The Moon
Moved
37 Centimetres.

Chapter One.

The Wrong Morning.

Nova Mercer woke at four seventeen a.m. because someone was whispering his name from inside the wall.

“Nova.”

He opened his eyes.

The room was blue with moonlight. His wardrobe stood opposite the bed, one door slightly open. Clothes hung inside like a row of patient bodies.

“Nova.”

The voice did not sound male or female. It had the soft, stretched quality of speech heard underwater.

He held his breath.

The house was silent. Not the ordinary silence before dawn, threaded with pipes and distant tyres. This was complete. The silence had weight. It pressed against his ears until he could hear the pulse in his neck.

His phone lay face down beside the bed. He reached for it.

The screen showed four seventeen.

The digits did not change.

No signal. No Wi-Fi. The battery icon was full, though he remembered plugging it in at twelve per cent.

“Nova.”

This time the whisper came from the window.

He should have stayed in bed. He knew that later. He would replay the moment and imagine pulling the duvet over his head, closing his eyes, waiting for the world to become sensible again.

Instead, he stood.

The floor was cold. He crossed the room and pulled the curtain aside.

The street below looked frozen.

A fox stood in the middle of the road with one paw raised. A sheet of newspaper hung above the pavement, curled in mid-air as if held by invisible fingers. In the house opposite, water poured from a broken gutter but did not fall. Each droplet formed a silver bead suspended in moonlight.

Nova stared.

The Moon looked too large.

He knew how ridiculous that thought was. The Moon changed size near the horizon; everyone knew that. But it was high above the rooftops, swollen until it seemed close enough to scrape against the television aerials. Every crater was unnaturally sharp. A dark line ran through its centre, dividing it like the seam of a closed eye.

The line opened.

Gold light spilled out.

Pain drove Nova to his knees.

It entered through his eyes and pushed behind them, a hot blade separating memory from thought. Images flashed too quickly to understand: a tower beneath black glass; seven figures; an ocean standing upright; cities turning inside out; his own face older, scarred, smiling at him from the other side of a door.

A word appeared in his mind.

Lunar.

Then another.

Channel.

The Moon moved.

It slid a fraction to the left.

Reality followed.

Houses bent without breaking. The road stretched into a thin black ribbon. The sky folded along invisible lines and for one breath Nova saw behind it: a depthless field of geometric darkness crowded with shapes that recoiled from being observed.

Something in that darkness turned towards him.

Nova screamed.

Time resumed.

Rain struck the window. The fox completed its step and ran. The suspended newspaper slapped against a parked car. Water crashed from the gutter. Somewhere an alarm began to shriek.

Nova fell backwards and hit the wardrobe.

His phone vibrated.

Four eighteen.

One minute had passed.

He crawled to the mirror fixed inside the open wardrobe door. His reflection looked grey and terrified. Blood ran from one nostril.

His eyes were blue.

He leaned closer.

Gold flickered across both irises, thin as lightning beneath ice.

Then it was gone.

A knock sounded downstairs.

Three slow impacts.

Nova froze.

He lived alone. His nearest neighbour was a retired teacher who would not knock at four in the morning unless the street was on fire.

Another three knocks.

He wiped his nose and looked for something he could use as a weapon. The heaviest object within reach was a brass lamp. He unplugged it and carried it into the hallway.

The staircase descended into darkness. At the bottom, moonlight formed a pale rectangle across the front door.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

“Who is it?”

No answer.

His voice sounded thin in the silent house.

He crept down. The old timber steps complained beneath his weight. At the door he raised the lamp, then looked through the spyhole.

A woman stood on the pavement.

She was perhaps twenty-five, soaked by rain, dark hair stuck to her face. She wore a red coat and no shoes. One hand was pressed to her mouth. The other held a photograph against the door.

Nova did not recognise her.

She lowered her hand.

“Please,” she whispered. “You have to let me in before they remember I exist.”

A car turned into the street.

The woman looked over her shoulder. Fear transformed her face.

Its headlights swept across the houses. The vehicle was black, long and silent. It stopped three doors away.

Both rear doors opened.

The woman hammered the door with her palm. “Nova.”

He stepped back.

“How do you know my name?”

Her eyes met the spyhole.

For an instant, they glistened gold.

“Because you told me not to trust you.”

The streetlights went out.

Nova unlocked the door.