Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-33531395-20171113200011/@comment-24101790-20171122043155

Starting with the smaller things, the sounds (Knock.) would be more effective italicized. This is done to differentiate sounds from the rest of the text. It also draws more attention to the words and gives them more importance in the story.

"She was wearing an old fashioned white dress that looked to be very valuable." This line could use a bit of revision as it really isn't apparent why the dress seems to have any value. A general rule of thumb is that any suggestion you make to the audience about the condition of an item should have a bit of evidence to back up the claim. (For example: The stairs looked like they were rotting and I was pretty sure that they were going to collapse the second I put any real weight on them.)

"One distinguishing feature was her black, souless eyes which were crying crimson red." I know it's featured in the original story, but describing them as crying blood really tends to set off the cliche marker as it's done a lot in stories and it's never really as effective or well-received as the writer envisions it will be.

"Simon began crawling backwards, the knife now sliding across the floor under his palm." Besides some awkward wording, the plot about him arming himself with the knife does feel a bit like a misuse of Chekhov's gun. You set up the protagonist arming himself and he immediately drops it, making it feel a bit out of place.

"Simon looked up at the girl, who seemed to have aged to a young teenage girl, and rested his faith to her." I'm not sure what you're trying to say with the second section of that sentence of why she randomly ages up to a teenager in the end.

Additionally it feels like you can do quite a bit more with the source material, The White Death. Right now it comes off more like an OC (crying blood is common) and doesn't really work too much of the original idea into your version. Feel free to read WITNESS, a story on the site that recounts the same events but incorporates more elements from the original telling into the plot.