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Book Blurb & Info
The Unseen by J.L. Bryan
Publication date: October 31st 2013
Genres: Horror
Cassidy is a young tattoo artist living in the Little Five Points neighborhood of Atlanta. She’s always suffered terrible nightmares, and sometimes the hideous creatures seem to follow her out of her dreams and into her waking life, though she’s the only one who can see them. Drugs and alcohol can blot them out, but never entirely chase them away.
When a demonic cult begins to take control of the people in her life, including her younger brother, Cassidy discovers that the unseen world of monsters is very real. She can no longer avoid it. To protect those she loves, she must accept her own hidden supernatural talents and face the forces of evil before the sinister cult achieves its twisted goals and casts the world into darkness.
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18630803-the-unseen
Book Promo
The Unseen by J.L. Bryan has a special release price of 99 cents through Halloween.
The Unseen by J.L. Bryan has a special release price of 99 cents through Halloween.
See his website for details and links: http://jlbryanbooks.com/books/theunseen.html
Book Excerpt
“You also need a YES and a NO so the spirits can answer questions, and a GOOD-BYE so they can leave when they’re done,” Barb said. “Use the glow-in-the-dark markers.”
“Good idea!” Cassidy replied. Barb hopped up to light the three scented candles in Cassidy’s room. Tamila frowned.
Cassidy carefully wrote out the alphabet in three rows of green letters, then added numbers from zero to nine. She wrote YES and NO in the upper corners and GOOD-BYE at the bottom.
“And maybe a big FUCK YOU in case they get annoyed,” Reese suggested, and Cassidy snickered and added FUCK YOU between the YES and the NO.
“This isn’t a joke,” Tamila said. “I’m not doing this.”
“Blah, blah, blah.” Reese rolled her eyes.
“Now we just need to decorate it,” Barb said. “There’s usually a sun and a moon...”
“We can do better than that.” Cassidy drew a blue moon, a green clover, a red heart, and a purple horseshoe before realizing she was imitating the ingredients of a Lucky Charms box. “Wait, this is stupid.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying,” Tamila said.
“It looks good!” Barb countered.
“Make it more occult-y,” Reese said, with a sharp grin at Tamila.
Cassidy used the nozzle of her Elmer’s Glue bottle to sketch stars in each corner of the poster board. She dusted them with red glitter and blew off the excess, leaving four sparkling red pentagrams.
“That seems like a bad idea,” Tamila said. “Just take off the pentagrams, okay?”
“The pentagrams are great!” Barb said.
“Hell, yeah, keep them,” Reese nodded.
“What other occult symbols are there?” Cassidy asked.
“Inverted crosses?” Reese suggested, then smirked at Tamila’s shocked look.
“There’s a symbol for each horoscope sign. I’ll sketch them...” Barb drew the symbols on a scrap of notebook paper, and Cassidy copied them in marker around the edges of the posterboard—blue waves for Aquarius, a red bull pictogram for Taurus.
“The symbol for Cancer is a sixty-nine?” Reese snickered, looking over Barb’s shoulder.
“That’s what Cancers like. I’m a Cancer, so I know,” Barb replied.
“Here it is—the ultimate Ouija board.” Cassidy held up the colorful, glittering poster board. “We should be able to talk to ghosts from all over the world with this thing.”
“Sweet, international ghosts! Let’s see how it looks in the dark.” Barb turned out the light, leaving the room in the dim glow of three candles. The letters and numbers glowed an eerie green. Outside, the trees rustled in the wind and light rain tapped on the balcony.
“Maybe I should go,” Tamila said quietly.
“Maybe you should!” Reese snatched the newly made board from Cassidy’s hands and tugged Barb down to the carpet with her. “Come on, let’s call up some dead people.”
“What do we use as a pointer?” Cassidy asked.
“You mean a planchette?” Barb drained her wine glass, then placed it upside down in the center of the board. A few droplets of red wine dribbled down and blurred the glowing letters M and N. Barb and Reese laid their fingertips on the base of the inverted glass.
“Let’s do this!” Reese said.
Cassidy slid down from her bed and sat across from Reese. She placed her own fingertips on the glass along with the other two girls.
“One spot left,” Cassidy said to Tamila, who had made no move to leave the chair.
“I’m not doing it.”
“Come on, Tami. It’ll be fun. Please?” Cassidy resorted to a begging tone, locking eyes with Tamila. What she wanted to say was: I am desperately trying to make you part of the group here, so please stop acting like such a tromboner tonight. “As a favor to me?”
“It does work better with four people,” Barb added.
Tamila sighed, looked at the board, and reluctantly left her chair to sit next to Cassidy, while offering a shaky, frightened smile to no one in particular.
“Okay. Let’s get it over with,” Tamila whispered. She placed her trembling fingers on the base of the upside-down wine glass. “We should say a prayer first.”
Barb and Reese found this hilarious, and Tamila frowned at their peals of drunken laughter.
“Let’s go,” Barb said. She closed her eyes. “Are there any spirits—”
“Come talk to us, spirits!” Reese interrupted, closing her eyes and also swaying from side to side. In her best drama-club voice, she projected, “Speak to us, give us messages from the world of the dead...”
The glass trembled under their fingers, and Cassidy gasped. Everybody leaned in for a closer look, but the glass became still again.
“You should say only good spirits,” Tamila whispered. “Or we could end up talking to demons, or evil ghosts, or dead murderers...”
“Calling all demons, evil ghosts, and dead murderers!” Reese cried out in a slurred voice, then doubled forward, laughing.
“Be serious, Reese,” Barb said. In a louder, more formal voice, she asked, “Are there any messages from the Other Side? Like from our spirit guides or totem animals?”
“Totem animals,” Reese snickered.
“We all have one. Mine’s a frog,” Barb told her, and Reese laughed and shook her head, tossing her blond hair.
“You look like a frog!” Reese said.
“Sh! It’s moving,” Cassidy told them.
The wine glass shuddered again, and this time it began to slide over the poster board, the lip scraping and smearing a few of the still-wet letters, gathering glowing paint around its rim.
The glass moved across the alphabet to the word YES in the upper left corner of the poster, scraping up glue and glitter from a sparkly red pentagram along the way.
Crafty Witchcraft:
How to Make Your Own Ouija Board!
There are a few important considerations when making a talking board for your own use:
1.The board itself—this is an important choice! Skp the boring poster paper and consider all your options: wood from a lightning-struck tree, dark obsidian rummaged from ancient temple ruins, or cursed cardboard from an evil factory are all great places to start! Remember, this will do more than anything else to determine the look, feel, and demon-summoning power of your board.
2.Decorate! If you’re going to speak to the really interesting evil spirits out there, you’re going to need a little something extra. Consider a black-lace doily edging and pentagrams drawn in goat blood. A bit of glue and a dash of glitter or ground bone powder from the corpse of a serial killer will really make your board stand out to the dark ghosts of the unseen world.
3.Modernize! There’s no reason to stick with just the old-fashioned, humdrum letters and numbers. These days, you’ll want to include a hashtag and an @-sign for more modern communication with the Other Side. All your witchy friends will see how hip you are when you’re getting messages like this:
Lucifer Morningstar (@TheFallenOne)
GIVE ME YOUR SOUL, WRETCHED MORTAL!
That’s right! Even fallen angels are hip to social media—shouldn’t you be?
4.Improvise! There’s no reason to stick with a little rectangular board game model. Consider painting an entire room with the letters, numbers, and other symbols. Instead of a pointer, use a glass-top table on wheels. Invite your occult-oriented friends over for a spirit-summoning party, and watch those other witches turn green with envy!
5.Accessorize! Why keep it to a simple, boring old pointer? Adds some bells and whistles! Literally. Maybe your spirit wants to express itself through spooky music or flashing lights. Be creative, and you’ll attract all the coolest ghosts.
We hope today’s article has helped spur a few ideas of your own! Remember, you’re speaking to the dead—there’s no reason to bore them to death all over again!
Author Info
J.L. Bryan studied English literature at the University of Georgia and at
Oxford, with a focus on the English Renaissance and the Romantic period. He
also studied screenwriting at UCLA. He enjoys remixing elements of
paranormal, supernatural, fantasy, horror and science fiction into new kinds of
stories.
He is the author of The Paranormals series (starting with Jenny Pox), The
Songs of Magic series, Nomad, and other books. He lives in Atlanta with
his wife Christina, his son John, and some dogs and cats.
Website: www.jlbryanbooks.com
Twitter: @jlbryanbooks
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