Excerpt from Black Moon by Kenneth Calhoun, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

He went to her studio, where she had, until about a year ago, made painstakingly detailed stop-motion films. Along with a small alcove that they used as a bedroom, the studio was the only closed-off space in the otherwise open plan. The walls were padded with sound blankets. The small room was crammed with tripods and lighting stands, racks filled with props, and outfitted with heavy blinds so she could control the light. She was there standing with her back to him, staring out the window.

"Carolyn?"

She turned and, at first, seemed unable to recognize him. She was ancient around the eyes, stooped with weariness and holding one of the articulated dolls from an early film. Her hair curtained her face. She was wearing a promotional T-shirt from a former client of his. It was far too large and hung off her thin frame like a shapeless dress. She had managed to find a slipper for one foot. The other—nails flecked with remnants of red polish—was bare against the wood floor. It gutted him to see her this way: even worse than when he left her, just hours earlier. He still entertained the hope that this thing destroying them would simply play itself out and stop, that he would come home to find her sleeping. He would press his lips against her closed eyes. He would feel her eyes moving as dreams unfurled before them, a churning kaleidoscope of stories.

"Where did you what?" she asked, her face now full of sorrow. "You don't go for so long all around and around if you're who you said you are."

He assumed a smile, though it took a beat for his eyes to catch up with the curve of his mouth. With that, the show had begun. "It's over," he said, taking her by the shoulders. "They've done it with a cure!

He hugged her and felt her stiffen against him.

"Do you understand this that I say?"

It was important to keep the pose of his sleeplessness going, to perform the lazy scramble of diction, the hint of slur.

She looked up at him suddenly and asked, "Where's my mother is she?"

"Your mother?"

"Mom was here earlier," Carolyn said matter-of-factly. Her mother had been dead for almost nine years. Yet he was not surprised that she would make an appearance since she was a fixture of Carolyn's dreams. Whatever lived there was now here, it seemed.

"She told me that you should up the floor," Carolyn said, "if you think this is ever going to work so you can kill the scorpions there."

What was this—some echo of old resentments, filtered and mutated as it passed through the sieve of hallucinations?

He led her to the couch and sat her down. The way she said thank you was distant and professional, as if he were a waiter seating her at a decent table. It got to him, but he pushed back on it and stayed focused. She was changing, slipping away with every hour. No one knew where all this was heading, but he didn't want her going there. They had been together for nearly a decade, weathering his career change, her creative block and the resulting depression, not to mention the cosmic denial of their medically ritualized, vaguely carnal request for a child of their own. A project they had both abandoned. But all of that was preferable to what they lived with now.

"Listen," he said, "everything's going to be okay now because it's over."

"Over?" She looked up at him through her hair. She brought up her hand and traced the lines on his face with her fingers. He reached out to her other hand to remove the doll—an elaborate model of a moon goddess. She surrendered it without a word, allowing him to place it on the drawing desk.

"Baby, look," he said. "This is what will fix us all."

Now for the reveal. He showed her the pills in his hand, slowly peeling his fingers away. They looked pitifully inadequate in his palm, but smaller things have brought down beasts or ended empires. The smallest of things are the plot points of history.

Excerpted from Black Moon by Kenneth Calhoun. Copyright © 2014 by Kenneth Calhoun. Excerpted by permission of Hogarth Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.