Each day the woman pushed the carriage across the bridge.
The Palmer Twins lived in a house in the shadow of the bridge, near the base of its footings. They often played in their backyard, a scrap of earth too damaged by weather to grow grass. And they were too poor for toys. But they had sticks which could be made into knives, swords, or guns at a moment’s notice. Trent didn’t mind being the bad guy. Rosie sometimes played the fair maiden, sometimes the evil sidekick, or an opposing villain.
“Have you ever seen her face?”
“What?” Trent hadn’t the slightest idea what she was talking about.
“The woman with the carriage. Her face is under that hood. You can never see it.”
It was true. The woman walked the bridge at approximately four o’clock each afternoon, rain or shine. It mattered nothing to Trent whether she wore a hooded cloak or a fancy dress. And what did it matter what she looked like? He raised his sword and swished it in the air at her stomach. “I care not! Defend yourself or be skewered, evil witch!”
Rosie waved him off. “I’m tired of this game. And it’s getting cold.”
With the fall days so gray and damp, Trent felt restless. He wanted to play a fight game, or crawl down upon the rocks at the river’s edge and look for crawdads. Rosie was boring. A breeze came up the river, whipping at the tails of his shirt and Rosie’s hair, as if toying with them. Sometimes at night that river wind seemed to call his name.
Their mother leaned out the kitchen door. “Come in, children. Your soup is ready.”
They didn’t dare ask why it must be soup again. The answer was obvious. With their father, that “no good scoundrel,” having gone who knows where, they were living off Mother’s house cleaning money. Each night they had soup made from whatever she could scrape together.
Tonight she ladled a pale cream-based soup with a few onions and potatoes into their bowls. Trent looked out the window where rain had begun dripping down the window panes, lending a sad and eerie look to the wan light coming through the window.
Rosie sipped her soup then seemed to lose interest. “Tell us a story, Ma.”
“I only know the one, and you’ve heard it.”
Trent set his spoon down, and pretended to be sated. “Please, tell it again.”
“Well, it is said that once a man and his wife had a terrible car accident, right there on the roadway leading to this very bridge.”
She pointed out the doorway to the road, high on the hill over the house. “The driver that struck their car fled and was never found. Their car caught fire and burned to a husk, killing his wife. The man was very badly burned, but survived.” Mother sipped her soup and moved a wisp of hair from her face which glowed in the warmth of the kitchen. “Well, the legend has it that he became mentally deranged, and ran off to the woods. They say he wanders this area looking for the driver of the other car, for retribution.”
Night had fallen and now the only light in the kitchen was the candle at the center of the table. It’s glow flickered and cast a yellow shimmer on Rosie’s and Mother’s eyes. Trent had heard this story before, but even so he leaned forward, for every time she told it, she changed or embellished the ending just a bit and he never knew how the story was going to turn out.
“Sometimes people see him… his skin burned completely off, and what is left of his face is charred like a fireplace log. And when he again doesn’t find the driver of the car that caused the death of his wife, he nabs another victim!” With the word “nabs” she pounded the table so the plates rattled, and Rosie and Trent jumped in their chairs.
Mother smiled. “Of course, it’s just a legend.”
“But you said it’s true,” Trent said. He felt a little disappointed. He liked to think that they had a deranged man right here in Candahashee. It made things more interesting.
“Yes. The car accident happened, and the fire. But if he did survive, I don’t think he’s really out there.” She looked out the window again, as if she might see him walking along the river, or up on the pedestrian walk on the trestle bridge. “People say that anyone who comes in contact with him is instantly charred. Like him.”
Trent shuddered. There was more he wanted to know, but he couldn’t have said whether it was some kind of concern or just morbid curiosity. “How long has it been since the accident?”
“I’m not exactly sure. Certainly it was before we moved here. No one talks about it, except occasionally and in hushed tones. And you can never get all the facts. That’s why I make some up.”
That night Trent lay in his bed listening to the sound of the owls and the far-off rumbling of lightning. Now and then a train would chug its way across the bridge. He had an idea. In the morning he would ask the mother who pushed her baby carriage over the bridge each afternoon if she knew anything about the legend. He needed to know which parts of it were true.
The next day on the way home from school, he broached the subject with Rosie. “You know that woman who walks every afternoon with her baby?”
Rosie frowned at him.
“With the baby carriage. The one who crosses the bridge every day?”
“Oh, yes.”
“I think we should ask her what she knows about the legend. Or that hit and run driver who got away. It just seems like, if it’s true, he’s going to wander this area, skinless and crazy, until it’s settled.”
Rosie adjusted her backpack as they walked along the sidewalk from the middle school. “There’s nothing to settle. You’re not suggesting that we get involved, right?”
Trent kicked a stone and it skittered along the walk. “I don’t know. Don’t you want to find out what’s going on?”
“I do and I don’t. It’s all very creepy.”
“Buck up,” he said. “At least it will keep us from becoming bored out of our skulls around here.”
At home, they dropped off their backpacks. Mother had somehow made some cookies in the morning before she left for work, so they each had two cookies from the cookie car with a big glass of milk.
Trent took the glass from her hand as she drank the last gulp. “Come on, come on. We may miss her.”
They walked through the garden gate at the back of their lot and along the small path to a set of stairs that took them to the top of the hill, where the roadway met the bridge.
Rosie stopped at the top and looked around. “Do you suppose it may have happened right here? On this very spot?”
It was a disgusting thought, that they could be standing right at this moment on the spot where a woman was burned to death in her car, and her husband became the Deranged Char Man of the Candahashee Bridge. Today he would get answers.
He saw her. The woman with the carriage was walking toward them, pushing what he saw from this vantage point was an old run-down carriage. Rosie took his hand in hers and squeezed. The woman came closer, her face completely enshrouded in the hood of her cloak. The only sounds were the purr of the river and the irritating squeak of a rusty wheel on the carriage.
She seemed unsure of whether to stop or to pass them by. She tugged her hood closer around her face and turned slightly away as she moved around them. But Trent said, “Excuse me? Could we ask you a question?”
The woman stopped, but did not turn to look at them. “We were wondering about the accident that happened here some years ago. About the man who was burned in the fire.”
She turned toward them, at last, and took two steps in their direction. At that moment, Trent realized he had never heard any baby sounds from the carriage. Never a coo or a cry. The figure pulled back the cloak, revealing not a woman’s face, but the badly burned face of their father.
Trent gasped, and Rosie screamed. They backed away as he reached for them, “My children,” he said. “I’ve wanted to see you, and tell you everything.”
They continued moving away, but he was too quick, and in a blink he grabbed one of each of their wrists. They were screaming, but there was no use. No one was near. Trent instantly felt the burning and charring begin to spread from his wrist up his arm, and he knew Rosie did too. Oh, how mother would be mad.
This story (an entry for the “Halloween in Spring” horror fiction contest by @dirge) was inspired by an urban legend about the “Char Man” of California. I’ve changed up the details but the essence is the same — that a man who was very badly burned survives the fire but becomes deranged. It does not end well.
I chose to write this story as a stretch. The horror genre is not one where I feel at home, but I do like to try many different genres to see if I can learn the fundamentals.
Thank you for reading!
