Meanwhile, I'm just going to go sob into my pillows for a while because this story is basically a brilliantly polished version of the story I spent a month bludgeoning into even a crude resemblance of what I was trying to say. This was aces. Brava, absolutely stellar.
Don't give up! I actually thought this story was deeply flawed and not very polished at all. I know you 'Cat, and you can do better.
The central problem, for me, was that the story felt scattered. Magic charms and sorcerous old ladies, incestuous pairings, ghosts and astral projection... it was all too much. Too much in too little time. It's hard for short stories to build complex worlds, and this one didn't pull it off.
Frankly, complex worlds are especially hard to do in horror stories, as horror shorts need to be... the words I'm going to use are "swift," "merciless," and "elegant."
Papa Was a Gypsy was slow, complicated, and clumsy. It was senseless, but in an awkward and uncompelling way, rather than the brilliant and intentional senselessness of
My Body Your Banquet.
For me, the take home lesson? The first ten minutes rule is alive and well in horror. If you want the audience to buy something, you need to sell it right away, rather than spooling it out. The real truth can wait - it can even be absent altogether - but the essential elements of the story need to be presented right away and pursued with speed and ruthless elegance.