Deal with the Devil

by M. Maharlika

---

Audio Book

Blurb

Deal with the Devil

When Iphigeneia agrees to accompany her friend Maria to a remote villa in the Luzon countryside, she expects nothing more than an awkward family visit and a long drive through the mountains. Instead, she finds herself drawn into a landscape heavy with secrets—where old Spanish stone walls seem to breathe, and the past refuses to stay buried.

Villa Luciano is no ordinary ancestral home. At night, it whispers. It scratches. It cries out in voices that sound almost human. Maria insists it is only the wind, only imagination—but unease clings to the house like damp incense.

As Iphigeneia explores the province—passing the Hanging Coffins of Sagada and winding mountain roads—she begins to sense that something is deeply wrong. The caretaker, Crispin, confirms her fears with a story so grotesque it borders on madness: a family curse rooted in colonial cruelty, religious obsession, and a sacrificial bargain meant to cheat death itself.

At the center of it all stands Maria—beloved friend, troubled child, possible victim… or something far worse.

Blending Gothic horror with Philippine folklore, medieval religion, and dark satire, Deal with the Devil is a story of faith twisted into violence, science warped into superstition, and the terrifying cost of believing that salvation can be bought with blood.

Some doors, once opened, can never be closed.

About the Author

Maria Maharlika is an emerging Filipino author whose work inhabits the uneasy intersection of sexuality, violence, romance, Gothic sensibility, and social injustice. Her fiction is marked by moral ambiguity and a sustained engagement with Filipina settings, where intimacy and power are inseparable.

Raised between the quiet rhythms of provincial life and the sensory intensity of Manila, Maharlika writes with acute awareness of social contradiction: innocence alongside exploitation, loyalty beside betrayal, faith tested by survival. These tensions shape narratives that are at once emotionally charged and socially grounded.

She first drew attention for stories that read like dark telenovelas refracted through literary realism. Her protagonists are often young women navigating political, economic, and sexual power structures they did not choose—yet refusing to remain passive within them.

Maharlika is particularly noted for her unsentimental portrayal of female desire and vulnerability. Her characters are flawed, strategic, and occasionally ruthless, resisting easy moral categorization.

Her prose is deliberately restrained, favoring traditional narrative forms over explicit description. This aesthetic choice distances her work from vulgar sensationalism while allowing for sustained erotic tension and psychological intensity—often more daring than that found in much classical romantic fiction. Stylistically, she blends fluid narrative with dialogue-driven momentum, giving readers access to her characters’ inner conflicts while using dialogue to propel the plot forward. She is also recognized for her precise plot construction, planting seemingly minor details that later reveal their significance. This structural discipline makes her work compellingly suspenseful, driven by delayed revelation and cumulative tension.

Critics have noted her ability to transform tabloid material—rumors, scandals, illicit relationships—into psychologically grounded fiction that exposes class divisions, gendered power, and the abuses of capital and political authority.

Her work has been supported editorially by Professor John Campbell (Harvard University) and Professor Quill (Yale University), who have helped refine its literary form and situate it within a broader social and historical context.

Maharlika studied literature, politics, and the social sciences at Oxford University, where she earned a first-class honors degree and completed her doctoral studies.

Though still early in her career, she is gaining a growing readership online and increasing critical attention for her fearless themes and cinematic storytelling. She is widely regarded as part of a new generation of Filipino writers who blur the boundary between popular narrative and social critique, using entertainment as a Trojan horse for uncomfortable truths—while remaining skeptical of both the sexual orthodoxies of the late twentieth century and the moralizing political correctness of the early twenty-first.

Deal with the Devil

Arriving at the Villa

The gate of Villa Luciano creaked with a heavy, metallic groan that seemed to echo across the valley. Iphigeneia adjusted her grip on her bag, the humid mountain air pressing against her skin like a damp shroud.

“It’s just an old house, Iphi,” Maria said, though she didn’t look at her friend. She was staring at the dark, arched windows of the second floor. “My grandfather likes the isolation. He says it keeps the modern world from rotting the soul.”

Iphigeneia looked at the grey stone walls, moss-slicked and ancient. “It looks like it was built to keep things in, Maria. Not just to keep people out.”

A man emerged from the shadows of the porch—Crispin, the caretaker. His face was a map of deep lines and sun-damaged skin. He didn’t offer a smile. Instead, his eyes moved from Maria to Iphigeneia with a look that wasn’t quite pity, but something much colder.

“You shouldn’t have come back, Maria,” he whispered, his voice like dry leaves skittering on pavement. “The shadows have missed you. And they are very, very hungry.”

Read the rest of this dark Gothic memoir in the interactive flipbook below.

******