Explore the World of Sanctuary (and for a limited time, download it for free!)
Read an excerpt below, and for a limited time, Regular Joe Readers can download the ebook for free.
Sanctuary
Some doors are opened by accident. Others are opened by fate.
A storm.
A lost traveler.
A forgotten cabin on the edge of nowhere.
When Jeremy seeks shelter from the rain, he steps into more than an abandoned cabin, he crosses the threshold into a hidden world. Between the abandoned walls spirits stir and the Moirai, born from what we leave behind,reveal themselves.
One of them, Adelia, still remembers what it means to love and to lose. She’s been waiting a century for a seer to help her reclaim what was stolen and break the curse that binds her.
But every decision has a price and the deeper Jeremy journeys into Adelia’s world, the more he risks losing his own. Will he answer the call and help those in need or listen to the whispers of his troubled past?
Haunting, intimate, and vividly imagined, Sanctuary is a story of survival, discovery, and redemption, where magic breathes through the cracks of the ordinary world.
Perfect for readers of Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus, and Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth.
Learn more at regularjoepaper.com/sanctuary-a-novel/ or dive in below.
Read an excerpt below:
He finally found the old light, but nothing happened when he pressed the button. It was a wind-up model, like an emergency radio, so he flipped the handle out and started cranking. It wasn’t terribly bright, but he would never need batteries or money to buy them. After a moment, the feeble blue light showed him the wood slat door. Usually, he would be satisfied with riding out a storm under a porch or overhang, but he was soaked through, exhausted, and starting to shiver. He knocked one more time for good measure before trying the doorknob. It turned, but the door was not nearly as cooperative. He put his shoulder to it and gently shoved. It slid over the wooden floorboards with a scraping sound.
In the beam of his light, he saw the inside of a two-room cabin. Across the room was an old wood stove with a single straight-legged wooden chair in front of it. To his right, there was an antique dining table and several more chairs. Ramshackle cabinets with sagging doors and a porcelain sink lined the wall. The floorboards groaned as he stepped inside. Shining his light into the other room, he discovered an old chest of drawers and an ancient brass bed. The tubing of the bed seemed to match the elegant porcelain sink and ornate kitchen table and chairs, while the chest was probably just as plain one hundred years ago as it was today.
There was a thick layer of dust on everything. If it was a hunting cabin, no one had used it for a very long time. There was nothing in the cabinets, no blankets, and no wood piled next to the old stove. No supplies at all that he could see. He dropped his backpack and collapsed into the wooden chair by the stove with a sloshing sound. Shivering, he shrugged out of his wet coat but regretted it instantly. The temperature was definitely dropping. He leaned forward, pulling the heavy door to the old iron stove open. No logs or kindling, just a bed of ashes. He stared into the empty stove for a moment, imagining flames, warmth, and light. His legs ached.
Pulling his gaze away, his eyes rested on a chair at the dining table. It would have to do. He pushed himself up and grabbed the back of the chair, laying it sideways on the floor. He raised his foot and stomped down onto one leg. It felt almost sacrilegious to destroy something that had survived so long, but he had to get warm. And with a fire, he could heat what little food he had. It wasn’t much, but sometimes half a can of warm black beans was enough to lift your spirits. The simple things mattered. He brought his boot down on the chair leg again, and it snapped off.
As it snapped, he imagined a scream in the storm as lightning lit the room. Rain pounded on the roof and smacked against the windows in a sudden, frantic rhythm. An uncontrollable shiver ran through him, and the hair stood on the back of his neck. He swung the beam of his flashlight around the empty room. Dust and antique furniture. Still, he suddenly felt like he was in a library or a museum, or maybe a crypt. He didn’t like that last thought at all and pushed it away. Exhaustion was causing his mind to play tricks on him.
He was in a massive downpour in an old cabin in the middle of nowhere; of course, he would have spooky thoughts. He tossed the chair leg into the stove and broke off the other three as quietly and gently as possible. As he worked, he noticed that the rain sounded like a conversation he couldn’t quite understand. His imagination. Maybe he was delirious. Light the fire, and everything will be fine. He hoped the stove pipe was clear so the smoke would escape into the night and not fill the cabin. Escape, now, escape this cabin. No, his thoughts were running away again. He would start a fire with this chair and dry off, get warm, eat, and clear his thoughts.
After stacking the chair legs in the stove, he pulled a few old food wrappers, along with his lighter, out of his pack. He flipped the wheel on the lighter and ignited the paper, shoving it under the wooden legs. He hated to destroy anything, even if it was abandoned, but this was an emergency, and he chided himself for feeling guilty about an old chair. Even after years of reflection, he still couldn’t shake the guilt he carried. Sometimes it seemed as though he felt guilty for being alive.
Be perfect and respectful, but don’t trust people or the government. Especially the government. His mother’s voice slid into his mind, along with the memory of his father’s anger. A quiet fury, just below the surface, always present. The cognitive dissonance that twisted through his thoughts only settled down when he was alone. When he walked away from his house one night, never to return, he didn’t truly believe he would find good people in the world. People who didn’t follow his family’s faith weren’t capable of anything but wickedness. But he had to see for himself. He had to know what was out there beyond his family’s fence line. And after four years, he knew there were good things out in the world along with the wicked. Even so, he didn’t want to get too close. It was better to observe from a distance, to figure out what was inside of him. It didn’t matter what was outside of him.
Flames slowly crept up the old, dry chair legs, and his thoughts settled as the flickering light worked its way into the room. He didn’t think about his mother’s lessons or the voices in the rain as he finished his half-eaten can of beans, warmed by the fire. His thoughts drifted to thankfulness, and his eyes grew heavy. Stretching out on the floor beside the woodstove, he used his backpack as a pillow. Tomorrow, he would figure out where he was. His sense of direction was usually reliable, but something felt odd about this night. Like he wasn’t where he thought he should be. As sleep took him, he dreamed of small, angry gray men flailing their arms around him.
“That’s my chair! Do you know how long it took to get that matching set over here? Years!” Adelia registered the rising siren quality of Pinta’s voice and knew he was serious. She had to ensure he didn’t lose control and hurt the seer.
“Pinta, I know. I’m sorry, but there was no other way,” Adelia said. She clutched his small shoulder, holding him back from the sleeping human, while another smaller gray creature, that was mostly human-shaped, except for the enormous nose and tiny eyes, held his arm. “We’ll get you a new one. We have a seer, Pinta! Maybe you can get something from the Worthington house when I find the missing coins. Not just a chair but the headboard, too. Imagine that.”
Her voice was gentle and assuring. She cupped the little creature’s face and looked into his large, dark, liquid eyes. “It’s okay, Pinta, we’re okay. We called him here. It cost us so much to guide him. Poor Sinta is still unconscious. A chair with only a little energy in it is well worth it…”
“Your voice….”
“I’ve forgotten what you hear when we speak. It’s been so long since I’ve talked to a human,” Adelia said.
Jeremy carefully pulled the bag out of the wall. “I…I can hear you if I hold this bag?”
“That’s right, you’re a seer.”
“What’s a seer?”
“One who sees us, the world, all the…” she started in a flurry but stopped, furrowing her brow in thought. She tilted her head toward him and started again. “A seer is one who sees the world as it is and all of us who are in it. Not just in your reality, but ours too.”
– Visit www.regularjoepaper.com/Sanctuary for more.
