"the real jersey devil, part two"

by elizabeth you (have you read part one yet?)

i started out at dusk for the old shrouds home in leeds point, new jersey. the house burned down in 1952 but the remains can still be seen. my research indicates that although many posses and searches have been launched over the years, no one has been able to successfully track the jersey devil. so i decided to take another approach and let it come to me.

the roads in the pine barons are rough dirt but my jeep didn't mind. i parked close to the house and decided to set up camp. it was terribly cold and the ground was covered with snow so i wondered if i shouldn't have waited until spring, but now that i was here there was no turning back. i was wearing my ski clothes and had plenty of blankets, so i cleared enough ground to start a fire and hoped that the flames didn't scare it away.

all of the stories i had read and heard about devil attacks had involved chickens and dogs, but unwilling to sacrifice the afore mentioned animals, i came armed with oreo cookies, hostess twinkies, kellogg frosted flakes, and the official beer of new jersey, coors light. once the fire was burning warmly i filled a backpack with junk food, grabbed a flashlight, and headed into the surrounding woods. in the growing darkness, i stumbled across a shallow cave near a small pond. figuring that this is the ideal place for a furtive creature to bed down for the cold winter months, i opened the box of cereal and spilled some along the path. as i headed back in the direction where i hoped camp lay, i continued to leave a trail of junk food crumbs.

after walking for almost forty-five minutes, i was certain i was lost. scenes from the blair witch project flashed through my head and i cursed myself for not bringing a compass or some company. i plodded forward, looking for a familiar-looking tree or the tracks i had left on the way into the forest, but the wind and snow had erased all traces of my passage. just when i was convinced that i was hopelessly screwed i saw a glow off to my left and followed the light to my jeep and the fire. i had been walking around in circles but was fortunate enough to stumble back to my camp and had just one twinkie left to lure the devil into the clearing.

i placed a shiny six-pack of beer at the very center, knowing he wouldn't be able to resist. now, it was just a matter of waiting and trying to stay warm. the fire wasn't putting off enough heat to thaw me out after the long hike, so i climbed into my jeep and turned on the heater. hoping the monster appreciated good music, i popped a korn cd into the player and enjoyed a brief respite from the wind. i drank my dr. pepper and ate peanut-butter sandwiches and no-doze as i stared into the dark trees hoping the devil would appear soon. i began to wish i had saved one of the cookies for myself when suddenly there was a movement in the woods.

as quickly as i could, i turned off the car's engine and rolled down the window. i searched my pockets for my faithful olympus digital camera. there were no sounds in the night except for my ragged breaths, the popping fire, and my engine ticking as it cooled. the brush rustled again, but still i could see nothing but darkness. then i heard a sound that i can only describe as a cat caught in a blender. the terrifying scream only lasted for a minute, but it was long enough to make me wish i was back home in bed instead of alone in the cold woods. as a reporter and aficionado of the weird and unexplained, i needed to know what kind of creature could make such a sound, but as a rational human, i wanted to be as far away as possible.

before i could consider starting the car and getting the hell out of there, something stepped out of the trees and into the clearing. by the light of the fire, i could see some kind of animal that appeared to be standing on its hind legs. part of me secretly hoped that it was just a deer or even a bear, but it was neither. it was about four feet tall when it was hunched over digging the food out of the snow, but then it straightened and i could tell it was at least as tall as i am. it had a long neck and an almost square head and something was poking out of its back. with shaky hands i opened the camera's lens and flipped on my jeep's headlights. it jumped, startled, and let out another scream. it rushed towards the lights, straight at me. i snapped a picture as quickly as i could before rolling up the window and then got my first good look at it.

the body was covered in patches of snow-coated fur. though the arms were shriveled, the legs were strong and thick. the neck was just as thick and long, also covered with the reddish-brown fur. it looked like it was molting in the middle of winter, spots of bare grey skin showed between the hair. it had large, bright eyes and wickedly sharp teeth. it was running so fast that it had closed the distance between us in a matter of seconds and had crashed into the front grill, shaking the car. it backed up a foot and charged again, revealing the lumps on its back to be folded wings. he jumped onto the hood and all i could see were its legs and the bottom half of his body, silouetted by my lights. he kicked a hooved foot at the glass, cracking my windshield. i yelled and tried to scoot backwards, my knee pushing into the steering wheel and leaning on the horn.

the devil straightened, and turned around, whipping a spindly tail against my windshield. he unfolded his webbed, bat-like wings, and pushed off the hood of the car, gliding a few feet before he landed in the snow. it took off running into the forest and i turned the car on, slammed it into reverse, and hightailed it out of there. my curiosity abated, i just wanted to get as far away as possible. i lit cigarette after cigarette as i barrelled down the dirt country roads until i got to the parkway. i didn't slow down until i spotted a motel and pulled the into the parking lot.

in the morning, i examined the damage to my precious jeep, it looked like i had hit a moose, the fender was twisted in and the glass was spidered out. parts of the grill and patches of paint were missing. i took a few pictures for the record, checked out of the motel, and headed back for the campsite to see if any evidence remained. the ground looked like it had been trampled by a herd of buffalo, but a few clear hoofprints stood out on the under the shelter of trees. the campfire had been out for hours, and flakes of metal and paint remained where my tire tracks stopped. the 6-pack of coors light was gone.

had i been visited by the jersey devil? was this creature some kind of mutated madman or a species of animal we have not yet cataloged? looking at the evidence, i knew that the cold and pep pills hadn't made me hallucinate the terrifying incident. i certainly was attacked by something in the woods that night, a being that i couldn't identify and roughly met the descriptions of the countless other people who had seen it before. was it really a 250 year old devil, the cursed thirteenth child of mother shrouds or an evolutionary miracle? whatever it was, i certainly didn't want to meet it again. it was enough that i was convinced of its existance, i wasn't going to risk sticking around to answer the rest of my questions.