The Tale of the Jersey Devil: Misinghalikun by Summer J. Wood

Prologue:
     Whispers. Whispers like wind through the bristly wilderness of the Pines.
     Mother Leeds hobbled along a sandy path into those Pines. Far from her family’s homestead, she hoped to seek solace from the fixed misery that determined her life’s measure. With eyes towards the heavens, she prayed for an escape, even if for a moment, from the hopeless triviality that was master to her. She longed to be away, to be alone with only her own thoughts.
     Never before had she ventured to trek the forest on her own. Not that doing so was forbidden, but her leisure was. Between being wife and mother, she had little time to devote to her own fancies.
     Perhaps something was directing her along this path, an independent whim in her subconscious that waved her away from her chores and beckoned her to a place where she would at last find peace of mind. She imagined this force had a whisper of a voice summoning from beyond the gnarled tangle of trees that called to her as if to say, “Come. Rest. Regain your strength for what lay ahead.”
     When these notions entered her mind, she had stopped hanging laundry and started walking beyond the curtain of tree trunks that surrounded the Leeds homestead in the Pine Barrens in the colony of New Jersey.
     Her children continued playing as if she was a spirit that could neither be seen nor heard. And if they had attempted to stop her, she was sure she would not have answered but would have kept going until she reached the place that would let her know when it was time to halt and have that peace she so longed for.
     Perhaps that which beckoned her also instructed them to stay.
     One hundred paces and she could still hear the cacophony of mischief surrounding them, resonating in her ears like a musket-shot reverberating through a crisp November afternoon, only this gunshot was not the death of some hapless deer, but of her own inner sanctum. She was sure that they took pleasure in causing her grief, not unlike pulling the wings off of a fly amuses those hooligans who have no respect for God’s creatures.
     But now she would get away, if only for a spell.
     As she ventured away from home, Mother Leeds had not followed any particular direction save a sandy path that appeared naturally in the geography of the land. It was not long before she came upon what had the appearance of an old Indian trail that seemed ancient in its origins. Narrow, with bramble bushes closing in on all sides and so thick with branches curving every which way that very few rays of sunlight were able to penetrate through the canopy of thick foliage above, even in the first weeks of spring. In some places it was impassable and insect ridden; true spring weather replaced the chill of winter early this year and every little critter took note of it.
      As she caught her breath, she eyed where her journey had brought her, to a small clearing, a ravine.
     With a deep sigh, and still recuperating from her overexertion, she sat against a tree overlooking the small ravine that was about the length and width of a house in diameter and a story or more in depth.
     She inhaled the air around her, which smelled sweet somehow, not like the earthy dirt and bark that held sway over the Pines she was familiar with. It was pleasant at least, as was the natural silence that she savored as much as she imagined fancy ladies enjoyed their orchestral concerts, spinets, cellos, and all sorts of elegant instruments from the Old World. Not the jaunty tunes of country fiddles, but sophisticated music.
     Although she could no longer hear the chaos that always surrounded her home, it nevertheless echoed in her ear’s memory. To add yet another screaming voice to the batch was unbearable. More so than she knew the pain of childbirth itself would be yet again.
     “I am tired of children,” she sighed to herself. Her voice sounded strange to her in the silence, almost unnatural.
     “I am tired of children!” she called out again, louder, and it resonated through the spaces between the trees, the smaller, thin ones seemed to waver back and forth from the echoes of her voice.
     As the echo stopped, silence once again filled the air.
     She had not really wanted another child. Not that she did not love with motherly devotion the children she had already, despite their rambunctious behavior; but adding another one to the brood¼just thinking about it drained her senses.
     She was too old for this. Her limbs ached as if she were twice her present age of forty. Her eyesight was failing. Youth was something she could no longer remember possessing of her own. The years had passed as steadily as her once soft chestnut hair turned to a tethery gray.
     She was, as all women, doomed to procreate for the Creator until her loins became as withered as her skin.
     And His work was carried out by His own creation, Man. She was not forced to marry but was that not what she was supposed to do? Sanctioned to do by Holy Scripture? A woman was nothing without a husband, without children, but often she felt she was nothing even with those things.
     It was, she surmised, her duty, but if God was merciful, why not give the chance to someone younger and have pity on an old woman’s diminishing health, not only of body, but of mind?
     Her thoughts trailed off as she heard a scrambling in the ravine below. She eased herself up and leaned over the edge. Her eyes wandered around the open space below.
     There was nothing there.
     A thick mat of dead, rust colored pine needles, sandy dirt, gray rocks intermingled with ivory ones that almost looked like the bones of some giant, fire-breathing dragon if such a thing ever existed jutting out here and there, but little else.
     She could have sworn she had heard something. When she had heard the noise she had envisioned a small deer falling below and struggling to get back on its feet, but there was no deer, nor any other of God’s creatures. It seemed there was little life in these parts at all, not even the insects that did not refrain from nipping at her on the way to this place seemed to know of it.
     She perked her ears up.
     Whispers. Now she heard whispers; she was as sure of it as of the existence of the Maker Himself. She was not alone. Had her children followed her? She turned her eyes now towards the brush engulfed spaces of the forest, looking for what person had uttered those whispers. There was no one there.
     She heard them again, more whispers, like to drawn out breaths.
     It had to be the wind, or even the ocean waves pounding against the Atlantic shore. Sometimes if it was really quiet, as it was here and now, it was said that one could hear the ocean this far inland, a continuous underlying roar of waves that lapped against the sandy dunes over and over again.
     That was not it either. There was nothing there. A few more moments and she did not hear these noises anymore.
     Mother Leeds stood a while looking into the ravine. It was not too far a drop but it would be enough to knock the wind out of someone if they happened to fall in, or jump.
     Such a fall could do much more than just knock the wind out of someone. For a woman with child, it could even bring about a miscarriage.
     This made her think of her own lost children. She had miscarried before but never with the insensible prospect to. Three children planted in her womb never made it to nine month, and little Elijah dying of the pox at three years, Henry at two years, and little Ann a few days after her first year on Earth. Now she could not hold back the tears that swelled her weary old eyes.
     To miscarry a child with intention when so many families unwillingly lost their little ones, including her own, was pure black-heartedness. What would possess her to even think of such travesty, she could not fathom, but she was set on forgetting it altogether.
     But again, circumstances in this day and age were ripe for such alternatives.
     No.
     She could never.
     She was tired of children but not to the extent that she would cause injury to the little one she carried now.
     What would the Lord say to her when Judgment came? Surely He would turn his back on her as he did on the fallen angel himself.
     She imagined herself tumbling to the bottom of the ravine as Lucifer tumbled from Heaven to Hell, and that, in all of its wretchedness, is exactly what she would be doing if she faltered from the edge of her sanity to this pit of unquestionable doom. A series of thoughts that were not her own and yet lurked in the hidden folds of her cumbersome mind.
     From a more practical view, even if she did want to shake hands with the Devil, such a drop by a woman her age would result in more than a miscarriage. She had little doubt that at her age, bones would crack or break like twigs. And she wandered away so far from home that not a soul would hear her calls for help, not even the neighbors that lived here and there around Leeds Point.
     Whispers again, the wind whispered through the emerald needled barrens.
     Perhaps the souls of all the little children taken too early were whispering to her, pleading her to leave this place, to regain a more hallowed line of thought, before it was too late.
     She could not agree more.
     As she turned to leave, a breeze blustered through the clearing, veering to a strong wind like that which occurs for many minutes right before a tremendous rain is released from the sky. There were no dark clouds looming over though. She suddenly became afraid and more resolved to leave the clearing immediately.
     She whirled away from the edge overlooking the ravine and scuttled towards the path that brought her to this place but she did not take more than several steps when the wind picked up tenfold. The trees shuddered to and fro and bits of dead foliage revolved around her, picked up by the torrent. Her white ruffled cap was plucked from her head as her hair escaped its tight coif and whipped across her face. This wind did not come from one direction, but was like a shadow whirling and dancing around her in great circles. All the time, a terrifying whisper blasted through the barrage, its undecipherable message aimed undeniably at her. Her resolve turned to regret as she attempted against this horrendous gale to flee from the clearing and return to the safety of her own home.
     Then, within an upwelling as if picked up by the wispy arms of this windy wake, Mother Leeds reeled ten feet below into the ravine. As she dropped to the gritty floor of the pit, the wind was knocked out of her. Yet it felt also as if it had been knocked into her, as if her soul had swallowed another soul.
     It happened so quickly that she did not feel the punch of her body hitting the ground but she did feel something else much worse. A sharp pain in her belly made her double over in pain. She clutched her stomach as her limbs and whole body twinged in excruciating spasms.   This sensation in her body seemed to whip around like the torrential wind above the ravine.
     A knife-like thrust tore at her insides. Her lungs burned as if the air was being drawn out of them with veritable speed and she was being suffocated. Then, as suddenly as it began, this torture stopped and she was left lying there on the floor of the ravine, panting, sweating, dizzy, frightened.
     The wind diminished in strength along with the stabbing sensation in her belly. As the pain ebbed and her thoughts came together, worry filled her.
     The pangs she had felt could only have been one thing.
     She lifted up her skirts and with an urgent dread searched for the telltale signs of what most certainly felt like the loss of the child inside her.
     There was nothing, no blood, nothing.
     It was a miracle for she had not had a miscarriage despite the circumstances. For all of the agony she had felt tear at her insides and ebb through every fraction of her being, she presently felt nearly as well in body as she did when she was standing over the ravine and all was ostensibly calm.
     She surveyed the pit she was in. She had not meant to end up on the floor of the ravine, but something strange had taken over her, possessed her thoughts and manipulated them. Perhaps she had meant to do it, but did not want to admit to herself that her subconscious would force her to take so extreme an action, to do what only God has the right to do.
     God.
     She had about enough of Him. Self-righteous God. He and his centuries old prose did nothing to alleviate her woes.
     The fall must have knocked her in the head to think about such things at a time like this. Never before had she thought such obtrusive thoughts about the Creator.
     Something was forcing these wicked notions upon her. These were not her thoughts. Not her actions. Were those whispers telling her something else, not the lyrical chimes of the lost children, but of lost souls, which traveled not from above but from below.
     Wicked whispers.
     Wicked intentions.
     Mother Leeds raised her body up until she was kneeling amidst the thick needles that covered the ravine floor. She could feel the points of them digging through her hair and the layered fabric of her dress to her skin.
     She felt no other pain. She assessed again that by a miracle of the Heavenly Father, no bones were broken, no muscles torn, no skin scraped, and perhaps most fortunate of all, no baby miscarried. She hugged her tummy and muttered a quick prayer. Although she was a mere three months with child and not showing yet, it could have been very dangerous for her to descend from such a great height as that. The landing alone could have injured her mortally, but she realized she did not really remember landing at all.
     Her thoughts began to come together now. She was lifted by the wind and then pushed and pulled all at once, as if a cold, stony hand had jutted out one clawed finger and tipped her over the edge into the ragged cupped hands of the vacuum like ravine that waited to swallow her up. She could almost feel a lingering sensation in the small of her back where this invisible hand through the wind touched her.
     No, that was ridiculous; there was not a soul around for miles. Her fear was putting impossible scenarios in her mind. There was no hand that pushed her. It could have just been that terrible barrage of wind though.
     Sudden winds and eerie whispers, evil was at work here and her constitution was spent from it.
     She began to mutter in prayer, she was not aware of what verse she recited, perhaps she was just praying as frightened people do for help, for a way to keep on living, for now she feared the loss not of her unborn child’s life, but her own.
    She rotated her eyes to the ravine walls that encircled her for the easiest way to climb out, but the wall was uniform all around. A natural stairway of stones protruded from the soil near the ledge she fell over and she would have to try her best to climb them.
     She took a step forward and found her foot sank more than an inch into a spongy rather than dry earth, like quicksand, but she did not sink into it any deeper. Then a strange sensation suddenly tickled at her ankles. It was water, freezing water. She shivered. The Pine counties were known to have a shallow water table, it was possible she had disturbed it with her rough landing as she tried now to justify with common sense what was uncommonly frightening.
     Mother Leeds took a few steps backwards toward the edge of the ravine as water of the deepest blue hue seeped from the ground. It was blue, not like the ocean but like the sky on a sunny, cloudless day, but transparent, too, like jewels glimmering in candlelight.
     As the water crept up through the gritty soil, a blanket of pine needles gathered and floated on its surface and was now to the mid-point of her shins. However, much to her chagrin, it was not due to the water rising more quickly, but the ground itself was breaking apart and sinking beneath her.
     If she had not known better, she would have deemed it Doomsday. God was ending the reign of Man and preparing all for Judgment Day. Or could it be the end of her? God had read her unholy thoughts in this unholy place and his judgment was to expel her to the Devil’s sanctuary. The earth would swallow her and close over her as she fell through each circle of hell’s inferno.
     Her skirts floated on the surface around her hips as the water had already become that deep. As the cloth soaked up more and more of this bluish water, they became weighted and sank underneath its surface, so heavy that they tugged at her whole body to follow them. It was a struggle to wade to the shallow part against the inside corner of the ravine, just below the point where she stood overlooking the hole moments ago.
     She clutched at the dirt walls with all her might to escape the chasm. With barely the air in her lungs to do so, she called for help, but knew she was too far from anyone to be heard. The echo of her voice back to her was the only reply she would get in this place. She dug her feet into the loose soil and tugged on the rope-like roots. She called on the Heavenly Father for strength for her ailing body whether He could hear her pleas or not. She had managed to make it half way up the side when the dirt on the ravine walls began to crumble and give way. She could not keep a firm hold and found herself once again on the ravine floor and underwater.
     As she struggled to surface and stand, she found the water up to her shoulders. The thunderous current and loosening earth that fell from under her feet caused her to lose balance and she fell backward once more into the icy water. She calculated that the pit was now at least ten feet deep. She was on her back on the very bottom and could see a sunny glimmer fall in rays through the trees from above. Somehow she could see clear as day the sun’s burst of light in the sky becoming as small and obscured as a star in the twilight as her body was pulled along with the sinking soil farther below the water.
     In a split second a shadow blocked the light from penetrating the water, but she soon realized it was no iconic saint donning a golden halo of sun rays. Had it been anything else, a cloud, a blur, a bird, she would have dismissed her fear and concentrated on saving her life but what she did not count on was a pair of eyes peering straight into her own.
     It was large and dark and these eyes, radiant eyes like to amber flames wiggling upwards from coals to air in a potter’s kiln. Its vision was impressed into her mind as if a terrifying memory she would carry with her the rest of her life.
     She almost felt as if her person was being violated by this thing.
     Mother Leeds was in such absolute terror that she screamed beneath the water’s surface and choked with impulsive spasms of her throat on the water that she inhaled. She batted at the vision of this thing, her arms flailing through the water.
     Although she did not in any way want to surface to confront this unholy thing, she likewise did not want to drown which she thought she would despite being underwater for longer than her old lungs could have withstood.
     Her perception of the water’s depth widened as more and more mossy sand like soil crumbled from beneath her, sucking her farther and farther away from the air above. If she did not rise to the surface now, she felt she never would again and her doom would be an unsacred watery grave instead of a sacred burial in the earth that all Christians deserved.
     Debris disturbed by the rising water and carried by its current funneled around her. At first it was just dirt, pine needles, twigs, but then she found the hollowed out eyes of a human skull peering at her until it was carried away, and then she saw more bones. Victims of this hellish lake, like her.
     More ground fell from beneath her feet to only the Devil knew where, plunging her deeper in the water. She kicked and paddled finally lunging to the water’s surface. She was more than relieved to find no shadow looming over, only the thick gathering of leaves and branches and the comforting warmth of the sun. Without time to dwell on this, she rushed to the wall she had been climbing before she tumbled down. She reached for a root handle in the ravine’s dirt wall but as she put her arm out, it became clear that the wall was always inches out of her grasp no matter how many strokes she made towards it. The ravine was in the process of widening and now had collapsed in on itself making the chasm almost twenty-five feet across and nearly as much in depth.
     A bitter strong current channeling through the water tried to keep her prisoner but she nevertheless fought with all her might to the ravine’s walls and once again tried to climb her way out. Digging her feet in and grabbing at the dirt she attempted to scale up the barrier. Dead pine needles continued to prick her bloody palms. Gagging and with stinging eyes she could feel the water creeping up the wall faster then she herself could climb and every foothold she had, slipped away like mud. She was almost to the surface when the water which had just been trying to drag her down suddenly sucked her towards the center of the hole and then surged in a domed wave carrying her over the threshold of the ravine’s edge and onto dry ground.
     Mother Leeds wasted no time backing away from the hole as far as she could without losing sight of it, her breath struggling in shallow wheezes to escape her lungs. When she felt at a safe distance she rested on her back and then turned to her side, the water she had swallowed and inhaled came back up as she coughed with intense convulsions that left her throat raw.
     She regained her normal breathing and collapsed on her back. She knew not how long she lay in this manner but it was another scuffle that brought her back to full consciousness followed by an ear-piercing screech that she had never heard uttered by any Earthly creature. She sat up looking to where the sound had originated and there, those black pivots once again peered at her, this time from behind and between the trees on the opposite side of what used to be a barren ravine.
     Glowing iron embers for pupils piercing her own like arrows and she could have sworn she saw this creature nod its canine-like snout at her, as if a gentleman bowing after an introduction to another gentleman, but this was no man. This thing, so beastly, yet possessing the polite mannerisms of human gentility.
     Without so much as a gasp she clambered to her feet and ran as fast as she could homeward, neither her aged muscles nor the weight of her water logged clothing in the least hindering the velocity of her unadulterated fright. She turned behind her and saw the eyes floating freely within an ambiguous gray cloud and closing in on the distance between her and it. Before she had time too pick up speed, a force pierced straight through her body, as if it were a transparent entity, and the wind was knocked out of her a second time. When she came to and could breath again, the thing was gone and she wasted no time gathering herself up and running home, never looking behind again for fear of seeing this creature once more, not even when she reached the outer fringes of her homestead. She gathered up all of her children in the parlor and locked the doors and shutters, and forced everyone to pray with her.
     Her husband returned from a business trip to Mount Holly got sight of her and then got an earful of her crazed story. He prudently insisted that she never mention this to anyone for he could not stomach if word should get out that his wife was unsound.
     She did not want to mention it herself for it was a certainty that those at the Meeting House would cast her out, label her a witch, or worse.
     By her eighth month of pregnancy she had forced herself to forget about what happened altogether or at least pass it off as a dream, perhaps a hallucination. She prayed more and more with a fervor that did not equal all of the praying she did in all of her years combined.

     Mother Leeds moaned in anguish, her hands twisting and wrenching the bed linen with white knuckled fists on either side of the goose feather mattress on which she lay. Strands of granite tinted hair spread in a fan over the bed pillow as she arched her neck, sobbing and panting from the agony that God, from the days of Adam and Eve, inflicted on all women as an unjust punishment for one.
     Desperate for some form of control over her aching body, the woman inhaled deep breaths of the stale air around her only to be rewarded with yet another gut wrenching contraction of her womb. Like a banshee she screeched in dire reply to the unwelcome sensation of tearing flesh that smarted between her legs. Her womb felt as if it were being pounded and kneaded from the inside like a slab of dough being prepared for the next day’s bread.
     Her six children waited downstairs with her husband, but not even the first of that lot had been so excruciating for her to bear. To endure, she drew on everything that she knew of her experience from giving birth to her already existing children and those that were now in Heaven; controlled breathing, meditative concentration, and she likewise paid heed to every direction given to her by her midwife. But the shredding pain was as unrelenting as the dissonant rain and wind that beat against the windowpanes.
     She felt again as she felt all those months ago, when she was not quite herself, not deliberating as her prudence dictated.
     “My husband be damned for this!” she shouted in spasmodic movements towards the door. She, in all of her pain, hoped it would reach the ears of the man she cursed, Mr. Leeds, who, in the parlor awaited the outcome of the labor with their children.
     Mr. Leeds, pacing, his cravat loosened hours ago, only shrugged his rounded shoulders and sighed. As much as he loved his wife and children, he himself had hoped this child would be the final one. Children were a blessing to be sure, but too many and that blessing could become a burden.
     The more Mother Leeds dwelled on the pain, the more destitute of reason she became. She could feel it, the desolation, the plague of lunacy spreading through her veins like a parasite. She recognized the symptoms of its presence but could not prescribe a curative and banish it whence it came.
     It was as unwelcome as when she felt despair at the ravine. How it played upon her, its maddening melody almost soothing her into a careless reverie.
     If only the child would come into the world and contract her anguish.
     A transformation overcame her senses, inside her belly she felt the soul of this child as if it were growing from seed to infant not in nine months but in nine seconds. This darkness within her forced its way back to the surface as she cursed a different entity now.
     “God be damned for this!” Her crazed eyes would have bore a hole through the ceiling to Kingdom Come so loathsome were they to convey their message. If humanly possible she would have leaped through the roof of the house to Heaven itself and forsaking all hallowed loyalty, damn the bastard to His face.
     “Mother Leeds!” the midwife, Mrs. De Cou, exclaimed with astonishment. “There’s no need for that kind of talk, you’re only havin’ a baby,” she chided.
     Mother Leeds tired of the horrendous labor and furthermore of the lack of compassion that humans and God alike all seemed to have, felt her spirit dwindle to a compressed core that would burst at any moment from the constriction of its own mass.
     Her eyes narrowed to slits, her face held an angry toothed sneer. She could not endure the agonizing pain that came with the delivery of this particular child. She could not withstand the churning of hatred forcing its presence upon her mind. It beckoned her again and again and she could not resist the heavy weight of its overture.
     She pounded her fists against the bed in frustration, deranged and losing her coherence with reality, losing a battle with her own sanity. Without quite knowing what she was about to declare nor capable of withholding it, she exclaimed loud enough to wake the dead all the way back in the Old World.
     “LET IT BE A DEVIL!” Mother Leeds sanctioned with a heinous shriek and a twist of her thin lips so malicious that Mrs. De Cou’s senses numbed momentarily as if a calf bludgeoned in the skull by a dull mallet.
     In an instant the midwife gained those senses back only to see a flash of lightning illuminate the contorted face of Mother Leeds, her eyes like to black mirrors reflecting not the room but the flaring patent coals of the other world.
     Mother Leeds growled another incantation but it was in a language the midwife had never heard, it must have just been gibberish or she had hoped.
     Beyond the doors, and down the stairs, the midwife heard Mr. Leeds leading the children in a prayerful recitation.
     Good, Mrs. De Cou thought, we could use some prayers right now. It took a loud cry from Mother Leeds, no longer chanting, to bring the midwife’s wandering attention back to the task at hand. Probing with her fingers she could feel the infant’s crown deep inside. It was in perfect position in the birth canal, but the poor thing steadfastly refused to stir from the protection of its mother’s womb. They must deliver this baby before they lost it and the mother as well.
     Margaret. Mrs. De Cou had sent her young apprentice to fetch some things that the elder Leeds children would not. Whether it was because they were a sorry lot or just frightened she did not know, but her apprentice should have returned by now.
     “Where is that girl with the linens?” the midwife called over the most recent crack of thunder. She waited for an answer, standing between Mother Leeds’ trembling thighs with bloody hands firmly perched on her chubby hips.   Mrs. De Cou called out again.
     The mother to be continued to moan in a pain that would make even the hardiest man cringe with uneasiness. The pain had the intensity of all previous births combined. In a fit of frustration she shouted a profane question to a God, which granted no mercy on a poor woman’s broken body. A bright flash of lightning followed by a deafening crack of thunder was the only reply.
     The pain only intensified, as did her fear. She had been agitated, yes, but now, she could not help but regret the terrible things she proclaimed.
     This force which overcame her, that she knew she had, worked its ripening within her, began to bloom right in front of her eyes from a fist sized glow to a full grown apparition. This thing had beady black eyes that glowed like a nocturnal animal’s when the light hits their pupils a certain way. Those eyes, they were the same ones she had seen in the Pines. It snorted and puffs of smoke like to wrought iron ash billowed from its snout. This sight in itself was all the poor woman could tolerate as she squeezed her eyes shut and screamed not in pain, but in utter terror, and not even her cries could drown out the whispers that sounded in her ears. This was not a reflection or even a hallucination; it was in the room with her and as real as the midwife. A wave of heat from it reached out to her through the chill of the room. Not only had she seen and heard it but she had smelled it, a musky scent she had not encountered from any other animal known to her. Or known to God.
     She felt something grab her hand and she screamed again but when she opened her eyes she saw that it was only the midwife who had taken her hand as a caring gesture. The beast she had seen with those haunting, hideous eyes was gone.   She eyed Mrs. De Cou nervously who seemed as if she had not seen anything extraordinary but minded her business, every now and then patting her knees and saying something tender to put things at ease.
     Had she not seen it, too? Mother Leeds could not have imagined such a creature, those eyes, she never would have fathomed a human like being to have such terrorizing eyes. It was real. It had to be. The thing had been watching her since she first saw it six months ago and now it wanted something from her, she could feel it in the marrow of her bones. The very sight of it terrifying but it had not harmed her; it had looked upon her in sympathy, with pity. What was it? Mrs. De Cou did not see it. Was she imagining it? Had everything, even her loss of sanity been a hallucination?
     No. It was real. She had not the imagination to create such things. It had a purpose for her for her child and she had succumbed to all of its trickery. She had cursed God and child and now she would have to yield the sacrifice. This thing had made her do it, pity or not, fear had now taken a hold over her for she could not bear the thought of having to placate this man-beast with her infant child.
     Without warning, Mother Leeds lurched at Mrs. De Cou and took hold of her apron with trembling hands. “Help me,” she said, her wavering voice barely audible above her own hysterical breathing.
     “Help me!” she screeched this time.
     This sudden uprising by Mother Leeds took Mrs. De Cou by great surprise as she fought to unclench the woman’s stony hands from her clothing.
     Mother Leeds stared into the midwife’s eyes, her lips quivering with a mixture of fear and confusion. “I did not mean it,” she said so softly it was almost a whisper. “I did not mean it,” she insisted in a risen pitch, her face not an inch from that of bewildered midwife’s.
     With all the seasoning of a woman who had many births behind her, Mrs. De Cou assured Mother Leeds that God was more akin to the goodness of her heart than any words she might utter in a moment of beleaguered pain.
     The midwife continued, “Oh, nothing to be upset about now Mother. The Lord will have mercy on your womanly patience, to be sure. This is only your sixth, no your seventh, better yet. I know ladies had ten, fifteen childrens in as many years, too.” Mrs. De Cou again regretted what she said about the children but could not recant it now. It was possible Mother Leeds did not even hear her she was so wild with agitation.
     But Mother Leeds had heard her and did comprehend although she held no ill will towards the midwife for reminding her. Even in her pain, she made a shocking revelation, this was not her seventh child, it was in actuality the thirteenth. She had six living, and six in Heaven. And this was to be the thirteenth. She panicked.
     Mrs. De Cou recognized a heightened anxiety in her. “It will all be good in the end, you shall see.” With this and many other words of encouragement, finally she was able to calm Mother Leeds down enough to settle her back against the bed.
     Mother Leeds recoiled back into the mattress. Sorry for what she had said and terrified out of her wits of having had to see those eyes again. She now tried to think of a way to repent. If she had unwittingly cursed the child in a fit of madness brought on by the pain or the being that puppeteered her mind, surely she could recant that curse by blessing it.
     “Mrs. De Cou, you must send for the minister. My child needs to be blessed before it is too late. Have Mr. Leeds send for Mr. Hutchinson.”
     “Now, now, Mother, you don’t need no blessin’, God has heard your prayers, all will be well.”
     If she could not have the minister here she would pray herself.
     “Please,” she moaned, “God bless this child.” She brought her hands together as if praying and with genuine tears whispered, “Let it be an Angel.”
     She concentrated so much on this prayer that she lost all notion of the pain she felt in her body. She at long last felt a calm certainty that Mrs. De Cou was right. God knew her heart. God took his mighty hand and battled the thing that preyed on her faith. Anything else she thought she might have seen was nothing but visions brought on by the stress. All would be well in the end.
     Rubbing her hands on her apron Mrs. De Cou now attempted to calm her own weary self down. The barrage of wind, rain, and rumbling outside did not make it any easier. She glanced behind her towards the door. Mr. Leeds continued vigil with the other children in the parlor. But where was Margaret?


     Margaret Sutton knelt on the planked boards in one of the smaller rooms on the second floor of the Leeds’ house that doubled as a pantry and children’s room. She could hear through the doorway Mother Leeds and Mrs. De Cou in the process.
     She too was born during rain; her mother had endearingly nicknamed her Little-rain, but her father’s side of the family had taken to calling her Margaret in an attempt to lift all traces of native birthright from her. They wished to anglicize her completely. From a European perspective, she had been fortunate. With her light skin she fit in well among the white colonial community. A closer inspection however, revealed deep, warm, almond shaped eyes and when let down, straight, silky black hair that could only have come from a native heritage. She had an almost exotic countenance, which some family members remarked came from her Welsh ancestry rather than Indian.
     What those relatives on Mr. Sutton’s side did not know is that sometimes, her mother would sneak her away from their village in the Pines and out to the ceremonial dances upland while her father was away on a sea voyage.
     Once when she was about ten years old, she was taken to a spring ceremony held annually by the Lenni-Lenapes. Her mother had been outcast by her tribe for wedding an English colonist so her grandmother had escorted her. The ceremony was to celebrate the coming of the growing seasons and to ensure healthy crops and abundant game. There had been singing and dancing and feasting, but nothing had struck her memory as much as the Misinghalikun.
     As the sun set, all men, women, and especially children had been enjoying the festivities. She had never seen such joy and pleasantry, especially not from her white brethren whose ideal celebrations were sitting in a parlor, sipping tea, and criticizing in hushed whispers the very same people with which they were acquainted.
     Out of the darkness leapt the most fearful creature she had ever beheld. Screaming as any unsuspecting child would, she ran to her grandmother’s arms and buried her head as far as she could into the old woman’s bosom to hide the hideous thing from her vision. Her grandmother cackled joyously at this precious sight, but it took the gentle coaxing of the other Lenni-Lenape matrons to help her grasp that the creature she had so feared was just a chosen one masked as a protective spirit, the Misinghalikun.
     One of the more revered men of the tribe, Running-elk, scolded her for her fear. “You are like the White Man, too judgmental and fearful, Margaret,” he said, putting a sarcastic emphasis on her English name. “And well you should be for your mother’s abandonment. One day, the Mising will do the dance of fire with you as he did with your mother, and it will not be for your protection.”
     Although she did not understand what he said, it stirred an even greater fear in her. A fear that never subsided no matter how much the matrons assured her of Running-elk’s mischief.
     Now, she had only to see her own shadow shift with her movements, and the old fears crept back into her soul. That is why she had to pray. Pray for the unborn child. The terrible storm told her that things were not right. That is when the evil spirits always come to wreak havoc. She was more than glad when Mrs. De Cou sent her out of the room. She would finally get the chance to pray for mercy from the Mising.   Pray for all of them in a way that in their own Christian simplicity, they would never comprehend.
    Mrs. De Cou had sent her for linens. It did not take long to procure them, but rather then take them down the hall, Margaret took this opportunity and knelt on the floor. She took a tiny figurine out of a hidden pocket in her apron and held it firmly in her hands. She whispered in a voice so low that even standing a pace away one could not detect her muttering. After a verse of this low chanting she held the figurine up to her eyes.
     Margaret gazed at it with awe, rubbing her fingers over its smooth surface. It was a reddish brown stone with a human like stature but carved into a bear like shape. Its head however was not so much like that of a bear but covered by a large oval mask, the left side painted black, the right side painted red.
     It had been a gift from the Mising himself that night once she had embraced his nobility. As he jumped over pyres and tumbled effortlessly through cinders, he chased her around the wigwams, with a screech as hideous as his clay mask and hairy suit, until at last he caught her and made her screech like him. Satisfied with her effort, he placed the figurine in her hand and then left her to taunt another with his acrobatic havoc.
     Her grandmother told her to keep it with her always to ward off the evil spirits. “The evil spirits, Little-rain, come as they please and stay until they please. But if you keep this figurine with you, the Mising will protect, and the evil sprits will never come to you.”
     “But Running-elk said they would come to me,” Margaret said. “He says they already have.”
     “Running-elk does not know about the figurine though. If he knew you had such a powerful object, he would not have put so much fear into you,” her grandmother countered. And then she offered some wise advice. “Just do not let your father see it.”
      Margaret was able to keep it hidden from all eyes but her own for six years until one day, her father caught her looking on it. He plucked it from her grasp and in an angry fit, threw it against a wall breaking it in two. Less than a month later, her father was thrown from his ship and drowned in the Atlantic, in a sudden storm just off Absecon Island. Margaret more fearful than ever bound it back together and prayed for it with a religious fervor she had learned from all of the different European sects she had come across in her twenty odd years; Catholics, Quakers, Puritans, Calvinists, Lutherans.
     That is how she prayed now.
     “Margaret!” she heard a voice calling to her.

     “Ah, here is that silly girl. Why I take on these apprentices, I surely do not know.”
     Margaret tripped in the dark and barely caught her balance as Mrs. De Cou grabbed the linens and went back to her business. “We don’t want baby to catch cold now, do we? Now Mother, take a big breath and give a little push. For heaven’s sake Margaret, go fetch some more candles.”
     The girl nodded but instead of leaving she watched in curious horror as the old woman squirmed on the bed following the midwife’s instructions to push. The girl was startled by a shrill scream from the woman on the bed.
     “No!” Mother Leeds cried out.
     “Margaret!” she heard Mrs. De Cou holler but she could not take her widened eyes off of the terror that distorted Mother Leeds’ face. Suddenly Margaret felt a chill escalate up each vertebra in her spine. She wrapped her arms around her body to quell her shivering. In a blaring crack of lightning followed instantaneously by a deafening roar of thunder that sounded like a thousand whips cracking at once, Margaret saw something that looked like smoke coming from Mother Leeds’ mouth, and then from Mrs. De Cou’s. Another flash and she saw it again, this time forming a crystal puff in front of her own face. It was their breath, as if it were the middle of January, only now it was the middle of August. How could it have gotten so cold so quickly and in the middle of the hottest summer she had ever witnessed in Leeds Point?
     The howling wind that had been performing a gusty symphony all night blew one of the bedroom windows open, the glass pane cracked, and let in a humid gust of air. Margaret rushed in the near darkness to close it, the rain pelting in on her face until she was able to latch the window despite the thrust of the winds that continued to blow through.
       The several candles that lit the room were now even dimmer, the flames dwindling from sallow gold to glimmering sapphire.
     “No,” Mother Leeds whispered as she shook her head from side to side trembling not in pain now but in fright.
     There was nothing there that the others could see except darkness.
     How could they not see the being that hovered there as if a dog waiting for nightfall before it digs at a grave for a bone to gnaw on? The beast would hunker in the shadows, looking on and waiting patiently like Merlin to snatch him up like the babe Arthur whence he was born of the dragon’s breath.
     The midwife eyed the dark space by the bedpost to her left that Mother Leeds stared at with such fright and then to Margaret who she knew had yet to obey her order.
     “It is come for my baby,” Mother Leeds whispered. “Do not let the Devil take my child.”
     Lightning lit up the room but still Mrs. De Cou saw no one there that was going to take anyone’s baby. “Margaret, quit your daydreaming and fetch them candles!” the midwife shouted with an increasing hysteria.
      This time the girl did as she said and promptly turned on her heels and ran out of the room almost knocking over the washstand.
      “Now, Mother, this is nothing new for you, take a deep breath and give a little push.”
      Instead of doing as instructed, Mother Leeds lunged up at the midwife and grabbed her by her apron straps. “It’s not taking my baby, I shall not allow it!” she screamed in Mrs. De Cou’s face, a look of pale terror in her eyes. Mrs. De Cou, a devout woman by nature from her Huguenot ancestors but also sensible, would have none of it.
      “Ain’t no one going to take your baby sweetheart!” she yelled back at Mother Leeds, tearing the white knuckled hands from her apron at the same time trying to gather her own wits.
      Mother Leeds with all of her middle-aged strength jumped back to the head of the bed and squeezed her legs shut. She would not sacrifice her newborn even if that meant keeping the child in her womb for eternity.
     “Mother Leeds!” the midwife exclaimed in disbelief. “Margaret!” she called out trying to calm Mother Leeds.
     “Yes Mrs. De Cou?” she hesitated in the doorway with a dozen or so candles in her arms.
     Mrs. De Cou grabbed the candles from the shivering girl and lit them only to discover that they too gave off a bluish halo of light. “What in the world is the matter with them candles?” she asked even though this was not the first time she had seen such a phenomenon.
     “Mrs. De Cou?” Margaret whispered. “It’s terrible cold in this room but terrible hot in th’other. And the candles burn blue. Should we not maybe-”
      The elder cut her off, “Oh I’ve seen stranger in my day up north, nothin’ to be afeared of. Now you get your wits together.” Mrs. De Cou let out an exhausted sigh, but she knew she would need more than Margaret to help now. “Margaret,” she took hold of the girl’s shoulders. “Go fetch Mrs. Safford. Quickly now. Go! And while you’re there, fetch some more candles from them!” she called out right before the girl shut the door.
      Mrs. De Cou turned back to the frantic woman on the bed. Mother Leeds was still clamping her legs together to prevent the baby from being born. As a midwife of thirty odd years, she had never witnessed anything quite like this. Even before she became a midwife, during the height of the witch scare in Massachusetts, never had she seen such supernatural anxiety. She remembered how dreadful it was, women so afraid to give birth for fear the town would call the child the work of the devil. But those days were over. The accusations, the trials, for what? And just five years ago there was a witch trial here in Jersey, Mount Holly it was. There never were any witches though, only mindless fear.
     Just as there is no devil in question here.
     Mother Leeds was obviously experiencing some sort of breaking of her spirits, perhaps brought on by the dreadful children she already had. The only devils she had ever seen were the ones called themselves men.
     Margaret, meanwhile, raced through the upturn of the rain that pounded the ground. She clutched her figurine through the fabric of her apron with one hand and held a lantern with the other. Running under the dark cover of the night frightened her beyond comprehension but nevertheless she tried to keep hold of her wits not for herself, but for the child about to enter this world. If not for the lightning, she would not have known her way. The lantern she toted gave little illumination in the murky streaks of rain dropping from the sky.
     The Saffords lived nearly a mile or more away. She should have taken a horse but she could not ride well. Quickening her pace, she hit a patch of slippery grass and mud, falling face forward. She heard a crash of glass and discovered the lantern had cracked and rain had drowned the lighted wick. Watery mud filled her mouth. Disgusted, she spit it out and wiped the mud from her eyes. She wavered to her feet and felt once again for her figurine but it was not there. It must have fallen out in the mud. A flash of indigo etched across the inky sky and enlightened the ground around her.
      Everything was covered with a deep film of mud and she did not know exactly where the fetish had fallen. It would take hours to find it in the dark, hours when she had barely seconds to spare. She cursed herself for being so clumsy.
     Weighing her fear of losing the figurine’s luck or gaining its displeasure and making Mrs. De Cou wait, she decided everyone was better off if she could just find the lost figurine. She got back on her hands and knees and squeezed clumps of mud through her fingers hoping a quick search may return the figurine to her. If God and the good spirits were merciful, they would help her recover it for the safety of the child at the least.
     A rumbling reverberated through the air but there was no lightning for it to follow. Again the rumbling sounded, the ground quaked, and this time Margaret froze. It was a growl almost, followed by a howling whimper. Unable to find her fetish, Margaret grasped for her crucifix and began a steady chant of Christian prayer instead. This thing was not interested.
     As if a harbinger of what was about to appear before her eyes, the growl sounded again in her ears. This time followed by lightning, that much to Margaret’s disbelief, captured the form of a being that hovered far behind her by the line of trees that marked the beginning of the Leeds homestead.
     “The Mising,” she panted. Stunned, backwards she lurched into the mud, kicking out her legs to gain momentum away from the creature that seemed to approach her by drifting on the wind itself. From fear alone she was finally able to get up and run away.
     “The Mising!” she screamed. “The Misinghalikun!” She ran as fast as she could, the fetish as well as the crucifix all but forgotten.
     She ran back to the Leeds house and burst through the door. “The Mising!” she yelled again.
     “Mrs. De Cou! Mrs. De Cou!” Margaret blew in like the storm’s wind.
     “Margaret!” Mrs. De Cou exclaimed.
     The mud that once covered Margaret from head to toe was now a watery film of dirt mostly washed away by a shower of rain. Nevertheless she was a wild sight. She took hold of the midwife and unable to take normal breaths cried out, “It’s coming here, it’s com-”
     Mrs. De Cou slapped the young girl’s face. The old midwife was as surprised as Margaret but quickly regained any lost composure.
     Mother Leeds at hearing the young girl say this now screamed and made an attempt to crawl off the bed and out of the room.
     “There’s no time for fetching Mrs. Safford now. Margaret, go hold down Mother Leeds arms while I get her legs.”
      As if awakened from a trance, Margaret did as she was told. The two of them labored to calm down Mother Leeds and were after a while able to. Mother Leeds so weary and deluded from the pain and stress listened to the women and lay back down on the bed, ready to give birth to her child and adamant to keep it if anything should try to take it from her.
     Mrs. De Cou had delivered so many children that she did not need to see; she felt around the opening. Her fingers ran over a smooth lump. It was the head, crowning more than it had moments earlier.
     “Push Mother, push!” the midwife commanded. The woman on the bed pushed as hard as she could and through her gasping and the thunder she heard howls from the forest.
     The cracked window burst open again. A high pitched cry echoed from the forest as a huge gust of warm air circled about the room and around the bed.
     “Push again!”
     Cradling the infant’s head and neck in her hand, Mrs. De Cou pulled as Mother Leeds pushed. Finally the rest of the baby’s body entered the world.
      Margaret waited in silence as Mrs. De Cou wrestled with a squirming blur. In the darkness, the midwife huddled over the newborn and at last the silence was broken by the high pitched cries of an infant.
     Mr. Leeds came rushing into the room, the children behind him.
     “Oh, Mother Leeds,” the midwife cried as if oblivious to the strange process of the birth, “You have yourself a little baby boy!”
      The newborn cried as if in relief to finally be brought forth from his mother’s womb. With tiny waving fists, the cherubic boy cooed in Margaret’s arms as Mrs. De Cou cut the cord and wrapped one of the linens Margaret had fetched around him.
     Mother Leeds’ face once ghostly and full of fright now took on a golden complexion full of relief and joy at seeing her child safe and secure in her arms.
     The candles no longer burned sapphire, but returned to a normal golden flame, the room had gotten warmer as well. All, it seemed, was well in the end, although this birth was in every aspect far from ordinary.
     “William,” Mother Leeds whispered in the tender tones of a mother, as if forgetting what she had seen and felt before.   Mr. Leeds stood by wife and son; the other Leeds children looked on in awe.
      As Margaret watched mother and son, Mrs. De Cou did the one thing she looked forward to more than anything else she did after a successful delivery. Reaching into her satchel she got out a little leather bound book bound together by tatty red ribbon. Affixing her spectacles to the bridge of her nose she thumbed open to a place in the middle on which appeared a list. She licked the end of the quill and dipped it in ink and then said aloud what she began to write in shaky cursive.
     “William Leeds born on a stormy Saturday eve on the 22nd of August in the year of our Lord One thousand seven hundred and thirty five to Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Leeds of Leeds Point, New Jersey.”

                                                   Continue to
                                                Chapter 1



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The Tale of
the Jersey Devil:
Misinghalikun
by Summer J. Wood

Dear readers,
Having been unable to get an agent or publisher for over four years, I decided I'd rather have people actually read my work then wait forever for a break and have it collect dust.

Please note, according to United States Federal law, this material was COPYWRITTEN the moment I wrote it. Therefore I have full ownership and authority over it. Please do not steal my ideas or words or copy and paste any part of the novel on your own site or use for your own use. I have full proof that I wrote it and will take legal action if necessary.

Also, please note, this is not professionally edited for grammar, spelling, or historical accuracy (although I try to make it accurate as possible within a writer's artistic license). :P Please e-mail me with any comments or critiques. Contact information follows the conclusion of the prologue and each chapter.

Thanks and I hope you like it!