The Devil in the Pines By Christian Angeles

Part One: The Foreman

I’m tucked away in my bedroom inside my lil’ trailer. Comfy beyond belief. It’s daylight savings and I earned this extra hour of sleep. Especially after a sixteen-hour shift. I don’t wanna get up today. I don’t wanna deal with people no more.

Seventeen days a’ protests. We were supposta start weeks ago. When I first took this ere’ job, I was under the impression I’d be constantly building. Making and breaking the what-nots, like my Legos as a kid. Erecting towers that went high into the sky flippin’ the bird up to God Almighty himself.

Instead, most of the sites I’ve worked on haven’t been building up but over. No building monuments with diesel caterpillars either, as foreman, permits have become my playthings. 

See, the department of conservation and natural resources started leasing oil and gas rights on public park areas and forests. Four hundred-and-thirteen million dollars for one hundred-and-thirty eight thousand acres of land. A lot of it, former national parks and historical monuments.

When we started, the locals complained about an oil pipeline and the environmental damage it could cause. The oil boys agreed. Sought cleaner alternatives. Choose this new technique called fracking, instead. People liked that word ‘green’ bein thrown around. We were supposed to do our jobs and be done with it.

Fast forward to about a month ago, and a lot of these same people realize they don’t like this fracking business much neither. Complaints came in rather quickly over site zero, the first fracking location out of the planned eight. Concerns about the suddenly brown drinking water. How it gave people headaches. How the children who drank it broke out in rashes. Said we lied about it bein’ safe.

The worst case was a grandmother. She came in personally and complained to me at three in the mornin’ right outside of this here trailer. Said her grandson developed lymph nodes and mouth ulcers. Missed an entire month of school, sick as a dog.

When I told her I’d look into it, she didn’t believe me one bit. Instead, she invited her very large and very angry son who was waitin’ outside, inside my lil’ trailer. He had a special gift for me…

And dropped a dead corpse onto my couch. I hollered. 

“Jesus! For a second, I thought that was your actual grandson.” 

“Family Pitbull,” the son uttered under cringing teeth.

“That dog died after drinking the water in town for the first time. Two days!”  emphasized the grandmother, “Imagine what that could do to a person over time?”

I looked over the poor mutt. Normally, dead animals look peaceful but this one looked like it died in pain. Face flaps of its skin curled oddly inwards. Like it was drying out from the inside. 

“You try boilin’ it?” I asked snarkily.  After a whole lot of arguing and cussing, they left my trailer but left the dead dog for me to hold onto. Said it serves as a nice reminder of the messed up shit we were doing. It took weeks to get the rancid smell out of my trailer.

On that depressing note, I get up and go for a shower. Start my usual morning routine. I look in the mirror and hate the pale looking thing starin’ back at me. Average height. Atrophied muscles. Receding brown hairline with severe bags under sunken eyes. The only time I smile now is to brush these tar stained teeth.

After a quick shave, I get dressed: foreman outfit, utility belt, and helmet; eggs over toast and black cup of coffee for breakfast. I’m ready, yet again, for another painstaking day. Fifteen months of this routine. I hate being under contract. Job’s supposed to be done already. I just want to be back home in Texas.

When I get to the site, I smell diesel in the air. Hear the load roar of the caterpillar engines, ready to go yet immobile due to the line of protesters barring the path. Lines of picketers yelling complaints that fall on deaf ears.

We’re supposed to clear an acre of trees for the pumps and tanks. We were also supposed to tear down an old mansion nearby, what I believe the locals call a ‘historical landmark’. And I do believe it was, for a time, until it was sold just now. All in the name of Fracking. 

One of the boys reported hearing an odd screeching noise from the inside of the mansion yesterday. Some sort of animal. I checked it out for myself but didn’t find anything. Though I may have also scared it off when I fired a few rounds of my 9mm inside. Technically, not legal in Jersey, but it is legal where my trailer is in Pennsylvania. The loud, waiting to be used equipment, masks the noise anyway and let’s be honest, who in their right mind wouldn’t like to fire a gun in a fancy old abandoned mansion?

Regardless, what I did find upstairs was two abandoned journals. Old looking things I’m surprised weren’t in a museum. I plan on it pawning it after getting a chance to read it for myself tonight. When I’m back. After the final guards leave and the site’s locked down and no one, including myself, is supposed to be in the building.

Little did they know, is that I’ve already got a plan. In a few hours I’m gonna call for a protestor meetin’. Hear everyone’s complaints again for the umpteenth time. While that’s goin’ on,  I’m also asking for one of my workers to plant our tiniest bulldozer out back around the Mansion gardens while everyone is distracted. Keep it quiet with the engines off.

See tonight, I have every intention of finally getting to ride me a Caterpillar bulldozer…

When I tear this place down.

Part Two: The Majordomo, Journal #1

They found him at the edge of the garden. His horse was missing, and his clothing was found clawed and torn. Footsteps in the snow showed that he’d trailed in from the woods, and there were sprinkles of blood, in short and tiny patterns, found along the path.

I inspected the area they found him in. There were signs of a struggle. The splattered blood of a potentially broken nose. Though given our lord’s proclivities with opioid medicines, it wouldn’t surprise me if it had been bleeding prior to his morning hunt.

I asked everyone what happened but they didn’t know. So, I let my lord rest throughout the afternoon. And he slept as the flurries began to fall heavier and heavier, powdering the rooftops, gate, and the tips of the unending woods.

For better or worse, Joseph brought along with him, the first blizzard of winter.

“How, how did I get here?” he asked when he awoke, startled and looking about the room like the place was foreign.

As Majordomo, it was my duty to keep the house in order and answer all questions, though as Joseph’s former army medic during the war, my care for him was a personal matter as well. He was like a son to me. Enormously kind to me and my family.

“We found you passed out in the gardens, my lord. You’d returned from the hunt, alone.”

 “And the party that came with me?”

 “Missing, Sir,” I said as I checked his vitals, then explained, “We’d sent out a search party, but the storm buried your tracks. You courageously dragged yourself home from the forest.”

“Courageous?” he said as he stroked his hand over his face to wipe away his sleepiness, “My entire life has been one retreat after another. Cowardice is more like it.”

“One would call that survival, my lord,” I corrected.

He groaned at my optimism. Rubbed his fingers over his temples and shut his eyes. I granted him a moment to collect his thoughts and went about the manor to check on things.

The windows of the place were faceted and secure, and the pantries and storages were filled to the brim. We were well-stocked and always ready to tend to guests, as The Manor was lonely, and located within a large forest in the middle of nowhere.

When I returned to his room, I found Joseph up and stretching looking about. He was rummaging through the small circle of belongings we’d found on him.

“I’ve rested enough,” he said, “Is this all my belongings? My Sabre? Where’s my sword?”

“Sir? I beg your pardon, but they didn’t find you with any weapons of sorts.”

“That’s right, I’d left it in the — damn it!” he grunted and before I knew it, Joseph uncharacteristically gathered his belongings. He dove into the armoire of his bedroom. Dressed himself in thick breeches, leather gloves, and a button-up waistcoat, with a heavy woolen overcoat meant to seal himself against the wind.  

Afterwards, he rushed down the hall and descended the grand staircase. I followed. The servants that greeted him as we walked were happy to see him recovered, though he ignored their well-wishes, keeping no time for pleasantries. Along the way, he ordered the head guard to gather the men and ready the horses.

“What happened out there?” I asked as I tried keeping up through the hallways.

“We fought a great beast and lost. I intend to amend that right now.”

“Sheesh. In such haste? My lord, you’re sounding more like your brother.”

“I’m do this for my brother,” he said as we reached the armory.

Joseph grabbed the Charleville musket and Pennsylvania long rifle, the most lethal mid and long-range guns available to man. I grabbed my sabre to join him in arms, but he snatched the blade from my hands.

 “Give me that, you old fool,” he said as he sheathed my sabre and attached it to his own hilt, “This is my duty. You are to stay here and take care of our people.”

“I expect that sabre back,” I told him.

“You will,” he replied as he rushed out of the armory and toward the manor doors. He opened them, and outside, was an endless storm. A dazzling white spectacle milling through every inch of the air.

“Look at this, Sebastian,” he said to me eyes mesmerized at the infinite snow, “It never snowed in Naples or Spain. I imagine this is like what my brother described in his letters during his long campaign in Russia. Yet even that feels closer to home than this. Everything about this country feels foreign. It’s cold… and distant.”

He marched onto the porch against the howling winds. I put on a quick heavy coat and joined. Below him, the wood of the deck splintered beneath his boots, buckling to the force of wind and snow.

In the distance, a faint light glimmered, and Joseph weathered through and approached it. I followed him to its source, revealed to be our would be guards and a cavalryman. They were locking-down the stables to Joseph’s disagreement, “We need horses,” said Joseph in a cold expressionless manner. The guards attested to the order, and the cavalryman, a broad man with wide shoulders and the build of a hunter, snickered, “The horses are in disarray. They’ll never ride out in this weather, my lord.”

“Saddle your best one anyway. I have no intention of dying out there and every intention of returning,” Joseph commanded as the squall of a chilling wind blew snow directly into his face. The men laughed and disagreed. They then locked the stables and headed back inside.

Joseph, for all his attempts at valor, was never really a soldier. Bewildered at what he considered mutiny, he redirected his attention towards me, and I shot him a confused and concerned expression.

“Those men will die out there in this storm,” he reasoned.

I protested, “And you, sir? Are you yourself not going to freeze to death out there!”

“Sebastian…” he said with a pang in his throat before stopping himself, “Old friend, please just gather the people around the fireplace. Keep them warm. Keep them safe.” Then he placed his arm on my shoulder, “I know… I know you’re concerned as to why I’m doing this… That sword is special to me. As are the lives of my men.”

I brushed him off, “Joseph, let’s be real here, those men are likely dead. Look at you, dressed for war. What war?! The revolution is over. We lost. We came here to leave all of that behind, so please… let’s just move on. It’s just a sword.”

“That sabre was my brother’s. The last token of the Bonaparte reign. If I don’t carry on our legacy, no one will,” he said with a fire in his eyes that fizzled in the snow.

Saddened, he looked at me one last time and said, “Look, If I don’t see you again. I’ll tell my brother you said hello.”

“May the Angels be with you, my lord,” I bid farewell as I walked back in.

“Save it for the innocent. Only the devils survived the war,” he replied.

And with that, Joseph Bonaparte, brother to the great Napoleon Bonaparte and the last of the Bonaparte name, walked off into the dark of winter… to hunt a great beast, alone.

Journal of the Majordomo Sebastian Champoux

November 20, 1812

P.S. ten minutes later, Joseph turned around and came back inside. I wish I didn’t start writing this immediately after he left. But here it is. We’re about to have hot chocolate and roast these delightful French delectables by the fire called ‘Marshmallows’. His idea.

Part Three: Joseph Bonaparte, Journal #2

They called me a man of refined tastes. Unlike my brother, the soldier and infamous conqueror, I was more of a man of culture. Understanding the hows and the whys and the ways that people worked the way they did. Politics were my game.

A natural gentleman, I embraced the role of the socialite rather well. Relished in the finer things. Extravagant masquerades, aromatic oriental teas over biscuits, soft big game hunted furs gathered from across the world.

My library in the new world, would eventually come to hold the largest collection of books in all of America, sitting in at ten thousand volumes, four thousand more than the Library of Congress, herself. I also have a wine cellar fully stocked with the best vintages from all of Europe, floor-to-ceiling mirrors, elaborate crystal chandeliers, a marble fireplace, and a grand staircase.

The idea was to sell my guests at the manor, a taste of the world they’d never have the money or time to experience. My estate, large and isolated as it was, would serve as a part-time museum, part-time boudoir, and on special occasions, even a late-night brothel.

All for the aristocratic elites of the New World.

I did this partially out of boredom, but mostly, because gathering information can be rather easy sport when your opponent is caught quite literally with their pants down. Oh, the wonderful things people confess to while on the edge of pain and pleasure.

Who am I to judge? What’s important are the facts, because knowledge, especially of the New World, was all that was needed to manipulate the game in my favor.

I’d learned this trick ruling Naples and Sicily, where the people had absolutely adored me. I threw the most lavish celebrations and was always in the know with the latest gossip in town. And while I said my door was always open to any aristocrat seeking a friend, I’d also sold my safe space as a place to truly be yourself…

And reveal all the little secrets.

Secrets, that oddly, kept everyone in line. As no one wanted to be outed in their affairs. Matters which, oddly enough, were often co-occurring by both guilty and accusing party alike that the lines of innocent versus adulterer were impossible to tell apart.

For two years, my little country brokered peace. One forged by lies and infidelity.

Which is why, when Napoleon asked, I rule Spain, a large landmass he desperately needed to regain in control, I agreed, thinking the same old tricks would work.

They did not.

The people, who were more religious mind you, rejected my ways of government. They called me a sinner. Said that the only way, was the Church’s way, and the one true God’s way.

This infuriated me. Months of persuasion and nothing had worked. My partying days were finally over, and over time, my lands started seceding and I could do nothing to stop it.

It wasn’t all bad, however. They were a more charismatic group. Missionaries of sorts, letting in more war refugees from the areas ravaged by my brother. More than Naples ever had. Needing homes to shelter, lumber to build, and farmlands to feed, I saw an opportunity to bridge the old ways and the new and found a new mission of rulership.

First, I ordered to clear out an old area adjacent to Madrid to make space for our new empire. An old forest of large and ancient trees, none too special, save for one tiny caveat I’d really wish I hadn’t neglected: a tiny grove of olive trees. The people held the objects sacred. Though I should have listened to their protests… keep in mind, they’d been mostly ignoring my decrees since I’d gotten there. So, I thought I’d give them their due and ignore theirs.

And ordered the olive trees burnt to ash.

I regret that decision. Still, you must understand my plan. The ash would enrich the soil for new farmlands. The businesses that could come after the new land that could expand the kingdom. It would be symbolic for a new rule. The first order to dignify my reign.

But in the dust, something had awakened I was not expecting. Something old. Something evil. Soon after, a plague reached the land killing much of the people. On top of this, the soil grew tainted that season, as the harvest seemed oddly low.

They blamed me. The man who burnt down their sacred trees.

“Little Bony frog eater,” the people chanted in defiance, “Witch king, Witch king!”

They said I had birthed a devil that now haunted Spain. That the only way to purge a false king was to eradicate all the signs of his rule…

By fire and blood.

If you ask, people don’t even realize that I was once king of Spain. That I gave Mexico its freedom. That I ordered the end of the Spanish Inquisition. They don’t know this because Spain purged me from its history. When the great fires came, they burnt everything with a Bonaparte crest to its name. The mob broke in and stormed my eerily unguarded castle with ease.

They looted and pillaged everything. Then tossed Antoine, my seven-month-old son, off a third story balcony. The image of the tiny splatter hitting the walkway still haunts my dreams.  

We escaped through the underground latrine systems. A befitting punishment for a fallen Bonaparte king. I was disguised in simple clothing along with my paramour, Lucinda, a young woman whom I absolutely adored, who had a soft face and powerful hips. She was Antoine’s mother. Together we mourned at sea for months over our son.

Lucinda and I traveled from the sewers and onto a boat, taking with us what we could from the palace. We gathered supplies in Naples, before embarking on our final voyage to the Americas. Doing little to stir the waters as we kept silent from port-to-port, wary of pirates or thieves or anyone who caught wind of the treasures we’d had looted from the capital.

When my brother lost the empire, he was exiled to Australia, where rumors of his death surfaced. I myself, went into self-exile to the Americas, the last Bonaparte to my name. I took little with me, save my paramour, my sword, and the crown of the King of Spain…

Pretty cool, huh?  

Oh, and  I forgot. My longstanding servant and friend, Sebastian and his family, they came with us too. Also, some several chests of gold taken from the treasuries. Some of the loyal Castle staff too. A few of my war buddies may have hitchhiked on the boat as well. Also, some of the castle guard. And the band… oh, and everyone listed above’s families came too.

Alright, so maybe I took a lot with me during my exile. What can I say, it helps to have friends! I had brokered a black-market dealer in Europe. Exchanged the ancient crown of Spain, which fetched for a very high price mind you, for a large ship to the Americas. I did, however, keep the crown Jewels for myself. I exchanged those for the land and luxurious mansion we came to own in the new world.

When we landed, the first thing I did in the New World was marry Lucinda, as the titles of Kingship that prevented us to in Spain, would no longer be relevant in my new life.

What I’d neglected to say, let alone didn’t come to expect to be a problem until it was one, is that my very much still living first wife, Julie, along with our two beautiful daughters, survived. They were in exile in Frankfurt and sent me a letter saying that she was staying with her side of the family. At least, until the end of the revolution settled down.

When I told Lucinda that our New Jersey wedding was more formality than actual marriage, she left me. Then after six months she came back. Then left me again, two years later. I’d left her some money and the freedom to do as she will in the new world. We occasionally catch up on occasion. And on special days, once a year, we catch up and talk about our escape. And Antoine.

It was around our fourth-year anniversary in New Jersey, during one harsh winter, where supplies had become difficult to come by. Looking for fresh meat to hold us for the winter one morning, I trudged past the normal hunting grounds, and into the deep winter forest by the estate.

It was there, where I’d found a unique set of elk tracks but noticed something peculiarly strange. That the creature was only walking on two feet, not four. And that one foot seemed slightly larger than the other. Like it was rather deformed in some bizarre fashion. Curious, I followed the trail to the edge of a small ravine with two of my men, but the tracks simply just ended.

“I’ve hunted everything from across the world. I’ve never seen no animal tracks just disappear into thin air like that”

“What do you think it is then, Giles?” I asked.

“It looks as if the creature flew.”

“Impossible.”

“You see no sign an impact?” he said as he pointed to the bottom of the ravine, “No carcass or sign of an impact, below.”

He was right of course. And though I’ve come to see a lot in my time, nothing like this before had ever happened. Which scared me.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” I ordered.

We backtracked. I don’t really know if it was I who found the creature, or if it had secretly been hunting and found me. It was at an open field amidst the first winter’s snowflakes. I mistook the beast as an odd cluster of flakes falling, though realized that was something else.

It was the creature. Diving quickly at us from high above in the air. In short moments I’d watched Giles get pulled and taken high into the sky, never to be seen again. When I ordered his partner, Kyle, to make haste with me, we ran swift as the wind.

When I turned around, I found myself, alone. In the distance I saw it coming at me. I pulled out my rifle and fired. Shot-after-shot with perfect aim. The bullets repelling off the beast like water on a duck’s back, or so they saying goes, I think.

With powerful leather-like wings, it spread and kicked up the wind as it landed with an earth-shaking thump while hitting the ground. I fired my pistol, but it did nothing. Pulled out my powerful sabre, the sword of the French Revolution, and cut a deep gash into the beast’s wing.

 It rose on a pair of inhuman hindlegs and crushing the dirt beneath it with cloven hooves. Broad winged but human in stature. Seven feet tall, with deranged asymmetrical features, and child sized arms, no not arms. Sharp talons! With the face of a horse and the drooping horns of a ram on its head.

Its body twitched as it walked, as if every step were agony. I looked at its dead expressionless eyes, it stared at me. Two tiny black holes behind a curtain of falling snow.

It struck a warning whip at me with its forked tail, knocking the sabre into the bushes. Then it opened its mouth and let out a blood curdling shriek.

I ran away from the creature but before he knew it, found my feet kicking at the air, as the beast carried me higher and higher. And before I knew it, I was being carried high into the air being ready to be tossed to a plummeting doom.

Maybe it was the altitude, but up high I could have sworn I heard the beast yell “ANTOINE!” mocking my history and my heart. I refused to die right then and there. Catching the creature off guard, I climbed its back and stuck my hands deep and gouged its eyes, as the creature crash landed, and I pummeled it into a bloody pulp.

I dragged myself home that evening. Said I’d quest to find the sword of my family, tomorrow.  That winter, I invited Lucinda and Julie, who was visiting the states at the time, to one of my extravagant parties, and we absolutely had a ménage à trois.

It was nothing shy of amazing.

And that was the Winter of when I beat this so-called Devil of New jersey.

The Diary of Joseph Bonaparte

December 25th, 1832

Part Four: Bonaparte Manor, The Voice Between the Walls

There was once a large estate in the middle of a great garden. Surrounded by an even larger forrest. Hidden between trees that stretched from end-to-end to the edges of the world.

They called this place the pine barrens. It was the largest area of undeveloped land in the Mid-Atlantic seaboard. With 1.1 million acres of forest and underground Aquaphor of 17 trillion gallons of the purest water in the country.  

It was a great house, filled with histories and secrets. Elaborately decorated, with wood and marble fashions taken from lands far across the Ocean. There were underground tunnels-built for secret access, and a hidden treasure of ancient kings, buried deep below.

“Here upon this land I shall build my temple to the old world,” said Joseph, the once proud owner of this precious manor. He gathered within his house, special rarities and even set upon its first foundational stone.

It was a special house built for a special man. And the house loved him. For he was its creator, owner, and the reason it came to be.

Then one day, Joseph changed, and things were different after that.

It began when he went off into the snow in the middle of winter, chasing after an old sword and a legacy meant to be put behind him. After all, this is what the house was for: new legacy. New memories. A memorial to the world before celebrated about the world now.

But some things cannot be easily forgotten. And for better or worse, Joseph never returned and the house… 

And The Manor never knew why.

The house became very unhappy after that. It didn’t understand why the parties were over. Overtime, it’s halls began to empty. The people diminished, as the staff shrunk the place became quieter and quieter.

Some accused the house of being built on faulty footing. Said that the beloved owner, the house’s beloved Joseph, known for being a debaucherous liar and swindler, skimped on the foundation and covered up the house’s faults with luxurious glamour. That the house was built on the edge of an underground fault line, a compaction of gas ready to implode at any moment.

So, it was abandoned.

And derelict.

And lonely.

And for years. Age had its way with the house. Creaking the wood and splintering the doors. As grass reclaimed floorboards, termites grew kingdoms, and mice made little nesting holes, all within the Manor’s home.

Until one day, it came inside. It flew in from the manor’s chimney, though it didn’t notice it at first. And much like the mansion’s other tiny inhabitants, it crept inside made its nest within the refines of the place.

There was a sense of familiarity with it, and for some strange reason, the creature reminded the house of Joseph. Its master long forgotten now.

Over time, it grew to be a part of its walls. Thought of initially as a simple other pest, as the creature clawed at the wood and scratched up the walls, soon after, the beast served a different purpose to the house…

It was on a muggy spring day. Where three suspicious characters, two men, one woman, all pale in skin color broke inside through a window. The men wore patchy blue jackets and carried with them, drinks of sustenance and a bag of sorts. Needles and vials of a strange kind.

The young woman was unconscious and out of her senses. The mansion remembered how opiates had a very particular effect on humans and recognized her symptoms, not only from her body, but also the familiar scent of vinegar in the air. Something the drug was known for, at least during its use in18th century medicine and recreation.

For some odd reason these men had an abundance of it with them, and the woman, perhaps had taken too much of it. They tried doing things with her. Things the house hadn’t recognized since many ages and parties ago. It did not look like she was enjoying herself.

There was a sadness in the air and the house did not like this. It wanted these visitors out, though had no means of doing so, not directly anyway. What it could do, through sheer determination, in a way only haunted spirits of a place  can, was summon the fury. The rage. The hatred against the living.

And with this energy it summoned the beast in the middle of the night. It crept up onto the unsuspecting men, and one-by-one, with claws and teeth and fury, it grabbed its victims with its talons, and flew them up through the windows and into the air.  High into the sky they went and bled and pled and screamed, until at just the right height, the beast had dropped them. Plummeting the men to their doom.

When the woman awoke, she did not know why she was in a house by herself. She was able to leave, and the house let her go with no harm.

It was at that moment that the house came to accept the creature as a blessing. A champion it could keep nestled within its bosom, so long as it provided shelter. And together, they rested in the pine barrens with nature. Keeping away those who sought them harm. 

Until one day, a team of frackers, along with their little foreman, came by and began digging the dirt beneath their home. Tainting the ever pure water. Culling the gaseous fumes from its vapors. And so the house called wept and called for its protector. 

Waking the beast from its slumber.

Part Five: Legend Has It

Legend has it that a long time ago outside of the Pine Barrens, a Mrs. Shroud, a self-proclaimed witch and medicine doctor extraordinaire, wished to bear the child of a demon. 

She tried many methods of doing this. 

From eating nothing but vinegar with every meal during pregnancy, to sealing her belly in hot wax every evening. Different fathers, different witching rituals, and sometimes, when she grew most desperate, she was even rumored to have lied with feral creatures of the forest.

Her first twelve attempts produced normal, healthy, human babies, which were all given up for adoption. It was not until her 13th attempt, while hidden away in a dark cave one dark and stormy evening, when she bore a child… Also, a healthy human baby.

At least, up until the witching hour.

For when the clock struck 3 a.m. the child’s arms turned into wings. As the baby cried in agony as it flew away. Mrs. Shroud excitedly cheering at the birth of her newborn demon.

But that is just one version of the tale.

Another legend says that a longstanding Aristocrat and Soldier of vast fortune, came to the Americas and impregnated a young woman, a traveling gypsy, named Lucinda, who was a refugee now living in the Americas.

She was promised to be wed to the aristocrat and together, they were supposed to live as Americans in his great manor.

When he rejected her but kept the baby, his natural heir, she had spitefully asked her family to put a curse upon their son. And on a full moon, the boy transformed. His face elongated into the head of a horse. Bat-like wings sprouted from his shoulders. He grew to the size of a man and his voice could speak in only blood-curdling screams.

He was cursed with one purpose by his mother: To kill his father. Which he had done so...

But that is, likewise, just another version of the tale.

And though those are the two most popular versions, from what I understand, there was once, also a third version of the story. A tale lost in the Old World, about a rejected king forced to rule an unruly foreign country. Seeking to build shelters for war refugees littering his border, he’d chosen to clear an area of the forest which contained a sacred grove of olive trees.

When he accomplished his goal, his people hated him even more.  So he ordered his armies to police them. Born out of the ashes of olive, a spirit took form, and haunted the man. Cursed, he’d lost everything dear to him and so abandoned the old world and fled into the new.

But little did he realize… it followed.

It met with the spirits of the Lenape, the ancient ones of forest and fire. The original caretakers of this land, they called The Americas. They guided its shape to take form. Called upon the wild deer and sinister serpents, the head of a ram and wings of a bat. Finally, it called upon the evilest and most diabolic of life’s creatures: the torso and heart of man.

It stayed with them as an alleged guardian of the forest. The Lenape tribe called the beast’s territory ‘The land of the dragon’ or in their exact words: ‘The place where the forest burns’. You may better know this place by its identifiable forest fires. If not, than by its English name:

The Pine Barrens.

Part Six: Sin’s Embrace

I see the animal. It barks. It’s on a chain tied next to a tree, hurting the tree, as its chain grinds across the wood. It refuses to stop barking at me.

So, I fly up to it and use my talons to grab its head. When I yank it, not all the flesh leaves the chain, but I eat what I can. The blood, familiar to me, tastes like copper.

Sweet delicious copper.

When I finish I hear a scream in the distance. Probably the being’s family. This happens a lot in my territory, or at least has over the years. I fly a good distance, then land just outside the house by one of their machines. The house called me here. The man. This foreman, is here.

He has turned the machine on and is threatening the house. Is threatening this place. Is threatening mother nature. I tell the spirits of my home, that I will not allow this to happen.

I will defend nature. I will defend my home.

The roar of the engines hum in his machine. He begins to drive it but stops.

“Shoot. Where did I put that coffee?”

He refers to his hot drink. The one he’s left by the Garden’s entrance a couple yards back. This coffee, I believe the humans call it, is one of their addictions. Weakness of their flesh.

He goes to grab it. I take high into the sky and see my opportunity. When I dive, he dodges my approach. He pulls out a metal plaything. It fires warm steel that burns the skin. A familiar feeling I haven’t felt in ages. He runs inside a nearby machine home. Hides beneath a couch. I sneak inside from the back. He does not know I am here.

Quickly, this Foreman grabs a device. I believe I’ve heard it before. A telephone.

“Please, please it's here,” he says.

“What’s here sir?” says another human from the device.

“The monster. It’s here. It’s—”

The man thinks he is safe. He is not. I reach with my long tail and wrap it around the lower part of his left leg. With precision, I lacerate his tendon, and he hits the ground hard, bleeding. I cut the tendon to his device too, the stringing line of this so called ‘telephone’.

 “PLEASE, PLEASE, GOD SOMEONE. HELP ME!!!”

I slowly creep up to the man hoof step by hoof step. He looks me in the eyes. Leaks water from his face. Salty sweet. I can taste it in the air.

This foreman says these strange words. Rituals I remember from the men of his tribe’s past. Prayers, I believe they call them? It matters not. I dig my talons onto his sides and take him with me and fly with him high into the sky.

A distance away, I stop at one of these high human posts. The ones with the tendons that can shock you, that they place end-on-end, for miles. I rest for a second to catch my breath.

“OFFICERS PLEASE, HELP ME! HELP ME!” he screams.

I’ve had enough at this point and I apply pressure to the man’s windpipe. Not enough to kill him but just enough to stop his screams. Though, it’s too late. The men below us hear his cries. They bring out their toys and fire warm metal at me.

I take flight and take this foreman high into the night sky. Then, with my sinister tail jab into him, over-and-over, rather painfully. His foaming at the mouth shows one last feigned attempt to scream as his body goes limp. He is paralyzed but not dead.

I take this opportunity to try something new. Taking my prey higher into the air, I taste the flesh of his face and rip a part of his nose out and chew it between my gums. One of his eyes gets caught in my gapingly large bite and so, I tongue it in my mouth and roll it around, then pop it under the crush of my molar.

It’s not as tasty as I’d hoped.

When I finish, I dump his still breathing body high into the night sky, and he plummets and falls. I can almost hear the subtle attempts at screaming moments before he SPLATS below.

When his soul leaves the body, I take that with me too and drag it along home. Thankfully, the spirits can’t scream. Though they do put up one hell of a struggle.

Another day, another soul for the house to feast on.