Crypt of the Moon Spider
Crypt of the Moon Spider is a dark and dreamy fantasy about greed, corruption, and selfhood. Together, they weave the stickiest of webs.
Years ago, in a cave beneath the dense forests and streams on the surface of the moon, a gargantuan spider once lived. Its silk granted its first worshippers immense faculties of power and awe.
It’s now 1923 and Veronica Brinkley is touching down on the moon for her intake at the Barrowfield Home for Treatment of the Melancholy. A renowned facility, Dr. Barrington Cull’s invasive and highly successful treatments have been lauded by many. And they’re so simple! All it takes is a little spider silk in the amygdala, maybe a strand or two in the prefrontal cortex, and perhaps an inch in the hippocampus for near evisceration of those troublesome thoughts and ideas.
But trouble lurks in many a mind at this facility and although the spider’s been dead for years, its denizens are not. Someone or something is up to no good, and Veronica just might be the cause.
Nathan Ballingrud (he/him) is the author of The Strange, Wounds: Six Stories from the Border of Hell, and North American Lake Monsters, which won the Shirley Jackson Award. He has been shortlisted for the World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and Bram Stoker Awards. His stories have been adapted into the Hulu series Monsterland. He lives in Asheville, NC.
“This short, surreal novella feels like a slice of a much larger story in the best way. A thoughtful meditation on personhood, judgment, and trauma. Not for the arachniphobic among us.” —Seanan McGuire, New York Times bestselling author of the Alchemical Journeys series
“A wicked, pulpy, hideously gorgeous, phantasmagoria that will leave you helplessly twitching in its grand web. Nathan Ballingrud once again demonstrates that he’s one of our finest writers.” —Paul Tremblay, author of The Cabin at the End of the World and A Head Full of Ghosts
“Crypt of the Moon Spider is a superb and unnerving work of science fiction.” —Owen King, author of The Curator
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