This is not the first time I’ve heard about circumstances like this, though it is one of the very few times
that I’ve seen it written down. The author who shared it with me—a caster from the Garden State—told
me she’d heard more than eighty stories, all in this vein. All with the same ending.
Only 985 tales to go.
What do you have that I want?
The question hadn’t been asked yet—but it was coming.
Zeb picked up the stranger not long after the Woodland intersection with 563, heading west on County
Route 532. It was raining and raining hard. Zeb introduced himself, but the stranger said nothing. He had
nothing with him, not even a backpack, and he kept his wet hood over his head. Zeb asked how far the
stranger was going, but the stranger didn’t speak; instead, he just spread his pale hands, as if to suggest
he didn’t know or it didn’t matter.
The car was an old Nova—it had belonged to a kid Zeb met the summer before, and it wasn’t reliable. So
Zeb drove it sparingly, really only when he needed to go into Atlantic City. Otherwise, it stayed under a
tarp most of the time. The wipers worked dubiously, forcing Zeb to slow down to stay safely in one lane,
but it didn’t matter because there was no other traffic in either direction. There was nothing out here,
not even light posts, and there’d been no houses or businesses for miles. The car’s heater didn’t work
very well, either, sometimes blowing cold air instead, and so the interior was colder than it should have
been, even on a wet Jersey night like this one.
Once they were moving again, a hot smell, the kind you notice even when you breathe through your
mouth, slowly began to fill the car.
Zeb tried to make small talk. He asked if the stranger was from New Jersey. So, Taylor Ham or pork roll?
Springsteen with or without the E Street Band? But the stranger just shrugged each time, muttered
something about “making better time,” and stared out the window at the trees becoming thicker in the
blackness. They drove along for some time in silence, but the smell—a stench, really, like burning rotted
meat—became so strong, it demanded addressing or a distraction.
Zeb tried again with a conversation piece that always worked. “So, how about this: What do you know
about the Jersey Devil? Anything?”
His inquiry seemed to bring the stranger to life. He peeked out from underneath his soaked hoodie, his
eyes alight. “Yes. I know a few things. It was the thirteenth Leeds child. They say Mother Leeds already
had all the kids she wanted, so she cursed it to the devil. Then, when it was born, it grew hooves and a
horse face and transformed into a hideous winged thing and flew away, out into the night. Now it
haunts the Pine Barrens, where they say it’s been hiding for two hundred years.”
Zeb licked his lips and tried not to stare at the stranger too closely, who had shifted to look at him
before continuing. “But the last sightings that weren’t debunked took place over a hundred years ago.”
Hands at ten and two, Zeb raised his chin almost defiantly. “So if it’s out there somewhere, what does it
want?”
The stranger said, “I imagine revenge on all people. It was driven out by its own mother—so, it must’ve
had a face even a mother couldn’t love. And wouldn’t it want to take that out on everyone else? It was
supposed to be one of us. But it’s not.”
Zeb swallowed. “You sure do know a lot about it, that’s for sure.”
“Yes, I do. And say, aren’t we headed toward the Pine Barrens right now? I think we are. I know this area
pretty well, actually. You asked earlier—yeah, I’m from Jersey.”
Zeb hesitated as if considering a diplomatic response. “Well,” he finally said, so calmly that it sounded
forced, “we’re not quite there yet, and they say it doesn’t leave the Barrens.”
“They say,” the stranger agreed. “They sure do say a lot of things, don’t they?”
Zeb leaned forward in the driver’s seat, hunching down over the steering wheel and squinting into the
black, wet night as if he couldn’t see where they were going. He grimaced dramatically. “So,
listen—what do you think if we just pull over, okay? Maybe just for a few minutes. You want to get out
and stretch your legs?”
At this, the stranger suddenly laughed, slapping the dashboard with one scrawny hand. “I’m just
screwing with you, man. It’s that dark and stormy night thing, you know? Campfire stories, urban myths.
You aren’t going to put me out in the middle of BFN, are you? I might not get another ride until sunrise
tomorrow.”
Zeb didn’t answer, but he slowed the car down and drifted into the grass beside the empty highway. The
stranger said, “You know what? I’ll stop talking. I’m not chatty anyway. How about I just get in the back
and go to sleep for a few hours? Leave you alone. How would that be?”
The stranger turned around and looked in the backseat. Zeb hadn’t cleaned it since acquiring the car, so
the blood from the kid who’d owned it last summer was still dried all across the seat.
What do you have that I want? How about your car?
“You know what they don’t know about that thirteenth child?” Zeb said, his teeth clenched and bared.
“Before he changed and flew away to live in hell by himself? He had a name—Zebediah.”
His face began to stretch, elongating, nostrils flaring, eyes doubling in size.
The stranger panicked immediately. He reached for the door handle, but it wasn’t there—it was only a
hole in the door now. Zeb had removed it not long after taking possession of the car. For moments like
this.
“Maybe he missed people so much,” Zeb hissed, his ears becoming jagged, his hair wiry and taut, “that
sometimes he came into the city just to be with them. But he always had to go back to the Barrens. He
wasn’t welcome to stay among the good men.”
As its wings filled the space between its back and the seat, the car’s frame groaned. Zeb snarled at the
stranger. The stench of brimstone came off of him like a blast of heat. The lower half of his face had
become a snout, long and bristling with fine hairs. His teeth were jagged. And his voice came out low
and rough, but the words, the last the stranger would hear, were still clear enough.
“What do you have that I want?”
