Point Pleasant Read Online Free PDF Page B

the road ahead.
    Bill Tucker stood with a Remington shotgun in his hands and the barrel still aimed outward as he balanced on the hood of his parked Ford pickup truck. Ben realized that they had cycled at least a mile and were just coming up on the long, gravel driveway that led to Tucker’s farm. By some stroke of luck that Ben would never be able to explain, Tucker must have been on his way to town and had come across the chase just in time.
    Ben and Nicholas slowed their pace before they came to a screeching stop beside Tucker’s truck. The man fired another shot, though there was no resounding scream this time. Ben stumbled off his bike so that he could spin around and see if the creature lay dead in the middle of the road, but there was nothing there. The Mothman had disappeared.
    Ben panted for breath and slumped against the bed of the Ford. He slid down until he crouched on the ground in an attempt to collect himself.
    “Where’d it go??” Nicholas asked, darting his eyes around the tree line that surrounded the road.
    “Not far,” Tucker replied, his voice like a gruff rumble of thunder. “I hit it with the first shot. Got it in the wing, I’m sure of it.”
    Nicholas sank onto the asphalt at Ben’s side.
    “What in damnation are you two knuckleheads doing out here at this time of morning?” Tucker asked as he leapt off the hood of his truck and reloaded the barrels of the shotgun. “Never mind. I don’t even want to know. Get in the truck.”
    Nicholas stood first and offered Ben his right hand. He seemed shaken, though not as badly as Ben, who needed a few extra seconds before he rose with Nicholas’ assistance.
    Every nerve in Ben’s body danced and quivered as if electrified. Nicholas opened the driver’s side door of the truck and pushed Ben inside before he clambered in as well. Ben moved to the furthest side of the front seat—a bench with dirty, tattered leather lining—and rolled up the passenger window.
    The heavy thump of metal on metal broke the eerie silence of the road when Tucker heaved the bicycles into the bed of his truck. He hauled himself in behind the steering wheel and pulled the door shut. The noxious squeal of the door’s hinges sent a shudder down Ben’s spine.
    Tucker pulled off his soiled, red baseball cap to wipe a film of sweat from his dark brow. He started the truck, and its engine roared to life as he slid the cap back on his head.
    Ben stared out the dirty front window and continued to perch on the edge of the front seat with a rigidity to his posture that was alien to him. Andrew was fond of poking at Ben’s back while saying, “Sit up straight before you get stuck like that, Benji.” As Ben eyed the tree line, he yearned for his father’s presence.
    “Where are you going?” Nicholas asked.
    Only then did Ben realize that Tucker had turned the truck toward the direction they had just come from rather than toward town.
    “Gonna see if I can see it,” Tucker replied. “And if I need to put it out of its misery.”
    Nicholas nodded, but Ben gave Tucker a wild look. No, no, no. You don’t go check on it. You never go check on it. That’s the unspoken rule of all good, bad, and horrendously cheesy horror movies.
    Ben knew that if Andrew could see his son’s total panic, he would give a lecture on how Ben should not be such a baby . But a giant bat with glowing red eyes had not almost airlifted Andrew off his bike, had it?
    As Tucker’s truck crawled toward where they had lost sight of the creature, Ben shifted closer to Nicholas. The three passengers peered out the driver’s side window, which Ben had been remiss to roll up.
    The Ford came to a standstill. Tucker put it into gear and killed the engine. Morning birdsong cascaded through the thicket of trees, but there was no sign of movement from the forest.
    Tucker shifted to open his door, but Nicholas put a hand on the farmer’s right forearm. “Please don’t, sir.”
    The man leveled them with a