i first learned of the monster attack on an oil well in the north dakota plains from a reporter friend at the washington post. like most americans, i never heard of the black earth oil well before, or of the tiny town which gave the well its name. i had just returned from the border skirmishes in iraq. the occupation was at its full height, and u.s. policy planners realized the center would soon give way. within the green zone, you began to hear rumblings regarding the outer provinces. but stateside, the oil boom in north dakota was just getting off (or out) of the ground.

i’d heard the stories coming out of the roughrider state: surges in population, strain on public infrastructure, skyrocketing home prices, vast communities of people living in mobile homes who prayed the heat stayed on. but beneath stories of wavering energy prices and environmental degradation rested another layer, another world, and those suckling at the teat of cheap-and-ready petroenergy blindly occupied it. a world relegated to myth and legend by the state’s white settlers as far back as 1877, the year american soldiers killed crazy horse, the last freedom fighter of the great sioux nation.

the sioux call the monster winyan nupa. to the cheyenne, it is héstova’éhe. english translators interpret this as ‘the two-face.’ according to legend, two-face is a tall, lumbering creature, but were it not for its staggering height (upwards of eleven feet), you might think it human. its joints are weary and insufficient support for its bulky frame, so it’s said the creature rolls when it walks, especially in the shoulders, which look dragged down by the meaty flesh of its forearms. but this is where the humanoid appearances end. for on the back side of its head is another face. there is much rumor what this face looks like. few alive have allegedly seen it, for like the western medusa, all who look upon it are turned to stone, or at least temporarily paralyzed. that is, until the beast returns to murder them, often by crude dismemberment, a savage display of claws, teeth and blood.

my reporter friend told me the local police had a witness in custody, so i took the train westward from new york to fargo, and from fargo, i took a bus out to black earth. i had to make that westward journey, to understand the migratory patterns of the white settlers, to see the changing landscape unfold before my eyes, the gradual leveling of the horizon. among the flattened plains, depth is the only real dimension. folks never look up or down at anything or anyone. everything is on the level. but closeness is visceral. stand too close to someone, or too far off, and folks notice.

jack laughlin is one of the few men alive to survive an encounter with two-face, though he has to tell me the story from behind bars. when i arrive, he is sitting in the black earth county jail where he is being held without bail until the local district attorney decides whether they wish to prosecute. ‘i told them what happened,’ jack tells me, ‘but i guess they don’t believe me.’ jack can’t be older than twenty-seven, blue-eyed, and all i can think is how tightly his skin fits around his face, his hands, the folds in his neck. jack smokes a pack and a half of marlboro reds a day, so the fine lines will come, but right now, sitting in his cell, he’s beautiful, and when he tells me his story, i have to believe him.

jack yanked his story straight from the b grade horror films i used to skip school to see in darkened movie theaters. all the classic signs were there: while working the second shift at the rig, they heard strange bumps in the night. one wandered off to investigate and never came back. while outside searching for his missing coworker, jack came face-to-face with the beast and was saved in the final reel by a lucky break. but an odd feeling swept over me as i listened to his story, told in spurting fits of um’s and uh’s. it wasn’t fear i felt, for jack or anyone else, really. it was jealousy. i felt riveted to know that somewhere out there on the margins of our existence still lay the world our forebears warned us of, worlds of magic, monsters and mayhem. i thanked jack for his story and left him there behind bars.

the sherif’s office released jack the following morning. i tried calling him to schedule a followup interview, but my messages went unanswered. i sort of lingered in my motel room, sneaking the occasional bottle from the mini fridge. i watched daytime television and waited for the phone to ring. i stayed in black earth for two weeks, but his attorney advised jack not to give any more interviews. no one else affiliated with the well would talk to me. the plains outside were white and silent.

while waiting for my train to take me back east, i bought a ham and swiss sandwich at a local bistro, took a seat outside and called my editor. i told her about jack and his story, but she was skeptical. there’s an insurgency in fallujah right now, she said. you think this monster is any scarier than cheney? i hung up the phone and lit a cigarette. the waitress approached. she told me she had heard my conversation. two-face does not live on the periphery of society, she said. that’s just something white people think. her family was lakota, and for them two-face was central. she said for centuries her ancestors mapped migratory patterns and hunting habits according to its location. we put the monster at the center of our thinking, she said, and that’s why it never harmed us. you white people put nothing at the center of your lives, nothing but money and distractions. so yes, i can see why you are surprised when bad things sneak up behind. i said nothing and waited for the girl to leave before writing her words down in my notebook.

i returned to the center of my life with no great fanfare. the new york streets were quiet and deserted. it’s hard to say what i even went back to. i met weekly with my editor to discuss changes to my upcoming manuscript. i met with an interior designer that charlie and i had contracted to redo our three season porch. i read a biography of cocteau and watched antonioni films and tried a new recipe for salmon mousse. i learned to cross-stitch and went to see new chekhov at the public. i slumped against streetlamps and watched cabs go by. i sat in parks and waited for strangers to approach with their stories. i went to the tops of skyscrapers and dared myself to jump. i ordered reubens from my favorite jewish delicatessen in crown heights. i went to a pta meeting in my local school district despite having no children and watched silently from the back as parents pelted local administrators. i did the laundry and once threw a pair of red underwear in with my favorite white sweater. i wore my favorite pink sweater around the house all the next day and ate ice cream straight from the carton. i leapt up when the doorbell rang and ran to the phone when someone called. usually it was no one: a cousin in phoenix looking for money. a pulse survey from a marketing agency. a public service announcement from the mayor’s office. twice from my editor, whose calls i did not answer.

finally, one spring day, when i began to think i imagined the entire ordeal out west in north dakota, i received a call from my friend at the washington post who said someone in the black earth sheriff’s office had contacted him. there had been another attack. jack laughlin’s forehead had been bitten off, like a piece of fruit or soft boiled egg served in a cup. they found him standing upright at the oil well just inside the gates. the blood dripped down his face, and his eyes stared out lifeless at the flat north dakota plains. the sherif culled together a hunting team that morning and set out in jeeps and pickup trucks to track the creature down. but they never found it. it had all but vanished. residents in the nearby mobile villages were not too worried. folks believed that all who gazed into two-face’s intractable pits of fire were marked to die, that the beast had returned to finish what it started, and that now appeased, it would rest.

some folks get monsters and murder, vendettas and ancient curses. there was none of that in new york. our great monsters had retreated from the coast centuries ago, following the native algonquin and lenape, so that the streets of fifth avenue were ghostless, spiritless, shadowless. we don’t suffer from the natural disadvantages of an open plain. nothing sneaks up on us. nothing crawls out from under our beds, our closets. we believe in nothing that might reach out and surprise us in the dark.