And with that, Chapter 9 has officially begun! Help put gas in the Paranatural tank on Ko-fi or Patreon! Thanks so much for reading, I hope you're as excited as I am for this one!

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[Transcript]

        Every bedtime story lays its claim to ever after. New love lasts. The peace persists. The monster never rises from its grave. Each fable, though, each fairy tale, is followed by an epilogue less happily endured... for when the book is shut, the nightlight snuffed, the bedroom door sealed coffin-tight, we face the cliché’s counterpoint, a question mark: the black beyond The End.

        Fear of the dark, the oldest fear, is born from its fathomless depth. Every lesser nightmare swims within it, circling hungrily in its uncharted waters, waiting for a flashlight’s trembling spotlight to debut it as the monster of the week. When at last dawn breaks, however (despite the meddling of the night’s marauding denizens), we see that every empty threat it once contained has been dispelled. With the darkness driven back, we sigh and go about our day, briefly believing once again in happy endings.

        Nevermind that all the boogeymen retreat back to their birthplace. Nevermind that it’s still lightless in your head, beneath your skin. Forget that all the goblins, ghouls, and witches are within you, staring from the black you glimpse with every single blink. Behind your eyes, the night lasts ominously ever after.

        It was from the sun-sieged safety of this hiding place that Fauxbia, the Fear Witch, spun her web. She’d crept about in plain sight for some years now, regathering the strength that June Summers, the meddling brat, had burnt away. Nestled deep within her day job masquerade, veiled by blissful ignorance from vampires, ex-husbands, and abandoned hosts alike, the embodiment of fear itself had nothing left to fear...

        ...until this very morning, when Fauxbia discovered she would soon have ample cause to fear the light.

        “CURSES! Curses and HEXES and jinxes AND spells! Of all the rotten LUCK!”

        Fauxbia swept potions and poisons and yarn-safe shampoo from her dilapidated sink. She clambered closer to a shattered mirror spiderwebbed with cracks, where her reflection flickered in and out like a candle soon to fade. Fauxbia snarled as she struggled to study the festering wound she’d stitched up with her string. Worming its way through her house’s hideous curtains, the faintest glint of sunlight stung her eyes.

        “KYYYAAARRRGHH!!” she screamed in rage, if not yet in a pain she couldn’t bear.

        CURSE that plague rat Davy Jones! He’d BIT her with his FILTHY fangs, with teeth drenched in the black blood she had spilled from him! Now her body, already a feeble, detestable prison, was beginning to succumb to his disease. Vampirism. By sundown she would be one of his thralls, forced to breathlessly follow his brainless commands, to lick that leathery, ill-fitting boot he called his face!

        No. No, no, no. The Fear Witch was nobody’s puppet. She was the puppeteer! She would claim a NEW host, just as planned, just as she had craved for years... a youthful vessel she could pilot as she pleased.

        But how? Fauxbia would be defenseless while she waited for a mundane host to metamorphosize into a proper spectral. She had countless contingencies prepared to salvage the failure she’d faced back at Bayview Academy, but with such a strict time limit, she would have to act much faster than expected.

        So be it. She’d stitched thinner threads into a masterwork before. First there was the Bayview Academy student with white spectral energy that Paige and her flunkies had supposedly discovered. An impossible prize like that was a mouthwatering prospect... but there was sure to be a catch. Fauxbia needed other plans in place. East Island was her playground, reshaped just as she’d wanted. She had her web of wires overhead. She had a hostage she could use to force that pipsqueak Cody Jones to do her bidding. If she could set the stage by sunset... yes. Yes. With that much fear at her disposal, she could mold the perfect puppet in an instant.

        A shaky smile (free of fangs for now) spread wide across the Witch’s wicked face. With a creepy-crawly flourish of her fingers, she dismissed the spirit fusion that disguised her.

        Devilora Demonelle DuNacht, Vice Principal of Bayview Biddle School, stepped out of her decrepit home, emerging in the bleak shade of her weed-infested porch. Her next-door neighbor, the middle school’s very own Principal Pleezdoo, appeared right on schedule, too, popping out of her bright yellow house like a bird from a cuckoo clock. Devilora greeted her with a grin and a wave so arthritic it seemed to move in stop motion, and Principal Pleezdoo faked a wobbly smile back. She’d given up avoiding Devilora years ago; they’d carpooled to the middle school each morning for a decade.

        Devilora took a deep breath through her dangling aardvark nose. Today was the day. The sky was clear. The seas were calm. The sphinxes she’d contracted circled slowly overhead. The moon was going to be full tonight, which didn’t matter much to her but felt appropriately eldritch.

        Before the day was done, she’d claim what she deserved. What wretch was fool enough to try and stop her?

        Johnny Jhonny woke up in his bed feeling sweaty and stifled, beset by humidity, bewildered by the narrative’s transition into prose. In an attempt to reclaim his reality, he groped for the first caveman verb that he could and punched his poor alarm clock off its perch.

        “Snooze,” he said, though it had not been beeping.

        Johnny blinked, rubbing strange purple shapes from his sight. Had Bayview always been this freaking hot?