FLAPPER

FLAPPER

“Two herons. Three. What the….? When he saw the third he saw the truth. Not herons. Not birds at all. Bigger, bigger than herons even, with lacy rippling wings like a bats, cheese hued membranes with Swiss cheese holes, lumpy bodies and twisting stalks stuck out for necks to end in equine heads with goggle eyes. How could he ever have thought they were birds? And that was all he had time to register before the first was almost on him.”

 “Storch stared out over the army of creatures that fluttered, staggered, stumbled, stood and slowly shook his head, still smiling. —Well, some the walkers and floppers come from Old Mother Storch. Not so many anymore though. Mostly they come up from the Bottom—floppers, flappers, haystacks, all the others. Ones from Mother Storch used to last longer. Her best could even talk. They got more real blood n’em, like you and me.”

“The flapper next began to wind its snaky neck round Donny’s own neck and head, each twist bringing that ugly horse head closer.”
Scott Nicolay, Tuckahoe

This creature from Nicolay's story is the most obvious homage to the Jersey Devil. There's loads of references to the legend in the story: the Pine Barrens setting, the monster spawning Mother Leeds etc.