Paranormal is Relative

by S.J. Drew

places."

  "A person with a strong faith, especially one who lives in one place for a long time, can cause some similar effects on their house," Isabella said.

  "So mi abuela has blessed her house in a way?" Leah asked.

  "Yes. She may also have had an ordained priest bless it sometime as well. Since she's not here, we need a representative of her faith to give us permission to act here and drive that thing back to whatever abyss it came from."

  "I guess that makes sense, but I don't know how to do that."

  "Pray for guidance," Nora said. "God will take care of the rest."

  Leah kind of smiled. "You're right. Okay, I'm going into the spare room to get my head together and do some serious praying."

  "Take your time," Isabella said.

  "I'd rather you hurry up," Maryann replied. "That thing is really creepy."

  "Maryann!"

  "Well, it totally is."

  Leah went into the spare bedroom and shut the door. She was a little nervous; so far neither the supernatural things she'd encountered nor Isabella and Maryann's magic had come into potential conflict with her faith. She couldn't deny what she had experienced was real, so she simply trusted it was all part of God's plan. "I guess I'll just have to keep trusting," she thought. Her grandmother had religious pictures all over the house, so she knelt down facing a picture of Jesus. She pulled a rosary out of her purse and started to pray. She prayed to St. Cecilia, St. Jude, to Christ, and to God to remove the horrible creature from the fireplace and from the world and to seal the door so it could never return. She emerged from the bedroom feeling a little calmer. "Okay, I've prayed. I hope that'll be enough."

  "That goes for all of us," Nora said.

  They walked back into the sewing room.

  "I hunger!" it roared, brandishing its tentacles menacingly.

  "Stop it," Nora snapped.

  "It's my nature," it replied sullenly, its tentacles dropping back to the floor with a dull, slightly squishy sound.

  "We're going to draw some circles in chalk," Maryann said. "Don't you dare attack us while we're doing it."

  Despite not having shoulders, it managed to shrug. "I will not interfere."

  "I'm going to have to mop after we're done," Leah sighed.

  Maryann and Isabella drew some circles and symbols on the ground while Leah fidgeted with the rosary nervously. Nora had pulled out her cross necklace and had sent up her own prayers. Isabella concentrated on closing the half-open door while Maryann asked for her own divine guidance. The room went completely silent for a moment; there was a bright flash, a sort of suction-popping sound, a powerful gust of wind that knocked them all to the floor, another flash, and the world seemed to go back to normal.

  The young women blinked furiously until they could see again. Friedle-goth was gone, the fireplace looked normal, and the sewing room looked like it was the victim of a minor tornado. The dummies had fallen over, the scraps and smaller pieces of fabric were scattered everywhere, and buttons and other fasteners had spilled all over the floor.

  "Aaahh!" Leah cried, seeing the mess. "Mi abuela is going to kill me!"

  "Don't worry; we'll clean it up," Maryann said.

  "No, you don't understand. Abuela's super-organized. Everything has a place and I don't know what that is. Even when it's clean, she'll know it got messed up. What am I going to tell her?"

  "We'll figure something out," Isabella said. "So let's get started cleaning."

  "Oh, I'm so dead. First the RV and now this," Leah moaned, but she got to work.

  The band pulled together and cleaned up the sewing room. They tried to put everything back where they remembered it being earlier but after all their efforts, Leah was still certain that they had missed something. They warmed up the promised enchiladas for dinner and spent the night at the house.

  They headed out early the next morning.

  Two days later, Leah got a call from her grandmother. It was quite long but since Leah was speaking Spanish, the band didn't know what she was saying. Leah winced a lot, seemed to get interrupted, and finally sighed and ended the call.

  "She noticed the room was different?" Nora asked.

  "Oh, yes, she did. But I told her that someone had broken in and messed everything up and then she wanted to know if we'd filed a police report and so I said we didn't and then she yelled at me for not knowing better," Leah replied, obviously frustrated. "But then she calmed down and thanked me for trying to clean up everything and she was glad I wasn't hurt or anything."

  "Why would she think you were hurt?" Maryann asked.

  "She said she had one of those dreams and she thought I was going to meet something awful."

  "Well, you did."

  "Yeah, I know that," she retorted. "But I can't tell mi abuela what was in her fireplace. So I kind of let her think that we probably interrupted the burglar which is why only the sewing room got messed up."

  "So it all worked out!" Maryann said brightly.

  "If by that you mean mi abuela thinks I'm a flake for not filing a police report."

  "Family," Nora sighed.

  "I hear that. Well, at least we did get rid of that thing," Leah said. "It's better that Abuela is mad at me than if she'd come home to that thing. But I'm so going to hear about this next Christmas."

  "I guess Friedle-goth got what it wanted, kind of," Nora said.

  "What do you mean?"

  "It causes chaos and destruction, right? Well, it didn't devour the world but it sure managed to cause chaos and destruction our lives."

  "Great. So the only winner here is the terrifying monster," Leah said sourly.

  "The terrifying monster does live in a world where it might get eaten any minute," Maryann said.

  "You're right. I feel better. And I'm glad it didn't have enough power or inclination to drive us insane."

  "We probably wouldn't even notice if it had," Nora replied dryly.

  The band laughed and Maryann turned the conversation to a different topic.

  The Lyrics:

  On the surface all is normal

  But beneath the waves it sleeps

  Lying dead and dreaming

  Its influence grows and seeps

  The inmates hear the dark whispers

  That immanent from the deep

  The voices become louder

  And slowly the madness creeps

  Refrain: Do not read from the book!

  Do not look upon its face!

  Fear the ancient star god,

  The horror from beyond space!

  Miskatonic University

  Houses the terrible tome

  The book of the Old Ones

  Is much better left alone

  Lying in forgotten chambers

  Are dark forbidden texts

  Those that read them are dead

  If you read them you'll be next

  Refrain:

  Gambrel roofs and dark legends

  All those here are damned

  Supernatural horrors lurk

  In the small village of Arkham

  If you go looking for something

  You don't know what you'll find

  If you're lucky you find nothing

  But you may still lose your mind

  Refrain x2

  Track 7 - The Brother of Sleep

  The Interview:

  Bryan: I really feel this album has taken a much darker tone than your debut. We've got tracks about twisted love, jealousy, stealing credit, bad influences, twisting words, monsters, and now this one, “The Brother of Sleep,” is actually about death.

  Lee: What about our breakaway hit single? That was about redemption.

  Bryan: Well, even that wasn't exactly happy. Why is this so dark?

  Kelly: Is this sort of a dark side of fame approach?

  Lenore: No. That's already been done.

  Kelly: In your last interview, you said you didn't want to be considered a “da
rk, Gothic-style” band. So why these dark songs?

  Belle: The tone of this song isn't particularly dark, is it?

  Bryan: Well, I think of it as progressive rock with alt-rock undertones, so I guess it's not exactly death metal.

  Anna: And we’ve already done a pop tune and soulful pop tune.

  Kelly: That’s true, but the subjects are pretty dark.

  Lee: And here we try to look on the bright side of life. “Life's a laugh and death's a joke it's true.”

  Kelly: Are you really making fun of this?

  Anna: You know, not so long ago, people here weren't so weirded out by death. People would display the dead bodies in their own homes. Maybe death isn't so scary. It's just like sleep; well, under ideal circumstances anyway.

  Lenore: We like songs about unconventional subjects. And while I suppose we didn't set out to intentionally create a darker follow up to “Necromancy for the Greater Good,” the creative process sometimes takes a different path than we envision when we start the process.

  Lee: In short, the songs fit together, and that's why we put them on the album. These songs were all written at different times, so it's not like we sat down to write all these songs with depressing subjects just for our second album.

  Bryan: It really just ended up that way?

  Anna: Well, not exactly, I guess. But we don't want people to think we're all dark and Gothic or whatever now like that's our thing. But these songs just came together really well.

  Lee: Don't worry, our next album will be just full of nothing but auto-tuned dance songs and throwbacks to bubblegum pop.

  Kelly: I would pay to listen to that just to find out if you actually did it.

  The Inside Story:

  Nevermore and the Ravens finished up their show at a trendy dive bar, relaxed for a bit, and then got to the tedious work of packing up their gear. The bar was in an up-and-coming restaurant district, so there was still a bit of traffic even for that late hour.