The Ghost Hunter Chronicles - A Place of Nightmares Vol 1.

A Place of Nightmares Chapter 22 The Basement

I awoke in bone freezing cold and unrelieved darkness. It was damp and musty, but another more fecund odor clung to the wet, cold air. Death, the stench of the grave. Corrupted flesh and vital organs. I wrinkled my nose and fought back the urge to puke. I had no idea where I was only that I was trapped and possibly in the one place I was not meant to be. I tried to move and oddly my side had stopped hurting. Was I dead? Didn't the pain being fine mean death? No wait, how could I be dead? I was having cohesive thoughts.

I sat up and was aware of being elevated, I was sitting atop something, and I was also aware that something horrible lay beside me.

I was about to reach out to find out what it was when light suddenly erupted into bloom. At different points around the room candles suddenly spurted to life. For a moment I was glad of the light, the pitch black unnerving, but with the coming of light, came also the revelation of what a dire predicament I was in.

Immediately I knew where I was. The old tar paper walls, the fallen-in section of thatched roofing. The broken furniture and scorched walls. Worse still the centuries old mummy swaddled up next to me on the old stone table I sat on.

The thing had cole-cocked me and drug me down into Hannah's den of nightmares. This was her old hut, the one her son Gilles had kept as a shrine to his mother. It was then I also realized who had abducted me to this place. It was Gilles Maygar. With Paddy reduced to ashes, and her son's body handy to her own, Hannah's crazed spirit had reanimated her own child, made him into a monster to do her dirty work. She truly was insane. She was so self absorbed even in death, that she would take away the dignity of her son's eternal rest to further her own agenda. I shuddered and scrambled off the table.

Still marveling at the loss of pain in my side. My ribs felt fine.

"You know you might be thanking me for that lovvie." Came the rusty gate voice of Hannah from out of the shadows.

I jumped and turned in a circle but had yet to see the maligned visage of the woman.

"For what?" I asked my teeth chattering from the deadly cold of the place.

"Why for your recovery lovvie! Can't have a broken toy now can I? Besides a broken body won't do me any good, I had to fix what I did."

This was making me uneasy indeed.

"I'm sorry?" I asked, still trying to see everywhere at once. A shadow kept appearing and fading in different spots I couldn't get a read on it.

"You will be." Hannah answered.

"What?" I asked.

"When I shove you out of that pretty little frame and take up residence. I've been waiting for millennia for the perfect vessel. One that was strong enough to accommodate me. I was never meant to die, me or my family. He said if I did as he asked, I and my family would remain immortal. I did as I was told! Now I want my life back! And you'll give it to me!" Hannah roared.

I saw where this was going. She meant to possess me. To shove my soul out of the way, enter my body, to become me.

No way! No way was I letting that filthy child murdering monster in. I'd die first.

"Shania?" I heard Aide calling from far away.

"Here! I'm in trouble! Hurry!" I yelled.

"Oh you have no idea!" Hannah growled and revealed herself from the shadows. Here she stood. The specter of a long dead witch, she was surprisingly tiny, grey wiry rat's nest of hair. A face that might have been kindly but for the mad sheen in the eyes.

Usually I could hold my own over any spirit, but Hannah had me entranced. I was terrified and trying to back out of the room when I felt something fasten onto my ankle.