WE STARED AT the map in silence for a minute. Neither one of us knew what to say next.
"So it's a vortex?" I finally asked. "What... how? Like what's causing it?"
"It's got to be some sort of pressure system," Jeremey replied. He tapped the eraser of the pencil against his lower lip. "Do you remember back when we were in middle school in Mr. Green's class?"
"Oh yeah, the guy that was obsessed with meteorology, right?"
"Exactly." He pointed the pencil at me. "Remember when he was teaching us how hurricanes form?"
"Pressure systems?" I offered. I knew it was what Jeremey had already said, but I didn't remember much of anything from school. I'd tried in middle school, but my attention span was shit, so I never did better than C's. I'd stopped bothering to try in high school.
"Yeah, basically." Jeremey narrowed his eyes, glaring back down at the map. "The hurricane spins because of the extremely low pressure located at its center. Basically, it sucks air in, and that creates the vortex." He mimed the formation of a hurricane with his hands, bringing them together in a slow twisting motion.
"So there must be a low pressure system at the center of town?" I asked. "At the farm house, and that's what's causing the wind?"
"Maybe," Jeremey said slowly. "But the thing is, it doesn't make complete sense. I mean, the low pressure would explain the swirling winds, but that still doesn't explain why there would be a pocket of low pressure to begin with. With hurricanes, it's because of warm water evaporating off the ocean. But what's going on here doesn't make any sense. There is no water to evaporate. A hurricane can't form over dry land, Harper, it just doesn't happen."
"So it's got to be caused by something else," I pondered. "What else could cause low pressure?"
"Hot air is lower density than cold air," Jeremey offered.
"So maybe a lot of heat? Maybe the farm house is generating a lot of heat!"
Jeremey shook his head. "We're not talking like, running a generator or a fireplace, Harper. I mean, to create an actual pressure system, this would have to be something huge. Like... some geothermic kind of thing."
"Geothermic... like from the earth? Like a volcano?"
"I guess, maybe." Jeremey paused, biting his lower lip. "But even that doesn't make complete sense. You don't see shit like this forming around volcanoes. You don't see shit like this... at all. It's not... it's not... natural."
He made eye contact with me, and chills ran down my spine. "What are you saying?" I asked quietly.
"There's no real explanation for this," Jeremey said. He paused for a moment and exhaled. The hot air from his lungs condensed into a mist in the cold air surrounding us. "Harper, do you believe in the supernatural?"
I didn't say anything. I didn't know what to say. Thoughts from when we had been kids danced around the back of my mind. Thoughts about the farmhouse. About the stories we'd told. But had I ever really believed them? It had never been a question I'd had to consider seriously, but what was going on now... It was real, and there was no way to explain it logically. "I don't know," I finally replied.
"My grandma did. She always liked to tell stories about the supernatural. Ghosts and demons and stuff like that. I liked to listen to her when I was little, but of course I didn't actually believe any of it. I was pretty convinced most of it she was making up to entertain me." A faint smile flicked across his face.
"Anyway, she grew up here in Millstone, and her parents grew up in Millstone, and yada yada, generations of my family after that," he continued. "So, she had a bunch of ghost stories about the area around here. Most of them were silly spooky stuff. Ghosts that carried lights out on railroad tracks looking for their lost dog, ghosts that slammed windows because they froze to death during the cold of a winter night. Those kind of things. But there was one story she always told that wasn't just some random haunting."
I didn't realize it, but I'd scooted to the edge of my seat, my eyes stretched wide, waiting to hear what Jeremey would say next.
"Harper, you know the story of the Leeds Devil?" he finally asked.
I scrunched my eyebrows together. "It sounds familiar." I knew I'd heard of it before, but I couldn't quite place it.
"Also known as the Jersey Devil," Jeremey said.
It clicked. "Oh, of course." I ran my hand back through my hair, trying to fight off a chuckle. "The Jersey Devil. Huh. Really?"
"I mean you know the stories. How when Mrs. Leeds fell pregnant with her thirteenth child, she cursed the child in frustration. Legend says when it was born, it had the wings of a bat and the head of a goat. After killing everyone present at its birth, it flew out the chimney of the house in a puff of smoke. It retreated into the Pine Barrens, where it lived for centuries, killing anyone unfortunate enough to encounter it."
"And... your grandmother believed it was true?" I asked. "You think all this has something to do with the... the Jersey Devil?"
Jeremey grinned at me. "Actually, that was one of the only legends my grandmother didn't believe in. That's why I remember that story so well. She'd tell it to me, and then laugh and explain the true story. How it was all made up. A bunch of colonial political bullshit."
"So..." I began. I didn't understand what Jeremey was getting at.
"But I mean, legends come from somewhere, right?" Jeremey interrupted me before I could form a useful thought. "Something has to inspire them. The Pine Barrens... my grandma thought there was something inherently haunting about them. The darkness of them, it grows legends. She didn't believe the Jersey Devil was born to Mrs. Leeds, but she did believe in demons. In devils. There are some versions of the legend that say the Leeds Devil wasn't cursed, but in fact the son of Satan himself."
"I thought you said she thought the legend was made up."
"Oh, it absolutely is," Jeremey began to speak even more quickly. "But she said there were truths within it... You know what sacred grounds are?"
"Yeah," I said. "I mean, just grounds that are sacred, right? It's pretty straight forward."
"Right, well, my grandma believed there were areas in the Pine Barrens that were the opposite of that. Areas that were cursed. Unsacred, if you will. Demonic."
"And Millstone is one of them?" I asked. "You think the farm house is cursed?"
"I don't know," Jeremey said. "But something isn't right with all this. Harper, we ran off into the woods when those dogs started chasing us... why didn't they go in after us? They didn't follow us at all. Something isn't right."
"But what does that have to do with the wind?" I asked. "Is that what's causing it? The cursed grounds? Causing the vortex?"
"I don't know," Jeremey paused for another second, deep in thought. "I think it is two part. I believe there is some sort of heat force generating the wind. But I think there is also a reason for the wind. Harper, think about what it's doing."
I considered it all for a minute. I thought about the town. It was like a ghost town. Empty. Desolate. "Everyone's leaving," I finally said.
"Precisely. It's driving people away. I think the town is preparing for something... I think the wind is a preparation. And I think whatever it is, it's all centered around the farm house, and the woods that surround it. The question is... what is it?"
I leaned back in my chair and exhaled. My hand reached towards my pocket to get my cigarettes, but I clenched it into a fist instead. I thought about the farm house. I thought about when we were there last night and the dogs chased us off into the woods. I thought about how they didn't follow us in there. And then... I thought about what I'd seen in the basement right before Joshua had shown up. My hands went to my face, involuntarily covering my mouth.
"Jeremey," I began slowly. "I should have told you this sooner... but when we were at the farm house and I was looking through the window into the basement, right before Joshua came back and we ran, I saw something."
Jeremey leaned in towards me, hinging on what I was about to say.
"I saw the crate that Joshua made me help him carry, and then—" I paused. "I saw a hand."
Jeremey's green eyes stretched wide.
"Someone's down there, Jeremey! Joshua has someone down there in the basement, and he made me help! He made me help him take her down there!"
I didn't know where the "her" came from. Maybe it was my dream of the girl running through the woods, maybe it was the look of the hand as it grasped around the crate—small and delicate but still hauntingly eerie. It felt like a woman.
"Harper..." Jeremey started to say, but before he could get anything else out, his phone buzzed on the end table. He reached for it, glancing at the incoming text.
His face turned as white as a ghost.
My breath caught in my throat, and my heart slammed against my chest. "Who is it from?"
He didn't say anything for a second. Finally, he opened his mouth. "It's from you."