Chapter Five
“This is not one of your better ideas,” Joanne whispered, sitting upright, still zipped in her sleeping bag.
A chilling, distant cry of an animal had woken her from a light sleep. Her heart felt as if it were pounding out of her chest.
Noah rolled over to face her.
“What?” he said.
“Didn't you hear that?”
“You mean that owl?”
She slapped his sleeping bag, hoping she got his chest underneath. “That wasn't an owl. It sounded like . . . I don't know . . . like a kid that's been hurt really bad.”
Joanne's father had been an avid camper. She'd grown up in the woods of Maine and New Hampshire. The cry of an owl or frightened fox was nothing new to her. What she'd just heard out there, beyond the flimsy safety of their tent, came from no animal she'd ever heard before.
Noah tried to put an arm around her. “Why are you freaking out so much?” His voice was thick from the six-pack of beer he'd had before they turned in. Joanne wished they'd kept the little fire going.
“I don't know. Maybe it's because you have me in the middle of nowhere scouting out places where a monster has been said to live for a couple of hundred years,” Joanne said, pulling the top of her sleeping bag up to her chin. She knew she sounded ridiculous, but it's how she felt.
“Oh, come on, honey, you know all those stories of the Jersey Devil aren't real. Unless you're talking about the hockey team.” He laughed, but she wasn't amused.
“I don't know. All the locals we talked to seemed pretty sure it's real,” she said.
“They were messing with us. We're outsiders. The moment I said I was starting a Jersey Devil camping tour, they went into their âfuck with the interlopers' bit.”
“But there wasn't a single person who didn't believe in it. I was cornered by a woman in the restroom who practically begged me to stop what we were doing. She looked pretty sincere. I think if I stayed any longer, she would have started crying.”
Noah shifted so he was on his back, hands behind his head.
“There's something else about the Pinelands I should have warned you about that may change your mind about all the local yokel tales of the devil flying through the night searching for victims.”
She shot him a cutting glance, but in the dark, she knew there was no way for him to see it.
“Oh, so you wait until we're all the way out here to tell me the truth?”
“It's not as if I lied to you, Jo. There's just a teeny part I left out. The Wharton State Forest isn't just the center of most modern-day Jersey Devil sightings. There may also be some pot farms here and there.”
“Are you kidding me?” Now Joanne was fuming. Illegal pot farms were dangerous places to stumble upon. They were always guarded by armed men who wouldn't give a second thought to shooting you the moment you crossed their invisible line. When she lived in Maine, she'd heard stories about backpackers taking a wrong turn, stepping into dangerous situations. When people went in the woods and never came out, most people assumed they'd stumbled into a pot farm and were now fertilizer. It was a growing problem in the United States as demand increased. Naturalists were pro-legalization of pot more for their safety than for getting high.
Noah said, “Look, it's just something I've heard. No one has any proof.”
Joanne thought back to their long drive through the endless, pitted roads of the Pinelands. They were literally in the ass end of God's country. Yet, she'd spied a lot of nice houses, some of them brand-new estates surrounded by thick gates. What kind of work out here could net a person the money needed to build places like that? She'd bet her life that at least half of those amazing houses were owned by pot farmers.
Noah had camped about five times in his entire life. The Jersey Devil camping tour was a cool idea. There were other tours taking people to places the monster had been sighted since the 1700s, but none of them promised an entire weekend experience, sleeping in the very spots it called home. Thanks to all those cable shows, interest in creatures like the Jersey Devil was rising. Noah said that if Jersey Devil enthusiasm died down, they could always change it to a tour of haunted ghost towns in the Pinelands.
He needed her camping expertise, and she was glad to help.
But now his stupidity could get them killed.
“You have no idea how dangerous it is,” she said. “People die all the time hiking blindly.”
“But if we stayed on the trails, we wouldn't get to the good spots.” He reached out to turn on the lantern. Joanne grabbed his hand.
“Don't!”
“Why?”
“You'll give us away, idiot.”
“Afraid the Jersey Devil will see us as he's flying around?”
It took all of her strength not to scream in frustration. She loved Noah. She really did. But his whole man-child act was wearing thin now that they were both approaching thirty.
Joanne said, “If we're on the outskirts of a pot farm, we don't need a beacon drawing them to us. They might even know we're out here now, making those noises to scare us off. They could have seen our fire earlier.”
“I think you're being a tad paranoid. You sure you didn't sneak off to one of those farms by yourself and take a few samples?”
She lay down and turned her back to him.
“I really wanna punch you right now.” Grinding her molars, Joanne contemplated socking him in the jaw if he said one more stupid thing.
She heard him rustling in his sleeping bag. “Look, I'm sorry I didn't tell you about it before. I realize now I should have, considering you're the expert out here. But this is a pretty famous location. An old glassworks used to be here, along with a little town. That town was plagued by the Jersey Devil for a whole month in the summer of 1823. They say it killed their dogs, chased kids and would scamper on the rooftops, clawing to get in at night. After the factory closed, the town was abandoned. A fire eventually wiped out all the structures. We have five more nights and campsites to scout. Please don't be mad. If you want, we can pack up and leave right now.”
Her anger softened. He was really into this whole venture and could make it workâif his own stupidity didn't get in the way.
“Is there anything else I should know?” she asked.
“That's it. I promise. So, do you want to pull up stakes?”
Joanne sighed. “No, it won't do us any good to go stumbling in the dark.” She got out of her sleeping bag and rummaged through her pack. She took the bowie knife from a side pocket and placed it, in its leather sheath, next to her inflatable pillow.
“Jo, I really am sorry.” Noah caressed her shoulders, kissing the back of her neck. Staying mad at him was difficult. It was like being upset with a toddler for drawing on the walls. He didn't know any better. At least that's what she always told herself.
“It's okay. In the morning, we're going to
carefully
scout the area. If you plan to make this one of the campsites, we have to make sure it's safe.”
He showed his appreciation of her forgiveness in one of her favorite ways, and when he finished, she drifted off to sleep.
The next morning, Noah shouted for her to wake up.
“Babe, come out here. You have to see this!”
Groggy, Joanne extricated herself from her sleeping bag, stumbling to get her boots on. The sun was out and there was a slight chill in the air. Noah stood by the fire pit they'd made, shirtless, hands on hips, looking down.
“Good morning to you, too,” Joanne said, wiping sleep crud from her eyes.
“Come here,” he urged, motioning for her to stand beside him. “Look at that!”
He pointed at two hoofprints by the circle of stones. They were too small to be those of a horse, but too big to be something like a goat.
“What do you make of that?” he said.
“I'd say some stray animal walked through here last night.”
He smiled, and it made her nervous.
“All right, now look up.”
She craned her neck back, staring at the branches of a pine tree.
“What do you see?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“What should you see?”
Her breath instantly left her lungs.
“Holy crap, where's our pack?”
They'd tied their pack with food on a very high branch last night. It was gone.
“Look a little higher,” Noah said.
She looked up and up until she got dizzy. There, at the very top of the one-hundred-foot tree, were the fragmented remains of their pack. Before she realized it, she was gripping his hand.
“I don't think those were pot farmers last night,” he said.
Chapter Six
April Willet, tall as a model, her mousy brown hair trailing behind her, ran up to the tractor holding her cell phone out. The sun caught her wide, green eyes, sparkling like emeralds. “Ben, did you see this?”
Her big brother slipped his Beats headphones off and shut the tractor down. Just like his grandfather, he'd been listening to Dean Martin while he worked the cornfield this morning. He'd picked up the expensive headphones to save his ears from all the damage the farm machinery could do to him. And it was a good way to shut out the rest of the world.
“April, I got a lot to do today. Why aren't you at the store?”
Willet Farms comprised three farms in Pine Bush. Old Boompa had built himself quite the little empire. They even had a combo farmer's market and general store that April had been put in charge of when she turned twenty-one. They sold fresh produce, apple juice and ciders, honey, pies, jams, you name it. April preferred being in the store to working the farms, and she was good at it. In the fall, she organized hayrides, pumpkin and apple picking, and even did a little haunted maze come October.
“Brenda's covering,” she said, handing him the phone.
“What is it?” he said, shielding the sun from the screen. It was almost impossible to see what she'd pulled up.
“It's another Jersey Devil sighting,” she said as matter-of-factly as she would note a rabbit hopping out of a row of corn. “That makes three this month.”
Because she spent a lot of her time outside the store, tending to the produce they kept in wooden bins, her skin was bronze and smooth. Ben had caught his best friend, Steven, staring hard at her a few days earlier. He hadn't liked the look in his friend's eyes, so he grabbed him by the collar and showed him the door a little rougher than he'd had to. They hadn't spoken since. Sure, April was twenty-five, but he was still her older brother by five years and insanely protective of her. It was a miracle he'd let Alan marry her, not that April could be stopped once she set her mind to somethingâeven marrying a dillwad.
Ben (his parents liked to joke that they'd named him after that movie with the rats) may have been the shortest in the family of giants and Amazons at five-seven, but he was also possibly the strongest. He definitely had the worst temper, even more so lately, which was why he liked to work out here alone with his headphones on. Well, he was never entirely alone. A pint of Johnnie Walker kept his pocket company most days.
Ben cracked his neck and took a swig from his bottle of water that had some splashes of whiskey. Everyone thought he drank iced teaâa lot.
“You stopped me for that?” he said, unable to hide the irritation in his voice. April looked as if he'd lashed out and smacked her.
“I thought you'd be interested,” she said. “Three is a lot, you know.”
He let out a deep breath and handed the phone back to her. “I'm sorry. It is?”
April grinned. “Big-time. If this keeps up, we'll have another 1909 on our hands.”
Looking across the cornfield, feeling the weight of the work to be done, he said, “Okay, why don't we all talk about it later at dinner?” He went to put his headphones back on, but she grabbed his arm.
“Boompa's gonna fucking freak.”
“He just might, if three is as big a deal as you say it is.”
“Trust me. All right, go back to your plowing, young man. I'll go tell Mom and Dad.”
“Ape, save it for dinner. They had to go out to do some stuff. They'll be back later.”
For a moment she looked crestfallen, then she brightened. “I can't wait to see Boompa's face.”
She ran back toward the store, which was a considerable distance from the tractor.
Ben brought the big machine back to life.
The whole town looked to the Willets as the models for the simple, honest American family. If only they knew the glue that held them all together.
* * *
Bill Willet met his wife, Carol, for lunch at their favorite diner. Carol had an appointment at the bank and Bill said he had to talk to their insurance agent about making some changes to their homeowner's policy.
He'd stopped at the barber, greasing Phil's palm with a ten-spot to bump him up so he could get to the diner in time. A couple of the men waiting griped, all older with less hair on their head than Bill had on his nuts. Phil told them to pipe down. They were retired and had no plans, while Bill had to break his back so they could buy local and feel better about themselves.
Carol reached across the table and ran her hands over Bill's freshly shorn head. “I love it when it's fuzzy,” she said.
“There seems to be a little less fuzz every time I come here,” he said, spooning out a chunk of ice cream.
Bill smiled, giving the acting performance of a lifetime. If Carol only knew where he'd actually gone before the barber.
The weird circular movement his hand had been making off and on had been easy to conceal and explain away, to himself at least. It must have been a pinched nerve or pulled muscle. Hell, he'd been pulling and pinching things every day on the farm.
But when he began to lose his train of thought, forget simple words and names, and found it hard to follow a simple story in a newspaper, he got concerned. Not wanting to alarm Carol or the kids, he'd made an appointment to see Doc Stasolla. The man took enough blood to feed a nest of vampires. He brought up two words Bill had never heard of beforeâHuntington's disease. He explained how it was a degenerative disorder of the brain, how it affected motor and mental skills, and even though it sounded dire, he could be wrong. If he was right, they were making great strides in treating the disease.
Walking to the barber, Bill looked up Huntington's disease on his iPhone.
It was bad. Suddenly, he had the immediate urge to take a shit, but there was nowhere to go. He jammed the phone in his pocket, trying to put everything out of his mind.
He said he could be wrong.
But if he was right . . . Shit. Bill would end up a twitching, mush-brained vegetable.
Jesus H. Christ.
His father liked to say he was as tall as he was wide, though that was a bit of an exaggeration. He was all muscle from a lifetime working on the farm. People who didn't know him veered away from him because he looked meaner than a rabid raccoon. A lot of that was due to the harelip that gave his face a dastardly turn. Those close to him knew that he was just a big softy. His daughter, April, was the one they should watch out for.
It was all going to be taken away by diseased cells as they ate away his brain.
No. Stop thinking the worst. Doc's been wrong before. Remember when he told us Ben just had a bad case of the flu when he was ten? He never once thought it was Lyme disease until we took him to that specialist in Westchester. Doc's not infallible, and he is getting older.
Ben. Now there was a worry they'd been gnawing on a lot. The son who returned from Afghanistan wasn't the same man they'd watch leave when Obama swore to end the war. Fucking liar, just like all the others. Ben had always kept to himself, but even more so since he came back. There were things he wasn't telling them. It was tempting to try to force them out, but Bill knew they had to wait until he was good and ready.
And now there was this.
No point telling Carol. Not yet. Wait until the tests come back
.
“Will you take that gum out of your mouth?” Carol said.
Bill chuckled. “I didn't even know it was in there.” He wrapped it in his napkin. He went through two packs of Big Red a day. It beat smoking and was a hell of a lot cheaper. Hey, at least he didn't have cancer, right?
Carol's phone vibrated. She swiped her thumb across the screen, read for a bit and frowned.
“Bad news?” Bill asked, dipping a French fry in brown gravy.
“No. April sent me a link to a report on a Jersey Devil sighting.”
That made Bill sit up straighter in the booth. “That makes three in just the past few weeks.”
Carol nodded. “She said she'll tell your father and Daryl at dinner. You think it's time?”
Bill got quiet, thinking things over. Old Boompa was definitely going to take notice, but he'd be cautious. He'd waited almost sixty years. He wouldn't go crashing headlong now. But he didn't have another sixty years ahead of him.
“Let's just hope it's getting real close,” he said, scratching at his side, wondering how long it would be until he could no longer control his hand.
Just focus. Even if you do have it, this Huntington's disease (should I ask if it's something linked to people who hunt?), you're okay now. Maybe things are happening now for a reason.
They finished their meal in silence, each running through mental checklists. Three was a lot in such a short time span. Of course, it could be three hoaxes, one inspired by the other.
Or could it be what they were waiting for? The dark cloud was on the horizon, and they'd been preparing to do some serious storm chasing.