Fireside Books: Fireside Books in Parksville now has a second location in Port Alberni, the BookWyrm. Used books are just $5 or less. The BookWyrm, on the corner of Redford and Anderson, is open seven days a week from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Fireside Books, at 464 Island Highway East in Parksville, is a book dragon’s dream come true. Browse their extensive collections seven days a week, or order online at firesidebooks.ca and pick up at either location. Ask about returning books for a book credit.
Eddie Van Haddock & The Rockfish: In a little town by the sea, where the stories never end, lived Captain Dave and his crew, every child’s favourite friend. With a smile as wide as the ocean and a heart that’s full of dreams, he sails a Mellow Submarine where magic gleams and beams. Every morning at sunrise, when the world awakes anew, Captain Dave and his crew set sail in waters deep and blue. Through the ticking clock of time, where adventures come alive, they laugh and learn and play each day in their underwater dive. Captain Dave and the Mellow Submarine.
Dave Graham: The whole harbour smelled like cinnamon and salt air. Along the docks of French Creek, someone had strung up paper bats between the lampposts, and almost every boat railing seemed to have grown a pumpkin overnight.
A folding table held a big bowl of apples bobbing in water, waiting for brave contestants, and somebody had balanced a scarecrow on an overturned crab trap, its straw hat tipped stylishly to one side. Captain Dave stood on the deck of the Mellow Submarine, holding up two costumes for Larry the Lobster to see.
“Pirate captain,” said Captain Dave, wiggling a felt hat with a skull on it, “or friendly sea ghost?” He flapped a white bedsheet with two holes cut for eyes.
Larry the Lobster scuttled up from below, still buttoning a small black cape around his shell. It had taken him a few tries to get it on. This wasn’t something lobsters normally did.
“I have already decided, Captain. I am going to be the scariest thing in the whole harbour.”
“Oh?” Captain Dave raised an eyebrow. “And what is that?”
Larry held up both claws and clicked them together with a dramatic flourish. “A pirate lobster. Terrifying.”
Captain Dave laughed so hard he had to sit down on a coil of rope. “I think you might frighten a few seagulls, Larry, but I’m not sure the rest of the harbour is quite ready to tremble.”
“We shall see,” said Larry, adjusting his cape importantly. “I have been practising my scowl all morning.”
“I noticed,” said Captain Dave. “I thought you’d gotten something in your eyes.”
Tonight was the French Creek Harbour Halloween Festival, and it was Captain Dave’s favourite night of the whole autumn. Families would walk the docks after supper, stopping at each boat for candy, admiring the decorations, and listening to spooky stories told by lantern light. Every year, the Mellow Submarine got the loudest cheer when it lit up its portholes and blew a puff of harmless steam from its little smokestack, just for fun.
But this year, something was different. The marine radio crackled to life on the control panel, and Harbourmaster Nadia’s voice came through sounding worried instead of festive.
“Mellow Submarine, this is the harbourmaster’s office. Captain Dave, are you there?”
Captain Dave picked up the receiver. “Right here, Nadia. Is everything all right?”
“We had some kids down yesterday to help decorate. Some of them say that after it got dark, they saw something glowing green in the water near the old pilings. And two fishermen mentioned something big moving near the breakwater rocks, something with a face full of teeth. One of them said it looked right at him. Half the festival committee wants to cancel the dockside walk. Nobody wants scared children out here tonight, not after everyone has spent all week carving pumpkins and stringing up decorations.”
Larry’s claws froze as he finished tying his cape. “Something with teeth? Captain, maybe my pirate lobster costume is a little too realistic after all.”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” said Captain Dave calmly. “Nadia, give us some time. Larry and I will take a look before anyone else arrives.”
“I would appreciate that. The festival starts at 6:00, and I would much rather greet everyone with good news than a cancelled event. Thank you, Captain.”
Captain Dave hung up the receiver and turned to Larry, who had gone a paler shade than his usual deep red. “Well, First Mate, looks like we have some investigating to do before the trick-or-treaters show up.”
“Investigating what, exactly?” asked Larry. “A glowing green ghost light and a sea monster with teeth, on Halloween? Oh, Captain, that sounds like the plot of one of those scary stories Nadia tells by lantern light.”
“It does,” agreed Captain Dave, pulling on his boots, “which is exactly why we should go find out what is really happening, instead of letting the story get scarier every time somebody tells it.”
They cast off from the dock just as the afternoon light began turning gold, and the Mellow Submarine puttered slowly out past the breakwater toward the old wooden pilings, where fishing boats have tied up for a hundred years.
As they idled near the pilings, Larry pressed his face to the porthole, staring hard into the water. “I do not see anything glowing, Captain.”
“That’s because it’s not dark enough yet,” said Captain Dave. “Some kinds of glowing only happen at night. Let’s wait a little while, and in the meantime, let’s go find this toothy something near the breakwater.”
They motored carefully along the rocky breakwater, the submarine’s engine humming low so as not to startle anything. The evening was turning cool, and long purple shadows stretched across the water, sliding over the kelp fronds that swayed slowly against the rocks like waving hands.
“There,” whispered Larry suddenly, pointing one claw toward a gap between two large rocks. “I see it, Captain. Eyes, big eyes, and something’s moving.”
Captain Dave slowed the submarine to a gentle stop and peered through the porthole. Tucked into a crack in the rocks was a long, thick, greyish-brown creature with a blunt head, small dark eyes, and a mouth full of surprisingly large, blunt teeth. It watched them without moving.
“There’s our monster,” said Captain Dave softly, and Larry gulped. “Larry, that’s a wolf eel.”
“A wolf eel,” Larry repeated. “That name does not exactly help, Captain. It sounds like two scary things put together.”
“Oh, I know it looks fierce,” said Captain Dave, “but wolf eels are some of the gentlest creatures along this whole coast. Those big teeth are not for chasing anything down. They use them to crunch up sea urchins and crabs, the same way we might crack open a walnut. Wolf eels like to tuck themselves into a den among the rocks, and then they’ll stay there for years and years, sometimes even with a mate, taking turns guarding their eggs.”
Larry studied the creature a little longer. Up close, the wolf eel’s face did not look angry at all, just calm, almost sleepy, with its chin resting on a rock. “He does not seem like he wants to eat us.”
“He does not,” said Captain Dave. “In fact, divers who visit the same wolf eel den again and again say the eels start to recognize them, and some will even let a diver gently touch their chin, the way you might scratch a dog behind the ears. This fellow is not a monster at all. I would guess the fishermen just caught a quick glimpse of him poking his head out to see what all the Halloween noise on the docks was about, and their imaginations did the rest.”
“So the scariest part of him,” said Larry slowly, “is just how he looks, not how he actually is.”
“Exactly,” said Captain Dave. “That happens to a lot of creatures down here, and it happens to people too sometimes. It’s easy to be frightened of something before you have taken the time to understand it.”
By now, the sky had faded to a deep blue, with the first stars blinking on above French Creek Harbour. Captain Dave eased the submarine back toward the old pilings. “Now, let’s see about that glowing green light.”
He cut the engine, and they climbed up onto the deck as the sub drifted quietly in the darkening water. For a long moment, nothing happened. Then Larry gasped and pointed. Where the submarine’s hull gently stirred the water, tiny points of blue-green light sparkled up like scattered stars, swirling and fading, swirling and fading, every time the water moved.
“Captain, it is glowing. It is really glowing.”
“It certainly is,” said Captain Dave, delighted. “That is called bioluminescence, Larry. There are billions of tiny living things in this water, so small you could never see just one with your own eyes. When the water around them gets bumped or stirred up, some kinds of these tiny creatures make a little flash of light, almost like a firefly. Nobody knows for certain exactly why they do it, but many scientists think it might startle away anything trying to eat them, like a tiny burglar alarm made of light.”
Larry dipped one claw very gently into the water and swished it back and forth. A trail of glittering blue-green light swirled around his claw like magic dust, and he watched it fade slowly back into darkness before swishing again, just to see it happen once more. He gasped. “Captain, this is the most wonderful thing I’ve ever seen. This is not spooky at all. This is beautiful.”
“I think so, too,” said Captain Dave. “It’s one of my favourite things about this coast. Most nights it’s far too faint to notice at all, but sometimes, on a dark, calm evening just like this one, the water lights up enough for everyone to see.”
“Can other people see it, too, or is it just for submarines?”
“Oh, anyone can see it,” said Captain Dave, “if the water’s dark enough and they know where to look. And I think I know exactly how to turn tonight’s scary rumours into the best Halloween this harbour has ever had.”
They motored back to the dock just as the first families were arriving in their costumes, carrying flashlights and candy buckets shaped like pumpkins. Nadia hurried down to meet them, looking anxious. “Well, what did you find, Captain?”
“Good news,” said Captain Dave, tying off the submarine. “No monsters. Just a shy wolf eel who lives quietly in the rocks and would rather not be disturbed, and some tiny glowing creatures in the water that are about to make this the most magical Halloween French Creek Harbour has ever had.”
He explained everything to Nadia, who listened with growing delight, and soon the word spread down the dock from family to family. Instead of cancelling the walk, Nadia announced a new tradition right there on the spot. Everyone would gather at the end of the dock after trick-or-treating, and Captain Dave would show them the glowing water himself.
The rest of the evening went exactly as a Halloween evening should. Children in costumes ran from boat to boat collecting candy, admiring the pumpkins glowing with candlelight, and shrieking happily at Nadia’s spooky stories by lantern light. A little witch tried her luck at the apple bowl and came up sputtering and triumphant, with an apple clenched in her teeth.
Larry the Lobster, wearing his little cape, stood proudly at the bottom of the Mellow Submarine’s gangplank, handing out treats and telling every single child, in his most dramatic voice, that he was a terrifying pirate lobster who guarded this ship. Nobody looked very frightened. Mostly, they laughed, and one small boy, also dressed as a pirate, insisted on a claw shake before moving on down the dock.
When trick-or-treating was finished, Captain Dave gathered everyone at the end of the dock, flashlights off, and gently dipped a long paddle into the dark water. Blue-green sparkles swirled up all around it, and a chorus of delighted gasps rippled down the dock.
“That is not a ghost,” Captain Dave told the crowd, his voice carrying easily over the water. “Those are tiny living creatures in the sea, making their own light. And out near the breakwater, there is a wolf eel who looks fierce but would not hurt a soul. Some of the spookiest things down here turn out to be some of the gentlest, once you take the time to understand them properly.”
One small child in a ghost costume raised her hand. “So Halloween is not really about scary stuff at all?”
Captain Dave thought about that for a moment, smiling. “I think Halloween is about looking a little closer at the things that seem scary, and finding out what they really are. Sometimes that’s even better than a scary story. Sometimes it’s magic.”
Larry scuttled up beside him, cape fluttering in the evening breeze, and swished his claw through the glowing water one more time, watching the lights swirl and sparkle. “Best Halloween ever,” he announced happily. “Even for a very frightening pirate lobster.”
The whole dock laughed, and one by one, the families knelt at the edge of the dock to trail their own fingers through the glimmering water, calling out in delight every time the lights sparkled and swirled around their hands.
Out past the breakwater, tucked safely in his rocky den, the wolf eel settled in for a quiet night, entirely unbothered by all the Halloween fuss, while overhead the stars continued to blink on, one by one, above French Creek Harbour. And below, the water glimmered softly, as if the sea had decided to celebrate Halloween in its very own way.
Eddie Van Haddock & The Rockfish: When the night falls softly and stars light up the sky, Captain Dave tucks his crew in with a gentle lullaby. Dreams of whales and mermaids, of treasures lush and green, await each little sailor aboard the Mellow Submarine.
Fireside Books: There’s exciting news for book lovers. Fireside Books in Parksville now has a second location in Port Alberni, the BookWyrm. Used books are just $5 or less. The BookWyrm, on the corner of Redford and Anderson, is open seven days a week from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Fireside Books, at 464 Island Highway East in Parksville, is a book dragon’s dream come true. Browse their extensive collections seven days a week. Order online at firesidebooks.ca and pick up at either location. Details available online. Ask about returning books for a book credit.
