Moonville

MOONVILLE



The sky was a deep indigo blue as crickets stridulated, serenading the darkness with their song. The full moon cascaded onto the open field, shadowed by the occasional tree or shrub, with only lights from a nearby house to contend with. Quietly I made my way as the midnight hour slowly approached. A tinge of apprehension filled my soul as adrenaline pumped through my veins, creating a warmness that shielded me from the effervescent cold that had spilled out onto the night. Stalking above me, a black cat surveyed the dirt road that I followed, gnarled and splintered limbs of an old oak supporting his vigil. Would she come, I wondered?



As I made my way, the terrain slowly changed. Moving forward, I approached a thicket and with it a slope leading down to the gulley that was once a free flowing riverbed. Like the town it once sustained, the river had all but dried up. My feet angled down the embankment, following the ground they treaded upon. Now, with only a small stream of water trickling through the once vast trench, the sandy bottomed bed was thick with a morass of stones and overgrowth. Carefully, I crept through the wooded landscape, knowing I was approaching the story that had piqued my interest since childhood. Forged into the hillside and glowing in the distance, a structure beckoned. One by one I passed the giant pillars that had once supported the Raccoon River Tressel. Years had worn their smooth stone finish, but their size could not be diminished. This mysterious passage, whose tracks emptied into the Moonville train tunnel, had been the source of folklore and ghost stories for as long as I could remember. My heart pounded rampantly as I moved closer. I envisioned the beautiful girl, said to haunt these tracks, her spirit shimmering and gleaming like the sun’s fiery light reflected on the moon’s surface as she poised her ghostly figure above the tunnel. Was she waiting for me? Would she tell me her secrets and finally satisfy my curiosity? Does she possess the answer to the navigable intricacies of life and death, or does she struggle helplessly between them?



Long ago I had heard stories of her heartbreak, a thwarted love she could not escape. She sorrowfully walked the tressel tracks crying, fraught with despair, only to find solitude at the bottom of the ravine. A steaming locomotive barreling down the iron rail left passengers and townsfolk a witness to the sight of her death and forever shrouded it in mystery. Why was she there? She was not the type of girl to wander so far from home. Where was she going? What was the purpose of her journey? Now the sight of her filled my mind like a vivid portrait. Why had she called to me for so long? What secrets did she have to tell? Why was I so desperate to find her?



The tracks, long since removed, had been replaced by a gravel path. Upon reaching the train tunnel I found a hollow darkness. A wet mist had begun to fill the air, as it lay upon the ground it surrounded and enveloped me. I checked my watch, waiting for the bewitching hour. I cautiously speculated, would she greet me with hostility and vile immorality, or withered and tired from an eternity of hopelessness? I shouted into the tunnel, but there was no answer, only my own voice reverberating back at me. Was it the ground trembling or my legs underneath me?



Standing alone in front of the train tunnel, I began to wonder if my excursion had been in vain. No ghastly figure stood before me, no haint to face at last. Behind me in the brush I sensed a presence, I looked but no one was there. The dead foliage covering the ground at my feet crackled and snapped as it crumpled under the pressure of my weighted step. I imagined I could hear the train whistle blowing in the distance, announcing the arrival of the midnight run. A musty sent filled the air and a hooting owl called out as if looking for another to converse with. The stage was beautifully set, and yet she was not there. All there was to be found here was disappointment and a vague reminder of a time when life had been simpler, though not without heartache and misery. I found peacefulness where I thought I would find horror. There was tranquility, a solitary still calmness. Maybe that was her secret.



As I gathered my things to make my way back, I smelled the sweet scent of lavender wafting out of the languishing old tunnel. Closing my eyes, I drew it in. As the bouquet filled my nostrils and heightened my consciousness; I believed I could see her radiating before me. She drew me in like the undertow of a strong current, eagerly seizing me in her grasp. I could feel myself within her and could instinctively hear her say “Tell them.” I felt an infectious fever rise within me and suddenly I was her, walking the old train tressel, board by board, gasping at the gaping depression beneath me visible between the cupped worn planks. Step by step, one foot in front of the other I steadily made my way. The wind blew through my hair and gently grazed my cheek in the twilight of a balmy summer night. I suffered no melancholy stirrings in my heart but pure anticipation. The weathered wood, splintered and dry, felt rigid upon my bare feet. Still I proceeded with an overpowering urgency. Male frogs and toads bellowed with their baritone vocals, piercing my ear drums and echoing inside the ramparts of my mind. Thick humidity and labored breath tore through my lungs when, from behind, I began to feel a vibration followed by a sudden burst of terror. That was when I saw him, waiting for me in front of the tunnel. A panicked and distressed silhouette tragically bounded by spatial time. As the vibration intensified and the urgency to run became apparent it was already too late. I turned, only soon enough to be blinded by the light glowing brilliantly before me. “Jasper” I screamed, but then was silent.



Startled, I awakened with the illusion of falling and frantically trying to find my breath. My eyes flew open and searched the atmosphere above me. I was disoriented and lay upon my back, covered in the trees discarded flora that only moments earlier crumbled beneath my feet. A gust of wind blew over me and a river of leaves began to roll over the graveled path end on end. Their dry, clacking sound like screaming cries of sorrow rushing past only to lie despondently still again. All I could see and feel was darkness. Slowly I began to realize that my apparition had not eluded me. Through her eyes, she had shown me that she had not been a jilted lover, but young and in the throes of forbidden love. The object of her adoration had been promised to another. An arranged marriage to a young woman he did not love, that would benefit his family’s social status and their dwindling fortune. His sweetheart, the ghastly spirit I thought I would find, was beautiful, but poor and certainly not the sort he would be permitted to wed. Although he loved her more than he thought possible, he was bound by the wishes of his family and had chosen that night to tell her. His heart hung heavily as he observed her approach at the far end of the supported track. “Why was life so hard?” he thought. As he watched her, his eyes filled with tears and then panic. She was only partially across and the train was behind her. While fantasy and expectation distracted her, sorrow and apprehension had preoccupied him and neither one of them realized the train had ventured so close. A trip across the tressel lessened her journey and would ordinarily have given them more time, but that fateful night time became extinct and love would not prevail. Tragedy had visited and left grief as its replacement.



As her spirit hovered above her body, she watched as the boy, still strapping in his youth, trampled through the brush and hastily made his way to the bottom of the narrow valley, terrified at what he might find. There, in a bed of lavender, she lay as if sleeping. As he knelt down beside her and cradled her in his arms, a circular silver locket fell loosely from inside his shirt, glistening and dangling from his neck. The piece of coveted jewelry, once warm beside his heart was now exposed and cold. When hearing the passengers of the train, which had stopped to investigate, moving in his direction, he softly laid her to rest, told her that he loved her, and kissed her goodbye. His family would not be embarrassed by the quiet whispers and scandalous rumors his being there would create. When the engineer and conductor arrived along with the others from the locomotive, she lay motionless in a bed of purple blossoms. As beautiful in death as she had been in life, with her cheeks still damp from his angst ridden tears and the smell of lavender gently flowing through the air.



As I staggered to my feet, I wondered what had become of the young man waiting before the Moonville tunnel. He was left to mourn her alone and unable to admit his feelings for her without upsetting the social balance he was required to keep. She died loving him. Did he do the same? Had he married and forgotten her?



The night began to disappear as the sun rose and caused the moon to fade. I started the long trek homeward, taking one final look around before making my way back. Walking through the dense forest, I was haunted by the memory of the locket. It held a certain familiarity to me. Where had I seen it? What relevance did it have?



Eventually, I returned to the dirt road where I began my expedition. The black cat still stood sentry to the compressed earthen route and again scrutinized as I passed below him. How odd he still remained there. Returning home, I mentioned the silver locket to my mother. I knew I had seen it before, although I couldn’t remember where. Several minutes later she returned, holding it in her hands.

The locket had lost its brilliance and was now tarnished and worn. My mother said it belonged to my great grandfather and inside held a small tin of a beautiful girl, her eyes tenderly penetrating. I recognized her immediately and felt a tear rushing from my eye as I blinked for more clarity. “I know her.” My mom, realizing I was exhausted, encouraged me to sleep. As I walked toward the bedroom, she told me that she did not know anything about the girl in the picture, but she did know her grandfather had never married. He was tormented in his youth, haunted by a horrible tragedy. He left his family and traveled the world for many years as a soldier. After one of his tours abroad, he happened upon a woman that had just been killed and her child, a tiny infant, was left beside her. He rescued the child and, with no one to claim him, adopted him as his own before returning home again. She really didn’t know much more about it just that the locket had been passed down from generation to generation and that the child that he adopted was her father.



“We always called him “Grandpa J” but I think his real name was…” my mother tried to articulate.



“Jasper” I answered.