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It’s taken me awhile to be able to write this. I wrote the first post in a rush, trying to get a desperate warning out in case I never came back.
I didn’t know what the thing was that took my sister, or if there are others like it out there, lurking in the dark. I can only tell you now: pray that there aren’t.
It’s been some time, but still I type this with shaky hands, remembering those two nights: the one it took her, and the one I went to get her back. I think I’m finally ready to try and recount it all.
Let’s pick up on that awful morning. My head aching and scabbing, my sister gone, my dad soon to return. I had posted my story here, a plea into the online void, a record of what we went through, in case I never came back. All there was to do then was wait.
I went to Chloe’s room. I sat on her bed, thinking what a miserable older brother I had been. My heart broke when I looked down to see her favorite doll laying on her bed, left there forgotten.
I turned towards the window, where the creature had pawed at the glass every night. I pictured Chloe, kneeling in front of that window, the monster on the other side whispering lies to my little sister. I remembered it’s long, unnatural fingers – claws, really – caressing the glass as that terrible mix of sounds flooded my ears.
An image filled my mind then. Chloe, walking out of the front door on her own. Was she awake, or sleeping? What did she think she was following into those dark pines? I thought then only of what must have really been ahead of her, beckoning, guiding. Long, unruly, filthy hair. A white dress of rags. The unnatural arms, the black claws, urging my sister forward. I shuddered.
I rose to the window, my anger rising inside me, the frustration at letting that thing take Chloe. A helpless feeling that filled my gut, the knowledge that I wasn’t able to protect her. Not even for one night.
As I looked out, the late morning sun caught the glass at a new angle.
That’s when I saw it. A glint, a fracture in the light against the window.
I pressed so close to it that my nose almost touched. There they were: fine scratches in the clear glass. Not just random gouges from those unholy claws, but a pattern.
The thing had drawn this while it spoke to Chloe. A series of scratches from all directions, that intersected at one point.
I didn’t know what it meant. But I felt like it meant something.
Chloe had a little desk where she drew, colored, water painted. I tried not to look at these reminders of her and instead focused on finding a clean sheet of paper and a black crayon.
I put the paper to the glass and traced.
Finally, I had the odd, misshapen pattern - like a lopsided, unfinished spiderweb - on the page.
Clutching that paper in my hands, I left the house. I arrived at the library ten minutes before it was supposed to open.
The old man arrived five minutes late. He was surprised to find me there, pacing, looking at the time on my phone. I assume his hours could be loose; not many visitors to a brick-and-mortar library anymore. I might’ve understood, but under the circumstances I was livid.
“Took your sweet time,” I spat.
“I beg your pardon, young man?” The old man apparently had some grit to him. He met my glare without blinking.
I realized taking my anger out this man wasn’t going to help me get what I needed. I dropped my eyes.
“I’m sorry. I have a lot going on. But I really need some advice. Some information. Again, I apologize.”
The man gave me a long stare, but I guess he eventually saw my apology was genuine. He shrugged. “Come on in, then.”
He unlocked the door and went inside to open up. I waited patiently, knowing that I needed to get on his good side. Pushing wasn’t going to help after my outburst. Finally, he took a seat behind his desk and turned towards me. “How can I help?”
“My assignment is due later today, and I’m really stuck,” I lied. “Have there been any theories about where the Jersey Devil lived? If it slept, where that would be?”
“That’s what all this fuss has been about? An ending to your writing assignment? Son, if it’s creative writing, shouldn’t you…you know, make something up yourself?”
“I have writer’s block. Please, please can you tell me. Anything you know would be helpful.”
For what it’s worth, I’ve never considered myself a good liar. But the past few months of lying to my dad, sneaking out to party, going down the shore with friends, making excuses…I guess it had helped.
The old man sighed. I wondered if he thought I was simply an idiot who was trying to cheat on a silly assignment. But I didn’t care. I needed answers, if there were any to be found. He was my best chance.
Luckily for me, the old man clearly had nothing better to do this morning. He got up, motioned for me to follow.
“Some say it lives in the house its mother died in. Legends say that’s Leeds Point, near Atlantic City.”
“That’s miles and miles away from here…is there anywhere closer it might’ve been?”
The old man wrinkled his face in confusion. “If this is for a story, what’s it matter how far away the place is?”
I tried to think fast.
“Umm…story continuity? I have events taking place near Vincentown. So, I need somewhere that…feels authentic, but logical.”
He rolled his eyes, but thankfully, indulged me.
“I don’t know if I can help you with the specifics. But I’ll give you a lay of the land, so to speak.”
He pulled out a huge book, filled with maps. He flipped through it until he found the right page. It was a map showing the southern half of New Jersey. A big area was highlighted in green. The top of the page said, “Natural Lands Trust.”
“What’s this?”
“The Natural Lands Trust is an organization that accepts land donations and ensures the protection of the Pine Barrens. It was founded about 100 years ago, by the Leeds Family itself. The Trust has gotten hold of a great swathe of the original Pine Barrens in the name of conservation. As such, the map of what it controls is the best approximation of the boundaries of those woods from the time of the first Devil sightings.”
I took in the highlighted area. It was huge. My heart fell, thinking of Chloe out there somewhere, alone. But not alone…worse than alone. Lured. Taken.
A thought struck me. I looked up at the old man.
“Are there records of people who disappeared over the years? Stories of the Devil…taking people?”
“Oh yes, certainly, quite a many of those. Stories of youths taken as food for the beast. Spooky stuff,” the old man said in his best fairytale voice.
The look on my face told him I didn’t appreciate the joke.
“I mean it. Are there?”
He nodded. “Yes. What do you want to know?”
“I want to know where they happened.”
I think I put the librarian on edge with the fervor in my voice, but I couldn’t waste time with proper manners.
Thankfully, he didn’t argue. He pulled out some of the books from my last visit. He began to search the pages. I wondered when the last time was anyone showed this kind of interest in anything inside these walls.
I asked after a scanner and something to write with, and he obliged. As he looked through the old books, I printed out a large scan of the map. I laid it out on the table. I looked up at the man; a marker held in my hand.
“OK, give me the first.”
It took better part of an hour, and I wish I could tell the old man what his cooperation meant to me and my family. But I kept up the pretense of my “assignment” as we worked. Every time he gave an approximation of a location of a missing son or daughter, I made a mark on the map. By the end, my map was dotted with locations all over the area of the ancient Pine Barrens.
The old man looked down at the paper with me. There was no pattern, no correlation to see in that pockmarked paper.
Until I pulled out a drawing from my pocket drawn in crayon.
I laid it next to the map. And the points began to make sense.
I took the map and began to draw lines towards an unseen center, following the guidance of my crayon drawing. I kept as steady a hand as I could.
And when I stepped back, I had two images that seemed identical.
I pointed to the center of it all.
“Where is that?” I asked the old man.
The sun was high in the sky by the time the train arrived. I stood, back against the truck, my baseball cap pulled low. My mind wrestled with what I would say, how I could manage to explain that didn’t make me sound crazy. I hadn’t come up with anything good.
My dad appeared on the platform moments later, his overnight bag slung over his back. I didn’t move as he approached. My tongue felt fat inside my mouth.
“Everything go OK?”
I simply nodded.
“Chloe is good? You made sure she had a good breakfast before camp today?”
“Yeah, she’s good,” I found myself saying, too ashamed in that moment to tell him the truth.
As we drove home, I was silent as my dad filled the space with complaints about his colleague, the gall he had to make a single dad drop everything, and details about what seemed a lackluster trip.
When we pulled up to the house, I still didn’t have a plan. We exited the truck. As he turned towards the house, I opened my mouth, and nothing came out. And so, my father entered the house alone.
His surprised cry from inside told me what a coward and idiot I was.
I hadn’t cleaned up the broken glass, and the sliding back doors were obliterated in shards across the floor. Neither had I cleaned up my blood on the floor where the thing had hit me and cut the top of my scalp.
My father burst out of the front doors in fury.
“What the hell did you do? What happened? Did you have a party with your little sister in the house? You didn’t even have the decency to try and fix the house you trashed?”
I don’t think he’s ever screamed so loud in his life. Or been more disappointed with his son (which is, of course, saying a lot).
Yet I still didn’t have the words.
He charged back down the walkway towards me. He got right up in my face.
“What did you do. Be a man. Speak up!”
I trembled then, but not because of fear of my father, or anger at his reaction.
Tears filled my eyes.
“Chloe is gone. I couldn’t stop it. It took her.”
He froze. He was still angry, and confused, but there was now also fear. As crippling, or worse, than the same that I felt.
“What do you mean? Where is she? What happened?!”
“I couldn’t tell the police. They wouldn’t have believed me. I knew you wouldn’t either. Unless you saw it with your own eyes. Dad, I’m sorry.”
He was conflicted then, his righteous anger at his incompetent son starting to be outweighed by his concern for his daughter.
“Saw what?”
I led him inside, to the computers. I pulled up the footage.
“It makes the cameras malfunction. I couldn’t capture anything, while it was here. But once it left the house…”
I pressed play. I watched my dad choke on his words, and on his tears, as he watched his little girl walk out of the house into the dark.
“You let her walk off into the woods? Why didn’t you follow her?”
I took off my baseball cap then, to show him the hidden gash in my hair, the bloody gauze I’d used sticking to it.
“I tried to stop it. I promise, I did everything I could.”
“Who took her? Tell me exactly what happened.”
“What. Not Who.”
“What’s that mean?”
I again tried, but failed, to utter the words I knew would sound insane. So instead, I just met my father’s gaze with as much honesty and courage as I could.
“Like I said, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. But Chloe is in danger. And I know where to find her.”
“How-“
I held up a hand, pleading.
“Trust me, please. The only thing that matters is we get Chloe back.”
I could tell he wasn’t giving up easily.
“I’m going. As soon as I can. Will you come with me?” The last question came out more desperately, pathetically, than I’d intended. But I guess I still needed my old man more than I’d been recently able to admit.
His mouth worked, like he wanted to argue, to demand more answers.
Surprising us both, he simply said, “OK. Take me there.”
My heart leapt then, whether from the realization that I wouldn’t go into those woods alone, or from his rare display of trust, I don’t know. But I met his gaze and tried to project some semblance of confidence.
“We’ll need a few things before we go.”
He didn’t ask more questions, though I knew he wanted to. At my urging, we dressed in our most rugged clothes, the kind we wore when doing yard work. Each of us put on sturdy, waterproof boots. I grabbed two of our biggest Maglite flashlights, and we each took extra batteries in our pockets.
Then, my dad’s eyes widened as I strapped my grandfather’s old hunting knife to my waist.
“Are you sure you need that?” was all he asked.
I nodded grimly. Without saying a word, he disappeared into his bedroom. When he came back, he was holding an old hunting rifle and a box of ammo. It was a Ruger American Bolt Action, and another heirloom from his dad’s hunting days.
We were ready then, as we’d ever be. The sun was starting its descent in the sky now.
“Let’s go.”
My dad hopped in the driver’s seat and looked to me. “Where?”
I pulled open my Maps app, where I’d typed the coordinates the librarian had helped me pinpoint. I hit “enter.”
“Take a left. Then a few miles down, we’ll turn right.”
We drove in silence then, and I wonder what was going through his head, what he suspected. We continued on, me giving him directions as the intersections came. Our road moved further into the woods, and less and less houses or streetlights lined the path.
Thirty minutes into our drive, we passed a sign that said, “Bear Swamp at Red Lion Preserve.” I recognized this as one of t the big swaths of land on the old man’s map. One of the Leeds Trust Protected areas. I wondered to myself then if the rumors about the Leeds family and their dark history had more truth to them than the librarian had given them.
Otherwise, the location we were following seemed the middle of nowhere, and there were no landmarks on the map. I could only hope we were getting closer to Chloe, and that my theory wasn’t totally wrong. I could see the doubt in my dad’s eyes, and I tried to hide my own.
But the marks on the window. The map of disappearances. They lined up. It had to be true. I had to find her.
We drove another fifteen minutes until I told my dad to pull over. He pulled off onto the side of the road. We got out and scanned. Forest for miles, except for one small path leading into the trees.
A chain and a sign hung across that sandy path: Bear Swamp. Do not Enter in big letter. Beneath, smaller print about “protected lands” and vital habitat.”
“About two miles that way.”
My dad grabbed the rifle out of the back and slung it over his back. We tucked the Maglites into our waistbands. I screwed a Nalgene bottle of water I’d brought through my belt loop.
Ducking under the chain, we set out on the path.
I was glad for the small sandy footpath, which led us past overgrown underbrush that would’ve been a nightmare to slog through, as well as little bogs and swampy lakes we could’ve been mired in. We were making good time, and my heart raced, thinking of finding Chloe soon.
Then the path ended.
There was no sign to mark the end as there had been the start. It just simply stopped, the sandy path petering out into the trees. Into wild forest.
My dad and I paused then. He looked up at the sky, and then into the trees.
“How much farther?” he asked.
“Little over than a mile still,” I replied, crestfallen.
“It’s going to be a long trek through all that.”
“I know.”
I unscrewed the Nalgene, and between us, we finished its contents. I left it at the end of the path, not wanting to carry anything unneeded.
We set off into the trees.
It was a brutal journey. The first leg was a battle through high, thorny bushes and brambles. Our pants and boots were tough and resistant, but they could still get snagged. We were sweaty and worn down by the time we made it to more forgiving turf. The brambles became less dense, the way clearer.
But then came the mud. The dry underbrush gave way to wet soil that clung to our boots and weighed us down. The last sunlight glinted off pockets of wet earth and bits of swamp. As the light disappeared, and we pulled out of flashlights, we had to watch our steps even more carefully.
Soon, only the frail light of a crescent moon aided our flashlights. As dark set in, so did the noises. Anyone who talks about “silent woods” has never been in the Pine Barrens. The air fills with sounds of crickets, cicadas, and katydids – a constant hum. As we ventured deeper and deeper, we heard the rustlings of animals lurking in the branches, swishing past bushes, and snapping twigs. Every time, I tried to tell myself it was just a squirrel, a raccoon, an opossum, or the rare gray fox. Certainly not poisonous timber rattlesnakes. Or anything worse.
We made our way closer to the dot on my map. We were closing in on those coordinates. To Chloe.
Then, the signal cut out.
“No. No, no…” I hissed in frustration as I shook my phone, holding it up to the sky.
My dad clocked this. “How close we were before you lost service?”
“I don’t know, maybe .2 miles?”
Nodding, he said, “Then we just keep our eyes out.”
A horrible bleating filled the air. It drew out for seconds on end. A baby’s cry? A sheep dying? It chilled me to the bone.
Something touched my shoulder and I jumped.
It was my dad, his strong hand on my shoulder. “It’s just a fowler toad. Keep your head on straight, son.”
I nearly died of embarrassment. I was thankful the beams of our flashlights were aiming down, and most of my face was in shadow.
And so, we turned towards the last direction my GPS had shown and trudged on.
I’d like to tell you I was brave, scouring those woods for Chloe, and that I wasn’t terrified. But the truth is, I clung as close to my dad’s back as I could, while he led us onwards. My pulse beat through my shirt. Every little sound then made me whip my head and flashlight around into the darkness. I didn’t think I could feel terror more intensely than during that long walk.
But of course, I was wrong. Because when I saw the house, I nearly lost control of my bladder.
It was old, hundreds of years by the look of it, and I don’t know why I felt surprised. It would’ve been a grand house in its day, but the decay and rot and mold and broken bits made it seem otherworldly.
My dad turned to me. He put his finger to his lips. Then he unslung the rifle from his shoulders. He turned off his light and tucked it into his pants. He motioned for me to raise mine.
A feeling filled my chest then, seeing my dad. His silence, his exhaustion from the past months underneath all his responsibilities, were gone. He was strong. He was determined. And for a brief moment, he made me feel brave.
I pulled the hunting knife from my belt and raised my Maglite to the house. Together, we moved towards it, my light illuminating the path, his rifle raised.
Inside, the years had not left much of what it once was intact. There were rotted bits of furniture, scraps of carpet and fallen drapes, but mostly it was gutted. Nature had overrun it. There was no sign that Chloe had been there.
We cleared it room by room, searching every corner. We crept up the rotten stairs carefully, our feet occasionally breaking through and having to navigate to a more solid piece of wood. Upstairs, all we found was one empty room. The rest had collapsed God only knows how long ago.
We slumped on the floor in what once must have been the living room.
“She’s not here.”
“She has to be.”
“Why? Will you please just tell me what really happened. I followed you, I believed you knew where she was, I haven’t asked questions. Please, son. What happened to Chloe?”
“It took her.”
I put my head into my hands, unable to look up. We’d come so far, to find nothing. Was the creature somewhere else entirely? Was Chloe alone in the dark with that monster, somewhere we’d never find her? My eyes bore into the floor.
“I know we haven’t been…open with each other. Things have been hard since…”
He trailed off and I don’t think either of us wanted him to voice it, not here, not now.
“It’s my fault. I think…I think it wanted me first. And then when it started on Chloe, I knew. I knew, but I didn’t tell you. I knew you wouldn’t believe me.”
I could feel his eyes on me. I couldn’t bear to meet them. I kept my eyes down.
“That’s on me, not you. You should always be able to talk to your father. I don’t think I’ve been able to let you.”
A cry almost left my lips then, but I bit it down.
“It’s not your fault.”
“Yes it is. I’m so sorry.”
I heard his footsteps. I didn’t move. He slid down to the wall beside me. And his arm wrapped around my shoulders.”
I cried then. I still couldn’t tell him the things I’d seen, about my failure to protect Chloe. I knew it would sound crazy. And I just let my dad hug me for a while.
“Maybe we should head back. We’ll call the police, report her missing. We’ll go out with a search party. We’ll find her.”
“You don’t understand. This way the only way.”
“I don’t understand, you’re right. But I believe you.”
I blinked away my tears, staring at that dirty, leaf-covered floor with hatred. It was supposed to be here. I was supposed to find her.
As I cleared my eyes from my sadness and anger, it finally caught my eye.
Hidden under a mass of rusted leaves, there it was. A ring of tarnished brass.
I leapt to my feet. My dad cried out in surprise, but I barely heard him. I kicked at the leaves, spraying them into the air, sweeping them aside.
A heavy brass handle. Which meant: a cellar.
The old door was heavy. I couldn’t make it budge. Then I felt my dad’s hands around mine., pulling together. Creaking, it finally lifted, and we tossed it back on its hinges.
Pure blackness lay below. The stairs that must have been there had rotted away in the centuries between. Now just a dark hole in the ground.
From that darkness came a sound.
Whispers.
Hearing them again, in this place, I froze. I knew what they meant. We’d found Chloe…and the creature.
I looked to my dad’s face for strength, but instead I saw only confusion and fear. That made my stomach lurch as nothing else had. If he wasn’t strong enough, how could I possibly be?
My dad did something then that made me love him more than I had in a long time, something that made these months of awfulness between us seem to melt away.
He smiled.
“Let’s go get your sister.”
Thinking back on this moment, I find it hard to write without tears. He asked no more questions, he simply acted. After months of silence and distance between us, his love for my sister shone through in that moment. I knew he was willing to die for her. And I was filled with a desperate, pleading thought:
Let us all get out alive. As a family.
Even as I type these words, my hands are shaking. I am afraid to relive the moments that came next. I don’t think I’m quite ready. So, I will pause the story here.
When I have the strength, I will finish it.