by Hunter Shea
Daniela nodded. “He’s harmless. Now, if Tony brought his brother Jimmy along, I’d be sleeping in the car.”
They laughed, tapping their beer cans together. Jimmy was a year younger than Tony and the quintessential guido. The smell of his heavy cologne would have been enough to chase the wildlife away for miles.
Tony came back and laid an armful of rocks near them. “Got more to go,” he said, taking a swig from Heather’s beer.
Justin was hacking away at a fallen branch as thick as his forearm twenty feet to their left. Tony walked with an exaggerated swish to his hips in his direction, plucking a jagged rock from the ground. “Now no looking at my ass, no matter how hard it is to resist,” he said.
“Boys,” Daniela said with a shake of her head.
“Meanwhile, you know him and Justin check out our asses every chance they get. I hope they get a fire going soon because I really am starving,” Heather said.
When Daniela didn’t reply, she nudged her. “You have to be as hungry as I am.”
Daniela was looking up somewhere over the heads of Tony and Justin. “Hey, I thought bats only came out at night,” she said. “I wish I brought a hat now.”
Heather looked at the bits of darkening sky between the swaying cones of the pine trees. She didn’t see anything. But she thought she heard something, like a high chittering that could very well be a bat.
“I won’t be sitting out here long if there are going to be bats everywhere,” she said.
“Hey, guys,” Daniela called out. “Watch out for bats!”
Tony and Justin froze, eyes furtively looking for the winged rats. “What bats?” Tony bellowed.
“I think I saw something flying above you.”
Justin held the axe over his head. “They better not even try to mess with me. I’ll smite them with my Paul Bunyan peacekeeper.”
Heather snorted beer from her nose. “Ow, that burns.” She broke into a fit of laughter. Daniela wiped beer from her upper arm.
“Gross,” she said, cringing.
“Sorry,” Heather said with her hand over her mouth.
There were several heavy thumps as the rocks fell from Tony’s arms.
“Bro, do bats have tails?”
Justin let out a nervous laugh. “What? No, they don’t have tails. Not even in the comics.”
Tony said, “I swear, I just saw something that looks a lot like a bat circling over there.” He pointed to a spot over Justin’s shoulder. “And it had a freaking tail.”
Heather wasn’t falling for it. Tony had played enough pranks on her over their two-year relationship to the point where she’d grown a thick prank callus. But Daniela looked like she was starting to tense up. So was Justin, but she assumed he was just playing along to “scare the girls.”
“Ha-ha, butthole,” Heather said. “Get cracking so we can make a fire.”
Something shook a branch overhead. It sounded as if the world’s heaviest squirrel had leapt onto a heavy limb. Heather jolted.
“Great, now you have me all tense,” she said, glaring at Tony. He didn’t even look her way.
“It could be a bird,” Justin said. “There’s all kinds of swamps and ponds and stuff around. Those long skinny birds are everywhere. You know, cranes and shit like that.”
Tony bent down and gripped a heavy rock.
“I don’t think that was a crane,” he said.
“Come on, guys, cut it out!” Heather shouted.
Tony glared at her. “I’m not messing around, Heath!”
Daniela said, “I’m going in the tent. Come with me.”
Heather’s stomach bunched into a knot the moment she met Tony’s eyes. He wasn’t kidding around. He saw something, and it was freaking him out.
“Why don’t we all go in the tents until whatever it is passes through?” Heather said.
The boys shook her idea off. Even outside their element, they still had to show they were alpha males. “I wanna see it for myself,” Justin said.
Heather shot back, “Suit yourself. We’re bringing all the beer into the tent and—”
Daniela’s scream cut her off.
Three dark brown shapes swooped down with horrifying screeches. Before Tony and Justin could react, the shadowy blurs were on them. Heather cried out the same moment Tony yelped in agony.
“Tony!”
Hearing her voice, the creatures retreated back to the sky.
“Oh, my God!” Daniela wept, collapsing into Heather.
The winged creatures were gone, but so were most of Tony and Justin. All that remained of them were their legs, all four standing upright, everything from their kneecaps up missing. Blood ran down what remained of their legs, until one by one, they collapsed with wet thuds.
Heather screamed so hard and long, she was sure she’d never be able to stop.
Chapter Thirteen
Bill Willet drove the old van down the Jersey Turnpike. They’d just crossed the George Washington Bridge, having endured a traffic snarl that set them at a snail’s pace for two miles. He kept glancing at the temperature gauge, sure the old rust bucket would overheat. The last thing they needed was a trip to a mechanic. And if the heat they were packing were to be accidentally discovered, well, they’d be up shit creek without a paddle, boat or arms to swim.
April sat next to him, her window wide open, enjoying the light summer breeze. Bill caught quite a few men checking her out back when they were inching along. It was hard to resist his fatherly instinct to tell them to keep their eyes in their heads, even though April was in her mid-twenties and already divorced. Instead, he settled for one of his world-class sneers, which looked to have given at least one fella a case of whiplash as he jerked his gaze back to the road. Bill only had one baby girl and that she would remain until his dying day.
Which may be sooner than you think.
His left hand shivered and he dropped it to his side so no one could see. His test results would be there when they returned from Jersey, but he already knew. Something was wrong, had been wrong for some time now. Huntington’s disease. He’d had to sneak peeks in the computer, reading up on what was possibly killing him. What he read was far from encouraging.
“So tell me, Boompa, how long did Grams live in Jersey?” April asked.
The old man had taken a nap in the back when traffic was tied up, but he was up and fresh now.
“Oh, it wasn’t long. Maybe a couple of years, though it felt like an eternity at the time. Her father moved the family to the Pinelands right after she graduated high school in the Bronx. He was a foreman of a construction crew and went wherever the work took him. Your grams and I had been seeing each other for about a year when her father broke the news. We were in love by then, so I moved not long after.”
“That’s so sweet,” April gushed. “What were you, like nineteen at the time?”
“Just turned twenty. I wanted to marry her right then so she could stay in New York with me, but my parents advised me to wait. It was good advice. I moved close to her and spent the next two years building up my savings so we could have a good start.”
April curled the ends of her hair in her fingers. “I wish I had waited before marrying Alan. If I was smart, he’d still be waiting and I’d have forgotten all about him by now.”
Bill pulled into the left lane to get around a slow moving SUV. “Look on the bright side. You got out the moment you realized what an absolute waste of space he was and you’re not tethered to him through a child,” he said. He couldn’t count the days and nights he and Carol had fretted, waiting for April to gush that she was pregnant, both of them knowing the marriage was destined to crash and burn.
Instead of defending her choices, April smiled. “Amen to that, Dad. Testify!”
She whooped and gave them both a high-five. He admired his daughter from the corner of his eye. April had been as spirited as a wild horse since the moment she’d learned to walk. Alan never stood a chance. Bill wasn’t sure any man did.
> Even though she’d heard Boompa’s story a hundred times, she prodded, “So, was the plan to get married and stay in, what was that town?”
“Tabernacle,” her grandfather said. Bill thought he saw the man’s face turn wistful. “It was nothing but farms out there. Your grandmother’s father rented a house on a small plot of land on the outskirts of one of those farms, though he didn’t do any farming himself. It was cheap and actually pretty cozy, if I remember correctly. Much better than the room I rented at a boardinghouse. I’d been working in a cranberry field while we kept company and was sick to death with the smell of them. Couldn’t get the scent out of my clothes or the room.” He scratched his beard, sighing.
April said, “And you both left Tabernacle after . . .” she paused. There was no need to say it. Everyone in the family knew what happened next.
“Yep. She couldn’t stay there. It was too much for her nerves. Oh, I put on a good face, but truth be told, I was getting kind of skittish out there. The nights were so dark and quiet, but after what happened, I imagined all sorts of things. What made it worse was knowing that my imagination was less terrifying than the truth.”
The vibe in the van grew dark, bordering on melancholy.
Three generations of Willets had been haunted by what had happened down in Tabernacle, smack dab between two forests that were the perfect hiding places for the unspeakable.
All Bill wanted now was a way to put an end to it all while he still could, much like his father. An end to the worry, the speculation, the doubt of what the future held for him and his children. What had plagued them couldn’t be found in any of the Jersey Devil stories over the centuries. Their tie to the legendary creature was uniquely their own.
And it was high time they severed it.
* * *
“Holy shit Mark, you have to see this!”
Kelvin Anders fumbled with his cell phone, taking picture after picture of his grisly find. He and his neighbor Mark Oberman made monthly trips all around the Pinelands, searching for the remains of the unbelievable number of ghost towns that lay hidden in its depths. He’d once read that there were more ghost towns in the Jersey Pinelands than the American West.
So much of the sandy soil in the Pinelands, called sugar sand, acted like a kind of quicksand for old mills, factories and homes. Over time, whatever was still standing was eventually sucked into what became a sandy grave. Kelvin and Mark liked to locate and document those towns, taking pictures for themselves only, even if it was just a few foundations or scraps of weathered timber. It was a harmless hobby that got them out of the house. Every foray into forgotten history was capped by a trip to the Cornerstone Bar a few blocks from their house, where they’d alternate buying rounds and look at the pictures they’d taken.
Kelvin was pretty sure they wouldn’t be ogling these snapshots.
Mark jogged over with heavy footsteps. He’d only gone twenty or so feet and he was already winded. Neither of them were getting any younger, these trips in the woods pretty much the extent of their exercise. Too much time on their asses in office cubicles had made them soft.
He recoiled when he looked at what Kelvin was photographing. “What the hell?”
“You think some illegal hunter is dumping carcasses here?” Kelvin asked, holding a hand over his nose. The sound of buzzing flies was deafening.
“Not with a pile like that,” Mark said, stepping back but still enveloped in a dome of putrescence. “If I didn’t know better I’d swear that was a bear stockpile, but I don’t think they gather up that many kills in one place. And I’m not even sure there are any bears out here anyway.”
Out here anyway was near Speedwell, on the edge of the Wharton State Forest. They’d been looking for the remains of a town called Friendship, which used to be one of the biggest cranberry operations before the turn of the twentieth century. They never expected to find this.
Kelvin bent closer to the small pit. Inside was a circle of skinned animal carcasses. Chunks of meat had been torn from hides, organs left to spill out of split cavities. Bones protruding through denuded flesh appeared to have been snapped—soft tissue like eyes and tongues either devoured or liquefied.
“It looks like there are at least three deer, a couple of dogs, maybe a coyote, definitely some cats. And I don’t know what the hell that is,” he said, pointing to a large pile of random meat and bone.
“I’m gonna be sick,” Mark said. He stumbled off to puke against a tree.
Kelvin was as fascinated as he was repulsed. Who or what would do something like this? Could it have been one of those Satanic cults? Maybe they’d had a mass sacrifice. But did Satanic cults still exist? He couldn’t remember the last time he’d read a reputable report about one. That was all sensationalist stuff from the ’70s and urban legends told to scare kids from going out into the woods or abandoned homes.
More likely it was the work of a crazy person, someone who had checked out of society and was living out here like a wild man. Which meant he and Mark had just stumbled into his special place.
There had always been that fear, traipsing in the middle of nowhere. The Barrens were notorious for being home to strange and outright aggressive people who didn’t want to be found. If what was in this pit was any indication, someone a tad on the violent side could be very close.
“I think it’s best we get out of here, now,” Kelvin said. He was done taking pictures. He couldn’t shake the sudden feeling they were being watched. Normally, he’d say it was his own mind messing with him, but not today. Not with a ring of flayed animals in front of him.
“You read my mind,” Mark said. He’d locked one arm to support himself against a tree. He looked as green as spring grass. “Maybe we should call the cops.”
“We’re definitely calling the cops,” Kelvin said as he hustled past his friend. “Come on.”
He heard Mark culling wads of spit deep in his throat. “Just let me get everything out,” he said.
Their car was parked on the side of the road, maybe a hundred yards away. Kelvin wished he could teleport right into the driver’s seat. Every noisy step they made was a beacon, a dinner bell ringing for the maniac who had left the gory tableau for them to find. Absent any weapons, he grabbed his keys, three of them poking from between his fingers as a makeshift brass knuckles with bite.
He waited for Mark, staring ahead, looking for signs of anyone that could pop out on their way to the car. Sometimes on their excursions, they would bring Mark’s metal detector. It would be as good as a steel bat right about now. Too bad it was in his buddy’s garage at the moment.
“What the hell is taking you so long?” Kelvin said, turning.
Mark was nowhere to be seen.
“Mark? Mark?”
His heart went into an instant gallop. Kelvin walked slowly back to where Mark had been standing.
Where the hell could he have gone? He’s about as nimble as a hobbled bull.
“Hey, Mark! Quit fucking around.”
His heart raced. Mark wanted to get out of Dodge as much as he did.
Had the person who filled that pit found him chucking up the last of his lunch?
But if there’d been a struggle, he would have heard. It was as if Mark had been sucked though a sinkhole. With the soil the way it was out here and all kinds of underground waterways, that was a distinct possibility.
Kelvin cupped his hands around his mouth, no longer worrying about alerting a madman in the woods. “Maark! Mark, where are you?”
He stopped short when he got to the tree Mark had puked on. His slick, brown vomit was still there, running slowly down the jagged bark.
There was no sinkhole.
For a moment, darkness crept into his periphery and he felt the ground pull out from under him.
Mark’s severed head lay in the leaves, the flesh of one cheek flecked with dirt, his eyes wide open and terrified. As Kelvin stood transfixed by the mind-numbing sight, he thought he saw his friend’s mouth open slightly,
as if he wanted to say some last words before the final vestige of life bled from his soul.
Kelvin turned and ran, spitting up bile as he navigated between the trees faster than he’d moved since high school.
Chapter Fourteen
Norm had timed it so he’d arrive at the agreed-to spot in the Pinelands at the same time as the Willets. After he’d landed at Newark, he rented a small SUV with four-wheel drive, just in case. He’d heard a lot of the more remote roads in the Barrens were barely roads at all, eager to grab hold of unprepared cars and never let go.
He’d come early so he could make a couple of stops and interview a few of the Jersey Devil witnesses. Again, they all passed his BS detector. He’d been most skeptical of the couple, Joanne and Noah, simply because they had a vested interest in having their own encounter with the creature. What could be better for a Jersey Devil tour business?
When he saw the look of genuine fear in Joanne’s eyes and heard Noah talk about how they’d delayed starting the business because the whole thing had made them nervous, he knew they were telling the truth.
So was the kid, Wyatt, who was more excited than afraid now that he was in the safety of his home and could brag a little that he’d faced the Jersey Devil and won. His father shot him a warning glance when it looked like he was getting too enthusiastic.
“Don’t forget,” Wyatt’s father had said, “none of this would have happened if you hadn’t stolen my gun. None of this should have happened.” His father was a big man with a neat, black beard and forearms that looked like they could cleave a steel girder in two. Norm wouldn’t want to mess with him. And by the look on the kid’s face, neither did Wyatt.
The plan was to meet the Willet clan in the small town of Chatsworth, simply because it was known as the Gateway to the Pine Barrens. Norm loved the small American town look and feel of the place. He took a few dozen pictures and some video with his phone, which was better than the old video cameras he used to lug around in the early nineties. Chatsworth was famous in the area for their annual cranberry festival, cranberries having supported countless businesses and families in the region over the past couple of centuries. He was kind of disappointed that the festival was months away. Being from the Carolinas, Norm loved a good country fair. He remembered working the ox pull matches at the Beaufort Days Fair when he was a teen. Just thinking about it brought back the smell of fried dough and barbecued meat, the laughter of kids on rides the local fire department had erected, and most of all, the beautiful girls all dolled up for a night on the midway.
