Hey,

Wow, this was really scary as well... he build-up of this was so great, and it really added to the scare-factor of this... A brilliant story! I didn't find many mistakes in this one either, so well done!

ranDUMM

Wow. This is a creepy town. Hoq do people still keep moving there? Gosh. Who is the kid in black clothing?

Ooh! :D This gave me chills. I don't read horror very often because I don't like scary stuff, but I enjoyed this. It was enough to give me a tingling, but didn't scare the crap out of me for a week, but then again I'm a wimp. So, make of that what you will. Did it have the effect you wanted?

At first I thought it was going to be cliche, with the whole moving to a new creepy neighbourhood, but that's hard to avoid with the horror genre. It turned out pretty unique though, with the weird woman and the pictures.

You should proof read it though, because you missed out a couple words, like:

"she bleated the sandy haired boys" should be "She bleated at..."

and

"Jonathan found slid across the surface." should be "Jonathan found he slid..."

I'm assuming anyway.

I also liked the general structure of the story, with the short time period and the opening sequence set up the characters. The ending was pretty awesome too.

Wow. I'm probably going to be, like, terrified of pictures now. :-D No, but really, that was really good. My name is Sarah too... XD I didn't see any grammatical errors or anything except a couple punctuation marks missing. Such as in the last part, third to last sentance. But great job!

I like this so far. I thought I'd give this story a go to see if I like your style, which would determine if I would read your other stories. (I will).

It's creepy and fantastic. It has a Coraline-sort of feel. You're one of the better writers from the Gossip Forum.

Can't wait for more.

As I have come to expect, you have written another well imagined and terrifying story. I had realized that it was the same kid in black clothes, but I had not realized that all of this was taking place in the same neighborhood. It is like all of these stories are really just different chapters. I like them and look forward to the next story.

Ha! So they finally figured out King was missing too! And it's only been 5 days? What's up? Is it like an equinox or something, and all the creepy ghouls are coming out to play?

Jonathan was such a nice kid. He wasn't close minded, and he wasn't as impatient as Joshua. But now we have another link to the other two stories, being Matt and Sarah respectively. Did Sarah know both those victims? She must have. Charles was in her class. Is she sacrificing people? (No, I don't really believe that). But it is weird that the picture of her hand becomes the evil woman... she sounded friendly enough though.

And Jonathan gets sucked into a picture just as Matt is opening up again. Poor Jonathan. And his mother didn't even look at the picture. I bet she never sees it, and just throws it into a draw with the junk mail or something. Photos get lost that way.

I actually had some hope that Jona would survive when he hadn't yet seen the boy in black. Why don't they ever go up to talk to him? I wanted him to leave the house and go talk to him. Maybe then things could have been different.

This one was very short and straight forward, not as convoluted as the others, but simple is good too.

I want to know why this town is suddenly horror central though. Something in the water? An alien experiment? (grins) I still really enjoy your writing and how you structure your pieces. You do your characters justice, and so far they've each had a unique personality. Charles was a bit uprupt, almost angry all the time. Joshua was very impatient, especially with Tommy's superstitions (What happened to Tommy by the way?) And Jonathan was a bit frustrated at never have a place to settle, although he was begining to fit in (he adapted so quickly too).

Fun stuff! Keep it up. I'll wait patiently for the next story. (Even though I want it NOW)

:9 Pencils

Opening paragraph sentence is poor. Having a single sentence for an opening is risky, and this one didn't work for me.

"“Yeah[,] it’s great[,] mom,” answered Jonathan dully." Missing commas, noted. 'Mom' should be capitalized. 'Dully' doesn't work for me - I would much rather that the way he spoke was described, not an insight into his mind.

"Look[,] Jonathan." Missing comma.

Same comment about 'sarcastically.'

Lots of missing commas... I'll stop noting them, else this will just be a list of them.

"Carful" should be "careful."

Closing is good. There's a bit of a POV shift from what is happening, and what would have happened. Mom comes home, discards of photo. It's very difficult to show something that none of the characters sees, but we can close similar to the Shining, where the camera focuses on the photo in question.

Here, with it face down, that's not an option.

The story is told in a flat voice, with bursts of interesting phrasing, but most of it is pretty flat. Some of it is 'tell', where the author is speaking to the reader.

Dialog is good. It's a little rough at the beginning, which could be a case of 'easing into' the story.

Descriptions are lacking. I think this is what gives me the feeling the story is flat. It seems too dedicated to telling the story, if that makes any sense. There isn't a sense that the story, the people, the town are real, aside from Jonathan.

Jonathan's characterization is good. There isn't enough time to show real development, but his reaction to the events and growing jumpiness works well.

Overall, it's a good story. The concept is simple, it's not over-explained. Some may want to know who and why, but that is optional in my eyes. Sometimes, life just sucks. It's told in a confident and capable manner.

another creepy story, again i love how you can take such simplistic things and turn them into a worth reading story. Another flawless one. Cna't wait to read any others you post.

~WriterOnTheMove~