The Jersey Devil (5 page)

“No way,” Wyatt said.

“Come on. How many times have I let you use my BB gun? Like a hundred?”

“I don't mind going last,” Jackson said. Wyatt knew why. He was hoping there'd be no more bullets by the time it was his turn. Sure, he was intrigued that Wyatt had swiped the gun, but he could tell his friend was kind of scared.

“How about this,” Wyatt replied, a compromise popping into his head. “I'll take the first shot, but then you take the next three.”

“Shit, yeah,” Alex said with a big grin.

There were seven bottles on the branch, crying out to be shattered. “I think that's enough,” Wyatt said.

“Just one more,” Jackson said, balancing a Coors bottle with the tip of his finger. Alex ran up beside Wyatt.

“You think it has a huge kick?”

“I doubt it. It's just a small handgun.”

“Yeah, well, you better be ready, just in case. I think you're supposed to keep your arm stiff, like with your elbow locked,” Alex said.

“Don't do that,” Jackson said, still working at the bottles. “You have to keep it loose. I watched a bunch of videos on YouTube about it.”

Wyatt knew enough to listen to Jackson. Of the three of them, he was the one with the good grades. When he wasn't studying, he was looking up how to do all kinds of stuff on the Web.

Wyatt opened the chamber so he and Alex could see the bullets nestled in their chambers.

“This is crazy,” Alex said. “Can I hold the spare bullets?”

“Sure.” Wyatt fumbled for them in his pocket, handing them over. “Come on, Jackson, I'm dying of old age out here.”

When he looked over to his friend, he almost dropped the gun.

Alex let out a short, incomprehensible grunt, taking an involuntary step back.

Jackson saw their faces and said, “What's the matter?”

He didn't see the creature standing right behind him.

Jackson screamed as Wyatt pulled the trigger.

Diving to his right, he covered his ears as his friend fired off all six rounds. He thought for sure he'd been hit.

“Stay down!” Alex screamed.

Stay down? Why did he want him to stay down? Was Wyatt reloading to finish him off? If he was shot way out here, he was as good as dead.

Rolling onto his back, Jackson felt dizzy, he assumed from blood loss.

A fetid gust of wind blanketed his upturned face. He had to fight to keep his lunch down. Before he could take a clear breath, another blast of oxygen left to rot burrowed down his nose and throat.

Looking up, he screamed.

A creature that shouldn't be possible in nature flapped its wings ten feet over him. Thick green fluid leaked from a spot on its rib cage.

Wyatt shouted, “Get the fuck away from him!”

He must have reloaded, because two more cracks split the air, deafening Jackson.

The creature bleated like a wounded goat, which is kind of what its face looked like, turned and pushed its way through the air currents to the top of the trees. Jackson watched it circle once before heading what he assumed was south. His mind was in such a fog, he wasn't sure he could even spell his own name at this point.

There was a mad crunching of leaves, and Wyatt and Alex were on their knees beside him.

“Are you okay?” Wyatt asked. Sweat poured down the sides of his head. His face was pale and Jackson detected a slight tremor in his grip as he helped him into a sitting position. “I didn't hit you, did I?”

Jackson took several breaths, running his hands over his body, looking for wounds or blood. He almost wept with relief when he realized he was unscathed.

“I'm fine. I'm fine.”

Alex urged them, “Come on, we gotta get outta here. What do we do if that thing comes back? We only have two bullets left.”

Wyatt agreed with rapid nods. “He's right. Come on, Jack.”

The world spun when he stood, but he didn't fall. Alex was already twenty feet ahead of them, his legs picking up speed. Wyatt held on to Jackson's elbow as they ran to catch up.

“What was that thing?” Jackson asked, constantly checking what sky he could see through the gaps in the trees.

“Dude, I think it was the Jersey Devil.”

As much as Jackson wanted to deny it, he was afraid Wyatt was right. Everyone who lived in the Pinelands knew about the Jersey Devil. They were taught the legend over and over by older family members and friends. You could throw a stone in any direction in the Pinelands and hit someone who had either had an encounter with the horrifying beast or knew someone who had.

The thing that flapped its leathery wings over him had to be the Devil. It was almost as large as a man with a head bordering on a goat and a horse, with a long neck, compact body and long, whipping tail.

The boys ran, not slowing down even when painful stitches stabbed their sides. When they finally burst from the tree line into Wyatt's yard, they collapsed onto the freshly mowed grass, lying on their backs, gasping.

After a while, Alex said, “Holy shit, Wyatt, you shot the fucking Jersey Devil!”

Wyatt ran his hand over his sweaty forehead.

“I did, didn't I?”

Jackson added, “I don't think anyone's ever done that before. I'm pretty sure you hit it, too. It looked like it was bleeding, but not regular blood.”

They lay in silence, cautiously scanning the sky.

There was no sense swearing one another to an oath of silence. One, or all three of them, was going to tell. Some secrets were just too big to fit inside a person.

* * *

Sam Willet spent a hot afternoon in the henhouse collecting eggs and making minor repairs. In this kind of cloying heat, the stench could burn the nose hairs from a man, but Sam had developed an immunity to it long ago. A farmer with a strong olfactory sense was in for a long, tough haul.

The rest of the family was scattered about the three farms, with April happy in the air-conditioned store. He grabbed a green bandana from his pocket and wiped his brow. The hens clucked nonstop, chattering on about whatever birds with a brain the size of a pea concerned themselves with.

There was a time when he used to talk back, light-heartedly discussing his day and the chores he had to do while they got to sit around and yammer all day. His wife had caught him a couple of times, and the ribbing he'd endured was enough to shut his yap for good. Lauren was probably watching him right now, waiting for him to slip into chicken whisperer mode. Sam smiled at the thought.

He eyed the large eyebolt in the floor of the coop. Before he'd put a spit shine to the coop, he hadn't been able to see it through the feathers and straw and shit.

“Can't hurt to check on things,” he said aloud to himself, not the hens.

Bending down to grab the ring wasn't as easy as it used to be, but he also wasn't grumbling in pain. The old back still had some life left in it, despite decades of doing his best to wear it out.

As he pulled, a doorway in the floor opened. One of the more curious hens hopped down to inspect it and fell into the darkness.

“Damn stupid bird,” he chuffed, pulling the door all the way back until it rested at a ninety-degree angle.

He walked down a narrow set of wooden steps, reached out, found the chain and pulled. A sixty-watt bulb gave light to the tightly packed room. Sam grabbed the hen with both hands and brought it back up to the coop. He then closed the door behind him. It didn't even so much as creak. Sam always carried a can of three-in-one oil in his back pocket. He had a thing about rusty hinges.

Sam ran his hands over the mounted .308 caliber Russian SKS rifles. There were six in all, purchased over the years at various gun shows. Metal cases containing all the ammo needed to hold back an army were stacked beneath the rifles. The SKS was a workhorse of a rifle, able to shoot even when banged around or covered in muck. They'd always been his personal favorite. Opposite them were Ben's AR-15s, polished to a high gloss.

There were plenty of handguns, so many he'd lost count years ago, as well as tasers, utility knives, daggers and even bayonets. April's first pink pepper spray was on a shelf, the contents empty. She'd emptied it in her ex's face one night when he wasn't taking to the notion of divorce. The next day, she'd come down here and placed it on that shelf as a reminder that all those years of preparation had been worth it.

Having lived through several wars, including the scariest of all, the Cold War, Sam swore that he'd never be caught with his pants around his ankles. He wasn't one of those doomsday preppers, and truth be told, if a nuclear bomb hit, his biggest hope was that the farm was far enough from any major targets to keep them safe from the initial fallout. He'd meant to build a proper shelter in the seventies, but the demands of the farm took up all his time. No, if a bomb ever hit, the family would have to stick to the basement of the house or the storm cellar.

Or the weapons cache, though that wouldn't hold a person for long. He'd stocked some jugs of water and K-rations just in case, but it wouldn't see anyone trapped down here through to the end of Armageddon.

That really wasn't what this room was for.

If he wanted to do what no one else had ever done, he needed to be ready. No bringing a knife to a gunfight. Better to bring an atom bomb to a fistfight.

Boompa settled into the lone chair, took down a rifle and began the calming process of cleaning it. He whistled an old Mel Tormé tune, happy to be out of the heat and away from the nattering chickens for a spell.

* * *

Daryl Willet lay sprawled on the couch, a bowl of chocolate ice cream on his stomach, his Mets hat pulled down low over his brow. He watched a rerun of
The King of Queens
, his laughter making the bowl teeter on his belly. It'd been a long hot day and he was bone tired.

“That's where I want to live,” he said. “Right there in Queens. I want neighbors I can touch just by reaching out my window, restaurants and clubs down the block and easy access to the city.”

April was in a rocker tapping away on her laptop. Since her divorce, she'd moved into the farmhouse at the Willet Farms vineyard. The vineyard provided the grapes for a thriving winery over in New Paltz.
Drink Local, Taste International
was the slogan. The vineyard was another example of Boompa's taking a gamble and winning. She loved the cozy house, especially the part about not having Alan anywhere near it, but she also liked to be around her family. She ate dinner with them most nights and hung around for a couple of hours later. It was comforting, and Lord knew she needed comfort.

“You also want to deliver packages and be married to a wife who scares the crap out of you?” she said.

Daryl tipped his cap up. “I'd work in Manhattan or Brooklyn, get a nice desk job making six figures. My wife would be a Puerto Rican honey who owned a hair salon and left smoke in her tracks because she's so hot.”

April laughed. “That's a pretty nice fantasy life you have there, you sad, sad schmuck.”

He cringed. “Hag. It could happen. I'm not old like you and Ben. I have my whole life ahead of me.”

“Oh, please, you're not that much younger than me.”

“Five years buys me a lot of time,” he said, spooning the rest of the ice cream in his mouth. “All I know is that I don't want to spend my life on the farm. A whole different world is just an hour car ride away.”

“Well, then you should look at going back to college. Not many six-figure jobs out there for a guy with one year of community college under his belt.”

April winced when she said it. School was a sore spot with Daryl. The kid had always had his head in the clouds. He could never stick to anything beyond the honeymoon phase. It was a miracle he'd made it through high school. He'd kept threatening to leave Pine Bush and head out to Alaska to work the pipeline at the start of his senior year. He'd even gone so far as to buy a plane ticket. The plan was to head out west with his partner in crime, Brant Halpert, but Brant got cold feet and Daryl never made it to the airport. Brant was now a baby daddy, working as a waiter at an Olive Garden in Newburgh.

“I've been looking into it,” he replied, surprising her.

“Really? Where?”

“I was thinking of going to the Culinary Institute in Manhattan. Who knows? I downloaded the fall course booklet last week.”

April leaned over the arm of the rocker and gave him a pat on the shoulder. His muscles, even in repose, were rock hard. “Way to go, little bro. I'm proud of you.”

“I'm only worried about one thing,” he said.

“You know Mom and Dad will pay for you. You'd be the first one in the family to get a bona fide degree.”

“It's not that.” He sat up, settling the bowl on the table. “I'm worried about what it would do to Boompa.”

April sighed. “You know he wants what's best for you. And he knows you're not cut out for this. Cooking, yes. Heavy-duty working year in and year out, no. You bitch and whine too much to be a full-time farmer. For a big gorilla, you're soft as fresh shit.”

He swiped at her with a pillow and missed.

She knew their grandfather loved Daryl in a very special way. She didn't begrudge them their close relationship. Boompa had always been a fan of underdogs and lost causes. Daryl was a true dark horse. They all knew he just needed to find his thing and he'd ride it to the top.

“I think it might upset him too much, my being away,” Daryl said. “He's not getting any younger. What if something happened to him while I was away?”

You're afraid of losing him
, she thought.

“It's only New York. You'd be home weekends if you wanted and could even drive home for dinner a couple times a week, if you didn't have too much homework—or partying. He'll be fine. I'll take extra care of him.”

Daryl chuckled. “He'll starve if you take over the cooking.”

“I'll practice,” April said.

Her computer chimed an alert. There was a new message in her in-box. April clicked it open. After scanning the first few lines, she covered her open mouth with her hand.

“What is it?” Daryl asked. He turned his Mets cap around on his head.

April clicked the link in the e-mail, opening up a page from a New Jersey paper.

“Some kid shot the Jersey Devil,” she said. It felt as if her heart had paused, refusing to beat until she read the entire article. Her fingertips suddenly felt ice cold.

“You're kidding, right?” Daryl said.

“I'm not, but there's always a chance the kid in the story is.”

Daryl read the story over her shoulder. “That seems like a pretty wild story to make up to cover for the fact that he stole his father's gun. I'm thinking everything that's been going on down there is adding up to more than coincidence.”

He and April both absentmindedly scratched at their hips.

“You think we should call a Brady family meeting?” April said.

Daryl's mouth grinned, but his eyes looked nervous. “I think we have to.”