Where Things Come Back: Chapters 6–14

He couldn’t leave his siblings and his mother behind to bear the brunt of “Reverend Rambo,” as he and his sisters jokingly called him.

“You disappointed your mother and me today, son,” he said in a somber voice.

“So you thought it was okay to go gallivanting around with some little harlot? I really thought better of you, Benton. Oh well. It’s no matter now. Date’s off. You can take off that tie.”

As if this wasn’t bad enough, Benton was nearly shunned by his entire family, who, save for the occasional “How are you?” or “Could you pass the salt?” seemed oblivious to his very existence.

In an attempt to take advantage of our town’s recent foray into national fame and to distract herself from the thought that my brother was lying dead in a barn somewhere, she had introduced the Woodpecker haircut.

Around that time he had begun to say and do things that, as Dr. Webb says, were signs of some sort of nervous breakdown or stress-induced mania.

“Can we just talk for a minute?” I said, trying not to laugh at the absurdity of my situation.

At the same time, the fallen angels, known then as the Grigori (or Watchers), began teaching all the remaining humans the arts of war, astrology, and vanity.

Warning: The following pages, whether used as a journal or for ideas, are most assuredly filled with melancholy, cynicism, and woe.

Warning: The following pages, whether used as a journal or for ideas, are most assuredly filled with melancholy, cynicism, and woe.

Cabot grinned as he flipped through the pages of the book to find often short, mostly random musings over things ranging from strange phrases Benton had heard to television shows he’d watched to people he had encountered.

At that time, the books had been missing for nearly one thousand years, having been banned from the church by powerful theologians who claimed the text heretical and ordered all copies to be burned or shredded.

At that time, the books had been missing for nearly one thousand years, having been banned from the church by powerful theologians who claimed the text heretical and ordered all copies to be burned or shredded.

Though many Christian and Jewish theologians give little to no credit to the book, which at one time was considered an accompanying apocryphal, or secret writing, to the New Testament, there is one church that includes it within its Christian Bible, this being the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

And the whole earth has been corrupted through the works that were taught by Azazel: to him ascribe all sin.

The road was lonely and desolate and all those things that a road is not supposed to be when you are driving down it at five minutes to midnight after leaving your new girlfriend’s house and wondering whether or not she really exists or is part of your imagination—some mental coping mechanism that has taken over your thoughts and actions.

He never sang them, just wrote them down diligently as if he had been assigned to or something.

Officer Lansing joked, breaking away from his serious demeanor.

This happens when the child who is not missing begins to feel embittered toward the child who is missing purely because he or she is getting all the attention of everyone around.

My dad’s voice remained calm and steadfast.

The Ethiopian Orthodox Bible is made up of the largest canon of any Bible in print in the modern world.

This was in the Book of Watchers, which would serve as the focus of Cabot Searcy’s endeavor.

It read:
And destroy all the spirits of the reprobate and the children of the Watchers, because they have wronged mankind.

Now Cabot Searcy felt as if he had been given some sort of posthumous assignment from Benton.

“Here”—my mother waved her arms around to encompass the entire field—“or there?” she asked, pointing to the ground beneath Vilonia Kline.

I’m not sure exactly what compelled me to do so, but then again, I’m not sure exactly what ever compelled me to do or say any of the things I did and said back then.

We walked, my parents and I, with Agent Perry out to his car, and as he backed out of the driveway, we all seemed to have the same sort of look about us: one of disillusionment and lightness.

“Neither of us is going,” I would say smugly.

She declined offers to go get coffee; she froze up at the first inclination of flirtation.

He was confident, but not cocky. Suave, but eccentrically charming.

He was confident, but not cocky. Suave, but eccentrically charming.

Cabot Searcy’s uncle Jeff had hired him to run errands for his real estate development company that summer, and Cabot, although he found the job to be boring and tedious, enjoyed being able to live in his uncle’s large house and spend his free time reading and writing.

Nico chuckled as the previews began to light up the screen, and Alma continued to gripe about the seats, spilling half her popcorn in the process and then quietly closing her eyes for a few seconds to calm down.

Alma had planned to be out of the house and instead was with Cabot Searcy, playing golf and talking about her aspirations to become a wildlife photographer.

She marveled at his speech, completely enamored by the things he said and did.