Up and Vanished

The third story in my series inspired by folklore and fairy tales. This one is from New Jersey, where I currently live: the Jersey Devil. The origin from 1795 is a story of Mother Leeds, a woman giving birth to her thirteenth child. Her husband is absent and a drunk and she cursed her pregnancy, wishing the child to be a Devil. The child is born a normal, healthy boy but soon transforms into a monster with claws, horns, sometimes a nail. It murders Mother Leeds, the midwives and its father and siblings before running off to terrify the rest of the Pine Barrens.

The sun was encased behind a wall of gray and left the snow untouched. A couple of inches had fallen overnight, blanketing the yard of the house in bright white. The snow crunched under Nora’s feet as she approached the wrap around porch.

“Do you want your coffee?” Tyson called from the open passenger door. Nora shook her head and stepped inside the house. She could hear Tyson grumbling behind her, disappointed he had made the extra effort to grab her a coffee and she wasn’t even taking it in with her. Nora smiled at her partner’s mumbling before the smell knocked it right off her face.

The entrance to the house was dark. There was a small alcove where there lay boots and children’s shoes scattered on the floor. A mess of coats hung off hooks on the wall above a small bench. A long hallway reached out from the front door with several doors on each side, most of them shut except for one at the end of the hall. A narrow staircase rose up out of the dimness at the start of the hallway.

“Detective Leeds?” Nora nodded at her name, covering her mouth with her gloved hand. “Right this way. You’re going to want to come in this room first.” The officer assigned to greet her was young with soft features and big brown eyes that were currently full of fear. His mouth was set in a thin line that told Nora what was in the next room was something disturbing and he was trying to keep it together to remain professional.

“That’s the last time I get up early to get you coffee,” Tyson muttered playfully as he came up behind them. Nora turned and gave him a look and he instantly knew now was not the time for their usual banter.

The smell grew heavier and took up residence in Nora’s nostrils. As tightly as she covered her nose and mouth, it remained there so pungent she could taste it the closer she got to the one open door. Sounds of cameras clicking and flashes of light exited the doorway. Low chatter of officers inside became louder as Nora turned to enter the room.

Four officers moved slowly around the room doing various procedural tasks. In the enter of the room was a kitchen table. Chairs were pushed against the walls and there was a large, empty china cabinet on the far right corner. Nora saw a pair of legs sticking out from underneath the table, bloodied and one twisted back, the knee clearly shattered. Her eyes were more concerned with what lay on the table as one gloved officer took samples off the body that lay there.

A woman, middle aged, lay on her back, her legs spread wide across the table, her stomach covered with a sheet, a bump rising over her belly. One side of her face lay loose from her skull, a flap of red skin lying open as if someone had peeled it back and let go before it came off. Her left eye was missing and her hair was matted to her face with blood and sweat. Nora glanced at the officer taking samples of blood from deep cuts in her arms that resembled what a bear might do to a person if given the chance. The officer nodded, giving her permission to step closer. Nora approached the body, leaning over the woman to take a closer look.

“Jesus,” Tyson breathed behind her. “There’s one under it, too.”

“I saw,” Nora answered flatly. The woman’s mouth was wide open as if frozen in a scream. Her hands had fallen to her side with her palms up, deep cuts in them and a few fingers missing. Nora made her way down the woman’s body, more wounds similar to that of a wild animal attack.

“Same wounds down here,” Tyson said from the floor. He was kneeling next to the second body, an officer beside him taking photos. “Her neck is broken, almost decapitated her.”

Nora moved to the end of the table. The second body lay below her, another female, sprawled out in sickening angles. She was dressed in light blue scrubs and wore latex gloves. From where Nora now stood, it became clear who these women were and what was happening before this attack. Her thoughts were interrupted as the young officer who had greeted her stepped forward from outside the room.

“Are you ready to see the rest of them?” he asked. His mouth was still tightly clenched as he waited for her reply.

“The rest of them?” Nora questioned. She had heard it was multiple victims but something in his tone told her there were a lot more than she had assumed. “Yes, show me.” She threw a look at Tyson who waved her off.

“Go ahead. I’ve got a couple of questions for these guys in here,” he told her, standing up. Nora turned and followed the officer upstairs, leaving Tyson armed with his notepad and his usual list of questions. Nothing about this is usual, Nora thought as she disappeared into the hallway.

The wall up the staircase was covered in marking like something with claws had dug in. At the landing at the top, there were three doors. The one to the right was off its hinges and hanging precariously. Two officers were inside discussing how to remove the bodies that lay there. Nora stepped in, once more accosted by the smell and heard herself gasp.

In her five years as a homicide detective in New Jersey, this was the first time she had let herself react audibly at the crime scene. In the small bedroom with three twin size beds, a pile of bodies lay before her of varying ages but all were under the age of fifteen. They were holding each other, the older children covering the younger. Tears in their flesh lay open to the air, the blood drying darkly. Their clothes were ripped to shreds and clumps of hair were splayed on the walls as something had torn through this room and the children inside of it.

“We think these are her other kids,” the officer was saying. Nora heard him swallow hard. Keeping bile down, she thought as some rose in her own throat. “Whatever it was ran up here and took them out and the father is out back. It got him there.”

“He left them here,” Nora said as more of a statement than a question.

“Yeah, you can see him from the window over here. The bastard.” Nora stepped carefully over to the small window in the room and saw officers around a body of a man. He was flat on his stomach, his right arm was missing and his legs were twisted like the second woman downstairs. His head was lying to the side at an impossible angle.

“Where’s the baby?” Nora asked. She turned back to the heap of bodies, unable to look away as much as her gut told her to. This was unnatural, surreal. Normally she could dissect a crime scene in a matter of hours. But this was something she didn’t grasp at all yet.

“What baby?”

Nora spun on her heel. The young officer flinched under her gaze. “The baby. That woman downstairs was having a baby. The other victim was a nurse or midwife; you can tell by her clothing and how the woman was positioned on the table.”

“I guess it could have eaten it,” the officer replied. His face paled as he said it.

“What do you all think this was?” Nora said coldly. She hated dealing with local police for this very reason. They always came to the simplest conclusion and it was hardly ever right. Whatever they assumed happened, they’d give her a hard time until she at least confirmed it was possible that they were correct. They just want to be heard, she tried to tell herself without rolling her eyes.

“A bear or wolf or something,” the officer mumbled. Nora looked again to the bodies in the room.

“I don’t think a bear or wolf would do something like this. Why come upstairs? An animal comes in and attacks the mother, nurse, and baby. There’s no need for it to continue upstairs. That feels calculated. The animal already doesn’t know why he’s in the house except to eat.”

“And he didn’t eat anybody,” Tyson interrupted from the doorway. “Fuck, Nora. What is this?” Her partner for only the past year, Tyson was as eager as they come. He was bright, curious, and always looked to her for answers which fed her ego nicely. Her former partner was stubborn and sexist at times. It was refreshing to feel like the expert she was for once.

Nora pinched the bridge of her nose, the odor getting to her more. “I don’t know, Ty. But I don’t think it was a bear.” She stepped back through the room and met Tyson in the doorway. “Did they find any remains of a baby downstairs? Did you ask?”

Tyson shook his head. “I thought the same thing when I saw how her legs were. No baby anywhere." He jerked his head to the window. “Heading out back next?”

Nora stroked her chin as she stepped out into the hall and back down the stairs. Lost in thought, she nodded back to Tyson and he followed. “I’m going to need all the evidence you’ve collected,” she shouted back at the young officer. He started to argue and she held up a hand. “I don’t care. This is above your department’s skills, officer. Have them wrap up it nice for me and put it in my trunk.”

Tyson chuckled quietly next to her as they headed through the kitchen. “I think you just made that dude piss his pants.” Nora gave a small satisfied smile. Even as they walked through a house of death, she had to take pride in knowing she would be the one to figure this out.

The assumed father was covered with a light dusting of snow. Nora and Tyson stepped onto the lawn and were stopped by the officers around the body.

“Wait! Careful! There’s tracks in the snow.”

“Tracks?” Nora said as she looked down. Sure enough there were tracks breaking the coat of white around her. They were animal tracks; small, clawed, looking like a deer with the hoof shape they made. “What the…” Nora mouthed. Her and Tyson gingerly stepped over to the body.

“Thanks for coming out here. I was told you’d be coming by to help us. I’m Sheriff Grossman. What do you make of all this?” Sheriff Holts was a tall, sturdy man with gray hair peeping out from under his wide brimmed hat. Years of worry creased his face but his eyes were warm and comforting.

“Not sure,” Nora answered. “What can you tell me about the family?”

Sheriff Grossman sighed. “Oh, well, this here is the Reynolds family. They’ve lived out here for the past decade or so. Father, this man right here, is…was…a problem in town. A bit of a drunk.” Nora listened as she crouched down to take a look at the victim’s face. His eyes were wide with surprise and his jaw appeared to have been broken, the bottom half lying crooked on his face.

“How many children did they have?” Tyson asked, his notepad out.

“Oh, about ten, twelve maybe. Not sure. They home schooled them out here.” Sheriff Grossman looked back to the house. “Miriam was nice. That’s the mother. We went to high school together. She stopped working a while back. This house was all they had. Poor things.” His eyes wandered to the upstairs bedroom window where the children were. “I can’t wait to shoot the thing that did this.”

It was Nora’s turn now to sigh. “Sheriff, while I hope you get that chance, I don’t foresee it happening because an animal did not do this.” Sheriff Grossman raised his brow at her in a question. “The tracks are probably just a deer coming to graze and the cuts and scratches, that could be a lot of things.” Nora was grasping at straws here but managed to keep her voice sounding confident. Tyson shuffled his feet behind her, sensing she was guessing. “I told the officer up there to secure all the evidence and place it in my car. I’m going to be staying in town here at the Pine Barrens Motel up the way."

“We’re located in Tom’s River mostly,” Tyson explained. Nora shot him a look and he shrugged. Overly helpful as always, she mused.

“Here’s my card,” Nora said, stepping back from the body and handing it to Sheriff Grossman. The sheriff barely glanced at it before shoving it into his coat pocket. “I’m going to take another look around but call me if anything else comes to light.” The sheriff nodded stiffly and turned his attention back to the surrounding around and the tracks that led to the woods in the distance.

“You don’t have a clue, do you?” Tyson asked genuinely.

“Nope,” Nora said quietly. They headed back into the house. “Let’s take another once over, make sure they give us all they got and head back to the motel. We’ll figure it out; we’re missing something somewhere.”

“Oh! Almost forgot. No one has found anything that is from a baby. The thing up and vanished,” Tyson added.

“Nothing up and vanishes, Ty,” Nora stated. “We’ll find the baby somewhere. The woods, maybe. Anyway, it’s not like the baby was the one that murdered everyone. The missing piece is right in front of us. We’ll find it.” Even as she said it, Nora felt suspicion grow within her. Having had a child herself three years ago, she knew by what was left around the woman that the baby had been born. Her belly ached at the memory automatically, like a shadow passing over her. But where had this baby gone? Did the person who did this take the baby? She thought to look in the woods but the afternoon was ageing quickly and she wanted to get back to analyze what the officers had gathered before they had to head back to Tom’s River the next morning. After another sweep through the house, Nora and Tyson got into the car and drove off, leaving the house sitting silently in a pool of white snow.

Nora’s eyes ached in the dim light of her bedside lamp. They had been going through paperwork, scribbled notes, and digital photos for the past several hours. Empty takeout cartons sat growing cold on the only table in the room.

“I’ve got to call it,” Tyson yawned. “We’ll take this all back tomorrow and get a fresh pair or two of eyes on it.”

Nora knew he was right but hesitated to give up before she find the key. “Right, yeah, you’re right,” she said distantly. “I’ll come by your room in the morning. I’m going to give it another hour or so.”

Tyson leaned on the table towards her. “Okay but don’t expect coffee in the morning. You’ve got to get it yourself this time.” He gave her a wink which made her smile in spite of the graphic photos that lay on her computer screen. “Night, Leeds!”

“Night, Ty,” Nora replied as the door clicked shut. She flipped through the pages again, scanning for a word or sentence she hadn’t noticed before or something in the corner of an image perhaps that gave way to underbelly of this mystery. An hour passed and Nora’s eyes were now burning. “Calling it,” she said to the empty room. She gathered up the papers into a messy pile and shut her computer screen.

As she turned off the bathroom light after brushing her teeth, Nora saw a shadow pass by her window. Pulling the curtains back, the parking lot was still with only a few cars. Great, now I’m imagining things, she thought. Nora crawled into bed, pulling the stiff cover up around her neck. A sudden scratching sound entered the room from outside the motel door. Ignoring it, Nora rolled over, pressing her head hard into the pillow to block the sound that was growing in intensity. Something trying to get in. A low growl followed and Nora told herself it was a dog out for a walk or perhaps a stray cat. The growl turned into a high pitch squeal as the scratching stopped and the room fell quiet once again. After a few minutes, Nora somehow fell asleep, exhausted.

Her dreams woke her a few hours later. Visions of a winged animal flying through her motel window and spraying glass all over the room, into the carpet and onto her sleeping form as the creature landed on the table. Its wings outspread, it screeched until the walls shook and scraped its clawed hands through the wallpaper. The head of the beast looked to be a horned goat, its jaws dripping with saliva and jagged teeth bared. It crouched low before rising up and pouncing onto the bed, its bent legs pressing down into her thighs, holding her as they dug into her flesh. Nora woke with a jerk, breathless and sweating, shoving the covers off of her onto the floor.

“A drive,” she said to the empty room. “I’ll take a drive.” Eager to leave the room, she pulled on her jeans, grabbed her coat and car keys and headed out.

Nora was known for her drives. Her husband would tease her about them if she came home late, knowing once she got behind the wheel, she could go for hours as she worked out a case in her head. Waking from a nightmare, a drive seemed just the cure to distract her from whatever that monster was in her imagination and perhaps draw the curtain back on the Reynolds’ case.

The road was eerily still with a light fog drifting across the pavement. There was thick brush on either side of the road and she could only see what came in front of the beam of her headlights. This was the best way to think in her opinion. No distractions, pure focus on the road. That was when her best ideas came.

This time was different though. Her thoughts swirled around the creature she had dreamed of and the bodies of the children in the house. There had been no signs of a break in or forced entry. All the doors were locked except the back one where the father had fled. Nothing was missing or stolen. Hardly anything broken. Whatever had done this had been in that house or let inside by someone. The officers had noted more family history: the father, Jason, had a few tussles in town but no one that would wish him dead. Miriam was well liked and the children were good to each other. There were a few interviews that came into her email later in the day where neighbors and relatives had stated Miriam was not excited about her pregnancy. She was tired of having babies and living alone in that house in the middle of nowhere. Still, that wasn’t motivation enough to murder a child, Nora thought. This woman wasn’t a monster; she was merely in a tough circumstance. The father could have been a suspect as well as the nurse. The nearest neighbor was a mile down the road and they were all accounted for that evening. A drifter seemed unlikely since the house was off the highway and Nora was scrambling to think of anyone else that officers had forgotten to interview. Her thoughts drifted back to the missing baby, wondering how it had gotten free or perhaps where the murderer had hidden its body. Maybe he did take it, she thought. Maybe there was someone else living in that house.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a massive shadow that flew across her headlights, startling her to slam on her brakes, her car twisting side to side on the slippery winter road. She wrenched the wheel to the right and pressed hard on the brake, trying to stop the fishtailing. The car screeched as it slowed down and finally stopped, the hood jutting across the center line. Gasping for breath, Nora released her fingers from around the steering wheel and steadied herself. Looking out the windshield, she tried to see what had jumped in front of her. A deer probably, she thought as she squinted past the headlights. A whoosh of air cut through the silence and a thump landed on top of her car. Nora screamed in surprise, covering her head as if it was going to bust through. How was a deer on her car?

The top of her car groaned as whatever had landed on it crawled off. It came down the side of the car, scratching against the window and door. Nora braced herself, staring ahead, not wanting to turn around to see what it was before she could analyze what it could be. A large form passed the driver’s side window as Nora moved her eyes and kept her head still. She couldn’t make out what it was but it was standing on two legs. The headlights caught it briefly as it moved in front of the car. Nora screamed again, her hands hitting the horn and its bleating echoing into the night.

A tall figure stood before her. Its legs were stout and bent like a horse, covered in fur. It had short arms that ended in clawed fingers and its body was patchy with flesh and fur. The light didn’t reach its head but Nora could see it was large and fur covered its neck. Frozen for only a moment, Nora took her foot off the break and slammed it onto the gas, lurching the car forward and straight into the creature. The figure moved upwards, the car missing it entirely, and Nora kept the pedal glued to the floor as a screech followed behind her. The whooshing of air continued for a few moments, the car approaching 75 mph, and faded into the night.

Nora was sweating and screaming, leaning over the steering wheel, trying to breath. She looked into the rear view mirror and saw nothing but darkness but she kept driving. There was something about the creature she saw that told her to run. It was watching her, studying her, wondering if she was going to get out of the car or it would have to make its way inside. Nora didn’t give it a chance to decide. She was going to keep driving all the way home, to Tom’s River. She’d call Tyson in the morning and let him know she had an emergency, she’d blame her kid. She wouldn’t tell him that the creature from her nightmare had come to life out on the roads of the Pine Barrens. She wouldn’t tell him she was almost certain that was what had killed the Reynolds family. That this creature had someone been inside the house, inside Miriam herself even. How would she write this up in a report? It didn’t matter right now. All that matters is getting out of the Jersey woods, she thought and pressed the gas a little harder.