The Jersey Devil (13 page)

Ben reached for a gun that wasn't there.

He couldn't believe what he was seeing.

The old woman dangled upside down, blood trickling from a wound around her neck. Her wails degraded to desperate gurgles. The bass boom of shotguns rattled his rib cage.

One of her ankles was lodged in the mouth of the mother of all Jersey Devils. It was everything people, and Boompa, had described. The tan goat head, though as large as a horse's, looked down at them with eyes black as the empty pit of a haunted mine. It didn't make a sound, other than the steady whoosh of its wings as they beat at the still, humid air. It pulled its cloven-footed legs up to avoid the devastating shotgun pellets, scaling twenty feet higher in a second.

The Piney family opened fire on the creature. It moved so swiftly, they may as well have been throwing rocks at it.

“We have to get out of here, now,” Ben said. “While they're distracted.”

His mother snapped, “We have to help them!”

“With what?” he said. “Our fists? We can't fight that thing, and once it leaves, they'll tie us up for sure. We need to get back to our vans and get our gear.”

“We should at least try,” April said.

“Dad?” Ben said, looking for an ally.

The Devil flew around the family as if it were taunting them. The woman had stopped trying to scream. She must have passed out. Or worse. More shots were fired and Ben was pretty sure he saw her take one to the gut. Whether it was a mercy kill or an errant shot, he didn't want to stick around to find out.

Ben's father looked to the family, then the way they'd come in to the field. “He's right, we have to get the hell out of here. At least they have weapons.”

“Of course, he's r-r-right,” Norm said, already heading opposite the action. “Protect your family.”

Daryl grabbed April by the hand, pulling her away.

“I'll take the rear,” Ben said, not that there was anything he could do to protect them should the Devil veer their way.

His mother, father and grandfather swept past him. He worried about Boompa, hoping his heart could hold out. What they'd been through was difficult for anyone even half his age.

“Catch her!” Ben heard someone shout.

The Jersey Devil flicked its head, letting the lifeless woman slip from its grasp. Her body flipped end over end, landing into the waiting arms of several of her family. They fell hard onto the ground. The creature circled, then went into a blazing descent until it was practically level with the ground. More errant shots were taken. It didn't so much as flinch as it smashed into as many people as it could, snatching one of the children in its jaws. Ben saw a geyser of blood shoot straight into the air. It must have nicked the girl's artery. The child screeched until the Devil bore down on her. She fell from its maw in two pieces.

You motherfucker
.

Ben burned the awful image into his brain. It would be fuel to fight the Devil and its diseased offspring, maybe the bit of anger he'd need when things looked their worst. And they would get worse. No one had expected this. How could they have?

“Just go, go, go!” he commanded his family. “Don't look back!”

His father went pale as another child was taken, flown a hundred feet up and dropped. “No!”

Ben pushed him forward. He knew that sometimes retreat was the best option.

“Keep running, Dad. We have to get out of the open.”

And then what? Would the smaller Devils be lying in wait for them amid the pines?

It was a relief when they hit the trees, no longer able to see what was happening.

But the sounds, the terrible cries, they followed the Willets farther than anyone thought they could stand.

* * *

Norm Cranston ran the entire way with a protective hand over his head, knowing that at any moment, the smaller creatures were going to rain down on them. His heart almost burst with relief when they came to the clearing with their campground. Legs gone rubbery, his hip clipped the front fender of the minivan. He spun, landing on his ass with a heavy
whump
.

Chest heaving, he scanned the breaks in the branches overhead, looking for monsters.

While he sat, the Willet men went into the older van to get their weapons.

“We have to get the hell out of here and call the p-p-police,” Norm said between burning huffs of air.

“You're free to leave, Norm,” Sam said. The man had the stamina of a twenty-year-old. They had just dashed through the woods, stopping briefly a couple of times, but he looked as if he could go run right back to that awful place without missing a beat. “Go without feeling even the slightest bit of trepidation. You didn't sign on for this.”

Somehow in the melee back in the field, Norm had had the presence of mind to record some of the Devil's horrid actions on his cell phone. He was afraid to even look at it now.

Norm said, “But someone in au-authority has to know about that f-family. They need help.”

Sam shook his head. “People come out here because they don't want anything to do with anyone in a position of authority. I hate to say it, but I don't think there's going to be anyone left to save.”

Just like the cows
.

The image that popped into Norm's mind, the bodies of the backwoods family in place of the gutted cattle, made his stomach churn.

Daryl extended a hand to help Norm to his feet. He had to lean against the minivan to stay upright. His knees felt as if they'd been turned to water. “If you want, I can help load up your car,” the youngest Willet said.

The kid looked scared, but also appeared to have complete control over his emotions. All of the Willets did, though Carol seemed a bit dazed.

“And what are you all going to do, go out and h-hunt those things?” Norm asked, raising his voice. Everyone was so busy arming themselves, they weren't taking a moment to stop and think things through. They'd all just watched a group of people who looked like they knew their way around firearms get wiped out in minutes. Was their desire to kill the Jersey Devil so great, their own lives didn't even matter? He held up his phone. “We have everything we need right here! All the proof every cryptozoologist and believer in the J-J-Jersey Devil has ever needed. We should get out of here now and show the damn world! They'll bring in the f-frigging Marines to capture these things and study them, dead or alive. In the end, you'll get your wish.”

April handed him a bottle of water. She chugged her own, downing the bottle without coming up for air. She said, “No one, and I mean no one, will believe that video. Pictures and video are too easy to fake now. Come on, you know that kids can make clips of UFOs that look better than anything Spielberg ever did. You show that to anyone and they'll laugh you out of the country.”

Carol, who had been staring off into the distance, arms folded across her chest, said, “What about the bodies from last night? You can't fake that.”

She was right! Norm wanted to leap for joy. To have video
and
a few bodies, or at least parts of bodies. That was irrefutable proof! The goddamn holy grail!

“Yes, yes, yes!” he said, pushing away from the minivan. “Everyone just hold on a sec. There may not be any n-need to rush off to war.”

Bill Willet stopped checking the clip of his gun. His face was ashen. The rifle trembled slightly in his grip. “He may have a point.”

“It's here, we're here, we can finish it ourselves,” Ben said. Norm shuddered when he saw him pocket several grenades.
Where the hell did he get them?

His father held out his hand, motioning for him to calm down. “Look, there are two things we came out here to do. One, find the Devil and hopefully discover what the mark means. And two, kill it so whatever hold it may have on us is no longer an issue. Boompa, what do you say? We didn't know it was going to be like this.”

The old man removed his ratty cap, tossing it in the van. He wiped his head down with a black bandana he kept in his pocket. “I'm not going to lie to you. I'm out of my depth here. We're not just talking one creature. Who knows how many are out there? They need to be exterminated. There's no questioning that.”

Norm felt, if given time and distance, he could question it. He'd dedicated his life to
finding
mythical creatures, not killing them.

Sam continued. “But if we can get someone else to do it for us, I think we should. There's no sense risking our lives if we don't have to.” He sauntered over to the cooler where they had placed the most intact body last night. “Well, I'll be damned.” Using the tip of his boot, he lifted the other cooler, reached in and grabbed a can of Schaefer beer. “I really need this right about now.”

Norm and Carol scooted to the cooler.

It was gone! Someone had removed the plastic bag with the small Devil body.

“No, that c-can't be,” Norm said, his head reeling. “Why would those hillbillies take it?”

“I don't think they did,” April said, suddenly standing next to him, looking down at the half-melted ice, running red with the blood of the beast parts that had been inside. “We would have seen one of them carrying it. That thing was too big to just stuff in a pocket.”

“So what are we saying, someone else has been here?” Daryl said.

“Or something,” Ben said.

Norm shook his head violently. “No, not s-s-something. For the Jersey Devil to d-do that, it would have to p-p-possess intelligence and dexterity far beyond . . .”

Carol looked to him. “Far beyond what?”

She was right. Beyond what? Beyond the abilities he
thought
something like the Jersey Devil should have? What was the baseline he should use to compare it to?

The real answer was that something like this went beyond what he
wanted
the creature to possess. Because if it was smart enough to know what they had done and able to reclaim the body of its brethren, the humans out here were in a world of trouble.

The closest Norm had come to being this afraid was the night he'd camped in a small cave in the Gilchrist State Forest in Oregon. He'd been there for three weeks tracking down sightings of a Sasquatch that had disturbed separate pairs of campers the week before. He'd found prints right off the bat, and was studying the plaster casts he'd made that night when he heard a strange, heavy moaning outside the cave's entrance. A powerful, wet animal smell wafted inside, making him gag. He'd grabbed his rifle, calling out, “Who's there?” It seemed even the night birds and wind outside the cave stopped.

Low mumbling between what sounded like two people speaking a foreign tongue whispered back and forth. Something about them didn't sound quite right. The stream of hard consonants seemed to come from a mouth and vocal structure beyond the capability of a human being. He pushed his back against the wall, staring at the small, open mouth of the cave, waiting for whatever was outside to clamber inside.

The mumbling stopped. He jumped, hitting his head on the low ceiling, when a palm-sized rock was tossed into the cave, hitting and breaking one of the plaster casts. Terrified, he fired a warning shot. The booming sound of the discharged rifle in the small space deafened him. Without that sense, he was left with only being able to see something coming at him in the dark. He never slept that night, expecting an angry Sasquatch to clamber into the cave.

That never happened, but he'd been so scared, he'd pissed himself that night . . . twice.

“We have to get the hell out of here,” he reiterated. “Right now.”

Daryl, April and their father had been scouring the ground around them.

“It's all gone,” Bill said.

“What?” Carol said. She hadn't taken her eyes off the empty cooler.

“All the bodies, the bits, shit, even the leaves with their blood. Everything's been removed.”

“It d-doesn't matter anymore,” Norm said. “We have to l-l-leave. Proving to the world it exists is low on the p-priority list.”

This was a creature smart enough to clean up after its deeds. It was most likely why it had remained undiscovered for centuries. Maybe it should be left that way.

Bill looked to Sam, the old man crushing the can of Schaefer, tossing it into the cooler that once held the Devil body.

“He's right,” Sam said. “This has gotten too dangerous. We should go.”

It appeared admitting defeat hadn't come easy. Norm was shocked to see his friend looking his age for the very first time. His entire body sagged, the lines in his face etching deeper.

“You all go,” Ben said. “Just leave me a car. I'll meet up with you when I'm done.”

His mother turned to him, saying, “No, we're all leaving.”

“I'm not. I just need to bag one of those things. Then I'll leave.”

“This isn't a debate,” Bill said.

Ben cocked an eyebrow. “You're right, it's not. With any luck, I'll be with you all before you know it.”

Norm tossed things haphazardly into his rental car. He'd be ready the moment they convinced their son to get the hell out of Dodge.

“I'll stay with him,” April said. “Someone has to have his back.”

“The hell you will,” Ben countered.

“I'm with them,” Daryl said. His brother looked like he wanted to punch him in the face for piling on to an already difficult situation.

“Enough!” Bill shouted. “No one, and I mean no one is staying behind! If I have to drag you, I will.”