#until then enjoy your regularly scheduled half-baked newsies angst

[to-be-a-dreamer]

🥚

Yes. Yes, I do have an inbox full of asks from the game the other day. However, why would I be a normal person and answer them when I could finish this response from literally ten months ago? (Other than this paragraph and the bit near the end, everything here was written back in June. I cannot even begin to tell you why it never got finished but enjoy I guess)

Okay, perfect so let me tell you guys about a little story called Pearchwood Hollow! It was a mystery/horror original story I wrote in 2019 that I repurposed into a Newsies AU. Obligatory "I have a very loose mental roadmap of how this plot goes at best, and nothing but general vibes and random scenes in mind at worst". This AU is an absolute mess and I have no idea how at least 50% of it goes, which is the exact reason it has never seen the light of day. You can read the concept chapter I wrote if you want; it's not that great but it'll help you get an idea of what this is going to be. (Don't bully me for the characters' names I was 16 and thought I was being quirky) It's formatted kinda weirdly because of the application it was originally written on but luckily I saved a copy to my computer after I deleted the original file.

Anyways, the basic idea:

It's a small town au and our main character is Davey Jacobs, an 18-year-old high school graduate/rising college freshman who lives with his parents and brother, is best friends with Charlie Morris-Larkin and Katherine Pulitzer, and was dating Jack Kelly-Larkin for most of high school. Jack and Charlie are brothers and Charlie is older by like four months because I said so. Davey and Jack broke up a few weeks after graduation because they made plans to go to colleges on opposite sides of the country. They're still friends and it's totally not awkward at all. Nope. Besties for life, those two.

Anywho, if you read the chapter I linked, you already know the mystery that's being set up, but just as a little TLDR: the town Davey and the gang live in is completely and totally normal. Really, it is. (this is not me being sarcastic again, it really is just a regular, boring town in middle-of-nowhere New York)

THE TOWN RIGHT NEXT TO THEM, HOWEVER-

It's called Pearchwood Hollow and it seems perfect, almost too perfect. Davey's been there a few times and everyone he met was super friendly and helpful. The lady at the gas station gave him a free candy bar, the mechanic who helped them out when they got stuck on the side of the road taught Davey how to change a flat tire, and the nice old couple who own the local sandwich shop snuck an extra cookie in his bag. It's a perfect town, full of perfect people who live in perfect houses and go to perfect schools and play in perfect parks and have perfect everything lives.

So why does every single person within a 100-mile radius know the exact same rule: Never, under any circumstances, stay in Pearchwood Hollow overnight

Davey liked to think his parents trusted him. He didn't have a curfew because they know he isn't interested in staying out late and getting into trouble. He was allowed to go anywhere in town as long as he gave them a general idea of when he would be home. He had his own job and his parents allowed him to do whatever he wanted with his salary, knowing that he always puts half into his savings account and made sure his phone bill was paid before spending anything on himself.

Yes, Esther and Mayer Jacobs trusted their oldest son, he had never given them any reason not to, after all. But Davey had never in his life gone longer than a week without being strictly reminded "never go to the Hollow".

No one knew where the rule came from, not even the oldest people in town. As far as Davey could tell, the fear of Pearchwood Hollow went back at least six generations and for seemingly no reason. Every once in a while, a couple of local kids would go to the Hollow with the intention of staying the night, but they always chickened out before sunset. No one had ever spent the night except for the people who lived there, all of whom usually laughed off the rumors or seemed genuinely clueless about them.

Davey was curious of course, everyone was, but he figured if so many people were afraid of the Hollow there must be a good reason. He would not be known as the fool who went poking around in places he shouldn't have and ended up becoming the answer to the mystery.

Which brings us to the beginning of the Actual Plot:

The opening scene is Davey packing for college while Les helps him and whines the whole time about being left behind. He's fine, just dramatic. Davey insists that he'll love being the only kid in the house and getting all of their parents' attention. Just in case though, Davey promises to leave his favorite denim jacket for Les to wear while he's gone and Les gives Davey his favorite friendship bracelet that he made at camp.

Anyways, Les has to leave the room for something, and, while Davey's shifting boxes around and trying to figure out how to pack his whole life into one tiny little dorm room, he finds an envelope behind his desk. It's covered in a thin layer of dust, a bit crumpled, still sealed shut, and reads "To Davey" on the front in neat, loopy handwriting.

Of course, he opens it and finds a letter from someone telling him that they've always wanted to know what was wrong with the Hollow. That they couldn't take it anymore and were going to find out what the rumors were about, once and for all. They told Davey they were planning on staying for one hour past sundown and to expect them home before dinner if all went well.

That much was already weird enough, but there were details in the letter than didn't make sense. First of all, there was the fact that Davey doesn't know anyone named "Sarah", and she kept speaking about him, Les, and their parents as if she were close to their family. Extremely close. Then she asked him not to tell Katherine where she'd gone until she got back, again, as if she were close with Davey's best friend. She called him D, an old nickname his family used when he was a little kid. Other small things like that.

Davey is completely and utterly confused, so, naturally, he goes to his two best friends to make them confused with him (one of which is his ex's brother and the other of which is his ex's ex. This is normal.)

Davey, Kath, and Charlie are, individually, incredibly smart individuals, so you would think that between the three of them, they could figure out a reasonable plan of action. However, their first working plan is to just. Go to the Hollow and see what happens. They don't stay overnight, they go during the middle of the day just to see if anything about it has changed since the last time any of them went.

There's a chapter or two of the gang driving around, looking at the old, decrepit town, a far cry from what they all remember. All of the buildings are falling apart and overgrown with plants. The road is full of potholes and cracks and looks as if it hasn't been tended to in decades, maybe even centuries. Davey's pretty sure he doesn't see a single animal in the entire town. It's only been six months since one of them was here, so they have no idea how it looked so bad.

They ask around a bit to try and learn what happened, or even if anyone knows a girl named Sarah, but every person they try to talk to just yells at them to get out before they get "claimed", whatever that means. Even the nice little sandwich shop that Davey remembers has basically crumbled into a giant pile of rubble and the man at the counter glares so harshly as they enter that they turn right around and go back to the car.

It's weird and creepy, nothing like they remember about the Hollow, so they leave a lot sooner than they originally planned. This chapter(s) ends with the three of them encountering Jack on the road out of the Hollow.

He's absolutely furious for a few reasons. First for going to the Hollow without telling anyone (Katherine could have sworn she sent Darcy a text right as they crossed into the town limits). Second for not answering their phones when literally everyone has been trying to find them (Davey couldn't remember his phone going off at all while they were in the Hollow, but when he checks he does in fact have several missed calls and texts from his parents and his friends). Third for turning off their location-sharing so that Medda and Jack couldn't even figure out where Charlie was (Charlie had barely touched his phone all day, but when he pulls it out to prove it, sure enough, his location-sharing is off.) I also think that it's been at least an hour longer than the trio thought, but I'm not sure if they would realize that now.

And so they have no choice but to tell Jack what's going on, to show him the letter and explain their "plan". He understands, he probably would have done the same thing, but he's hurt that they couldn't bother to tell him. He knows that things have been a bit awkward since the breakup but they're still his best friends and Charlie should have had the sense to at least tell his family what he was up to instead of scaring them half to death by practically falling off the face of the earth for four hours.

I have no idea how long this confrontation lasts, but by the end of it everyone has more or less made up, and now Jack is in on the goal to figure out the mystery. I told you there is no plan for this, I barely know what's going on at this point.

Here's the kicker: when Jack asks if they at least learned anything useful on their little field trip, Davey, Kath, and Charlie all say "no". They tell him that everything was just as perfect and idyllic as always, everyone was nice and welcoming and nothing weird was going on. They're not lying. The reader knows all of Davey's thoughts and memories in this moment and, as he recalls them, they are drastically different from what the reader knows to be true.

This is when we discover what the characters won't for a long time: the Hollow affects your memories. As long as you leave before sunset, the memories you made during your time in the Hollow are replaced by new ones. Fake ones. Memories of colorful houses with blossoming front gardens, of cheerful diners and mom-and-pop shops, of friendly townsfolk with genuine smiles and happy lives. Our narrator has forgotten four whole hours of his life and doesn't even realize it. What else don't we know about this story?

Wasn't sure where to add this, but I think something would happen in the Hollow that left a physical mark. Like, the car got scratched, someone skins their knee or gets a small cut on their arm, or someone drops a book in a puddle of water which leaves the ink bleeding and the pages warped. Something physical that can't easily be fixed, but could easily be forgotten for a little while. Jack asks what happened and the trio realizes that none of them knows. It's a big enough mark that they definitely should have noticed as soon as it happened, but none of them did. Or, at least, none of them remember if they did.

Also, at some point, we would meet Finch, Albert, and Spot, three best friends in the grade below our main characters who sometimes just kinda show up and are Also There. If Davey and the gang thought really hard about it, they wouldn't be able to remember where or how they met the three younger kids. And if Finch, Albert, and Spot thought really hard about it, they wouldn't be able to remember where or how they met each other.

Here's where the plot gets a little muddy and I start to lose my grip on the steering wheel. Or maybe my navigation system just shorted out idk it's less of an outline and more of a wishlist after this point:

So our new Buzzfeed Unsolved gang consists of Jack Kelly, his older brother of four months, his ex-girlfriend, and his ex-boyfriend. Someone book them a weekly timeslot on the History Channel.

They eventually decided that the best thing they can do is just research the Hollow and see if they can figure out why there are so many warnings about a seemingly-normal place. They don't find much, people have been searching for answers about the Hollow for over a century and never found anything. Finally, Katherine manages to find one newspaper article from the late 1800s, early 1900s. (It might be a little on-the-nose to say it's from 1899, but that's around the time period, I didn't even do that on purpose). According to the article, there was some kind of tragedy that killed every person in Pearchwood Hollow. I haven't 100% decided what happened, but my top 3 options are: blizzard, massive flood/tropical storm, or mysterious illness. I think I'm leaning towards blizzard just for simplicity's sake, but the illness one would be easy to explain why it didn't affect any of the surrounding towns. It's really not important, all you need to know is that everyone in town died, and the article states that no one has any plans to rebuild or repopulate.

Then the exact same newspaper released another article a week later, talking about a new school opening in Pearchwood Hollow to help with the large population increase over the past few years.

This is when the gang starts to revisit the weird stuff that happened when they went into the Hollow. Their phones seemingly not working, time moving differently, and the physical mark that I mentioned earlier. With this, in addition to the news articles and the letter from Sarah, there's only one logical conclusion to come to: the Hollow affects your memories.

Okay so maybe it's not exactly a logical conclusion and they definitely argue about it for a while, but it's the best explanation anyone has. But if the theory is true, that means there's no way of learning what's going on. Not unless they stay in the Hollow overnight.

Again, I have absolutely how the plot progresses to this, it just Does, alright? So yeah, the gang decides to just stick it out and stay in the Hollow overnight. How do they decide on this? Absolutely no idea but it happens and we're going with it, it's important to the plot.

Now this is really where I have no idea what happens beyond really vague ideas so just bear with me:

The gang goes to the Hollow and it's the same as the last time (the time the reader remembers), the run-down buildings, the horrible roads, the weird townsfolk, everything. Except this time, as soon as the sun sets, it's like a switch flips in everyone's heads and they suddenly remember that this is how Pearchwood Hollow has always been. Every single time, they had had the same awful experience, their memories were just replaced after they left. It's fascinating and terrifying all the same, but they move on to the next part of the plan, which is to find Sarah.

Which they do. Somehow. Don't ask questions, I don't have answers. They find Sarah and, again, a switch flips and suddenly they all remember her. She's Davey's twin sister, Jack's best friend, and Katherine's girlfriend of two years. It's very emotional, very sad, many tears. I'm so good at descriptions.

This is when the pieces all start to fall into place for both the reader and the characters. Sarah left the note for Davey about a week or two before the story started, went into the Hollow, stayed after dark, got trapped, and everyone in the outside world forgot she existed. Every physical and digital trace of her disappeared, except for the letter. As Sarah keeps explaining, they learn dozens, if not hundreds of people get stuck in the Hollow every single year. And then the world just... forgets them. People they knew, people they were friends with, maybe even people they loved. All gone.

Sarah doesn't know why, no one in the Hollow does. They still age and die as normal, so this has been going on for over six generations just like in the outside world. The town is pretty run down after a century of not being able to call for outside help or materials, but they don't really need to sleep or eat or drink like they should, so the lack of safe housing or good food or clean water isn't really a problem. The Hollow is basically a weird little pocket dimension and the people inside are somewhere between dead and alive. They just live out the rest of their lives wandering aimlessly in their odd little prison, making tentative friendships that don't mean all that much, and scaring off any visitors so they don't get trapped as well.

Davey, Katherine, Charlie, and Jack aren't technically stuck yet. They could still leave, but they'd forget everything again. They aren't really trapped until they get "claimed", which, according to Sarah, should be happening any minute so they really needed to get going. They argue this, of course, saying they won't leave without her and she insists that she can't leave, that she's tried and everyone else in Pearchwood has tried, but there's no way out after you get claimed.

They're arguing about this for a few minutes and then they hear a voice calling out from the other room. Asking Sarah who she was talking to. Then the final switch flips and they remember Race. And Davey can't feel any emotion besides horror as the boy freezes in the doorway. This is Jack and Charlie's little brother and, if Davey's memory isn't failing him again, he's been gone for over a year. And all that time, while he was stuck in this horrible limbo, they were just living their lives as if nothing had happened

Okay, so this is where I stopped writing back in June because couldn't think of an ending. We're picking this up about ten months later so apologies if there's any continuity errors after this

For the sake of getting this finished so it doesn't sit in my drafts for another ten months, we're gonna speedrun our way through what is technically the climax of the entire story, just deal with it. In case you haven't noticed I love creating situations for my little guys but I'm so bad at getting them out of said situations

Basically, Pearchwood Hollow is the way that it is because back in 1899, when the whole town was destroyed, there actually was one survivor. It doesn't really matter who it was. Maybe the mayor, maybe a poor farmer, maybe a small child. Who they are isn't important. What's important is that they were scared, lonely, and so very desperate.

Desperation is a dangerous weapon in the wrong hands. It makes you vulnerable.

They made a deal with something. Maybe they thought it was an angel. Maybe they knew it was a demon. Maybe they didn't care either way.

The demon couldn't bring everyone back, but it could bring others in. It promised that if the person could get people to stay in the town just until sunset, the demon would make sure they were never lonely again. It could give them a community, a family again.

Desperation is a dangerous weapon in the wrong hands. It makes you vulnerable. It makes you irrational. It prevents you from remembering all the warnings passed down from generation to generation about reading the fine print before accepting a deal from a demon. They never give you what you think you're asking for in the first draft.

At the time of our story, the original person who made the deal is long dead. But the demon will never break its oath, not as long as there are still people in the Hollow.

Demons gain their power from soul sacrifices. Technically, there's a specific ritual a human must complete of their own volition before the demon can stake their claim, but every rule has a loophole. Willingly entering a demon's earthly domain past nightfall despite warnings to keep away? Close enough to a ritual sacrifice for a demon to claim your soul and keep you trapped for the rest of your life.

Anyways, long story short but Davey and Co meet the demon and somehow don't ask questions Davey convinces it to take only his soul in exchange for letting the rest of his friends go, including Sarah and Race. I'm thinking the reasoning is because souls that are willingly sacrificed by someone who fully and completely understands the meaning of said sacrifice are ten times more powerful than souls that are forcibly stolen using a shaky-at-best loophole.

Desperation is a dangerous weapon in the wrong hands. It makes you vulnerable. It makes you irrational. It makes you impulsive. It tricks you into thinking you've outsmarted your opponent when both of you know the game was over before it even started.

Jack and the others try to talk him out of it. Davey insists that this is the only way and at least most of them should be able to go home. They won't remember him anyways so they won't have to mourn. Before any of the others can try to offer themselves up instead, the demon snaps its fingers and suddenly the reader is sent back to the opening scene.

Davey is in his room packing for college. Sarah comes in to try and steal some of his sweaters to take with her to her own university just two hours away from Davey's. They bicker like all siblings do, like they always have.

They meet Charlie, Katherine, and Jack for lunch at Jacobi's later that day. Sarah greets her girlfriend with a sweet kiss and Davey slips under Jack's arm like it was the only place in the world he belonged. None of them mention the Hollow. The thought of the place doesn't even cross Davey's mind.

Jack leaves early to pick Race up from work, grumbling lightheartedly about how his annoying kid brother should hitch a ride with his friends instead of bugging him all the time. Davey rolls his eyes, knowing his boyfriend is eager to soak up every second left at home with Race before Jack and Davey move across the country to go to college together.

Davey does not find a dusty envelope behind his desk.

Esther and Meyer shed several tears the day they drop Davey and Sarah off at college, mentioning how quiet the house will be with only the two of them living in it

If he thought long and hard about it, Davey wouldn't be able to remember why he left his favorite denim jacket at home.

If anyone asked, Davey wouldn't be able to recall who gave him the handmade friendship bracelet he always had on his wrist.

And if anyone asked, David Jacobs would say he has only one sibling, his twin sister Sarah.

Always read the fine print before making a deal with a demon. They never give you what you think you're asking for.