He spreads his ancient wings and glides silently over the pitch pines and the cedar swamps and the little rivers with the tea colored water. The moon is full and the wind is gusting from the east. Down below, tree frogs become silent as his shadow passes and pickerel race for the safety of their muddy lairs along the banks of the Mullica River.

He lets down on a dead oak near the river's bank and waits for the frogs to resume their sleigh bell chorus and when they do, the part of him that is human is comforted. He closes his eyes and lifts his equine head and as the wind gusts, it carries hints of things happening further on up the river where the water runs clear and the duff covered soil gives way to sugar-sand.

Fleeting shadows danced across the windshield as Victor Tooms finessed the 69' Chevy through another rut of soft white sand.

On this desolate country road, he handled the car well considering it wasn't his, but he was coming down on the accelerator too often. Lonnie Peters snuck a glance at the temperature gage and prayed that he wouldn't notice the needle's slow advance. If the engine were to suddenly seize, it might give her the chance she needed.

"Penny for your thoughts," Victor said.

"I was thinking how nice it would be to take you home to meet my parents."

This made Victor Tooms smile. He was slowly moving the tip of a large knife along her throat as she sat stone-like in the passenger seat of her own car. "You're very pretty," he said.

Lonnie Peters was pretty and she was usually smart too, but tonight she had let her guard down. A half hour earlier she was opening her car door in the parking lot of the Circle K when she saw Victor Tooms, on crutches, fumbling with his car keys. It was an old Ted Bundy trick (guy fakes injury, girl offers help, guy forces girl back into her car at knifepoint). It had happened so fast. She cursed herself for being so stupid. She was a crime reporter for God's sake.

From the Circle K, Tooms had followed route 70 through the Red Lion intersection and out onto the unnamed sand roads of south Jersey's pinelands. They passed a sign that read "Welcome to the Pinelands National Preserve" and Lonnie remembered a piece she had written as a cub reporter about the legendary creature that supposedly haunts these woods. Part man and part beast, it had been sighted by reliable sources as far back as the Revolutionary War. She wondered where the years had gone, how it had come to this and as they drove deeper into the woods, she felt the hourglass running out of sand.

Tooms said, "We have a common interest, you and I."

The car slowed as they hit another patch of sand and as Tooms gunned the engine, he lowered the knife and Lonnie instinctively rubbed her neck and checked for blood. She stared blank-faced at him and was overcome by a sudden feeling of Déjà vu. "Do I know you?"

"I'm the one you've been writing about," he said smiling.

"I've been writing about a serial killer."

An image came to her of the police artist's sketch that the paper had been printing following her stories covering a string of local murders. "Did you bring me out here to give me an exclusive?" she said.

"I brought you out here to kill you."

"It doesn't make sense, all your other victims had brown hair."

"Quit the psychological crap," he shouted. "Did it ever occur to you that maybe a person kills just because he likes to kill."

Suddenly, the front end of the Chevy rumbled and a geyser of steam shot out from under the hood. Like a rabbit released from its cage, Lonnie jumped from the car and began running. She slipped in the sand, regained her footing and bolted into the woods.

Tooms let out a guttural and furious sound and Lonnie looked back when she heard the car door slam. She was running blindly now, blocking branches with her outstretched hand when the earth gave way and she tumbled down the bank of the Mullica River.

He found her as she was pulling herself out of the water and he threw her against the steep muddy bank. "What's one less writer on the face of the earth anyway?" he said as he raised the knife above his head. "No," she cried. And as she threw her hand out in a last attempt to protect herself, a dark shadow rose up behind Tooms and in an instant, he was gone.

The abandoned fire tower rises bold and stark above the mixed canopy of old growth cedar and evergreens. From this height, he can see the distant highway that carries the cars from the shore to the big cities up north and out west. He watches the girl walk the sand road and the part of him that is human knows what it means to be lonely. The girl turns around and looks in his direction. She stares briefly before continuing on her way and as she does, the part of him that is human knows what it means to feel desire. She disappears from his sight and he looks down at the man he has pinned beneath his sharp claws. He sinks his teeth deep into the man's neck and the part of him that is not human rips and chews...and rips again and swallows.