OUR GUEST AUTHOR TODAY IS THE LOVELY, LUCINDA HART, FROM CORNWALL, WHO IS SHARING AN EXCERPT FROM HER NOVEL, 'THE SUMMER AND THE MAY' #RWRTeamBlog #ReadWriteRepeat

THE SUMMER AND THE MAY

A Sample

Frank’s bed is in the corner under a high window. While he laughs with the boys Caroline watches the relentless tattoo of first hail, and then more rain, on the glass. The sky is purple-black with storm clouds. Inside the ward the electric light seems even harder and brighter. Caroline feels she can’t breathe. Frank hasn’t said anything about Verity or about the accident; neither has she. It doesn’t matter now. Caroline eases out of her plastic visitors’ chair, and stands beneath the window.

“Awful, isn’t it?” Frank says. “I expect you want to be off now.”

Caroline shrugs. Yes, she does, she wants to be home in Mullion with the boys, and the doors and windows locked; she also wants to stay here in the safety of the hospital until it’s all over. Whatever it is.

“It’s the rush hour now. Why don’t you all go to the canteen here and get something to eat? Wait for the rain to pass.”

Caroline checks her watch automatically. “I don’t know,” she says.

“Oh please,” Jonny says. “I’m starving. Are you starving, Andy?”

“Yes, starving,” Andy agrees.

Caroline cranes her neck. She cannot see any lightening of the sky, but it will keep them here for a little longer, put off the moment of hurrying across the flooded car-park, and back to their lonely home on the cliff.

“Go on,” Jonny wheedles.

“All right,” Caroline relents. “Let’s go.”

Frank hugs each of the boys. Caroline bends down to kiss him on the cheek, but he takes her face in his hand, finds her mouth with his.

“I love you,” he says, as they draw apart.

“Yuck, gross.” Jonny makes vomiting noises.

Caroline smiles uncertainly at Frank. "Will I see you again?" she asks silently. "Will you see any of us again?"

She grabs the boys by the hands and leads them out of the ward. She does not look back to Frank, or to the oblong of pewter sky above his bed.

The canteen is on the ground floor. Plate glass windows stream with rainwater. The smell of institutional food makes Caroline gag. She buys fish and chips for Jonny, chips and beans for Andy when he appears unable to make up his mind what he wants.

"What are you eating?"Jonny asks.

Caroline takes a pre-packed sandwich from the cold cabinet, orders a cup of tea. As she stands in the queue to pay, she feels a vibration in the air. She blinks. The air from the cold cabinet seems colder, voices and clangs seem louder. She takes her change, keeps her head down, and leads the boys to find a table.

"Here, by the window," Jonny says.

Caroline would prefer to be in the centre of the room, away from the dark glass, the rain, and whatever may be moving in the bushes outside, but it is tea time, and the canteen is busy. It is the only spare table. She places the overcrowded tray on the sticky, crumby surface. Jonny gobbles chips. Andy messes with his food, eats a few chips, a mouthful of beans, discards his fork. Caroline simply sits with her cooling tea in front of her. Everything is more acute: her vision, her hearing, her sense of smell. She thinks she may retch from the smell of food and damp people. She can see the colours of diners' eyes far across the room; her head pounds with the conversations around her.

"You're not eating," Andy whines, shoving beans round his plate.

"Sorry," she says and tears the wrapper from her sandwich. Sharp cheese and salad scents hit her nose. She gulps a mouthful of tea.

"Are you ill?" Jonny asks, squirting tomato ketchup from a sachet.

"No." Caroline looks up, around the room, at the heads bent over cups and plates.

Suddenly she sees other things: ghostly colours blurring heads and faces. Auras indifferent hues. She jerks round to face the boys but she sees nothing around their heads. She reaches up to her hair, but she cannot sense any warmth or light there. There is no spectral halo in her reflection in the glass. She takes a bite of sandwich before the boys can say anything else about her not eating. She chews and chews, unable to swallow.

When she turns back to the dining hall, she instantly sees a dark murky yellow light around an old man's head. She recoils, almost chokes on her sandwich.

"He will die," she says.

"What? Who?" Fear in Jonny's eyes.

"Oh, er, nothing."

"Who will die? Daddy? Daddy's going to …"

"No," Caroline almost shouts. "Daddy's had his operation. He's fine. He'll be home soon."

She looks at the old man again, talking to his wife, lifting his cup.

"I want to see Daddy," Andy says.

"We've seen Daddy. I want to get home now."

"Can't we see him again?"

"No. He's probably eating his tea. We wouldn't be allowed in."

"Let's see if we are," Jonny says.

"We're going home."

Caroline is not going up to that ward again. She is not going to see what colour aura shimmers above Frank. The elderly man gets up, walks stiffly out of the canteen with his wife. When will it happen? Caroline wonders. Tonight? Tomorrow? Next week? She sees other dirty yellow auras, in different tones.

"Are you two ready?"

"What's the matter, Mummy?"

"I'm fine, Jonny. I'm tired and worried and the journey will be horrible in this storm. Let's go. Finished, Andy?"

Andy is gazing out of the window, at the darkened foliage and heavy sky.

"What you looking at, Andy?" Jonny asks.

"Looking for Angel."

Caroline stands abruptly, knocks herself on the table. Cutlery and voices jangle in her head.

"Come on. We're leaving."

As she weaves between the tables she holds her hands tightly in front of her abdomen, afraid of touching, breaking, the auras around her. On the corridor outside she stares and stares at the boys' heads, but still she cannot discern anything there. She takes hold of Andy's hand. Jonny refuses her grasp. As they hurry along the corridor, she averts her eyes from the patients on trolleys and in wheelchairs. The air is thick with auras of death. She can smell it: sweet, cloying at the back of the throat.

The giant doors hiss open, and colder air blasts her cheeks. Suddenly Caroline's sight and hearing return to normal. The stink of death has gone, washed away in the rain that still pours down, forming pools in the car-park. She does not see any coloured haloes above the people at the pay point. She looks all around her. It is just a car-park in the rain, with people in wet coats stumbling through the puddles towards the hospital.

It’s after six o’clock. The rush hour traffic has gone. The roads are awash with rainwater, and the cars travel slowly. As Caroline turns right at Arch Hill, she sees approaching thunder clouds mounting over the treetops. This time she is driving right into the storm. Great arcs of water spray up on either side of the car ahead, and Caroline brakes just before she hits the flood. She’s jumpy – really jumpy – waiting for the first flash of lightning. It comes on the wooded, creek-side road, lighting the trees from behind and above, transforming them instantaneously into shivering silhouettes.

“Angel would like that,” Andy says suddenly.

“If you get hit by lightning you get picked up in the air and burnt and dropped down again,” Jonny says. “You could land miles away.”

The car ahead peels off for Falmouth. Caroline glances in her mirror, sees the two behind follow him. The route to Helston stretches out: darkened, empty. Suddenly hers is the only car on the road. The sky bursts with blue lightning again. Bright green sparks skitter along an electrical cable overhead. Caroline hits a patch of water, almost skids, eases her foot off the gas. Sweat prickles her face and neck as she visualises the tumbled wreck of her car, upside-down, burnt-out, her children trapped inside. She almost sobs with relief when she sees the lights of Helston through the streaky windscreen.

“Twenty minutes and we’ll be home,” she says, and her voice sounds thick in the stale car, over the drone of the engine.

“Andy’s asleep,” Jonny says.

“Why don’t you have a nap too?” Caroline asks him.

“Not tired,” Jonny sniffs.

Caroline checks her mirror. There is no-one behind her. Around the bend ahead she can see the glow from red rear lights. She speeds up to tuck in behind the car in front but, as she sweeps round the bend, the red glow disappears and there is only the empty road ahead.

"Ten minutes," she mutters to herself. "Ten minutes and we'll be home."

Trees close in thickly, their leafy crowns obliterating the darkening sky. There are still flickers, but they're further away, and she cannot hear any answering thunder. She slows right down for the bends at Bochym. Water is running off the wooded hillside, pooling across the carriageway in an oily black flood.

"There's a man."

Caroline jumps at Andy's voice.

"Where?"

"There."

The car judders up the hill. Caroline snatches at the gear lever, and the car squeals.

"Where?" she says again.

"Over there."

"There's no-one," Jonny says. "Put your specs on."

"They are on."

"I can't see anyone," Caroline says, her voice quivering.

Suddenly the sky flashes with sheets of lightning.

"It's Angel!" Andy shouts. "There, Mummy, by the trees. Angel. Stop, Mummy."

Caroline's feet tremble on clutch and gas. Thunder crashes overhead, and a squall of rain hits the screen. She forces the car on up the hill, her eyes on the mirror. With a shriek the tyres hit muddy grass.

"What you doing?" yells Jonny.

"Sorry, sorry, boys." Caroline feels the burn of diarrhoea in her bowel.

"Angel was there," Andy says.

"There wasn't anyone," Jonny says. "There's no angel."

"There is! Mummy, tell him."

"There's no angel," Caroline says.

"Should have gone to Specsavers," Jonny hoots.

"You said he hurt Daddy, but he didn't."

"Andy, shut up."

The car's choking, as though there's dirt in the fuel. Caroline turns the wipers up to fast. She checks the petrol gauge. The needle is spinning back and forth: empty, full, full, empty.

"Have we broken down?" asks Jonny.

Caroline doesn't answer. She just can't speak. Onwards, onwards, she wills the car, inch by spluttering inch, to the crest of the hill. The fuel line clears, but the petrol gauge is still frantic. Caroline accelerates. Rain water sprays up from her tyres. She knows she's going too fast again. She bumps over a pot hole. At last, the road sign for the Mullion junction. She swings right towards the coast and the lightning.

It only takes a few moments, but it feels like forever. Caroline pulls onto her parking strip, flicks off her lights and wipers, kills the engine. She rests her head on the wheel, tears in her eyes, as the rain drums on the car roof and windows.

"Are we getting out?" Jonny demands.

"Yes, yes," Caroline whispers.

Her door is almost wrenched from her grasp. The wind roars across the bay. There are lights on in Verity's front room. Caroline shudders, opens the back door for the boys to get out. She's about to say you two go on, and I'll lock up then remembers she cannot let them out of her sight.

She gathers her bag and keys, opens the gate. The boys run through into the dark wet garden. Caroline slams the gate behind her. It bounces on the catch and swings open. She steps back to reach for it, still watching the boys. A flash of light in her peripheral vision, but it’s not lightning. It stays there. She turns quickly. Her car headlamps are on. But I turned them off, I know I did, she thinks. I sat in the dark, and Jonny had to rouse me.

She hesitates. The boys are on the doorstep. Jonny’s jigging up and down. Andy’s gazing upwards, letting the rain mottle the lenses of his glasses. Caroline fumbles for the key with her cold fingers. As soon as the front door is open, she shoves the boys inside, turns on the light. She should feel safer with lights on, but she doesn’t, and her car lamps are still on, out there on the cliff road.

“Stay here, right here, behind the door,” she says, throwing her bag into the hall. “I have to go back to the car for a moment. I’m going to lock you in. I’ll only be a minute.”

She locks the door, checks the handle, and slithers down the wet gravel path to the gate, suddenly terrified she will fall, leaving the boys trapped indoors and alone. The gate has blown right back in the wind, leaving a yawning gap onto the cliff. Caroline keeps her head down, wrenches open the driver’s door, and reaches in to turn off the lights. As she finds the switch, she half expects it to be in the off position, or to find that, whatever she does, she cannot kill the lights, but they die silently, and now she stands in the dark. Slowly she turns to face the cliff edge, sensing the presence of someone, something, in the shadows.

The tamarisk is waving wildly. Ocean, clouds and sky blur into a thick blue-black darkness. She can just see the pale outline of Carrag Luz on the cliff edge. As the wind pauses to inhale for another gust she hears the crash of waves far below, and imagines she can taste the salt on her lips.

“Angel,” she says quietly. She feels the word with her mouth and tongue, rather than hears it. “Angel,” she says again, louder this time. “You’re no angel. I know who you are.”

She waits, but nothing happens; no-one appears. She breathes deeply: cold air into her lungs. The pain in her bowel has gone; her heartrate is dropping. She realises her fear is ebbing.

“I’m not afraid of you,” she says. “You will leave my children alone.”

And now she can taste the spray on her lips. She can smell the ocean and the rain and the sodden, crushed bluebells and garlic. She can hear the rustles of tiny creatures burrowing in the undergrowth. She can see Carrag Luz clearly; the rocks are glittering with crystals and veins. She inhales deeply, swallowing the rain and the wind, and the power of the night.

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Author Lucinda Hart

BIOGRAPHY

I’m a novelist from Cornwall. The Summer and the May is a standalone folk horror set in my home village of Mullion. It’s a special book for me as it’s about a May Festival I took part in when I was a teenager. My other published novels are a set of family dramas also set in Cornwall.

I live in the house where I grew up, with my mother, my two daughters, and our guinea pigs. Apart from writing and reading, my interests are running and keeping fit, ju jitsu, art and history.

Please join me on my Facebook page Lucinda Hart – Author.

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The Summer and the May: Amazon.co.uk: Hart, Lucinda: 9781839195433: Books

BLURB

“The time of the angels may have passed for now, but they will return.”

The Archangel Michael defeated the Devil in Helston and cast him into Hell forever. This legend is retold every spring at Helston’s Flora Day. But the legend is about to become a reality.

Underground in the rocks and sea-caves of Cornwall, Lucifer is stirring. Soon he will wake and break free. And this time he will prevail against his old adversary Michael.

Verity is entranced by a beautiful stranger she meets on the cliffs. The young man cannot tell her who he is or where he is from. Unbeknown to her, Lucifer is bringing her under his spell. Verity’s friends fall away from her, frightened by her obsession, and she finds herself alone when a cosmic battle is fought in the skies of Cornwall.

The future of all mankind is at stake.

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COMING SOON: On Monday, 26th January, our own team member, author Eva Bielby, will be sharing her recently written, short story, 'Beyond The Mist' Part 1 - 'Mystified'.