I was lying in bed last night reading when I noticed a movement our of the corner of my eye. It was a spider scuttling across the floor, but not your average spider, oh no. This was the King Kong of spiders, a huge, black, hairy hunchbacked thing. It stopped next to the waste paper bin and just stayed there. I don’t know it it was daring me to move or it had a death wish. If so, it got its wish as I introduced it to my shoe. It’s remains where then flushed down the toilet on its way to spider hell, because that’s where all spiders go. A place when juicy flies buzz over head, but they can never catch then and every hour they get a blast in the face from a bug spray. The thing that kept me awake was wondering if he had come alone or was there a relative or friend close by?
I woke this morning to the sound of chainsaws and to my horror found the powers that be were cutting down the branches of the tree outside my office window. It’s not in my garden so there was nothing I could do, but watch as it was stripped of its lush branches. Hours later its been reduced to a stalk, its limbs jutting like skeleton arms towards an unforgiving, grey sky. I know some will think, “So what, it’s just a tree,” but its not. I watched it grow over twenty years from a sapling to a might elm. Its branches was home to countless generations of birds. Their nests now lie like dark blood spots on the green grass and the owners circle the stump in confusion. Not only did it hang with leaves and blossoms, but in its youth it was a climbing frame for many of the neighborhood boys. If I close my eyes I can see them hanging upside down by the ankles, glossy hair swinging as they screamed with life and laughter. Those little faces are lost to me now, the boys all grown and scattered to the four corners of the world. I judged the seasons by its leaves and watched as it grew from bud to green, then orange, red and gold. It will, no doubt, recover and come to life in time, but I will miss its familiar greeting, when I open the blinds each morning and the birdsong. Ah, that I will miss most of all.
Well folks, we’re back to the rain. Not that it makes much difference when you’re manacled to a desk. I was determined to take some time off after completing Shadow Self, but the blank screen kept issuing a challenge and I’m not one to back down. I’m hoping to make the story in to a trilogy and have written the first three chapters of Beyond Bargamore. You’ll understand the title later on. Have a great day and stay safe.
I’ve done it. Despite the wonderful sunshine, I stayed inside and finished the last chapter of Shadow Self. It sometimes frightens me how determined I am when I set my mind to something and no amount of coaxing could get me to leave the computer. Now, comes the hard part, finding someone to publish it, but I have faith in my agent. It is suitable for 8 years and up, but really it’s for all those who still believe in magic. I do, do you?
I’m still beavering away at the editing, but that’s not what I want to tell you about today. I heard about Empty Nest Syndrome, but it’s just hit me for the first time, when a pair of abandoned angel wings reduced me to a sobbing wreck. My children have come and gone over the years, dipping their toes in the property market etc, but now it feels so final. It’s not too bad during the day, when I’m working and have no time to think of anything other than mythical characters, but its when night come creeping that the ache sets in. I hate closing the bedrooms doors on rooms now devoid of scent and sound. If a floorboard creaks I know it’s just the house settling and not the tread of a loved ones foot. Even the sign on my office door, warning that I am working, is now redundant. I’m delighted that my children are happy, of course I am, but I just wasn’t prepared for the sense of loss.
There was nothing beautiful about the house, but it obsessed her from the moment she saw it. Its fascination had nothing to do with anything strange or otherworldly; it was just that she had never had anything of her own before; not a house, a room, not even a bed. Everything had been leant to her; as though the giver warned “this will be yours for a while or for as long as I say.” Well, all that was at an end and she was now the proud owner of Bracken House, a Gothic monstrosity set in a remote location and lacking any of the charm that such buildings can sometimes have. The front of the house was a mismatch of tower rooms and angles, as though the builder, uncaring of where he placed each brick, let the house rise from the foundations of its own accord. This gave it a rather simple, moronic look and were it to vie for place among other buildings of its era, it would, in all honesty, be thought of as the court jester, it’s misshapen limbs a joke among the majesty of finer houses. Still, its new owner saw none of this and after the bare cells and cold stones of the convent; she saw only her new home and the start of a new life.
It had come as quiet a shock to the Mother Superior and her other sisters when she told them she was leaving. The look of outrage and disbelief on each face still sent her in to giggles of delight and she relished the upset she had caused by abandoning what was a depleting calling.
“But, you’re sixty eight years old,” Mother Superior gasped.
“It’s never too late or so they tell me,” Sister Anne, as she was then known, replied.
“Where will you go; what will you do?” The Mother asked.
“As you know, my mother recently died and it seems she has left me her whole estate, “Sister Anne said. “I intend to use the money before it is too late.”
“We are always short of funds, Could you not stay here? It had been your home for over fifty two years after all, and it seems only fair that the other sisters should share in your wealth.”
“I have no intention of sharing one penny with any of you,” Sister Anne replied, before getting to her feet.
The Mother Superior’s face was ashen in the fading light, her lips drawn in to a thin line of anger and Janet; she had reclaimed her old name, wonder if it were not for the large, mahogany desk that divided them, would the woman have struck her? How glad she was to leave the office that day and know that she would never return. The image of that room was imprinted on her retinas and the smell of trapped heat and old books seemed to have lodged itself in her nose. The idea that she would share her new found wealth with others! But then, Janet had never been one to share anything. Truth be known, she would not be missed by those she lived and worked beside and she knew that there was those who had breathe a sigh of relief when she walked out through the gates of the convent. There was nothing wrong with her; she decided many years ago, it was other people who had the problem. She had no time for the fake friendships they offered and the harlots who were placed in her care were a burden to be endured. She was a strong woman with even stronger principles and if they thought of her as cruel in her treatment of others, that just showed their weakness in both morals and spirit. It was time to go anyway, as the years changed and the unmarried mother was no longer an outcast and therefore of no value to her order. The other sister had become fat and lazy from decades of inactivity, while she stayed lean and unbending in all, especially her beliefs.
The rather stupid young man in the estate agents office had tried to dissuade her when she picked out the house from a stack of leaflets. It was very remote; he said and had the audacity to add, for a lady of her age and should she need help it was miles away from a hospital.
“I have never known a day’s sickness in my life,” she snatched the leaflet from his hand. “And I don’t intend to start now, even at my great age,” she added.
He had the grace to blush then and agreed to take her to view the house. Even as they drove, he pointed out, what he believed were more suitable properties, but she had ignored him, refusing to turn her head to look.
She loved the house on sight.
“Your photograph does not do it justice,” she told him.
“Really?” He stared from the leaflet to the house and scratched his head in wonder as she drank in the mottled brickwork, trailing ivy and peeling wood. “It has quite a reputation round here.”
“In what way?” She thought this just another ploy to put her off buying.
He shuffled from foot to foot and kept his eyes on the ground.
“Come along, young man. I have no time for dawdlers.”
“They say it’s haunted,” he mumbled. “That’s why no one wants to buy it.”
“How ridiculous,” Janet huffed. “Haunted indeed!”
One of the former sister’s downfalls was, like all salesmen familiar with a particular product, she knew all its faults and so it was when it came to spirits and religion. She feared nothing and no one and if that young upstart thought he could frighten her away with his tales of hauntings, he had quite another thing coming.
“I would like to see the interior now,” she said, her lips drawn in to their usual line of disapproval, her eyes thin slits in her skeletal face.
There was no arguing with someone like his present client and the young man took a large, rust-stained key from the glove compartment of his car and led her towards the house. Whatever Janet’s beliefs, the house did have a bad reputation. It was well known that it was haunted. In fact, it was the glue that held most ghost stories together. It was included in most tales of terror and one told by the old women of the surrounding area, round winter fires they whispered its name and crossed themselves with fear, to add substance and terror to the telling.
Janet felt a delicious thrill when he opened the creaking front door. The hallway smelt mouldy and clouds of dust rose from the threadbare carpets and muffled their footsteps as they descended further in to the house. She scanned each of the downstairs rooms, making a shrewd assessment of what it would cost to repair and what she might knock off the asking price.
The rustling ivy outside the windows sent darting shadows across the bare walls and their grotesque shapes made her shiver. It was all that young man’s fault; she glared at him for putting such thoughts in to her mind. The noises in the wainscoting were nothing more sinister that the scuttling of mice and the creaking floorboards overhead signalled that other wildlife had made there home within the house. She was right; there was a life of sorts within the house, but it was not one that could be easily explained away.
Another restless night spent listening to the Worry Witches. You all know these terrible creatures, who creep up beside your bed, when you are desperately trying to sleep, and whisper in your ear about all the things that could go wrong or might go wrong. They’re at their most powerful when you’re worried about something or someone. Yet, on Saturday night, when I’ve had a glass of wine or seven, I am deaf to their murmurings! So the question is, is wine a force against evil or does it just still the voices in ones head?
It’s been a while since I’ve posted a story, but there never seems to be enough hours in the day to fit everything in. I’m 99,144 words in to my new novel for young adults and trapped in a world of fantasy and folklore. Sometimes it’s difficult to remember where fantasy ends and reality begins. The fact is that fantasy has become more preferable as I create worlds filled with color, where we know who the bad guys are and we can root for the goodies. If only things were more clear cut in our mortal world.
The Shed
Jim McCormack built a shed. So what, you’re thinking? Men build sheds all the time and there is nothing in that first sentence that draws the reader and make them hungry for more, but wait. This is his story, told to me by his daughter and I can vouch for the tale as I have seen the structure first hand.
Jim has been diagnosed with a brain tumour. It has come at a time when he should be winding down and enjoying what life has to offer. The fates are not always kind and he had to retire from a career he loved and to his horror, he is now in the company of his wife twenty-four hours a day. She is not a bad woman, but the kindest thing I can find to say about her is that her tongue was forged from the finest tempered steel. 
Death requires a lot of thought, he needed to be alone, to get things in order and so the idea of a shed was born. He built it himself, not an easy job for a man unused to working with his hands, but it came together bit by bit. The roof is made of galvanised steel, which makes the slightest shower of rain sound like thunder. It doesn’t matter though as sounds, smells and colours have become very important and have taken on a new meaning. The walls are made from pieces of wood he found while scavenging or was given by family and friends. Nothing matches, but it is his den, his sanctuary. He now spends most of his day in there and admits only the privileged few.
His five-year-old granddaughter, Suzie, is his best friend. Most days, after the rigors of school and homework are through; they sit in the shed and build furniture for her doll’s house. Tiny beds, tables and chairs are whittled by his care-worn hands as he listens to her childish gossip. He is her granddad, her hero and he in turn finds comfort in her dreams and imagination. I watch them sometimes, these two gentle souls, one just beginning a life, the other contemplating the end and I wish that time could stand still.
Of course the most important thing about the shed is to see Jim’s pride in it. He glows when he speaks of finding some old oil heater or table that fits inside its rackety interior. He needs to keep adding to it as if it were alive, feeding it the way he did his children. It had become an extension of himself and says the things he could never find words for. It keeps out the unwelcome and lets in with open arms the people he loves. As my friend says.
“It has made me realise how much I mean to my father. I’m a bit like the shed, I’ll never be perfect, but when he talks about me his face has the same glow it has when he talks about the shed.”
It’s a beginning. I refuse to think of it as an end. Don’t you?
Copyrighr© Gemma Mawdsley2013
I know I’m very late in getting round to this, but the wishes are the same no matter how late. I hope that 2013 is good to all my friends and if I could write with my fingers crossed then I would. I have always been one who thinks that things will get better, but sometimes it’s hard to believe they will. I’m not complaining for myself, but it pains me to see how sick and downcast my country, Ireland has become. I’ve always been a bit of a Christmasholic, someone who plans for it the whole year. I love the glamour and glitz, but this year, for the first time ever, it was a complete let down. The season was somehow muted, as though no one had the heart to truly take part. I had the same amount of family and friends to Christmas dinner, 14 of them, so it was very busy. Still, everyone seemed lethargic, not only in my home, but everywhere. I’ve spoken to a number of people since and they all had the same opinion. It feels as though people have lost hope and when that happens there’s no way back. I’ve stopped reading the newspapers, as everyday the sad panorama of human suffering is played out in black in white. A couple in their 60s frozen to death in Dublin and more and more people are losing their homes. Up to 25 homes a week are having their gas cut and this is just as the really hard weather hits. Some people are actually asking the electricity companies to cut their supply as the stress of owning big bills is killing them. This is modern day Ireland, living by candlelight while ice forms on the inside of the window glass. When I was researching my first novel, The Paupers‘ Graveyard, I thought things like the famine were history. This is not so as people can no longer afford to feed their families and the charity organisations are overwork and under financed to cope with the thousands asking for help. The statistics I have given you may seem small, but you must realise how tiny our country is compared to many. There are no jobs to be had. My daughter sent out 512 applications for jobs and received two replies, both rejections, so I know what I’m talking about. All we can do is pray for a miracle and that’s what I wish for you all as the months tumble one in to the other. Good health and happiness, I suppose if we have these two basic things then we can achieve anything. Like Pandora’s Box I leave you with the thing I wish you the most, Hope. Never stop believing.
gemmamawdsley 