Queer Fantasy and Weird Tales for the People
Impossible
One by one, the dead fall still and drop to the tiled floor. Silence falls over the hospital wing.
Berend stands on legs shaky with exhaustion, adrenaline the only thing keeping him upright, his empty pistol gripped in one hand as stiff as a corpse’s. A slow fire that reeks of disinfectant and rotting flesh eats at what’s left of his barricade.
Is it over?
Continue reading “The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Three, Chapter One”“She did it,” he says aloud. “Gods love you, you crazy death cultist. You did it.”
The Book of the New Moon Door
PART THREE IS STARTING
You can read this chapter right now on Patreon, or wait another week for it to show up here on the blog.
The Void
Isabel gets to her knees and grips the back of the driver’s seat. It’s empty, and the carriage jerks and bumps over the fog-shrouded terrain with no apparent guidance. Ghostly figures part like water before it, barely lifting their heads to acknowledge it. Their attention is focused on the crumbling wall, and the seething mass of eyes behind it.
Where are we going? Either the carriage is compelled by a base, inanimate desire to move despite its lack of horses, or it has some destination it seeks out mindlessly like a compass needle finding north. Isabel can’t wait to find out when it will stop. Her body, and Brother Risoven’s, are still sitting on the carriage’s physical counterpart, less than an arm’s length from the horde of undead filling the streets of Mondirra. When the angry corpses pull the wheels off the carriage, which won’t be long given their numbers, both she and Risoven will be torn to bloody shreds in no time at all.
Risoven’s spirit crouches behind her, one arm over his eyes and the other hand gripping the edge of the open window below him. He prays in a breathless, whispered litany: “Watcher on the wall, master of the gate, guardian of the bridge, shepherd of all souls, deliver us, please.”
Ondir isn’t listening, wherever he might be now. Isabel reaches out and shakes Risoven by the shoulder. “We have to hurry.”
Continue reading “The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Twenty-Six”“Some of us are still alive,” says Isabel, “for the moment.”
“We’ll see how long that lasts.”
The Book of the New Moon Door
It’s the last chapter of Part Two, now available on Patreon! If you’re not a subscriber, worry not, it will be here next week. In the meantime, make sure you’re caught up by checking the Stories tab above (under the Menu if you’re on mobile).
Part Three of The Book of the New Moon Door is about to start! I hope to have it finished in a couple of months, after which I will begin the editing process to publish the whole thing later this year. The book will be published one way or another, because no one can stop me, but the question remains whether to maintain the current chapter-by-chapter posting schedule. It is quite possible that, at the rate we’re going, the book will be ready for publication before all the chapters have been posted.
So, I’d like your thoughts! Here’s a poll:
This poll will close on April 1, so let me know your thoughts! ETA: I think it needs to stay up a little longer, so let’s say the 7th.
Faithful
Isabel’s feet hit the ground, sending a shock from her heels into her knees and all the way to the joints of her hips. The palms of her hands burn as she removes them from the coarse linen sheet and exposes them to the air. A pair of raw patches marks each one, livid red where the skin has peeled away.
She looks back up toward the window. She could have fallen much, much farther. The improvised rope drifts in the afternoon breeze, its end brushing against the street. Berend’s face is framed in cut stone before he moves away from the window and disappears.
Continue reading “The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Twenty-Five”Its clothes are rags, filthy with grave dust, and one of its eyes is a hollow socket. Yellowed bones show through both bare forearms.
It is very dead, and it isn’t alone.
The Book of the New Moon Door
We are still in the thick of the zombie apocalypse. You can read this chapter on Patreon now, or wait until next week for it to appear on the blog. In my view, all readers are good readers, especially you.
Barricade
Berend watches the window. He shouldn’t; he should be fortifying the doors, maybe figuring out some way to get Warder out of the direct path of danger. The nurse’s stockinged feet touch the ground, and she takes off running up the street. Isabel’s climb is slower, the soles of her boots scraping against the masonry wall and her arms unsteady. Berend checks the knots again.
The younger nurse approaches the door to the hall, one hand on the pair of shears in her pocket. She puts her ear to the door and listens.
“One of the doors is broken, but they can’t get through yet,” she says.
Her companion, a woman of about thirty with pale yellow curls escaping her cap, pushes past her and turns the latch. “Not yet. Soon, though.”
“Should we barricade the door in here?” asks the first. “What about the other patients?”
“We can’t just leave them,” argues the second.
Continue reading “The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Twenty-Four”He’s got nothing against the gods. He fought in one of their names for years. But they take their own sweet time to get around to helping their faithful, and he’d much rather rely on tangible things that work on schedule. Such as a firearm.
The Book of the New Moon Door
The latest chapter of The Book of the New Moon Door, featuring a desperate fight against a horde of zombies, is now available on Patreon.
Walking Dead
“You should have predicted this, Sentinel,” Geray muses. He hovers two feet above the floor, as though to emphasize his relative safety and removal from the horde of undead at the door. “Hundreds of thousands of wandering spirits with nowhere to go, and the god of the dead absent. If they were a living mob, they’d have torches and pitchforks. I dare say you’d fare better were that the case.”
Isabel doesn’t have the will to stop herself from putting her hands over her ears. The pressure makes a dull roar that drowns out Geray and the wet, solid blows the walking dead are doing to the whitewashed wooden door. The lock is good iron, and the door itself a single, heavy oak panel, but it won’t hold forever.
Continue reading “The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Twenty-Three”
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