F. Wilson - Secret Circles

Jack turned in a slow circle, uncomfortable with the trapped feeling that stole over him. He saw a triangle of cloudy sky above the damaged megalith. The broken-off apex rested at an angle against its base.

What had happened? A weakness in the stone? A lightning strike? He‟d never know.

“Look,” Weezy said, pointing to the perimeter of the sunken area.

Jack saw how the sides sloped away at an angle, following the inner surfaces of the megaliths.

“How deep do you think the stones are buried?” she asked.

Jack shrugged. He had no idea, but the megaliths were even bigger than they appeared from the outside.

He heard splashing and turned to see Weezy making her way toward the short column in the center. Her speed increased until she all but leaped the last few feet.

“Jack! Look at this!”

When he joined her he found her running her hands over the top of the column.

“Look! It‟s the same shape, the exact same size!”

Jack immediately saw what she meant—a six-sided indentation in the top of the column, a perfect fit for their lost little pyramid. No doubt about it now—the two pyramids were connected.

“What do you think it did here?”

“I don‟t know but …” Anger washed across her features, leaving steely determination.

“But what?”

“Somehow, some way, I‟m going to get our pyramid back and find out.”

Jack shared her desire but couldn‟t see any way to make that happen, so he looked for a way to change the subject. He turned and pointed to the megaliths.

“Why go to all the trouble to drag these things here and set them up like this?”

Weezy shook her head. “Stonehenge was set up as a sort of solar calendar. Maybe this is something like that. Maybe the sun shines through one of these cracks and—oh my god!”

“What?”

“Our pyramid. I‟ll bet they placed it right here in the center so that at certain times of the year a shaft of sunlight hit it and …”

“And what?”

She looked at him with a lost expression. “I don‟t know. But I‟ve got to know. And I will know.”

But Jack was thinking about something else. He did a slow turn, taking in the placement of the megaliths, the spaces between, the way they were tilted inward, making them virtually impossible to climb …

He felt a little squeeze in his chest as it all came together.

“I don‟t know about sunbeams and that sort of stuff, but look around. Imagine you‟re a tiger or a lion … those openings are wide enough to toss food inside but too narrow for something big to squeeze through. I think this is some sort of cage.”

4

After a moment of stunned silence, Weezy said, “You could be right, but … but we‟re

talking a major, major project. Chiseling these huge stones somewhere and dragging them here, then somehow setting them upright with exactly the right spacing between them, all to cage a lion?”

Eddie‟s voice was hushed. “Who says it was a lion. Maybe it was the Jersey Devil.”

A glance told Jack that Eddie wasn‟t kidding. He liked to bring up the Jersey Devil as the cause of whatever couldn‟t be explained in the Pines—and there was no shortage of the unexplained here—but usually he was at least half kidding. This time, however …

Supposedly, back in the 1700s, a certain Mrs. Leeds, on learning she was pregnant for the thirteenth time, cursed the baby, saying she‟d rather bear the devil‟s child than another for her husband. Well, that child was born with the head of a horse, bat wings, cloven hooves, and a spiked tail.

At least that was one version. Jack didn‟t buy into the JD. Neither, of all people, did Weezy, who bought into just about everything else.

Weezy did believe that something strange lurked in the Barrens, and Jack couldn‟t disagree.

“Eddie,” Weezy said in her must-I-explain? voice, “this was built way before the first Jersey Devil story. It‟s got to be thousands of years old.”

“No way!”

“Why not? Stonehenge was started in something like three thousand B.C.”

Eddie shook his head. “Nuh-uh. The only people around here back then were the Lenape Indians, and they didn‟t build this.”

Jack smiled up at him. “Well, you did say it looks like a teepee.”

Eddie drew an invisible “1” in the air. “Got me.”

“Other people were here besides the Lenape,” Weezy said.

Eddie frowned. “Like who?”

“The Ancient Septimus Fraternal Order.”

“The Lodge? No way!”

“Why not? The first word in their name is „Ancient.‟”

“This is your Secret History of the World stuff that nobody believes in but you.” Eddie waved his hands. “But I don‟t want to get into that. What I want to know is, if this was a cage, what was in it? And where are its bones?”

Weezy dug the toe of her sneaker into the sand under the water, kicking up milky clouds.

“Probably under here. Who knows how much sand and dirt have blown in through the

centuries? That wall out there probably kept out a lot of it, but I bet this is a couple of feet deep.

And I also bet somewhere below is a big hexagon of granite that served as the original floor.”

As Jack watched the churned-up water, he noticed the reflection of a blotch of light. He glanced up at the opening atop the damaged megalith. He dropped his gaze to the cracked-off chunk of granite leaning against its base. He imagined an animal—a bear, a lion, or whatever—climbing upon the fallen piece and then leaping, scrabbling, clawing its way to the flat, broken surface atop the megalith. From there all it had to do was slide down the outer surface and run free.

“It escaped.”

Eddie and Weezy stared at him.

“How do you know?” she said.

Jack pointed to the opening. “Through there.”

Weezy looked up, then down at the fallen piece, then nodded. “I think you could be right.”

“That still doesn‟t answer the big question: Who would go to all the trouble to cart these stones here and set them up to cage an animal?”

Jack could not resist. “What if it wasn‟t just any animal. What if it was …” He paused, then screamed the last words. “The Jersey Devil!”

Eddie and Weezy both jumped, then Weezy laughed. “You‟ve been hanging around him too long. Weren‟t you listening? It can‟t …” But her smile faded as she said, “On the other hand …”

Eddie grinned. “Hah! Told you it was the JD.”

“No, it wasn‟t. But maybe it became the Jersey Devil.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Did you ever hear of crypto zoology?” She quickly waved a hand at Eddie. “Never mind. Look who I‟m asking. It‟s the study of strange creatures that may or may not exist.”

Jack had never heard of it, but had an idea what it was about.

“You mean like Sasquatch and the Loch Ness monster?”

She smiled and nodded. “And yeti and the kraken and a bunch of others. So, what if ancient folks—maybe early, early members of the Lodge—built this to house some weird creature? Or maybe two of them—male and female. Maybe they were sacred to them, and maybe the little pyramid sitting in the center here had some significance or some function.”

“Like what?”

“I don‟t know—yet. But what if they escaped into the wild? And what if they had offspring and their offspring had offspring? Eventually the Pilgrims came and the colonies started, and one day someone sees one of these things. And then somebody else sees it. Pretty soon someone makes up the Jersey Devil story to explain it. The story starts circulating and eventually we have a Pinelands legend.”

“But what … ?” Eddie paused and Jack saw him swallow. “What if one of those things is still around?”