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Once on a cold dreaded night. Sort of like most of the nights in this small town a legend started. Not just any soft hearted legend that bring families together. Not at all like the fairy prancing though the frilly forest of love and such. It was a soft night with a heavy rainfall, but that didn’t stop people for running home in the mud and grave streets, and through the small forest just on the edge of such a small town. People hurried a long their ways in compete disarray due to the rain. Most people end awash in the rain; ring out clothing at the door of where they were going. Though this is the setting thing aren’t always as they appear. Look at the small Tiny family over there, though it’s cold and wet the children still run amuck around the town throwing mud at each other. Those boys mother will brawl about their frenzy of a mess of clothes. Mr. Smiths are hard at work even though it’s after hours, just trying to get enough money for his family of seven. It’s a town that seems to never change.

Here is the family we’re looking for, the young Graver family. One son at the sweet age of five is jumping mud puddle to mud puddle and the young mother of twenty in this family of Mr. Graver. Theirs is a proud family married out of love and though they’re poor they still have their small cottage thought the forest near the moon shined lake so beautiful and radiant at night it seemed like it was the stars in space right in that lake. Thought soaked to the bone the family smiles away all the worries of the day and talked. They never seemed the type to starts an uproar or anything. Well one of them any ways. It’s all happened this night, as they walked home though the same old woods on the outside of town towards home. Safe home sweet home.

“It’s so odd of how our little boy thinks, Hon,” Mrs. Graver says as she glances back at their son frowning. She knows who’s going to clean those dirty clothes and not happy about how he treats all her hard work to clean them. “Adam, come here!” she calls back not knowing what was looming over the boy with drooling poison fangs and the most evil intentions. The smell of brim stone and hell seeping off of the monsters pours.

“Mama!” the boy called running up to her smiling a smile that could nearly break the clouds and let the sun shine just for him. That boy never had seen anything that could take that pure smile away for him. He would never see anything more than a flash of light. He was the lucky one. “There’s a weird man in the forest, mama,” the boy says. That is no man sadly and the mother should have worried after what the boy said, but he was more curious about that “man” more than scared.

She rolled her eyes at the boy’s blunt way to say he saw someone else in the forest tonight and sighed knowing she need to teach him better manners. The rain didn’t help when a large drop fell from the tree right on top of her head, sighing again she wiped away the water moving down her face. “Don’t be so inconsiderate” she scolded, “Now tell your father how you count how old you are.” Mr. Graver smile at his family knowing that his wife is trying hard to teach the boy at a young age in hopes that he will be smarter than most of the kind in the small town later.

Though Mr. Graver is a man who lives off the land with hunting and trapping for trading off furs, mostly of deer. He lived off the meat as food and is happy with his poor small life, it’s simple and easy for him. He trades the furs for what he needs. Most family was envious of the happy family with a perfectly simple life. Many would be happy to married for love instead of money. Mrs. Graver was a good wife taking care of the house and son though Mr. Graver spends some days home just so he can have so time to play with his boy. No one would have though that this kind of family was in this town or that what soon to happen would happen.

“I spent two year with only mama and me and papa together and two years playing with the Tiny’s boys around the town, so that would make me five years old” said Adam smiling so bright that Mr. Graver could help but smile back at his boy. Adam is trying hard to learn something that kids four years older are still trying to get down completely and a little mistake though it should be corrected is cute to see.

“You’re right about how those years were spent” he picks up his son pulling him up on his shoulder quickly even though Adam squirmed and laughed “my boy.” Mr. Graver smiles up at Adam so proud of him, “those were year well spent.” Mr. Graver smiles at his wife as he finished the last of that sentence. Mrs. Graver giving him a scolded look but under it is obvious happy to be there and glad that her husband is too. Though they both knew in that no way did two plus two equals five.

Then almost like a dream Adam was swept off of Mr. Graver shoulder and gone. There was no warning or chance to stop the evil demon from tearing away the most precious thing to them. Lucky that in yanking the boy off his father shoulder that he had caught the boy by the neck killing him instantly yet no blood was dropped on the ground. Both parent stopped and stood in shock, it was like a nightmare they couldn’t believe that their boy just seemed to up and disappear into the dark skies but now something was clearly wrong in the woods. Their screams could be heard all the way back to town and soon everyone started to search for Adam, though they would never find the body. That boy went to heaven and way graciously welcomed and taken care of till his family could reach him again.

“ADAM!! ADAM!!!” Mrs. Graver walked that forest for days ignoring her work at home or her mind telling her it wasn’t safe, she wouldn’t give up. If she wasn’t in the forest screaming her beloved boy’s name she was home and a wreak of what she used to be. No happiness could seem to get past her tears in sadness of the lost of her boy. She spent a year yelling for her boy.

Mr. Graver always carried his shotgun with him, he would go into town trying, trying so hard to get someone to listen. The town was convinced that the boy was hit by a tree as he was on Mr. Gravers shoulder and while his wife was in shock he got rid of the boys lifeless corpse in shame of being so careless that he killed his our boy.” The demon was no where done with the Graver family or this town. Even the summer seemed cold with the Gravers and Mrs. Graver now only slept, waking only to eat and sleep. She dreamed away what happened and in her dreams was still teaching the young boy.

“Pay attention fellow men! we must be at attention, we must be ready!” Mr. Graver yelled in the middle of the town as people hurried about their business. Not one took notice of what he had to say. If only they had listened, maybe many people wouldn’t disappear suddenly in the forest. “Listen to me; we need to write to the king. They need to know what is out here. Demons, being commanded by magic! MAGIC my good men, you can’t ignore the facts!” he went at that for days while his wife withered away in the cottage too afraid to even walk out of that door.

Soon people got tired of hearing the insane ranting of what they thought was a murderer, though people were disappearing. No one trusted him any more, and though people blamed bears and Indians for all the disappearances. The town was starting to wonder if Mr. Graver was really killing, trying to start some historical insanity of the new land, being dangers with unexplored and barely explain able creature snatching up children and unwary people. What ludicrous thought could this simple and oblivious man come up with to tear apart a town? Was he trying to take all the land of this place for himself? No one knew that lies spread faster than fleas on a dog in the town square.

People soon told their children to throw rocks into his house when Mr. Graver was in the town square. Most people still ignored his word, though now their children started to go missing while Mr. Graver was in the square yelling. Most of them joined sweet Adam in heaven; some wandered invisibly back home begging to be seen. Telling their parents to run, for they have seen what monster lies in the woods. Sadly they were ridded of their skin first and then slowly and painfully eaten bit by bit. Some had passed out, while others were still fighting as they were ripped apart.

Many kids were killed. With all Mr. Graver attempts to get someone to listen and help he had forgotten to kill food for his wife. Mrs. Graver couldn’t fall asleep with out eating enough and soon was screaming she had to get back to her dreams. Her boy was there, if only she could get back. She wandered out of the house aimlessly trying to find away to fall back asleep. She needed her boy she would do anything to get back to him. Mr. Graver heard, and unlike the rest of the town, hurried away from his usual ranting and toward the horrific and blood curling screams that he knew quite well. If he dared to stay home it’s the scream that was directed at him in the dust ridden house. Bugs had taken over his home to sometime more like a freezing dump of mud and rocks.

He ran to the screams, but it was too late. The demon recognized Mrs. Graver’s scent and wanted to taste the same sweet body of the mother of the boy that had started his blood lust. She never saw it coming. She had ran half way into the lake thinking water might help her sleep again and was attacked from behind just as her son was. His blood rotted claws sinking into her shoulders. She screamed so loud that she broke her voice and couldn’t scream anymore. It took Mr. Graver hours to walk to the lake.

The lake that used to be able to pull the wondrous stars from the sky itself and let poor people such as this town touch the star sand basket in the glorious shine of the full silver moon if you stood in the lake. It’s almost like; a spotlight had been dropped and broke into the lake. The lakes water what all red. Not a light red you’d see people color for a heart, no. It was as if someone had stab a million living creatures and drained their blood into the lake. Maybe something had broken in the lake, but on the shore was what concerned Mr. Graver the most.

There half floating in the water was the face of his wife. Her mouth still open to a silent scream that had been broken screams so much so that her jaw stuck. There was no body to the head though Mr. Grave still to tried to save her, bravely swimming out toward the disembodied head, only to find out that she was gone. There was no saving his wife but he could at least give part of her a proper burial. Well that’s what he thought anyways as he swam back to shore his clothes stained blood red.

Just as he was about to make it out of the lake climbing on the shore he was shoved over. His arm and soon realized was empty of the head of his wife in the middle of that sudden attack. Even though I was a frontal strike he had seen and heard nothing. With gasping horror he ran back to the town yelling again. No one believed him.

In his defense these words were taken down in court. “The skies not falling and I’m not joking. I won’t go and tell the king that the skies falling when its not. You need to tell him to get his army out here and kill that monstrosity!!” He yelled at the judge, “you can not tell me you don’t realize more of the children are gone and many people have gone missing. Go see the lake yourself it is all blood, there is no way that it hasn’t been touched by something evil.” So, they sent someone to see the lake.

There was nothing there and so Mr. Graver was said to be the first serial killer and as he awaited hanging he yelled over and over. “You need to kill that beast, if you at least pay attention enough to figure I’m telling the truth you’d know. That god hated creature of the world took my wife and my son.”

As he was being set into a disgusting dilapidated prison hold he screamed out, “All hail to the thief that stole my wife! All hail to the thief that curses my life!”

He spent ten days in that cell, and was only given water. Everyone in the small town hated him. The man that took their children from them and caused a huge uproar caused mothers to loose their children before they’re even born. In that time in the cell and heard all that the town’s folk had to say to him, even he started to believe that he was the killer. So when the day came that he was to be hung he stood there silent, and even though he was given one last chance to speak, he did not.

So the demon walked the land still to this day a hundred years later in the forest were people still disappear with out a trace if foolish enough to walk through unaware of what stalks it prey in that forest. Many people may ask where this little town was, well if you haven’t realized it yet. This is just the first kill of what the demon is now know as today. The Jersey Devil.