Lee Klein: Jrzdvlz

“It’s to protect the crops and children,” he said, “plus there’s a surprise guest.”

Not fifty feet from where we are now, he said, something emerges from the woods and runs at the fire. Beneath its arms a stretchy fabric looks like wings. It wears an expressionless mask: eyes, nose, mouth, cheeks. Not diabolical at all. It’s stoic. Flat. Like one of those Easter Island stones. The rest of the body is covered in furry animal hide. Woolly white boots around its feet, it runs at the others, dances with them, and then gets a good sprint going and dives through the fire with arms outstretched, landing in a graceful shoulder roll, popping up without missing a beat. It leaps over the shoulders of smaller dancers, stretching its arms while airborne. Chanting becomes more furious as the surprise guest flings itself through the fire, over the dancers, and through the fire again.

Duven couldn’t remember the original Indian name for the masked beast, but translated to English it meant “Solid Face,” the centerpiece of a ceremony European settlers thought was an evil spirit, when really it protected against everything. Groups now carried out the tradition each spring. Made no difference if the drop of native blood they claimed originated in legend. If they believed it, they believed it, and it sure seemed you needed to believe it to dance around a fire all night.

Once Duven finished conjuring the action around the bonfire a season ago, Mack said “Seems like we could all use some Solid Face about now.”

I decided then I would make the trip worthwhile.

“The thing is, we really need to make a Jersey Devil theme park, like Six Flags,” I said. “Maybe we could bring Solid Face into it and that stuff Duven pulled with his gun—and get the Jersey Devil on board, too, of course.”

I’d hardly said anything all night, just going along, naturally gravitating toward Mack. I’d been quiet so long no one really seemed able to respond to me.

At this point, we were most interested in encountering dawn’s early light. The major obstacle between seeing the beast and not seeing it was staying awake. Moss was more vigilant, but even Riv’s energy had sapped. Kirsch looked like he would happily curl himself up in a pile of orange pine needles. Corinne attended to Moss and then chatted ahead with Duven. I trailed behind with Mack.

“You really think we could sell this to tourists?” she said. “Staying out in the woods all night with a guide is one thing, but we’d have to do a better haunting job. Shooting into the woods, that’s not quite enough.”

“I have some ideas I bet you’d like.”

“Like what?”

I had learned not to announce who I was, so I suggested she record what she saw in the next hour and come back to the area every once in a while so I could see her. She seemed to hear what I said but kept walking, maybe thinking I suffered from sleep deprivation.

I slowed down, letting them walk toward what Duven said was a great spot to watch the sunrise, an overhang of rock I knew from my earliest days, where I peered into a pool of water and saw human eyes surrounded by so many animal elements.

They walked ahead. Mack now seemed to accelerate as though my gift to her journalism career were a stink bomb, an irrational come-on undercut by monster breath.

I had in mind a fireworks display at dawn. This hunt must end with my appearance and, after so much time, a transformation forever after into what I’ve always been. Cast off this mysterious vestment of domestication that’s served me so well for so long, let her go now that her lost sailor has finally returned home.

I slipped from the path and into the brush. I removed shirt and pants and shoes and tore apart the Velcro clasps holding the dress in place. This wonderful dress, I must release her into the wilderness. I let it go, hoping it would move on its own toward the sea. But all the life in it seemed used up. It just lay there.

The sun was coming now, warming the ocean, lightening the sky, as thousands of birds commenced their morning tribute. For the last time I watched the transformation of my arms into wings, fingers into horns, feet into hooves, legs into delicate stilts. I crossed my eyes to watch the elongation of my face. Never again would I assume human form, everything united beneath a skin of human flesh, aware that within lurked my true, multiple, animal self, neither human nor man nor new Adam, neither beast, nor monster, nor vampire, nor dinosaur that survived mass extinction 65 million years ago.

I am the Jersey Devil, older than America itself, cursed at birth, damned to atone for an unfortunate reaction to my entrance into the world, perhaps doing what all infants would do if they could. Instead they wail about this wall-less world encountered beyond the womb.

The dress at my feet, used to its fullest and released to return to the earth or revive itself and do as it would like, I decided to hang for now from the limb of a suitable tree, thinking I might want to use it again, or need to, especially if my plan didn’t go as hoped— my dream of a theme park, profit and philanthropy, everyone on board, all those who would soon notice I was gone, presumed devoured by what they would soon see.

I could feel the effort it would take. My legs as light as ever didn’t provide much elevation when I pressed off the sand with my hooves. I tried to release myself into the air as I always did, just spread my wings and enter the aerial world.

A quick hop like a buzzard on a fence yet unable to fly.

Without flight, what would I do? What could I do? How spend my days in my natural state in my natural habitat if I couldn’t release myself into flight? How would I feed myself? How anything?

I tried again, but it was like a switch had been turned off.

I limped ahead as fast as I could and tried to propel myself into the air but couldn’t leave the ground.

I released a wail now that sounded so much like the sort I had made before I learned human speech. A wail I didn’t intend to make.

They had to have heard it, the way it ran unimpeded through the pines like sunrays ablating the morning fuzz. I imagined them up ahead, realizing I was gone, hearing that pitiful shriek, and now either running away or maybe even toward me.

I stepped onto the path and expected to see Moss make the connection and realize I was the one buried in the woods now, a head above the surface filled with swarming thoughts, all else buried in my current flightless form.

Did they not hear me?

Would a louder wail bring them back?

I released a fearsome roar, more like a lion’s than anything else, a jet engine, and as soon as silence restored itself, all birds quiet, I tried to scamper up the path, my legs so stiff. I ran slowly, like a mechanical animal, chasing after those I wanted to see again, at least speak to them in my own voice, the one they would recognize.

Was it possible I wore the dress too long and became degraded and devolved? All the time spent as a relatively normal human had cost me the benefits of my natural animal form? Or could it all be caused by that shift in the air I’d sensed?

I hobbled down the path, the sunrise behind me, my shadow cast far in front. Wide and bat-like, I spread my wings. Ahead, I saw my friends, huddled, discussing what to do, arming themselves with cameras.

Duven smiled the smile of the wholly impressed.

Corinne’s eyes opened so wide they accounted for most of her face.

Mack took a step toward me, but only one.

Kirsch peeled off and ran.

Moss stepped toward me.

Riv fell to his knees as though I were his god.

I tried to tell them it’s just their friend, Adam Merriweather, humble grocery clerk, but my words again came out all at once: every urgent sentiment and confessional phrase I mustered smeared in an inarticulate slurry, a percussive bark at most, something no one would understood pertained to plans to open a theme park, an irretrievable idea in my flightless state.