Lee Klein - Jrzdvlz

The cousins, each on either side of the press’s bed, lay type, watching an account stabilize in letters. Disordered reality, shock, impassioned attempts at articulation of an impossible scene retold and transcribed into flowing pen strokes on parchment, as ordered and unassuming as any affectionate expression if standing above it. But closer to the page, each word came into focus and revealed such horrors.

“It becomes easier to believe when set in type,” said Japhet. “These words put our family to rest.”

“Yet gashes of fear shall open in readers. How I envy their current state.”

“But better to recognize the threat.”

“Reports arrive of slaughtered livestock, unfamiliar prints. Something is present, I am sure of it.”

“We are devoted,” Titan said. “For my cousins I dedicate these pages before we join the hunt to avenge them.”

They would not see me if they stepped from their printing quarters and considered the crown of the royal oak. But a hundred yards away, perhaps. So much made so little sense but I comprehended their words. In exchange for my strange shape, I had received such comprehension, as well as extraordinary endowments of hearing, smell, sight, and access to the thoughts and feelings of certain humans for whom I had an affinity. Streaming thoughts and feelings resonated as though they were my own. But an uncommon swerve indicated they were not my own. My mind on free wander, shades of sense and images arrived that had no place in my memory, and yet I could ignore them no more than that which I saw and heard.

“If you read this account in Poor Richard’s, would you think it a hoax, akin to the account of witch trials in Mount Holly? We must make it clear that we are honest.”

“We present this account with no more sensation than we find in it,” said Titan.

“I would disbelieve myself but dare not. I now perceive a world charged with the potential for inordinate violence.”

“But do you believe what Dr. Thorpe and I say about the fleeing beast? The midwives sent me through the worst moments of the storm to run for him and as we galloped in return we saw it shoot from the chimney into the night.”

“I believe it if you saw it.”

“And I was not alone.”

“No, Japhet, you were not alone. Farmers also attest to glowing eyes at the edge of the wilderness.”

“Our work may bring this devil some peace.”

I was a man whose form was unfortunate, disordered, a deformed composite. But not a devil, even if my actions were devilish. Perhaps if I spoke to them?

Silently I swooped, landing on hooves, my heron-like legs springy, my leathery wings spread wider than the printing quarters’ breadth. My eldest brother and cousin laid out letters that recounted my tragic arrival. Perhaps these men might understand that I would never again open another chest and suck the organs out.

I tried to introduce myself in a calming, diplomatic tone: “Dear brother Japhet and cousin Titan, please realize there is no need to hunt me, for I am not a threat, I should not be held accountable for regrettable actions, for what I did to our family, I am repentant, and would like to atone and do good, so please help me perhaps achieve that goal, my brother, my cousin, having no father and now, unfortunately, no mother, I ask you to shelter me and raise me as an odd sibling.”

All these words traveled from mind to mouth at once. A horrifying screech forced their arms to disrupt the bed of type. They careened against the far wall and, lacking a more perfect articulation for their fright, screamed as well.

“No, no, hush, no,” I said—or tried to say—“I only mean to make amends.”

I screeched in a way I hoped might indicate a complicated soul, though such comprehension seemed overshadowed by what stood before them.

Japhet recovered first. He grabbed a musket and prayed aloud that it was packed. It clicked. He searched for powder and ball.

Titan fell to the floor. He stared dumbstruck. By the time either man regained speech, I had flapped my horrid wings and disappeared.

Armed with an axe and a musket loaded with ammunition, they stepped from the printing quarters, savoring this step as the last of their lives, expecting me to secure them to my soft furry underbelly with my long tail like a constricting snake, fly them over the ocean, and drop them among the white caps. But they survived that first step, meeting only morning silence and a stillness charged with terror.

“A new Man of Signs,” said Titan.

“A what?” Japhet whispered.

“We must undertake a new Man of Signs,” said Titan. “Every aspect of the beast seems like some distortion of the astrological visages of bull, ram, crab, fish, scorpion—bat, rat, dog, horse, crane, even what they call the kangaroo”

“A horrid joke of a beast, a hideous yet almost humorous assemblage.”

“Yes,” said Titan, “we must repair the text and describe this weird fiend in detail.”

Titan’s father, Daniel, made his way to them. His hair was steely. A taste for cranberry wine had made him heavy. Youth had been lost in all respects except in eyes capable of sympathy and sorrow.

“Who screamed?” he said as he rambled into the quarters, ready to mete out blows.

“We both,” replied his son, “but you also heard the beast.”

“You did not destroy it?”

“We must keep the musket loaded,” said Japhet.

“We need guards day and night,” said Titan, “as we describe the vision seared in our memories. We will depict it, print it, and disperse this knowledge as soon as possible. It will be our final publication, freely distributed, and then we will commit ourselves to defense against this beast.”

“Better to wield words as weapon and warning,” said Daniel.

“We will warn and then hunt, and perhaps when the threat is ended return to what once was, if serenity may ever again exist.”

When Pastor Dade heard that Mowas Leeds’s newborn had not been found, he claimed it had been born a devil, as prophesied— bastard spawn of a British soldier, spurred by the mother’s insolence, cursed by the community entire. Yet all remaining Leeds believed that the newborn, like its mother, siblings, and the midwives, had all been victims—otherwise they were related to a monster on the loose.

The printing quarters were guarded by a dozen armed men, the perimeter of the Leeds’s home surrounded. If the Leeds sought to profit from their encounter, to capitalize on horror, skepticism may have halved the militia. But with no mind for profit, belief in their words and actions spread, as did alarm.

The fear had once been of witches, although most now believed those unfortunate women were victims of injustice and that simple eccentricities did not merit such a fate. But my appearance outside the printing quarters, the sight they saw was real. They focused on my legs. All else may have been elaborate costume, but those spindly, springy legs, appropriate on some avian marsh predator, coated in the rubbery hide of a littleneck clam, each limb was far too thin to hide a human leg, whereas the torso was too short to conceal even a teenager on peculiarly pliable stilts. The screech belonged to an unidentifiable animal, as well, a sound with direct access to bones and blood.

An impossible fact before their eyes, indubitable, unbelievable. Perhaps the water of this New World caused collective psychosis. That was the only sane possibility: everyone was mad.

Pastor Dade of Estellville appeared grim, prideful, straight-backed. Crossing the clearing in front of Daniel Leeds’s home, he was armed with an aura of righteousness, a rectitude that might compel even the most industrious and upright, such as Titan, to relinquish benevolence in pursuit of sin.