PSYCHOSX: The Hunter is Haunted

By Maggie Moor

Publishes October 11. 2026 

I’M WATCHING YOU.

In the wake of 9/11, a singer and PI battling addiction investigates a charismatic horror filmmaker. As he turns the camera on her, he weaponizes her life and trauma to trap her inside a brutal, real-time performance.

A dark psychological suspense novel, PSYCHOSX: The Hunter is Haunted is a volatile, hyper-observant blend of literary noir and trauma narrative, exploring addiction, art, surveillance, identity, and a mind under pressure across Manhattan and Europe.

PSYCHOSX follows Charmay, a woman battling alcohol addiction and living with the aftermath of teenage abuse and homelessness. She transforms herself into a hunter—private investigator, performer, spy—only to discover she is ultimately hunting the ghosts inside herself.

From the intimate trauma of an overdose to the global fracture of 9/11 and its aftermath, the novel draws personal collapse, historical catastrophe, and predatory power into the same psychological terrain.

PSYCHOSX

30 seconds inside the world of the novel.

• Good Morning, Midnight (Jean Rhys)
• Blow Out (Brian De Palma)
• Perfect Blue (Satoshi Kon)
• Lost Highway (David Lynch)

THE FALL. THE HUNTER. THE CAPTIVITY. 

2001. The line between performance and survival is razor-thin.

Operating under the alias Dusty Rose, Charmay is an actress, singer, and part-time private investigator battling alcohol addiction and living with the aftermath of teenage abuse and homelessness. When she takes a surveillance assignment to trail a New York director to a small film festival in Germany, she expects a clean, fast sting.

Then the towers fall.

Grounded in Europe by the closed post-9/11 airspace, Charmay is pulled into London and into the volatile orbit of Zaz, a charismatic horror filmmaker. When the PI firm suspects Zaz of covert international links, they push her deeper into his world. But the surveillance cuts both ways.

Zaz steals her laptop, mines the raw fragments of her past, and announces a new film. Once on set, he strips away the script—weaponizing her life and trauma to trap her inside a brutal, real-time performance.

As production moves through Tunisia, France, and Greece, the boundaries between script, memory, performance, and reality begin to collapse. Charmay’s drinking accelerates into blackouts, hallucination, and near-death as Zaz’s manipulation escalates.

She has transformed herself into a hunter—private investigator, performer, spy. As the investigation cuts to the bone and the film takes on a life of its own, the most dangerous thing she is hunting may be the ghosts inside herself.

This is for the lonely ones—you are at the heart of the truth.

THE HUNTERS ARE HAUNTED

SURROUNDING CHARACTERS

Issey’s Private Investigations: The firm that pulls Charmay out of the nightlife and teaches her to use her perceptive skills on the streets.

Toby: A career bartender at Pianos and a friend, hoping Charmay can fit into the comfortable life he offers.

Johnson: An international attorney and Darlings client whose penthouse embodies security as entrapment.

Lolo: A piano player at Pianos, a mute Vietnam veteran whose presence soothes Charmay and gives her breath.

Val: The gender-bent bartender at Darlings, part of a world where empowerment and disintegration exist side by side.

PSYCHOSX WORLD

2001 New York & Europe

The narrative unfolds across a landscape of landlines, AOL uploads, MiniDiscs, Nokias, MiniDVs, hidden files, handwritten maps, moral ambiguity, and secrets hidden in plain sight.

The story moves from Manhattan to a German film festival, then into London and Zaz’s Pembridge Road home—a space filled with horror imagery, scripts, cameras, and maps of Afghanistan. Post-9/11 surveillance closes in as Charmay’s private investigation work, nightlife, music, and relationships begin to overlap.

Back in New York, the story moves through The Darlings gentlemen’s club near Ground Zero, smoky music rooms, Christopher Street apartments, penthouses, hotel rooms, and the Woolworth Building. The city is grimy, wounded, watchful, and alive.

As Zaz’s film moves through Tunisia, France, and Greece, his obsession grows into horrifying, psychotic action disguised as directorial technique, and the line between script, memory, performance, and real life begins to collapse. Charmay’s drinking accelerates into blackouts, hallucination, and near-death.

When the investigation reveals the truth, the film takes on a life of its own. Charmay disintegrates into the flashing reality that the most dangerous thing she is hunting may be the ghosts inside herself.

Reader Note / Content Warnings

PSYCHOSX is a gritty, transgressive psychological noir intended for mature audiences. It contains themes of trauma, addiction, intense psychological manipulation, sexual content, and erotic mysticism.