The Pines (31 page)

“Go on,” insisted Athena.

He didn’t look up from the notes. “Eventually, any freakish child could be labeled another Jersey Devil. And in time, whenever campers disappeared, due to say a boating accident or something, it got blamed on the creature.”

“Or the other way around.”

“How do you mean?”

Athena’s voice seemed to come from a long way off. “Whenever the creature took someone, they blamed it on a boating accident.”

“What about Barry?” Doris asked.

“What…?”

“Officially.”

“Oh. They’re saying it was dogs.”

Doris choked out a laugh. “Climbing ladders?”

“This doesn’t help. This is crazy.” Athena sounded defeated. “Some poor starving goon running around the woods. What’s that got to do with…with the horrible things that…? First Lonny. Now Barry. It’s getting closer. I can feel it. I’ve always felt it.”

“I looked for details common to the different versions.” Steve clutched the wad of notes. “You never know what’s going to be important.” And he stared at the papers with hard-eyed pain. “Most of the variations involve some sort of transformation as a major feature. Depending on who you listen to, Mrs. Leeds’s little boy is reported to have grown a long tail, bat wings, hooves, antlers, or—”

“That’s a dead end. Athena’s right. It doesn’t help. Malformed animals—we’ve all seen things out there, things that shouldn’t be.”

Athena tried to talk over her. “There’s an image I can’t get out of my mind. Something on top of Pamela’s trailer, dogs all around it in the storm.”

He shuffled papers, afraid of the look on Athena’s face. “I found something that ties in with what you just said, Doris. Where…? Here it is. A British soldier during the Revolutionary War—the researcher gives him the name of Kallikak—fathered eight mentally defective children by various women in the barrens, then returned to England and sired three normal children.” Putting down the notes, he wondered why Doris kept shaking her head at him.

“Maybe it’s the vegetation.” Doris stirred her coffee, then stubbed her cigarette out in a saucer. “What are those things?” She pointed to a pile of slick-looking papers.

“Newspaper and magazine articles mostly,” he said, “some stuff from books. I must’ve gone through a hundred of them.”

“Looks like you spent a fortune copying this.” Doris flicked dismally through the pile. “Do we need to read it all?”

“For some of them, I just underlined a few things. Look, through 1840 and 1841—reports of strange tracks, and of screams heard in the woods. ‘Again, posse unsuccessful,’” he read. “‘Heavy losses of chickens and sheep.’”

“That could’ve been a bobcat,” said Doris, lighting another cigarette. “Or a bear even.”

He pushed the chipped ashtray toward her. “In 1858, near Hanover Iron Works…”

“What’s wrong, Steve?”

“I don’t know—I felt a chill. Maybe I shouldn’t go on with this. Maybe we should stop here.” He set the notes down on the table, drained his cup with one swallow. “We could still. Stop, I mean.” He looked at the two of them, then down at the notes. “Like sane people. I get the feeling there’s a border we’re about to cross.”

Athena got up and put on a fresh pot of coffee.

“Read the rest of it.” It was Doris who finally spoke.

“Uh, Hanover Iron Works. ‘Management has trouble with workers afraid of Devil and refusing to venture out of their tents.’ Then in, let’s see…I don’t have to read all of this. The gist of it—time and again, we’ve got reports of laborers barricading themselves in their huts.”

Athena stood at the stove, seemingly totally involved by the task of making coffee.

“It seems to come in waves. Fifty years later, we hit pay dirt.” Steve read on, his voice deep, without emphasis. “In 1909, between January 16 and January 23, there’s literally thousands of sightings and incidents. All over Jersey, we have factories closing, schools closing. A theater in Camden closed. And, uh”—he squinted, trying to make out his own handwriting—“this is sort of confusing. We’ve got several accounts of local sheriffs emptying their guns into the woods. The mills in Gloucester and Hainsport shut their doors. People in Mount Ephraim refused to leave their homes even in broad daylight. There were full-scale hunts with dogs mounted in Burlington County, Columbus, Dunbarton, Haddonfield, Hedding…”

Doris emitted a low whistle.

“…Kincora and Rancocas. There was a substantial bounty offered, and twice the militia was called out.” He turned the page. “In 1927, we have two reports of stranded motorists threatened by ‘something that stood upright like a man but without clothing and covered with fur.’ Then, let’s see now, that same year, following reports of what sounds a lot like a giant German shepherd, posses formed in both Woodston and West Orange. Oh, and this one I especially like, it’s dated Thursday, November 22, 1951.”

“The date of my birth, how nice,” added Doris.

He ignored her. “It’s from a Gibbstown paper,
The Chronicle
. A group of youngsters are playing in a tree house, when a ten-year-old points out the window and screams….” He held up the paper and read. “‘The thing! It’s staring at me with blood coming out of its face!’” The paper rattled. “Then, let’s see…‘The boy fell to the floor and his body was wracked by spasms.’” He set the page down on the table. “I checked the files. Two days later, we have an unexplained disappearance in that area. But a search party only began beating the brush after numerous sightings of what’s described either as ‘a chunky man with a bestial face’ or a ‘half-man, half-beast.’ Good, huh?”

“So what are we dealing with?” asked Doris. “Is it the missing link? Neanderthal man? Tell me. I can take it—I watch old movies.”

Athena returned to the table, coffee spilling over the side of her trembling cup. “Oh, I’m sorry. Did anybody else want some?”

“Another bounty was offered,” Steve droned on. “A few weeks later in Jackson Mills, several dogs were torn to pieces by ‘sort of a wildcat, four feet tall…long…grayish.’ Then things quiet down for a while, until—”

“Oh, that’s enough! Let me see this.” Doris snatched the notebook from him. “Your handwriting stinks.” She glanced at the top page, then passed it to Athena.

She skimmed the list of dates.

1959: Wall Township, St. Trps arrest 30+ rifle-bearing “vigilantes” claim to be on track of creature.

1960: St. Police quell panic in Dorothy, NJ. Set traps & patrol w/rifles. Same in Sims Place, Jenkins Neck.

April 1966: Mullica River. Farm animals mangled and strewn about. Trps follow “humanlike” tracks deep into barrens before lose trail.

“She’s right. Your handwriting is terrible. Is that all of it?”

A jumble of papers spread across the table. “That’s about it, except for a couple dozen reports a year, mostly by vacationers.”

“Reports?”

“Just sightings mostly—of something that sounds a whole lot like Lon Chaney, Jr. Then there’s the poem of course.”

“What poem?”

He pointed. She flipped the notebook and read the scrawl on the back.

When the moon stands over the cedars,
And the waters are hidden by fog,
Comes the cry of the witch’s child,
And the Devil will rise from the bog.

“I couldn’t think where I’d seen it before. Then it dawned on me—it’s from that damned painting at the diner. Uh”—he looked around—“did you put more coffee on?”

“You say it comes in waves,” began Doris. “Does that mean there’s really a pattern? Let me see the dates again.” She scanned. “You realize there’s plenty of secondhand stuff, tracks, dead chickens, that sort of thing—even disappearances—but nothing you could really call evidence.”

“You mean like an eyewitness report? Somebody left to talk about it afterwards? No, there isn’t. Somehow I don’t find that especially reassuring.”

“Is it…God, I can’t even say it.” Athena put her cup down. “Is it a werewolf?”

Doris shuffled papers in embarrassment. “Look at the dates. It goes back…two and a half centuries. Well,” she sighed, “we’ve certainly got enough books here. Let’s see, here’s a good one—cannibal clans on the Scottish moors. Check out the pictures. I crave that bearskin.”

“I wasn’t sure what might be relevant to the case, so I just grabbed everything.”

Athena had been holding her fists close to her body. Now she relaxed slightly, comforted by the professional sound of that: relevant to the case. Listening to their voices, she sipped coffee and watched Doris’s cigarette smoke fill the room.

“This book’s about ghosts.”

“Let me see that. I didn’t mean to bring that one. Must’ve picked it up by accident.”

“Great chapter headings. Look, honey. ‘Haunted Places.’ Not houses, mind you. ‘Psychic Phenomena in America,’ ‘Poltergeist Activity and Pubescent Girls.’ Is this dirty, I hope?”

Athena paged through volume after volume, her attention only partially focusing. Now that they were actually down to it, it all seemed so foolish, so fantastic. For over an hour, they all leafed through in relative silence, skimming indexes, peering at illustrations.

“Here’s a good one,” said Doris. “Did you know you could tell a vampire by the smell?”

“Matty’s asleep finally.” Pam wandered in. “Oh, are you still talking? What are you still talking about? Them pineys, I bet.”

Athena opened another book. “Yes, we’re still talking.”

“Oh well, I’ll just get some coffee and go in the other room then.” Pam poured herself an inch of coffee, then filled her cup with milk and sugar, stirring it slowly and with some apparent difficulty.

Something thumped. Steve had opened a heavy tome. “I found this.” He turned to a marked passage. “The librarian told me the author was supposed to be a famous warlock. He claims that lycanthropy—that’s being a werewolf—that it’s…”

Pam’s eyes opened very wide.

“…kind of a ‘malevolent astral projection,’ what ever that means.” He kept his eyes on the page. “Apparently the person goes into a kind of trance, and his ‘animal soul’ is free to walk around.”

“No mental projection tore those men apart,” Doris muttered.

“He did it.” Pam dropped her cup. Quickly, milky coffee found its way into the cracks between the worn floorboards.

“Pamela!”

“Oh! Oh, I’ll get it, ’Thena.” She grabbed a cloth off the sink and began to sop up the mess. “And you just cleaned in here too.”

“No, it’s all right.” She got out of her chair. “Just leave it. Pamela, I’ll get it.”

Steve hadn’t taken any notice of the accident. “I don’t see why we’re assuming that what we’re looking for is a he.”

“You saw the bodies,” said Doris. “No woman did that.”

“I don’t know. When I was on the force in the city, I saw some pretty horrendous things.”

“You’re forgetting the semen on the body. It’s a he.”

“It’s an it,” said Athena.

Rag in hand, Pam crouched over the wet spot on the floor, listening with her mouth open.

“Yeah, I guess.” Doris nodded. “It. Makes you think of cavemen huddled around a fire, seeing eyes out there in the dark. What?”

“No, it’s nothing. Just a dream I had. Pamela, if you don’t mind…”

“You mean I have to leave? You’re kidding!”

“Please.” Athena waited for her to exit, then turned back to the others. “Reading all this stuff, I don’t know, it’s just a feeling I get. I can’t explain. Did either of you look through this one? It talks about central Europe and the plague. Think of them—isolated people with death all around, barricading themselves in their huts to keep out disease and wolves and vampires. And then, like what you talked about before, Steve—immigrant workers huddled in the pines. Pretty similar. What ever it is, couldn’t they have brought it with them?”

“You sound like an expert all of a sudden, honey.”

“I guess without knowing it, I’ve been thinking about all this.” She stopped. “Without knowing it. But do you think it’s possible?”

“You mean something congenital?” Doris considered it. “What’s that word again? Here it is—lycanthropy. Something in the genes maybe, waiting for the right combination…” They watched her mull it over. “Okay.” Taking a drag on her cigarette, she sat up straight. “Okay, I’m starting to put something together, just hypothetical. But how’s this sound? See that book there? The Indians of the north country are afraid of the bear men. In Europe in the Middle Ages, they had werewolves. What if it’s all the same thing? See what I mean, ’Thena? Steve? Where’s that article? Leopard men in Africa? Tiger people in Asia. We get identical legends in, look, China, Brazil, Hungary. Right? Always in blasted countryside, bleak mountains or swamps, barren ground. What if it’s the same creature?” They nodded hesitantly, trying to follow. “Not a bear or a tiger anyhow. But something so terrible that the locals always interpret it as the animal they most fear.”

“And here?”

“They called it the Devil.”

He sighed. “That puts a hell of a dent on the whole idea of shape-shifters. It’s what I just read. Have you seen this?”

“I glanced over it,” Doris responded.

“It’s about people who believe they can be trans…transmogrified.”

“Trans-who?”

“Changed,” Athena put in quietly.

“Could I see that?” Doris read in silence for a moment. “Of course, right down the page here, he completely contradicts himself. This bit—a man does something, something so horrid that he blames it on some monster or other he’s dreamed up. Right? Because he couldn’t have done it, obviously. Not a nice guy like him. Or else, if he did, he must’ve been changed into a beast somehow.” She laughed sourly. “In which case, they’d go out and look for a witch to burn. I tell you, they always find a way to stick it to the woman.” She tossed the book down. “Where’s that other thing I was looking at a minute ago?”

“What?”

“You know, about certain kinds of psychos who completely block out what they’ve done from themselves, so they really don’t even know they’re doing it. Steve? Steve, what’s the matter? You looked funny there for a minute.”

“You know what? You know what?” From the doorway, Pam’s words poured in a rushing babble. “At my ma’s house, when my uncle Nim died, when I was just a little girl, one night I woke up, and I was real scared, and there he was, and he was just standing there, standing by my bed, and he had these real big eyes, and he just kept looking at me and looking at me. I was so scared. And his eyes was all strange like.”