Last Friday we had a visitor named Donald S. Murray. Donald is a writer from Lewis and now he lives in Shetland. He is inspired by birds and taught us about how different types of birds use their senses. Gannets have a special sense of sight which helps them to see fish far below them underwater. Because they dive into the water so fast to catch the fish, eventually gannets go blind and cannot find food and so they die.  Crows have a special sense of smell. The reason you will find them round graveyards is because they love the smell of dead bodies!

Donald taught us to be like birds when writing and to describe everything with our senses. We used his advice to do some shared writing for our ‘Overcome the Monster’ genre story, ‘From the Depths’.

Here it is. Just wait! I have to warn you this isn’t a pretty little elf story. It’s a gruesome, frightening horror story so beware!

The mist rolled onto the beach like the smoke from a raging forest fire. The sea gently caressed the weeping sand and the silence strangled him filling him with a sense of foreboding fear. Davie clenched the stick tightly in his hand and absent-mindedly began to make twirls in the black rock pool. That’s when the trouble began.

Without warning tiny bubbles began to gurgle from the depths of the bottomless pool like the last gasps from a drowning baby. Davie felt an ice-cold chill sprint down his spine and he froze with terror. A hand! White as dracula’s sun-starved skin. It rose slowly out of the pool.

Davie’s heart rammed against his rib-cage like a bull impaling a matador’s chest. After a stunned, deadly moment Davie gasped a lungful of air and ran to the shore screaming. When he dared to turn around a pale white body was standing right behind him. His eyes were as black as a witch’s cat, two horrible fingers on each hand, green stinking seaweed piled on top of his head. With horror, Davie watched as the demon lifted his arm and pointed straight towards him.

I did warn you! Hope you don’t have any nightmares tonight!

By Maggie, P5