Prayers Beneath the Empty Moon

von Shutts

158 Seiten, Taschenbuch

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

Faith Turner, an ethnographer determined to document the oral traditions of a remote mountain sanctuary, arrives at Thi¿n T¿ch Pagoda after a punishing climb through fog, rain, and the gorge below. The young monk Brother Asher receives her with formal hospitality but makes one rule unmistakably clear: after the tenth bell, she must remain inside her quarters. The monastery, he insists, is a sanctuary of silence, and the stories told by villagers about mysterious midnight prayers are nothing more than superstition and strange mountain acoustics.Faith, however, has come precisely because those stories do not fit ordinary explanations. Local boatmen claim that the pagoda's evening rites can be heard across several ridges, while elders speak of a monthly full-moon vigil attended by visitors who leave no footprints. The enormous bronze bell in the monastery's tower is said to toll for them, although no one admits who strikes it.Rather than obeying the curfew, Faith secretly leaves her cell shortly before midnight, carrying a directional microphone and camera. From the shadows of the Main Courtyard, she watches the ancient bell tower suspended above the gorge. At exactly midnight, the wooden striker begins moving without any visible human hand. One by one, the bell sounds twelve enormous chimes, each low enough to shake the stone beneath Faith's feet and reverberate through the surrounding cliffs.When the final chime fades, something even stranger occurs. The mountain fog begins moving against the prevailing wind, gathering in a circular pattern at the center of the courtyard. What begins as an acoustic investigation becomes a confrontation with a phenomenon that cannot be dismissed as folklore. Faith realizes that the monastery's silence is not simply religious discipline; it conceals a ritual and a history that the monks have spent generations protecting.Her investigation forces the sanctuary's guardians to confront the difference between preserving a sacred tradition and burying the truth beneath it. The mysterious prayers beneath the empty moon become connected to forgotten lives, hidden guilt, and the monastery's long relationship with the people living below the mountain. Faith's recordings and observations gradually expose the physical evidence behind stories that outsiders had dismissed as superstition.As the boundaries between researcher and witness begin to disappear, Faith must decide how far she is willing to go for the truth-and whether exposing a secret automatically means she has the right to claim it. The mountain, the bell, and the empty courtyard become pieces of a mystery in which sound itself carries memory.What begins as an academic field study ultimately becomes a journey into the meaning of faith, secrecy, and remembrance. Beneath the cold full moon, Faith discovers that some prayers are not meant to summon the dead or prove the supernatural. They exist because the living have never finished answering the past.

• Themen: Belletristik Kriminalromane und Mystery Krimis mit Ermittlerinnen
• ISBN: 9798182795968
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 18.09.2026
• Größe: 229 x 152 mm
• Verlag: THOMAS SHUTTS