Braelynn's Birthright--Book 1: Wendigo: Braelynn's Birthright

By Elise Abram

Imagine a world where the creatures of nightmare are real. This becomes fifteen-year-old Braelynn Hanlon's world once she inherits her birthright in the form of her grandmother's ring and is tricked into putting it on. You see, the women in her family have been cursed, doomed to defend humanity from things that go bump in the night. On the upside, the ring comes with super-healing powers, but it also makes her a magnet for all things supernatural. Her mother has had years to come to terms with her fate, but Braelynn's about to get a crash course on how to be a hunter of all things paranormal.

 

Her boyfriend, Seth, turns out to be a vampire. When Braelynn vanquishes him, the leader of Seth's gang sends a bugbear to seek revenge. If that's not bad enough, her best friend, Shannon, is a werewolf, and Shannon's girl crush is enchanted. To make matters worse, the school's activist, Winona, is an Ojibwe shaman in training, hot on the trail of a wendigo disguised as a local businessman who is threatening to destroy the local watershed. Braelynn and her friends agree to help Winona vanquish the wendigo, but will her ring and her new-found powers be enough to keep her safe?

• Language: English
• Publisher: EMSA Publishing
• Release date: Sep 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781988843681

Elise Abram

Elise is a retired high school teacher of English and Computer Studies, former archaeologist, and current author, editor, freelance writer, avid reader of literary and science fiction, and student of the human condition. She has been writing for as long as she can remember. Over the years, writing has become as essential to her as eating, sleeping, or breathing.  Elise is best known as an urban fantasy and young adult novelist, but her writing interests are diverse. She has published everything from science fiction, horror and the paranormal, and contemporary fiction and police procedurals for all ages. She has also published five children’s picture books.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Grandmother’s house is huge; like mansion huge. It’s also really old. Mom refers to it as The Old Victorian. I don’t point out that old Victorian is redundant; the Victorian Era dates to Queen Victoria’s reign, which ended over a hundred years ago. So, yeah—a house built during her reign would be old.

Anyway, to say that her house is big would be an understatement. Suffice it to say, my mother’s mother lived comfortably. And now she’s dead. And I never had the chance to know her. Mom says they had an estrangement over something that happened when she was pregnant with me. I’d hate to think I was the reason she stopped speaking to her mother, but then again, I wasn’t even around (technically) at the time.

My grandmother’s house looks like something out of a horror movie. Why do so many Victorian houses—old Victorian houses—look haunted? Maybe they’ve been around for so long that they’ve seen all sorts of life, tragedy, and death. Mom claims that organic elements—like wood, stone, and water—are capable of recording spiritual energy. She also says the house has been in the family for generations. In that case, pretty much every square millimetre of it is saturated in the literal blood, sweat, and tears of my family.

Cue the full-body shudders.

You coming? Mom calls from the top of the porch.

I look up at the house’s paint-stripped wooden siding, the weather-worn wooden shutters on the windows, and rickety wooden stairs. Right behind you, I say, putting on a brave face.

The door creaks when Mom pushes it open. The floors creak when we step inside. The wind moans through the siding after we close the door.

Kitchen’s back here, Mom says, hoping to rustle up something for us to eat. She opens the fridge door, and I smell the rot from across the room. She closes the door, spins around, and says, Uber Eats it is.

We order an abundance of pizza (nothing like cold pizza for breakfast). I set about exploring the house while waiting for the pizza while Mom stays behind to tidy the kitchen.

I take out my phone, turn on the camera, and centre my face in the frame. Hi, everyone! Braelynn Hanlan here, coming to you from my grandmother’s house. I turn my phone to record the grand staircase at the front of the house. Come with me as I explore! I set out up the creaky staircase, imagining my mother launching Slinkys down it when she was young.

The door at the top of the stairs is closed. It also creaks when I open it. I keep recording as I reach in to turn on the lights. Instead of a proper light switch, I feel a plate with two buttons on it and press the top button to illuminate the room. Looks like the electric isn’t the only thing in need of an upgrade. I film the old-fashioned light switch and pan the rest of the room.

I think this was my grandmother’s sewing room, I say when I see an old sewing machine and a seamstress’s dummy, not to mention several bolts of fabric propped up against the far wall. The curtains are drawn in the room, which is really dark in spite of the overhead lights.

On to the next room, I tell my future viewers.

The next bedroom has a twin bed in it, already made up. There’s a bay window that looks out over the front of the house. A built-in bench below the window forms a neat reading nook. I wonder if this was my mother’s childhood bedroom.

A claw foot tub. This comes out in a sort of reverent whisper when I find the bathroom. The toilet seat has a crack in it right at the front, and I wonder why my grandmother hadn’t called anyone to fix it. The toilet, sink, faucet, and small, black and white checkerboard floor tiles look about as old as the house itself. It’s like stepping back in time, I tell my future viewers.

I open the last door on the floor to what must have been Grandmother’s bedroom, and I wonder how someone as old as her managed to climb the stairs on her own on the regular.

No sooner have I caught a glimpse of the museum exhibit that is her room than the doorbell rings, and Mom calls up to let me know the pizza’s here. I stop recording and post to my Insta account before joining Mom for dinner.

––––––––

Mom comes knocking on my—or should that be her—bedroom door later that night. Hey, she says, I was thinking...you must be really scared sleeping all alone in this big, drafty, creaky house.

Umm...no, I say, like duh, and I turn off my music. "Okay...well, I’m really scared sleeping all alone in this big, drafty, creaky house, and I wonder if you wouldn’t mind helping me out."

Thinking she’s looking to sleep with me in my room, I say, The bed’s a twin? Duh, again.

I meant in my room.

Really?

Come on, Braelynn, she whines. She walks to my bed with exaggerated steps as if she’s walking through quicksand and plops on the end of my bed. Being here is bringing up all sorts of bad memories, and I don’t want to be alone.

I make an involuntary sound, something like ach in the back of my throat, though whether to show perturbation or acquiescence, I don’t know.

"We can pop popcorn and fire up a video on Netflix."

Your mother has Wi-Fi?

I thought I might create a hotspot with my phone.

You know how to do that?

Mom raises her upper lip in a sneer and says, Ha-ha.

Let me get this straight, I say, you want us to eat popcorn in bed?

Just this once, she says, and I know she must really be hard up for company if she’s willing to indulge in her pet peeve.

I give in and follow Mom to her bedroom.

––––––––

After the movie, Mom fires up her tablet to read. She’s into binge- reading the books on which the shows she binge-watches are based. This one is about a guy who stalks a girl and eventually kills everyone in her life, including her. I open Instagram to see if anyone’s commented on my video yet.

Hey, Lynne. Stiff upper lip. That comment is from Shannon, one of my friends at school.

Creepy, says Mrs. Baggins.

Miss you, Sommer, who sits next to me in English class, posts.

Come home soon, says Chloe, one of my classmates.

This *CAN’T* be real, 1D4evr says.

Photoshopped, Allistair99 proclaims.

"Dude, Photoshop’s not for videos," D3VA5TAT10N admonishes.

Who are these people?

It’s someone in a costume, KashSida posts.

Believe, you muggle, HermoinePotter says.

WTF? I think, only I say it for reals, having forgotten my mother is sitting right next to me.

What is it? she asks.

Crazy comments on my video. I lean over to show her what people are writing.

You posted a video? Of the house, no less? I really wish you hadn’t, Braelynn. Mom’s from that generation that still believes in privacy. She makes it a point not to post any photographs with people in them, and she carefully cultivates what she posts on Facebook, even though the only people following her are people she knows in person, like work colleagues, clients, and friends.

What are they all talking about, anyway? she asks.

Hell if I know.

Your language leaves something to be desired, she tells me as if she’s never sworn in my presence.

There have been almost a thousand views since dinner, I tell her.

’You are no Zak Baggins,’ she reads.

As if I even know who that is.

That guy on the ghost hunting show I watch, Mom says. It’s one of what she calls her guilty pleasures. She watches it when she claims there’s nothing else on television and gets super-mad when Dad and I give her a hard time about it.

Mom continues to read: ’There are more things on heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’

What’s that even supposed to mean? I ask.

It’s Hamlet. It means that people can never know everything there is to know about everything.

Oh, I say and scroll further down in the comments. ’Creepy house? Check,’ I read. ’Creaky floorboards? Check. Howling wind? Check. Spooky apparitions? Check. Girl that isn’t listening when the ghosts are telling her to get out? Check.’

What did you post, Braelynn?

Nothing, I say, shocked that she’s so alarmed. Me as I explored the house.

Show it to me.

I press play, and we watch.

When the video ends we look at each other. Neither of us seems to have the words to speak.

I didn’t see anything, Mom says. Did you? I shake my head. Uh-uh.

We scroll down a bit.

Watch for it... another comment reads. Pause the video at 1:36.

We fast-forward to 1:30, let it play until it reaches 1:36, and hit pause to see what looks like the top half of a man wearing a suit poke his head out from the shadows. We advance the video frame by frame to see the man recede back into the shadows a fraction of a second later. If you blink, you’ll miss it.

Who was that? I ask Mom.

Who was what?

That guy.

What guy?

Look, I say, and I back up to show the man in freeze-frame. There’s nothing there, she says.

I point at the apparition and inadvertently touch the screen to set the video into motion, so I have to go back and stop it again. This whole thing feels more like the white/gold or blue/ black dress argument than anything else.

Pareidolia, she says, matter of factly.

Is that the guy’s name?

Mom lets out a breathy laugh. No, sweetie. It’s when the brain tries to make sense of what you’re seeing. It takes random patterns and forms an image in your mind. Most often, it makes you see a face in something abstract, like a shape in a cloud.

Seriously?

It’s a well-known phenomenon. You can look it up.

Like that’s going to happen.

Look, it’s getting late. Maybe we should turn in. We can take a look to see what the figure might’ve been in the morning.

Or we could go now, I offer.

Mom smiles. She turns off her tablet and places it on the bedside table. Or we could wait until morning.

Fine, I say, defeated.

CHAPTER 2

It’s about two in the morning when I’m awoken by a crash. I’m not sure if it’s in my dream or real until I roll over to see that Mom’s no longer in bed. I call her name in a whisper in case there’s an intruder in the house. There’s no answer except for the shatter of something ceramic. This is followed by what sounds like someone dancing on the main floor.

I call my mom again—a little louder this time—but she still doesn’t answer, so I get out of bed, go to the second-floor landing, and try again.

Go to sleep, sweetie, Mom says, sounding out of breath.

What are you doing down there? I ask, making my way down the stairs.

Nothing. Go back to bed.

When I come around the curve in the stairs, I see Mom standing there in her pyjamas. She’s in a sort of warrior yoga pose, carrying a shiny-tipped staff. Mom looks around her, straightens, and swipes at the air. She pauses as if to catch her breath, and then she falls, only it’s more like she’s been pushed. She goes careening into the huge, wooden sideboard server in the room.

That’s gotta hurt.

I call to her again.

Not now, Braelynn, she says sort of sing-songy. She gets up and searches for her staff, which has rolled to the base of the stairs. A look of sheer horror—or is it fear?—forms on her face, and she covers her head with her arms.

While all this is happening, I run down the stairs to retrieve Mom’s staff.

I call to her. She looks up, and I toss the weapon to her.

Mom catches it, stabs at the air, and practically collapses.

What was that?

I couldn’t sleep, she says, panting, "so I decided to come down and practice a bit of bōjutsu. I guess it worked because I’m exhausted now. I don’t know about you, but I’m going back to bed."

Since when do you do...what did you call it?

Bōjutsu. She walks up a few stairs, turns, and says, Are you coming?

What the—

Don’t you dare swear. Your grandmother wouldn’t appreciate it.

She’s not here to hear it.

Mom’s lips curl into a knowing smile. If only you knew, my love.

I’ve practically closed the distance between myself and the stairs before what she said sinks in. Wait...what?

Nothing.

I follow Mom up the stairs and back to our bedroom.

Something’s going on, I tell her. You’re not telling me everything, so...spill.

Now’s not the time, honey. Mom crawls under the sheets. When I follow suit, she leans over and kisses me on the forehead. Maybe in the morning.

I’m not a child anymore, Mom, I say in a tone that renders the statement a paradox. Whatever it is, I can handle it.

You’re certainly not an adult yet, she says, and I can’t believe she’s condescending to me like that.

What the hell is going on here?

Language! she says.

You’re deflecting.

Mom rolls over and says, Goodnight.

No! I pull the blankets off of her. Tell me what you’re not telling me.

She sits up in bed, crosses her arms over her chest, and stares at me. I can tell she wants to tell me, but something about her and the fact that she’s my mother is stopping her out of a stupid sense of protection.

Mom looks at her phone. It’s late, sweetie. I can appreciate that you must have a lot of questions, but tomorrow is the reading of your grandmother’s will, and—

Why do you always do that?

Mom smiles thinly. Do what?

Call her my grandmother.

She lets out a nervous giggle. Because she is...was.

But she’s also your mother.

Not in the true sense of the word. Not for a while.

But it’s like you’re blaming me for whatever happened between the two of you. Speaking of which—

Like I said, she cuts me off, "it’s getting late, and while I can appreciate that you have a lot of questions, tomorrow is the reading of your gra—my mother’s—will, and we need to get up early to get ready and get over there in time."

Why are you being evasive?

I’m not. I’m just...exhausted and frustrated and stressed about the whole situation. She slides back down in the bed and pulls the covers up over her shoulders. Let’s get some sleep. We will talk about this tomorrow. After the lawyer’s. I promise.

I let it go. Even though I believe she has no intention of revisiting my questions, she will answer them. I’ll make sure of it.

CHAPTER 3

Mom says little the next morning. It’s like she’s trying to avoid me or something. She doesn’t even come down for breakfast, and she’s the biggest supporter for starting the day right by feeding your brain (her words, not mine) I know. She sniffles while driving to the lawyer’s and wipes tears from her cheeks,