You know what blows? Jersey. In January. A fucking cold, fucking bleak, soul-sucking place. I wouldn't wish Jersey in January on anyone.
Ok, maybe that's a lie.
Still, I certainly wouldn't wish it on me and Sam. Every hour we spend here has me thinking I'll need therapy after this job is done. No, no. Screw that pansy shit. I'll just hole up with a hot redhead for a day or two, maybe find a beach cabin in the Keys with broken air conditioning and a fully stocked mini bar.
I'm sure Sam won't mind sleeping in the car for the sake of my 'recuperation.'
Right, right.
So, yeah, what was I saying? Right, Jersey, January, a cold day in Hell.
We got wind of devil sightings a few days ago. The fucking Jersey devil, can you believe it? I can't.
Dad always insisted it was a case of mass hysteria, the multiple sightings that happened over a week's time in January 1909. The other scattered encounters, well he just chalked those up to over active imaginations and people with nothing better to do than gossip.
But, they've started up again, in the same week they happened all those years ago, so we figure it's best to check it out. Scratch that. Sam thinks it's best we check it out. 'Better safe than sorry,' yada yada yada.
I think the locals are just cold. And bored. But, I'd rather spend a few days freezing my nuts off than listening to Sammy bitch.
He thinks I'm pushy. What a joke.
So we get to the Pine Barrens, the neighborhood where a majority of the latest sightings have been. We spend a day talking to the 'victims,' old women mostly, with long drawn out stories about a monster with black wings and hooves. Sammy does what he does best, plays sympathetic, and gets the details we need. Not surprisingly, most of them want to talk, and don't even care about our cover story. I just look serious, keep my eyes open, and nod whenever it seems appropriate.
Sam pretends not to notice the 'I told you so' look I give him after several stories have holes the size of his big, fat head. Fine, ignore me all you want bro. I'll be reminding you later that you just made me freeze my ass off for nothing as we high-tail it out of this crap town.
These old ladies, with their crocheted tea cozies, doilies, sofa slip covers – they're just bored out of their skulls. The last house we visit though, it breaks pattern. It's a family of three – a man, his wife, and their twelve year old daughter.
It's the kid that saw it first. Her parents tell us how they ignored her frantic pointing at the window in her room, tried to calm her down, but something passed over the house, flew past the windows, its wings casting a long shadow into the girl's bedroom where they stood.
I don't know about Sam, but the girl's eyes give me the heebie jeebies. They're flat, no light. She doesn't seem afraid, just weirdly calm.
She tells us it talked to her, it asked for her name, it asked for something to drink. That's it.
I throw my brother a look at this point. The other sightings haven't been like this. Just fly bys, a few mentions of movement on the roof that sounded like the clomping of hooves, but no conversations, no requests for a goddamn beverage.
Sam keeps his head on straight and asks if we can take a look around the girl's room. The husband looks like he might protest, but Sammy turns on all that good ol' boy charm, puts those big, weepy eyes to work, and the wife leads us up with shuffling hands and embarrassed, flirty smiles.
If only he would use that power to get himself laid, life would be so much easier.
Anyway, there's not much to the room. It's pink. Not baby pink, not something you could kind of ignore if you kept your eyes on the off-white carpeting. I'm talking pepto-fucking-bismol pink. I think my eyes are still bleeding.
I hurry over to the windowsill, with my eyes slit half-shut to keep out the glare. Hoof prints are just outside the window, like something has perched there recently. Maybe it has, maybe the girl isn't having an episode, those flat doll-eyes give me doubts, but maybe she isn't. Maybe a mythical devil/bird/creature/beast sat on her windowsill a couple nights ago, had a nice little chit chat, and then politely asked for a cup of tea.
I hold back the urge to see if it asked for one lump of sugar or two. Who says I don't have any tact?
You know, normally, I'm quick to admit when we're dealing with 'our kind of problem,' but this? I don't know. It just seems too silly, too witch hunt, too Edgar Allan Poe, too Grimm Brothers.
"We can't just bail, Dean," Sam says after we get settled in at the motel.
I've got the Browning Hi-Power stripped down, clean as a whistle. The familiar metal feel of a gun in my hands is cool and comforting. I've dealt with a lot of weird shit in my time, but this job just rubs me the wrong way.
"Oh yes, we can. It hasn't hurt anyone. And we have no clue how to track it down. Have we ever managed to catch anything with wings, Sammy? And no, that turkey you shot on complete fucking accident when you were eleven doesn't count."
"That was a clean shot!"
Gotta love the look of insulted pride on Sam's face. Too easy.
"Riiight. Sure thing, dude. Anyway, a turkey is a far cry from the damn Jersey devil. We don't know where it sleeps. We don't know how to track it, what to look for. We don't even know if it can be killed. IF it even exists."
"We still can't just leave town. We gotta check it out. What if it does hurt someone? Won't you feel even a little bit guilty?"
Putting the Browning back together distracts me long enough to push down the urge to tell him no, it won't bother me. He'll know it's a lie and I just don't want to hear it. He can be such a condescending pain in the ass sometimes. Condescending…that's a big word. Damn, I've been hanging around his bookworm ass for too long.
"Fine. Whatever. I'm going to clean every weapon we have, keep the heat on high, and watch some TV. You think of a way to track down something that doesn't leave any tracks, you let me know, Sherlock."
Cocky little fucker figures it out. It takes two days of really crappy television, and a second pass over our entire arsenal of guns and knives, but he figures it out. Comes in all full of himself, slaps a piece of paper down on the table and gives me this look.
"Its hideout is only about fifteen miles from here. Just off the Mullica River. Found an abandoned paper mill that happens to be smack in the center of all the sightings. Not just the latest, but all of them."
He waits. Like I'm gonna say, "Way to go buddy, good job!"
I just raise an eyebrow and drink down the rest of my beer, eyes locked on the TV screen.
"Well?" he finally says, rapping those Sasquatch knuckles against the map on the table.
"You're driving. Don't get any of that smug self-satisfaction on my seat."
Ten minutes later, the ear-to-ear grin on Sam's face isn't so funny anymore. Luckily, the boarded up mill comes into sight and I remember the one thing Mr. Smarty-pants has yet to enlighten me about.
"So. Any clue how to kill it, you know, just in case it's not friendly?"
Watching the grin slide off his face like melted cheese falling off a piping hot pizza is a priceless moment in history I wish I could have captured on film. Oh well.
"No clue, huh? That's too bad. Looks like we better hope Mister Thirsty Peeping-Tom is polite."
Sam glares and puts the car in park. I flash a thin-lipped smile and snatch the keys out of his hand.
I'm not really sure what to take out of the trunk, so I just grab a mishmash of what we work best with, plus what might be able to handle a longer distance shot, in case the devil takes flight. Shotguns, crossbows, extra bolts, a box of shells, and we're a go. With the full bag slung over my shoulder and a crossbow in hand, I creep low and follow Sam's hulking frame through the overgrown bushes around the mill.
We circle around the building, looking for an easy, quiet entrance. A small grate on the east side looks promising. Shimmying up to the opening, we pull off the grate and drop down into a small storage room.
You know, this would be a perfect spot for the Mission Impossible theme. Know it? Hum it for me.
Eh. Close enough.
Ok, so we're in the storage room, yeah? Place smells like fifty year old mops. Dirty ones at that. Blegh.
There's a short set of stairs on the far side of the room, and a doorway. No door. Place has been pretty hollowed out of any spare wood, now that I take a look around. Shelves are missing, with only a few slabs of wood still attached to the walls to let us know they were there in the first place.
We get on opposite sides of the door, crossbows ready, breathing steady. This isn't our usual shoot first, ask questions never kind of situation, so we're a bit out of our element.
How exactly do you ask a mythical creature if it plans on eating any of the locals any time soon?
Worry about that later, find the thing first.
Peeking around the door frame, we can't see too far into the gloom of the main room but there's a good sized bit of cover to the left with nothing but a wall at its back, so I scurry over to it with Sam in tow. From behind an overturned piece of equipment, we've got a clear view of most of the rest of the room.
Factory equipment is everywhere. Grimy, dusty, broken, leaning, you name it. There's a strip of ragged conveyor belt running along the west wall, an enormous hole in the roof, and a pile of wood in the rough shape of a huge bird's nest at the north end.
We don't see it at first, because the edge of the nest is about six feet high and we're too far away. We do see shadows though, on the wall next to the nest – first some shapeless ones, moving about, then a flexing wing that's clear and defined. Looks like a bat wing, only huge.
I take a quick glance at Sam. He nods to let me know he saw it too, and then we move from cover to cover, next to the strip of belt, until we're just ten feet or so away.
We can hear voices now, coming from the depths of the nest. Sam's eyebrows furrow together, and I'm guessing I have a similar look of focus on my face.
"But Shane, we can't just leave the girl to fend for herself. That poltergeist could really hurt her."
"I know that, Danny. I'm not an idiot. But we're out of cayenne pepper, and the thing was cremated. What do you suggest we do? Wave our shotguns around and then do the hokey pokey til it gets annoyed enough to leave?"
Sam blinks, hard, and gives me a crazy look. I gotta admit, I'm stumped too. So I crawl up onto the conveyor belt. Sam joins me, and we peer over the edge. For once in my whole damn life, I'm truly and completed shocked.
Ok…there was that one time, with the water, and the basement, and the taser. Different story, sorry.
Directly in front of us, we can see a television, a nice one. Flat screen, possibly plasma, but at the very least HD. There's a satellite box and a DVD player next to it, plus a stack of DVDs to the other side. The screen flickers a touch, and a twelve foot long wing reaches out and smacks the satellite box in obvious irritation.
"Stupid dish, wish I could get cable out here," a high-pitched, nasal voice mutters from beneath our perch.
Two men are on the screen, dodging flying objects, a toaster, glass tumblers, a frying pan.
"Shane! We gotta get Karen out of here!" the dark-haired one yells.
"Ya think?!" the other ones responds belligerently before sidestepping a flying cookie jar.
The devil's round, bear-like ears twitch, and it stretches out its long, thin legs to prop its hooves on the square ottoman in front of it.
A manly choked scream draws my attention back to the TV. The dark-haired one (Danny was it?) is being dragged across the floor, a strip of saran wrap twisted tight around his throat.
"Oh, come on! Not this shit again," the devil snorts. "Should get that boy a neon-sign that says 'Don't Forget to Choke Me, Have a Nice Day!'"
I can't help it. I shoot a sidelong glance at Sam, a dumbfounded grin on my face. He has this 'we gotta be in the Twilight Zone' look on his face, and he's gnawing on his bottom lip.
Just then, the devil's spins and stands and we're staring into amber colored eyes that looked just a surprised as ours must. Its nose is long, horse-like, and two small upward-pointing fangs jut from its bottom lip. It huffs a breath through its flaring nostrils and blinks twice at us.
"Well, hello there. I wasn't aware I had company."
My grip on the crossbow tightens, but it's pointed at the ground since I'm not looking to piss the thing off just yet.
"Please, please. Come in!" it howls cheerily in that tinny voice, and grins. At least I think it's a grin. The flashing rows of sharp little teeth are a bit hard to read.
Sam tugs on my sleeve, as if I need encouragement NOT to get inside this creature's nest, but it just keeps waving one hoof and scooting back to give us room to climb over the edge.
"Son-of-a-bitch! Dan? Danny! Dude, talk to me!"
The devil glances at the television, as if to check for itself that 'Danny' is in fact still in one piece after his encounter with the evil saran wrap. Sam shoves at me, eyes widening and narrowing frantically like he's trying to tell me something in Morse code with his eyelashes, but the devil's gaze is back on us fast.
"No really, please. I promise I won't harm you. I haven't had a decent conversation in years. Damn humans, you're all so nervous and easily spooked. I don't even eat meat!" it chortles, gesturing towards the pile of hay on the left side of the nest.
I look at Sam, because he's tugging nervously on my sleeve again like he did when he was six and I had to drag him up to practically rope him onto that mall Santa's lap.
The thing is, I'm an instinct kind of guy. And the creature simply isn't setting off any warning bells at this point. No bones lying around, no grinning human skulls, no dark magic symbols, nothing. There's only a half empty bag of peanut M&M's, a slightly dented universal remote, and what looks like a really old copy of Entertainment Weekly. Not exactly the stuff of nightmares.
Grabbing Sam by the collar, I jerk him into the nest with me. It's deeper than it looks, and we end up sliding down the sloped wall on our butts.
The devil chuckles, sits back down in its straw chair-type-thing, and the weirdest afternoon of our lives begins.
"Wait, so their brothers, and they hunt ghosts? That's it? That's the plot of the show?" Sam says, incredulously.
"Yes, well, not just ghosts, but yes. They drive around in this big white, '65 Malibu, and they hunt down evil," the devil chirps.
"And the younger one, he's a whiney type is he? Kind of emotional…womanly, that sort of thing?" I add, flashing a toothy smile at my clearly irritated little brother.
"Ha ha! Yes, a bit. But he's got a big heart and a good head on his shoulders. The other one's a bit dim," the devil answers, chopping on some M&M's.
I ignore Sam's snort of laughter, and snatch a handful of the candy for myself. With a mouth full of chocolate, peanut, and candy shell delight, I grumble out a response.
"Maybe so, but at least he's better looking."
Four hours later, we're saying our goodbyes to Charles – hey, that was his name! – and working our way out to the car.
Sam is chewing the inside of his cheek. I can almost hear the deep thought in process.
Amazingly, my little brother surprises me.
"That Danny guy needs to get laid. Don't you think?"
"I couldn't agree more, Sammy."
You probably could have heard our relieved, and slightly hysterical laughter for miles around.