Lee Klein - Jrzdvlz

It was remarkably human to personify storm clouds as gods of thunder, but did Zeus or Thor ever feel humbled when their most impressive jagged streaks were channeled from their destructive goal by a simple rod of iron? There’s always been a popular saying about how behind every great man there’s a greater woman. If Stearns were a bachelor alone on his faux-English estate, a mad political scientist concocting nightmares to spring on an unsuspecting, impoverished populace, an evil entity without potential for ever making good, he would have been no more. Such a man would have needed to protect against assassination by numerous enemies, and so my task would be so much simpler, duller, and bloodier than it was. Instead, confronted by this mollifying touch of humanity, a woman I had protected as a girl now saved another’s life, whether she knew so or not.

She may have only been possessed by the memory of her father’s encounter with the same finger that made her rise and come near enough to me so that when her fingertip touched mine, she whispered her father’s final words, said them so not even Stearns heard, said them with an earnestness that forced all human organs within me to sink as though soaring wings had given out.

“I am the Leeds Devil,” she said.

The proliferation of false devils rampant through the pines and Philadelphia, all those false devils were smote by a single true one standing before me when she pressed that bit of flesh to the rough edge of mine.

A small change in attitude, a charge to my eyes worked wonders, bloodlessly. My most human element keyed a lock in Stearns that opened him to notions regarding the importance of survival.

Meanwhile, the legend would soon be so widely dispersed that I would be forced to relinquish all claim to self possession.

So much in motion, the widespread act uncontrollable once unleashed. Falconers strapped horns and tails to their birds. Animals were slaughtered, so many necks of innocent livestock punctured as though by vampire. Eventually it would end but there was no way to end it. I added to it, considered another element of the infestation of devils throughout the snow-blanketed region, a trick of consistent snowfall perhaps, midwinter fantasy and mesmerized delusion, something people wanted to see— needed to see—to make it to the turn of the season.

Nothing unites like a common enemy: I improved the common good by flying through populated regions at dusk as the falling snow assumed a life of its own.

If such flights helped or hindered was not my concern. Acceptance of self, regardless of the degree of one’s peculiarity, seemed a dream of pure water as well.

I released myself from all alliances. All arguments were illusions, no water on the surface was pure, the only thing that mattered was that subterranean ocean within. From the first moments of life on, everything corrupted and pulled you out of it.

I was not the only one of my kind: all men were devils. As humans evolved from clusters of cells to fish to their current form, by some celestial or terrestrial spark that slowly yet ceaselessly modified the dominant hominid, I became the first step toward the species’ future. All the rest were bizarre archaic forms, throwbacks to days we would soon prefer to forget. Yet exposure to them compelled our progress, as well as my will to propagate this new human form should ever I find a suitable partner—a willing one, more so. In short, I was Adam updated for the 20th century—and it was time to find an Eve.

Streaks of phosphorus, a rabbit with wings and a rat tail, antlers on animals that should not have antlers, a week of oddities, sightings, declarations, prayers, shuttered windows, absenteeism, closed factories, children escorted to school by armed parents. Never was the area so charged with terror. Cryptozoological infestation, if not a sign of the apocalypse, never signaled the best of times. The pines, as though mourning its primary owner, released its spirits into view, some even traveled as far as Philadelphia, attracted to the bustle, the pestilence, the byproducts of common plight.

A week-long storm of sightings began late Saturday with streaking white phosphorus shot into the treetops, the sound of hissing, infant wails, a Victrola needle dropped on a disc of scratched steel. Dogs growled at a winged creature hopping and screaming—they chased the beast, never to return. An enormous glowing crane took flight off the Delaware. Footprints everywhere early Sunday. Muskrat trappers stalked a winged, bipedal cow. Monday: the first awake discovered tracks circling their homes and trash scattered as though by cyclone. Word spread. Doors were latched and barricaded, areas cordoned off. Prints on rooftops. Armed men prowled streets, seeking rewards. Tuesday: a woman watched the beast on her shed and told it to shoo—it barked at her then flew off. Elsewhere, a girl fainted when she saw an odd print in the snow and her sister encountered a retriever-sized rat, with wings and a chirping bark. An unusual antlered creature appeared outside a public library. Three-toed footprints were found.

Wednesday: in Burlington, a policeman saw what he called “a Jabberwock with eyes like blazing coals.” In Pemberton, a reverend saw the devil. In Haddonfield, armed men found cow tracks that suddenly left no trail. In Moorestown, a man chased a beast with “arms and hands like a monkey, face like a dog, split hooves, and tail a foot long.” Elsewhere, a trolley driver saw a winged kangaroo cross the tracks. A puppy was found dead: odd tracks surrounded the body.

Thursday: in Camden, a beast peeked in the window of the Black Hawk Social Club. It turned tail when members screamed. Not much later, a trolley conductor saw a devilish kangaroo. In Trenton, a horse in a barn panicked and its owner saw a beast covered in fur and feathers, approximately the size of a canine mutt but with the facial traits of a purebred German Shepherd, its eyes emitting unmistakable anger. That same night, a city councilman heard wings flapping and discovered cloven prints on the roof—the same prints were everywhere in the city. Armed guards protected the trolleys of New Brunswick and Trenton. In Atlantic City, a telegraph worker reported that linemen saw “The Terror” on a pole. In Philadelphia, a woman saw a six-foot-tall creature covered in scaly skin. When flames spurted from its mouth, she screamed, her husband threw a rake at it, the creature flew off, and a carriage driver swerved to avoid it as it crossed Pine Street. Across the Delaware River in Camden, the beast attacked a woman’s spaniel and she beat it with a broomstick, but it lingered on a fence post. Police fired and it flew off.

Panic throughout the state. Schools closed, offices shut down, workers called out sick. The mayor of Philadelphia asked the Governor to send troops to protect against the beast, and also against armed posses roaming streets ready to fire on anything odd. Was this the first instance of government protection against popular delusion in America? Had the snow falling for a week released this beast from captivity in the ground? Had an archaeopteryx risen from extinction? Was it a sign of the apocalypse, a plague of glowing eyes and wings and tails and hooves?

Casts of prints were made, none varying much, and nothing was captured or confirmed killed. A threat to the collective sanity: news rippled through nights brightened by snowfall until a raccoon or squirrel, any sort of animal, any movement half-seen, conformed to reports. The reaction was not courageous and communal but locked doors. All human endeavor (armed posse formation notwithstanding) was suspended until the storm of psychosis passed. And in its wake, there was commerce: commemorative figurines, pewter dishes, my likeness burned into a yard of linen, woodcuts, specious rubbings of gravestones depicting similar beasts, and even a sideshow at Ninth and Arch Street in Philadelphia.