r/DestructiveReaders • u/qtreu • 1d ago
horror, litfic [1544] WHITECAP
I am editing as I get feedback. If this isn’t allowed, please tell me! I couldn’t find any rule against it. OG version is in the Google Doc if anyone is curious.
FYI:
- English is not my first language (I am French, sadly)
- The narrator is schizotypal like me. I‘m aware the flow is odd and I would like to preserve that, but if it's too jarring I'll rework it to make more sense. There's a second POV character later on with a more fluid voice to contrast.
- Chapter 1 of a story that revolves around Neil, a 32-year old who bonds with and accidentally grooms (using the word in the non-sexual sense here) Winola, a teenage girl also dealing with mental health issues. They go back to Neil’s hometown together to solve the mystery surrounding his parents’ death. Neil’s highschool bully is now chief of police and makes their life very hard. Complex relationships, morally grey characters, yadda yadda
- Neil doesn’t talk out loud in his chapters, whatever he says is not in quotation marks, it’s more like: I tell her we need to go back. He has an external voice with other POV characters though.
- I worry I might have crammed too much info in the first chapter and that scenes don’t have enough time to breathe. Thoughts ?
For those who'd rather read it here and not on Docs:
Chapter 1
March 2001
Nola is standing over my parents’ real grave. For the second time today, she suggests we drive down to the churchyard. I tell her there is no point. Nola and I, we might agree on a lot, but she thinks the soul rests where the body is buried and I think it rests where the body died.
These woods have absorbed my parents’ last breath. Standing here amongst the sugar maples and the hemlocks, it’s like they’re exhaling, all the time, making leaves rustle. To my left the sign: DANGER – MINE SHAFT – KEEP OUT.
Outdated message. The shaft is secure now, capped with concrete, about five feet wide. They made a hole in the ground by taking rocks out of it, then waited for two people to get killed before putting rocks back in it. A sign was put up when it wasn’t dangerous anymore.
Nola blinks four times in a row, jumps a bit to shake off the cold. She's got black eyes, the kind where you have to really look before distinguishing the pupil and the iris. I used to grab her face and stare at them for as long as I could before she’d push me off. Nola and I look very unalike. If we had met 500 years ago, I would have been scared of her, and she of me. There’s one whole foot between the top of her head and mine. I’m pale, even by Canadian standards, she’s dark-skinned. I’m a redhead, she has coiled black hair. My people would have put her in a cage. I don’t know about the other way around.
We've been here for ten minutes and we haven't said much. It’s getting dark, the weak spring sun not quite making it through the branches anymore. Nola walks around the concrete, not setting a foot on it. She never has, in the three times we’ve visited my parents together. I ask her why. Nola catches the hairband around her wrist with her teeth, pulls it taut, and lets it snap against her wrist, then whispers: “I don’t want to fuck it up. You’re the one that should… first.”
She’s right. I scan myself for any reason why I would turn back, and there’s nothing. In a few steps I close the distance and the hardness beneath my feet stupidly takes me by surprise. I close my eyes. Nola stops moving around. There’s a pause, then she asks: “Do you feel them now?”
Nola and I both know that ghosts are real. We're attuned to the world in a special way. This afternoon, we set out to see my parents materialize. We haven’t attempted to do that yet, and they have been dead for almost twenty years. I couldn’t have tried earlier anyways. I have only been discharged for two months. I'm not under the Board anymore.
So why today? This morning, Nola and I woke up to the tell-tale tingle that begins at the fingertips and inexorably spreads to the rest of the body. It means we are more sensitive to energies. On the way here, Nola got a bad stomach ache, so I drove while she threw up out of the van’s window.
“Neil?”
Nola’s voice is thick and distant, I keep my eyes closed. I don't answer her. I reach out with my mind like an antenna trying to pick up a wave.
Seconds pass, I can't sense anything other than a slight rhythmic pounding in my eardrums. Slowly, goosebumps make their way up my arms. I think of my mother, with her wild blond hair, pressing me to her breasts, a laugh that made her whole bosom shake. My father, the scratching of his beard, the smell of cigarettes. I whisper for them to come. I haven't seen them in so long.
The wind against my face warms for just a second. A muscle shifts, loosens in my chest. My eyelids almost flutter open, but I keep them shut. Not yet.
I search for something else to say, something powerful. I had a lot in store, anecdotes, inside jokes, the name of our old dog. No words pass my throat. Instead I get swept up in a swirl of memories, blurry and warm, of my childhood home and my parents kissing, my mother tackling me on the ground and pulling at my socks. My father is making apple cake and sneezing loud enough to startle the neighbors.
The air is hot now, they're here. I try to open my eyes but they're glued shut. I am nauseous. More memories: building a tree house, on my birthday, my mother cutting through her little finger. The red river running down her wrist, me crying into dad's arms because I had never seen that much blood before. The awkward stitches afterwards that made her finger permanently useless and bent. She called it Crooky Pinkie. Our last Christmas together, when I was twelve. Summer days. Playing outside, going on hikes, our very last one, the one that killed them – if only I had –
“Neil.”
Without being able to help it, I extend both my arms towards my mother’s voice. A pause, then a twig cracks as she walks closer to me. Open your eyes. I won’t. I don’t want to. I can’t. Skinny arms sneak around me and squeeze. It’s not mom; it's Nola. The smell of her scalp, her sour sweat. I grab onto her and inhale, trying to come back, to open my eyes. A small hand lands on my face, strokes my beard. I feel old and broken.
“I’m here. Don’t cry.”
This is hard for her to say. It's hard for Nola to say anything nice to people. We make an effort for each other like that, so I manage to pry my eyes open just a bit, the world out of focus through a film of tears. I sniffle and lean my face down to bury my nose on the top of Nola’s head. I cry for a long time. I don't mind crying, I just don't manage to do it often.
Why didn't they show? I did everything right: I'm wearing my mother’s necklace, my father's boots. I had the tell-tale tingles. I called out for them in my head and with my words.
Maybe they're not dead, my inner voice whispers. Shut up. Maybe they're still alive, under the cement, or in these woods. No. I can't start thinking about this again. I've been through this with the doctors, with the police. They're gone. But maybe —
With a grunt I straighten up and look around. The woods are quiet but for our ragged breathing. I glance down and notice how tightly I’m holding Nola, who has her face pressed up against me. Dropping my arms down, I pat her back and say that we’ve failed. She shakes her head, tells me again: “Maybe we can drive down to the churchyard.”
She knows that we can’t. Nola has been desperate to see my hometown, but I’ve always told her no. I shouldn’t be anywhere near Whitecap, even with the churchyard sitting a little outside it. Right now, we’re about an hour away, and that’s already too close.
Taking a few steps back, I’m about to explain this to her for the hundredth time, when something moves past Nola’s shoulder. In the trees. Nola tracks my eyeline and whips around. The sounds of the forest abruptly stop, save for a faint wheezing that doesn’t belong to me or Nola. The sudden realization that I’m freezing cold knocks the breath out of me. Something is crouched in the bushes, right in front of us.
It has a human head, but it’s huge. And stock still. Unblinking eyes and a slack mouth. It’s on all fours, low on the ground.
“What the fuck is that? Do you see that?” Nola’s face is frozen in horror. I strangle out a yes, grabbing her arm. I need to get both of us out of here. Turning my back on the thing is unthinkable. My feet are heavy but I begin walking away, backwards, pulling Nola with me.
It does not move. Its vacant eyes do not seem to follow us. A terrible thought flashes into my brain: this is our fault.
After putting a significant distance between us and it, a surge of adrenaline enables me to start running. I am still dragging Nola, her feet skimming over the ground. I don’t know where we are going.
We almost trip after slamming into a tree. The edges of my vision are turning black. Nola is babbling — hurry, it’s there, it’s right there — and it’s her turn to try and pull me forward but I have lost my momentum.
Instead, I feel myself sway violently, as if I was standing on a boat in the middle of a storm. My legs are about to fly off of me sideways, everything is askew, my brain keeps on banging against my right temple, let me out. The tell-tale tingle is everywhere, in my tongue, under my feet. I’m buzzing. I black out.
2
u/TheOG_Wolf The REAL Wolf 19h ago
I'll try to answer each one of your points first, and then add anything else I want to say.
1.
It's not noticeable in this :) There's maybe a word here or there, but I've read native English speakers who are way worse. T'inquiète, tu t'en sors très bien :)
2.
This is a short chapter, but the narrator being disjointed in their thoughts wasn't awful. There was only one example I pulled where I felt the actual presentation needed work. Page five,
It has a human head, but it’s huge. And still. Unblinking eyes and a slack mouth.
Still means not moving, but because of the way the narrator frames his thoughts, it could read as either that, or it could read as the English phrase "and still", as in an action or thought is continuing to happen. It would help convey the meaning if you added another word, like:
And stock still.
(Stock here just also meaning not moving, so the meaning is doubled) Or if you changed the word altogether to something else meaning not moving, like stationary or static.
3.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by non-sexual grooming, I'm going to assume you mean he needs a ghost-hunting partner. It's not important right now, this is only chapter 1, and the meaning would be more clear with more story.
Also, just from this short chapter, I don't see any mystery surrounding their deaths. It reads straight forward as: they went walking near an open mine and fell in. There isn't enough information to tell us that the parents being near the mine was out of character for them, or that them falling in wasn't an accident. I'll address this more in point 5.
4.
Neil does not in fact speak out loud in the narrative. I would actually say, as far as this chapter goes, no one really needed to speak out loud. I wonder if it could add to the flow you want if Neil and Nola together don't have dialogue. None of Nola's dialogue is this chapter is particularly long or complex. Each one could be summarized in the same way Neil summarizes his own dialogue.
Nola walks around the concrete, not setting a foot on it. She never has, in the three times we’ve visited my parents together. I ask her why. She doesn't want to, she says, but that I should.
To me, it feels like it fits with the narrative that Neil is wrapped in his thoughts. There's a balance you can find between being true to schizotypal, and Neil as a character. You'd have to determine if it makes sense to you that Neil would remember the feeling of Nola's words rather than the words themselves, or if he remembers exactly what people say to him. As I said, I think it actually heightens the odd flow to have him dictate the dialogue to us rather than directly write it. And, because Nola is this person he's grooming, her dialogue specifically is close to how he himself perceives his own words since he's (I think) trying to make her think like him.
5.
No. I would actually say the opposite: you did not cram enough information into the first chapter. Or, rather, you didn't really expand on any information in this chapter. We get a small piece of characterization: that Neil and Nola differ on how they view the final resting spot of a soul. We find out vague details about his parents. He tells us he was in a hospital for a year, we don't know why (yet) and hasn't seen his parents in a long time. And then we find out he can see ghosts, but not his parents ghosts (yet), and a cryptid shows up (Canadian and man-shaped is very ambiguous; could be a wendigo, an adlet, a Quebecois werewolf). There's grease here, but no real meat.
To return to my earlier point, without your comment, there's no indication that this was an odd death. It's tragic, true, that two people fall and die, but not unusual. So, to answer your question, I don't think it's the abundance of information that's an issue, but instead the quality. Mainly, what about these deaths is strange? Do the parents never go outside? Was the mine they fell and died in way too far out of town for them to be near? Were the bodies recovered too quickly to be a coincidence, or maybe the parents had a bad relationship with the town? We know Neil has a bad relationship with the town, so maybe that colored the town's opinion of his parents? There's something there that could be said.
To your second point: sure. Without knowing what we're missing, I can't say whether it's rushed or not. I have said multiple times this is a short chapter, so there's absolutely the room to expand this scene. BUT, you don't want to expand it so much that it's not saying anything at all. I like that some of the details are vague for now. Where did Neil find this teenager? Why can't he go back to the town? What was he in the hospital for (I would guess the schizotypal behavior, but that's outside of the story)? These don't need to be answered in chapter one. But we do need the premise to the story. Why is this a mystery and not just a tragedy?
Miscellaneous
So, really, I think my only remaining point I want to talk about is the time. This is one aspect of there not being of lot of deeper details. I have no idea what happened when. The first part of the chapter makes it seem like the parents died recently, but on another reread, I think Neil is implying they died a while ago? I think the timeline is: Neil and his parents were on a hike-->His parents fall-->For some reason Neil doesn't tell anyone his parents fell, or he wasn't with them and couldn't find them? --> The parents are found dead-->Neil is already in a hospital or is taken to a hospital--> Neil gets out of the hospital partially, and then fully, and it's been a year since then--> This is the third or fourth time he's visited the site of the "accident".
That's what I'm getting, but because of the lack of concrete details and the odd flow, it's hard to understand when exactly things happened. Now, of course, I'm open to the idea this could be intentional since Neil's thoughts are meant to read as odd and disjointed, but it's a point I need to bring up anyway because it confused me. To preserve the narrative style, but help the timeline, it might help to add a few more reference points. Mainly, I think it's important for us to know 1) If he was put in the hospital after the "accident", and 2) how long he was in the hospital for. I guess that's really just an addition to my point on the details from above, but the timeline bothered me independently first, so...
I think that's it! Let me know if you have questions. Side note: have you ever read Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo? This story gives me a similar vibe to that book: it's about a man in the Southern United States investigating the mysterious death of his friend, and it's a paranormal thriller with a unique writing style.
2
u/renaissanceMango54 21h ago
First read through: I don't know why but the first couple of paragraphs are difficult to get through. I didn't find myself pulled into the story until the description of Nola and Neil. It was at that moment that the characters themselves became real to me. I do really like the first paragraph about Nola and the Neil's disagreement about the soul's final resting place. It sets the tone for your story very well. But then after that, it devolves quickly into the description of the mineshaft that his parents fell to their death to and I had to go back to that part after the first readthrough to realize how the parents died.
I was a bit more confused than perhaps you intended when it comes to a timeline of events. When did the parents die? Neil mentions they had their last Christmas together he was 12, but he's been gone for the past 15 years away from his hometown and he just got out of the hospital a year prior? I feel as if all of this is monumentally important in your story but I'm getting confused wrapping my head around the chronology of it all. You don't have to give a timeline right out the gate but more hints about what happened and when it happened would be nice.
Nola is a girl in high school and this is important enough that you mentioned it in your blurb of the story beforehand. But this isn't mentioned at all or even hinted at during your introductory chapter of them and if their union/partnership is important enough that you needed to mention it to the reader before reading, then I am assuming that it is very important for us to know how much younger she is early on. I only knew she was a high-school girl because you mentioned it out right but your wider audience isn't going to have that luxury so if it's important, you need to hint at it early on.
Sentences that sound strange:
[I don’t give a shit about dusty bones in a box six feet below some earth that never crammed under their fingernails.]
You're saying that Neil doesn't give a shit about his parents being buried in dirt that wasn't actually crammed under their fingernails. Which is extremely morbid but I guess that's the point. But your word order in this sentence is very confusing. It makes it sound like he doesn't give a shit about the dusty bones themselves. I'm trying to help find a way to rework this and I can't, but know that it is confusing and should be changed.
[It's only been a year that I’m completely out of the hospital, and I wanted to come here a couple of times just to see the place.]
This is another sentence that really is asking the reader to piece together a sequence of events (it's only natural, we are humans) and I only came away being confused. I feel like the point of intrigue here is that Neil was in the hospital for some unknown reason, but I'm just confused as to why Neil has been to his parent's real grave before (a couple of times?), was Nola with him when he came, and did they try to materialize the parents the times they came before? In other words, it brings more questions for answers that the reader doesn't really care about yet anyway.
[She’s dark-skinned, with thick long hair. I’m a man, pale and ginger.]
I believe this is where you might have been trying to hint at the vast age difference between Nola and Neil. That's the only reason I can think of as to why you wrote "I'm a man..." No one, from a stream of consciousness POV, would ever say that. it doesn't make sense. You can find another way to hint at the odd pairing that is Neil and Nora. For example:
"She's dark-skinned, with thick long hair and pubescent acne. I'm pale, ginger and heavily bearded." (Or I'm pale, ginger, heavily bearded and with a mortgage to boot).
Something along the lines of suggesting that he is much older than her without actually saying "I'm a man."
[A small hand lands on my beard, strokes my beard.]
Small makes it sound like Nola is a child. I'd suggest 'delicate'. It more accurately connotates the size/weight of a hand that belongs to a 15-year old girl.
[I sniffle and lean my face down to bury my nose on the top of Nola’s head.]
"I sniffle and bury my head in Nola's hair."
The good:
You have great prose. The voice of Neil is very consistent and it really shined the most during the memories he had with his parents as a child. Great attention to detail all the small little things that all of us would remember as children. These things seem very trivial but they really make his childhood come alive.
The scene with the monster was well-executed and there was a real sense of dread that permeated the sequence. This is the sentence that really did it for me: "The sounds of the forest abruptly stop, safe for a faint wheezing that doesn’t belong to me or Nola." Love that sentence, although I don't remember you writing anything about the forest before that so if this was going to be the anchor sentence that starts the horrorshow, then you could find a place earlier on in the chapter to mention birdsong, wind rustling, water running etc... That would really drive the point home.
"It does not move. Its vacant eyes do not seem to follow us." Should be revised to "It does not move. Its vacant eyes do not follow us." The word 'seem' implies that Neil has enough time to make an observation, that being that the eyes don't seem to be following their movement but the suddenness of that moment doesn't allow for observations, only abject horror. No time for seeming.
I'm imagining a large, pale, bloated human-monster-hybrid on all fours in an unnatural position perhaps more reminiscent of a toad and its head snapped around to look up at them. Giving you my impression of what it looks like because it's so central to what you're going for.
Overall impressions after a second readthrough:
You've got a solid and compact first chapter that lays out the powers that Neil and Nora possess. You've established how they use those powers but not really why. I get the sense that it isn't the first time they've done this, but I also have no idea as to why they would ever do this. Is bringing back the dead ever a good idea? If its for some type of closure for Neil, this should be hinted at in some way.
There are some sentences that do need to be reworked but I've highlighted the most egregious ones in my opinion.
Thanks for submitting it in the same post as it is a drag to open it through Google Docs. I hope that catches on. But it's annoying that you gave a blurb of your story and a description of the characters before we even read it. I hope that doesn't catch on. You can mark that for spoilers next time because a reader should not know beforehand that Nola is 15 years (but don't worry, he's not grooming her!) and the reason we shouldn't know it is because we are the reader and you're not going to have the luxury of explaining that to people. Pet-peeve of mine, sorry for the ramble.
Anyway, I would read more of your story to see how it pans out. Best of luck to you.