Haunted Nights ✅ Completed

Chapter Thirteen: A Quiet Moment

A Quiet Moment

Maya had no idea how long she stayed in the bathroom, her mind still racing from Des’s last words. Her studly yet dumb-as-a-bag-of-rocks gas station attendant was somehow involved in all this craziness. To make things even weirder, Des talked as if he personally knew Daniel and had followed it up by mentioning true love. Could he really mean Daniel was her true love? Maya didn’t believe in that one true love crap and even if she did, it would never be with a ghost! To be fair, Daniel wasn’t a typical ghost, but he was a far cry from being a typical guy too.

Her brain was starting to hurt and Maya wished for nothing more than to be at home, curled up on her sofa with her cat, watching the Chiller channel. She almost laughed out loud at that. The Chiller channel! It wasn’t as if her life wasn’t one big horror movie anyway…why the hell did she need to watch any more?

But she knew why, it was the same reason her aunt had obsessed over ghost documentaries on the discovery channel – it was a means of control. For Maya, cheesy ghost movies helped her cope with the trauma of her childhood. Her memories could be recast into something that was more direct-to-DVD material, which made it easier for her to deal with. Or not deal with which was a more apt description.

Now Isadora had come in and messed up her nice little digital stream of denial.    

Thankfully self-pity was an indulgence she couldn’t afford at the moment. Shaking off the worst of it, Maya took a deep breath and focused on bringing down her heart rate. Isadora was scary but Des had taken control of that little problem pretty easily– for a second she’d been worried someone like Isadora would be able to figure out what she could really do.   

For the moment, the witch had only a small inkling of Maya’s extrasensory abilities when it came to the dead. Her “gift” was more than just a way for ghosts to commune with someone amongst the living. Maya could connect with them an elemental level. It was how she knew she was passing a graveyard even if she were in an airplane 25,000 feet in the air. It was how she knew the exact number of people that had died in a given area. It worked similar to a sonic wave, a frequency she could give off to gauge how close or how ghosts many were in a particular area. It wasn’t something she used often, as it caused more attention than she liked, but it did come in handy every now and again.

Like tonight.

When Maya had sent out her sonic wave as Isadora talked, she discovered something almost immediately: Isadora’s body was crawling with ghosts, like she’d sucked them into her own twisted orbit. There were so many entities flying within the witch’s personal space, Maya had been unable to get a lock on an exact number of souls she was dragging around. Isadora was feeding off them, but before she could find out exactly how, Des had arrived and disrupted her reading. Still, she’d gotten enough intel to know Isadora was not only a sadist at heart, but evil to her very core. Even if Daniel were only using her to free himself of his curse, and in fact had no real feelings for her whatsoever, it mattered little. Maya wasn’t about to let him become part of that Freak Show of the Damned.  

Turning to go, Maya steeled herself against the fear that tried to creep back into her body. She was scared, terrified if she was being brutally honest with herself. Isadora was unlike anything she’d ever encountered. Worse than a psychotic bully with delusions of grandeur – she was a monster straight out of the gates of Hades. She’d imprisoned Daniel for eternity for his betrayal, yet she was a creature that collected souls like the most twisted of wardens. Maya tried to find her center, the root of her strength Aunt Freda always talked about. It was deep inside her but it was a place that could not be reached if she allowed fear to take hold. It was one of the reasons she was so hostile towards ghosts in general – fear was the enemy of rational thought and her strength needed cool reason the way her lungs needed oxygen. There was a lot at stake here and Maya wasn’t about to let some soul-stealing-beauty-queen-from-Hell mind fuck her and risk both their souls in the process.