Hello, all! Welcome to Something Good Can Work!
I haven't written fanfiction since around freshman year of high school. I'm now multiple years into college. I haven't written pure prose for a few years as well, having only written nonfiction papers that, well...don't include dialogue and whatnot. In short: I'm very rusty.
Also, this is going to be 100% self-indulgent, borderline occ/fanservice content. 2020 has been the worst year of my entire life for a plethora of reasons, and I'm letting myself get back into an old comfort fandom, as a treat.
If you read this and enjoy what I'm writing, please leave a comment so I know I'm not alone in what I'm assuming is a dead-fandom void (I haven't really checked if it is or not 😅).
Chapter One: The Dark Knight Rises
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Burgess, Pennsylvania was a modest town. It had history, with a colonial background that had left a modern-vintage 'main street' type of downtown area, with brick buildings clustered together, places that once held apothecaries, taverns, druggists, and metalsmiths now the home of locally-owned cafés, bakeries, and boutiques.
The old cobblestone roads cut off at the end of the historic downtown square, giving way to asphalt roads and the modern structures that lay beyond the quaint little section of town: grocery stores, gas stations, department stores, banks, restaurants, and more. Modern cars drove past in light traffic, leading from the center of town into the surrounding suburbs,
However, a very small group of people knew there was more to Burgess than that. What had once been whispers of grandparents' ghost stories about the icy blue ghost of a boy who drowned in a nearby lake that they had seen in the night as children was more than a simple haunting, but rather a spirit, a real, living being with the powers of winter known as Jack Frost. The children that could see him adored him, praising him for bringing them snowdays and snowball fights all winter long.
However, not all of the local spirits were benevolent.
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Miles away, there was an empty forest. The towering, seemingly-ancient trees were bare, being in the purgatorial period between bright autumnal leaves and snow-covered branches, making the forest appear to be completely lifeless.
In the depths of the forest, there was an odd sight: the remnants of an old bed. It had to have been at least a century old, or it was a very simple homemade frame left to rot for slightly less time. It was made of unfinished wood that had become dull and brittle, most parts either bent, broken, or both. A few coils of rusted metal remained, hinting at a mattress once being there, the rest of its remains long gone, taken by wind and weather— especially in the past few years. For roughly eight years, give or take, the bed had rotted away at record pace. For years, if not decades, it remained in an identical dilapidated condition, but quickly fell into further disrepair. None of the locals knew why this was the case, but decided that it must have been a mistaken memory of the bed being in the same state of dismay without change until 2012.
Under the rubble of the remains, the ground was slightly darker— in fact, it was a hole. A human-sized rabbithole of sorts, hidden under pieces of wood and metal scraps. Although the intention was to keep the hole in question secret, a few poor souls had fallen prey to in the past almost-decade. One fall, a deer hunter had his trusty hound by his side in the deep woods, only for the canine to catch the scent of an interesting creature that led there, only to fall through and to never be seen again. Another incident involved a gang of teenagers who eventually dared a fellow teenage boy into going into the hole. Unaware of the hole being more of a vertical tunnel than a pit, he was lost to the dark void. The friends panicked, fleeing the scene. The boy was found the next morning, obviously traumatized and walking aimlessly through the woods, speaking in incoherent ramblings about seas of black sand and giant horses attempting to trample him. Rumor had it he was sent away for indefinite in-patient psychiatric care.
Anything that fell into that bottomless pit of despair either returned broken and traumatized, or simply didn't return at all. Based on the trauma all human victims claimed to have, it was coined "The Boogeyman's Hole". Little, did they know, the moniker was actually quite fitting. However, the tall, thin, grey-skinned man with the mythically-acclaimed golden yellow eyes who struck fear into the hearts of both children and adults hadn't been seen in quite some time.
Until now.
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In the dead of the night, the wood and metal scraps were shoved away by something underneath, a monochromatic hand emerged, black nails digging into the dirt as if the hand's owner was hanging on for dear life. A few moments later, a second hand appeared, clinging just as desperately. Heavy breathing came from the beginning of the hole before a grunt of one using all their strength, an extremely-thin figure hauling themselves out of the clutches of the dark void inside the tunnel.
The being crawled to a nearby tree, laying down on the ground, chest heaving as they attempted to catch their breath. After a few minutes, they gave a chuckle. Then, the chuckle turned into a laugh. Soon enough, the laugh became borderline-hysterical as they regained their strength, standing up and immediately running off, practically giddy because of their newfound freedom from the hole's abyss.
Pitch Black was back.