𝐌𝐀𝐃𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐒𝐄 ... percy jackson

001.

— 001.
house of memories

IT WAS DARK in the labyrinth.

People often said that being scared of the dark was ridiculous— that it wasn't even a logical thing to be afraid of, because, supposedly, you couldn't really see anything. People say that's what made being in the dark so scary— the fact that you truly had no idea what lurked in the shadows.

You'd be wrong, though, to think so foolishly.

Tessa learned the hard way— the darkness only fed deeper into the monsters that came with it, strengthened them, made them ten times worse.

Teresa Santos was no stranger to the monsters that lurked in the shadows.

Almost every day she felt them, eyes staring right through her. She'd feel the same chill down her spine from the moment they'd appear to the moment they'd leave.

Her heart would start beating faster and she'd become hyper aware of everything around her. She was scared, she always was.

Tessa couldn't help but look twice when she'd catch the shadows move around her— the same man in the top hat, the woman in white, the small childlike figure she'd see around the gas station her father used to frequent. The weird figure she had yet to understand.

She'd only catch glimpses of them, always out of the corner of her eye, but one small glimpse was enough to fuel her nightmares for weeks.

It was all the same. They'd show up, almost as if they were curious, watching her. Sometimes they'd stay at a respectable distance, like she was a work of art on display at an exhibition. At other moments, they were more curious, grabbing things, stepping close.

And those were just the faceless shadows.

Tessa started hearing voices when she was seven. She was so young, she'd never really understood it at the time, but as she grew older, she started to. The whispers became louder, the screams more constant.

It was like a nightmare. The girl would never know peace— she was never alone.

The spirits of the dead plagued her mind. The mindless babbling, the rampant screams, the cries of anguish and sorrow. Tessa could barely escape them.

Tessa had learned to live with it.

When she was ten, she'd seen her first full-body apparition. That, she had never been prepared for.

It was a man, in his thirties, with a grin on his face, and a pinstripe suit on his body. He looked just like her father.

The first time she'd seen him, she and her family had just moved into their new house in California.

Tessa had been unpacking her room, moving things around, waiting for her dad to come in and help her, when she'd sneezed and heard a short "bless you."

The girl hadn't thought much of it, until she saw a fully grown man leaning against the wall across from her, a smile present on his face.

Tessa blinked, multiple times, thinking this was like all those other moments. Thinking that he would disappear in just a second.

That's not at all what happened.

The girl had been a little freaked out to find a grown man following her around all week, but when she'd asked one of her older cousins about it, the girl had simply brushed her off as needing more sleep.

It had taken her another week of snooping to figure out the strange man was her great grandfather— Isko Santos. The man had been rich in his youth, but had died from a tragic accident her family refused to speak of.