Just far too slow and dithering, the pacing isn’t great and the hints at the start are kind of cheesy.. The story takes itself far too seriously and it’s just kind of derivative. I feel like I’ve seen this story a million times before. This is something you’d get from a seventies portmanteau movie and it wasn’t really scary then and it isn’t now. I just didn’t find it very interesting, even if it was a dream, the part with the ghosts had zero bite to it. There’s no setup, he’s just talking to this old woman about nothing in particular, then boom ghosts, feel sorry for these dead kids for reasons. It just couldn’t hold my interest long enough to finish it, you really need to have some hook right at the start or people’s eyes just glaze over. The characters are also just place holder characters, they have no real depth so it’s hard to care about them. I can see you’ve tried to make it somewhat descriptive and I like some of the Lovecraft words, gibbous. But this is no Lovecraft. Lovecraft isn’t the best writer but he captures the atmosphere and the attention from the word go and leaves a lasting sense of foreboding. I mean there could be a great story here but I’m not going to read it because it’s weighed down with the poor pacing. It;s by no means bad and trust me, I’ve seen bad, it’s just ok.

I actually can’t link to this story because this was review was so savage they took it down haha (I’m not proud of this). I actually wrote back and gave them some more constructive feedback and they thanked me for being so honest so it’s not that bad. I did write back and gave them some ideas I thought might improve the pacing so I’m not a monster, well… ah.