Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-30361889-20161030013349/@comment-28266772-20161031172231

TL;DR - Haha like I'm giving you one of these. I just read and annotated 5000 words. Read my damn notes in full.

 I am writing this story in hopes of being remembered, maybe even to warn at least some people of the horrors that will surely come to them as they have consumed me [that last clause doesn’t feel right (will surely...) and can be read ambiguously]. I am not sure how long I have been awake, the hours blending [blend] together in one string of hopelessness, but I fear to fall asleep, I cannot take any more nightmares. '[the style’s a bit stilted and there’s an over-reliance on clauses separated by commas. Consider finding ways to increase flow e.g. but I fear to fall asleep FOR I cannot…]'

 It is ironic to me that I of all people, fall victim [tense; Consider “that I of all people fell victim / that I of all people would fall victim…”] to these horrors of my own mind. A psychologist, consumed by madness, it is sure to give anyone a good laugh.

 The day on which Lucy, poor Lucy Dovran has [tense; had] been assigned as my patient, I curse it. How I wish I would have never taken up her file. [consider the redundancy in these two sentences]

 She came to me after surviving the fire that consumed Boleskine Manor, turning it to ashes once and for all. Her file detailed that she had lost her husband in the fire [repetition; ‘fire’] and was suffering from nightmares and hallucinations due to it '[‘due to it’ does not suit the tone here. It sticks out like a sore thumb]'. I regret throwing off [same with ‘throwing off’; consider – ‘dismissing’] her warnings as a simple byproduct of her unstable state of mind. Now it is too late. [that last sentence feels a bit unnecessary]

 In hopes of finding a solution, [that comma is unnecessary] I have researched all the rumors surrounding Boleskine Manor and Aleister Crowley [eurgh], who is tied to them closely. Anything to make it stop. I found nothing but stories and tales of sacrifices, pain and death. '[these last two sentences need a rethink – is researching a house really ‘doing anything’? That sort of wording should be saved for a legitimately daunting task. And considering that his task was research, why is it that he found ‘nothing but stories’? Isn’t that exactly what you should find when researching a place’s history? Was he hoping for a stuffed teddy bear?]'

 In our first session, she told me about the manor, as she wasn't ready to discuss anything more recent. Her voice was shaky and soft as she began her tale. [new speaker, new line] “I never should have considered buying that horrid house,” were her first words toward me. “If I just hadn't, he would still be alive-” She broke off, sobbing quietly. I gave her some time to recollect herself, assuring her that her husband's death was not her fault.

 She just smiled a horribly sad smile. [this description needs a wee bit of work]

 The rumors and ghost stories, Lucy told me, were what attracted her and Jean – her husband - to the house in the first place [clearly her judgement is askew; it’s one thing to buy a haunted house but another to marry a man called Jean]. “You see, my husband loves - ...loved them,” [either ellipses or the dash, not both] she said, '[remember what I said about flow? Here a simple ‘with’ would save you a comma] 'a fondness in her voice. “I didn't care much for them, but he was obsessed, almost. I thought it was cute. And when he found out that the manor was on the market again and pretty cheap [this wording ‘pretty cheap’ also feels out of place], too, he wouldn't stop talking about it.” A fire had broken out there, a few rooms were destroyed, and several people died in the flames, Lucy told me. They had still bought it. Lucy started crying again, screaming out in agony. Regret and guilt painting her face. [tense; painted – or you can attach it to the last sentence ‘as is’ with a semicolon]

 “The nightmares…,” Lucy whispered, suddenly changing the topic. “You know, they didn't just start after,” trailing off, she looked at me. '[new speaker, new line. Very important rule that keeps dialogue easy to track for a reader] '“So when did they start?” I asked carefully. “The house...it made me have them.” I assumed she had meant the house by 'it'. Oh how wrong I was [feels on the nose]. I know that now. Her description of the nightmares was often interrupted by shivering and sobbing. “I still have them, I can see the eyes. Glowing red, too wide, like beams of a flashlight! The dark forest, it was so lonely.” At this point she chuckled, void of any emotion. “You know, I thought it was so cliché, the first time I woke up from the nightmare. I mean, glowing red eyes,” her gaze darkened, “the scratching sounds, the eerie whispering, everything was so textbook.” Shivering, she wiped her eyes. “But the second night I woke up and the scratching, the whispering, it didn't stop,” her gaze glazed over, lost in the memory, “it didn't stop.” Raising her head again, she continued, “the third night was when I saw the mark. I woke up screaming, I don't know why. I don't remember anything except that mark.” I asked her if she could draw it, but she frantically shook her head, muttering something I didn't catch. Her eyes were wide and fearful as she looked at me. [For the most part I’m really enjoying this]

 Suddenly a lot calmer, she said [this wording feels unclear; consider; Suddenly she became a lot calmer and said – or something to that effect.], “I can't draw it, or you will see it, too [comma overload]. I'm certain. You will be lost, just like I am.” I responded that drawing it might help her conquer the nightmares, as they seemed to center around the mark. Reluctantly she scribbled it on a paper and slid it over to me, while I took a mental note to research its origin, as it seemed faintly familiar to me. [to me/redundancy]

 That night I dreamt horribly. I found myself in a forest, dark spruces looming over me in eerie silence. I assumed it had to be night time, as I could barely see a few feet ahead. Upon standing up, I glanced around, trying to discern my whereabouts. It was hopeless, the darkness had settled around me like a thick fog. Seeing as I had nothing to go by, I decided to just start walking, in any direction. Maybe I would find some way out of this forest. I had been stumbling through the darkness for what felt like hours. It was cold, and I felt so lonely, so empty. As I walked on, slowly, unsteadily, not even the sounds of my footsteps could pierce the all encompassing [all-encompassing] silence. I couldn’t hear my own breathing, not even the blood rushing through me. But then, for a split second, I thought I could hear a sound, a whispering, right next to my ear. Twirling around in panic, I almost tripped, but caught myself in time. Nothing was there, nothing but darkness and silence. In frustration, I tried to scream, but no words would leave my throat. And then I spotted it, between two tree trunks, a few feet to my right, I caught a flash of red, as if the sparse light reflected off glass. And then it was gone. I stood there, frozen in silent expectation, straining my eyes to find that glimmer of movement again. Nothing, nothing but silence and the forest. The second I managed to turn my head back in front of me [awkward wording], I saw red, glowing [red, glowing; awkward wording] not even half a foot from my face. Suddenly there was whispering, coming from everywhere and nowhere, echoing between the trees, steadily picking up in volume. It seemed like words, but none I had ever heard before, and they grew louder and louder and louder. Unbearably booming, as if something was trying to rip out my eardrums.

 I woke up crying and thrashing, bathed in sweat. After a brief moment of adjusting to the familiar surroundings of my bedroom, I finally managed to calm down, still gasping for breath. Lucy's description of her nightmares must have gotten to me more than I thought.

 During the second session, I managed to coerce Lucy into telling me what they found in the catacombs after the repair crew cleared off the debris blocking it.

 “You know, I was extremely sleep deprived and irritable that day, Jean as well. All those sleepless nights, riddled with nightmares, had taken a toll on both of us. [again comma overload] I remember we were fighting about something in the kitchen, when one of the workers stormed in. His eyes were so wide, both of us instantly knew that something was wrong and he confirmed it by puking '[puking; tonal dissonance. A ‘lady’ (if you have set this during the time of ‘ladies’) simply would not discuss anything grotesque in detail] 'all over the kitchen floor. He couldn't utter a single word and just motioned us to follow him, so we did. “Lucy started crying again. [punctuation error; so we did.” Lucy] “Oh god the stench, it was horrible, and all that blood!”

 Deep in the catacombs, the workers had found a room, masterfully etched [etching is not the right word for this] into the area beneath the house, a stone slab sat in the middle, intricate carvings were on it. In the center of the altar, she explained, was the symbol she had dreamed of. It was crusted with a brown, clumpy substance. The same substance was all over the floor. But this room, she clarified, albeit horribly smelling as well, wasn't where the awful stench originated.

 “The other room...I don't know how to describe it” Shakily she continued. “I...I pushed my way past the workers huddled around a heavy door, but I froze as soon as I got a clear view. The whole room...It was caked in blood and excrement. That's the first thing I noticed, and I almost puked [same issue as above] right then and there. In the center of that room there were about a dozen white stones, lined up neatly, and I briefly wondered what they were supposed to be. But what I saw next, oh god! [God]” She took a long breath trying to calm her nerves. “There were children.” Sobbing she continued, “ they...they were chained to the walls with collars, so many of them- so many corpses! [“they…]”

<p class="MsoNormal"> I sucked in a breath. That hadn't been in the file. Nothing of this.

<p class="MsoNormal"> “They looked so horrid, mutilated like that! Limbs torn off, some even missing completely! And those masks! Horrible metal masks were encasing [were encasing; there are ways to make this wording more concise] their faces, strapped to their skulls with thick leather, red glass fittings for eye holes. And instead of holes for their nose or mouth, the mark was carved in. That horrible, horrible mark.”

<p class="MsoNormal"> Gently putting a hand on her shoulder, I asked if she would like to take a break, but she declined, she didn't want to stop talking now. “I finally threw up, then. I couldn't take it. But as we turned to flee the room, one… one of the kids [tone; kids] moved and opened it's [punctuation; it’s] eyes. It just stared at us. That's when the police arrived. My husband had called them. They ushered us out, doctors and officers streaming in the room. They managed to unchain the kid, but when they tried to move it out of the house, it suddenly screeched, a wretched, painful sound, like nails on glass. It ripped itself out of their grasp - I don't know how, and ran back into the cellar, the doctors close behind, trying to get a hold of it, but it dodged every time. It was fast, scarily fast. We found it back in that room. It had strapped on one of the masks, and was huddling in the corner, rocking back and forth. [this story would benefit from an established setting; the heavy-set poe/lovecraft vibes combined with words like ‘kids/puke’ make it difficult to know if this story is set in 1939 or 1999)

<p class="MsoNormal"> Since we couldn't get it to leave the house, I took it to one of the bathrooms, under instructions of a nurse. We bathed it and checked for any wounds. When the dirt came off, I noticed the kid had apparently [filler word; apparently] been almost starved to death, I could count all of his ribs, I could see his hipbones almost poking through paper white skin. It was a boy, no older than maybe fourteen, a wild and knotty mob of blonde hair on his head that took forever to untangle. We asked for his name but were only met with silence. We asked what happened to those kids down there, but we couldn’t get a single sound out of him. He scared me with his famished appearance and big grey eyes, staring at me, not blinking. His eyes looked so empty. Just plain grey. Had I just known what would happen - I would have taken my husband and fled. I was so blind!” She broke off, unable to continue, while I still took in what she had told me.

<p class="MsoNormal"> I didn’t sleep well the following nights, either.

<p class="MsoNormal"> One particular night I found myself in a cemetery, shrouded in fog, the moon illuminating the old and crooked gravestones. The cemetery was located right next to a dark lake, and turning away from the water, I could see a mansion on top of a hill, not too far away. Ancient and mossy stone steps wound their way up, barely wide enough for me to use them. I felt as if the house was calling for me, whispering in my mind to come see, come find out what lay behind those old walls. I couldn’t refute the urge. Halfway up the steps, the silence of the night was broken by faint chanting, and I urged myself to hurry. Reaching the top of the hill, I was suddenly [filler word; suddenly]in a beautifully maintained rose garden. The chanting grew louder as I could make out the unmistakably flickering light of torches not too far ahead. I hid behind some rose bushes, peering out carefully. Right in front of the house I had seen from the cemetery [it’s not necessary to clarify that it’s the same house], I could see hooded figures standing in a circle, moving slowly, sometimes right, sometimes left, almost as if dancing. Each of them holding a torch, the light illuminating the walls behind them. In their center I could make out movement, and as the circle cleared up before me, I could barely hold myself from letting out a horrified scream. There was a child, heavy chains binding [tense; bound] its arms and legs, a mask strapped to its skull, resembling the ones Lucy had described to me. Light reflecting from red glass fittings and metal, the mark carved into the smooth surface where a mouth would normally be. The chanting grew louder, the torches grew dimmer, until a sudden gust of wind blew them out completely. In that moment, the chanting ceased completely [repetition; completely], thick silence settling over the gathering. And then in another gust of wind, the shadows seemed to climb higher, forming a huge animal, black and ruddy, wafting in places as if partly made of smoke. then [Then] the whispering started, the whispering I had heard before. It started out as a velvet sort of sound, caressing the ears, but soon it rose in volume, a disembodied voice, piercing my ears from everywhere and nowhere. A thunderstorm of screams and whispers, indecipherable and cruel, and then, silence again. [this paragraph is too long.]

<p class="MsoNormal"> One of the cloaked people stepped forward, gesturing towards the child, saying something to the creature. Visibly angry, the creature [creature!?] shook its skeletal head and only seconds after, the child suddenly burst into flames, and the silence was yet again broken, only this time by horribly tortured, but [you could replace ‘, but’ with ‘and’ to get a better flow] muffled screams.

<p class="MsoNormal"> Waking up crying, I was unable to fall back asleep. I could still hear faint whispering, and it unnerved me so much, [this should be a period/full stop] I turned on the lights, driven by baseless paranoia. I sucked in a breath, almost screaming in shock. There, on the wall across from my bed was the mark, painted in a deep red substance that I desperately hoped was normal paint. Noticing the stench of rotting flesh, I looked around to find a dead rabbit lying on the floor directly under the symbol. It was gutted and ripped apart, barely recognizable. I heaved, sprinting to the toilet, reaching it just in the nick of time to empty the contents of my stomach into it [redundant; into it].

<p class="MsoNormal"> After calling the police, I armed myself with a bat and searched all of my apartment. No open windows, not a single trace of anyone who might have entered while I was asleep. Still nervous, I tumbled towards the kitchen on shaky legs, making myself some tea to calm my jittery nerves. The doorbell ripped me from my thoughts a good twenty minutes later. Two officers were at the front door, asking to be led to the scene. As we reached my bedroom, I gasped in shock for the second time, that night. “It was right there!” I half screamed, the officers looking at me, annoyance clear in their eyes. [you need to make it clear that the scene has disappeared] “I swear, it was right there! I swear it!” “Fucking crazies,” one of the officers muttered under his breath, while the other shot me an angry look “You better get your head checked, because that is the cleanest wall I've seen in years,” he rumbled rudely. They departed shortly after, leaving me to question my own sanity. Had I been hallucinating? Was I too affected by my current case? Consumed by my own thoughts and fears, I was unable to find any sleep for the rest of the night.

<p class="MsoNormal"> Lucy hadn’t shown up for our third session, and I was downing my fourth coffee when I received a call from the hospital. She had been found scraping symbols into her own hands and had been brought in for treatment. The news hit me like a brick. Of course, she had been through horrid experiences, but she seemed to at least start to cope with everything. I had prescribed her with sleeping pills after her last visit, which I assumed would help with the nightmares, but now I was questioning my abilities. Had I misjudged her? Had I overlooked any symptoms? She was a textbook case of severe depression, coupled with a hefty psychological trauma. '[this is a petty complaint but psychologists can’t prescribe and diagnose, they can only offer therapeutic treatments; similarly this is why you need to establish your setting more clearly because it would help you address this issue more authentically. If this is set pre-1980 then phrases like ‘depression’ might not be used, instead we might see ‘neuroses’, ‘hysteria’ or ‘dysthymia’. If it’s post 1980s then he wouldn’t say ‘psychological trauma’ he’d just say it’s PTSD.]'

<p class="MsoNormal"> With a few hours of free time, I decided to visit her in the hospital. She seemed glad to see me, smiling at me weakly. To my question on why she did it, she replied that she couldn't remember doing anything. She had taken the sleeping pills the night before and had woken up to hospital lights and bandaged hands. Though she did say she remembered dreaming of red eyes and dark forests again, of excruciating pain and horrible screams. I was speechless. The sleeping pills should have helped her into a dreamless state, but instead, they only made it worse.

<p class="MsoNormal"> I couldn't sleep that night, [those damn commas again] either. Not only did I not want to experience any more nightmares, I was scared of what I would possibly wake up to.

<p class="MsoNormal"> The fourth session, Lucy sat in my office, absentmindedly playing around with the scabbed over remains of the scratches on her hands. She had apparently scratched in the mark that both of us knew all too well by now. Glancing out of the window she offhandedly commented, “You know, that kid we found, he had the same mark. Someone had burned it into his chest. It was a horrible scar. I think he was cursed. He didn't mean to...” She broke off, furiously scratching her hands now. I grabbed them, steadying them. “Shh, take a deep breath. Now hold it. Release it.” I calmed her down by repeating that simple technique for a few minutes. “I hate it.” She mumbled “The mark. It feels so wrong.” a [A] few more steadying breaths. “I need to tell you what happened next,” she said suddenly. “Only if you feel you can manage,” I replied softly. “Yeah. I need to tell someone. It eats at me. Not being believed, not even being listened to by anyone else.”

<p class="MsoNormal"> I nodded, giving her the okay to continue. “We tried to find out the kid's name, but as I said before, he didn't utter a single word. Though occasionally, if someone touched him, he would scream in that gruesome way. Just scream. For minutes at a time. I had no idea what to do, he refused to eat anything we made him, he didn't sleep. When I walked around the house he would sit in a corner somewhere, just staring. Every time the paramedics or police tried to bring him out of the house he would start thrashing and screaming, running back to the cellar where we originally found him in. Always putting on that horribly creepy mask. It reminded me of my nightmares with those red stained glass fittings that reflected the sparse light in that room so eerily. And then he would cower there, in the corner of the room, rocking back and forth, twitching occasionally. '[I’m sure they’d just fucking tase/knock the kid out at this stage – also what is the situation here? Is it immediately post-discovery? Or has the kid somehow wound up living with this couple?]'

<p class="MsoNormal"> Sometimes I saw him wander about in hallways, followed by some sort of animal I’ve [tense; I’d] never seen before. I was only able to steal glances of it. It was huge. Black, with ruddy fur and spindly thin legs, a catlike head, so hollowed out that it almost looked like a skeleton. He didn't seem bothered by that - that thing at all, sometimes he sort of...screeched at it, almost as if communicating. But I - I couldn't bear to look at it. Somehow it made me feel so lonely, so petrified, as if I was a little girl lost in the woods at night.” She shivered, rubbing her upper arms as if only thinking about it made her grow cold. '[So she has a literal monster in her house? I’m not sure I believe anyone would find a monster in their house and shrug it off like she seems to.]'

<p class="MsoNormal"> “At night, when I woke up from the nightmares, I could hear howling and scratching - and those horrible whispering sounds - it was maddening. One night, I remember - though I'm not sure anymore if I didn't dream it - I jolted awake from a nightmare and went to the kitchen to get a glass of water. It was dark and eerily silent, there were clouds blocking out almost all the light and I could barely see where I was going. I don't know why I didn't turn on the lights. When I was halfway through the hallway, a wet sound of something ripping apart broke the silence. And as I turned my head, I saw those red glowing eyes from my dreams reflecting what little light there was back at me. The clouds cleared up a bit and when the moonlight hit the room, I was unable to move. The boy...he was crouching down over something in the shadows. That gruesome mask halfway up his face, I couldn't see his eyes. But his mouth – it was smeared with something dark. I never even noticed how unnaturally pointy and sharp his teeth were, but they glinted in the moonlight. He was ripping at the thing in the shadows and I'll never forget that moment when the shadow beneath him moved and groaned, and a hand, a – human hand, shifted into the light. I think he noticed me then, because he lifted his head in my direction, mouth open, something dribbling down his chin. And then a small smile crept on his face, I’ll never forget that moment. The smile, it looked so normal, but it felt so wrong. I noticed a shifting in the darkness behind him then, and for a split second I think I saw something huge and black leap at me, but after that, I don't remember anything. I woke up in my bed, and the room I had seen the night before was completely unchanged, no sign of anything. Now that I think of it, though, one of the construction workers had gone missing that morning, vanishing without a trace. I should have known. We should have never opened that damned cellar.” Towards the end, her voice grew hateful. A heavy silence settled in the room and for a few minutes, we just sat there, staring at each other. Then she continued “We tried talking to that kid so many times, you know. But he didn't react at all, not even looking at us, nothing. As if we didn’t exist! It made me so angry!” Lucy almost screamed in rage at this point. “The maddening silence, his empty stare, it was worse than any of the nightmares! And now, now I see the kid, that monster, in my nightmares, staring at me with his featureless mask, as if – as if mocking me! And after what he did to Jean!” She broke into tears, sobbing uncontrollably, a wordless scream of anger and desperation escaping her throat. We had to break off our session at that point, since Lucy was so shaken, so lost in her own mind, there was no getting to her, even for me. I deeply regret letting her leave with the nurse that day, because it was the last time I saw Lucy Dovran alive. I never found out what she thought happened to her husband, or how the fire happened, and it is driving me mad. [this paragraph is just too long]

<p class="MsoNormal"> She had been found a few days later, or rather, what remained of her, lying across her bed. I will spare you a more detailed description, as I still cannot think of it without bile rising in my throat.

<p class="MsoNormal"> The night she died I had another nightmare. I found myself in a dimly lit room, my vision obscured, somehow, everything was tinted an eerie shade of red. I looked around, barely recognizing stone walls around me and a sliver of movement.

<p class="MsoNormal"> Suddenly the need to breath hit me, panicking I noticed I wasn’t able to get air into my lungs, something was in the way. Raising my hands I tried to touch my mouth, but my fingers only connected with smooth metal. Instantly, my mind went into a frenzy. The urge to breathe became overwhelming as I scratched and clawed at my face. I tried to scream, desperate for help, but no sounds would escape me. After some struggling I noticed that the usual signs of suffocation hadn’t set in and my mind calmed enough to let me think straight again. With a little bit of trying I could manage to breathe around the mask obstructing me. It was barely enough air, but somehow it sufficed.

<p class="MsoNormal"> After a few minutes I was calm enough to feel for a clasp that would help me take off that damn thing. Following the leather strapping around my head, my fingers bumped into a buckle, but all my efforts to open it were in vain. Feeling further, I felt another metal ring piercing both straps, and feeling downwards I had to realized that the goddamn mask had been locked to my skull with a padlock. A sudden creaking sound had my attention returned to the room, as two cloaked figures entered.[missing space]Any movement around me ceased immediately upon their entry, and for the first time I noticed that I hadn’t been alone in the room to begin with. Several small figures were sitting along the walls, cowering in hopes of being overlooked. With the obvious turning of my head, I had apparently invoked the attention of the cloaked figures, one of them striding over to me almost casually. He fiddled with something on the wall behind me and suddenly I was being pulled forward by a metal chain. My hands instantly shot up to it as I tumbled along. That’s when I felt the collar around my neck. It was made of metal and, now that I noticed it, very uncomfortable. Feeling around, I could only feel smooth surface, no clasps of any kind. It seemed to have been welded shut. Too horrified to put up a fight, I was led into a room adjacent to the one I’ve previously been in. Immediately I froze. This room...I knew it. Lucy had described it to me. A huge stone slab sat in the middle of a giant symbol etched into the stone floor. As I was pulled towards the slab, my survival instincts finally set in and I began thrashing around, panic clouding my mind. The only clear thought I could muster was the need to get away from that altar at all costs. I lunged at my captor, trying to land a good punch. Too late I realized that I was not my normal size but rather of a very small and scrawny build, the size of a preteen maybe. He laughed at my frenzied attempt to escape, roughly grabbing my shoulder, dragging me over to the altar. The man made me climb up onto the cold stone, forcing me to lie down and strapping me there. I was trying desperately to wind myself out of his grip, but my body felt heavy, weak and useless. [paragraph too long]

<p class="MsoNormal"> After strapping me down, one of the many cloaked people in this room brought forth a different kid, I noticed a shock of dirty, and very messy blonde hair, and as they led the kid towards me, they took off his mask. Grey, empty eyes stared into mine, making me freeze mid-struggle. I could feel a spindly thin hand on my arm and the people around us started chanting.

<p class="MsoNormal"> That’s when I felt the pain, suddenly the small hand pressed down hard on my arm, its nails digging into my skin violently. I felt my skin tear off and I screamed in agony.

<p class="MsoNormal"> I couldn’t place the voice that had escaped me, It [it] felt nothing like mine. High pitched, panicked, and pained, like a small child's.

<p class="MsoNormal"> Again, I felt a hand, this time on my exposed chest, first so soft and then - pain, excruciating pain. I didn’t stop screaming, pleading, crying to make it stop!

<p class="MsoNormal"> Make it stop!

<p class="MsoNormal"> Make it stop! [needs quote marks if this verbal speech]

<p class="MsoNormal"> They didn’t react.

<p class="MsoNormal"> Again and again I could feel soft hands, almost caressing me, then nails digging in and ripping, ripping, and pain, so much pain. I felt the bile rising up my throat, almost choking on it. With blurry vision and almost mad from agony, I looked up at the young boy, to see him stuff parts of my flesh into his mouth, chewing, swallowing. With every bite, my vision became more blurry [blurrier], my throat grew hoarse from all my screaming [this feels redundant] and I could have sworn the shadows around the boy started swirling in patterns, solidifying into a skeletal head, ancient eyes staring down at me in amusement, as if mocking me, before dispersing into black swirling wisps again. I heard whispering, malicious voices, promising more suffering to come, more agony, laughing in my face, the cackling rose until I wasn’t sure where it came from anymore, not sure if I was laughing with it or crying, it filled my ears, filled my mind. Then, everything went black.

<p class="MsoNormal"> I shot up in my bed and emptied my stomach onto the floor next to my bed [repetition]. I cried for hours afterwards, the torment fresh in my mind, vowing to myself to not sleep again. I could still feel his fingers digging into my flesh, still see his expressionless eyes staring down at me, I could still hear the chanting, the laughing, the whispering. It had felt so real, too real.

<p class="MsoNormal"> The first few days I managed to keep myself awake with coffee and sugar. I worked and worked, trying to take my mind off everything else. Report after report, patient after patient, mug after mug. A few more days like this and my mind grew hazy, my movements sluggish.

<p class="MsoNormal"> I grew irritable, snapping at patients, screaming at co-workers. Unable to stop myself, I spiralled more and more out of control.

<p class="MsoNormal"> I could hear the whispering that previously had been confined to my dreams almost constantly now. Malevolent commentary to my miserable existence, sometimes urging me to give in to sleep, sometimes egging me on to lash out. I would scream for it to stop, too caught up in my own mind to register anything else. I often wondered if Lucy had gone through this, constantly haunted by shadows and voices, taunting her, snickering and cackling.

<p class="MsoNormal"> It all came crashing down on me on a Tuesday afternoon. The memory is still fresh in my mind, albeit filled with a sleep deprived haze. A secretary had emptied the pot of coffee I made for myself. The whispering had been especially vile that day. I am not proud to say that I completely snapped, going into an angry frenzy, shouting at her, accusing her of sabotaging me, repeating every last word the voice had snarled into my ear. I was out of it. She had tried to defend herself, clearly frightened by my rage, but that had only fuelled the fire inside me. I needed an outlet, the rage was so consuming I simply couldn’t contain it. I smashed a mug on her head and would have done much worse, had I not been stopped by several of my co-workers. They held me down while I was screaming, crying and then cackling in manic laughter, until security dragged me out. I had been escorted home by two police officers, who had [tense; would have] much rather locked me in a cell.

<p class="MsoNormal"> Of course I was let go after that.

<p class="MsoNormal"> With no more work to keep my mind off things, the voices and hallucinations only grew worse and worse. Staring blankly at a wall, I suddenly saw the mark appear on it, in swirling shadows, but when I blinked it had vanished. I could see the mask outside my window, peering in with glowing red eyes, but that couldn’t be! Except for Lucy, there hadn’t been any survivors of the fire that ate away Boleskine Manor. The voices begged to differ, snickering at my naiveté. Whispering of ancient gods and immortality, that I couldn’t be saved, not ever, no matter where I would go. “They will find you! It will find you! You cannot run, silly little human,” they snarled, “they want flesh, they need blood, it is not enough, He cannot rise yet, never enough, never enough!”

<p class="MsoNormal"> “No more,” I whispered to myself, as my eyes began to feel heavier and heavier. “ You [punctuation; “you…] know what is waiting for you there, no more, no more!”

<p class="MsoNormal"> I can barely keep awake, so tired, so tired.

<p class="MsoNormal"> Need to stay awake, but what for?

<p class="MsoNormal"> I don’t remember.

<p class="MsoNormal"> Why am I trying?

<p class="MsoNormal"> I don’t know.

<p class="MsoNormal"> “Just give in,” they whisper.

<p class="MsoNormal"> “Just a few minutes…” I mumble.

<p class="MsoNormal"> I hear scratching on my window, and my gaze meets glowing red glass.

<p class="MsoNormal"> -

<p class="MsoNormal"> Mechanical issues – Enough to warrant a proof read and a spellcheck on your behalf. MS word is ridiculously effective at picking out most grammatical & spelling errors but if you don’t have access to it then you just need to read it over yourself for grammar and use spellcheck.net to pick out spelling errors. Beyond that you have a tendency to muddle up your tenses and word things awkwardly. Specifically, you have a penchant for redundancies and overly long paragraphs that make reading difficult. You also don’t punctuate dialogue properly. Check this guide here for tenses, this one here for punctuation and dialogue. There are other guides you should probably check out on the wikia too.

<p class="MsoNormal"> Style issues – So the most basic problem is the setting. You don’t establish the time period and that causes major ambiguity and isn’t pleasant for the reader. The next major problem is that the story is told through nightmares and a second hand retelling of Lucy’s unfortunate experiences. Why this is the case, I don’t know. You sacrifice the physical setting (we know it’s in a house but we never see anything of this place barring some loose descriptions of its dungeon and some hints of what the narrator sees in his dreams) for the words of some doctor and that causes problems. Either way your story doesn’t put this style to good effect. It’s not done badly either! It’s just there’s no real benefit. I think you would have been better off just showing us Lucy’s experiences instead of having the doctor tell us them. You would gain the ability to set the time period clearly, describe the house (building atmosphere) and cut out the middle man. I mean the doctor experiences the (nearly) same fate as Lucy, so why focus on him? Cutting him out would simplify the plot structure, save you a shit load of words, and achieve 99% of the same impact (I appreciate that Lucy is meant to act as foreshadowing of the doctor’s fate, but there’s more than one way to skin a sheep). It also gives you room to expand on the lore/mythology at work which would help this story stand out from an extremely saturated genre (i.e. Lovecraftian).

<p class="MsoNormal"> Beyond that though the style works. You make some clumsy word choices but when you get into those loooooong paragraphs of yours we see your style at its best. Keep the tone consistent, split your paragraphs up, and keep an eye on redundant storytelling and the core descriptions of your work will shine. There’s an imagination to the ideas at the heart of this story, and it succeeds in immersing the reader into an atmosphere of palpable anxiety. That’s hard to pull off; good job.

<p class="MsoNormal">Plot issues – I’ve covered the core of the plot problem by addressing the stylistic choice to make this a second hand retelling via the doctor. But there are some other major issues too. My biggest one is why in fuck would anyone let a feral child live in their house!? Why would anyone allow them to continue living after seeing them stalked by a skeleton cat monster?

<p class="MsoNormal">Needless to say this harmed my ability to buy the plot of this story. But I also disliked that we never get to find out any spooky history of the house. We never get to find out where the story is even set (England? America? Are we looking at pagan rituals with druids or Native Americans or Aztecs?). You’re too vague on the details. What does the symbol look like? Why did the owners get workmen in to excavate their cellar? How could they afford this? Who lived there previously? Were they responsible for the murders? Or had the child been down there for longer? Also if the basement’s filled with dead kids where did they come from? Were there reports from the local orphanage of missing children? Or were they instead bred for the rituals through some grotesque Satanic orgy?

<p class="MsoNormal">Specifying some of these details would help this story feel more original, and help address the reader’s curiosity. I’m pretty sure if you cut out the doctor you’d find room to cram in the necessary world-building details to help make this story feel more authentic and interesting.

<p class="MsoNormal">See Also – Read Jozsa's Grove. It hits the same points as your story in half the words. It has a similar tone and setting but is different enough that you don’t need to worry about plagiarism. You just need to carefully look at how Mikemacdee uses every opportunity in his story to build the world and characters, and how no word chosen feels wasted. Bear that in mind. No one is saying you need to be as good they are on your first attempt, but you do need to look at how his neat story structure allows him to cram in more detail and world building which makes his story feel more economical and efficient.

<p class="MsoNormal"> Oh and it shouldn't need to be said - but this is a good story and is an oustanding effort for your first try. I wouldn't have gone so in depth if you weren't talented. I hope to see you around here more.