by Hunter Shea
* * *
Norm ruminated on everything that he had seen and done over the past two days, wondering what the hell had possessed him to follow the Willet family to the brink of hell. Then he remembered those creatures in the cooler and the frenzy that would follow when he unveiled them to a world that had lost its sense of wonder. He was contemplating the potential windfall that would come his way when he heard the screams.
Sam Willet and Gordon Leeds were tending to the stunned girl staring off into nowhere. Well, not nowhere. Norm was sure she’d never be able to close her eyes without seeing the Jersey Devil.
He ran to the old foundation where the Willet boys and another woman were shouting. April was in the clutches of some wild woman.
Without a second thought, he leapt into the pit.
The events of the day had ceased to surprise him. Now he was simply torqued off that everywhere they turned, something or someone was out to get them.
“Let her go!” he shouted at the woman. Her eyes narrowed into hawk’s slits. Her hands tightened on April’s throat.
There were two heavy thuds behind him, presumably Daryl and Ben entering the fray.
Norm saw the filthy woman with the crazy eyes was out to lunch, orbiting a planet galaxies away from the one sitting topside. There was no point trying to persuade her to let April go. He was on her in several quick strides. Grabbing her wrists, he exerted all the pressure he could, feeling her bones grinding on one another. She gasped, letting April go. Daryl was there to catch his sister before she could fall and hit her head. Ben came up behind the wild woman, wrapping her up in a sleeper hold. She struggled against him, but it was no use. He had her in an iron grip. The veins on his forearms popped out, angry vines delivering more strength to taxed muscles.
When her eyes rolled up in her head, Norm said, “Ease up. You’ll kill her.”
Ben didn’t look at him, nor did he let the woman go.
“Stop it! She can’t breathe!”
“That’s the idea!” he snapped.
The woman started to go limp. Her eyelids fluttered and closed. “She’s out. She’s out.”
“Enough already,” April said, massaging her throat. Her voice snapped him out of his angry fugue. He let go, allowing the woman to slump to the ground in a boneless heap.
“That’s the woman I was talking about,” Daryl said. “Her name is Jane. She’s the one the Jersey Devil’s been doing stuff to. She asked me for help before when she had one of her lucid moments. I think she’s gone schizo or something.”
Ben walked away from Jane’s body. He stood behind his sister.
“Everybody all right?” Boompa asked from above.
“We’re f-fine,” Norm said. “We just need to get out of this h-hole.”
With everyone helping, they made quick work of getting Jane out. Boompa covered her in his flannel shirt.
Daryl was trying to wake her up when Gordon Leeds said to his grandfather, “Why didn’t you tell me about that?”
“How was I to know there was a woman out here?” the elderly Willet said.
“I don’t mean her,” Leeds said. He gestured toward Daryl. “I mean him. And her. Those marks.”
Norm tensed. The woman had the same red hoofprint mark on her side as the Willets.
“I needed you to take us here. I didn’t have time to recount my family’s history,” Sam said.
“If you’d told me, things could have been different,” Leeds said, shaking his head.
Sam squared his shoulders. “How so?”
Leeds, refusing to be intimidated, replied, “I would have told you to stay the hell away from here! If you’d have listened to common sense, you all could have avoided a world of trouble.”
Ben got close to the man. “And I may have shot you someplace non-vital to convince you otherwise.”
“Common sense?” April huffed. “There is no common sense out here.” She had finger marks around her neck. She turned so Leeds could see her own mark. “You telling me you know what this means?”
Leeds broke her icy gaze. His hands gripped his rifle tighter. Norm could see his knuckles whiten. “You all should never have come to the Pine Barrens. Never.”
“We didn’t have a choice!” Sam roared, startling everyone. “You have no idea what it did to my wife! Not just that day it took her, but every day after. And to see that same thing on our son, then our grandchildren. It broke her. The rotten branch on your family tree broke her. She died afraid. We’re here to put her soul at rest. And to make sure it stops now.”
Gordon Leeds slowly backed away.
“Take me home. Now. I showed you our place. You took your best shot. Take me home and leave New Jersey and never look back. You hear?”
“Not until you tell us what this means,” Daryl said.
The old man raised his gun, pointing it at Daryl. “I said take me home!”
Norm didn’t see how Ben had gotten behind the man, pressing the barrel of the AR-15 into Leeds’s ear. “You have two seconds before I turn your head to cherry Kool-Aid. One.”
Leeds dropped his gun. He lowered his head in resignation.
Everyone was too personally involved in this. Norm knew he had to step forward to try to make sense of everything.
“Look,” he said, “I don’t think you’ll find a group of people with a greater working knowledge of the Jersey Devil than wh-what we have here. For myself, I’ve never come a-across any part of the legend that mentions a Devil’s mark.”
“You ever see a legend do what you just saw, Mr. Cranston?” Leeds said. “Your legend and my family’s truth are entirely separate things.”
Sam Willet grabbed Leeds by the arm. “So what the hell is your family’s truth, Mr. Leeds?”
Leeds jerked his arm away. “If I knew your family had the mark, I’d have never taken you here, even with your guns pointed at me.”
A cold realization hit Norm. He said, “You’ve been protecting it. Despite everything that’s been going on around the Barrens, and I don’t for a m-minute believe you’re ignorant of the killings, you p-protected it. That’s why you’re an outcast in your own family. Without those marks, the odds of us ever coming across the Jersey Devil out here would have been sl-slim to none. No harm, no foul. But I’ve seen what happens. It’s dr-drawn to them. How does it work? How can it pass it on to others?”
When Leeds didn’t answer, Ben put the rifle to his chest.
Drawing a deep breath, Leeds said, “I’ve never seen the mark myself, but stories of other people with it have been passed down in my family for generations. The last time we heard about it was back in 1907. A woman was found wandering in the woods. She was catatonic. No clothes, no way to identify her. They said she had a bright birthmark on her side in the shape of a hoof. When the doctors examined her, they were shocked she was even alive. They assumed the mark came from a fall. She’d been tore up bad inside. She died a week after they took her in. Never once spoke a word. No one thought much about it at the time.
“Two years later, you all know that Jersey Devil sightings hit an all-time high. Folks saw it all the way from Jersey to Pennsylvania—sometimes being spotted in two distant places at the same time. That’s when my family realized what had happened to that woman. She’d bore his offspring. The mark was his brand, in case he’d need her again. You see, in his eyes, the women are breeders, and any human male child that comes from her has the potential of giving birth to a new breeder. The mark is a way for him to find his kin when he or she is near. Only certain parts of my family even know about the mark. Until your family, the mark hasn’t been properly passed down because the women either kill themselves or die. And whatever child they bear, well, they’re not exactly like you or I. You see, every hundred years or so, he mates. But the children that come out, the devil children, they have to be put down. They’re wild, untamed, a danger to everyone in the Pines.”
Norm said, “And if they draw too much attention, they become a danger to him.”
Leeds shook his head, looking to Sam. “Your wife must have been a hell of a strong woman. I don’t expect you all to understand. He never harmed anyone.”
“Except the women it’s taken,” Sam said, his anger near the boiling point. His face was red as a fire hydrant, his hands balled into fists. Norm had a feeling Gordon Leeds wasn’t going to make it home.
Leeds continued, “My grandfather, father and uncles waited right here in 1909 for the children to return. They always come back. It’s said there were two of them that time. They were shot down right quick, and burned on a pyre. That’s what we do! We take care of our own, and the Barrens.”
“And that’s what we’re doing—taking care of our own,” Sam grumbled. “My family isn’t cattle, or breeders.”
Sam strode over and punched Leeds in the gut, folding him in half.
April stared hard at the man as he struggled for breath. “My grandmother may not have had one of its devil children, but we’re here to sever the bloodline, just the same.”
“That’s not entirely true,” Sam Willet said.
He looked to his grandkids, his eyes sparkling with tears.
“Your grandmother did,” he said. “It died, stillborn. The doctors said if it had lived, it would have been severely deformed. They couldn’t make heads or tails what was wrong with it. This was a long time ago. The body was incinerated, written off as a cruel twist of fate for a young couple. But your grandmother and I, we knew. We had to hide our joy that the child was dead. For a while, we actually thought we’d been saved.”
Norm looked down at a groaning Gordon Leeds. It was all almost too much to bear. What he thought was an impossible legend was a truth so bizarre, he was stunned into silence. As long as the mark was passed down, future generations would be at risk if they ever came near the Pine Barrens. They would never be entirely safe.
Norm slipped his arm over Sam’s massive shoulders. “You’re doing the only thing you can to save your family, and any others that bear the stain. You have to k-kill it.”
“But can it even be killed?” Daryl wondered. “If he’s right, this thing has been alive for centuries. How do we know it’s even mortal?”
Sam looked up at the empty blue sky. “Because it bleeds. If it can bleed, it can die.”
Chapter Forty-one
The first two bands took the stage later than scheduled with minor audio issues, but Erik Smythe had gotten a handle on things midway through Mankiller’s set list. The turnout was phenomenal. The perfect summer weather helped, but so did the cause. It was incredible to see so many people in the community giving their support and having a good time in the process. They’d taken a moment of silence in between the second and third bands to remember everyone who had lost or taken their lives because they’d been bullied. Erik had noticed quite a few tears. He hoped the feeling would last beyond today.
“How many you think are out there?” Darren asked.
While Erik checked the soundboard for the next act, he scanned the crowd. It was hot, so there were a lot of people in bathing suits. The smell of fried dough and sausage and peppers wafted over the fairgrounds, making his stomach rumble. All he’d had today was coffee. He needed to get something in his stomach soon.
“Maybe five hundred,” he said. “Which is about four hundred more than I thought would come.”
Darren laughed. “You’re such a fatalist.”
“My worldview keeps me full of surprises when things go right. How are you doing with that thing?”
Darren was fiddling with the controls of a drone that he had borrowed off their ninth-grade earth science teacher, who was at this moment staring at a couple of college girls in cutoff shorts, eating frozen bananas. Erik figured if he charged guys to watch them eat their treats on stage, he’d raise enough money to launch anti-bullying awareness campaigns twice around the world.
“It’s not as easy as I thought it would be,” Darren said. “When I look at it in the sky, I’m okay. The moment I check the video feed, I get disoriented and screw up the flight pattern.”
There was a small video screen on his lap, displaying the concert from a hundred feet above. The near silent drone circled the event. To Erik, it made the concert look even bigger.
“That is just so cool,” Erik said. “And it’s recording?”
“Yep.” The tip of Darren’s tongue poked out of the corner of his mouth as he maneuvered the drone to sweep over the stage, capturing the tops of the heads of the band as they plugged in their guitars and assembled the drum kit. “I’ll have to recharge it later because I want to get some night shots. With all the lights we have set up and everything, it’ll look awesome.”
“Just don’t break it. Mr. Berenson will kill you.”
“That I can live with. As long as he can’t flunk me.”
“Those days are behind us, brother.” Erik shielded his eyes to look at the drone. It was pale blue, so hard to pick out in the clear sky. It looked like something out of Star Wars, a round flying droid hovering over them. The video it was taking was going to sell like crazy.
“I’m going to take it out over the beach,” Darren said.
“Don’t go over the water,” Erik warned him. “If something goes wrong, you don’t want to lose it in the friggin’ ocean.”
“You worry too much. Check this out.” He handed Erik the monitor.
He watched the fairgrounds disappear in a blur as the drone turned toward the beach. Soon it was sand and sparkling water, rippling waves foaming at the shore. The drone dipped, getting closer to the beach. Erik could see people sitting in beach chairs and lying on blankets, soaking up the sun. He watched a particularly busty blonde apply sunscreen to the back of a tan brunette in perfect clarity.
“Sweet.” As much as he’d like to stare at girls all day from the safety of the monitor, he had work to do. “Bring it back around here.”
The angle tilted up as a gust of wind buffeted the drone.
Erik saw something big and brown zip across the screen. “What the hell was that?”
“What? What?” Darren said, concentrating on controlling the drone.
“Turn it so the camera is pointing that way,” Erik said, showing his friend which way to go.
“Why? What did you see? Was it some chick who lost her bikini top?”
The drone leveled out, but all he could see was blue sky and the tops of the buildings to the south of the fairgrounds.
“No, I have no idea what it was. Maybe it was a kite or a balloon or something.”
Someone on the microphone on the stage said, “Erik to the stage. Erik to the stage.”
He looked over to see the girl lead singer of the next group waving him over. Handing the monitor back to Darren, he wove his way through the crowd, every now and then glancing up at the sky.
* * *
Joanne and Noah were down to their last fifty fliers. After the visit from Norm the cryptozoology dude, Noah said they had to get their asses in gear now. The music fest was packed. When people took the time to glance at the flier, saw it was a weekend Jersey Devil tour, she could tell a lot were interested. Some even asked for extra fliers so they could give them to their friends.
Noah chucked the empty box in the garbage. “This is a good sign,” he said.
“What’s a good sign?”
“I don’t see any of our fliers in the trash can.”
“Come to think of it, I haven’t seen them littering the grass, either.”
He pulled her in for a kiss. “What do you say we hit the beach after we hand the rest out? Might as well take advantage of it before tour requests start rolling in.”
“Good thing I have my bathing suit on under here,” Joanne said. “Always prepared. But first, I’m hungry. You mind getting me some sausage and peppers?”
“By your command,” he said with an exaggerated bow. “I’m sure you’ll be out of fliers by the time I get back.”
She watched him disappear into the crowd, heads bopping
to a techno band she’d never heard of but was pretty good considering everyone in it looked to be twelve.
All the fear of going back in those woods had been replaced by excitement the past couple of days. Noah’s enthusiasm was contagious, and she was having fun riding with it. Today being so beautiful seemed like a good sign.
“Jersey Devil tours,” she called out above the unceasing beat. Two people in their early twenties turned around.
“Cool, let me check that out,” a guy with a scraggly mustache and hipster fedora said, plucking a flier from her grasp. A girl next to him did the same.
Noah was right, she was going to be out before he got back.
* * *
Gordon Leeds hadn’t said a word since they’d crammed into the van. The first step would be getting Heather, Daniela and Jane to a hospital. Sam wondered how many orderlies it would take to get Jane in the building. She was still out, but from what Daryl told him, she could fight like a hungry tiger.
For a moment back there, he thought he’d be taking Leeds to the emergency room as well. Lord knows he’d like to give Gordon Leeds a reason to end up on a gurney. The man had been protecting the Jersey Devil, along with some of his relatives, past and present, while covering up what it had been doing to young women all along. The fact that the Devil out there now was the same one born into this world over two hundred years ago worried Sam. Despite what he’d said, there was a niggling of doubt. Maybe it couldn’t be killed. Or perhaps it had only survived because it could hide in the Barrens seemingly forever while being protected whenever it sought a mate to procreate. And this was the first time, if Leeds was to be believed, that an entire family had grown with the mark. Three generations were gunning for it now.
What kept Sam from hurting the man was knowing that he’d held on to his own secret as well. He’d never told his family about the child Lauren had lost, because they were both ashamed and terrified of what had come out of her that day—Lauren’s shame that a monster had been her first. Sam’s constant worry was never knowing the full extent of what it meant not just to Lauren, but their healthy children who came into this world branded by a beast.
