Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-26229103-20150418194132

Any criticism is welcome, but I'm specifically looking for ways this story could 'draw the reader in' more. It doesn't feel 'gripping' enough to me.

Keep moving

My childhood home was a small village by the side of a lake ringed by a thick woodland. It was a time before games consoles and household computers were common, and so most of my time was spent was spent swimming in the lake or fighting with sticks in the woods with my closest friend Michael. On the path from the woods to the lake there was a large oak tree, with a trunk thicker than the next ten trees combined, and a vast web of branches, which cradled a treehouse made of rusty sheet metal and rope. It belonged to an elderly man who lived in the thing. We’d never seen the man, but we knew he was there, if we ever stopped at the treehouse on our way to the lake, a tired old voice would yell ‘Keep moving,’ down to us, prompting us to keep walking. The man was especially opposed to any attempt to enter the treehouse. Michael once grabbed one of the many ropes that trailed from the treehouse to the ground and the old man screamed, ‘don’t touch it!’ so angrily that we ran home frightened and didn’t visit the lake again for a week.

The old man wasn’t the only one who warned us away from the treehouse. My parents always warned me to stay away. Interestingly, they had also never seen the old man, but assured me that their parents had (though when I asked my grandparents what the man looked like, they told me that they too had never seen the man. But they were sure their parents had).

Anyway, one day we were making our way to the lake, as we had done many times before, when Michael asked, ‘have you ever tried ignoring the old man in the treehouse before?’ I hadn’t. At least in my case, it wasn’t the warning of my parents that kept me moving past the treehouse, but the angry demands of the old man who lived there. Michael proposed that on the way back from the lake, we should sit under the shade of the treehouse, and ignore the old man’s protests for as long as we could, just to see if the old coot would do anything besides shout. It sounded like a good idea at the time. We spent a long time at the lake, and by the time we headed back the sun hung low over the horizon. I wanted to suggest that we stay by the treehouse another time, the plan seemed like a worse idea the longer I thought about it, but I didn’t want to look afraid, so I held my tongue.

The treehouse looked especially sinister this late in the day. Shafts of red sunlight pierced the treetops, but none of the light was reflected off the dull metal of the treehouse, it stuck out as a dark mass against the trees, a monster crouched amongst the branches. Michael walked over and took a seat beneath the treehouse. I followed suit. The moment I sat down the old man protested: ‘keep moving.’ I almost got up and walked at that moment, but the thoughts of Daniel’s taunts kept me sitting. ‘Keep moving,’ the old man said again, this time slightly louder. The old man called down a third time, louder than we’d ever heard him call, ‘Keep moving!’ There was an angry urgency to his voice this time, I had to force myself to stay sitting. Michael was grinning, ‘he’s not going to do anything,’ he whispered, ‘I thought as much. Let’s see if he stops demanding and starts pleading.’ I quietly asked Michael why he was whispering, and he just shrugged. For some reason we shared a compulsion to keep quiet.

In spite of our silence, the old man knew we were still there, for when the red light was almost gone from the trees, and the sun began to kiss the horizon, he called down to us a fourth time, ‘children…’ he said, this time calmly, ‘if I were you, I’d keep moving before sunset.’ Michael asked me if I was staying and I assured him I was, though I kept quiet about my fear of what exactly would happen at sunset. The sun finally sank below the horizon, plunging the woods into blackness. I couldn’t even make out the expression on my friend’s face anymore, although I could tell he wasn’t smiling. The woods were cold at this hour, but that wasn’t what caused me to shiver. I wanted to look up, to see if the old man would emerge, maybe with a knife or gun, but my fear locked my every muscle in place. Half an hour went by and nothing happened. An hour passed, still nothing. I expected Michael to speak up at this point, but he said nothing. Neither did I. Hours went by and we stayed completely silent, I even caught myself trying to hold my breath once or twice. It made no sense, the old man hadn’t made good on his threat, he’d probably fallen asleep up there, but nevertheless, neither Michael nor myself dared to make a sound.

At some point I fell asleep, and woke to the same darkness. I had no idea what the time was but it must have been well past midnight. Every part of me was aching. Even in my sleep I hadn’t budged an inch. Michael was slumped against the trunk of the tree beside me, eyes closed, deathly still. I gave him a jab in the ribs and he stirred and asked where we were. I reminded him about his idea to stay under the treehouse and he immediately tensed up, his eyes wide. ‘Shall we go?’ I asked. ‘Let’s stay awhile, I want to see what the old man does first thing in the morning.’ That was when we heard him, the fifth warning, ‘keep. Moving…’ the old man’s voice was a low growl. A while later, when the sun began to peak over the horizon, he spoke a sixth time, ‘children, please leave before the sun comes up,’ this time, the old man sounded on the verge of tears. Maybe it was the fact he was pleading that finally made me move, maybe it was the sense that this time there would be consequences to staying under the treehouse. I got up and announced I was leaving. Michael stayed rooted to the floor, scowling up at me, ‘didn’t you hear him? He’s pleading with us. He won’t do anything!’ ‘I don’t care,’ I replied, my voice quivering. I turned and began to walk away. ‘Pussy!’ I looked back at Michael, and was about to answer with an insult of my own when I noticed the sun was up. Suddenly, several of the ropes hanging from the treehouse snapped around Daniel’s wrists and ankles, and he was hoisted off the ground with a scream. I turned and fled immediately, not daring to look back. I could have sworn I felt one of the ropes bush against my foot. Michael’s screaming was eclipsed by a metallic scraping emanating from the treehouse which caused my ears to ring. I didn’t stop running until I was out of the woods, just a short walk from the edge of town. Michael’s distant screams got quieter… and quieter. Finally the woods were silent.

I didn’t tell anybody what I’d seen that morning, after all, who would believe me? When I was asked where Michael was I just told them he had run off into the woods in the middle of the night. The police were called, the woods were cordoned off and my family moved. The prevailing theory amongst the townspeople was that Michael had been abducted and killed by the old man who lived in the woods, but he was never taken in for questioning. As far as I know nobody on the case ever went near the treehouse.

In the following years, the hysteria died down and the case was left unsolved. The next generation of children growing up in the town still played in the woods and at the lake as I had done, and they still heard someone calling ‘keep moving,’ from the treehouse whenever they stopped by it. I’d even heard that in the early hours of the morning, the sound of sobbing could be heard coming from the treehouse.

It was ten years after Michael’s disappearance that I finally discovered his fate. I was living on the other side of the country when I heard about it on the news. Some brave soul had finally taken a peek inside the treehouse. They found two corpses, one decayed and one fresh, strung up by ropes, flayed and mutilated. Forensic scientists reported that the fresher corpse had only been dead for a few days before he was discovered, and belonged to a man in his twenties. The decayed corpse had belonged to an elderly man, who had died roughly ten years ago. If I had to guess, he had probably died the night we stayed under the treehouse, and spent his last few hours attempting to spare us from his fate, something he had been doing throughout our childhood; and for the past ten years, Michael had been doing the same. 