Did You Know...? Creative Writing

Next up with a hidden talent to share is Georgia Cuthbertson (Library Assistant, PRL) who has written the following:

A little, probably well-known, fact about me is in my spare time/most of the time I enjoy reading and writing. I have been writing for as long as I can remember - scribbling away in notebooks and making a live action film in my head in car journeys. All in secret, to keep it safe. Then my lovely mum did what she does best whilst in my late teens. She went snooping and found said poems and writings. Now to make sure we are all on the same page, my mum does not read (she’s half-finished the Flowers in the Attic and only knows all the Catherine Cookson books because she has watched their TV adaptations more times than I can count). So her curiosity about my scribbles were brought to her workplace, where she typed them up and printed off some copies to give to my grandparents, who did enjoy reading. This of course was done without my knowledge. And true to form not only did mum send it out, she left a copy in her office which then accidently got sent around.

Suddenly my work, never seen by anyone before, was under inspection. Thankfully most of the comments were positive but you can imagine my surprise when copies of my notebook poems and short stories were returned to me like a teacher’s assignment filled with red pen. One of these short stories I have managed to find (and have copied below). It’s one of my first works and in the creepy historical realm is where my writing has stayed. Now I did manage to brush my mum off enough to keep her out of my books but as fate would have it, the following week a parent teacher evening took it all out of my hands when my teacher bragged about my writing assignment, a gothic inspiration of Dorian Grey, which mum had no idea I was reading. As a shy child by nature I did not like to brag nor share my work, which after a university degree in writing I‘m slowly getting rid of.  Ever my cheerleader, particularly when I did not want it, mum was on the case. Out she scoured and searched for a group I could join and she found it in New Writing North in the City Library. Lured with the promise of book - she knew me well enough that my bag would have a pen and notebook in it - she unceremoniously opened the door to the workshop and asked “Is this the writing thing?”. After the leader of that week’s session cautiously answered yes, I was shoved in, bag as my shield and told I would be picked up in an hour’s time. Always a force of nature, unfortunately her motto of “Mother is always right” has yet to be disproved.

From there I took part every Saturday in a writing session with like-minded teens and began writing pieces for their online magazine Cuckoo Review. This continued until my second year of uni, where I aged out of the writing group. But by then I was well on track having decided to take a Creative Writing BA, and eventually MA. I hope from then my writing has improved, but I’d have to let others tell me.

My latest projects have been rewritten about ten time a piece and each is as different as the last, focusing mainly on the witchcraft trials of Pendle and Salem, the European werewolf trials and a fantasy trilogy based on women of the past in a fantasy setting. It can certainly seem like a lot but unfortunately I am not one of those writers who can sit and write out in chronological order. A lot of my files are notes of free writing of different scenes and joining them together. Then of course I find a page in a notebook of free writing that I forgot about but now really like so now I have to rewrite the whole scene. It can be a long process and is often described as a lonely one. Sometimes I wish it was because there is nothing worse than being woken up by a character at 1am (when you have to get up early) screaming at you, “This really important thing needs to happen in my story and if you don’t write it down now I will go in a huff and not tell you about it tomorrow.”

Really they can be quite inconsiderate sometimes. So if you want to know more about the werewolf trials, obscure folklore or just want to chat about writing, you can find me either tapping or scribbling away at my desk. If I’m not there, chances are I’m buried in the History or English Literature sections are PRL.

Cove Of The Callers

A storm rages outside. The wind howls and stirs up the depths of the ocean. All is battered. All is bruised. All attacked by her fury. The Ocean. Inside the town the doors are locked, the windows sealed to block out the raging clouds and shelter the children from the deadly lightening that illuminates the bay. To the west of the harbour, past the beach, over the jagged rocks that only those who had grown near the bay knew how to weather, lay a cove. The cove. The Calling Cove. Its waters as dark as the ocean outside, they never changed these waters, always dark, always chilled enough to make the swimmer feel like they had been frozen. It’s too dark to see any further than your hand and as the light dims with the dying candle the young boy’s eyes drop to cover shimmering blue irises. His mother rocks him gently singing a lullaby of old; his older brother stands in the corner watching the roaring storm through the barely open window. He hears it. The sweet lament of a woman - no, a group of women - that seem to mourn and wish for comfort. He can feel it in his loins. An aching in his chest that pulls his eyes - the same deep blue of his mother’s - towards the cove. He stares watching for any sign of life yet all he can make out is the foam spewing up and rushing down the rocks. He stares for what seems to be forever. Until the lighting splits the sky and illuminates her.

Her, one of them, a caller. Her hair is long and as bright as starlight, it twists like seaweed in the corals and clings to her pale green skin. Her tail flicks casually from side to side and shimmers a dark blue. Despite how gentle and lulling it seems to be, the power in it is unquestionable. Scales of green that gradually lighten from her waist cover her yet leave her exposed in the most erotic way that causes him to blush. She raises her hand and opens it, thin skin between each finger barely visible, and cocks a finger towards him. Her eyes pouring into his own.

Come, my love. He hears it in his head. She opens her mouth but no longer is she mourning and wailing. She is singing as sweetly as his mother. But this is no lullaby - this is a song that calls to a man. Her pain and longing as strong as his own. He reaches out lost in the confusion of the song. Driving him forward, the desire to reach her, to run down the harbour, clamber over those deadly rocks that wish to pin him with a single misplaced step and take her in his arms. He’s almost out the window - he can feel the water hitting his face - when a firm grip on his arm yanks him back through the window.

His father soaked from the rain outside and his own hair drips onto the wood. He is still struggling, trying to break away to get to his caller. Only with the harsh slap that sends him to his knees, breath erratic as if breathing in after being starved of air, does he hear his mother’s cries. He turns to her and sees her clutching his brother to her bosom and wonders how the child can sleep through the commotion. His father storms around the room, muttering unintelligible curses about the callers. A dangerous thing to do but the adrenaline of almost watching his son lost to those whores of the sea leave him in a state of panic. His own brother a victim of their songs, he grabs a bottle of crushed berries that still seems to burn and boil without heat of the stove. He forces a couple of drop on his son’s tongue and sighs as he begins to shake as if a chill has left him. His mother rises and pulls him close stroking his head, tears drowning her eyes. His father seals the window, locking out the demon song. Tonight their son is safe. Tonight they won’t mourn.

Another is not so lucky. He is tired and frozen, past numb and cold yet he still follows the caller’s voice until he sees her back. He moves forward - a fire igniting him deep inside. Just as he reaches her, she casts a coy look over her shoulder, emits a dark laugh, but before he has time to guess something is wrong, so very wrong that he should listen to his beating heart and the fear on his spine that tells him to go, she dives with a perfect arc and enters the water. He wastes no time with removing his clothes and merely jumps straight after her. He is lost now. He can’t make out which way is up. He is surrounded by the dark and he panics. Air is escaping him and as he turns the water continues to elude him of a relief. He feels the panic, remembers the stories and for the first time understands that what the old men say is true. Then he just makes her out. The light pale green hands lull him forward. He reaches out and she effortlessly pulls him towards her. Her hair leaves a halo around her. She smiles, but he feels no fear even as he no longer breathes, and it is water that fills his lungs, or that the eyes he stares at are a blank glowing white and would haunt any man. She takes his face in her hands and smiles revealing sharp needle teeth before kissing him fully on the mouth. She extracts his soul with each pull and her beauty grows as well as the paler green tattoos that adorn her arms and chest, curling down her spine. The light in his eyes fades and she watches him sink into the dark depths below, as she moves away. He will not reach the bottom yet as each her of sisters will take their fill and will finally leave him with the thousands of others that have become victims of the Cove of the Callers over the centuries.

Tomorrow one will mourn. Tomorrow one will cry. Yet the fear of the Callers will never die.