Jersey Devil
By R. Wayne EmersoniUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2011 R. Wayne Emerson
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4502-9126-2Chapter One
October 31, 1984
A chill wind was blowing through the town of Burlington, New Jersey, on the last day of October. For the children of Burlington, Halloween was almost as magical as Christmas. What could be better than sprinting from door to door, screaming, "TRICK or TREAT," at the top of your lungs so that someone might toss a bite-size Snickers bar or a pack of candy corn into your Halloween basket?
It was unnaturally cold in New Jersey that Halloween, but you could feel the excitement in the air. Every school kid, from kindergarten to the twelfth grade, was anxiously waiting for the final school bell to ring. Not only was it Halloween, but it was Friday as well, and that meant a full night of fun without the worry of getting up for class the next morning.
Children weren't the only ones excited by Halloween; the adults loved it too. It was a day to relive their childhoods. Who didn't like the idea of ghosts and goblins knocking on their door, smiling when they were rewarded for the costumes that they wore?
Of course, there were always some, like Ms. Beverly Ann Anderson, who found Halloween to be insufferable. Anderson was the old lady who lived at the top of the hill on Thirty-Sixth Avenue with her dog, Charlie. The house she lived in was like all the others on the block with the exception being that it was run down and in dire need of repair. The roof sagged in places, and a brown shutter hung at an odd angle, having come loose from its hinges on the right side of an upstairs window. The house was white, but time and the elements had stripped much of the paint from it, giving it the look of a cow or a harlequin-colored dog. In the front yard were the termite-infested remains of a warped picket fence. One spoke in three was missing or broken, and it hadn't seen paint in ten years. The backyard was surrounded by a rusty, chain-link fence. Intertwined with vines and falling apart, it did little more than keep Charlie confined.
Charlie was one of those dogs that barked at everything and everybody who walked by the fence. On a daily basis, neighborhood children walked by, teasing the dog and shouting wicked things about the woman who lived inside the house, a house that nobody dared ring the doorbell of on Halloween. The cut-through path that led from Thirty-Fifth Avenue to Thirty-Sixth Avenue, went right by old lady Anderson's yard and gave Charlie plenty of excitement.
If a child was unlucky enough to lose a ball in the yard, it was forfeited. Charlie was a biter, as several of the neighborhood children could attest to. The small, brown terrier mix loved nothing more than to chase children up and down the fence line. If he found himself outside of the fence, or if someone was foolish enough to try to retrieve a ball from his yard, the dog couldn't pass up the chance to attach his jaws to the children. The dog had been there for as long as anyone could remember, and some of the children, who had limited knowledge of the occult and witchcraft, claimed that Charlie was old lady Anderson's familiar, which was a pet that watched over things for a witch or a sorcerer. In some tomes of the occult, it was said that a witch who kept a familiar, usually a black cat, could gain even more power through the use of such an animal.
The woman in the house was mysterious and sightings of her only happened every so often. The neighbors knew she was there, because they could hear her yelling at Charlie from inside of the house. On the rare occasions when you did see the eighty-one-year-old woman, she was usually wearing her housecoat and slippers and was dragging her trash can to the front of her house, where it remained on the side of her front steps.
Never once did someone see the old woman when she didn't have a sneer on her wrinkled, leather-skinned face. Her messy gray hair and her gnarled fingers only helped to verify that she was involved in witchcraft and the occult. All that was missing was a pointy hat and a broomstick. To see her with either would have been proof of her communion with darkness.
Just like in every other town in America, the Crystal Springs subdivision of Burlington, New Jersey, was full of myths and misunderstandings. Both kids and adults alike made up wild tales about the woman. Some said she had killed her husband and kept him in a freezer in the basement. Some said that she snatched up little children, who made the mistake of walking the path by her house late at night.
None of it was true. The reality of it was that Beverly Ann Anderson was an old maid who had never married and had kept to herself.
In 1972, she had had a stroke, which accounted for the permanent scowl on her face. With no family left in the world, Beverly Ann Anderson was just an old woman who would have loved the company of children or the kind greeting of an adult, though she received neither.
There was no misunderstanding the troubled teen who jumped the guardrail at the end of Thirty-Seventh Avenue and entered the old Whitmore Cemetery. Just another kid who fit in nowhere, the young man fought authority at every level. Conrad Beyer had been a delinquent for most of his life. From age nine to seventeen, he had been suspended from school more times than anyone could count, and he had had three extended stays in the juvenile detention center in Camden. Upon turning eighteen he had stolen a car, for which he did six months in the county jail.
A short walk through a small patch of woods led Conrad to the edge of the cemetery. The ground under his feet was hard, and the leaves and acorns from trees crunched loudly under his shoes as he walked. No fence surrounded the cemetery, and even if one did, Conrad Beyer would have climbed over it to gain entry. The grass around the gravesites was tall, and many of the headstones were covered in mold or badly cracked. Some of them were missing altogether.
As the short, greasy-haired youth walked through the graveyard, he ardently searched for one grave in particular. For two hours, the troubled young man wandered the cemetery, looking at headstones and grave markers for the name of the one who might be able to assist him with his conjuring. It was said in many of the occult tomes he had read that the dead, those who were particularly evil in life, could aid the living with conjurations.
Squatting down over a crumbling headstone, which was covered in filth, Conrad discovered what he was looking for. The headstone read, "Samuel Leeds, may the Devil take him."
Clearing the debris away from the headstone, Conrad sat where he thought the man's coffin might be lying in the ground. He closed his eyes and prayed. Removing a small, leather-bound book from the inside of his jacket, the teen took off the rubber band that was wound around it, and opened it to a page that had been earmarked for the occasion.
He had stolen the book from a small antiquities shop just the year before, and ever since he had begun reading its contents, he had been hooked. Groban's Tome of Demons and Devils was well-known to those in the world of the occult, and the copy he had was invaluable. Inside of the book were notes made by a man who had understood evil and believed in the powers of Satan. Inscribed on the inside cover of the small book was the name "Samuel Leeds," the name of the man who was buried in the very grave on which the teen was sitting.
Studying the tome, the teen had come to understand the hidden meanings in the words. If one wanted to know the true meanings behind the words, he had to study them with an open mind. For a long time, the meanings behind the words in the leather-bound book had remained outside of Conrad's ability to understand them. But out of nowhere, a change had come over him and he could then understand those words, words that promised great powers to anyone who was willing to give himself over and open his soul to the Dark Prince.
A willing soldier, Conrad had made promises to the Father of Lies, promises that, for the first time in his life, he meant to keep. Though the Dark One never answered him directly, somehow he knew that his prayers were heard and that his sacrifice would be acceptable.
The teen reached into a hidden pocket in his jacket, but this time it was no book that he pulled out. Instead of a book, what Conrad Beyer removed from his jacket was a crucifix that was made of pure gold and adorned with glimmering rubies and diamonds. The crucifix was just as invaluable as the book in his hands, and stealing it from the rectory of Saint Mark's Church in Pennsauken had been difficult. More than one person had seen his face as he had fled from the rectory. It wouldn't be long before the police identified him. His time was limited. If he wanted to feel the power of evil and brush up against greatness, it was now or never.
The crucifix in his hands was said to be a great force for good in the world. Rumor had it that the cross had been used in the exorcism that had taken place in Mount Rainier, Maryland, in 1949. A movie had been made of the event; the devil was portrayed as the weaker of the wills that had battled for the soul of the child. If not for divine intervention from God himself, the devil might have taken the soul of the priest, along with that of the child. The exorcist who managed to remove the demon from the child in Maryland was among those who Satan hated above all. Most didn't know that it was a boy and not a girl who had been possessed in that house, and the devil who had taken possession of him had never planned on relinquishing his prize. If not for the interference of a holy man from Africa and the favor that that man held with God, the demon would have succeeded in claiming the boy, heart and soul.
Placing the crucifix face-down on the cold ground, Conrad removed a piece of dark cloth from his pocket and covered the relic. He examined his work carefully, trying to be sure not to let any of the metal from the crucifix show through the dark covering. The next thing the teen did was cut his wrist with a switchblade knife, allowing the blood that fell from the wound to cover the cloth over the crucifix. Unzipping his pants, the would-be sorcerer urinated on top of the blood-covered cloth, further soiling the holy relic. Bile from his throat and dirt from the bottom of his shoe followed the urine. Then Conrad felt that he was finally ready.
Opening Groban's Tome of Demons and Devils, Beyer began to chant the words that had been written in Latin, a language that he didn't know, a language that had been revealed to him by his dark master. It had taken weeks to learn the meaning of the words and how to properly pronounce them. For long minutes, Conrad recited the words of evil power. A feeling of impending doom came over the young man and the flesh on his arms pimpled with goose bumps. As he continued his chanting, the teen could feel the wind around him pick up speed. The air was growing colder still. Uncanny warmth protected him from the cold and he was barely conscious of it.
Completing the opening of the ritual, Conrad moved to the next phase of the rite he had to perform. Though he shouted, no one heard the words that flowed from the mouth of the teen. The words were ancient and privy only to those who had faith in the Prince of Darkness. Dark and foreboding, the words played off the lips of the teen, like the blood that dripped from his wrist, which he had never bandaged.
No smile came to his face as the cloth-covered crucifix burst into flames and melted on the cold, hard ground over the grave of Samuel Leeds. All business, the teen was wondering why he didn't feel power coursing through him yet. Clearing his thoughts so that the Dark One would not be offended, Conrad knew that the power would come. The promise had been made, the bargain struck. The power would be his.
Satisfied with his work, Conrad slowly began to back out of the verses he was yelling. Though he consciously tried to end the spell casting, he couldn't stop his lips from speaking the words. Horror and shock came over the teen when he realized that he was still yelling the words of doom and despair from the book. Trying to break off the ritualistic chanting, he found that he was unable. Struggling was futile.
A power ... something with a will stronger than his own had taken control of his body, and he couldn't stop. His eyes opened wide with fright and he looked frantically from side to side for help as his lips continued to form the words of the ritual. As far as his eyes could see there was no one to help him. Only he and the one he prayed to could hear the words. There would be no interruption.
A sweat broke out on his forehead, and tears fell from the corners of the boy's eyes, but he couldn't stop chanting. What had started out as warmth was now growing uncomfortably hot, and when he looked down at his legs, Conrad saw that they were on fire. Stark fear and panic took over; he begged to be released from his chanting.
His pleas went unanswered, and his mouth, which was now dry, continued to shout out the words of power. The fire on his legs spread to his waist and stomach, and his mind screamed out with the pain that his throat refused to voice. All the while, his lips parted and the words of summoning poured from them.
Within minutes, the unholy fire had consumed the teen, and all that was left of him was bits of burnt bones and clothing.
The ground where he had once stood was blackened, and the air smelled of seared flesh and hair. Lying next to the black spot on the grave was Groban's Tome of Demons and Devils, and though everything around it had been charred, the book remained unharmed. No fire had touched its cover or pages.
The teen had only been dead for seconds when the earth around the grave began to shake; the most dreadful scream came from the ground around the headstone. The scream was like the bark of a hoarse dog, only it was ominous and had a steely quality to it. For those who heard it, the scream was unlike anything their ears had ever born witness to. They were spooked by the noise; it frightened them so badly that they closed the curtains around their windows and checked the locks on their doors before going back to their soap operas.
Chapter Two
At one second after 6:00 p.m., the front door to every house in the Crystal Springs subdivision burst open. Children whooped and hollered with glee as they raced for the first houses on their carefully laid out maps of the neighborhood.
Karen and Bruce Cheek watched from the open doorway of their two-story, three-bedroom house on Thirty-Fifth Avenue. They had no fear for their children as the two girls, Deidre and Wendy, raced up the hill toward the end of the street. Burlington and the Crystal Springs subdivision were virtually free of drugs and crime. They could leave the door to their house unlocked, if they were going away for a few hours, without fear of someone stealing from them.
Every one of the modest homes in the neighborhood was the same, from the three steps that led to the tiny front porches, to the lunchbox sized front yards, they were all the same. The only thing that individualized the houses was the color of the paint on the siding and the type of fence that surrounded the yard, if the owners could afford one. Some had had the money to finish off the basements of their homes, but for most that was a dream that would have to wait.
Deidre and Wendy Cheek were fourteen and ten years old, respectively, and this was the first year that they would trick or treat in the new subdivision that their parents had moved them to. Dressed as Wonder Woman, Deidre was perturbed that she had been forced to wear a coat over her costume. At every door she knocked on, the residents there called her a princess; her headband was the only part of her costume that wasn't covered by the goose-down jacket she wore. The girl couldn't remember a colder Halloween, but she wasn't about to complain. She loved her new house and her new friends.
Wendy Cheek was dressed as a tiger, with her long, striped tail hanging down from the back of her suede jacket. The cowl of the costume had pointed, striped ears on its top, and it kept the sides of her face warm as she ran.
From the beginning, the pickings had been good, and the girls smiled at every candy bar or goody bag that hit the bottoms of their baskets. There were a few people who insisted on giving out popcorn balls or candy apples, but they needn't have bothered. The Cheeks had parents who were overly attentive, and any homemade candy was thrown away for fear of poison or razor blades being hidden inside. Urban legends died hard in the 1980s, and very few were the parents who took chances with Halloween candy.
Though it was dark and there were no streetlights in the neighborhood, the lights over the doors on the houses lit the way and made the children feel safe. The shadows that grew under trees and on sides of the houses were spooky, adding to the event, but the shadows weren't enough to keep the children from the candy that awaited them.
When it came time to cross to Thirty-Sixth Avenue, the girls avoided the cut-through next to Ms. Anderson's house. The light over her door was on, but no one was ringing her bell, at least no one who valued his or her skin.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Jersey Devilby R. Wayne Emerson Copyright © 2011 by R. Wayne Emerson. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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