Crypt of the Moon Spider is a dark and dreamy tale of horror, corruption, and identity spun into 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.

I’ll admit that I ordered this book without looking at its page count and ended up feeling a bit ripped off when the book arrived. But bloody hell… what a nightmarish ride it’s been.

I generally avoid shorter works and anthologies. For me, the joy of reading fiction largely comes from the exploration of plot and world-building. I would have thought that less than a hundred pages is just too little space to make much headway on either front. I stand corrected! In a humbling demonstration, Nathan Ballingrud has conjured a creepy tale with both a fascinating plot and wildly esoteric world-building - a story that will likely haunt me for a while.

In the initial part of the story, we follow the story of Veronica, who suffers from bouts of melancholy. Her life is disheartening, and we see her detached husband unceremoniously deposit her in a treatment facility without even feeling the need to meet the doctor in charge. Barrowfield Home for Treatment of the Melancholy is no ordinary facility. The secluded, secretive establishment is set on a moon, which in this fictional world is otherwise covered by a mysterious forest. In the later part of the story, we get a glimpse of what lurks in the depths of these spiderweb covered woods.

The doctor secretly employs some rather unorthodox techniques, assisted in his harrowing deeds by a psychopathic assistant whose viewpoint we explore in the later part of the story.

Saying anything else would take away from the experience of the story, and given its short length, I’d encourage you to just try it out if the theme appeals to you. If dark, creepy tales appeal to your taste, you will not be disappointed. This is the work of a master.

Now if only I can cleanse from my mind the imagery of spiders spilling out from surgical stitches.