The Well Below the Valley, Episode 13: Daybreak

A bleak, leafless tree against a sepia-toned sky. Text reads: Space Whales Press presents The Well Below the Valley, an audio drama

Table of Contents

Dramatis Personae
(in order of appearance)

KURT Cross, private investigator who has already seen too much. Male, early 30s, New York accent.

Inspector ISKANDAR Meshkia, who still remembers how to use a sword. Male, late 30s, strong Turkish accent. 

Father John WHITNEY, slayer of sacrifices and summoner of monsters. Male, early 50s, Northern English accent.

Eloise “ELLIE” Westmont, who always comes prepared. Female, mid 20s, posh British accent.

Three or more CULTISTS and residents of Whitmoor. Male or female, 30s or 40s, Northern English accents. 

Sheriff Norbert OAKS, unofficially the second in command of the cult. Male, mid-40s, Northern English accent.

MARIE Campbell, not quite sacrificed. Female, early 20s, Northern English accent. 

Dr. ERNEST Wilde, determined rationalist. Male, early 30s, Northern English accent. 

JASMINE Indrani, staunch defender of the women’s shelter and its residents. Female, late 20s, could have a British or Indian Accented English accent.

JONATHAN Martel, butler and caretaker of the Westmont estate. Male, mid-50s, Northern English accent. 

MARJANI Kaur, physician and practical optimist. Female, early 30s, could have a British or Indian Accented English accent.

CLAIRE Cooper, holy vessel. Female, late teens, Northern English accent.

Scene 1: Ext. Fields outside Whitmoor – Night

MUSIC: OPENING THEME.

The music fades into the howling of the wind over Whitmoor’s dry fields. In the distance, a copse of dead trees shake and rattle. Underneath the noise, a drone is present, steady and pervasive. 

Something enormous and heavy is coming into being among those trees. A heavy footfall shakes the ground, and a dry branch snaps. 

Continue reading “The Well Below the Valley, Episode 13: Daybreak”

Song of the Week

Loreena McKennitt, “Between the Shadows”

Good morning and happy Indigenous People’s Day!

I am running on very little sleep, but I should have the next episode of The Well Below the Valley ready today. It’ll go up on Patreon on Wednesday. I’ll also be starting a new page of Last Watch Before Dawn this week, in which we’ll finally get some dialogue!

The audiobook of The Book of the New Moon Door is coming along. I think I can safely say that it will be out sometime in November, hopefully early. I’d love to have it ready so that it’s available for anyone who needs something to listen to during holiday travel. I’ll update you as the process goes!

I’ll be out and about this weekend, so if you’re free and in the Milwaukee area, I’d love to see you! First up is the Spooky Frog Horror Book Fair on Saturday the 18th. We’ll be at the Sheraton Milwaukee Brookfield Hotel from 11AM to 4PM. There will be horror authors as well as artists and craftspeople, free hors d’oeuvres while they last, and a live DJ set by Goth Barge. Entry is only $5. If you’re going to the protests that day, I wish you power and safety, whether or not you can find the time to stop by.

On Sunday the 19th, I’ll be at What the Hex: Dia de Muertos from noon until 5PM at Dresden Castle on Underwood, Cudahy, WI. Entry is only $3 and gets you access to the market, live performances, and workshops on magic and healing. What the Hex is always a fantastic time, so if you’ve never made it to one, I highly encourage it.

Some petitions:

Via No Business With Genocide: Stop the UAE from fueling genocide in Sudan

Via Civic Shout: Hold ICE accountable for civil rights violations

Via the National Campaign for Justice: Demand governors fight Trump’s attempts to deploy their National Guard

That’s all I’ve got for today. Take care, stay warm, and stop by again soon!

Today’s the Day! The Book of the New Moon Door is now available!

Amazon (paperback & ebook)

Barnes & Noble (paperback & ebook)

Kobo (ebook only)

Apple Books (ebook only)

A very special thanks to everyone who preordered, and to everyone who reads it now! I’m so excited for you to finally get your hands on this book.

If you haven’t read the back-of-the-book blurb, it’s right here for you below the cut:

Continue reading “Today’s the Day! The Book of the New Moon Door is now available!”

The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Seventeen

Warning

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.

Table of Contents

The young man stands slowly, rolling his shoulders, as though the somber temple of Ondir is a country park and he’s contemplating concluding his picnic and heading home. He walks unhurried to the end of the row and starts up the center aisle, his hands in the pockets of his fine trousers and his polished riding boots sending a slow rhythm to echo against the dome. 

Berend stands, dragging Isabel up with him. His free hand goes first to his pistol—it’s empty, Isabel remembers, because he shot the animated corpse in the morgue and hasn’t had a chance to reload—and then to the hilt of his sword. His cloak hangs over his elbow, hiding the weapons from view. 

She twists her wrist out of Berend’s grasp. “Don’t do anything stupid,” she whispers. 

Continue reading “The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Seventeen”

The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Sixteen

Friends

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.

Table of Contents

Berend marches Isabel out of Father Pereth’s office. His grip on her arm is immovable as a rusted iron hinge. Isabel struggles, twisting her elbow and pulling against him, but it’s no use. Fear restricts her vision to the end of the hall, where the dome allows in a few thin beams of sunlight. She expects the chapel will be filled with constables, but she might still be able to get away, to disappear into the back corridors and out into the graveyard—if she could only get herself free of Berend. 

She trusted him. She’d thought he cared enough about the state of the world, about protecting the people of Mondirra, that he would help her. He saw the same terrible vision in the nether that she did. She’d even thought he supported her against the high priest’s accusations, until he’d smiled and acquiesced and grabbed her by the elbow. 

“I’m not going to the temple of Isra,” she snarls through her teeth. She doesn’t want to hurt him, but if she has to, she’ll drive the heel of her boot straight into the soft leather instep of his. It’ll have to be quick, and then she’ll have to run. He’s still injured. That will slow him down.

Instead, Berend lets go. He holds both hands out, spreading his fingers to show they’re empty. “I know.”

Continue reading “The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Sixteen”

The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Fifteen

Affliction

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.

Table of Contents

The body breathes in dry, rattling sobs, forcing air through collapsed lungs and a desiccated throat. It lurches forward blindly, rather like a garden slug, the sheet tangling its legs and covering its sightless face. The one free arm gropes its way forward, long, bruised fingers grasping at nothing. 

Berend draws his pistol, levels the barrel at where he’s pretty sure the back of the corpse’s skull pushes against its shroud, pulls back the hammer, and fires. 

Continue reading “The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Fifteen”

The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Fourteen

Trouble

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.

Table of Contents

Dawn breaks over the city by the time they reach the gates. Berend is usually good at keeping track of time, always waking right before his watch is due to start, but the night seems to have passed by in just a few hours. He doesn’t like it. 

Isabel is half a step ahead of him. Though she stops once more at the gate to make sure he’s following, she says nothing. She may have been weeping, silent and stone-faced, but it’s too dark still for Berend to tell. 

We are in trouble. 

Berend doesn’t want to have to be the reasonable one between the pair of them. His hands still itch as he pictures wrapping them around Arden Geray’s ghostly neck. It feels satisfying in his imagination, even though he’s aware that dead spirits don’t work that way. Failing that, he wants to go straight to the university hospital and shake Lucian Warder awake, his injuries be damned. Isabel is supposed to be preventing him from doing that, at least until she’s explained how best to not get himself killed in the process. 

Continue reading “The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Fourteen”

The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Thirteen

Fracture

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.

Table of Contents

Berend stands under a sky filled with blinking, staring eyes, surrounded on all sides by the restless dead. A red star shoots overhead like a firework, disappearing below a distant horizon in a blaze of ruby light. The world shakes with a terrible shriek, and Berend falls into it, the sound tearing him apart from within, his vision turning black at the edges and a burning pain spreading from his heart to his fingertips. 

Continue reading “The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Thirteen”

The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Twelve

Revelations II

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.

Table of Contents

Isabel closes her eyes. As she has no physical eyelids at the moment, it doesn’t do anything. Her vision is still filled with ghosts, crowding in around her, blocking all escape routes. 

But they’re not coming for her. They’re moving past her, like an unending river of death across the fields. Their incorporeal steps sink into the ground as though they’re trudging through a mire, slowly and doggedly. 

“Where am I?” asks the ghost of a young woman, a tattered shawl gathered around her head and trailing misty fibers. Tied around her chest is a sling to hold a young baby, but it is empty, lying flat against her swollen breasts. 

Continue reading “The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Twelve”

The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Eleven

Revelations I

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.

Table of Contents

Isabel falls quiet. There’s a long walk ahead of her, and a longer night after that. She has to conserve her strength. There have been more sleepless nights in the last week than she ever had to endure as an apprentice, and even then, young as she was, she had not endured them happily. 

The wind blows cold, and it carries a smell of frost as it crosses dry, brown fields on its way to the sea. Isabel can just make out the shapes of cut rows on either side of the road. Harvest time is well under way, and winter will follow, bringing with it a slight relief from the walking dead. Spirits are no less angry in winter, but bodies without the breath of life cannot keep their limbs from freezing solid, and their decay slows along with their chance of spreading pestilence. Winter, as the old sayings go, is when Sentinels retreat to their cloisters to study the same dusty tomes they studied the year before, and the year before that, going all the way back to the first Sentinel Rainier. 

With a sudden ache like a knife to her ribs, Isabel misses the library in Vernay. Her superiors will learn of her failings in a few short days, when Father Pereth’s request for her replacement reaches them. They will turn her away, or worse, allow her in and follow her through the halls with looks of pity and distrust, as though she’s a vagabond relying on their charity. 

Continue reading “The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Eleven”