben pulled into the driveway and leapt out of the car. He grabbed his laptop, his phone, and the bag of sage and deposited his belongings in the entry hall before he raced out to the car to retrieve the bag of rock salt from the trunk.

  When he reached the front walkway, Ben angled the bag of rock salt downward. He hunched over and scuffled through the bushes and around the full perimeter of the house until he was back at the front porch and a thick line of salt now circled his home.