Point Pleasant (18 page)

Likewise, if Nicholas had clung to an idea of Ben for all this time—if he had realized his feelings, however retroactively, for a figure who had not been around for the revelation—how likely was it that Ben would be able to live up to whatever idea Nicholas had of him?

The thought was jarring, and Ben snapped shut the book in his hands. He stood, stretched, and felt sore from sitting so long in the uncomfortable wooden chair. He slung his bag over his shoulder, gathered the books he had perused, and deposited them on a cart meant for re-shelving.

A young man with a name tag that read, “Timothy” stood behind the enquiry desk. He raised an eyebrow when Ben approached.

“Hi, I need some help.”

Timothy offered a reserved smile and brushed a stray lock of shaggy brown hair from his forehead. “What can I do for you?”

“I was hoping I could poke around the archive downstairs.”

“Are you looking for something specific?”

“Not really,” Ben said. “I wanted to read some of the historical accounts from the Battle of Point Pleasant, but I also need to check some of the property records relating to the old TNT Factory.”

“Are you a historian?” Timothy asked, tilting his head in a gesture of curiosity.

Ben laughed at the idea. “Not at all, it’s just personal interest.”

“Well, I can help you with the battle documents, but you’ll need to go over to Town Hall for the property records. I can look and see if we have anything else on file for the factory, though.”

“That’d be helpful, thanks.”

Timothy led Ben downstairs and pointed him to a table. “I’ll bring over what we have, you take a seat.”

Ben draped his bag over the back of a chair and flipped through his notebook until Timothy returned with an armful of loose papers, books, and what appeared to be a leather-bound diary.

“Here’s everything we have for the battle,” Timothy said. “I have some work to finish upstairs, but I’ll check on the factory records when I get some time and let you know if I find anything.”

“Thanks, this is great,” Ben said as he surveyed the mound of documents.

Timothy nodded and left Ben alone in the dusty archives.

Ben rifled through the papers first. They seemed to be copies of treaties and schematics of the battleground. The books were old and had been written more as a general history of the founding of Point Pleasant. Ben put them aside for later in favor of a read through the handwritten diary instead.

The writing was a neat, feminine cursive. Ben checked the first page and saw the diary had belonged to Emily Lewis. He struggled to place why that name sounded familiar and then recalled Dr. Evelyn Lewis had been one of the Mothman’s victims twenty years ago. Ben wrote down the name on a fresh page in his notebook as he pondered a possible connection.

Emily Lewis seemed to be a young woman from the tone and general content of the diary. She was perhaps sixteen to twenty years old at the time of her writing, though her age was never specified. She had been the daughter of Colonel Andrew Lewis and thus had been privy to many important discussions regarding battle plans.

“
Pa thought Phillip and I were sleeping
when Captain Mathews stepped inside the cabin last night with fresh orders from Lord Dunmore. It is important to sever the Indian ties with the British. If they ally, Dunmore believes we would lose the war. Combined, their forces would be too strong. We rebels would have no chance at all. I wish this war would end. I have grown weary of washing blood out of the men’s uniforms. Mother says it is my contribution. I never asked to contribute
.”

Ben kicked his feet up on the chair opposite him as he read. He noted the names of the areas she mentioned to cross-check them against older maps to determine exactly where it was that she and her family lived before the battle, but he had a growing suspicion of the placement of their cabin the more she described the “
dark, ominous forest
” around her home.

Of course, Point Pleasant would have been nothing but forest in 1774. It was the way Emily wrote about her walks through the quiet woods that caught Ben’s attention, though. “
Mother says I am being fantastical, but the woods do seem to observe us when we chop wood for the fire and gather berries from the bushes. Sometimes it seems as though there are eyes watching from a distance, but when you turn there is no one in sight
.”

Ben straightened as he read an entry from late September of 1774. “
Mother does not believe us, but Phillip and I saw a great beast by the river. We both screamed, and the soldiers came to our side, but it had flown off when they arrived. It had wings like a giant bird, and though I only saw it for a moment, it looked like a man. I want to think it was an angel but when mother reads passages from the Bible, I never imagine that an angel would be so terrifying
.”

Ben stared at the words. Though still in a feminine script, the scrawl was rushed and slanted when compared to the other entries. “
Its eyes were like the colour of the blood that stains the ground after battle
.”

The situation seemed even more impossible than ever. If Emily Lewis had seen the Mothman in 1774 then the thing in the woods was at least 238 years old. How could something live for so long?
Unless there was more than one of them
, Ben thought, and a chill crept across the nape of his neck. Either it was the same apparently ageless creature, or there was more than one of them, and they had the ability to breed.

A few days before the battle, Emily wrote again. “
There are whispers in the camp
.
The men are uneasy. They speak of the eyes in the woods and the great shape they have seen perched atop the trees during their scouting trips for a suitable fighting ground. Captain Mathews has gone silent since his last journey into the forest. Father says it is the anxiety of the impending battle that caused him to say he saw a giant bat swoop over the land near the river. I believe him, though. There is something in these woods, something that I do not think is an angel at all. Angels would not make you burn cold with fear at the sight of them. I heard screams late last night. It sounded like Phillip, but he was asleep beside me. It could not have been him
.”

Ben felt numb with unease as Emily Lewis’ account of the creature’s scream sent him hurtling into the memory of that early morning in the forest that had marred his otherwise normal childhood.

The next account was written on the eleventh of October, the day after the battle. “
We have won the area, though the loss of life and limb is staggering. The soldiers are all quiet and mournful. We have lost nearly eighty of our own, a heavy price for our victory. The Indians in our possession are frightened but not of us. They seem to twitch at every snap of twig and crackle of dead leaves near them. They do not like these woods. I do not blame them. Red-Face, the name the soldiers have given to the Indian man who speaks in English and translates the Algonquian language for us, told father that the Shawnee Indians fear the spirit of the woods. Father laughed, but Red-Face was sincere. He said the Shawnee believe this ground is rotten, that something emerged from it and tainted the land with bad omens. I do not want to live here anymore
.”

Ben leapt to his feet and strode to the other side of the room with the journal in his hand. He switched on the photocopier in the corner and within minutes he had copied every entry of the diary featuring a reference to the creature in the woods. His thoughts raced like the bright green light of the machine that scanned over every page as he worked.

If the creature had been seen over two hundred years ago, and if it was indeed the same creature, exactly how old was it? And if the forest that lined Point Pleasant was known by the surrounding Native American tribes to be ‘rotten,’ just how long
had
the creature lived there?

The creature had rested atop a tower on Silver Bridge hours before its collapse in the sixties just as it had perched in the trees in the days before the Battle of Point Pleasant. Had it somehow caused these events? Or was its presence merely an indicator of impending doom? Was the Mothman truly a death omen?

Ben gathered the copies and returned to the table. He was not sure how to proceed now. This was so much bigger than anything he had been prepared for. There was a flurry of potential leads to follow. It would be useful to cross-check every recorded sighting of the Mothman with some kind of local disaster or accident. This would be time-consuming but necessary. Ben still needed to find out if both Charlie Warren and Evelyn Lewis still lived in town. If so, he had to talk to them both about Emily as soon as possible.

A sudden thought froze Ben in place as he packed away his notebook and the photocopies.

If the Mothman
was
a bad omen, if its continuous appearance heralded death and destruction, why was it appearing
now
? Tucker’s journals revealed the extent to which it had been sighted over the years, mostly during random encounters, but what happened when it was sighted more than once? Was some terrible fate about to befall Point Pleasant?

“This is fucking crazy,” Ben mumbled as he gathered his bag and headed upstairs.

Timothy was behind the enquiry desk again. “You finished? I haven’t had a chance to look for the factory records yet.”

“Don’t worry for now, I’ll probably be back tomorrow for those,” Ben said with an anxious smile. “Thanks for your help, the documents were very useful.”

“I’ll put aside whatever I find,” Timothy offered and resumed his work.

Ben left the library and took a deep breath when he reached the parking lot. He knew he should grab some lunch, but he felt too discombobulated to consider food. The whole situation seemed
nuts
. He wondered if he should take his findings to Tucker or if it would only serve to make the old man even more paranoid.

A vibration rumbled in the pocket of Ben’s coat. He pulled his phone out and saw an alert for five missed calls from a number he did not immediately recognize. Ben scrounged for the Post-it note that Nicholas had given him that morning; it was the same number.

He tapped his finger over the notification to return the call and was surprised when Nicholas picked up after the first ring.

“Ben?”

“Hey, Nic. Sorry, guess I lost signal. Didn’t know you called.”

“Where are you?”

“God, you’re not turning clingy are you?” Ben laughed.

“Ben, where are you right now?” 

“The library. In the parking lot. I can send you GPS coordinates if you want something more specific.”

“I’ll be there in a minute. Stay where you are.”

“Nic, wha—” he started, but the connection ended.

The unease Ben had experienced when driving into town that morning slithered back into its place in the pit of his stomach. He deposited his bag in the Camaro’s passenger seat and slammed the door shut.

A moment later, Nicholas appeared. He strode at a brisk pace as he rounded the corner of the library. The Sheriff’s Department was only a few minutes away by foot, so it made sense for him to walk.

“What’s wrong?” Ben asked. He had a moment to register the sheriff’s grave expression before he spoke.

“Ben,” Nicholas started. “I—I don’t know how to tell you this.”

“Tell me what?”

“Andy,” Nicholas said, and Ben felt his heart drop in his chest even before Nicholas finished. “He’s dead.”

A gust of wind shook the sanguine foliage of the dogwood trees that lined the parking lot. Ben could only stare at the other man.

“Ben,” Nicholas said, but he faltered for something else to say.

Ben struggled to parse and process the words that had lost all meaning in his lexicon.
Dead. Andy’s dead. Your dad is dead.

“Did you hear me?”

“I heard you,” Ben whispered.

“Ben, I’m
so
sorry.” Nicholas’ tone made it real; his grief was genuine.

The asphalt under Ben’s feet was littered with dead leaves. Ben fixed his eyes on the thick lines of white paint that marked the separate parking spaces against the blacktop. When he looked up, Nicholas’ gaze was dark with sympathy. Ben jerked away.

“How?” he asked. The word tumbled out with a jarring shrillness that sounded foreign to his ears.

Nicholas seemed to be debating whether he should tell Ben to take a moment and collect himself before he started asking the
hows
and
whys
. “Ten-car pile up on the bridge. A semi crashed into the back of the line.”

“And?” Ben demanded.

Nicholas’ voice went soft as he continued. “Some of the vehicles involved were pushed over the side with the impact. Your father’s was one of them.”

Ben sank down onto the asphalt he had just been staring at.

“Ben,” Nicholas said in alarm. He kneeled down and placed a hand on Ben’s shoulder.

“I’m fine,” Ben said, but the response was weak. “I just need a minute.”

“Are you—”

“I said I’m
fine
.”

Nicholas sat at Ben’s side. They leaned against the rear bumper of the Camaro and did not speak.

“When did it happen? Is this why you left earlier?” Ben asked at last.

The small nod of confirmation from the sheriff was devastating.

Ben felt like a game of human KerPlunk; it was as if there was a handful of feeble plastic straws holding his marbles in, but those barriers were being stripped away one at a time. Soon, the marbles would drop out of him and scatter across the coarse surface of the parking lot.

“I have to tell Kate,” he said.

“I can call her.”

“No,” Ben replied. “You should go back to work.”

Nicholas’ eyes lit up with concern and something
else
, something that seemed almost like devotion if Ben looked close enough. It made him feel even smaller inside.

“I can stay if you need me.”

Ben forced himself to climb to his feet. “I need to be alone.”

“Where are you going?” Nicholas asked as he stood.