And THAT'S THE END OF CHAPTER EIGHT! I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did! I have a ton of stuff to say down here in the news section, so let's start with the things that keep this comic going! If you enjoyed this CHAPTER, pretty PLEASE consider supporting Paranatural on Patreon or tossing a few end-of-chapter tips my way on Ko-fi! And of course, for a LIMITED TIME ONLY (just 13 more days!) you can purchase for yourself an EIGHTFOLD PLUSH!

This little delight has been the most successful Paranatural merch I've ever sold, and it goes without saying that that makes it a HUGE help in tricky times! I would love, love, love to see it keep on going all the way to 1,000 sold before the campaign is over! This is the only time that you'll be able to grab one, so please consider getting a funny paper spider for yourself or a friend if you haven't already!

OK, with all that out of the way, let's talk what's coming next on Paranatural!

1) Next week, the update will be another big post about the Eightfold plush to give it one last big push before the campaign is over! I'll likely try to do some little Isabel/Eightfold comics or something similar, too, so definitely check back then even if you've already bought one!

2) The week after that, the update on November 1st, will be a VERY cool one! Since I think there will be some confusion when it goes up, I'm gonna do a little FAQ here to clarify in advance! I consider this FAQ very light spoilers, so feel free to scroll on if you want to be absolutely blind on what this update's going to be. Okay, here I go: the update on November 1st will be a single page of comics (as in an actual comic, not illustrated prose). It will be labeled as Chapter Zero, but it is not the start of a new chapter. It is just the single page that you will see on November 1st. Down the line, there will be more "Chapter Zero" pages between and within chapters. I'm not returning to the comics format (I sadly can't handle the cost on my body), but I hope this will be a fun treat for you all regardless!

3) After that, I'll be doing fun Bayview worldbuilding posts, old art retrospectives, and other cool stuff like that through the holidays! I definitely need the break to plan Chapter 9, tackle freelance, and rest and recover while visiting my distant family. I've been looking forward to this breather for a long time! I hope you'll follow along during the sort-of-break.

Chapter 9, therefore, will start some time after the holidays! Follow me on Twitter, Tumblr, and Bluesky for news until then!

That's all for now! I'm beat! Thank you so, so much for reading and for all of your support! Paranatural forever! See you soon! :^)

~

[Transcript]

        Beyond the walls of Bayview Academy, where some could still recall what came before, reality’s rewriting hadn’t fazed the population. Memories of rural life became a life in paradise, a bustling archipelago where tourists swarmed like seagulls.

        The seagulls swarmed like tourists, too, and often in a similar location. As dawn broke, a whole screeching flock had descended upon the largest sign that bore the town’s new name, scanning the Mega Mall below it for their first stolen meal of the day.

        Even before the birds had left their fecal mark upon their crowded billboard basecamp, the sign had been defaced by a much more deliberate, much more saturated splatter. The letter “D” had been spraypainted as graffiti over Bayview’s storm-bent “B”, in mocking protest of the man whose money puppeteered the town. Davy didn’t rule it from the shadows anymore, though he was still confined to their protection. To the people of Bayview, his was a household name... one that teens and rebels spat whenever they would speak it.

        Boss Leader knew to curse it, too, before the sun was high above the sea. She closed a fist within her dream, flexing chitin in the blue she swam outside it. Davy Jones...! He’d called her monstrous, in the end, so many long lost years ago. She wished it was as true as it had felt. If only she had been horror enough to show no mercy, a creature far removed enough from feeling to destroy him face-to-face. What evil scheme had he devised now in the shelter of her sympathy? Mayview had changed again, this time before the Great Unknown had risen from its slumber! If the deepest sleep that she could weave could no longer contain it... what power could she possibly employ to hold it back...?

        Before Boss Leader could decide upon the Activity Consortium’s next move, news of what transpired had reached ears best left unpricked. Sophie Sybil’s exposé had only briefly sat unread inside the inbox of a hundred different tiplines... before it had been forwarded away without a trace, arriving at an address based in distant Transylvania.

        “Oh, gosh! Oh, geez!” fretted a muppet of a man with swirly glasses, clicking away at the only computer that had ever graced the fortress where he worked. “Over a dozen keyword matches! M-multiple monster anomalies flagged across a gigabyte of photos! It’s pinging from ten different sectors simultaneously—th-that’s gotta mean the source is Sector X, ma’am! The Magpie Protocol finally snagged the big one!”

        “Show me,” growled a cool voice from the shadows just behind him.

        A single photo from the collection was soon being marched through the halls of a castle seized from Dracula Himself, clenched tight in the ruthless fist of the deadliest hunter that had ever served the Cousinhood of Man. She threw doors porcupined with bloody stakes aside, revealing a throne room filled with old men and still-older decorations. Dusty tapestries depicted knights in silver armor slaying hounds the size of horses; a shattered coffin was suspended from the ceiling like the bat it once contained; taxidermied wolves studded the walls, staring daggers at the council staring daggers at the door.

        “Shambling fossils, all of you. No less the living dead than the vermin you’ve failed to exterminate,” spat the woman at the threshold. Unlike the Cousinhood veterans leering down at her, the new arrival was dressed in sleek and modern-looking leathers, a cool sword at her back and countless gadgets at her side. “Your blind adherence to tradition—your refusal to adapt—has allowed a PLAGUE to fester in the dark.”

        The woman tossed the crumpled photo to the floor. A grizzled old hunter with dentures of pure silver shot a wooden harpoon straight through it, then slowly cranked it back up to his lectern like a fish snagged by a lazy dockside angler. His sole remaining eye went wide when he saw the empty suit in the photo—the empty suit... of a man with a hook for a hand. Murmurs were exchanged between the elders of the Cousinhood as they passed the haunting image back and forth.

        “Knight Hunter of the Raptor Sect,” wheezed a man with stakes for fingers. “Long has your division been the vanguard of the Cousinhood.”

        “But all too oft thine kin hath flown beyond our ken,” warned an incomprehensible priest wearing pitch-black pince-nez glasses. “Forget thee not: we Cousins hunt in packs. Thou must keepeth pace with those who linger in the past, for the future is a dangerous frontier. How wouldst thou handle sudden ambush, caught alone and unprotected, whilst thou typeth unawares upon thine smartphone?”

        “We never needed wi-fi to kill a werewolf back when we were still a Brotherhood,” growled the Apex of the Ursine Sect. A glare from the High Cleric of Human Resources softened the elder’s scar-crossed scowl. “Not that that’s a bad thing,” he appended shortly after. “I’m all for a more inclusive appellation. Yes, I voted abstain on that measure, but what’s more gender-neutral than neutrality on gender equality?” He thumped his lectern with a sweaty palm. “Let the minutes show that I’m an ALLY. Even women can be alpha males, that’s what I always say. In private, so as not to sound performative—”

        “You will have your long-sought hunt in Sector X, if you’ve the wit to pierce its border undetected,” hissed the Apex of the Serpent Sect, “but do take care not to repeat the past you scorn... lest you be consigned to it like Lady Shrike before you. The bleeding edge cuts both ways, bold Knight Eagle.”

        “Spare me your meaningless titles,” the woman answered, pushing up her shadowy sunglasses. Ladies, lords, and knights. Ridiculous. The Cousinhood’s medieval hierarchy was nothing but frivolous ren faire pageantry. It provided no tactical benefit. “If you must know who to thank after I’ve CULLED the beast Shrike COULDN’T...” The woman trailed off into dramatic silence.

        The incident had torn her heart and flesh and life asunder. Her stage name, too, was best left rent in twain—how could she claim that anything had survived that cruel night’s carnage? The name she’d worn beneath it had been cast aside as well (though that was unrelated to the grim parts of her backstory; the boyish charm that she’d been famed for never fit the woman well, and she had leveraged her lethal success as a monster slayer into a femme fatale transition fully funded by the Cousinhood’s insurance plan). What, then, did she have left to bear besides her nickname’s shards? She was a verb, a weapon honed to serve one single purpose.

        She was Shred Eagle no longer.

        “...Call me Shred.”

        Back in Bayview, life was quickly easing into its newly minted backdrop.

        Isabel’s sandals stuck to the surf and the sand as she walked the shore of the cove that she called home. She’d risen early, hoping to case the lighthouse while the dojo’s students were still out for their morning jog. Flipfop’s umbrella was in there, along with all her grandpa’s other captive spirits.

        Each night, when Master Guerra locked himself inside, the lighthouse would glow an eerie red that every spectral in the town could see for miles. He was training, fighting a battle royale in a myriad spirit trance, connecting with a hundred haunted objects that by all rights should have unspooled his ghostly form. Each dawn, however, he’d emerge from the spire unscathed.

        When Isabel was little, she would climb the lighthouse ivy to a perch where she could watch him through a window, pressing up against the glass with reverent awe. Eightfold would pull her into spirit trance so she could parse her grandpa’s shadowboxing, and Isabel would memorize his movements, mimicking them later as she’d seen them—made against the empty air, a violent art without a victim. She couldn’t see things that way anymore.

        Locked. The window was secure, just like the lighthouse’s heavy front doors. A twelve-year-old’s strength couldn’t break its thick glass, and spectral energy was useless when it came to mundane obstacles. Isabel sighed and descended the ivy back down to the ground. With Flipflop, she could have flipped inside. With Eightfold, she could have slid a paper ribbon through the crack to turn the latch. With just her own abilities, her only option was to challenge Master Guerra at the threshold... and that was what he wanted, wasn’t it? Everything was a miserable test with him, her every choice a chance at unexpected failure.

        Isabel stared out across the water and watched the sun rise over Bayview. She’d always liked the lonely feeling of an empty morning beach. It felt different now, however... brisk and windswept, with an autumn chill that didn’t suit the summer.

        “...I wasn’t alone back then, I guess,” she muttered softly to herself. The silence at her side was one she couldn’t take for granted.

        An island away, beneath the sea, a book no longer bound by earth and stone bobbed slowly to the surface.

        The rest of the Activity Club, too, awoke to a world misremembered. Max blinked blearily out of the Corner Shore’s second-floor window, stirred from his sleep by the inland souvenir shop’s awful steel-drum, surf-jam playlist. There it was, beyond the bubble—Baxborough, the mainland city Max had left. He’d felt hopeless, yesterday, about ever seeing it again... but that had just been pointless moping. It was so close, wasn’t it? The twins, the home he missed—even perhaps, he dared to dream, his mother’s phantom echo. Once they could get the Ghost Ship back in action, Baxborough was just a single day aboard away. Max could see his destination, plot his course from his own window... just as soon as that annoying fog concealing it cleared up.

        “And THAT is why... E equals MC squared!”

        Ed drew the little floating two with a flourish, and everybody clapped. Everyone respected them so awesomely for doing math with letters. This was not the first impossibility that they’d achieved with ABCs; Ed’s grades were so good that they had reached the coolest parts of the alphabet, clocking in at a Z+ in science and an X++ in Secret English, an invitation-only subject that drove most geniuses to madness. Ed didn’t really understand exactly how they’d ended up so smart, but it was rude to look a gifted horse in the mouth, or something wise and apropos like that. They were too busy basking in positive reinforcement to question if they really deserved to be tutoring eighth graders in a pre-dawn study sesh at Bayview Biddle School, or why class was in session in the middle of the summer.

        If Isaac had some insight to contribute, he was not around to share it. He’d skipped Ed’s lesson to sleep in at home, where he could stare in utter torment at the ceiling. Isaac’s thoughts were a worse storm than any he could summon, still swirling with fury at Doorman’s blindsiding betrayal. Pangs of confusion, loss, and guilt, too, sparked beyond the cloud of anger all too often, striking like stray bolts of errant lightning.

        I have to warn Max, Isaac thought. Doorman’s cryptic counsel was enough to make him worry, even if he wasn’t certain he could trust his mentor’s motives. Maybe Doorman was still using him, but... if Max’s spirit really was dangerous, Isaac didn’t care. He had to get the bat away from him, then hash things out once they could speak in private. Isaac stared out of the window of his bedroom. Maybe he should go and talk to Max right now. He was his next-door neighbor, after all.

        Unlike Isaac’s, Dimitri’s house was right where he had left it. The humble bungalow still sat at the back of East Island, where it faced the lapping waves and blue horizon. What was altered, he discovered, were its contents—every box had been unpacked, the missing furniture replaced. There was no sign that his family had ever planned to move.

        “Hey, bud,” said Dimitri’s dad, giving his son a placid nod as he cautiously emerged into the dining room.

        Dimitri jumped at the sound of his voice. He blinked at his mom in the kitchen behind him. Then he slowly stumbled to the window, staring out across the ocean with wide eyes. “Port Paradise Apartments” read a sign not far away, but Dimitri wouldn’t notice it for minutes. He was too lost in the dream his waking life had now become.

        Something unexplainable had happened to the town that he adored... to Mayview, the only home Dimitri could remember.