Point Pleasant (57 page)

Ben’s knees trembled when he rose, and Marietta helped him to stand. She eased him into his coat and slipped her arm around his shoulder before leading him toward the north wall where Nicholas and Tucker were waiting.

Distress twisted Nicholas’ features, and he stepped forward like he meant to sling an arm around Ben’s other side. Marietta shook her head, and Nicholas subsided. He fumbled in his back pocket for his keys, seeming to need to busy his hands with a task in order to feel useful in a situation far beyond anything that the police academy offered in its training curriculum.

“You good, son?” Tucker asked, removing his baseball cap as if the lack of its brim would help him to see Ben better in the dim light.

Cautious. He sounds so cautious
, Ben thought. The sensation of
seeing
but
not
seeing washed over him again. He bowed his head to the dingy floor and did not respond.

“No more questions. He’s still in shock,” Marietta said, leading Ben outside.

They ambled to Nicholas’ cruiser. The vehicles had remained untouched during the assault on the factory. Ben felt numb, thinking back to his earlier realization that they had been trapped inside the factory. Even if one of them had attempted to flee, the cars would have been useless.

Tucker tossed the floodlight into the open trunk of the cruiser and trudged around to the side where Ben stood. A curious mix of concern and pride crossed the old farmer’s features. He simply nodded to Ben, then to Marietta and Nicholas, and climbed into his truck.

The rusty Ford roared to life and rumbled down the dark, derelict road until Ben could only see taillights.

“Ben?”

Nicholas held the passenger side door open. Marietta sat in the middle of the back seat. Ben sank inside, and Nicholas closed the door. He rounded the front of the car and slid inside. After he slammed his own door shut, the three of them sat in silence and stared at the factory.

In that moment, the building was unremarkable.

“I don’t understand what happened,” Nicholas said, making no move to start the cruiser.

“You never will,” Marietta replied. “I don’t think I understand it fully, myself.”

“He’s home now,” Ben said.

Nicholas and Marietta remained quiet, waiting for Ben to go on when he was ready.

“What did you see, Ben?” Nicholas asked, realizing that Ben was not going to speak again.

“Didn’t
you
see?” Ben asked.

“I saw a light, but I couldn’t look at it. I had to close my eyes,” Nicholas admitted, shifting in his seat.

“We all did, Nicholas,” Marietta said. “Raziel would have burned those pretty blues of yours clean out of your sockets.”

“But the noise,” Ben said. “Didn’t you hear it?”

“What noise?” Nicholas asked.

Marietta regarded Ben through the mesh, and he stared back at her for a long moment before turning to Nicholas. That expectant look was back in their eyes, and they seemed to be waiting for him to explain what he meant. A gust of loneliness as powerful as the winds that had shaken the ceiling tiles from the factory’s roof swept through Ben once more.

“You didn’t hear it,” he said.

“I couldn’t hear anything,” Nicholas said. “Toward the end it was like Marietta was screeching that noise that Raziel would make.”

“Was I?” Marietta asked, taking on a frown as she leaned closer to the front seat.

“For me to speak it to you now would dismantle your physical form,” Ben said, parroting Raziel’s words from their voicemail conversation.

“What?” Nicholas asked, furrowing his brow.

“It’s something he said,” Ben replied. “About the language of the angels.”

“Is that what you heard, Benjamin? Did you hear the actual words?”

“I don’t know what I heard,” Ben said. “But you can consider me dismantled. I don’t understand how Azazel kept that
inside
of him.”

“He used to have his own, remember?” Marietta said with a sigh. “He bound Raziel’s in darkness and used it for all these years to harness the power for his own means. It’s how he was able to open up the ‘doorway’ as Nicholas called it earlier. You’re funny, though, Benjamin.”

“Am I?” Ben asked, startled.

“In all the years he was trapped here, why do you think you’re the first person Raziel asked for help?”

Ben did not reply, but he could sense Nicholas’ unsettled gaze.

“You got something in you,” Marietta said. “Maybe it’s your soul. Maybe it’s the way you were both locked out of your homes in different ways. Maybe he knew you’d understand.”

For the second time that night, Marietta’s words stung more than Ben would like to admit. Nicholas’ attention was fixed on the factory. His hands gripped the steering wheel as he stared toward the north side of the building.

“So that’s it? It’s over? No more monsters?” he asked.

“Just the usual ones that you take care of, Sheriff,” Marietta said.

Nicholas’ shoulders sagged slightly, but Ben found little relief in the confirmation. Marietta’s reassurance felt like a Band-Aid on a broken bone.

“And what about Ben? Is he going to be okay?”

“Benjamin is tired,” Marietta drawled, leaning back from the mesh. “He needs to rest.”

Nicholas cranked the engine without further prompting. He reversed, turned, and navigated the cruiser down the dirt road. Ben propped his forehead against the window on his side of the car. The glass was as frigid as the loss he felt but could not articulate.

“You can just call me Ben, you know,” he said, murmuring the words without looking back to Marietta.

“Names are important,” Marietta said after a beat. “They say a lot about us. We don’t have a choice in the one we are given, but, most of the time, there was some thought behind its selection. Even if you change your name, you deliberate over it. You want a name to mean something whether you’re giving it to someone else or yourself.”

“What does ‘Marietta’ mean?” Ben asked, lifting his head slightly.

“Well, that’s complicated. It’s a version of Mary, which itself is a variant of Miriam. Both names have meanings that have become muddled over time. Some say they mean ‘star of the sea,’ others say ‘bitter waters.’ Maybe it’s a bit of both. But I wasn’t named after a meaning.”

“What were you named after?”

“My hometown,” she replied. “Marietta, Georgia as I live and breathe. My sisters were named after the cities they were born in too. Florence was in South Carolina, and Augustine in Florida. My mother thought it was important that we always remember where we came from.”

In the cruiser’s headlights, River Bend Road stretched out like the arm of a loved one held up to enforce distance, and Ben pondered the sentiment behind Marietta’s name.

“Your mother was a smart lady,” he said at last.

“She was,” Marietta replied. “Do you know what your name means, Benjamin?”

“Something about a son,” Ben replied, forgetting the exact meaning. “My mom had a friend named Ben when she was growing up.”

“It’s always nice when a name is infused with a devotion of some kind,” Marietta said. “But you’re correct. Benjamin means ‘son of my right hand.’ In the Torah, Benjamin was the youngest of Jacob’s twelve sons. He remained loyal to his father even when his siblings turned against Jacob. And the right hand is very significant, you see.”

“Is it?” Ben asked, thinking of Raziel’s right hand as it stretched skyward in the seconds before the world exploded.

“Of course,” Marietta said. “Christian tradition says that Jesus occupies the throne at God’s right hand. It’s a place of honor.”

“I thought you were Jewish?”

“Nobody’s got it quite right. I told you before.”

Ben wished Nicholas would speak up to derail the theological talk; he might have enjoyed the discussion on another occasion, but, for now, he had enough of God and angels and everything in between to break his brain over for a lifetime. Nicholas, however, kept his eyes on the road and his lips pursed into a line as straight as the yellow markings that divided the asphalt.

“What does Nic’s name mean?” Ben asked.

“Do you know, Sheriff?” Marietta peered at Nicholas as if she already knew the answer. She probably did.

“No,” Nicholas said, making a left onto Main Street.

“You never wondered?” Marietta asked, and a knowing lilt was present in her voice. “That says a lot. Nicholas means ‘victory of the people.’ Perhaps it’s appropriate given your profession.”

Nicholas did not reply. The quiet hum of the car’s engine was soothing, and Ben was thankful for its gentle monotony. He checked the digital clock on the dash and was surprised to see it was after midnight. Over six hours had flown past since their venture to the factory. Ben struggled to account for the time after Raziel’s grace exploded, but exhaustion and emptiness clouded his thoughts like muddy creek water.

Nicholas parked in front of Marietta’s house. He climbed out, trudged around to her side, and opened the rear door for her. Marietta tapped on the passenger window, and Ben pushed the button to roll down the glass.

“You get some sleep, Benjamin. You need it,” Marietta said as she bent down and took Ben’s hands in her own. She pressed something cold and flat into his right palm. Ben knew without glancing down that she had returned Andrew’s Zippo. He clutched her hand, and Marietta tilted her head as if trying to read him again.

“What made you move to Point Pleasant?” he asked in a whisper. “Was it Raziel?”

Marietta considered Ben for several seconds, and she smiled. “Because they’re mighty pleased to have you here. Even if they don’t always know how to show it.”

Ben released her hand, and she brushed her fingertips over his before she stood back from the cruiser.

“You come see me sometime,” Marietta said. “I’ve got a teak G-Plan sideboard in the back of my shop that has your name written all over it.”

She turned and headed toward her walkway. Ben slipped the lighter into his coat pocket and watched as she disappeared inside her purple house. He reclined his head against the seat and scrubbed his palms over his eyes when he saw a flash of the
light
play against the inside of his lids.

Nicholas resumed his place behind the steering wheel. His hand hesitated on the gear shift, and he regarded Ben with the same kind of caution that Ben imagined he used with a potentially armed suspect during a routine traffic stop over an expired tag.

“Ben?” he asked in a whisper. “You okay?”

“I’m tired,” Ben said, wavering under the weight of the evening.

“Do you want me to take you home?”

“I don’t even know where that is,” Ben said, slinking back into a daze.

Nicholas finally put the car into gear and drove to the other end of Main Street. Cold air seeped in from the open window, and Ben relished its frigidity. When he looked out, they were in front of the Wisehart house on Cardinal Lane.

“I don’t mind if you want to stay with me,” Nicholas said. “I’d prefer it. Or I could stay with you.”

The projection screen in Ben’s head flickered with images of Nicholas’ unmade bed. “I just need to sleep for a while.”

“Ben—” Nicholas started, but he seemed to be at a loss for what to say. “Talk to me. Or don’t. Just don’t be alone.”

“Tomorrow,” Ben said, reaching for the door handle. He slid out of the car and offered a weak wave, shut the passenger door, and followed the dark pathway to the house.

The motion sensor lights in the front yard activated when he neared the porch and pulled out his keys. He waved again and went inside, dropping the keys without care. They clanked on the wood flooring, and the sound carried through the entry hall like an echo in a tomb. Ben shrugged off his coat, let it fall to the floor with the keys, and lumbered upstairs where he collapsed on the bed in his old room.

In the few seconds before unconsciousness took hold of him, Ben saw
the light.

Illustration, Chapter Four. “
Callosamia promethea
.”

Illustration, Chapter Five. “
Actias luna
.”

Chapter Five