Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-27186445-20151110073827

Hello! My story "The House in the Middle of the Woods" was rejected and I did get some advice from a mod but I am posting it here to get some more opinion.

12/21/2009 Caleb’s Log

I’m writing these notes down as evidence of what happened over the past week or so. I got a small notebook for my birthday last month from my mother. It was supposed to be for quickly writing down ideas for my art videos, but I'm sure she won't mind. This note is dated as today's date, and since I am starting this journal now all other notes will be dated for the day that the events occurred, leading back to the present and then from today forward. I hope these notes find the warm hands of anybody who can help.

12/16/2009 Caleb’s Log

My friend Jim and I went out to our spot in the woods even though it was lightly snowing. We use the spot to have fires at all times of the year, even in the dead of winter. The spot is deep in the woods near our neighborhood (me and Jim being next door neighbors). Jim lives with his old sickly ant who has trouble seeing and hearing and who doesn’t pay much attention to him. We lit a fire, had a few beers and smoked some weed, and when we were done we extinguished the fire. Everything was going great and we were about to leave when we noticed a faint red light coming from deeper within the woods than we were (mind you the woods near our neighborhood is very large). We thought this was odd because out of all the times we'd ever been in the woods, aside from the occasional dog walker with a flashlight, the woods were mostly silent and dark. We thought it could have been some other teens having a party, or perhaps an unlikely forest fire (what with the snow starting to fall harder and accumulating on the ground). Regardless of what we thought it was we decided to investigate. I wish we never had.

We walked through the woods with a flashlight until we came to the source of the red light. It wasn't a fire, manmade or natural (though I now wish it had just been a fire). The red light was a porch light to an old, decrepit, abandoned house. We had never seen it before and not to mention that we thought there were no houses in the woods at all, in fact, as far as we knew it was illegal to build on the land as it's a wildlife preservation. Jim and I looked at each other confused.

"How does this house even have electricity for that porch light?" I asked Jim. There were no power lines running to the house as far as I could see. He had no response though I could see him looking at the light inquisitively (or maybe at the house as a whole), as if trying to figure out what this falling apart house was doing here or why it had power in the first place. We heard a startling voice from the dark behind us that was deep and seemed to tremble, in yet it sounded cheerful, or perhaps it was speaking melodically.

"You can go now, if you really want to."

We whirled around and I shined the flashlight towards the direction we had heard the voice, but there was nothing there. We were shaking from the voice, but we decided to investigate the house further. We walked up to the front steps of the house and stopped, looking at the porch light, which was now showering us with red light. It flickered. Jim started to move forward when I put my arm out in front of him and stopped him. "No, let me go first." I said and right as I took my first step onto the porch the wooden step snapped underneath me and my foot went through the hole I had created. Jim helped me out with a little force and we made our way up the stairs and Jim opened the front door. It didn't so much creak as much as it moaned as he opened it. We looked inside the house; pitch black. I shined my flashlight inside the house and I could see tattered furniture covered in white cloths and dust particles floating every which way. We entered the house and I closed the door behind us. I handed my flashlight to Jim who walked through the living room slowly, as he shined the flashlight on the scattered furniture.

After we searched the first floor of the house and not finding much of anything we were talking in the kitchen, specifically about how we were about to go upstairs when we heard this noise from upstairs. It sounded like a woman's scream, but it had an ominous undertone as if the woman's scream wasn't the real sound that we should have heard like it was masking another sound, or distracting us. We ran from the kitchen, up the stairs, and into the second-floor bathroom. No one was in there. We left the house quickly and ran through the woods back to my house as fast as we could to sleep and talk about what had happened. We didn't get to sleep till 3:45 a.m.

12/17/2009 Caleb’s Log

The next morning Jim was gone when I woke up. For the rest of the day, I went Christmas shopping with my family and didn't see or talk to Jim for the rest of that day (which was kind of weird because we usually talk every day. I had tried to call him but his phone just went straight to voicemail). Luckily Jim and I are on Christmas vacation so we have a good amount of time to hang out.

12/18/2009 Caleb’s Log

We went back. It was stupid, I know, but for some reason Jim and I were fascinated with the house. When we got together we couldn't stop talking about it. So we grabbed a flashlight, a backpack with snacks, a bag of weed, a bowl, a lighter, and my digital camera. At midnight, we snuck out of my house and made our way into the woods. Jim stopped once we got into a dark patch of trees and I asked him what he was doing.

"Just takin' a piss" he said. I could hear the sound of him urinating and I melodically thought of the song "My Way" by Frank Sinatra to distract myself from something he easily could have done back at my house. I unzipped the backpack on my back and grabbed the flashlight and turned it on when Jim was finished. I zipped the backpack back up and I lead the way. We both somehow remembered exactly how to get there, almost instinctively. The same red porch light was on. Before we even went inside we noticed a foul smell coming from the house. It smelled like rotten eggs.

"Do you smell that?" Jim asked me.

"Yeah I do," I mumbled.

We walked up the front steps onto the porch and before we entered the house I handed Jim the flashlight and I took my digital camera out of my backpack, turned it on, and set it to night mode and made sure the flash was on. We then entered the house, the smell hit us like a truck and it smelled like it was distinctly coming from upstairs. We looked at each other and shrugged.

We made our way upstairs, the smell got stronger and stronger as we ascended the stairs. In the second floor hallway, the bathroom door was closed. By this point Jim and I put our shirts over our noses with one hand. I held the camera in my free hand and Jim had the flashlight in his. The house was dreadfully silent. Although, the smell was so strong it almost screamed.

Jim grabbed the dirty-golden door handle and turned to face me. "Are you ready?" he asked. I nodded my head and pulled the camera up to ready position. Jim swung the door open as I snapped a bunch of pictures, but instantly I could see what was wrong.

The bathroom was well-lit, clean, and smelled of pleasant flowers; nothing like it had two nights ago. It's almost as if someone had come and remodeled just the bathroom in some sort of 'home makeover' fashion.

We stepped into the bathroom confused. We were not prepared for what happened next.

In this particular bathroom there was a bathtub with a deep-red shower curtain. A sound sang from the bathtub that scared Jim and I half to death. It wasn't like the scream we had heard before, this was more like a song being sung.

I was shaking at this point but I gathered the courage to walk to the bathtub and grabbed a chunk of the shower curtain, ready to pull it back. And so I did.

There was no bottom to the bathtub, it was like a giant hole in the ground. Red rust spiraled on the inner sides of the tub. Deep within the tub a faint yellow light could be seen. Disembodied screams and moans lingered out of the tub.

The hole was only like 10-15 feet deep and at the bottom it looked like there was soft dirt to break a fall.

"We have to go down," I told Jim. He looked at me like I was absolutely insane. Perhaps I was.

"What are you talking about? We don't even know where that hole goes..." he said nervously.

"Where's your sense of adventure?"

I opened up the shower curtain, fully exposing the bathtub. I asked Jim to grab my hand and he did. I started to shimmy my way into the tub, clinging to his hand. I started to lower myself into the tub until I was just hanging by Jim's hand.

"Wait, how are we gonna get out?" he asked. Good question. My grip on his hand started to give and he tried to hold on tighter but there was no use. I fell down the hole in the bathtub and hit my head hard on the rock wall on the side of the hole and crashed onto dirt and rocks. Luckily the way I fell I landed on my ass. It still knocked the wind out of me for a few minutes but I was alive at least. I looked up and could see Jim leaning over the bathtub, looking for me.

"ARE YOU OKAY!?" Jim screamed down the hole. I was still pretty dizzy from the fall and I think my head was bleeding but I eventually cleared my throat and was able to call back up the hole to him.

"Y-yeah, I'm okay... I think I hit my head though..."

"WHAT DO YOU SEE?" Jim yelled down.

What did I see? I looked around and saw a dim yellow light glowing down what looked like a hallway carved in dirt. Before I had fallen down the tub I had heard screams and voices but now, nothing. The walls of the hallway were lit with wax candles that randomly dripped onto the dirt. I couldn’t smell much anymore, but the place was pretty damp.

I started walking down the hallway when out of one of the hole-like doors came an old man who was wearing Victorian attire and smoking a pipe.

“’Ow do ya do boy?” the old man asked me and I was officially scared shitless. I told the old man I had to go and started to turn away, but he said: “Hold on boy!”

“What do you want?” I asked. In the hallway, the candles flickered. “I want you to come back in 3 days.” The old man paused and rocked back and forth, then he continued.

“Don’t worry about your friend, you’ll see him as soon as you arrive in 3 days’ time.”

I was going to ask him what he meant about Jim, but then the candles blew out with a gust of wind and I was in total darkness. The candles relit on their own by some force unknown and the old man was gone. I had had enough so I turned back around and left the way I had come and arrived back at the entrance.

I stared up into the hole to see if I could see Jim, but I couldn’t see any trace of him so I called up to him.

“HEY, JIM! YOU THERE?” no answer.

“Jim?”

I investigated the area below the tub and on the left side of the wall there was a rusted, decaying ladder back to the surface that neither Jim nor I had noticed before I climbed up the ladder, my head still spinning from my head wound and that weird conversation with that old man.

When I got back up to the bathroom Jim was gone. I searched through the whole house and he was nowhere to be found. I contemplated going back down to demand answers from the old man, but he did tell me to return in three days’ time… I guess I’ll just have to come back, I thought.

12/21/2009 Caleb’s Log

So here we are, back at the present… It’s been three days and still no sign of Jim, luckily his ant hasn’t even called our house looking for him (probably just thinking he’s staying with me). I’ve gathered supplies and I’m heading out. I hope I make it back to update this log. If you happen to find these and I haven’t returned, don’t look for me.

01/05/2010

Local Area Youth Still Missing

HOPEFIELD – It has been a week since the police were notified about 2 missing boys. Local police and residents have organized search efforts with police calling in K-9 units but with no success. Hope is starting to fade that the young men might be found alive as it seems this is turning out to be a cold case and not a rescue effort.

12/03/2012 – Alex’s Log

I found a house in the woods near my house. I was walking my dog, Baker, when he started barking liking crazy. He strung me along (he is a retriever after all) through the woods until we came upon a house with a red porch light that smelled terrible. I had heard something from within the house so I think I’ll go back to investigate it tomorrow.

I am hoping for honest but constructive criticism. 