Path To The Dark Moon
An extract from my new book.
Below is the first chapter from my upcoming novel, Path To The Dark Moon, releasing May 27 as an ebook and paperback. You can find out more, including the content warnings for the book, on my website.
Step 1: Monday
The scent of spent gunpowder was enticing. It was an aroma drifting in the cold autumnal mist which had drawn Matilda toward the fractured arch; the hewn stone worn, with a crumbling surface like snow. Shades of dove, onyx, and regolith.
With a cautious glance behind her, Matilda’s pale-amber eyes cast a final look over the cemetery. Indecision clouding an already dulled mind. She chewed on her lower lip, her hands pulling at the tight cuffs of her khaki jacket. The thick ribbed fabric caught the grazes on her knuckles; she winced. Sighing through gritted teeth, she released the sleeves and forced her shoulders back.
This was her morning, Matilda had decided.
She had decided. No-one else. Not her mother, her father. Not her fiancé. Not her friend. No, Matilda had decided to leave the confines of the house, to explore. Even if it was not far.
The short walk from her home to the ruins of the old church taking less than fifteen minutes. Her stroll through deserted streets, past sepia homes, stubborn pines, fallow fields; the crops long-since harvested, in preparation for the turn from summer to winter.
Seasons curling, cyclical, and evidenced in the mud.
In the wizened blossoms Matilda strode by. Through the neat rows of graves and obscured plaques, towering columns topped with crafted urns, marble slick with morning dew; remnants of overnight rain which had yet to truly clear.
The moisture floated above clipped, sodden grass, a diaphanous and undulating cipher calling to Matilda. A siren which had encouraged her to place one foot after another. To trust the voice in her head; a voice she had obediently learned to silence over and again, a voice she had pushed away for fear it would destroy her.
Fear it would destroy everything.
Turning back to the shadowed entrance, Matilda’s palm brushed over the grooved stone. Finding hints of past touch, of many decades of stormy assault, of the secrets absorbed into each speck of grit.
She shuddered.
Her breath fracturing. With widening eyes, she sought out what lay within the ruins. The worn rock and encroaching moss of the cemetery path becoming smoother slabs of stone. An enticing path leading past the roofless structure and down.
Matilda’s long hair obscured her view; a sharp cry of wind swirling the sienna strands across her snowy skin. The long cotton of her dress bound her legs. Tucking the hair back behind her ears, she believed she heard an owl.
Believed she saw a snake’s scales glint in the dark.
Her heart surged.
The chime of her phone broke her thoughts.
It brought a chill over her flesh, her pulse strangled. Hastily, Matilda dug into her pocket, pulled out the device. The text expected. Yet one which snapped her away from her fanciful imaginings. One which made her consider turning back.
Swallowing, she replied to confirm she received the message. Her fingers hovering on the screen as she debated adding to it. Debated telling him she had gone for a walk. If she should provide her location, her intention to stay out longer.
Her mouth dried.
The consequences of omission duelling with the consequences of admission. Both kept her frozen. Her feet still ready to continue, while her mind suggested returning home. To flee. To deny the strong craving for discovery, to ignore the voice coaxing her into the crypt.
His one-word reply made her close her eyes.
Good.
She exhaled slowly, the phone slid back into her pocket. Matilda’s resolve knitting back together; threads illuminating her mind with ideas of what waited in the shadows.
The investigation of the ruined church had taken years to begin. An instinct drawing her to the remaining walls, glimpsed through verdant leaves in summer, revealed when they withered. Dropped. Leaving the beguiling memory of what had been.
Something about it had dug talons into her soul.
With a resolute inhale, Matilda stepped forward. Her booted feet crunching on the scraps of gravel kicked in from the churchyard path. A loud crack where a pebble struck stone and echoed. The walls damp below her contact, her fingers dancing over the crumbling mortar and weathered rock.
Matilda heard music. Heard the harmonious howls of dogs coupled with the haunting cry of owls. The hiss of snakes. They only coaxed her further into the arched corridor. The fragrance of gunpowder merging with dragon’s blood.
In this sheltered corner of the abandoned church, through this small curving doorway, Matilda felt stronger than she had for a long time. The ominous whispers and darkness an encouragement, not a warning to leave. It was a temptation she could almost taste.
Her senses adapting to the change in luminescence.
The gentle gradient leading her, spiralling below the cemetery with each new step. Carved stone coiled comfortably over her head as her fingers skipped along the walls. Her hips beginning to sway to the beat she could hear.
A vivid pulse.
Her eyes closing, navigating by feel. By emotion. By the swell of her heart, and anticipation rushing over her skin, below her clothes. A chilled electricity singing through her nerves, her mind.
Matilda’s sense of direction was skewed. One boot after the other, the thrum drew her deeper, the stone’s rough surface guided her gentle hands; her arms outstretched to trace the steady arc. Her whole body consumed by a burning urge to discover.
To learn what had been calling to her.
To feel she had accomplished something.
It was only when she believed the route was forcing her to double back that she began to question her idea. The tight corner sending the path parallel to the one she had already tread.
A continual, marginal, descent.
‘A labyrinth?’ she muttered, pausing to open her eyes.
Her mouth dropped open.
Matilda had expected pitch. Had expected complete darkness, a wealth of night. Of obsidian depth which would prevent her from being able to see the path ahead. She had expected to resort to the torch on her phone to discern her location.
Yet, a rich blood-red glow marked out the edges of the floor. A black undertone to the colour, ebbing in a crawling mist.
Her breath trembled as she inhaled. Her chest stuttering with the rapid intake of air. Air that was fresh, air that was clean. Though she continued to smell dragon’s blood and gunpowder, though Matilda still heard the owls shriek and snakes hiss, she knew she was alone.
The corridor empty.
The rhythm only an enticement.
‘I can do this,’ Matilda whispered.
Daring to glance behind her, she frowned. No mist, no glow. Only the raven-black retreat to an eventual re-emergence into the morning light, now out of sight.
‘I can do this,’ she repeated, louder.
Her intent evident in the slightest of changes in her stance. In the gradual raising of her head, of the straightening of her spine. An effort which she rewarded with a folding of her fingers into fists.
The coils of crimson undulated, coaxing her forward, the miasma wraiths pirouetting around her feet. A rhythm to their movement which encouraged Matilda to follow. To place her boots in step; turning, her dress flared.
‘I can do this!’ She laughed, her stride gaining in confidence with each box step, each sweep of her toes over the stone. Her hips gently circling wider. Matilda raised her arms, her legs moving diagonally in a winding pattern, crossing over each other as she progressed deeper into the tunnel.
Into the labyrinth.
Her body lithe, moving with a freedom and grace she had not felt in years, with a boldness Matilda often hid. The fear of failure, of falling, dismissed. There was only here, only now; the surge of complex scent and drifting smoke intoxicating.
Momentum drove her to chase the unknown. Her aim to explore, to discover what lay hidden in this forgotten corner of the ruined church, a resonating vibration in her mind. A mind purged of the usual fog, of the usual weight. Her numb relationship with the world disconnected and replaced with a vitality rarely experienced.
The chill which had swept into the corridor with her had begun to thaw, a gentle increase in temperature which teased her coat. A plea to slip the fabric from her arms. To drop it to the floor.
Mist escaping up the walls with the disturbance.
And still she danced on. Matilda’s body bending, spinning, eyes closing as she drifted with the layered melody; a thick heartbeat which underpinned the occasional hiss, the call of owls. Her head lilting with the tune, her lips a peaceful smile.
Fingertips sensually brushing over brittle stone, the glacial touch conveyed but filtered. Her mind only channelling heat the further down the path she traversed. The lower she spiralled.
Each looping pass bringing her closer to the centre.
To the increasing whisper of temptation; a gentle breeze catching the cotton of her dress, creating ribbons of her hair. Her eyes greedily on the carmine hues in the mist, on the jet streaks playing through the smoke. The path marked with small drops of vibrant red.
Curious, Matilda paused.
Ducked down.
One finger cautiously glancing over the ruby-jewelled surface of the small object. A translucent sheen in the wavering gloom; the transferring shades from the smoke and overhead dark adding depth. The texture hard, but suggesting conversion under pressure.
She frowned. Her pale-amber eyes rising to skim the curving path ahead. Further small red beads marking a sporadic trail. She pressed her lips together, the earlier numb fog in her mind reappearing.
‘Pomegranate?’ She crouched beside the aril.
Her focus moved with the glint on her solitaire ring. Dropping to the grazes on her knuckles, the bruises on her wrists. The sleeves of her dress pulled from her elbows with haste to cover the marks. Her throat drying and head snapping to check behind her.
A rush of frigid air gusting over.
Matilda shivered. Clenched her teeth. The howling cry from below a sudden desperate wail. A distressed prayer. She stood, straightened her shoulders, and took a small step.
Then another.
And another.
Until her dance had resumed. Until her smile returned. Until each discordant aria surged through Matilda’s blood; anaesthetised synapses destroyed. The steps ones she believed she had danced before, that the destination was one she knew.
As concealed as it remained.
The glowing fiery crimson tones leading her lower. Deeper. Tendrils of smoke a continual cycle of instruction, drawing her further toward the centre. A comforting embrace found in the growing warmth. In the slight narrowing of the corridor.
Rounding the final, more abrupt arc, Matilda halted. Her heart wild and pulse loud. Her lips parting and breath short. A furrow creasing her pale skin.
She was unsure what she had expected to find. She was unsure if she had hoped more or less than what she discovered. But Matilda was confused by the space she had arrived in.
With two straight walls, to her left and ahead, she was confronted with a mass of stone. Darkness played with the snaking coils of blood-red mist; an ever-changing cycle of shadow. The captive hymn that had occupied her journey nowhere but everywhere.
Howls and hisses undercut with a strong drumming pulse.
Matilda spun, trying to locate the source of the sound. Trying to find something to explain why she had been drawn to this location. Why she had felt so compelled to explore.
The corridor she had traversed now devoid of light; a curving tunnel of black. Only the chamber contained the kaleidoscopic hues of red and swirling mists. Only the chamber echoed with the keening song which had coaxed her feet to dance. Her body orchestrated to their every note and beat.
She sighed, teeth chewing on her lower lip. The frown deepening with disappointment. With melancholy. The familiar sense of failure and loss pricking through her veins. An ice burn branching through her skin with each breath. Emotion cauterised and dulled.
Matilda picked at the grazes on her knuckles, pulled the sleeves of her dress over her hands. Her eyes on the smooth stone below her feet, she felt heat blur her vision. The wraiths of smoke a taunting emptiness which increased uncertainty and foreboding.
Fear.
She had tempted fate. She had taken a risk. And it had resulted in nothing. A mocking cavity breaking her numb heart with every moment she stood, immobile, in the mist.
‘I shouldn’t have done this,’ she whispered. Her voice fractured and lost amongst the oppressive shrieks.
Matilda closed her eyes, her hands moving to cover her ears. The creases on her brow agonising as she gritted her teeth.
‘This isn’t real. This isn’t real. This isn’t real.’ Her words were slurred and barely audible through the thin slit of her lips; her head shaking and eyes tight. Determined to block the colour. The noise. The vapour.
Yet every inhale brought more gunpowder to her senses. Every cell of her being believed the chill in the air. The heat in the coiling smoke wrapped her limbs. Ambient hues crept through her lashes. Matilda was drowning under an intensity of seduction. Her body responding to every caress the increasing cacophony delivered.
Every confirmation of truth in the experience.
Conviction of imagination ruined by reality.
Opening her eyes, Matilda tentatively raised her head. Breathing quick and chest heaving with anxious anticipation. Lowering her hands to her sides, her pupils dilated. Jet drowning amber. Her lips parted and her heart leapt.
The chamber silent. The smoke static. The rough stone tinted with streaks of burgundy and black. And in the centre of the floor, a gleaming circle; a glass-like disc. Around the edges, a burst of lines produced the image of a sun. A star.
Matilda was confident that had not been there initially.
Her gaze shifted, the ceiling then floor. Listening for any sound, any footsteps in the corridor, any howls from the air. All was silent. All was still. A muted quiet which gradually built, surrounding her with spiralling pressure.
Falling slowly to her knees, Matilda braced herself with hands either side of the shining obsidian void. Her skin shrouded in warm smoke and bathed in crimson. Pain ignored. Drawn to the achromatic glass, she heard the thud of her heart, felt her vision sharpen.
A plunging abyss the reward for her descent.
Discover the rest of the journey on May 27.
You can pre-order the ebook on Amazon, or pre-order the paperback on Ko-fi. The paperback will then be available on Amazon on the day of release to buy if that’s your preference. Ordering direct from me means you do get a signed copy, and a few extra items (such as stickers and bookmarks, while stock lasts).
