Settling in doesn’t take long when your worldly possessions are in one pack. When Terah saw his new house was numbered 77 he had to wonder—had there ever been that many buildings here? The numbering scheme at Dickinsheet was idiosyncratic. Of course, he knew little about the place. He gathered that it was named after the unfortunately named founder, but he was curious about the history. Moby would be the man to answer his questions. He made his way back to the little man’s house.
Here in the middle of winter, with no roads to be plowed and outdoor work uncomfortable, the community was in simple survival mode. January was like that. Moby seemed glad for the visit. “Come in, Cal, was it?”
“Thanks, yes.”
“If you don’t mind my saying, Cal, you look like a professor.”
He’d known some pretty shabby academics in his day, but this made him laugh. “I used to teach,” he admitted.
“Something about your face. I can tell a person who reads a lot. I suspect you miss books.”
“Almost more than food,” Cal said. “As a newbie here, I’m curious about this place.”
“Well, it has two histories. One as a milltown that was abandoned for the larger community that became Stroudsburg, and another as a strangely functional socialist enclave for the otherwise homeless. Which are you curious about?”
“Both, actually. I tend to see things in terms of history, so knowing how this place started would be foremost in my mind.”
“Want to know about the name, do you? Don’t be embarrassed. Johannes Dickinsheet came east from Ohio in the 1890s. Keep in mind that slang for penises shifts over time, and this was just another Germanic name that Anglicized in a strange way. Dickinsheet had an engineering mind and, finding this stream in an unsettled area, built a mill. Coming from the west he seems not to have been aware of the growing town a few miles further on. When it became obvious that he’d overshot the really isolated parts of the state, he saw the utility of having a community nearby. His mill was a sawmill. What was unusual is that like Milton Hershey—he may have encountered him on his way east—he wanted to take care of his workers. There used to be all kinds of towns where everyone worked in one place, owned by the founder, back in the day.
“Dickinsheet built the houses and rented them cheap. His workers seemed to like him. As Stroudsburg grew, his business thrived. Some of these houses, you see come from the turn of the century. The problems started even before the war. Most people think of the Germans as oppressive Huns, but over here they ran into trouble during the wars. People didn’t trust them. Johannes insisted on being called ‘John’ and his surname was hard to place. Still, as America got involved in the war, sentiment against Germans grew. Nobody wanted his services. Without the income, his little socialist community simply couldn’t survive. The place was abandoned and Johannes Dickinsheet vanished into history.”
“And nobody really watched over the place after it was abandoned, or saw what he saw in it?”
“Well, there are plenty of streams and waterfalls around here. If a mill wasn’t run by a German it could thrive. There were rumors, though, that Dickinsheet was haunted. The very title ‘ghost town’ suggests as much. The Germans were practical, but also superstitious people. Johannes Dickinsheet, it was said, believed in the forest people.”
“Forest people?”
“Gnomes. Elves. Sprites. Call them what you will. Rural folk in the old country took them seriously. According to what I’ve been able to find—one of Dickinsheet’s diaries was tucked into the wall of the largest house—where Claresta lives now. It’s strange reading. I can lend it if you like, but it’s part of the permanent collection. Anyhow, Johannes left offerings for the forest dwellers. And rumors circulated about his wife. She was the most beautiful woman any of these people had ever seen. Never aged. Even before the war, jealousy ran through the community. Guys couldn’t see her without being inflamed. They started saying she was a wood nymph.”
“You can’t be serious? In the twentieth century!?”
“You can read the diary, if you like. That’s what Johannes wrote. When he settled this area he was single. The locals didn’t know where she’d come from. Her face, they said, was like Helen’s. Wars could start over it. All the men wanted her. Even before business waned for the First World War, the villagers claimed she was enchanted. She never aged, and when the men saw her, their wives would complain.”
“Does the diary say where she was from?”
“What man doesn’t think his first love isn’t a goddess, a nymph, or an angel? Her name actually was Caileigh, by the way. His diary doesn’t say where she was from, but it’s filled with his hyperbole about her beauty and charm. And magic. According the Johannes, some of the mill hands suggested a commune like the one up in Oneida that had closed down just as Dickinsheet was starting up.”
“They knew about John Humphrey Noyes?”
“You do.”
“I used to teach religion.”
“Ah, then you know how they practiced communal marriage up in Oneida. Well, the mill workers wanted that, but without the theological backing. Johannes knew they all really wanted his wife, so he kept her out of sight. Some said he released her back into the woods to frolic with the other nymphs, coming back only to warm his bed after the others had turned in. The diary doesn’t mention anything about children, but who knows what might’ve happened after they left? Dickinsheet left his diary here, and I don’t have a regular library here to research him any further.”
“Mich—Claresta mentioned some say this place is enchanted,” Terah said, not wanting to let go of the wispy dreamlike state that had engulfed him.
“For that,” Moby said, “we need to consider the more recent history of this town. Care to join me for a bit of lunch?”
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