The Deserted

The ruins of buildings have a heavy air. You can sense that history has happened in them.And that history didn’t stop when the buildings came down, or were deserted, or destroyed. Ruins are often the site of many events and strange things, well into their tenure as remnants.

The Deserted Village in New Jersey is a perfect example. In the 1700s a Scottish family settled in an area in the Watchung mountains near a little pond. That family lived and died farming the soil around here, burying their ancestors in a neat little cemetery. In 1845 the heirs sold their land to a paper magnate. He built a mill along the the stream to make his paper, and built a village to house the laborers, all immigrants. The village grew to more than 100 people, but twenty years later the village became completely deserted, and the buildings and the mill started their long journey into decay. Decades later the county decided to preserve the village and the wilderness nearby, protect it from the encroaching towns.

The village is L-shaped, starting at the modern-day main road. Down you walk or drive, past the remains of a general store, past the foundations and crumbling sides of workers’ homes. Behind the general store lays a path that takes you down, and then up, to the small cemetery. You turn right and continue past more remnants of homes, until you get to a dilapidated barn, which was meant for horses that ferried the paper products from the mill to the local towns.

It’s a spooky place. I loved it. I always felt attached to it. The village is in a nature reservation that preserved pristine wilderness right by my suburban Jersey town. I was born in the hospital at the very top of the local mountain, that looks down at the reservation and the Deserted Village.

I wasn’t too much into the outdoors as a kid, but I always liked exploring the Village. So did Cal, my best friend in elementary school. We first met in the first grade, in Mrs. Berkowitz’s class. He and I were shy and bookish kids in need of friends. We both liked history and we both liked the outdoors. It was a perfect match. My Dad took Cal and I to the Reservation often.

Cal spent way more time with me and with my family than I spent with his. Cal’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Bowen, were distant to me, a little awkward. I was told they were very religious, though I never knew what denomination. I thought they were Irish, since the three of them were all gingers. But clearly they weren’t Catholic, or my family would have seen them at mass. They never really socialized with my parents or the parents of my other friends, but they were always friendly and seemed to like me. They said they were from the rural corners of South Jersey. That made sense to me at the time — South Jerseyans are a little weird, right?

Around fifth grade, I remember Mr. Bowen had asked my Dad to not take Cal to the Deserted Village quite as often. Apparently Mr. Bowen was worried about the safety of us kids, even though we never wandered off or anything like that. My grandfather got my a pocket knife, and we had taken turns marking our initials in trees right by the cemetery. I suggested that Cal get one of his own, but he told me that his parents would never let him.

During the summer between fifth and sixth grade, we were down by the pond, on the far side looking up towards the Village. I must have been talking about our sixth grade schedules, which teachers I hoped to have, that kind of thing. Cal told me, somberly and matter-of-factly, that he’d be going to private school that fall.

“What private school? St. Bart’s?” I asked, confused. “But you’re not Catholic, are you?”

“No, I’m not. This is a different school, a boarding school actually. Down in South Jersey.”

“What, like Harry Potter?” I innocently asked.

“Who?”

I was completely stunned. Changing schools was one thing, but being on the other side of the state? for the whole school year?

“What’s going on, Cal? Are your parents making you go — ”

“No, it’s just-” he paused. “Well yeah, I guess they are. It’s a family thing. My parents went there. The school’s supposed to be cool — it has lots of open space, forest. A lot like this, actually. Without the deserted buildings.”

After that there was an awkward silence. The sense that we’d be separated was settling in. And then Cal said something surprising: “I want to go for a swim in the pond.”

Now the pond is not exactly the cleanest body and water, and not deep. And I’ve never seen Cal swim before. He never seemed to have gone to the Shore, or even to somebody’s pool.

He started taking off his shoes, and then his jeans. Instead of normal underwear, he had on a pair of what looked like long johns. They looked rough and scratchy. I wondered if that’s what he wore every day.

He waded in to his waist, which was the deepest the pond got, and just looked around. He looked straight up, to some of the ruined houses, and then to his right, up at the cemetery and the trees we carved our initials on.

Cal still had his t-shirt on, but after a minute or so, he crouched down and went under the water today. He came right back up and started walking out of the pond, shirt and long johns totally soaked.

I laughed a little at the sight of his soaking shirt. “Why’d you keep your shirt on?”

He smiled a little. “I forgot.” He tried squeezing out some water from the part of the shirt covering his stomach. Realizing how soaked his clothes were, his smile went away.

I reach in my backpack and realized I still had a towel from when I went to a friend’s pool the day before. It was a green towel my parents bought on a trip to Maine, the words “BAR HARBOR” printed in big letters. I offered it to Cal, who wrapped it around himself. We started walking up to the Village, found my Dad wandering by the cemetery, and headed home.

I saw Cal exactly once more that summer. He said his parents were annoyed with him that he swam in the pond, but thanked me for that towel. A couple weeks later he left for that boarding school. I didn’t give him a proper goodbye: he left earlier than I was expecting. He said his parents would give me a mailing address for the school, but they must have forgot.

Over sixth grade I had new classes, sports and other friends that kept me preoccupied. I never got letters or calls from Cal, and I never sought it out. Long story short, my life went on. And I guess so did his.

FIVE years went by. It was a cool October afternoon; late afternoon, just before sunset. I was with a girl friend that I was trying to transform into my girlfriend. We were walking her dog, Ellie, around some part of the reservation. We passed the cemetery, and started on the path to the old general store. We heard a noise. It sounded like shouting, distant shouting. Then another, almost like a drum. Ellie stopped in her tracks.

“Do you hear that too?” She asked.

“Yeah. Sounded like a scream, kind of.” No one else was on the path, or on the road leading out of the village. “Let’s hurry up.”

I turn around to check and see if there’s anyone around. I look up to the cemetery and out to the path beyond. I see movement. I see something move, something white.

“Ellie, Let’s go!” She shouted at her dog. Both were anxious.

“I think there’s a person there. What if they need help?” I asked.

“Let’s just go back to the car, this is creepy.”

We get to the general store and start to walk up, and I turn around again at the cemetery. I see the dim outline of man. A man with bright red hair, shirtless, and wearing some kind of thin pants that were tattered and torn.

In an instant my brain comes up with an insane conclusion. It’s Cal. Impossible. But at the same time a part of my instinct told me that it’s true.

“COME ON!” She yelled at me. Ellie was about to sprint all the way back to the car if she wasn’t leashed. I run up and catch up to their position, and we head to the car.

We get to the parking lot, maybe sixty yards from the general store. We get to the car and regroup.

“Did you see someone out there? By the cemetery?” I asked, not sure of what answer I’d get.

“No, but I was looking towards you, trying to get to hurry up.”

“Okay.”

“Did you see someone out there?”

I took a breath. “Maybe, or maybe not.”

She turned the ignition, and the headlights came on. Her car was pointed straight out at the woods facing to the village. She was turning the car when I saw a white figure run through the woods, perpendicular to us. Running away from the village towards the main road and the other side of the reservation. She hit the breaks suddenly.

“Did you seen something out there?” She asked as poor Ellie whimpered in the back.

“I think so.”

“God, let’s get out of here. That could be some ax murderer.”

She sped out of the lot and on to the main road.

I didn’t think of fighting her on it, of going out and trying to find that man, find Cal, and check if he actually was in need of help. Part of me thought it was too absurd: What was Cal doing back in North Jersey, back at the Deserted Village, without a shirt, running around at dusk?

And part of me sensed something awful had happened out there, or something awful was in the process of happening later that night. A sense I got when I looked up at the cemetery, and again when I saw him run through the woods. Something was in motion, and it wasn’t something I could stop or intervene in.

I never took my girl friend (never to be a girlfriend, actually) to the Reservation again. I didn’t even go back for a few weeks. It was November, and I decided to walk up to find the trees that Cal and I carved our initials into.

I followed the path, past the gravestones of those Revolutionary War Dead. I walked away from the path, over brush, and found my tree first.

I touched the tree, a birch. I find the CB and the JM, side by side. Just as I remembered it. I look down at the ground, and I see something that me yell in shock.

It was my Bar Harbor towel.