Chapter 1

The Retribution

chapter 1

1941
Ravens Fair was a small town along the outskirts of Washington. It was a quiet town with a close knit community and had a major tourist attraction - the Guignol theatre, over lost lake; which people would travel from all across the country just to visit, as it had some of finest talents around: largely ventriloquist acts and plays performed by top actors and actresses, who had also travelled from all over or were on tour and happened to pass through Ravens Fair. It was quite an attraction -  being a huge building, with architect decorating the exterior and even the interior - set out similar to the Victorian era.

Policemen swarmed the grand theatre, the outside part which surrounds it and along the stone bridge that leads across the lake. They had been guarding the area all morning, just stood about in the sunshine, as an investigation was under way.

Two detectives, one in his early 20’s with short dark brown hair and the other; late 30’s - similar, but with a few greys and slightly porkier were in the main sitting area of the living quarters, where the murder had taken place, whilst the forensics took photographs of every trail and splatter of blood which seemed to be everywhere, failing to detect the secret room tucked away behind one of the walls.

The youngest detective looked around. "Strange place," he muttered, as he continued looking around at every inch of the room, which was quite big and had a lot of architect with weird ornaments on top of the fireplace and fancy furniture spaced around, with curtains separating the other quarters; kitchen, sleeping area and bathroom. One thing struck him as strange - there were a couple of high chairs against the window and dolls scattered everywhere, which prompted him to blurt out, "She didn’t have any little ones."

The older detective looked around and asked, sounding annoyed, "Are you going to help at all?"

"I’m sorry. What d’ya want me to do?" he replied quickly.

"Get out your notepad and write what I say."

The junior detective did as he was told and waited with his pen on the paper.

The older man continued, "The body can safely be identified as ventriloquist Mary Shaw…" He was interrupted at that point by the youngster, who pointlessly commented with, "She’s been mutilated."

"Well done! How good of you to notice," he praised sarcastically in a patronising manner, before ordering, "Be quiet… Now, where were we?" He looked down at the body, as they both knelt besides her and continued, "She was discovered by a local boy, by the name of Henry Walker, 8 years old…" He paused there and said sympathetically, "Poor boy. He has to live with this for the rest of his life, having to cope with the nightmares," as he looked down at the woman, who was sprawled out still wearing the same white night gown which was drenched in blood and her face was worse still, as her eyes were wide open and she had a look of sheer horror - a combination of unimaginable agony and terror.

"Are you still writing?" he asked the younger man.

"Sir, the pathologist is here."

Both detectives stood up, as the pathologist walked in, carrying a black bag. He knelt down next to the body, got out all of his equipment and said, "I need one of you to write down what I tell you."

"It’s your turn," the youngest detective told the older one, but in return he hissed, "I’ve no time for games," so he just backed away and got his pen and notepad once more.

"She's been dead roughly between 8 to 12 hours," the pathologist began whilst examining the body. "Decomposition is starting to become slightly visible, which is probably due to the weather we are having." He looked up at the detectives and asked, "Er, can I ask when the young boy found her?"

"8 am this morning," the eldest replied.

"Do you mind me asking how he came to find her?"

"He told his parents everything…that he was playing with some other boys, but they left, so he was left alone and he noticed something didn’t feel right, so on a closer look, he saw that her door had been kicked down and  noticed a little blood, so he went along the hall, noticed another door had been kicked off of it’s hinges and let’s just say that his curiosity got the better of him."

Author's Note

The punctuation is still being worked on.

Reviews

[Eoin Lemon]

"architechture", I'm sure that's what you wanted to write!
You would also want to use a full stop before a character begins to speak eg:
sounding annoyed, "Are you going to help at all?'
I would also like to identify the two detectives more in the opening paragraphs, 20's is too vague:
He was in his early twenties, a handsome young man but his short brown hair made his ears look bigger than they should. His fingers twitched as he surveyed the scene and quietly longed for a smoke, he picked a bad week to give up. ???

You get to the action straight away and this means you have the reader interested from page one, a good start and I look forward to reading more. Just wanted get in touch and thank you for reading Charlie!
The group is called UK and Ireland Fiction Group, hope there will be a few of us soon.
Best regards, Eoin

[Michael X]

wow, this has a graphic intellectual underscore, that really grabs hold of the readers attention and plots with a sophisticated time-line, the beginning immediately places the reader in the middle of th investigation and what

unfolds is marvel producing such stark imagery mix with a thickening plot
of crime, which asolutely works well at keeping the readers attention,
i'm looking forward to seeing how the events unfold.

[Domenic Luciani]

The first thing I noticed was an overuse of commas. You definately need to relax on those, use some semi-colons and hyphens to break it up.
"The second was that you skimp out on the details of certain things, this part :the room,which was quite big and had a lot of architect with weird ornaments and fancy furniture,with only curtains to separate each quarter; kitchen,sleeping area and bathroom." This part could use some more in-depth detail
Third, I noticed that you're narrating this from present time which makes the story a little less authentic, like when you said: "dressed in a typical 1940’s style suit"
Next, your dialogue was very good, but what was lacking was a bit of setting. You did well with characterization, at least for a first chapter, and the scene where these men are is clear enough. However you don't mention where they actually are.
For a first-tmer, your pretty decent. I would say good job.