The Book of the New Moon Door: Chapter Eight

Wryght

The Book of the New Moon Door cover image: A book with yellowing, wrinkled pages lies open on an old wooden desk, with a sprig of lavender lying in the center.

“I found this, under the bed,” says Isabel, concluding her retelling of the previous evening’s events to Brother Risoven. She hands him the lacquered bead before standing to gather the breakfast dishes.

Risoven holds up the bead and moves his lenses in and out from his face with the other hand. His owlish eyes squint and blink. Finally, he lowers both hands, turning the small object between his fingers.

“It’s a prayer bead,” he says, with equal measures of confidence and confusion.

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The Book of the New Moon Door: Chapter Seven

The Old Ghost

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She’s starting to think of it as real, this demon of legend, like a living thing she’s searching for in the dark corners of the city. Isabel sits back on the heels of her well-worn travel boots, letting her skirts fall around her and bringing the arm not holding the lantern in toward her chest. It’s cold, and the wind blows freely through the open aperture of the lighthouse. On the positive side, however, the temperature keeps the body from reeking after what looks like a couple of hours since death.

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The Book of the New Moon Door: Chapter Five

The Device

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Berend breathes in the stale, dusty air, ignoring the pervasive scent of decay. His neck aches. He’s a big man, and a proficient fighter; there’s never been an occasion when someone has managed to get their hands around his throat, but he is certain that’s what he felt in that blasted room. If he recalls it, he can still feel the individual fingers squeezing, pressing into his windpipe. He hopes he’ll never have to experience that again.

There is his pistol, his trusty friend through more fights than he can count, lying in the dust on the parlor floor. Berend doesn’t want to leave it behind, for its sentimental value and the fear of what new absurdities might lie upstairs.

That means he must reenter the parlor.

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The Book of the New Moon Door: Chapter Four

The House

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“Did you see that?”

Lucian is already frantically scribbling in his book, a rough approximation of the young woman taking form under his pen. He balances the lantern on the top of his case and rummages in his satchel, producing a glass thermometer wrapped in a handkerchief.

“Was that the ghost?” asks Berend. With one last look around the stable, and no movement apparent in the body of the horse, he shuts both doors and places the wooden plank across the metal brackets on the outside.

“Not sure.” Lucian gives the thermometer a shake and frowns at it in the dim lamplight before wrapping it back up and returning it to his bag. “I’ll have to take a few more readings. What did you find in there?”

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The Book of the New Moon Door: Chapter Three

Belisia

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To place the box in which Mikhail’s corpse currently resides into the temple’s extensive graveyard, Berend will have to pay one hundred silver pennies.

He is informed of this by Father Reeves, the priest in charge of funerary services, a tall man with a shaved head and an aquiline nose. He is paternally comforting and coldly distant, often at the same time, and it’s an unsettling effect. Long brown fingers make notes with a quill in a yellowing ledger.

We all end up as numbers. Berend hands over the money. It’s most of what he has. He’ll need more if he’s going to continue sleeping in a bed until his next job.

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