Every writer has an unhinged fan or two.
But Deacon Cowl’s first encounter with Howard Grosvenor Kline—years ago—was disturbing by any standard. Young Howard, as it turned out, was a superfan of Silent Screams and hell-bent on soliciting his hero’s guidance on his own writing career. When his perfectly normal fan mail went unanswered, he took the perfectly normal next step and appeared at Deek’s front door.
STALKED ME + MY DAUGHTERS, he writes. FOR YEARS
Given what Emma knows about Howard thus far, that sounds about right. His needy smile. His perpetual victimhood. His alarming talent for finding people.
KEPT SENDING ME SHIT BOOKS
BEGGING ME TO READ
And . . . those drafts that kept arriving in Deek’s mail were probably the vile books that preceded Murder Mountain. How will the old man react when he learns the truth? The amateur manuscripts he was ignoring, scoffing at—all depicted real murders. Real victims.
She’s not sure she has the heart to tell him.
GOT RESTRAINING ORDER, Deek writes. THOUGHT IT WAS OVER
If only, she thinks.
NOW HE’S BACK, he writes. OLDER
SMARTER
ANGRIER
In the distance, a sonic crash of thunder races over the sea. The storm is growing closer. It jolts Emma’s bones, the promise of bad things on the way.
AND, he writes.
STILL THE WORST FUCKING WRITER I’VE EVER READ
He’d always been a gifted writer.
Even as a child, his skills were inarguable. Propeller Head was a tour de force, and Semiautomatic, for all its teenage angst, was crafted with undeniable skill.
From a young age, Howard wrote with urgency. In his junior year he learned that S. E. Hinton wrote her celebrated 1967 novel The Outsiders while she was in high school, and this triggered a race against time in his mind. If S. E. Hinton can be published at age nineteen, why couldn’t he? And as any aspiring writer knows, it’s a famously carnivorous business. Fewer than one percent of novels written make it to be traditionally published, and even fewer turn a profit—so he reasoned he needed a professional’s guidance to stand out amid the cutthroat field. Who better than the author of his favorite true crime novel?
His messages went unanswered. His delivered manuscript was unread. So one rainy afternoon in Strand Beach, Washington, he arrived on foot. He jimmied the back door with his wakizashi sword and found the home vacant inside. He was unaware that the entire Cowl family was on a five-day vacation to Crater Lake and due to return that evening.
So he waited.
He didn’t mind.
As the sky darkened, he spent hours combing through personal items. Studying framed photographs from guest interviews on The Tonight Show and Dateline. He leafed through Swiss and German editions of Silent Screams. He explored the children’s bedrooms. He helped himself to two beers from the fridge. He played with the unloaded .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver on the wall—a gift presented by the Fort Worth Police Department “with eternal gratitude, in recognition of Deacon R. Cowl’s integral role in the apprehension of the Stockyard Slayer.”
His only error: leaving the living room lamp on as he waited. This light was visible from the driveway and resulted in a 911 call at 9:31 p.m., thanks to the sharp eyes of Karen Cowl.
His arrest was a mortifying experience.
Caught off guard and carrying his wakizashi sword at the moment police arrived, Howard came within an eyelash of being fatally shot by his arresting officer (his mother later filed a formal complaint about this). The handcuffs bit into his skin. The booking photos were humiliating. The white-brick holding cell was stuffy. This, like his near miss with homicide detectives over Laura Birch’s disappearance several months later, would be a formative moment. Anyone can look back on his life and pinpoint key moments of missed course correction. He would be smarter. Quieter. Deadlier. No more mistakes. He was no amateur.
He would enter homes like a stalking shadow. He would train his muscles to remain still for hours, to leave no physical evidence. His victims would wonder if they’d ever seen him at all in their bedroom, or if he was merely a half-remembered dream and a trick of the moonlight. He would be seen only when he chose to.
He would return to the Strand, yes.
But he would return as a different person entirely.
She writes: WHERE IS HE NOW?
Fear gnaws at her.
In the distant window, Deek scans his telescope right, then left toward the ocean. Searching. Not a good sign. The moment seems to last forever until finally the old man looks up at her and shakes his head.
“Shit.”
She writes: WHERE DID U SEE HIM LAST?
He points.
The driveway? That’s old information. A minute out of date, at least. The author could be anywhere now, creeping low in the darkness.
“You had one job, Deek,” she mutters in frustration.
He’s still frantically searching.
Leaning into his telescope, his balance visibly wavers. She should have figured he’s been drinking tonight. Deacon Cowl has a brilliant mind, and like many with brilliant minds, he feels the need to kill it with every substance he can find.
“One goddamn job.”
She takes mental inventory of the house. Laika is safely upstairs on the second floor. The two doors are barricaded, the first-floor windows are all shut, and the broken one is blocked by a tipped sofa. Nothing is impenetrable. But if H. G. Kane—no, Howard Grosvenor Kline—enters through any of these routes, she’ll hear him coming.
Right?
She feels like she’s forgetting something. It needles her. In the kitchen, the stove burner ticks. The water’s temperature is slowly rising.
Her head aches. “Where the hell is he?”
SORRY, the old man writes. I’M SO SORRY, I LOST HIM.
But Emma isn’t focused on his words at all anymore—because as Deek leans over his whiteboard to write more, he reveals a dark figure standing behind him.
Howard stepped out of shadow, careful not to make a sound. The floorboard barely creaked under the sole of his tactical boot. He gently shifted his weight to his heel, his motions practiced and deliberate to avoid rustling his trench coat.
He let out half a breath.
Then, standing stone-still in the doorway, he raised his katana in two gloved hands. The blade’s edge was red with Jake Stanford’s blood. With an elevated jōdan-no-kamae stance, he aimed his decapitating swing.
Emma can only watch.
“No.”
As the storm intensifies, she can just barely see it through rain-blurred glass—a silhouette standing behind Deek inside the open driveway. She recognizes the broad shoulders. The rim of his telltale fedora.
That awful hat.
Deek leans back to his telescope, obscuring the doorway again.
She mouths: “Behind you.”
The old man only squints at her through watery glass. He can’t read Emma’s lips, but he can tell something is wrong. Just over his shoulder she glimpses that fedora again—the human shadow that first appeared in her bedroom. Watching with reptilian stillness.
Howard’s favorite trick.
And—she now knows—a weakness. He likes to remain undetected and study his prey up close, perhaps to better absorb all the sensory details he’ll later write. If he doesn’t know he’s been seen, he’ll remain still. Once his presence is known, he’ll attack.
Think, she urges herself. Think.
On his whiteboard, Deek draws an impatient question mark. He raises both hands in aggravation. He has no idea his superfan is in the room with him, sharing oxygen with him. Seconds from attacking him, cutting him into pieces like the poor delivery driver—
Think.
She inhales a shuddering breath. She lifts her marker.
DON’T TURN AROUND, she writes. HE’S BEHIND U.
He stood statuesque with his katana raised, exhaling silently through his nose. He squinted to study Emma’s whiteboard, wondering what exactly she was scribbling so urgently for her neighbor’s telescope.
An offer?
A request?
Instructions?
From where he stood, he couldn’t read Emma’s handwriting.
Deek leans into his telescope’s eye cup to read her message.
Silence.
Quickly, Emma adds: DON’T MOVE
OR HE’LL ATTACK
The silence drags on as he reads, then rereads. Five seconds. Ten. She waits with a swollen breath until finally the old man leans back from his telescope. Somehow, across a quarter mile of rain and darkness, they make grave eye contact.
Yes. He gets it.
Through her lens, she notices Deek’s hand is inching low toward his desktop. Keeping his movements subtle, unnoticed by the killer behind him, he lifts a small silver instrument into view. It gleams wickedly sharp.
A letter opener.
No. Emma wants to scream. Don’t try to fight him.
He’ll kill you, too.
The old man slowly rotates the tool underhand, tucked like a prison shiv. He takes an anxious breath, his eyes locked on her. She shakes her head, urgently now—Stay with me, Deek, and we’ll think of something, anything else—but he’s already writing one final word.
RUN
“No.”
Then Deek stands up (“No, no, no—”) with his letter opener in a clenched fist, blade out, whirling to face the doorway behind him.