The Jersey Devil (9 page)

“Th-thanks,” he said. He dropped the folder onto the passenger seat and turned up the air-conditioning in the car.

“
Why does this feel like a military operation?” he said into his audio recorder, staying two car lengths behind the minivan. “I don't think the Willets are here to swap stories and bang the brush for the Jersey Devil.”

He wasn't aware how close he was to the truth.

You couldn't get any higher than Apple Pie Hill. Ben had worried that there would be a steep ascent to the hill and they'd have to turn around. The old van in the lead wasn't cut out for that kind of driving anymore.

To his surprise, getting there was easy. He watched April's arm sway up and down with the wind current the entire drive. It was a beautiful day out. Some would say it was hot, but after a tour in Afghanistan, Ben had promised never to complain about the heat again. They parked in a lot next to a wood sign for the Batona Trail.

Getting out of their vehicles, he heard Daryl ask, “How far is it from here to the fire tower?”

“Just a little hike,” Boompa said.

The famous fire tower would be a great recon vantage point. If they were going to search for the Devil in the surrounding forest, he wanted to see what they were up against.

“April, you need to put on some jeans,” Ben said, eyeing his sister's too-short shorts.

She flipped him off, though with a smile.

He slung a backpack filled with water, energy bars and other essentials out of the van and onto his shoulder. It was heavy, but manageable.

“All right, I guess you don't mind ticks burrowing under your skin.”

She looked to their mother to confirm.

“He's right. They're all over the place out here. You don't want Lyme disease.”

April rolled her eyes, grabbed her pack from the minivan and went back to the van. “I'll be out in a second.”

The heat bugs were belting out a chorus. Ben almost couldn't hear himself think. He took a quick hit from his flask, careful to make sure no one saw him. There was no pleasure in the whiskey burn.

Stepping casually away from the family, he tossed the flask into a thick tangle of bushes. That was it. There was no retrieving that silver little fucker. Ben wouldn't say he had a drinking problem, but he knew he was skirting awfully close. The drinking made it easier to be with people, even his family. Sometimes, he felt so clenched up inside, he was afraid to open up, lest everything come exploding out.

He saw that Norm Cranston's face was already as red as a baboon's ass. He went to his grandfather. “You can stay here if you want. I have a map and can take everyone.”

Boompa patted his shoulder. “Don't worry about me. I still know how to walk.”

Ben opened his mouth to protest, then shut it. There was no arguing with the man.

He unzipped his pack, making sure the Beretta was exactly where he'd put it. He wasn't going anywhere without it.

“Everyone ready?” he said, noting his sister's jeans.

“Lead the way, young grasshopper,” his father said. He'd found a gnarled branch and was holding it like a walking stick.

The path was obvious to follow, but choked with overgrown vegetation. Twenty yards in and they were swallowed by clouds of mosquitos. Ben took out a bottle of insect repellent and passed it along.

“Some of these look like they could be the Jersey Devil,” Norm said, walking in the middle of the pack. He swatted them with his hat.

“No shit. This is nuts,” Daryl said.

“Watch your mouth,” his mother snapped.

“Really?” Daryl said, walking heavily, as he always did. You could hear Daryl coming from another county away.

“You and your fucking mouth,” April scolded him. Ben turned to see the sly grin on his sister's face. “Not in front of company, little brother.” She looked to Norm, who blushed.

“Welcome to the family,” Boompa said. He was keeping a good pace and not winded at all. Ben was impressed. “We work like mules and cuss like sailors.”

Ben veered to the left, pointing at the ground. “Watch out, broken glass.” Someone who most likely didn't celebrate Earth Day had smashed a twelve pack of Bud Light bottles on a rock protruding from the weed-choked path. He was surprised at the amount of litter thrown about. Water bottles had been jammed in bushes, cigarette packs squashed underfoot.

When they came to a clearing, they stopped to admire the view. A whole green and blue world had suddenly opened up before them.

“This is it,” Boompa said.

A sixty-foot fire tower rose ahead of them. Stairs zigzagged in the center of the structure, leading to the viewing platform. The red and white paint was worn and flecked. Some idiots had even taken the time to spray paint illegible graffiti.

“You know, your grandma and I lived not too far from here way back before there were things like cars and flying machines.”

Ben offered bottles of water. “You want to rest for a second before we climb up the tower?”

Boompa was already stomping towards the tower. “Gotta make the best of the daylight while we have it,” he said over his shoulder.

Ben said to his father, “We have to keep an eye on him.”

His father gripped the walking stick, his knuckles white. He was looking just a shade better than Norm. It couldn't be the heat or physical exertion. The man was up before the crack of dawn every day, working his ass off. He may have just been worried about what they'd find. Anything that could put its mark on three generations had power that was wise to respect. “I think we're going to have our jobs cut out for us.”

He offered some Big Red to Norm, who happily took a stick, tucking the foil wrapper in his pocket. “A little cinnamon boost never hurts.”

Their footsteps chuffed up the tower's steps, everyone following the octogenarian, trying to keep up with him. The view from the top was breathtaking.

Norm's labored breathing caught Ben's attention. The TV cryptozoologist leaned heavily against a rail. He caught his eye and said, “I'll be all right. This is what happens when you spend most days sitting on your ass being entertained by your cat. Even when I'm out in the field, I tend to take the road most traveled . . . and level.”

They could see countless miles of dense pine trees, with breaks here and there revealing fast-moving rivers.

Boompa said in voice fit for a tenured docent, “The Pine Barrens make up over one million acres of preserved forest land. Down there are towns lost to the ages, wetlands that may have never been seen by human eyes up close, more cranberries and blueberries than the world could eat in a year, farms, industry, modern homes, old homes, and somewhere in all that covered darkness, the Jersey Devil. If you look way over there, you can kinda see Atlantic City and Philadelphia through the haze.”

Ben knew logically how large the Pine Barrens were, but seeing it laid out like this was overwhelming. They could spend lifetimes exploring it and still not cover every square inch. The sheer vastness of the area worried him.

At least we'll always have cover
, he thought. Cover, to his way of thinking, was the perfect fallback position. But just as they would have places to hide, so would the creature.

“So where are we going tonight?” April asked.

Boompa pointed to the east. “I know a place we can basically disappear into the forest. There are plenty of areas between the Batsto and Wading rivers where we can set up. Once we're in that deep, we're officially in no-man's-land. We'll have to be extra careful.”

“Because of the Devil?” Daryl asked. He leaned over the rail, gazing at the distant ground.

“Well, that, yes, but there are lots of people who live out there that don't take kindly to strangers. There are whole generations of hermits who see things a different way. Not to mention some of the wildlife is a smidge on the untamed side.”

Ben watched Norm stroke his long goatee, looking slightly nervous.

“Okay, so we have the Jersey Devil, animals and crazy people to look out for,” Ben said. “Anything else?”

“The locals call themselves Pineys,” his mother added.

His father chuckled. “Well, there are also brown recluse and black widow spiders, usually tucked away under crumbling foundations and abandoned homes. Believe it or not, there are rattlesnakes out here and bobcats, too.”

April shivered. “I don't care about snakes and big cats, but spiders creep me the hell out.” She bent down to tuck the cuffs of her jeans into her socks.

“I thought witches dug spiders and creepy crawlies?” Daryl said, nudging her with his knee, almost knocking her over.

“Schmuck,” she said, punching his shin. Daryl pretended to be hurt, hopping on one leg.

His grandfather said, “We won't make it all the way to where I'd like us to be today, but we should get started. We'll at least be able to stow our trucks where they won't be stumbled upon.”

Norm Cranston's hi-tech digital camera clicked repeatedly as he took panoramic shots of the Pinelands. The cloudless sky revealed as much of the forest as one could ever see from this vantage point. Ben stayed with him while the rest of the family noisily walked down the tower stairs.

Ben saw a dark shape quickly rise above the pointed tops of a clump of pine trees several hundred yards to the west. He pointed it out to Norm.

“See if you can get a picture!” he said.

The blurred shape had a large wingspan and long body. It could have been a heron or even an eagle. And that's exactly what a rational person would think.

Norm snapped some shots before it dove back into the trees. They waited for a minute, but it didn't return.

“Let's see what w-we got here,” Norm said, pressing a button to review the series of pictures.

In all, he'd captured four frames of the winged shape. Even enlarging it on the small display screen didn't help bring out any definition.

“Is that a tail?” Ben asked.

Norm exhaled loudly. “Or it could be long legs trailing behind it. I'll get a better look when I download it onto my laptop. I'll bet my house and cat that it's just a regular bird. I mean, what are the odds we'd catch the Jersey Devil right off the bat, in the middle of the day?”

Ben stared across the green pines. His hand automatically went to his side.

“Better than you think,” he said.

The woman woke up to screaming. Wiping the dirt from her face, she stood, her back against the bare wall.

They'd come home. And they were hungry.

She looked up at them, saw the ravenous look in their eyes. Bumping and snipping at one another, playfulness bordering on something much darker.

When it was like this, it was best not to move. Holding her breath for as long as she could, she exhaled slowly, her stomach muscles moving outward oh-so slightly.

Become one with the wall. Sink as far into the earth as possible. But don't break eye contact. Never do that. No. That would be the sign. Weakness. They didn't like that. Especially not from her.

The change in them had been sudden, stark, terrifying. Seemingly overnight, everything had gone mad. The bad stuff had . . . altered them. Done something to their minds. If only she had been able to keep them here, safe, close, away from the bad stuff.

When the others had tried to stop them, it hadn't gone well. No, that was an understatement. It had gotten them killed. Then eaten. Their bones were right over there. Not a scrap of meat left on them.

She didn't want that to happen to her. So she quickly learned to fade into the background. They sniffed the air, wet snorts of dissatisfaction daring her to cringe.

Eventually, they turned and left her in the gathering gloom. Looking for more.

Her joints ached when she finally moved, padding silently across the floor in bare feet. She squeezed her breasts until it hurt. The pain centered her. Made her forget the fear.

She snatched a beetle skittering along an exposed root, crunching it between her teeth, tiny sharp bits stabbing her gums, her tongue. Before there was no more sun, she went to her hands and knees, pulling fat worms from the ground.

Eat, then sleep.

* * *

They drove for miles down a two-lane road that went from paved to simply carved into the forest. The whole trip, they only saw one car, and it was going the other way.

Carol sipped a Diet Coke in the middle seat of the minivan and worried. Yes, this area of the Barrens was on the remote side, but there should be people about, from locals to nature lovers out to hike the trails or canoe the rivers.

The murders have everyone spooked
, she thought. But she knew it went far deeper than that for many of the locals. They were afraid, and for a very good reason.

She wondered how Norm would react later when he saw the arsenal they'd brought. Maybe he'd be thankful once they told him the full story—the real story. He didn't know that she'd once been a Piney herself, though she'd left right out of high school to become a legal secretary for a law firm in Manhattan. All her childhood, she'd dreamed of getting off the family's cranberry farm and living in the city. And she did just that.

Until she'd met Bill when he was on leave. He'd caught her eye in a piano bar on East Fifteenth Street. Her friend remarked how he looked like a maniac, and he did look rather imposing, but Carol couldn't help her attraction. When he bought her a drink later in the night, and his scowl was lightened to a sideways smile thanks to a mix of whiskey and beer, she surrendered to his rough charms. Here was a man in the truest sense of the word. Carol had always been taller than all the girls in her class, and most of the boys. The handful of boyfriends she'd had looked like kids she was babysitting when they went out.

Not with Bill. They spent every waking moment of that weekend together. When he left, he did as he promised and wrote and called her constantly. Two months after that weekend, she told him she was pregnant.

Then came Ben, a wedding her parents didn't approve of, and she was back on a farm once again. Except this time around, she wanted to be there, and loved every minute with Bill and his parents, Sam and Lauren. They treated her like a daughter the moment they met her.

She was no longer a Piney, and that suited her just fine.

But the Pines weren't done with her. Not by a long shot. She couldn't deny it when Ben was born. Then came April and Daryl and the certainty that she would be back here one day.

Carol had long ago accepted that fate was always at work in everyone's lives. What were the odds that Bill would meet a girl from the Pines when he came to a city of millions of people? No, they were meant to be, just like what was happening now was meant to transpire.

As a Piney, she knew more about the Jersey Devil than what was in books and TV specials. Everything except the marks and what they meant. It couldn't be good. She'd gladly give up her life to know, if it meant sparing her children from the lifetime of worrying and confusion Lauren had suffered. Bill was able to compartmentalize it, bringing the question to light only when he felt the need. Carol, she fretted about it night and day, searching for anything, even among other legends, that could explain it. The few parallels she did find scared her.

Sliding in her seat when Daryl took a hard right into a cut in the trees just wide enough for the trio of cars, she said to her sons in the front seat, “You know I love you both, right?”

“Of course, we do,” Daryl replied. “We love you, too.”

Ben gave her a thumbs-up. He wasn't one for outward signs of affection, and she was fine with that. It was just a part of him and she loved all the parts, even the ones that came back from the military altered.

The minivan rocked from side to side. Branches scraped against the roof like nails on clay pots. The suspension cried out for its life as Daryl seemed to hit every pit in the so-called road.

“The van's going to need a paint job and new undercarriage when this is done,” Carol said. Some of her Diet Coke had spilled onto her lap.

“It's the best I can do, Mom,” Daryl said. “When Boompa said he was going to lead us off the beaten path, he wasn't kidding.”

They had to take it slow or else they'd wreck the minivan. “How in the hell is that old van not falling to pieces?” she said.

“It's old but it's solid, like Boompa,” Daryl said with a quick laugh. Ben kept his eyes on the road ahead, even though he wasn't the one driving, as if he could will his little brother to find the less rugged parts of the path.

They drove that way for miles. Carol watched the bright blue sky between the lush tree limbs take on a darker cast. “We better stop soon.”

No sooner had she said that than the rickety van's brake lights flashed. There was a white, sandy clearing ahead. Carol got out of the minivan. The sharp edge of the heat was dulled here, but the humidity seemed worse.

They stopped in the middle of a square of disintegrating structures. Partial stone walls remained here and there. A hulking iron tub, filled with old leaves and forest detritus, was the only solid object around. Carol spotted three crumbling steps leading to nowhere. A tree had grown around a metal pole, absorbing most of it.

Her father-in-law practically jumped out of the van.

“This'll be good for tonight,” he said. “There's a pond over that way if anyone wants to take a swim.”

“I think I'll pass,” April said.

“What is this place?” Carol said, her feet crunching on a small shard of glass stained brown.

Boompa looked around and sighed. “This was where Lauren and I used to come when we needed some alone time.” She thought she saw the shine of a tear at the corner of his eyes. “It was some kind of factory long before we found it. We never bothered to ask. Thought by doing that, we'd be giving away our private spot. There were a few more walls back then. Another fifty or so years and the whole thing will probably disappear.”

Wildflowers grew in bunches everywhere the sunlight could pierce the pine tree canopy. The air smelled of wild onions.

Carol looped her arm around his. “You know, I can picture you and Lauren sneaking out here, two young lovebirds making big plans.”

He patted her hand. “That we did, honey. That we did.”

“I'll get some things from the van,” Ben said with no interest in what this place meant for his grandfather.

She knew what
things
he meant.

“You going to be okay?” she said to her father-in-law.

He nodded. “It was my decision to come here. I'll be fine. I like to think Lauren's right here with us, even though it's . . .”

Walking away before he could finish, Bill clomped over and kissed the top of Carol's head. “It's kind of strange, being here. Dad used to tell me about this place. I had a totally different picture in my head, especially when I was a kid. Kind of thought there'd be a castle or something.” He watched his father gather some stuff from the van. “I like what he said.”

“Oh?”

“About Mom being here. With all the bad stuff to think about, that's the silver lining.”

She smiled. “I like to think he's right. I miss her, Bill.”

Her husband cradled her face in his hands. “I do, too. We're doing this as much for her as ourselves. If she's watching, and if we're lucky, she'll finally be at peace.”

Carol watched her children and Norm Cranston work on getting the tents erected. Ben, April and Daryl were all adults, but they would always be her babies. She was positive Lauren was watching them as well, proud as any grandma could be, and just like Carol, probably a little scared for them. They'd waited all their lives for this moment, and now that it was here, she was frightened.

“I just want us all to be safe,” she said. Then, gathering herself, she said, “Help me get this cooler out. I'm sure everyone is hungry and thirsty. What's that you used to say? ‘Smoke 'em if you got 'em'?”

* * *

Night came fast. They had a good fire going and full stomachs, thanks to Daryl's chuck wagon cuisine expertise. The family, usually as spirited as wild horses, was pretty quiet. No bickering between April and Daryl, which was rare. They were thick as thieves and bothersome as cats living in a sealed room.

At least the smoke from the fire kept the flies at bay. As the day wore on and they worked up a sweat, the flies and gnats descended on them as if they were fresh road apples.

Sam knew he had to fill Norm in on the reason they were all here. For some reason, he couldn't find the right words to start.

You're too old to stall for time
, he admonished himself.
Better to just spit it out.

He was about to start from the beginning when Norm jumped up. “I almost forgot to check those pictures.” He ran over to his SUV, opening the trunk.

“What pictures?” Sam said.

Ben said, “I saw something flying over the trees for a second while we were on the fire tower. Norm got a few pictures but we couldn't tell what it was on the camera.”

April was roasting marshmallows, three to a stick. They'd been burned black, just the way only she liked them. “It was probably just an egret,” she said.

Norm came back to the fire pit with a huge black laptop. He plugged a USB cord between it and his camera. It took some time to download.

“You know you won't have any place to charge that,” Bill said. His words sounded a little slurred. He'd only had two beers. Sam wondered how he'd missed his son becoming a lightweight.

“No worries,” Norm replied. “I have multiple battery charges. I use them all the time in the field. I like to write all my notes at night, while things are still fresh in my head. It's also good to load up any pictures I took as a backup.” He pushed his straw hat higher up on his head while he waited.

“Okay, let's find them,” he said, moving his finger around the pad on the laptop. Sam moved closer, as did the rest of the family.

It can't find us that fast, can it?
Sam thought.

Norm clicked on the first picture. A fuzzy shape looked to have burst from the top of the tree line, screaming towards the sun like a modern-day Icarus.

“Let's just enlarge this and do a little enhancement,” Norm muttered. Sam saw that April had let charred marshmallow flakes fall on Norm's shoulders. He was too busy fiddling to notice.

The blown-up picture didn't clear things up much.

“Whatever it was is brown all over,” Carol said. “Could be a hawk.”

“That's what I thought,” Ben said.

“Let me try another,” Norm said. The next two were even less defined. “It was moving really fast. It took off into the trees like it had sp-spotted prey.”

“One more to go,” Ben said.

Norm clicked to the next picture. He must have caught it in a moment when it paused before making its speedy descent.

Sam's stomach tightened.

“Hold on,” Norm said, fingers fidgeting with the control panel to sharpen the image. He clicked the enlarge button once, twice, three, four, five times, until the whole screen was filled with the creature.

“That's no fucking hawk,” April said.

“Jesus,” Ben said, dashing for the bag of guns.

Sam stared at the image of the beast from his nightmares. The creature had a long neck with wide, leathery wings. Its head was turned away from them, but he knew it would look like a hideous amalgam of horse and goat. And that was indeed a tail, long and thin, like a whip.

It knew they were here. From the moment they'd stepped into the Pine Barrens, it was stalking them.

“You son of a bitch,” Sam said to the still image of the Jersey Devil. “I'm not going to make it easy this time around.”

Norm looked at him. “You b-better tell me about the f-f-first time, now.”