Fiction
The Lion and the Bear
Book under development
About the Book
Brugge, 1914. Seeking a fresh start after the death of his wife, a widower reopens De Leeuw en de Beer, an old pub dating to 1776. Behind its bar, he discovers a ledger filled with promises its patrons never kept. Each evening, a quiet stranger takes the same table and asks him to honor a debt. But the visitor belongs to another century, and the name beside the oldest unpaid promise is the owner’s own. As war draws closer, the ledger leads him into a betrayal committed in 1780, when two families entrusted their futures to a single man. With frightened neighbors preparing to flee and a stranger who cannot leave, the owner must decide what he owes the living—and what he must return to the dead. An atmospheric historical ghost story about loyalty, loss, and the obligations that outlive us.
Coming Soon
Ask about this bookA Taste of the Writing
A Preview of the Story
An original story preview. The text may change as the manuscript develops.
Pieter Verhaeghe set two glasses on the counter before remembering that he needed only one. He put the second away carefully. There were habits grief would not release merely because a man had changed his address.
Above the door, the lion and the bear moved together on their iron bracket. He had paid to have the sign cleaned. The painter had brightened the animals' eyes and left the old date beneath them untouched.
Inside, the room smelled of soap, damp timber, and beer waiting for customers. Pieter had opened the shutters himself. He wanted the place to look ready, although nothing in Brugge seemed ready for what people said was coming.
The stranger chose the table nearest the wall.
Pieter had not heard the door.
“A beer?” he asked.
“If you please.”
He carried it over. The man watched him with an attention that made the short journey feel like an examination.
“Have we met?” Pieter asked.
“Not you.”
The answer ought to have ended the conversation. Instead, Pieter remained standing with the tray against his leg.
From behind the counter came a soft sound, leather shifting against wood. The old ledger he had found that morning had fallen open.
The stranger did not turn toward it.
“I hoped,” he said, “that someone would open the house again.”
Meet the Author
John K. Milius
John K. Milius brings four decades of sales, leadership, customer relationships, and hard-earned commercial judgment to the page. His fiction turns that same eye toward Brugge—a city of water, memory, history, and stories waiting beneath the stones.
Continue Exploring
