The Ordinary Times

dated 1857.

Alex and I trudged through Farragut Park, past a baseball game and across the bridge covering the train yard. To our left the late afternoon sky swirled with breaks of blue and a large cluster of charcoal colored clouds. It was moving. Not the sky, but the mass of weather, in an autumn manner.

The Columbian Cemetery lies tucked beside a giant warehouse, practically unseen beneath a canopy of elderly trees. The first time we ventured there, it was nearing the witching hour on a chilly November night. On that visit we opted to drive, rolling up slowly to unknown territory.  The only sound to be heard was the crunching of our tires across the dead foliage, even though an I-5 overpass lines the west side of the graveyard.The fog curling in front of the headlights made me nervous.

“Whoa…this place is scarier than I was expecting,” I said quietly. We spent a few moments trying to focus our eyes on what could be waiting further in the dark. At least that’s what I was doing.  Then we stepped out of the car and I undressed quickly. We had hoped to snap some creepy pictures of me naked, wearing a bird mask Alex had made, but once onsite I think we were both too spooked to focus on aesthetics. The whole twenty minutes we were there, I felt as if something was watching us, lurking on the edge between darkness and light.

I smiled to myself as we walked now; sure this two mile jaunt would be much less unnerving. As we rounded the corner from Vancouver onto Columbia, traffic roared by and horns honked. We joked about how we must have looked: two misplaced girls plodding a path on an otherwise pedestrian free road.  The further we got the more uneasy I began to feel, recognizing the same sensation in my gut from our previous trek. I blamed it on the greasy factory workers leering out their windows and the distinct odor of welded metal.

Our destination certainly looked different in the daylight. Garbage lined the cast iron fencing at the entrance, and one of the massive trees had crashed to the ground destroying a few more with it. The grass was taller than before, and seemingly grabbed for our feet as we wandered.  Dusk was arriving quickly and inside the wooded area was darker than desirable.  We meandered to the back of the plots, making small talk to ignore the now very constant feeling of otherworldly presence.

“Man, this is just as scary as I remember,” I finally admitted. The look on Alex’s face said she couldn’t have agreed more. Toward the very back corner I noticed a strange square of shrubs, all trimmed and growing together in tight rows. I started to walk toward the patch and then saw a blanket, and remnants of occupancy. Alex squealed and my heart pounded in my chest. “Let’s get out of here,” she proposed, already heading back toward the front gate. I tried to be peaceful in thought and reassure myself we were alone. We read a few headstones aloud and the dates etched in stone. All in all I think we only spent twenty minutes there, just like our last visit.

As we retraced our steps back to my house, the uncomfortable pit in my stomach slowly subsided. We paused at the bridge overlooking the trains to admire the view. Alex pointed out the excitement of visiting a cemetery and the rush of adrenaline from fear, which is clearly why we are both intrigued by these places that house the dead. I like to think a graveyard provides the doorway for those who’ve passed on, to continue their journey, or not.  In any case, the Columbian Cemetery is still the creepiest one I’ve set foot in.