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The Last Burdens of Childhood, Cut Loose
The town where we used to tease the ghost. A sad, windswept little place. I hadn't been there for over ten years.
It wasn't until two weeks after my mother's funeral that I found time to go back. I needed to look through her house and make an inventory of what I wanted to keep and what had to go. Alex was still living here, though, so I sent him a message asking if he wanted to meet up. He did.
I arrived in the early afternoon, alone, aching from a four-hour train journey. I had no trouble getting there from the station, and the keys the undertakers had passed along worked fine.
Inside: mustard yellow curtains, wallpaper laced with silvery flowers, bathroom retiled in white, grey chairs in the living room with arms spattered with cigarette burns. Not what I remembered. Of course it wasn't. What was I expecting? The whole place to have waited for me? Stupid. And yet it felt like the world had moved on without waiting for me, had left me alone, grown up yet still an angry, reticent little girl
I was having a hard time processing it. Second close family member gone; the last connection to my youth severed. If I went to another funeral after this, it would be for someone I met after going to university.
I wandered up into what had once been my room to find the old box that stored all the bits and pieces that had managed to avoid being thrown away.
A little wooden cat stature with one ear broken off. A geode (gift from my brother). A couple of toy rabbits. Pages and pages of embarrassing gel pen scribblings on lurid paper, from my early teens. Cutesy notes from Alex. A glowing letter from the headteacher. A little bone.
I took it out and rolled it between my thumb and forefinger, feeling the cool, grainy surface.
Not actually bone. Plastic, from an old classroom skeleton. A proximal phalange, a finger bone. We used to say it was real, from one of her victims.
That was the story they told me when I first went down to the beach: You can go out when she's about, you can see her in the distance, you can hear her wails. All good, all safe. But if you see her face-to-face, that's it. Yeah, you'll walk away fine, if scared. A few days later, though, and you'll be gone, and the only thing your family will have to remember you by is a small piece of you left under the pillow of a friend.
So don't let yourself get close enough to see her face.
Because the bone may have been fake, but the ghost is real.
Back when I still had family. My early teens. Teasing the ghost. Sometimes, depending on how dramatic we were feeling, we called it The Game of Mists, The Moonlight Roulette, Dancing with Death.
There were about seven or eight other players, all of them from another school. I first sought them out after I heard rumours of something beyond, something more transgressive than fighting, than underage smoking and drinking and fumbling on the outer edges of the field. I'd been the good girl until then. No detentions, consistently good marks, that sort of thing. But when I heard about the Game played on a tiny beach all my friends and I had been warned to stay away from, I couldn't help myself.
So that weekend I sat in a circle in the town centre with my new not-really-friends, holding the bone “from one of her victims”, while Tom, the ringleader, explained the rules to me:
At low tide, you run along the beach towards the pier. You go barefoot. You run together, but you don't try and stick together. The idea is to try and become lost, alone in the mist. Not too hard when the tide's out and the mist is thick enough.
Then?
Maybe something will happen. Maybe it won't. If she appears, “everything will go fucking weird.” Try and find her, wailing for her lost children. But don't get too close, and don't get close enough to see her face.
I said if I got that close, I'd just close my eyes.
“No,” he said. “Never get that close. If she approaches, run.”
Then he said they were planning to go along that night, if I wanted to come.
I did.
It was just after dinner. The sun was still out, but clouds gave the world a vast, oppressive ceiling, and mist was starting to roll in from the sea. It was still thin enough the see the pier. Or what was left of it – parallel lines of wooden legs, decayed and soft, coated with stringy green slime and held steady by brown metal braces. A little while past it, the sand became shingles, then rocks, then at last cold cliffs that looked unreal in the thickening mist. In the dying light the ocean looked like ridged pewter. Chill wind sent my hair flying and brought in salt and the smell of rot.
I pulled off my socks and shoes, and set them beside the others. The sand was cold and soft beneath my feet.
“Ready?” Tom said.
I wanted to shiver and pull my coat tighter, but didn't in case it looked weak. “Yeah,” I said.
“Alright. Go!”
And everyone ran. I started a fraction of a second later. Already the mist was so thick it nearly obscured the pier legs. Halfway there, we spread out. I took the leftmost route, closest to the ocean.
Was I worried? Yes, but not in the way you'd expect. I was worried that nothing would happen, that we'd just be a bunch of near-teens running about randomly by the sea like a bunch of fools, who'd go back and congratulate themselves for being brave.
I guessed I should've reached the pier by now, but the mist had covered it. On a whim – Tom had said run in any direction – I turned a hard left and headed towards the sea.
It didn't come. It felt like I'd crossed the beach's width twice over by now, and the water was still no closer. I slowed, listened. The soft rumble of the ocean was still there, but I couldn't pin a direction on it. I could hear the footsteps of my companions too, but they too were directionless, and seemed to fade and gain in volume.
Some emotion clasping at my throat. Fear? Joy? I couldn't say. I picked a direction and ran, just to see what would happen.
I must've run like that for a minute, and by the end of it I still couldn't tell if I'd moved at all. My world was the sand beneath my feet and a wall of mist a few feet away.
Another sound came over the crashing waves: Sobbing, stifled at first, then growing louder, until it became more of an open wailing. You could tell it was borne of authentic grief and loss. And this time, I could tell where it was coming from.
I walked towards it, heart in my throat. And at last, there she was. A figure. The mist smudged all detail, making her seem like a silhouette, barely human, hunched, shuffling, wringing her hands. I approached slowly, trying to make sure it wasn't one of my companions poking fun. A few feet away, she turned, and raised her hands towards me.
I'm not stupid. I ran. I didn't scream, or anything like that, but I ran. I think I might've laughed.
It took a while to get out, with the beach changed like that. I kept on coming closer to her, or other figures in the mist. This time I stayed away, kept moving. Eventually, though, the mist thinned, and I found myself moving off the sand and onto the shingles. Thus oriented, I was able to follow the line up away from the water, and back round to where out shoes will still lined up.
It was dark now, and the cloud cover was retreating to give a view of a gibbous moon in a blue-black sky.
Over the next five minutes, my companions came back from various direction. They were all grinning. “I saw her!” I gasped, laughing again. “That was brilliant!”
“We all did,” said Tom. “You were lucky. She doesn't always come.”
And she didn't the next three times tried. We just ran about in the mist for a few minutes for a few minutes until it was obvious nothing was going to happen, then went home. The fourth go was a win, then came another string of failures. These attempts were the full extent of our social life together. We never tried to hang out anywhere else, and that was fine by me.
After a couple of months, sick of these failures, I started making notes on the conditions, seeing if there was any way to predict the arrivals. It didn't correlate with dates, or phases of the moon, or anything like that. Eventually, though, I succeeded. It was a fairly involved mathematical pattern taking the solstices as zero points. What pattern? My secret. Do you expect me to tell you everything?
I didn't tell Tom or the others, either. It was my secret, and I liked having it. It meant I got to visit her alone. And, once, bring someone else along.
My friend Ella.
A few months earlier, about the time I was getting into the Game, I was also taking part in a school competition. I won't try to bore you with the details. It was something to do with maths, and we had a week to work on it.
The day before the deadline, Ella called me up and asked to come over. I'd already finished, so I said yes.
She came, we spent some time chatting about all the stupid stuff teenagers do, and she went home. Nothing unusual.
Except in the morning, when I went to check through all my work before I brought it in, some pages were missing. I searched, and searched, and searched, until my mother started to yell about being late. In the end I had to hand in my work incomplete. I didn't win.
Ella did.
I didn't even know she was competing! But she won, using what I was sure was my method.
I congratulated her about the win. I pushed, subtly, to see if she'd admit what she'd done. She didn't. She apologised about not telling me she was competing: “I just never got around to it.” She told me was surprised I didn't win.
I tried to get over. I told myself it was nothing, really. People are like that sometimes.
Ella could see something was wrong, but she had no idea it was because of what she had done to me. She even asked me once if anything was wrong.
“No,” I told her. “I have nothing against you.” I couldn't let myself admit I'd been affected so much. Not if she wouldn't admit the part she'd played.
My older brother saw something was wrong too. One evening he sat me down and asked.
Could I have lied to him? No, not to my brother. He was the person I looked up most to in the world. He was in his early twenties, and was trying to get into one of those overseas aid organisations. I lived in intermittent but strong fear that one day he would go off to one of the more ruinous parts of the world and –
Well, I don't want to talk about that. It's a digression anyway. The point is, even the full force of my natural reticence could not stand up to him.
I told him about what had happened with Ella, and how I couldn't get over my anger.
He listened. He didn't lecture me about the futility of revenge, or throw any other platitudes my way. He just waited for me to finish, then nodded and said, “What a bitch.” I grumbled about her a bit more, and he went on: “I hate to say it, but you're going to meet more people like that. But I know you're strong enough to win.” Other stuff, too, but that's the bit I remember.
So I tried to get on with it. I doubled down on my anger, held it under. It became a tiny, white-hot flame that refused to be extinguished, no matter how much I tried to stifle it. It was still there months later, when I figured out how to predict the visitations.
And then something occurred to me.
On a day my companions weren't playing, I took Ella down to the beach to see the ghost. She knew something was going on down there by that point, of course, and she was interested in seeing what I got up to, but I didn't tell her what to expect.
I kept her hand in mine, of course. I didn't want to risk her actually seeing the ghost's face. The Just getting lost in the tiny beach and hearing that awful sobbing would be enough. And it was: When we came out half an hour later, having avoided getting anywhere near the ghost, Ella was crying.
I played innocent. I acted scared. I told her that had never happened before, that I'd heard about the haunting but thought it was a myth.
Later, at home, thinking about this cruel trick I'd played, I couldn't help but feel a surge of satisfaction.
Ella and I drifted apart. Growing up, I suppose. It didn't matter, though, because new people came into my life.
He came up to me while I was leaning against wall, holding a plastic cup of some violently sweet and violently colourful drink that I'd had foisted on me. He had a broad grin which he wielded with worrying effectiveness and a sort of chattiness which quickly got through my defences
His name was Alex Thyme, I learned. Smart, but not shy. We talked at some length about the overseas organisation my brother was applying to, then some uncool schoolwork which we both found interesting. I went home with his number, and we started meeting up so often that I even had to cut back my visits to the beach.
For two years I went on visiting her, either alone or with my companions. It was my refuge, my escape from all the dreary, grinding bits of teenage life, uplifting in a way even Alex couldn't be.
On a Saturday morning, at the tail end of a weak and pathetic summer, my mother called me into the living room. It was in the tone of voice that made it obvious something big was waiting for me. And as confirmation of that, when I traipsed in, I found my brother sitting there too, providing backup.
And with him there, there was no way I could let myself evade the questions to come.
My mother, using my full name, asked me to sit down. I did. She paused to crush the end of her cigarette and light another. Then she asked me: “How long have you been visiting the ghost on the beach?”
I don't know why I was so surprised. If there really was something down there, people would have known about it before me, wouldn't they?
I told her honestly, and answered a few more brief questions while the smell of smoke thickened.
Eventually, seeming bored by this line of questioning, she leaned forward and said, “We think Thomas McAlister is dead.”
Tom.
We'd had a successful visit a few days ago. And Tom … hadn't been grinning like he usually did afterwards.
Oh.
“We think, anyway,” she went on. “We know how it works. There's not … there's not enough left to be sure.
She was blurry about the details, but I later found out that as far the official records are concerned, Tom went down as a missing person, and that was that.
“Promise me you'll never go down there again,” my mother said. “I couldn't stand to …” The cigarette in her hand trembled. “ … lose you.”
The choice was obvious, really. I promised, and I kept my word. And I wasn't the one she lost.
I want to say I was scared straight, but that wouldn't be entirely true. I was scared, yes. But another part of me felt Tom's death added to the allure, confirmed the danger, added an extra frisson to the notion of going out there again.
But life caught up. Growing closer to Alex – I never told him in any detail about what happened down there.. Even rebuilding a sort of friendship with Ella. Schoolwork, relationships, all the other stuff. And eventually, once that dreadful letter arrived, I stopped thinking about the beach entirely.
It was getting dark outside. I wondered once more through the empty, alienating house, retrieved the plastic bone from a mantlepiece that hadn't been there when I left for university, considered putting it in my pocket, then dropped it in with the rest of the bin.
One final reunion to go. I pulled my coat around me and left the house. Clouds formed a roof of pale grey, closing the world in, save for one ragged hole in the distance which was lit into a dozen shades of golden orange by the setting sun. Closer, sickly yellow street lamps were already on, smudged slightly by a thin mist, making the pavement look otherworldly and too-small.
I stuck my hands deeper in my pockets and pressed on through the cold air, down to the beach. I stood on the shingles, feeling the stones grind against each other beneath my feet and looked out at the horizon. The sea grumbled, streaked with whitewash. The pier legs were a line of black stumps in the distance, smaller and even more pathetic than I remembered.
Presently there came footsteps, someone calling my name. Alex, standing on the road behind the beach. Now sporting a beard and deeper-set lines around his eyes, but there was still that broad grin I remembered, the sort of thing to trick you into thinking he could do no harm.
I waved and walked over to meet meet him. We hugged awkwardly, unsure of the appropriate level of intimacy.
“How're you doing?”
I shrugged. “Alright, I suppose.” What else is there to say?
After a few more fumbling bits of smalltalk, he looked at the beach, and searching for something halfway interesting to say, came out with, “This is the place where you used to … ?”
“Yeah. Nostalgia, I guess.” I shivered. “Is there anywhere nearby we can get a drink?”
“Sure. Just up the road here.”
As we were walking up to the pub, I noticed he had a slight limp.
“Yeah,” he said. “Work friend got married recently. I was enough of a fool to try white water rafting on the stag do.” He gave me a self-deprecating grin. “Got a metal plate and everything in there right now.”
You still get the chance to –
I laughed. “Of course you did. Anyone else injured?”
“Nope.”
“Every stag needs its fool. I'm sure the everyone else was glad you could take the mantle.” This wasn't funny, but he laughed anyway.
The pub was reasonably warm, with a low, uneven ceiling and soft orange lighting. I watched Alex dither over a selection of ugly-sounding local ales before ordering us both something stronger. I drunk mine slowly.
“Thanks for calling me,” he said near the end of the first pint. “I was actually a bit worried, you know, that after what happened, you kind of blamed me,”
“No,” I said slowly. “I have nothing against you.”
What happened. He tried to get into it a bit more, but I didn't want to talk about it. I pushed through onto easier, more immediate things. How did the funeral go? Oh, well, you know, the officiant was …
And so forth, until he'd finished his second pint. I continued to sip at mine.
Then we move onto the nothings. How my accent is changing. How his isn't. Work, new friends, life in Bristol, politics, everything.
At the end of his fifth pint, it was dark outside; the windows were just mirrors showing me and Alex as spectres enveloped in darkness. I suggested we make a move, and together we headed out into the night.
We walked along the empty, poorly-lit road by the shore. Above us, you could tell there were holes in the cloud cover, but couldn't make out which was open sky. The moon was out, but reduced to a diffuse patch of brightness.
By the time we reached the beach, my eyes had adjusted enough to see the mist coming in.
“How's your leg?” I asked. “Think you could walk on the sand?”
“Sure. Sure. No problem.” A pause, then: “Why?”
“The game.” I grin at him. “Why not? It's been a grim couple of days. Why not have some fun?”
He smiled back. “Alright. What do I do?”
“First, we take our shoes off here …”
I explained what to do, and told him that the fun was getting disoriented and lost in what seemed like a tiny beach.
“I'm already pretty disoriented,” he commented.
We walked briskly, rather than ran, across the beach. Soon the thickening mist swallowed everything: Pier, sea, sky Alex. I was alone, with nothing by the cold sand beneath my feet and the wall of mist pressing in around me.
Everything else in this town had moved on without me, or else shrivelled and retreated into something pathetic. But this hadn't changed. This was as powerful, as wonderful as it had ever been. I savoured it, wandering, stopping, running. I heard her sobbing over the distance sound of lapping ocean and followed it. Three times I saw her hunched silhouette wringing its hands and stumbling across the sand, came as close as I dared, and retreated.
Eventually I felt stones beneath my feet and found myself by the water's edge. It was over. I turned and headed back across the beach. It was still hard to see well, but I recognised Alex by his limping form. I realised I was still smiling, stifled it, and walked over to him.
“The hell just happened?” he asked as I led him back towards our shoes.
I shook my head. “No idea. Weird …”
He glanced back at the beach. “That certainly was disorienting.” We sat down on a large stone to put our shoes back on. He continued: “I thought I saw …”
I froze, turned to look at him. “What?”
“Well, I thought I saw you at first, but it was someone else. I …” He shrugged. “No idea. Mind must be playing tricks on me.”
“Maybe” I said.
He was too tired and too drunk to want to continue further, so we headed back to his place in silence.
The next day, I thanked Alex for letting me stay over and gently probed about last night. Has wasn't sure what had happened, but wasn't inclined to dwell on it. What were his plans for the next few days? Going to see friends. That was good, I said, and asked him to keep in touch.
After finishing the work at my mother's old house, I took the train back to Bristol.
A couple of days later, I woke with something under the covers pressing against the back of my hand. It was cold and hard. Parts of it were slick and greasy. I sat up and pulled the covers aside.
A flat piece of metal, a few inches long. Squarish at one end, ragged at the other, like it had been sheared in half. A few smears of red lay down one side.
A surge of satisfaction.
I took it into the kitchen and threw it in the bin.
It wasn't until two weeks after my mother's funeral that I found time to go back. I needed to look through her house and make an inventory of what I wanted to keep and what had to go. Alex was still living here, though, so I sent him a message asking if he wanted to meet up. He did.
I arrived in the early afternoon, alone, aching from a four-hour train journey. I had no trouble getting there from the station, and the keys the undertakers had passed along worked fine.
Inside: mustard yellow curtains, wallpaper laced with silvery flowers, bathroom retiled in white, grey chairs in the living room with arms spattered with cigarette burns. Not what I remembered. Of course it wasn't. What was I expecting? The whole place to have waited for me? Stupid. And yet it felt like the world had moved on without waiting for me, had left me alone, grown up yet still an angry, reticent little girl
I was having a hard time processing it. Second close family member gone; the last connection to my youth severed. If I went to another funeral after this, it would be for someone I met after going to university.
I wandered up into what had once been my room to find the old box that stored all the bits and pieces that had managed to avoid being thrown away.
A little wooden cat stature with one ear broken off. A geode (gift from my brother). A couple of toy rabbits. Pages and pages of embarrassing gel pen scribblings on lurid paper, from my early teens. Cutesy notes from Alex. A glowing letter from the headteacher. A little bone.
I took it out and rolled it between my thumb and forefinger, feeling the cool, grainy surface.
Not actually bone. Plastic, from an old classroom skeleton. A proximal phalange, a finger bone. We used to say it was real, from one of her victims.
That was the story they told me when I first went down to the beach: You can go out when she's about, you can see her in the distance, you can hear her wails. All good, all safe. But if you see her face-to-face, that's it. Yeah, you'll walk away fine, if scared. A few days later, though, and you'll be gone, and the only thing your family will have to remember you by is a small piece of you left under the pillow of a friend.
So don't let yourself get close enough to see her face.
Because the bone may have been fake, but the ghost is real.
Back when I still had family. My early teens. Teasing the ghost. Sometimes, depending on how dramatic we were feeling, we called it The Game of Mists, The Moonlight Roulette, Dancing with Death.
There were about seven or eight other players, all of them from another school. I first sought them out after I heard rumours of something beyond, something more transgressive than fighting, than underage smoking and drinking and fumbling on the outer edges of the field. I'd been the good girl until then. No detentions, consistently good marks, that sort of thing. But when I heard about the Game played on a tiny beach all my friends and I had been warned to stay away from, I couldn't help myself.
So that weekend I sat in a circle in the town centre with my new not-really-friends, holding the bone “from one of her victims”, while Tom, the ringleader, explained the rules to me:
At low tide, you run along the beach towards the pier. You go barefoot. You run together, but you don't try and stick together. The idea is to try and become lost, alone in the mist. Not too hard when the tide's out and the mist is thick enough.
Then?
Maybe something will happen. Maybe it won't. If she appears, “everything will go fucking weird.” Try and find her, wailing for her lost children. But don't get too close, and don't get close enough to see her face.
I said if I got that close, I'd just close my eyes.
“No,” he said. “Never get that close. If she approaches, run.”
Then he said they were planning to go along that night, if I wanted to come.
I did.
It was just after dinner. The sun was still out, but clouds gave the world a vast, oppressive ceiling, and mist was starting to roll in from the sea. It was still thin enough the see the pier. Or what was left of it – parallel lines of wooden legs, decayed and soft, coated with stringy green slime and held steady by brown metal braces. A little while past it, the sand became shingles, then rocks, then at last cold cliffs that looked unreal in the thickening mist. In the dying light the ocean looked like ridged pewter. Chill wind sent my hair flying and brought in salt and the smell of rot.
I pulled off my socks and shoes, and set them beside the others. The sand was cold and soft beneath my feet.
“Ready?” Tom said.
I wanted to shiver and pull my coat tighter, but didn't in case it looked weak. “Yeah,” I said.
“Alright. Go!”
And everyone ran. I started a fraction of a second later. Already the mist was so thick it nearly obscured the pier legs. Halfway there, we spread out. I took the leftmost route, closest to the ocean.
Was I worried? Yes, but not in the way you'd expect. I was worried that nothing would happen, that we'd just be a bunch of near-teens running about randomly by the sea like a bunch of fools, who'd go back and congratulate themselves for being brave.
I guessed I should've reached the pier by now, but the mist had covered it. On a whim – Tom had said run in any direction – I turned a hard left and headed towards the sea.
It didn't come. It felt like I'd crossed the beach's width twice over by now, and the water was still no closer. I slowed, listened. The soft rumble of the ocean was still there, but I couldn't pin a direction on it. I could hear the footsteps of my companions too, but they too were directionless, and seemed to fade and gain in volume.
Some emotion clasping at my throat. Fear? Joy? I couldn't say. I picked a direction and ran, just to see what would happen.
I must've run like that for a minute, and by the end of it I still couldn't tell if I'd moved at all. My world was the sand beneath my feet and a wall of mist a few feet away.
Another sound came over the crashing waves: Sobbing, stifled at first, then growing louder, until it became more of an open wailing. You could tell it was borne of authentic grief and loss. And this time, I could tell where it was coming from.
I walked towards it, heart in my throat. And at last, there she was. A figure. The mist smudged all detail, making her seem like a silhouette, barely human, hunched, shuffling, wringing her hands. I approached slowly, trying to make sure it wasn't one of my companions poking fun. A few feet away, she turned, and raised her hands towards me.
I'm not stupid. I ran. I didn't scream, or anything like that, but I ran. I think I might've laughed.
It took a while to get out, with the beach changed like that. I kept on coming closer to her, or other figures in the mist. This time I stayed away, kept moving. Eventually, though, the mist thinned, and I found myself moving off the sand and onto the shingles. Thus oriented, I was able to follow the line up away from the water, and back round to where out shoes will still lined up.
It was dark now, and the cloud cover was retreating to give a view of a gibbous moon in a blue-black sky.
Over the next five minutes, my companions came back from various direction. They were all grinning. “I saw her!” I gasped, laughing again. “That was brilliant!”
“We all did,” said Tom. “You were lucky. She doesn't always come.”
And she didn't the next three times tried. We just ran about in the mist for a few minutes for a few minutes until it was obvious nothing was going to happen, then went home. The fourth go was a win, then came another string of failures. These attempts were the full extent of our social life together. We never tried to hang out anywhere else, and that was fine by me.
After a couple of months, sick of these failures, I started making notes on the conditions, seeing if there was any way to predict the arrivals. It didn't correlate with dates, or phases of the moon, or anything like that. Eventually, though, I succeeded. It was a fairly involved mathematical pattern taking the solstices as zero points. What pattern? My secret. Do you expect me to tell you everything?
I didn't tell Tom or the others, either. It was my secret, and I liked having it. It meant I got to visit her alone. And, once, bring someone else along.
My friend Ella.
A few months earlier, about the time I was getting into the Game, I was also taking part in a school competition. I won't try to bore you with the details. It was something to do with maths, and we had a week to work on it.
The day before the deadline, Ella called me up and asked to come over. I'd already finished, so I said yes.
She came, we spent some time chatting about all the stupid stuff teenagers do, and she went home. Nothing unusual.
Except in the morning, when I went to check through all my work before I brought it in, some pages were missing. I searched, and searched, and searched, until my mother started to yell about being late. In the end I had to hand in my work incomplete. I didn't win.
Ella did.
I didn't even know she was competing! But she won, using what I was sure was my method.
I congratulated her about the win. I pushed, subtly, to see if she'd admit what she'd done. She didn't. She apologised about not telling me she was competing: “I just never got around to it.” She told me was surprised I didn't win.
I tried to get over. I told myself it was nothing, really. People are like that sometimes.
Ella could see something was wrong, but she had no idea it was because of what she had done to me. She even asked me once if anything was wrong.
“No,” I told her. “I have nothing against you.” I couldn't let myself admit I'd been affected so much. Not if she wouldn't admit the part she'd played.
My older brother saw something was wrong too. One evening he sat me down and asked.
Could I have lied to him? No, not to my brother. He was the person I looked up most to in the world. He was in his early twenties, and was trying to get into one of those overseas aid organisations. I lived in intermittent but strong fear that one day he would go off to one of the more ruinous parts of the world and –
Well, I don't want to talk about that. It's a digression anyway. The point is, even the full force of my natural reticence could not stand up to him.
I told him about what had happened with Ella, and how I couldn't get over my anger.
He listened. He didn't lecture me about the futility of revenge, or throw any other platitudes my way. He just waited for me to finish, then nodded and said, “What a bitch.” I grumbled about her a bit more, and he went on: “I hate to say it, but you're going to meet more people like that. But I know you're strong enough to win.” Other stuff, too, but that's the bit I remember.
So I tried to get on with it. I doubled down on my anger, held it under. It became a tiny, white-hot flame that refused to be extinguished, no matter how much I tried to stifle it. It was still there months later, when I figured out how to predict the visitations.
And then something occurred to me.
On a day my companions weren't playing, I took Ella down to the beach to see the ghost. She knew something was going on down there by that point, of course, and she was interested in seeing what I got up to, but I didn't tell her what to expect.
I kept her hand in mine, of course. I didn't want to risk her actually seeing the ghost's face. The Just getting lost in the tiny beach and hearing that awful sobbing would be enough. And it was: When we came out half an hour later, having avoided getting anywhere near the ghost, Ella was crying.
I played innocent. I acted scared. I told her that had never happened before, that I'd heard about the haunting but thought it was a myth.
Later, at home, thinking about this cruel trick I'd played, I couldn't help but feel a surge of satisfaction.
Ella and I drifted apart. Growing up, I suppose. It didn't matter, though, because new people came into my life.
He came up to me while I was leaning against wall, holding a plastic cup of some violently sweet and violently colourful drink that I'd had foisted on me. He had a broad grin which he wielded with worrying effectiveness and a sort of chattiness which quickly got through my defences
His name was Alex Thyme, I learned. Smart, but not shy. We talked at some length about the overseas organisation my brother was applying to, then some uncool schoolwork which we both found interesting. I went home with his number, and we started meeting up so often that I even had to cut back my visits to the beach.
For two years I went on visiting her, either alone or with my companions. It was my refuge, my escape from all the dreary, grinding bits of teenage life, uplifting in a way even Alex couldn't be.
On a Saturday morning, at the tail end of a weak and pathetic summer, my mother called me into the living room. It was in the tone of voice that made it obvious something big was waiting for me. And as confirmation of that, when I traipsed in, I found my brother sitting there too, providing backup.
And with him there, there was no way I could let myself evade the questions to come.
My mother, using my full name, asked me to sit down. I did. She paused to crush the end of her cigarette and light another. Then she asked me: “How long have you been visiting the ghost on the beach?”
I don't know why I was so surprised. If there really was something down there, people would have known about it before me, wouldn't they?
I told her honestly, and answered a few more brief questions while the smell of smoke thickened.
Eventually, seeming bored by this line of questioning, she leaned forward and said, “We think Thomas McAlister is dead.”
Tom.
We'd had a successful visit a few days ago. And Tom … hadn't been grinning like he usually did afterwards.
Oh.
“We think, anyway,” she went on. “We know how it works. There's not … there's not enough left to be sure.
She was blurry about the details, but I later found out that as far the official records are concerned, Tom went down as a missing person, and that was that.
“Promise me you'll never go down there again,” my mother said. “I couldn't stand to …” The cigarette in her hand trembled. “ … lose you.”
The choice was obvious, really. I promised, and I kept my word. And I wasn't the one she lost.
I want to say I was scared straight, but that wouldn't be entirely true. I was scared, yes. But another part of me felt Tom's death added to the allure, confirmed the danger, added an extra frisson to the notion of going out there again.
But life caught up. Growing closer to Alex – I never told him in any detail about what happened down there.. Even rebuilding a sort of friendship with Ella. Schoolwork, relationships, all the other stuff. And eventually, once that dreadful letter arrived, I stopped thinking about the beach entirely.
It was getting dark outside. I wondered once more through the empty, alienating house, retrieved the plastic bone from a mantlepiece that hadn't been there when I left for university, considered putting it in my pocket, then dropped it in with the rest of the bin.
One final reunion to go. I pulled my coat around me and left the house. Clouds formed a roof of pale grey, closing the world in, save for one ragged hole in the distance which was lit into a dozen shades of golden orange by the setting sun. Closer, sickly yellow street lamps were already on, smudged slightly by a thin mist, making the pavement look otherworldly and too-small.
I stuck my hands deeper in my pockets and pressed on through the cold air, down to the beach. I stood on the shingles, feeling the stones grind against each other beneath my feet and looked out at the horizon. The sea grumbled, streaked with whitewash. The pier legs were a line of black stumps in the distance, smaller and even more pathetic than I remembered.
Presently there came footsteps, someone calling my name. Alex, standing on the road behind the beach. Now sporting a beard and deeper-set lines around his eyes, but there was still that broad grin I remembered, the sort of thing to trick you into thinking he could do no harm.
I waved and walked over to meet meet him. We hugged awkwardly, unsure of the appropriate level of intimacy.
“How're you doing?”
I shrugged. “Alright, I suppose.” What else is there to say?
After a few more fumbling bits of smalltalk, he looked at the beach, and searching for something halfway interesting to say, came out with, “This is the place where you used to … ?”
“Yeah. Nostalgia, I guess.” I shivered. “Is there anywhere nearby we can get a drink?”
“Sure. Just up the road here.”
As we were walking up to the pub, I noticed he had a slight limp.
“Yeah,” he said. “Work friend got married recently. I was enough of a fool to try white water rafting on the stag do.” He gave me a self-deprecating grin. “Got a metal plate and everything in there right now.”
You still get the chance to –
I laughed. “Of course you did. Anyone else injured?”
“Nope.”
“Every stag needs its fool. I'm sure the everyone else was glad you could take the mantle.” This wasn't funny, but he laughed anyway.
The pub was reasonably warm, with a low, uneven ceiling and soft orange lighting. I watched Alex dither over a selection of ugly-sounding local ales before ordering us both something stronger. I drunk mine slowly.
“Thanks for calling me,” he said near the end of the first pint. “I was actually a bit worried, you know, that after what happened, you kind of blamed me,”
“No,” I said slowly. “I have nothing against you.”
What happened. He tried to get into it a bit more, but I didn't want to talk about it. I pushed through onto easier, more immediate things. How did the funeral go? Oh, well, you know, the officiant was …
And so forth, until he'd finished his second pint. I continued to sip at mine.
Then we move onto the nothings. How my accent is changing. How his isn't. Work, new friends, life in Bristol, politics, everything.
At the end of his fifth pint, it was dark outside; the windows were just mirrors showing me and Alex as spectres enveloped in darkness. I suggested we make a move, and together we headed out into the night.
We walked along the empty, poorly-lit road by the shore. Above us, you could tell there were holes in the cloud cover, but couldn't make out which was open sky. The moon was out, but reduced to a diffuse patch of brightness.
By the time we reached the beach, my eyes had adjusted enough to see the mist coming in.
“How's your leg?” I asked. “Think you could walk on the sand?”
“Sure. Sure. No problem.” A pause, then: “Why?”
“The game.” I grin at him. “Why not? It's been a grim couple of days. Why not have some fun?”
He smiled back. “Alright. What do I do?”
“First, we take our shoes off here …”
I explained what to do, and told him that the fun was getting disoriented and lost in what seemed like a tiny beach.
“I'm already pretty disoriented,” he commented.
We walked briskly, rather than ran, across the beach. Soon the thickening mist swallowed everything: Pier, sea, sky Alex. I was alone, with nothing by the cold sand beneath my feet and the wall of mist pressing in around me.
Everything else in this town had moved on without me, or else shrivelled and retreated into something pathetic. But this hadn't changed. This was as powerful, as wonderful as it had ever been. I savoured it, wandering, stopping, running. I heard her sobbing over the distance sound of lapping ocean and followed it. Three times I saw her hunched silhouette wringing its hands and stumbling across the sand, came as close as I dared, and retreated.
Eventually I felt stones beneath my feet and found myself by the water's edge. It was over. I turned and headed back across the beach. It was still hard to see well, but I recognised Alex by his limping form. I realised I was still smiling, stifled it, and walked over to him.
“The hell just happened?” he asked as I led him back towards our shoes.
I shook my head. “No idea. Weird …”
He glanced back at the beach. “That certainly was disorienting.” We sat down on a large stone to put our shoes back on. He continued: “I thought I saw …”
I froze, turned to look at him. “What?”
“Well, I thought I saw you at first, but it was someone else. I …” He shrugged. “No idea. Mind must be playing tricks on me.”
“Maybe” I said.
He was too tired and too drunk to want to continue further, so we headed back to his place in silence.
The next day, I thanked Alex for letting me stay over and gently probed about last night. Has wasn't sure what had happened, but wasn't inclined to dwell on it. What were his plans for the next few days? Going to see friends. That was good, I said, and asked him to keep in touch.
After finishing the work at my mother's old house, I took the train back to Bristol.
A couple of days later, I woke with something under the covers pressing against the back of my hand. It was cold and hard. Parts of it were slick and greasy. I sat up and pulled the covers aside.
A flat piece of metal, a few inches long. Squarish at one end, ragged at the other, like it had been sheared in half. A few smears of red lay down one side.
A surge of satisfaction.
I took it into the kitchen and threw it in the bin.
Well, this was… hmmm.
I appreciate the way that you've got some backstory to your character, and you reveal their personality slowly and through exposition. You've got interesting stuff going on here, and it mostly makes sense and hangs together for me.
I was a bit confused in the beginning, and I'm not entirely sure why. There was this disconnect with the flat exposition, the timing of the funeral, and her mom being dead - I didn't understand why she'd waited until two weeks after the funeral to visit the house. I eventually concluded that she probably didn't go to her own mothers funeral, which seemed a bit strange to me. Her actions later in the story make that somewhat clearer once I have a better idea of her personality, but it threw me for a bit of a loop.
Her development as a character is fairly well done, I guess, but some parts of it seemed a bit… I dunno. Authorial dictum? She goes to see the ghost… because. She's super angry about this contest… because. I'm not really sure what bothered me about this, but it might be something that also affects the last bit, with Alex.
You make it pretty clear, in that section, that your MC is harboring a deep grudge against Alex. However, it seems to come into the story quite fast - rather too fast for how deep it is, IMHO. The whole thing feels a bit rushed, and rather gruesome. Your character's actions seem… well, not entirely out of character, but more vicious and deeply disturbed than she's shown in the middle section of the story. I think this is a symptom of introducing her grudge against Alex a bit too late in the timeline, and not giving us enough clues on just how deep it is? That may be part of what bothers me in the preceding bits; not so much that it's 'author says', but more that I'm simply not given quite the amount of time to consider what's being said as I'd like, or what's being said isn't quite clear or strong enough for me to catch it at the level you'd like to convey it?
And, well, her reactions to the whole thing make her seem rather… psychopathic, honestly. Alright, I've never killed anyone, but I feel like it would take something strange going on for me to feel nothing more than 'a surge of satisfaction' in the wake of killing someone, even indirectly and in an untraceable way. So... either she's pretty messed up, or she's already inured to killing? Either way, in the end, the picture I get of your character is a deeply disturbed person. And perhaps that's what you're going for?
I'm not sure exactly how I feel about this story. I appreciated the craft, and enjoyed parts of it, but in the end, I didn't actually find much of it that likeable. It's good work, but I'm not really sure how to approach it.
Oh, and I do have a nitpick: "And I wasn't the one she lost."
I… I have this pet peeve, Author. I absolutely hate it when authors do this sort of thing. "Little did he know!" the author smirks coyly, scoffing up his sleeve at the unsuspecting reader, upon whom he had just dropped an epic foreshadow. He stroked his evil mustache and white cat at the same time, while sipping whiskey and plotting world domination…
Okay, so maybe that's a bit over-the-top. But srsly, this sort of thing really annoys me. It seems childish, cheap, coy and offputting. Perhaps that's my personal problem, but since I'm reviewing… today, I'm going to pretend it's your personal problem, too. After all, annoyance loves company, even if company does not reciprocate.
I appreciate the way that you've got some backstory to your character, and you reveal their personality slowly and through exposition. You've got interesting stuff going on here, and it mostly makes sense and hangs together for me.
I was a bit confused in the beginning, and I'm not entirely sure why. There was this disconnect with the flat exposition, the timing of the funeral, and her mom being dead - I didn't understand why she'd waited until two weeks after the funeral to visit the house. I eventually concluded that she probably didn't go to her own mothers funeral, which seemed a bit strange to me. Her actions later in the story make that somewhat clearer once I have a better idea of her personality, but it threw me for a bit of a loop.
Her development as a character is fairly well done, I guess, but some parts of it seemed a bit… I dunno. Authorial dictum? She goes to see the ghost… because. She's super angry about this contest… because. I'm not really sure what bothered me about this, but it might be something that also affects the last bit, with Alex.
You make it pretty clear, in that section, that your MC is harboring a deep grudge against Alex. However, it seems to come into the story quite fast - rather too fast for how deep it is, IMHO. The whole thing feels a bit rushed, and rather gruesome. Your character's actions seem… well, not entirely out of character, but more vicious and deeply disturbed than she's shown in the middle section of the story. I think this is a symptom of introducing her grudge against Alex a bit too late in the timeline, and not giving us enough clues on just how deep it is? That may be part of what bothers me in the preceding bits; not so much that it's 'author says', but more that I'm simply not given quite the amount of time to consider what's being said as I'd like, or what's being said isn't quite clear or strong enough for me to catch it at the level you'd like to convey it?
And, well, her reactions to the whole thing make her seem rather… psychopathic, honestly. Alright, I've never killed anyone, but I feel like it would take something strange going on for me to feel nothing more than 'a surge of satisfaction' in the wake of killing someone, even indirectly and in an untraceable way. So... either she's pretty messed up, or she's already inured to killing? Either way, in the end, the picture I get of your character is a deeply disturbed person. And perhaps that's what you're going for?
I'm not sure exactly how I feel about this story. I appreciated the craft, and enjoyed parts of it, but in the end, I didn't actually find much of it that likeable. It's good work, but I'm not really sure how to approach it.
Oh, and I do have a nitpick: "And I wasn't the one she lost."
I… I have this pet peeve, Author. I absolutely hate it when authors do this sort of thing. "Little did he know!" the author smirks coyly, scoffing up his sleeve at the unsuspecting reader, upon whom he had just dropped an epic foreshadow. He stroked his evil mustache and white cat at the same time, while sipping whiskey and plotting world domination…
Okay, so maybe that's a bit over-the-top. But srsly, this sort of thing really annoys me. It seems childish, cheap, coy and offputting. Perhaps that's my personal problem, but since I'm reviewing… today, I'm going to pretend it's your personal problem, too. After all, annoyance loves company, even if company does not reciprocate.
Okay, so, I'm really into ghost stories. This is aimed pretty squarely at me, and I got a lot of enjoyment out of it. I found the overall story a really enjoyable arc that digs into the meat of what makes ghost stories and revenge stories interesting to read. I liked the lore that's developed, and thought it was doled out at a good pace. I also liked the ending, I thought it was very visceral and satisfying in a nasty sort of way. Mechanically, it's also an easy and non-frustrating read. There are some typographical errors that need a proofreading pass, but overall it was pretty solid.
However, I think that while the shape of the arc is good, the ending isn't quite sold by the content. We have a good idea of what Ella did to spark the desire for revenge (though I think you could probably trim down that section explaining the school thing a smidge, it felt a little over-long), but the fact that Alex did something bad is hardly mentioned at all. Something happened, we know that, but what it is gets brushed away without explanation and it's hard to get a sense of it at all. He thinks she blamed him, she says she doesn't, he wants to talk about it, she doesn't want to, that's the end of it. That could be any number of things that can be super benign, and considering it was treated in a benign way in the text, there's no reason to assume it was something bad until after the fact. And while that might make the twist more shocking, it makes the main character seem rather unhinged. We know she's the type to seek revenge from the Ella story, but without any context as to why she'd want revenge on Alex other than 'there's a thing she doesn't want to talk about that he's worried she blames him for,' there's no frame of reference for the raised stakes of actually leading to his death. Especially considering before the scene where they meet and talk, the last thing we knew was that things were going well between them.
At the risk of possibly telegraphing the ending, I'd suggest setting down some concrete details as to what transgression she blames Alex for. Provided it isn't truly outlandish, the goal and satisfaction of him dying should still be shocking, as the assumption would be that her revenge plan was just to repeat the trick played on Ella. I think that if that context was there, the story would hold together much stronger.
However, I think that while the shape of the arc is good, the ending isn't quite sold by the content. We have a good idea of what Ella did to spark the desire for revenge (though I think you could probably trim down that section explaining the school thing a smidge, it felt a little over-long), but the fact that Alex did something bad is hardly mentioned at all. Something happened, we know that, but what it is gets brushed away without explanation and it's hard to get a sense of it at all. He thinks she blamed him, she says she doesn't, he wants to talk about it, she doesn't want to, that's the end of it. That could be any number of things that can be super benign, and considering it was treated in a benign way in the text, there's no reason to assume it was something bad until after the fact. And while that might make the twist more shocking, it makes the main character seem rather unhinged. We know she's the type to seek revenge from the Ella story, but without any context as to why she'd want revenge on Alex other than 'there's a thing she doesn't want to talk about that he's worried she blames him for,' there's no frame of reference for the raised stakes of actually leading to his death. Especially considering before the scene where they meet and talk, the last thing we knew was that things were going well between them.
At the risk of possibly telegraphing the ending, I'd suggest setting down some concrete details as to what transgression she blames Alex for. Provided it isn't truly outlandish, the goal and satisfaction of him dying should still be shocking, as the assumption would be that her revenge plan was just to repeat the trick played on Ella. I think that if that context was there, the story would hold together much stronger.
So this is a story that had me going up until the ending. I mean, I wasn't sure how much the story would revolve around normal thoughts about the narrator's life and how much it would be suspense about who the ghost would end up snatching. I was fine with it mostly being about the ghost, because sometimes my expectations are really off track.
But then, instead of reacting with horror at the implication that Alex saw the ghost's face, she doesn't telegraph her emotions until she enjoys the confirmation of her kill? What? Why would she want him dead? I read this more closely than I usually read things and I still didn't see any hint of motivation or character in this decision. You almost had something decent, but until you tweak it, this ending just doesn't work.
This story was so-so. (5/10)
But then, instead of reacting with horror at the implication that Alex saw the ghost's face, she doesn't telegraph her emotions until she enjoys the confirmation of her kill? What? Why would she want him dead? I read this more closely than I usually read things and I still didn't see any hint of motivation or character in this decision. You almost had something decent, but until you tweak it, this ending just doesn't work.
This story was so-so. (5/10)
In terms of criticism, I don’t feel that I have much to offer that hasn’t already been covered. That ending really does just come out of nowhere and makes her seem psychotic – the relationship between her and Alex isn’t nearly as developed as it should be.
Perhaps you were going for shock value? Perhaps you wanted it to feel like a surprise? But I think it’s worth bearing in mind Alfred Hitchcock’s little story about two people having a conversation at a café as a time-bomb ticks away beneath their dinner table (obviously, he was talking about film, but the same principle still applies). In one version of the scene, the audience (or reader) doesn’t know the bomb is there, which means that the explosion comes out of nowhere and does nothing more than give us a little shock. But the other way to approach the scene is to let the audience know that it’s there, and that it’s ticking away. Suddenly, the character’s conversation becomes fascinating. Every word of it is like a countdown.
The ‘bomb’ in this story would be the reader’s suspicion that your MC is planning to kill Alex. In another version of this piece, the tension would be electrifying i.e is she really going to do what we think she’s going to do? Does she have the guts to go through with it? Is she really that mad at him? But instead, all that potential intrigue and tension is traded away for a cheap twist at the end, and it harms the story as a result.
(Granted, ol’ Hitchcock does make the caveat that perhaps the surprise is the whole point of the story. But in this case, I don’t think that the twist is nearly strong enough to get away with it).
However, there was a lot of stuff which I honestly liked! In particular, I loved the first third of it where she’s telling us the lore behind the ghost and the game she used to play and such. Her voice feels authentic, her character motivations relatable. And the story of the ghost itself is wonderfully strange and creative, and genuinely creepy to boot.
But what makes the tone of this piece truly special is the matter-of-fact way in which everyone casually accepts the existence of the spirit, as though it’s completely and totally normal that there should be a killer ghost lurking on the beach. Nowhere is this exemplified better than with people’s reaction to Tom’s death, where, rather than explore every other possible, more sensible explanation behind his disappearance (kidnapped? Ran away from home? Swept out to sea in a tragic accident?), instead, all the characters leap straight to, “Tom’s gone missing, you say? Welp! I guess that means the ghost got him or whatever. Let that be a lesson to rest of you.”
… Sorry, written down like that, I must make it sound like the story was being lazy. But I really did appreciate this element of your work. As I said, it gave it a very unique tone, and it was fun to read.
FINAL THOUGHTS: Needs work, but definite potential for something really cool.
Perhaps you were going for shock value? Perhaps you wanted it to feel like a surprise? But I think it’s worth bearing in mind Alfred Hitchcock’s little story about two people having a conversation at a café as a time-bomb ticks away beneath their dinner table (obviously, he was talking about film, but the same principle still applies). In one version of the scene, the audience (or reader) doesn’t know the bomb is there, which means that the explosion comes out of nowhere and does nothing more than give us a little shock. But the other way to approach the scene is to let the audience know that it’s there, and that it’s ticking away. Suddenly, the character’s conversation becomes fascinating. Every word of it is like a countdown.
The ‘bomb’ in this story would be the reader’s suspicion that your MC is planning to kill Alex. In another version of this piece, the tension would be electrifying i.e is she really going to do what we think she’s going to do? Does she have the guts to go through with it? Is she really that mad at him? But instead, all that potential intrigue and tension is traded away for a cheap twist at the end, and it harms the story as a result.
(Granted, ol’ Hitchcock does make the caveat that perhaps the surprise is the whole point of the story. But in this case, I don’t think that the twist is nearly strong enough to get away with it).
However, there was a lot of stuff which I honestly liked! In particular, I loved the first third of it where she’s telling us the lore behind the ghost and the game she used to play and such. Her voice feels authentic, her character motivations relatable. And the story of the ghost itself is wonderfully strange and creative, and genuinely creepy to boot.
But what makes the tone of this piece truly special is the matter-of-fact way in which everyone casually accepts the existence of the spirit, as though it’s completely and totally normal that there should be a killer ghost lurking on the beach. Nowhere is this exemplified better than with people’s reaction to Tom’s death, where, rather than explore every other possible, more sensible explanation behind his disappearance (kidnapped? Ran away from home? Swept out to sea in a tragic accident?), instead, all the characters leap straight to, “Tom’s gone missing, you say? Welp! I guess that means the ghost got him or whatever. Let that be a lesson to rest of you.”
… Sorry, written down like that, I must make it sound like the story was being lazy. But I really did appreciate this element of your work. As I said, it gave it a very unique tone, and it was fun to read.
FINAL THOUGHTS: Needs work, but definite potential for something really cool.
Leads off with a pretty good hook. The early section with returning to a changed home was something I could relate to all to easily. There was also some nicely subtle foreshadowing about her brother here, when it’s mentioned that she didn’t have any other close family left alive.
Descriptions were good; the pier, the beach, the sand. Along those lines the ghost encounters themselves where a high point, good at drawing out an evocative mood. Eerie and deadly serious, but at the same time, a known quantity that schoolkids abuse for their own ends. It’s a unique and provocative combination.
The characterizations were good, except that I have to agree with the other commenters; we don’t get enough foreshadowing of Alex’s transgressions for her attitude and actions to make sense. There’s the repeated “No, I have nothing against you” line, but not much more.
Overall, this has a lot of really good elements, but then doesn’t quite stick the landing.
Descriptions were good; the pier, the beach, the sand. Along those lines the ghost encounters themselves where a high point, good at drawing out an evocative mood. Eerie and deadly serious, but at the same time, a known quantity that schoolkids abuse for their own ends. It’s a unique and provocative combination.
The characterizations were good, except that I have to agree with the other commenters; we don’t get enough foreshadowing of Alex’s transgressions for her attitude and actions to make sense. There’s the repeated “No, I have nothing against you” line, but not much more.
Overall, this has a lot of really good elements, but then doesn’t quite stick the landing.
This might be something of a nitpick, but I mention it because first impressions of a story have an outsized importance: I appreciate what you're trying to do with the ghost hook of the first sentence, but you're dropping it as a sentence fragment that doesn't cohere with the surrounding context enough to overcome my disorientation at the grammar. Even inserting "It was" at the start would make a difference here, but I think you'd be better served recasting that first paragraph to set up a complete thought terminating with the punch of the ghost reference. (Also, it transitions from a "there" to a "here" without warning; fix that typo, as well as better disambiguating between the town and the mother's house. Which one is Alex living in, and where are they meeting?)
Definitely agreed with the others that this is winding up to something good, but falls apart at the ending. :\ There's already been good advice offered on that.
I have a feeling like I'm missing some crucial context here. Did anyone else understand that? Is it a reference to some other subtle point made earlier in the story?
Tier: Almost There
Definitely agreed with the others that this is winding up to something good, but falls apart at the ending. :\ There's already been good advice offered on that.
You still get the chance to –
I have a feeling like I'm missing some crucial context here. Did anyone else understand that? Is it a reference to some other subtle point made earlier in the story?
Tier: Almost There
I agree with >>Lucky_Dreams here, and in particular his analogy to the ticking time bomb. I think that developing her relationship with Alex more would really help, and knowing that there is a bomb (or at least, might be a bomb) would be helpful. In fact, I think it might be better to introduce her differences with Alex, then have her seem to be over them, towards the beginning, and then introduce her previous revenge using the ghost (and her general anger issues), which could set that bomb ticking. In fact, having a bit more of her anger issues in general might help, things she just couldn't let go of.
I do have to say that I liked this story on the whole, but it didn’t quite come together for me. And I agree with Lucky Dreams’ point about the ghost being a natural part of the world working well.
The end also makes me question whether or not she's done it before; if so, making it clearer that the knick-knacks were the remnants of her victims might help (and might also help lend further sinister implications deeper in the story - maybe have Ella die, and some sign that one of her knick-knacks was from her).
I do have to say that I liked this story on the whole, but it didn’t quite come together for me. And I agree with Lucky Dreams’ point about the ghost being a natural part of the world working well.
The end also makes me question whether or not she's done it before; if so, making it clearer that the knick-knacks were the remnants of her victims might help (and might also help lend further sinister implications deeper in the story - maybe have Ella die, and some sign that one of her knick-knacks was from her).
Fourth on my list, and most probably because of my personal preferences rather than story quality (my admitted weakness). I lost track of where the story was going about halfway in, and picked it up again at the end. Stil, very good work and more than a little creepy. Solid B+ from me and most likely A material for people who are more in tune with the subject matter.
I'm using horizon's HORSE rating system, which you can learn more about here.
11 – The Last Burdens of Childhood, Cut Loose
Hook is passable. I'm not bored, but I'm only a little engaged. I guess there's going to be a ghost in this story. I'm not a fan of the doubled-up timing sentences, though—it feels unnecessarily confusing to be discussing two different timeframes back-to-back in the story's hook, the most important place to make sure your reader's attention is totally committed to your story.
I like the quick pace on the prose, not wasting a whole lot of time to get through descriptive details. The scene-setting in the house carries a bit of nice character like the cigarette burns (though I could do with a bit more, and maybe some multisensory work, which should be pretty easy in a smoker's home).
The "last connection to my youth severed" thing mentally registers to me as a direct contradiction with the bit about Alex in the hook. Maybe it'll turn out to not be contradictory, but it sure feels that way on a first read.
Okay, this is getting entertaining in a hurry now. You've got your fable setup—"whatever you do, don't do X"—so it's pretty obvious where this is going. That never stops these stories from building some good tension, though. This is what half of the horror genre is founded on, at least for films. I'm in. Let's see where this goes.
About halfway through, I'm finding some missing-word and doubled-phrase errors. Worth being aware of, but a good editing pass should pick these up. Also, as much as I enjoy the protagonist's characterization, I feel like her voice goes a little wonky every once in a while. "I have nothing against you," isn't a thing I think I'd ever say to someone in real life. The protagonist's narration occasionally gets a bit technical (e.g. gibbous moon), and that feels a little off for what I want her voice to be based on the rest of the piece, though this may just be me—there are good reasons you're establishing why technical language can fit her. Still, perhaps worth knowing that it occasionally feels a little off to me.
Seeing a bunch more of that voicing stuff with simple word choices. I think the disconnect may be coming from how literary she sounds, even while she's narrating being a pretty impulsive (if smart) teenager. It may also be a product of the transition from the short, choppy lists of the introductory section into the longer prose of the later section, which really does feel different.
The protagonist's mother's use of "We" in the scene where Tom's death is announced is a little strange. Who does that "We" refer to? It doesn't seem to get explained, but it really feels like it needs to be, since the mother specifically talks about how "We" know about the ghost, and the lore, and everything else. If it's completely not a secret, why does it have that aura of mystery when the protagonist first learns about it. If it some kind of closely held information, the mother is making a fairly major statement about who holds that information that remains unresolved.
Hmm. Well, it seems making "I have nothing against you" stand out a bit is intentional.
Well, that went where I was expecting from pretty early on. I don't really get why, though. It seems like the implications point at either Alex being responsible for the protagonist's brother's death (which seems pretty damn sketchy, unless I missed something major) or the protagonist just kind of being a murderous psychopath. Obviously something happened that the protagonist blamed Alex for, but I really don't feel like I've got a clear handle on what.
The sad thing is that I don't think the story has done enough work to make me really care, either. There's definitely some good stuff here, and I expect this story is going to look a lot better once it's been spruced up a bit. Plenty of foreshadowing, a bit of tension in a few spots, and it tries to weave everything together into a nice concerted whole. It mostly does a good job with that, though I'm not sure that it really has enough words for so many characters to breathe. I get the impression that you're expecting us to care about the protagonist, her brother, Tom, Ella, and Alex—but all the characters except the protagonist have very limited roles in the story, and hardly extend outside those roles. There's a sense in which this serves the story's tone: this story always feels spare and empty, like the mother's house, like the beach at night, like the protagonist's solitary-seeming life. But it also nerfs some of the tension, since we never have a whole lot of reason to care about anyone here.
Feel like I'm rambling a bit at this point. This was generally a fun read, with a lot of nice bits of tone and setting. Unfortunately, there's nothing especially new or unexpected, and the prose and construction generally feel loose. Normally I'd probably advise just tightening this up until you've got your core story without any distractions, but the distractions are giving you some of the tone, which is one of the highlights here. So (I know this is kind of nebulous advice) instead I'd probably advise fleshing out some of the details and characters here while trying to retain the spare tone, and then going through and trying to prune back everything that's not directly giving you tone, theme, character, setting, or plot.
HORSE: ▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉ (Yes, I left them balanced.)
TIER: Almost There
11 – The Last Burdens of Childhood, Cut Loose
Hook is passable. I'm not bored, but I'm only a little engaged. I guess there's going to be a ghost in this story. I'm not a fan of the doubled-up timing sentences, though—it feels unnecessarily confusing to be discussing two different timeframes back-to-back in the story's hook, the most important place to make sure your reader's attention is totally committed to your story.
I like the quick pace on the prose, not wasting a whole lot of time to get through descriptive details. The scene-setting in the house carries a bit of nice character like the cigarette burns (though I could do with a bit more, and maybe some multisensory work, which should be pretty easy in a smoker's home).
The "last connection to my youth severed" thing mentally registers to me as a direct contradiction with the bit about Alex in the hook. Maybe it'll turn out to not be contradictory, but it sure feels that way on a first read.
Okay, this is getting entertaining in a hurry now. You've got your fable setup—"whatever you do, don't do X"—so it's pretty obvious where this is going. That never stops these stories from building some good tension, though. This is what half of the horror genre is founded on, at least for films. I'm in. Let's see where this goes.
About halfway through, I'm finding some missing-word and doubled-phrase errors. Worth being aware of, but a good editing pass should pick these up. Also, as much as I enjoy the protagonist's characterization, I feel like her voice goes a little wonky every once in a while. "I have nothing against you," isn't a thing I think I'd ever say to someone in real life. The protagonist's narration occasionally gets a bit technical (e.g. gibbous moon), and that feels a little off for what I want her voice to be based on the rest of the piece, though this may just be me—there are good reasons you're establishing why technical language can fit her. Still, perhaps worth knowing that it occasionally feels a little off to me.
Seeing a bunch more of that voicing stuff with simple word choices. I think the disconnect may be coming from how literary she sounds, even while she's narrating being a pretty impulsive (if smart) teenager. It may also be a product of the transition from the short, choppy lists of the introductory section into the longer prose of the later section, which really does feel different.
The protagonist's mother's use of "We" in the scene where Tom's death is announced is a little strange. Who does that "We" refer to? It doesn't seem to get explained, but it really feels like it needs to be, since the mother specifically talks about how "We" know about the ghost, and the lore, and everything else. If it's completely not a secret, why does it have that aura of mystery when the protagonist first learns about it. If it some kind of closely held information, the mother is making a fairly major statement about who holds that information that remains unresolved.
Hmm. Well, it seems making "I have nothing against you" stand out a bit is intentional.
Well, that went where I was expecting from pretty early on. I don't really get why, though. It seems like the implications point at either Alex being responsible for the protagonist's brother's death (which seems pretty damn sketchy, unless I missed something major) or the protagonist just kind of being a murderous psychopath. Obviously something happened that the protagonist blamed Alex for, but I really don't feel like I've got a clear handle on what.
The sad thing is that I don't think the story has done enough work to make me really care, either. There's definitely some good stuff here, and I expect this story is going to look a lot better once it's been spruced up a bit. Plenty of foreshadowing, a bit of tension in a few spots, and it tries to weave everything together into a nice concerted whole. It mostly does a good job with that, though I'm not sure that it really has enough words for so many characters to breathe. I get the impression that you're expecting us to care about the protagonist, her brother, Tom, Ella, and Alex—but all the characters except the protagonist have very limited roles in the story, and hardly extend outside those roles. There's a sense in which this serves the story's tone: this story always feels spare and empty, like the mother's house, like the beach at night, like the protagonist's solitary-seeming life. But it also nerfs some of the tension, since we never have a whole lot of reason to care about anyone here.
Feel like I'm rambling a bit at this point. This was generally a fun read, with a lot of nice bits of tone and setting. Unfortunately, there's nothing especially new or unexpected, and the prose and construction generally feel loose. Normally I'd probably advise just tightening this up until you've got your core story without any distractions, but the distractions are giving you some of the tone, which is one of the highlights here. So (I know this is kind of nebulous advice) instead I'd probably advise fleshing out some of the details and characters here while trying to retain the spare tone, and then going through and trying to prune back everything that's not directly giving you tone, theme, character, setting, or plot.
HORSE: ▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉ (Yes, I left them balanced.)
TIER: Almost There
The Last Burdens of Childhood, a Post-Mortem
Yeah I dropped the ball on this one. The brief I was aiming for was something along the lines of The Cask of Amontillado, in the form of a ghost story, as told by Gene Wolfe. And I suppose that last part turned out to be my downfall.
I wanted a story in which the pivotal event and key the whole thing is conspicuous by its absence, because the narrator refuses to recount it, but is still evident (roughly, at least) from the events surrounding it.
This was a poor choice. First because Wolfe-style stories tend to invite a niche audience. Even I have to be in the right mood to try and engage in one. Second, and more importantly, because such stories require a lot of engineering to make all the implications fall into place, and I'm not skilled enough to get all that together in the timeframe. But I was too busy being impressed with my own cleverness to see that until I was too far in the turn back.
Oh well. Cautionary tale, I suppose. On to the individual replied.
¬Hat,
Thanks for the comments! You seem to have pinned down some of biggest screwups here. I'm also starting to think that your overall reaction is a pretty good litmus test to tell which story is mine: “Well-crafted, but I disliked it.”
The narrator comes off as psychopathic? Well, yeah. She just murdered a man for revenge. It's definitely intentional.
bats,
Right, so the fact that Ella got out safely primes to reader to expect a more benign ending – hence the twist is still in the death, for a different reason? That's an excellent suggest, more workable that what I came up with, and I genuinely wish I'd come up with it.
Cheers!
Solitair,
You almost had something decent. Ouch, damned by faint praise or what?
Still, thanks for the comments. (And I do honestly mean that.)
Lucky Dreams,
I wasn't aiming for either of Hitchcock's options, and I think the man's example misses the point of a good twist, which isn't just to shock, but to force the reader to reinterpret the story up to that point in a coherent way. (Remember back in the old days when Shyamalan lucked on a good story? Sixth Sense didn't enjoy its fame just because the ending was shocking.)
That said, the ending still failed, so a more traditional suspense ending would have served me well had I been smart enough to see it. I appreciate your compliments not just because they give me a fizzy feeling, but because they tell me there's enough cool stuff in the story without me trying to get clever with an unreliable narrator.
Ratlab,
Thank you! I guess that's more confirmation that I should've just written this as a more normal ghost story, then.
horizon,
Yeah, the hook was iffy. I banged my head against it for ages, trying to get it to work, and it never did.
I suppose it's academic now, but the italicised bit is another hint that the narrator has it in for Alex. Something along the lines of, You still get the chance to run off the stag parties, while he never will.
TD,
Yeah, that's a good call on when to introduce the issues with Alex.
Georg,
Well, I guess I don't have much say here beyond: Thanks!
Bradel,
Hm. What you have to say about voicing is interesting. I didn't notice that, but I suppose it's because I was never properly clear on how close the narration is from the character (in other words, whether it's in the style of her talking about something from some time in the future when she has a bit of emotional distance, or whether it's right up alongside her as the narrated events happen.)
Also, going by the comments, you're the only one to notice the link I intended between the death of the narrator's brother and her revenge on Alex. And if that still isn't making the ending work, I can take it as confirmation I screwed up pretty bad.
Yeah I dropped the ball on this one. The brief I was aiming for was something along the lines of The Cask of Amontillado, in the form of a ghost story, as told by Gene Wolfe. And I suppose that last part turned out to be my downfall.
I wanted a story in which the pivotal event and key the whole thing is conspicuous by its absence, because the narrator refuses to recount it, but is still evident (roughly, at least) from the events surrounding it.
This was a poor choice. First because Wolfe-style stories tend to invite a niche audience. Even I have to be in the right mood to try and engage in one. Second, and more importantly, because such stories require a lot of engineering to make all the implications fall into place, and I'm not skilled enough to get all that together in the timeframe. But I was too busy being impressed with my own cleverness to see that until I was too far in the turn back.
Oh well. Cautionary tale, I suppose. On to the individual replied.
¬Hat,
Thanks for the comments! You seem to have pinned down some of biggest screwups here. I'm also starting to think that your overall reaction is a pretty good litmus test to tell which story is mine: “Well-crafted, but I disliked it.”
The narrator comes off as psychopathic? Well, yeah. She just murdered a man for revenge. It's definitely intentional.
bats,
Right, so the fact that Ella got out safely primes to reader to expect a more benign ending – hence the twist is still in the death, for a different reason? That's an excellent suggest, more workable that what I came up with, and I genuinely wish I'd come up with it.
Cheers!
Solitair,
You almost had something decent. Ouch, damned by faint praise or what?
Still, thanks for the comments. (And I do honestly mean that.)
Lucky Dreams,
I wasn't aiming for either of Hitchcock's options, and I think the man's example misses the point of a good twist, which isn't just to shock, but to force the reader to reinterpret the story up to that point in a coherent way. (Remember back in the old days when Shyamalan lucked on a good story? Sixth Sense didn't enjoy its fame just because the ending was shocking.)
That said, the ending still failed, so a more traditional suspense ending would have served me well had I been smart enough to see it. I appreciate your compliments not just because they give me a fizzy feeling, but because they tell me there's enough cool stuff in the story without me trying to get clever with an unreliable narrator.
Ratlab,
Thank you! I guess that's more confirmation that I should've just written this as a more normal ghost story, then.
horizon,
Yeah, the hook was iffy. I banged my head against it for ages, trying to get it to work, and it never did.
I suppose it's academic now, but the italicised bit is another hint that the narrator has it in for Alex. Something along the lines of, You still get the chance to run off the stag parties, while he never will.
TD,
Yeah, that's a good call on when to introduce the issues with Alex.
Georg,
Well, I guess I don't have much say here beyond: Thanks!
Bradel,
Hm. What you have to say about voicing is interesting. I didn't notice that, but I suppose it's because I was never properly clear on how close the narration is from the character (in other words, whether it's in the style of her talking about something from some time in the future when she has a bit of emotional distance, or whether it's right up alongside her as the narrated events happen.)
Also, going by the comments, you're the only one to notice the link I intended between the death of the narrator's brother and her revenge on Alex. And if that still isn't making the ending work, I can take it as confirmation I screwed up pretty bad.
The Last Burdens of Childhood, Cut Loose
So, I just got around to reading this. Like many stories that didn't make the finals, it very easily could have and no one would have blinked twice. The level of writing here, the craft, is outstanding. It easily clears the bar of mere mechanics and construction, so the only way that remains to critique it is the story it tells.
Personally? I loved it. There's some creative stuff here. Part of me wishes we had more backstory on the poor woman in the mist, but the more I think about it, the more I'm inclined to believe it's not necessary, and would simply weigh down the story if you tried to add it as mere exposition. Perhaps you could hint at it through more subtle means, tying together some of the story's strings -- the bones, the beach, the mist, the pattern of when the woman appears.
I agree with others who mention that Alex comes across as rather psychotic. She's apparently quite comfortable not just with scaring people to death, but actually leading them to their deaths. And she is satisfied to do so.
There are humans like that, so it's a valid character to describe. But it's an alien character, one that most of your audience won't be able to relate to unless they clearly understand why the main character (we never get her name, which is a stylistic choice that I'm ambivalent about) is so eager to kill. You mention The Cask of Amontillado as inspiration, and I can see why -- both stories feature a protagonist exacting revenge for some ill-defined transgression. But it's worth noting that when Poe wrote Cask, the fear of being buried alive was very much alive in the popular imagination, to the extent that coffins sometimes came with little bells, so the 'corpse' inside could ring for a rescue upon waking. So, part of Cask's success was that it titillated the audience.
Does Burdens do that? It does not -- it simply presents us with a psychopath who is willing to use supernatural means to kill. But without any connection to the ghost or the mystery of the Game, we have less reason to be invested in this story than Poe's readers did for Cask.
But still, this was vividly told and it compelled me to read and read and read until I was done. The framing device at the beginning of the story -- sorting through her mother's belongings and finding the bone -- struck me as unnecessary or ill-fitting by the end, especially since the discovery of the bone and flash of satisfaction tied back to the middle of the story -- the MC's tormenting of Alex -- rather than the beginning.
But I digress. This was excellent, and if the dice had rolled a little different, this could easily have ended up at the top of the finals.
So, I just got around to reading this. Like many stories that didn't make the finals, it very easily could have and no one would have blinked twice. The level of writing here, the craft, is outstanding. It easily clears the bar of mere mechanics and construction, so the only way that remains to critique it is the story it tells.
Personally? I loved it. There's some creative stuff here. Part of me wishes we had more backstory on the poor woman in the mist, but the more I think about it, the more I'm inclined to believe it's not necessary, and would simply weigh down the story if you tried to add it as mere exposition. Perhaps you could hint at it through more subtle means, tying together some of the story's strings -- the bones, the beach, the mist, the pattern of when the woman appears.
I agree with others who mention that Alex comes across as rather psychotic. She's apparently quite comfortable not just with scaring people to death, but actually leading them to their deaths. And she is satisfied to do so.
There are humans like that, so it's a valid character to describe. But it's an alien character, one that most of your audience won't be able to relate to unless they clearly understand why the main character (we never get her name, which is a stylistic choice that I'm ambivalent about) is so eager to kill. You mention The Cask of Amontillado as inspiration, and I can see why -- both stories feature a protagonist exacting revenge for some ill-defined transgression. But it's worth noting that when Poe wrote Cask, the fear of being buried alive was very much alive in the popular imagination, to the extent that coffins sometimes came with little bells, so the 'corpse' inside could ring for a rescue upon waking. So, part of Cask's success was that it titillated the audience.
Does Burdens do that? It does not -- it simply presents us with a psychopath who is willing to use supernatural means to kill. But without any connection to the ghost or the mystery of the Game, we have less reason to be invested in this story than Poe's readers did for Cask.
But still, this was vividly told and it compelled me to read and read and read until I was done. The framing device at the beginning of the story -- sorting through her mother's belongings and finding the bone -- struck me as unnecessary or ill-fitting by the end, especially since the discovery of the bone and flash of satisfaction tied back to the middle of the story -- the MC's tormenting of Alex -- rather than the beginning.
But I digress. This was excellent, and if the dice had rolled a little different, this could easily have ended up at the top of the finals.
>>Cold in Gardez
Well, damn. You've taken the time to read and respond to all my stories so far even though you didn't have to look at any of them. So: Thank you, really. You have my sincere and immense gratitude.
And now I feel a bit guilty for coming down on Doubt Not so nastily.
Well, damn. You've taken the time to read and respond to all my stories so far even though you didn't have to look at any of them. So: Thank you, really. You have my sincere and immense gratitude.
And now I feel a bit guilty for coming down on Doubt Not so nastily.