He drove his knee into the man’s spine, forcing him prone into the wet gravel. He’d given his most convincing police voice. Deep. Authoritative.
And it worked.
The delivery driver complied immediately, dropping to his knees and surrendering to the commanding voice behind him.
Thirty-one-year-old Jake Stanford was a lifelong Washington resident, father of two, and a FedEx employee of three years. His surviving family describe the former Navy truck driver as a natural go-getter; a jack-of-all-trades who was as comfortable deep-sea sturgeon fishing as he was volunteering at Grundy’s annual canned food drive. Tragically, Jake’s single infraction against company policy that evening, during the final stop on his route, likely contributed to his capture. While delivering parcels on foot, Jake would often switch from phone speakers to his Bluetooth earbuds to avoid breaking rhythm in his music, and this likely dulled his situational awareness. He didn’t hear the footsteps behind him—only the voice.
By the time Jake realized that voice was only impersonating a police officer, he was already prone on the driveway, unable to fight back. The katana was already raising for a fatal thrust—until the carbon steel glinted with a bright new light source.
Thirty feet away, the house’s front door had opened.
Emma’s voice.
“Stop.”
There he stands.
Spotlighted by the delivery van’s headlights, towering over his new hostage in the downpour. It shouldn’t be possible. He’s cheated again, somehow, and all of Emma’s hard-fought confidence has drained out of her body. It’s wrenching, hollowing.
The pale visage of H. G. Kane is finally in clear view.
His face is freckled and stubbled with curly ginger neckbeard. His cheeks are plump, boyish, hanging over fleshy jowls. His mouth is a small and dirty-looking orifice, as puckered as an asshole. Behind his fedora, she can see the author’s red hair is worn long and greasy. He must be at least six-three and two hundred and fifty pounds, oversize in a clumsy and sad way. His trench coat is pulled taut to contain his cauldron belly. His cargo pants bulge in odd places. None of his clothes fit quite right.
She expected Jason Voorhees. She got a life-size Chucky doll.
Somehow, this is still worse.
His victim, a young man in a FedEx uniform, writhes under the sword’s edge and cranes his neck to look up at her with wide eyes. This makes the danger real in a way Emma can’t describe—up until now, H. G. Kane has been her private demon.
This is really happening.
Her stomach heaves.
“Let him go.” She doesn’t recognize her own voice. “This is between us.”
The wind growls between them.
He glances at her, then down to his hostage. He can end a human life with a single thrust. His glasses shine with reflected light, rendering his eyes unreadable. Like glowing canine irises. Slowly he points a black-gloved hand at Emma’s kitchen knife.
This is a clear message: Drop it.
The FedEx driver shakes his head—“Wait, don’t”—as Emma underhands the knife into the dark yard. She knows it’s useless here.
“Good girl,” the figure says.
Good girl. Like praising a puppy.
Then, with his other hand, he reaches into his trench coat and pulls out a semiautomatic pistol. Emma’s gut stirs with horror at the sight of it. Like a tumor in an X-ray, like a motionless body inside a wrecked car, it’s Bad News concentrated to its purest form. And strangely, the firearm seems to be rattling, vibrating in the killer’s grip.
He’s trying to fight it.
But his hand is trembling.
His hand was perfectly still.
His nerves were stone-steady. His veins ran with ice water. He had adapted to the delivery driver’s unexpected arrival, dominating Jake Stanford in seconds. He was a sociopath in the truest sense, a clean-burning machine unfettered by empathy.
With this new development, his plans had changed dramatically.
He was on the Strand to murder one person, and now it would be two. Stressful as it was, in his view it was also worthwhile to supplement the body count of Murder Beach. Username HGKaneOfficial often mused that fiction was in its own way sociopathic, a created world where some deaths matter and some really don’t. Did anyone truly care when the gun store owner got blown away by Arnie in the opening act of The Terminator? No, he’d reason, because we’re invested only in Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese, characters with names. As readers and viewers, we’re stingier with our empathy than we’d like to admit, and that December night, a young father of two died on his knees to serve a supporting role in someone else’s story.
He studied Emma in the bright headlights.
He couldn’t help but admire her.
His lips curl into a fleshy grin.
Again, Emma feels insects crawling on her skin.
“You talk in your sleep,” he says. “You said a name while you tossed and turned in your bed. The same name, over and over.”
She braces for it.
“Shawn.”
It hits her like buckshot to the heart. Her husband’s name feels obscene, violated, coming from those hairy lips. He has no right. Still she says nothing, unblinking.
The chubby smile grows. “Shawn’s dead, huh?”
Fuck you, she thinks.
“In your locket.” He points at her neck. “I bet there’s a picture of him?”
Fuck-you-fuck-you-fuck-you—
“Grieving widow, living alone in a beach house? Bit of a cliché, honestly.”
You don’t know me, she thinks.
You only think you do—
“You might be surprised,” he says abruptly.
This startles her. She can almost feel his dirty fingernails inside her brain, picking through her thoughts. She takes a breath. “Who are you?”
“The devil.”
“Who are you really?”
“I’m here to do what you’ve been trying to do for months, Emma.” He cocks his head and his hairy throat flesh jiggles, oddly birdlike. “I’m actually here to help you, strange as it sounds. I know why you’re here. I know what you’re struggling with. I saw your backpack by the door, all loaded up with rocks.”
In her peripheral vision, Emma senses new light.
It’s coming from Deek’s house. If the old man is in his living room, he might check his telescope. Or—better yet—he might be watching the standoff right now. She keeps the light at the edge of her vision. She can’t tilt her head. If the author sees it, too, he might panic and execute his hostage.
Don’t look at it.
The FedEx driver noticed it, too. Her chest flutters with panic as he cranes his neck—
“Hey,” the author snarls, shockingly loud: “Don’t look up. Don’t look at my face.” He slashes in reflex, his wrist barely seeming to move, the sword not making a sound at all—but the hostage cries out in blood-curdling pain. Emma grips her locket in a tight fist just below her collarbone. She has to squeeze something.
“Look down.” He jams his pistol into the back of the man’s neck and twists hard, a cruel screwdriver motion. “Don’t look at me. Do you understand?”
The hostage nods, clutching his ear. From here, Emma can’t see the injury. Blood runs between his trembling fingers and mixes pink with rainwater. For some reason his blood doesn’t look exactly real to her. None of this feels real. How can H. G. Kane know her so intimately?
In a story, the author is God.
Or the devil.
She notices the FedEx driver’s right hand is slowly moving, unseen by the author. She tries not to look directly at it, either, or he’ll notice—but she follows the man’s hand across wet gravel. His palm rests atop a decorative stone marking the driveway’s edge. His bloody fingers clasp around it, spiderlike.
A weapon.
Emma locks eyes with him. No, she wants to whisper.
But he tightens his grip on the rock. She shakes her head now, keeping her motions small. A desperate, unspoken plea: Please, wait. You have no idea how dangerous this man is.
The driver acknowledges her stare. But he keeps the rock.
Emma knows the standoff is about to boil over. H. G. Kane won’t allow any witnesses to leave tonight—especially if he’s afraid of being identified without his demon mask. This leaves only one potential way forward. It’s a risky one.
Deep breath.
“You can kill me,” she tells the author. “But let him go.”
He says nothing.
She steps forward, keeping her eyes locked on his through the pouring waterfall created by the overloaded gutter. “He hasn’t seen your face.” She glances to the hostage. “Right?”
Silence.
“Right?”
Weakly, the man nods. His earlobe nods, too, half-severed.
“And he doesn’t know your name. Or why you’re here.”
He nods again.
“This is between us.” Emma reaches the porch’s edge. The gutter’s waterfall crashes down on her now, ice-cold on her skin, pooling in her sunken clavicles. She fights a shiver in her voice: “You and me. So please, let him go.”
He admired her attempt to bargain for Jake Stanford’s life, but there was simply no room to negotiate. The situation had escalated with this new development, and greatly accelerated his own time frame. He knew he already had hours of forensic evidence to tidy up. He would need to fry Emma’s phone, her e-reader, and her laptop. He would need to wipe down every fingerprint and bleach every surface for stray hairs, skin cells, or fibers. To say nothing of the secrets within the walls of the house itself. There could be no living witnesses to his now-infamous Strand Beach massacre.
No deals.
He wouldn’t allow a soul to leave alive.
“Deal,” the author tells her. “I’ll let him go.”
Emma releases a trapped breath.
Too easy.
“You’re right.” He flashes a doughy, vulgar smile. “It’s all about you.”
She says nothing.
He’s lying.
Something is wrong, as wrong as a dislocated limb. She can’t take him at his word. His words are worse than meaningless. In the silence, she stares back at his unreadable glasses and braces for violence. She knows it’s coming. She knows he’s about to do something to the innocent man before her eyes, just to prove he can, that H. G. Kane is in full control of her nightmare.
Nothing happens.
Instead, the human Chucky doll stuffs his pistol into his trench coat and steps back, still grinning, and—true to his word—gives his hostage space to stand up.
What the hell?
The FedEx driver—his uniform soaked and stained with blood—pushes himself upright into a sitting position, still clutching his ear, still afraid to stand. Afraid to leave. He’s as shaken and deeply confused as Emma is.
“Run,” she hisses to him. “Please, run.”
Before he changes his mind.
Even still, she’s certain the author is lying. He’s playing cruel games, savoring his power over them. Why would he allow a witness to leave? His smile is fading now, darkening, turning like rotten mayonnaise. “I wanted to save you, Emma.”
Silence.
She hesitates. “W . . . What?”
“I wanted to save you.” He waits expectantly, maybe even desperately, as if giving her a chance to express gratitude. “He told me I had to kill you. And I stood up for you—”
Her mouth instantly dries. “Who?”
The author stops himself. As if realizing he’s said too much.
“Who told you to kill me?”
He tips his fedora at her. A chivalrous gesture: M’lady.
“Answer me.”
Still smirking, he glances out at the windswept grass and the breakers beyond. As if he’s soliciting the permission of someone unseen, someone watching.
She turns, too.
It’s too dark to see. Just rain and wind.
He told me I had to kill you.
With her spine tingling, she remembers Demon Face in Jules’s night vision camera. Every time she’s seen H. G. Kane thus far, he’s worn that fedora. But Demon Face wore no such hat—and he had a lighter coat, like a windbreaker. What if there are two intruders out there?
A twin brother?
A cowriter?
A crazed fan?
“Tell me,” Emma hisses. “Who else is out there?”
Before the author can answer, she notices the kneeling FedEx driver has shifted his weight forward. His eyes hardening. His jaw setting. His muscles tensing.
He’s made up his mind.
No.
She screams—too late—as he swings his rock at H. G. Kane’s face.
To say he was a skilled swordsman would be a gross understatement.
Outside of his prolific writing, he lived and breathed by the blade. His apartment walls were a library of Japanese and Chinese combat swords carefully mounted on brackets. A Global Gear Makaze. A Hanwei Practical Pro. On the shelf beside his gaming PC’s ultrawide monitors sat a wicked Cheness Cutlery Kaze. In the bathroom above his toilet, a small but deadly tantō dagger encased in glass (to keep out moisture).
And on the bedroom wall over his king-size mattress, within arm’s reach in the event of a home invasion, was his pride and joy: the now-infamous twenty-eight-inch Thaitsuki Tonbo Sanmai Katana. He owned rarer and finer swords, but this one held special value. His mother bought it for him as a gift on his eighteenth birthday to celebrate his first self-published novel. Accordingly, it was the blade he chose to carry on the night of the Strand Beach massacre.
Aching for its first “blooding.”
Four years earlier, he’d uploaded the most popular video on his (now demonetized and defunct) YouTube channel HGKANEOfficial. Prior to his profile’s deletion, the video had garnered more than two million views. He’d tried many times to replicate its success.
At one minute and fifty-eight seconds, the recording shows him filling a two-liter Mtn Dew Code Red bottle with water from the hose and placing it upright atop a black card table. The setting: nondescript suburbia. There’s a garage door with peeling paint in the background. The sky is hard blue. Somewhere far away a lawn mower rumbles. Somewhere much closer, a dog yaps incessantly, crackling the microphone.
“Shut up, rat.”
He’s always hated his mother’s nervous little dogs.
In this video he’s two years younger, his chin freshly shaved with ginger stubble. He wears a black T-shirt featuring Pepe the Frog, khaki cargo shorts, and New Balance sandals with black socks. And of course, his wool felt fedora—a chic testament to his strength and unwillingness to take no for an answer.
He leans offscreen—ensuring the iPhone is filming—and then he stands in the foreground beside the two-liter Mtn Dew bottle.
He says nothing.
He only stares into the camera, squinting in the afternoon sun. His right hand slides down to his hip, to the black saya hanging at his waist, which most viewers do not notice until now. His thumb pops the katana’s hilt collar a few centimeters free with a wooden click. He glances left, then right. Choosing his moment.
He waits.
So must we.
A passenger jet passes overhead. The faraway lawn mower changes pitch.
Somehow we’re still not ready for it when it happens. A blur, a glint of white-hot sunlight, a hiss of friction. By the time the sound has registered on-camera, he’s already completed the motion and he’s smoothly twirling his katana back into its battle-wrapped saya. To his right, as if blasted by an offscreen bullet, the two-liter Mtn Dew bottle explodes in half, two diagonal pieces sliding apart with clean-cut edges.
He looks back at the camera as water dribbles off the table. He doesn’t smile. The sun is in his eyes anyway.
In the distance, the neighbor’s lawn mower ceases. So, too, does the small dog’s barking. Just a coincidence, but this creates a strange stillness, an expectant gulf of negative space, as he reaches for his sheathed weapon again. He performs the same maneuver for us, perhaps even faster—the glint, the blur, a bony crack—and again, the blade is back at his waist. A viewer might wonder if his stroke hit anything at all. The Mtn Dew bottle’s plastic halves tremble in shock, but remain untouched on the table.
The last of the water finally trickles away.
Airy silence.
Then the card table itself falls apart. Each bisected half topples on two legs, landing in the grass. The dog resumes yapping and the faraway lawn mower starts up again, but he keeps staring into the camera with his right palm over his lacquered wood scabbard, resting delicately, almost lovingly, on the terrible power carried there.
Offscreen, someone claps. This individual is never identified.
Now, finally, he grins.
The blade moves too fast for Emma to discern. She sees nothing but its effect. The man’s right hand—swinging the clutched rock—twirls away freely. Then another piece of him flies off. Another. He flutters apart with every razor stroke and Emma can feel every near-silent cut in her bones. A human body is dismantled by whispers.
She staggers back inside the house.
Missing a step. She falls.
She kicks the front door shut behind her and screams into the floor.