Rise of the Night Witch

For SUAR 1

A/N: Hey guys! This book isn't fully up-to-date anymore. I plan to rewrite it (though on a website other than Wattpad) and these are the first three chapters of the rewritten version.  If you're doing a review swap through SUAR or some other community, it'd be cool if you critiqued those instead of the old chapters.

It had been ten years since a demon tried to kill Marissa for the first time.

She was eight back then. When she grew older, she saw them again. Pockmark-ridden faces popped up in mirrors or windows when she believed she was not strong enough, not smart enough, or not good enough.

She tried to ignore them. As long as she didn't see them, they didn't see her either.

In her old home, she solved the problem by dismounting all the mirrors in her home. She always went to school with disheveled hair and was mocked by the other girls for her poor grooming, but it did the trick.

Upon reaching adulthood, she couldn't hide anymore. She had to move out and enroll in college in a new town with a new home and new mirrors. Just as she wanted wash her face, a grotesque monster greeted her in her reflection and forced her to drop her hairbrush.

So, she went to college as a crusty-eyed bed-head today. People there wouldn't be as judgemental as in high school, or so they told her.

Marissa was the last to arrive in the lecture hall. Fortunately for her, not much had happened yet. Other students slept on their desks, their skins sunburned from a summer break they wouldn't enjoy again for a year.

Professor Weber struggle to get his presentation to work. Once modern technology did what it was meant to, the first slide, titled An Introduction to Modern Folklore, welcomed them.

Marissa took her notebook out. She was the first in her family to go to college. Besides her mother, maybe, but she didn't stick around to give advice. Her Dad's cop salary could only support her so far, poor grades were unacceptable. Only a good GPA would get her into law school.

Now that the day had come, she had trouble focusing. Her pen fidgeted as Professor Weber introduced the course and its aims. From what she picked up from the uni's website, this module targeted sociology and media communications majors. It didn't offer as much practical value as, say, a course on coding, but the university promised that it taught critical thinking.

Today's lecture had the title Supernatural Superstition: Rise of the Paranormal in the 21st Century. Weber opened with something eye-catching: A video of a woman transforming into a werewolf

The classroom buzzed with a mix of awe, skepticism, and pencils scratching on paper as the grainy film played.

Professor Weber paused the video, his eyes scanning the room to ensure everyone was paying attention. He was a small guy wearing a monocle. He spoke in a low tone and his eyelids hung so deep that Marissa worried he'd fall asleep any moment, "Now, class, this may seem like a scene straight out of a horror movie because this is precisely what it is. It has been made from the scrapped footage of an unfinished film. Yet, millions of people believe it is real and the uploader describes it as authentic footage shot in Russia. In this course, we will dissect these stories, examine their cultural significance, and discuss why so many people believe stories of cryptids, aliens, or monsters that occur in our newsfeeds every week. Now-"

The old man paused. Professor Weber forgot that he had to manually switch the slides for his presentation to work, so he switched to a slide that showed the course outline he had just described in words. The poor man was too old for modern technology.

Over the next 90 minutes, Professor Weber explained folkloric beliefs of the supernatural. He explored various supernatural myths and their historical roots. Ghosts, vampires, and witches all made appearances in the discussion, each serving as a lens through which the human psyche grappled with fear and the unknown. He also discussed magic, like how people believed running water had magical properties and could repel creatures like vampires, the Nuckelavee, or the Barghest. All three of these were said to be unable to cross rivers.