Phantom on the Outskirts of Nowhere… Dedicated to my younger sister Tina: always brave, always true blue! More stories from the Kid’s Table for young and young at heart readers.

“Jump Tina!’ I shouted, “hurry up, the tide’s coming in!” My sister was stuck on the same boulder she always got stuck on.

“Here,” I said, tapping my walking stick on a big flat rock, “aim for this one.”

Tina swung her arms as she shifted her weight back and forth. Suddenly she stopped and nearly fell off her perch into the swirling water below. She just stood there biting her lower lip; she looked like a scared chipmunk.

Sure all the rocks were slippery with kelp and covered with razor sharp barnacles; but scrambling over that craggy point was the only safe way to get to Hobo Jungle.

“We should have ditched her!” My new friend Vicky said. “just do it scardey-cat!” She yelled.

My goofy sister was making me look dumb in front of Vicky.

“Look Tina ” I called, ” you’re the one who wanted to come along!” The mist of a nearby wave brushed against my face; the tide really was coming in. “If you can’t keep up the beach way, we’ll have to use the train bridge.” As I spoke, a distant train whistle shrilled.

“I’m not chicken,” Tina replied. She took her walking stick, an old piece of bamboo, held it in front of her like an acrobat and jumped. She landed with a crunch on a barnacle encrusted rock. “OK, let’s go,” she said and trudged on as if nothing had happened.

With the fairgrounds behind us; the three f us made our way to our forbidden destination.

Hobo jungle is the place your mother tells you not to go to. The place were people disappear and unspeakable things wash up on the shore. But where else could we catch a glimpse of a ghost the Saturday before Halloween?

“Barroommaa!” A distant foghorn wailed. Ahead the distant cypress trees became veiled in mist. There on the outskirts of nowhere, a heavy Autumn fog rolled in.

Shreds of mist drifted by. Tina’s brown hair was already starting to curl in the moisture. I brushed back a curl of my own hair as I bent to pick up a half open clam shell.

“Gross!” said Vicky, “what’s that?”

“Evidence of low tide,” I said mysteriously. ” Charman is seen during low tide…So they say.” i figured the Vicky would enjoy a good ghost story at this point.

“No, no, not Charman!” Tina whined pitifully as she covered her ears. Tina’s boogy-man was Charman, she had nightmares about him. I had to check under her bed at night to make sure that Charman wasn’t lurking there. And yet, she could never resist my terrifying saga.

“Who? What? Tell me!” Vicky demanded.

As she gave Vicky a side-long glance, Tina slowly lowered her hands from her ears.

“Red tide brings him out,” I began. I shook my clam at my audience and it’s contents giggled ominously. Charman is a doomed phantom. He howls in grief as he prowls the land between the fairgrounds, Hobo Jungle, all the way to Foster Park and Camp Comfort.” Pausing for dramatic effect, I could hear Tina panting like a trapped rabbit.

Scorched in a terrible fire that destroyed his home and family, Charman is hideous beyond belief. He is covered in putrid rags, matted hair and a monstrous stench surrounds him. He cannot live, he cannot die; he is over two hundred years old. In his cursed loneliness, he roams the land calling for the ones he lost, calling, calling…”

“Ack, awok, ack, ack!” A piercing cry passed overhead. Vicky’s eyes flew open wide.

“Seagull.” Tina said flatly. Yet we were all shivering as we squatted on a flat rock shrouded in a heavy fog.

“We sit right now in the phantom’s tragic path. In his dreadful solitude, he steals way children who are never heard from again. Call his name out loud and he will take you way forever!”

Suddenly, I stood up and screamed a the top of my lungs: “Hey, Charman, come and get us!”

“No way!” Vicky cried as she sprang to her feet. ” You’re a liar!”

“Charman’s real,” Tina told her.

“You’re both crazy,” Vicky barked. “You and your stupid clam! I’m out of here!” Vicky knocked the clam out of my hand and shoved me hard as she scrambled past. I stumbled backwards and wedged my foot between two huge boulders. I heard a clatter and splash as my walking stick fell into the water. ”

“Wait up Vicky, I’m Stuck.”

“Oh, smart move klutz!” Vicky said with a sneer.

“Maybe we can both pull her out?” Tina said. I could hear and see that the tide was coming in. Soon the entire point would be underwater. I had to get my foot free while there was still time.

“Look over there,” Tina whispered. We all turned to see a vague figure looming out of the thick, damp layers of fog.

“It’s Charman, you idiot!” Vicky screamed. “This is all your fault, you called him!”

“No, Vicky, that was just a dumb story,” my voice shook with fear and pain. “please if you don’t help me, I’ll drown!” Again the foghorn brayed it’s lonely warning.

“Charman!” Vicky cried. She bolted over the rocks and vanished into the fog.

Tina stared at me in amazement: “She left you to drown! She’s older than you Lisa, but she’s more chicken than me!”Tina tried to push the boulder away but it was impossible. She then took her bamboo walking stick and wedged one end under the massive stone, she put all her weight on the other end. The bamboo bent for a second, then shattered into a million pieces.

“Tina, Listen to me, run for help!” The water swirled above my ankles and was rising fast. Tina couldn’t swim yet. “Go! Charman’s coming!” I fought to keep the panic out of my voice.

“Uh-uh, I’m not chicken.” Tina picked off a crab that was crawling up my trapped leg and flicked it into the water. “Dumb old Charman. I’ll kick him right here!” She pounded her knee as she spoke. Despite the throbbing pain in my ankle, I laughed to see her so fierce.

“Charman, you big meany!” Tina shouted. I opened my mouth to sat something too but instead, I was sapped in the face with a big, salty wave. Foamy water swirled around my waist as I sputtered the salty spray out of my nose and eyes. I looked up but Tina was gone.

I turned frantically this way and that but I couldn’t see her. Where was she? Did she run for help after all? Had she been washed out to sea? At first all I could hear was my own heart pounding, then water rushing over rock and sand. That rumbling, growling sound told me that the next wave was going to be really big! Oh where was my sister?

“Look what I found, floating over there?” It was Tina. Relief flooded over me as Tina came scrambling over the rocks, clutching my walking stick. She stuck one end under the boulder just as before and hefted on it. The boulder wouldn’t budge, it was just too heavy. I kept silent as I caught a glimpse of that vague figure again moving closer to us in the fog.

“Ack, awok, ack!”

“Seagull.” Tina said without looking up from her work. A series of smaller waves began to pound against us. The water was past my knees and rising. Tina dug her front teeth into her lower lip and leaned hard on her lever. Suddenly my foot went numb, I was free! Tina clapped her hands and bounced up and down: “Yay! The water made the rock less heavy!” And she climbed over to me.

We were too late! I looked up and saw a huge green wall of water coming toward us, curling as it rose. It was the biggest wave I’d ever seen. “Hold your breath!” I ordered. I pushed her down in front of me and grabbed a hold of the boulder.

A gargantuan blast of icy salt water blasted over us and crushed us against the boulder. We were under so much water I thought that my lungs would explode. The wave then pulled back with such force I was certain we were going to swept out to sea. But the rock we were clinging to held; finally the water receded.

“Crawl!” That was all I could do. Tina tried to pull me up onto the levy. If only we could go along the train tracks back to the fairgrounds before the train came! I heard a noise, it wasn’t a bird or a train. Someone was right behind us! I swung around with my fists clenched; no one was going to get my sister without a fight! Tina too, was swinging wildly.

“Hold on girls, I don’t stand a chance against you two wild-cats!” Not a monstrous howl, but a woman’s voice broke through the fog. The I saw that she wore a Parks Department uniform. “Let’s get you two off the rocks, don’t you girls know that the tide’s coming in?”

Tina and the ranger helped me limp to her jeep which was parked near the fairgrounds. We sat wrapped in warm blankets as the ranger gave first aid to my ankle. “I would never have seen anyone in this fog,” she said as she wrapped an ace bandage on my injury; “but I heard all this ruckus so I came to see what all the trouble was. Strange,” said the Ranger shaking her head, “out of the fog, I saw another girl running toward the fairgrounds. I tried to help her but she took off screaming as if she had seen a ghost! Was she a friend of your’s?”

Tina and I looked at each for a moment. Then at the same time we both said, “No way, she’s not my friend!” Tina ave me a toothy smile and punched me in the arm. “Poke spoke, you owe me a coke,” she chanted. I nodded. I knew I owed her much more than a soda.

A Long Walk On the Beach, Stories From the Kid’s Table: Performed one spooky October for Poets West at the Honey Bear Bakery and Cafe in Seattle

Walking on a lonely beach or a deserted trail through the mistletoe laden oaks telling tales of ghosts and phantoms was my introduction into story telling. Here we meet Charman as we take a long Walk on the Beach…

Late in the year if you time low tide right, time it just right you can walk almost all the way to Hobo Jungle Past the Fairgrounds and around the last jetty and run, run for your life over the train trestle.

People board their horses at the fair grounds. It was never locked we’ just walk in and feed the horses. We never thought about it then, we’d linger with the gentle animals; kind of feeling like we may not make it from our long walk on the beach.

Charman is said to be in the Jungle this time of year. And he walks among the windblown juniper and the air smells like sumac and fennel, salt, low tide and the air smells like something beyond death. When Charman walks the beach crows and seagull silent, waves break on the shore.

We’d never tell anyone where we were going:

“Bye! I’m going into the hills by myself.”

“Bye! I’m dogging fossils in the lonely cave I found last week.” 

“Bye! We’re walking ten miles to Hobo Jungle to look for snakes bones and hang over the train trestle as the 3:17 screams by because we didn’t time our crossing just right”… What’s the point?

And Charman moans, his bones clink; rags and burnt flesh. And he howls a lonely wail like a seagull, like a phantom, like life’s last breath escaping into the mist. Burned in a cabin fire a century ago: all was lost, nothing to save: bones and dust and burnt to the ground; and yet he did not, could not die.

A nightmare phantom of Foster Park traveling up and down: Miner’s Oaks, The Avenue and the dark stretches of beach. Charman could be just abut anywhere; tell his story and feel his presence, he knows when you’re alone.

At this time of year when the fog is thick and strange things wash up on the beach: little sharks, man-o-war jelly fish, weird little blue things that stick to the dry flotsam and jetsam of low tide and it is pitch dark before you can sense the twilight.

Charman’s image is in the corner of your eye. His sliding bone step to match your own. He stops when you stop, he is silent when you hold your breath.

Heart pounding in your ears, the name you’re compelled to say three times in a row but wait! Don’t do it! He longs for you in his unbearable solitude. Call his name three times and never be seen again. Think his name three times and he will know!

This time of year in the jungle of juniper and tall fennel and too many places to hide, a far off seagull cries: butterfly tree; orange flutter fog, a twig snaps and whiff of distant cigarette smoke…Slither of snakes, rustle of feral cats, a rattling cough, hermit crabs and something else.

Far away, a rat shrieks. I can almost see the bridge. This time of year: rip tides and eight foot waves. The gull soars overheard and it sounds like it’s crying, “Charman, Charman! It cries a third time and for a moment, all is silent. All is still. All I can hear is the beating of your heart. The mist closes in around us. We run for the trestle. Deep in the fog, a train whistle…

 

 

 

Stories From the Kid’s Table: Ghosts of Fog and Smoke. Written for the Institute of Children’s Literature.

Charman! Charman! Char… Stop! Don’t do it! Anybody from Ventura California knows what will happen if you call out this phantom’s name three times in a row: he’ll come in the hour of the wolf and, and take you away! But where does the terrifying Charman come from? Hobo Jungle? perhaps, but do you dare journey alone to search for: The Ghosts of Fog and Smoke…

As the Ventura River deltas into the Pacific Ocean, the dark out-of-the-way wetlands form a wildlife refuge known as Hobo Jungle. This secluded jungle beckons to the beachcomber to risk the unknown and discover secrets lurking beneath dark cypress tress and tangles of undergrowth.

It’s not easy to get to the jungle on foot. If it’s low tide, a good rock scrambler travels along the rugged beach. High tide forces the adventurer to use the dreaded train bridge. No one knows when the next locomotive will hurl across the narrow, rickety structure, which is suspended thirty feet above jagged rock and piercing cactus. Those who have encountered the train have had to hang over the side and prey the strength of their hands held out.

There! We’ve made it. The ocean breeze tousles the groves of wild fennel draping the salty air with a hint of licorice. How cool it feels to walk barefoot on the bluegrass covered sand dunes.

Ancient wind-gnarled cypress trees guard the center of the jungle. Look up into the fluttering golden-orange leaves. No, wait! Look again, it’s tens of thousands of monarch butterflies! They fill up entire trees and are waiting for some sign from nature to begin their migratory journey south. The sky is a kaleidoscope of graceful, fluttering wings. Hold still, you’ve got one in your hair.

Sitting on a lonely beach, you will see a hazy gray wall appearing on the horizon; it moves closer and closer until everything is enveloped in a thick, damp curtain. The fog has rolled in. Now  all sound is muffled, all vision obscured. Somewhere beyond the whisper of the surf as it pulls back over polished rock, we hear the plaintive cry of a distant foghorn.

The smell of a campfire demands attention; it’s not called Hobo Jungle without good reason! A figure looming out of the mist could be a transient, a criminal hiding out, or maybe even one of the local haunts. Look! It’s Charman! Run for your life! Fly over that narrow  train bridge, and don’t look back.

Hobo Jungle is the place your mother tells you not to go to. But where else can a careful observer catch a glimpse of a snake or a wild cat or possibly a ghost? The jungle is wild and cut off from the world. Sneak out some summer night. We’ll set up camp and stare into the glowing embers of our fire. Maybe we”l survive, maybe we won’t.

Go with a group and take the jungle over with wild Indian calls, barbecued lunches and hours of hide and seek. “Olly, olly oxen all home free!”

Travel the jungle alone and the gnarly cypress tree seem to lurk overhead as if watching every move. The heart pounds at the mournful wail of a distant foghorn or a sudden snap of a twig. Every fiber of being is tingling, alert,ready for anything. The primordial allure of the jungle could never exist in any safe place. Go there for a visit, but beware!  

Anacapa Tsunami

One illustration for “The Charman Chronicles: The Book of Fire”, available on Amazon.com and Kindle as well as my on-line shop: http://www.cafepress.com/lisanoble. Imagine standing on a Ventura beach gazing at the Anacapa Islands when suddenly the waves began to pull back, farther and farther past the islands…