Hey everyone, this a story I'm writing. I'm not too sure how long it'll be here's the "back of the book" summary type thing: This is a story about a man who stumbles upon an online community for the ghosts of dead children. He becomes their link to the real world and tries to help them move on to Heaven, but he steps into a world much bigger than he thought and his life changes as he is plagued by malevolent otherworldly creatures that want nothing more than to stop him from reaching his noble goal. This is heavily influenced by Jadusable's Alternate Reality Game(google it). I had an idea for one, but as I don't have the time, money, resources, or skills to do it, I decided to write a story about it instead. And since it's a story, it's also going to become a real world thing as well. In the story, of course. Anyway comments and criticism would be very much appreciated before I continue writing. The story hasn't really kicked off yet, this is kind of introductory and to get me into "Writing mode". Here's chapter 1. Spoiler My name is Joshua Bright. My friends and family call me Josh. I’ll get straight to the point: I have a story to tell you. It’s none of your business, but it’s something I have to write about. Not writing about it would be unfair to the people involved in the mess I got myself in. I don’t want to write this thing. It hurts, recalling all these memories. I hate admitting that these things happened. And it’s just so awful remembering some of these things. That house…I spent so much time in that god damn house. But I have to press on, it’ll be hard, but I have to write these things down, get them on paper while I still can. I won’t leave anything out. You’ll find everything out just the way I did. I was twenty one years old when all this shіt started. I was a decently normal kid, I got decent grades in high school, and got myself into a nice local college. But after my second year, I decided it just wasn’t for me. I dropped out. My parents were furious and neither of them would take me in. But my older brother’s a nice guy. And he had a lovely place in the suburbs. It was a pretty sweet deal for me. All I really had to do was keep myself (and, by extension, him) out of trouble…Jesus, I couldn’t even do that. I had been a member of KH-Vids.net for a while. It was an online community where people talked about the video game franchise, Kingdom Hearts. Maybe I was a little too old to be there, but it was a fun place, and it wasn’t like I had anything else to do. The day everything began started like any other. I woke up much later than anyone else in the neighborhood, and my brother had already gone to work. I went straight to get some food and go to the bathroom (with a little bit of overlap in between), and went straight to the computer and onto KH-Vids. I had a few notifications, a nice thing to show up to. A few visitor messages from my friends and one personal message from someone I had never seen before. I was particularly curious about the personal message, so I opened it first. It was from a member named “DK213”. My guess was that it was a reference to Donkey Kong. He had a low post count, no avatar, and no signature. The message was sent just a few minutes before I logged on. It said, “I don’t know how often you check these messages, or if this place will send you an email because you got this message, but I’m sending it to you here because this is the most obscure place I can think of. I don’t think THEY will find us here. Ever since everything started I haven’t had much time for this place so I don’t think THEY know I even have any connection to it. Jake, I think I found something interesting at the All The Dead Kids website. I know you told me not to go back there, but I didn’t like that, because I’m pretty sure THEY tried to tell me the same thing, I didn’t want to give them their way. What we’re looking for, I think there’s a clue looming on how to find it. I think we might be closer to finding out why all those kids are stuck there. I won’t go into details, but just give me a call when you can, the way we set up a few days ago. Delete this message as soon as you get it. Good luck.” I stared at this for a few seconds. Then about a minute. What the Hell was going on? It sounded like this guy was trying to avoid the government, or some group of people, but what the Hell was the “All The Dead Kids website”? And what’s he talking about, kids stuck there? Stuck where? Surely he couldn’t be talking about the website. And clearly this was sent to the wrong person. My name isn’t “Jake”. I decided to send the person back a kindly message informing him that he had the wrong guy, but he had beaten me to it. At the page I went to to write a reply, I noticed I had another notification. It was another message from the same person. “I’m sorry; I sent that to the wrong person. Please ignore that message. In fact, delete it promptly. Please.” Now I was curious. Delete it? Why on Earth would I do that? Clearly he didn’t want this thing to stay on the internet, as he had told “Jake” to delete it too. At this point, I was just too curious. I wish I wasn’t now. If there’s anything I learned from this whole experience, it’s that curiosity killed the motherfuсking cat. Tormented it slowly, tore it apart limb from limb, bathed in its blood, let it scream until it couldn’t scream anymore, and then finished it off brutally. I typed “All The Dead Kids website” into Google. I didn’t find anything except for the lyrics to a song called “All The Dead Kids”, and a few other similarly worded things. Nothing called the “All The Dead Kids website”. Then I tried Bing, Yahoo, even Ask.com. Nothing. But I wasn’t satisfied. I clicked on my address bar and typed in “Allthedeadkidswebsite.com”. Sorry, page not found. But then I thought, “Who puts ‘website’ in a URL?” And my fate was sealed. I navigated to Allthedeadkids.com. The page existed this time. It was completely black, and had no images in sight. There was a blob of grey text, a small text input box, and a button. I read the grey text first. “It has come to my attention that we have had some unexpected, uninvited visitors to our little website. While more traffic than usually expected is most often a pleasant surprise for a website, this time it is not. Outsiders, this website was not intended for use by the likes of you, it is intended for use by us, the dead kids of Peach Creek, and ONLY us. Despite us urging you to leave our website, you will not, and so I now require a password for entry. For the people whom this website was intended for: The password is a location. It’s one of our favorite places to hang out, even though it’s somewhat trashy. Write it all as one word, no spaces, no capital letters, thank you. -Edd” Well, this was interesting. It seemed that this was a website for a club that called themselves “The Dead Kids”. But, if it was a name of a club, it seemed like it would be likely to be capitalized in the otherwise spotless grammar. Peach Creek? I seemed to recall that name. I had certainly never been there, but I felt like I knew someone who lived there. Below this notice was as input box, for the password, I supposed, and the button said “Submit”. It was at this point that I figured this website was just something superficial. I carried about my business for a little while after that. But I still wondered, what could that guy who messaged me have been on about? Why would he want to be snooping around in these kids’ website? And what did he mean, “Stuck there”? After a few hours, my curiosity caught up with me, and I decided to take a look at the page again. I read it over again, carefully. I noticed the signature, which I seemed to have missed before. “Edd”? What an unusual name, I’ve never heard of anyone spelling “Edward” with two D’s, or shortening it that way. And then, I remembered where I had heard Peach Creek, and wondered why I didn’t realize it before. It was the name of the neighborhood of one of my favorite cartoons as a kid, “Ed, Edd, and Eddy”. Now this whole thing seemed really strange. This was some guy, calling himself Edd from “Ed, Edd, and Eddy”, saying this website was for use by the “Dead kids” of Peach Creek. This was seriously confusing. But more than anything, it was enticing to my curiosity. I started to wonder what could be inside that website, and what the password could be to get in. I started recalling “Ed, Edd, and Eddy”, and the answer seemed pretty obvious. The kids in that show liked to hang out in the junk yard a lot, and it was the only place I could think of that could be called “Trashy”. I hadn’t seen the show in a while, though. I could be wrong. But, it was worth a try. I clicked on the input box and typed in “junkyard”. I clicked the submit button. The nightmare began. Chapter 2 Spoiler To my surprise, I had been let in on the first try. I was now in this website I was so curious about. It was a forum. A black VBulletin forum, just like many others on the internet. And it was titled “All The Dead Kids”. Not surprising. The page I was on seemed to be the portal, as there was a welcoming message greeting me in the same grey font the other page had. “Hello, and welcome to the All The Dead Kids website. This is a website for the dead community of Peach Creek to share theories, stories, and ultimately come closer to finding out why we’re here and what we can do to get out. If you’ve recently died, or have been dead for a while but recently decided to join our website, please register and make an introduction topic in our introduction section. You may then proceed to check out my theories or post your own in the theories section, read my detailed location profiles in the location section, or go the findings section to see what’s been showing up or what’s been happening lately. -Edd” Now this was fuсking creepy. Here this guy was, talking about being dead like it was no big deal. Obviously “Being dead” and “Dying” had to be some kind of code word for something, but what? Could it be some kind of cult? “Introduction section”, “Theories Section”, and “Location section” were all hyperlinks. I decided I would check them all out, maybe they would help me understand what this thing was. The introduction section was a section of the forum that looked like any other. There were nine threads. And to my surprise, every single one was titled with one word, and every one was the name of a character from “Ed, Edd, and Eddy”. This was too weird, but intriguing as well. I pressed on. I decided I’d start from the bottom and read up. The thread on the bottom was titled “Rolf”. Interestingly, it was started by the member “Edd”. I clicked it, excited to see just what was happening. The thread read: “Hello all, Edd here. Rolf was the first of us to wake up here, so I figured it’s only fitting he should get the first introduction thread. However, he does not know how to type, so I decided to take the liberty of making it for him. Rolf was raised in a farming family grew up in the twenties. He doesn’t remember the exact year, and I don’t blame him! It was a long time ago, after all. Rolf’s family fled his home country, the name of which he still does not remember, and came to Peach Creek some time in the late twenties. However, they were met with the Great Depression and even worse poverty than in their home country. They couldn’t buy the farm that they wanted to, instead they ended up coming to Peach Creek and buying a tiny house with a decent sized backyard, and tried to farm there instead. Obviously, in the midst of poverty and your best source of food being your backyard, his family was finding it impossible to feed themselves. At the age of twelve, Rolf died of starvation in his own house on Peach Creek. He’s told us that after dying, he remembers floating through a dark void where he saw many stars. We now know, of course, that this is space, or at least this world’s version of it. After an undetermined amount of time floating through this place, suddenly his little farm-house materialized in the space. His house and backyard were suddenly there, and he could stand on walk on them, seeming to be affected by gravity. Above, he saw sky. But he still saw the infinite blackness of space on either direction on his level. Below was ground, of course. In this afterlife, Rolf did the only thing he knew how to do: he farmed. He tried to grow some food in his backyard, and to his amazement, suddenly animals began to appear, his little crops grew, and he lived this strange afterlife for a long time, watched all the rest of us show up, and still lives today in that same house. Today Rolf enjoys simple things. He doesn’t seem to be very interested in moving on from this place, he’s happy here. He has everything he needs. He’s taken advantage of his agelessness and started a fun group for some of the other dead kids that he calls the Urban Rangers. Despite his apathy to moving on from this life, Rolf is still an invaluable source of information in our quest, as he was the very first one here that we know of anyway. Here is a picture of our dear friend Rolf.” Below was a picture of a house with a large amount of dirt in the front of it. There was no one in the picture, it was just a house. As I finished reading and viewed the picture, a bead of sweat rolled down my face. This was insane. “Dead” didn’t sound like it was some code word anymore. This was an account of an actual kid dying. In the thirties. This was account written nonchalantly by some other kid who claims to be his friend. I was terrified. Clearly this was all some kind of joke, or maybe just an attempt to creep people like me out, and if it was, it was fuсking working. But what the hell could this be? Why would someone just make some website posing as Edd, make some detailed description of Rolf, and then protect the website from a password? What the fuсk was this? As horrified as I was, I had to know. I went back to the introductions section. The next thread above Rolf’s was called “Jonny”. It was also started by Edd. I reluctantly, feeling more and more sweat build up on my face, clicked on the thread. “Jonny was the second person to arrive in our Peach Creek. He is also before the age of computers and does not know how to type, so I decided to do it for him as well. Jonny was raised in a fairly average family, and was always a social outcast. Even in life he had that block of wood he talks to today. But after years of being content talking to a block of wood, Jonny decided he wanted real friends, so he tried his hardest to make them, but people just found him unpleasant to be around and he had no success. He found himself extremely depressed. One day when he was just ten years old, he found a large amount of pills in his parent’s medicine cabinet and ingested them all, overdosing on some drug the name of which he doesn’t even remember. Jonny says he wanted his parents to think it was accident. He hopes they do. The year was sometime in the fifties, but Jonny cannot place it. Jonny recalls floating through the same void Rolf did after he died. He eventually flew past Rolf’s little “Island” of a house and yard, and once he was a relatively short distance away from it, he stopped floating, and his house materialized around him, connecting to Rolf’s. Interestingly, Rolf says that Jonny materialized with “The rest of his house”, that is, Rolf did not see Jonny while he was floating through the space, he did not see him stop floating on the space that would become his house, until it became his house. Rolf is the only person to have seen someone show up here, everyone else materialized when no one else was around. Jonny met Rolf shortly after he showed up here. He was very scared of being rejected like he had before, but if you were stuck in a place like this by yourself for so long you’d probably like any company that showed up. Rolf and Jonny became good friends, and still are. You could call them death-long friends. Jonny takes advantage of his agelessness by virtually being a child. He can barely read or write, still talks to that block of wood (Which he was ecstatic to see show up in his house a few days after his arrival here), and takes comfort in annoying everyone in our little neighborhood. If you didn’t know any better it’d be hard to believe he’s been here for sixty years. Here’s a picture of Jonny.” Another picture of a house but with no person. I was filled with a sense of wonder and fear as I read. This was a certainly…interesting take on “Ed, Edd, and Eddy”. These things were still inherently creepy to me, but I was very interested in a theorist sort of way. I kept reading. Edd had written the introductions for every single the introductions for every single person there. And each one was the same thing, an account of death, describing them suddenly appearing in whatever place Edd was talking about, and their house and possessions appearing with them. Nazz died in the sixties after finding several of her neglecting mother’s LSD and other assorted drugs and ingesting them. Ed died in 1985, beaten to death by kids at his school who were drunk. His sister, Sarah, committed suicide six months after. Kevin died in 1992 due to a biking accident. Eddy died in 1994 when he shot a drunk driver’s new car with his older brother’s pellet gun. The driver got out of the car and beat Eddy to death with a baseball bat. Jimmy died in 1994 as well, raped and killed by a man who offered him candy to get in his van. Finally, Edd died in 1996, in a “horrific car crash”. Every thread contained a piece of text that read like “Here is a picture of this person”, but each one had nothing but a house, no people. By the time I finished reading, my fear was gone. I had concluded early enough that this must have been some kind of satirical view on the show, depicting the characters as dead and living some afterlife of eternal childhood. But still, I thought, that doesn’t explain why whoever made this website covered it up with a password. It was possible that whoever did it only wanted true fans of the show to see it, perhaps other people would just get scared. But there was still that strange message I had received… Now that I had finished reading the introductions, I decided I’d read the “Theories”. I wanted to know what that was all about. I found the link to the forum, but when I clicked it, I was redirected to a new page. It was completely black with that familiar grey text. “More intruders have arrived. I haven’t any idea where they keep coming from. Sorry, friends, but the site will be down for a while I think of a new password. Intruders, please leave. We can do this on our own. We don’th̛̛͚̥ͮ̍̇̉̚a̰͓͙͕̯̜̒ͥͤͣ͑̊ͩ̒͜͝hah̴̢̡̪͔͙̜̘͛̄a̸͓̮̰͖̫̠ͪͬ̓̎̿̀h̘̜ͫ̑͆͟͞ͅa̷̧͇̟̝̱̳ͬͧͤ̚ͅwant or need your h̴̛̰̖̫͕̥͉̲̃ͦ͞e̡͈̩̔ͨ̉́͂̓ͦ̾́͘l̴̮̜ͧͥ͗ͤ̓ͧ̏͛̅p̧͓͍͇͇͔͇̟͇͍̆. Leave.” Now, this was just strange…but by this point, my curiosity had worn out. I just left the place, keeping it as an afterthought, and continued my day. That night, I had an intense nightmare. I was walking down a sidewalk in a place I’d never been in the middle of the day. I noticed, to my right, a very old, scary-looking wooden house. Its front lawn was covered in weeds and dandelions. It seemed as if no one had been there for years. I stared at it for some time, and then hear, and at the same time felt in that weird way you can feel things in dreams, someone screaming “Help me! Please, you have to help me!” I stood stunned, before I heard it again, and two other people shouting similar cries of help. I ran up to the door, opened it, and ran inside. It shut behind me by itself. I was in a room of pitch black. I couldn’t hear anything anymore. I tried to open the door but it wouldn’t budge. I couldn’t make a sound. Finally, some light seemed to come from nowhere, revealing three little boys who looked about twelve. One was a short kid wearing thick-rimmed glasses with black hair combed to his side. To his right was a tall, stocky kid wearing a very beaten t-shirt and ripped pants. And to the bespectacled kid’s left was a small blond mischievous looking kid with very visible buck teeth, wearing shorts and a shabby tank top. They all had despairing grimaces on their faces and were looking down at the ground. But soon after the lights came on, they looked up at me, and they smiled. They at first looked like the innocent smiles of regular kids, but they grew, grew into horrible, plain evil grins, and continued to grow, growing to unnatural lengths, seeming like their skin should tear off at any second. They had literally reached their ears when all three of the kids’ features started to change. The tall one became shorter and the shorter ones grew slightly. One grew short, spiked flaming red hair hat hid its eyes, and another grew ear length blue hair that covered its eyes as well. One grew long, yellow hair that grew along its sides. The way it grew revealed its eyes, two small, red dots that shone brightly. All three of their features grew feminine, they grew breasts of varying sizes and their bodies became slender. Their clothes didn’t change at all, they looked like short girls wearing boys’ clothing that was too big for them, with grins that seemed to wrap around their heads. The three of them all started saying, with clearly male voices, “Help me! You have to help me!” then laughed mockingly with more female voices. The two girls whose eyes were hiding looked at me, and moved their hair, revealing their awful red eyes. The three of them simultaneously opened their mouths, making the entire top halves of their heads move back at an angle, revealing sharp spikes for teeth and enormous, bloody tongues. All the while I just stood there, unable to make a move or scream. Finally they all lunged at me, biting me in different places, before I saw one going for my head, and I was about to be completely consumed, when- I woke up and let out a small scream before stopping myself. My bed was drenched in sweat. I looked at the clock; I had only been asleep for an hour. I shrugged it off like any nightmare and went back to sleep, and had normal dreams for the rest of the night. But the nightmare was far from over.
Not a bad story so far. I can't wait to read more! As soon as I saw Peach Creek and Edd, I knew there was going to be an "Ed, Edd, and Eddy" reference.
Yeah, there's going be a lot more of those :P The story kind of loosely revolves around EE&E. I know what you're thinking, "What can that have to do with ghosts?" But trust me, it works. Sort of.
I think this is very good. You should continue writing this. There was a lot of suspense in there which made me want to find out more and I thought you used your words very carefully when writing about what Edd said. I have to admit I'm not very good at finding faults in pieces of writing when I enjoy reading it. I do like how the whole chapter is based upon the internet, it just makes me smile how stories nowadays include youtube and google. Anyway, back on topic, I'm curious to find out if there was a reason for the mysterious members name and I'm sure there are other bits in there with a deep significance. Well done, keep up the good work, I'll be reading the next chapter.
A little bit of chapter 2 added. I won't be writing any more for a while because of Thanksgiving, so I figured I'd put what little I had done up. I ran out of time so the ending is kind of abrupt. It will be changed.
Quite good for what's been put up already. I enjoy it. I'm sure the nonexistent website allthedeadkids.com got some visits. I was one of them.
You have a fictionpress account? Because if you don't, you should. This story should be posted there. :3 Aside from that, it was good. The plot is good, and the use of "Ed, Edd and Eddy" is interesting (CHILDHOOD DAYS...=w=). I'd like to see more! Oh, and I thought you should know that the purple font color added to the creepy somehow. :3
Thanks very much for the feedback <3 If I put it on fictionpress, would people read it? I mean just looking at it I can see there's so many other stories, it kind of seems like mine would juts get drowned in them.
You're very much welcome. :3 Well, I guess you should put it this way: When I post stories (fanfiction, this time. :D), I often think, "Nah, people wouldn't want to read this piece of garbage...", but in the end, I'm proven horribly wrong. I end up getting reviews and such. Same here. Often times, stories don't just drown. They get noticed by at least a couple of good people. There are many times when a story doesn't get reviewed, but don't be disheartened by it. If you keep going, it's eventually going to get readers of all kinds. :3 You're a good writer, okay? People aren't just going to ignore you or your work. <:3
Okay, you've sold me :3 I just signed up, so now I'm gonna have to wait for the 2 days to post it. Thank you for the suggestion. Oh, and I'm not gonna start writing chapter 3 until after my last final (the 14th)
Hell yes. XD Well, you're very welcome. And of course; take your time. :3 Don't let people pressure you. :D
So far, I see an amazing concept followed up with amazing execution. LOL EXECUTION U C WAT I DID THAR? Anyway, there's not really anything bad about this piece, where others fail in horror you succeed by tugging at the things that everybody is afraid of. Keep doing that, and you should be good. One minor thing though, both of your chapters so far end in some sort of one-liner. It may be just me, but that kind of throws me off; breaking up the pace and such. Keep in mind that this is just a personal observation though. Great job otherwise.
Thank you. And sorry, but what do you mean by this? Like, what things specifically? Right now I'm more interested in introducing the concept than freaking people out. But if it's creepy already, then great. XD' Yeah that's the thing about me. I'm REALLY bad at endings. I consider myself a good author, but I have two big flaws: Coming up with names, and endings. I haven't even named half of the characters that I'm planning to introduce later. I just call them "The [adjective] [noun]" in my head. For example, "The Frightened Girl". And I usually end very awkwardly. So yeah I'm sorry but you'll have to get used to that ^^'
