Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-4893169-20190908203236/@comment-28266772-20190909112533

The whole mess started one spring afternoon, shortly after I relocated to Quimper in Brittany France. I was snoozing away peacefully after an all-night bender when a jarring noise disrupted the blissful scene: ''brrrrrr-ing… brrrrrrr-ing... brrrrrrr-ing… brrrrrrr-ing…''

“It’s here again,” said Mike--aka inconsiderate, entitled, surf enthusiast/trust-funded flatmate who still believed in a maxed-volume ringtone-- from down the hall. ''brrrrrr-ing… brrrrrrr-ing... brrrrrrr-ing…''

"Oh for God's sake!"[space]I growled, covering my head with the pillow. “Answer the damned phone, you stupid stoner slacker!”

“3 p.m," he continued, in a graver tone, “just like the landlord said it would–[try a period here instead]and right on time too.”

I cracked open one glassy eye and peered blearily up at my cracked ceiling. “What the frickin’ hell is he talking about?”

And then I heard it–[colon]the barking. The goddamn barking rising up from streets, from behind the walls bordering our apartment, increasing in volume, and dropping like shrapnel upon my eardrums.

“What the hell are those freakin' mutts barking at?” I sat up then groaned as the hangover hit me and turned to shield my eyes from noonday sun leaking in through the blind.

“And now the noonday[this is a weird word to use twice in a row like this] chorus of hell hounds has commenced.” Mike intoned slowly.

“Well, you got that right,” I scratched my scraggly hair and beard.

“Always they barked hysterically at the top of their lungs...” I heard the noisy crunching of veggie crisps followed shortly by a glug of V8. “Always at those same set of blue doors.”

I stopped scratching. “Say whaaat?”

The only blue doors I was familiar with were the ones that belonged to that vacant, bank-owned apartment down the block from us. I assumed it was left empty due to its owners not being able to afford repairs or fallen behind with their mortgage payments. Man! Was I wrong!

After what seemed like an inordinately long crunching and glugging pause, Mike mumbled, “Those same doors to that old apartment where all those seances took place...[… ]where a group of bored teens who had heard the stories of a dread room had decided to drive out whatever was imprisoned there.

“Always on the same day and exactly at the same time, nearly every dog in town comes to bark at those very doors...[space]as if to keep whatever had broken loose and murdered most those kids from wrecking more havoc.”

“What kids?” I enquired, mystified. “What the hell is he going on about? Dude must be stoned out of his gourd on bong hits, and inhaled several times what a sane human should consume.”

Then through my vodka-induced haze, I suddenly remembered–[no dash here]how the locals always would hurry to the other side of the street instead of passing close to that particular spot. How on one particular night as I walked by that place, I suddenly felt I was being followed and I kept checking over my shoulder, but I didn’t see anything. When I eventually got home, [I] was so grateful for the lights, and ended up double-locking my door behind me.

“And it was a simple phone call that started the whole curse thing.”

Gee, I wonder if there’s a stringy-haired ghost girl here as well? I mentally inquired.

It wasn’t any Samara/Sadako-type grudge spirit...and what I heard and eventually, found on my own was worse than I ever imagined.

“Those teens all thought it was just their friend calling to invite them over to dabble in the occult,” Mike continued, “and practice being junior exorcists...[space]only it wasn’t their friend who was making all those calls.”

He paused dramatically as if to let the words sink in. By this point in the story, cold chills were creeping up my spine, raising the hair on the back of my neck[.] The silence lasted for another minute before he spoke again. “No...[space]Uhuh..[…space]nope! No, siree! It wasn’t her at all. What was really making those calls was a demon-possessed corpse.”

-

So, I think you might want to revisit the core concept for this and actually tell us the story of the kids. As it is this is a second-hand retelling of a story and it doesn’t really work. I think seeing a story from the kids’ point of view is where this concept could be really exciting but as it is, it’s not really a story so much as it is someone recounting an urban legend in a way that isn’t exciting or scary.