Well, that happened.
Hgkaneofficialauthor1@gmail emailed her back. With dread fluttering inside her stomach, she opens the message and sees a dense block of text.
She braces for it.
Hi, you must be talking about Murder Mountain? I presume you’re Emma86?
This means nothing. He might just be maintaining deniability.
I don’t know who you are, and I don’t harbor any ill will toward you. As you know I’m a prolific author and very busy with all of my deadlines. I barely have time to write this email.
Uh-huh, she thinks.
My issue with this review is that you’re only a critic. Not even that—you’re a consumer. You don’t create things. You don’t understand how hard it is to write a book, a hundred thousand words all chosen and typed by hand. It’s easy for you to nitpick another’s creation because you have no skin in the game. You’re just a cold, negative woman with no friends.
So much for no ill will.
What you don’t understand is, it’s basically impossible to get published traditionally because the Big Five publishers only agree to publish mainstream books. And by slandering me and limiting my readers, you are attacking not only my daily income but also my chances of ever getting noticed by an agent or editor. This is the very definition of marginalization.
And no offense, but you’re a female. I’m a nice guy, but I just have to shoot straight here on this—females generally don’t like action or horror. It’s just biology. Why are you even reviewing it? That’s like me reviewing a bra. And some women always fancy themselves experts on whether a horror book is “realistic” or “unrealistic”—like YOU personally know how a .223-caliber Colt AR-15 rifle works? Can you load and fire one? Or how to tie a tourniquet? Or what a tension pneumothorax (“sucking chest wound”) is? Please. That’s what you don’t understand. You’re small-time and I shouldn’t let your uninformed “opinion” bother me, but as I like to say, sometimes it’s the small knife that cuts deepest.
That’s why I’m now ordering you: take your 1-star review down.
Sincerely,
HGK
She almost hopes she gets a chance to stab this guy.
And, worryingly, she can sense the rage building under his words. Like a geothermal force pushing to the surface, scalding, uncontrollable. Pressure rising. All from an online book review, of all things.
She needs a cigarette. “Fuckin’ writers, man.”
Wait.
There’s . . . more. She scrolls down further.
PS: If you’d CAREFULLY READ Murder Mountain, you would know that they didn’t go hiking in high heels, they just HAD heels in their backpack.
Your wrong!
Nice typo.
Maybe it really is him after all. This is the man who haunted Jules’s doorbell camera with a mouthless demon mask and dared her to open the door. Who watched her sleep.
But she still can’t prove it. Not yet.
She answers with one word.
*You’re
Sent.
The small knife cuts deepest, as an asshole on the internet once said.
That evening Deek writes: THINK HE’LL BE BACK TONIGHT?
“I kind of hope so.” Emma sips her espresso and watches the clock.
The police are “looking into it.” Whatever that means. Every few hours she sees the glint of a Dodge Charger creep up Wave Drive, diligently guarding a deserted landmass. She had considered spending a few nights elsewhere, but the only motel in town still open for the winter doesn’t allow dogs. She could jump in her beat-up Corolla and leave outright, she supposes. Break her agreement with Jules, hit the road with Laika, and be penniless and homeless again.
If the man following her is real, that’s arguably more dangerous.
Still, she’s considering it.
The sun lowers behind darkening clouds to the west. On Strand Beach, there’s always a next storm (a local saying she saw printed on a T-shirt in a shop window), but this one is the biggest yet. The anvil thunderheads look solid enough to touch, like the skyline of a distant city rolling in over the waves. It’ll be here sometime after dark.
WANT ME TO STAY UP? Deek asks. KEEP AN EYE OUT?
She hates involving him.
Every time she focuses her telescope on Deek’s window, she half expects to see a figure with a mouthless rubber face standing there instead. The old man’s body on the floor with an axe in his skull. And on the whiteboard, written by a bloody fingertip: I warned you.
Just paranoia.
I’LL KEEP WATCH, he insists. JUST IN CASE
“Thanks.”
He shrugs. I’M NOT EXACTLY BUSY
She has asked Deacon Cowl about his family only once and immediately felt guilty—when you get drunk and watch fireworks with an Ikea’s worth of crap in your house and a toilet on your deck, your life can’t be going great. Deek’s answer had been delicate. Twin daughters, he wrote after almost a minute of hesitation. I lost them both.
Emma never asked how they died. As a fellow lost soul on the Strand, she knows it doesn’t really matter. If Deek wanted pity, he wouldn’t be out here alone.
He writes more: YOU’RE MY FAVORITE NEIGHBOR
“I’m sure.”
GOTTA LOOK OUT FOR EACH OTHER
“That’s very sweet.”
PLUS CATCHING ANOTHER SERIAL KILLER COULD REALLY RESTART MY CAREER
She laughs. It seems to rattle out of her, a surprised bark, and she barely recognizes her own voice. She’s missed the feeling.
But . . . it was the sort of laugh only her husband could elicit from her. Her heart sinks like an anchor. Moments like this, she wishes she could cry instead.
She hasn’t cried since July.
Not once. The memorial service was full of eyes—sympathetic eyes, but eyes all the same. You’re expected to dress up and cover your face and sob in the front pew, and when you sit there like a tranced zombie in a baggy sweatshirt instead, people notice. People whisper. And she knows they aren’t wrong to worry. Whatever healthy grieving looks like, this can’t be it.
Maybe her brain has refused to accept what happened, like a laptop’s frozen blue screen, and if it’s a coping mechanism, it fucking sucks—because all she has then is the split second itself when two vehicles collided with a bony crunch. Five months. Zero progress. She’s still right there. Inside it. She can still smell the scorched brake pads, the gritty highway dust, the coppery blood in her teeth. She can’t taste pizza, but she can taste that.
Deek frowns. SERIOUS, EMMA. ARE YOU OKAY?
She exhales. What can she say? A psychopath may or may not be stalking her, and that’s still somehow the best thing to happen to her in months because it’s something to focus on other than the ocean outside. And the backpack by the door.
He’s waiting.
His question stands. And this time, she senses a finality to it. She’s lied to Deek several times now. She knows if she repeats her denial, he probably won’t ask again. This will be it. Not everyone is as patient as Shawn was.
I’m not okay, she wants to say. I haven’t been okay for months.
She twirls her dry-erase marker absently and forces a smile. It’s all metastasized inside her chest, a swollen mass of scar tissue.
I’m afraid of myself, she wants to write.
I’m afraid of what I’ll do when I’m alone, when no one is looking.
I’m so afraid.
This isn’t about solving the mystery of the figure in her bedroom. Maybe it never was. There’s a small secret part of Emma, a faulty sequence of genes somewhere, or a thing in her brain as real as a tumor. Maybe it’s the same silent defect that made her mother choose to keep binge-drinking box wines even after a teenage stranger died for her lifesaving transplant, to pickle two livers in one lifetime.
This part of Emma hopes the stranger murders her.
So she won’t have to do it herself.
For weeks the ocean has called to her with the promise of vanishing cleanly, completely. No body. No note. To be a mysterious and beautiful bird you’ll only later realize was endangered, like leaving a stuffy college party where the music is too loud and she doesn’t know anyone, the sly Irish goodbye—Where’s that Emma girl? I just saw her. Did she leave? Meanwhile, she’s halfway home. The girl who had once wanted to be an astronomer, who dreamed of naming new stars but settled for being a junior high math teacher, who now lives alone in a stranger’s house and smokes through a tiny window. And not for much longer. Blink and you’ll miss her.
Finally Deek shrugs in his distant spaceship. OK. TALK LATER I GUESS.
She feels a small stab of guilt. She guesses Deacon Cowl is a fascinating human being with a remarkable career. He could be a lifesaving ally or even a genuine friend. You’ll never know if you don’t let people in.
She almost didn’t let Shawn in.
She met her husband by accident seven years ago. One of the college clubs had organized a day hike to the overlook at Turnkey Peak, and she’d signed up expecting a large turnout. Instead, it was only her and a skinny electrical engineering major named Shawn. The eight-mile hike they took together was excruciatingly awkward. At the trailhead, passing through a rusty (and vaguely sinister-looking) metal gate, she remembers apologizing for not talking.
He’d shrugged politely, as if he didn’t mind one bit, looked up the hill, and said with a friendly smile: I’ll meet you there.
For some reason, this is imprinted in her mind.
I’ll meet you there.
She remembers walking fast. Trying to keep ahead of him, to avoid the skin-crawling discomfort of semi-introduced strangers walking side by side in silence. As it turned out, twenty-one-year-old Shawn was a hell of hiker. She nearly exhausted herself keeping ahead of his pace. But she pretended.
I’ll meet you there.
According to the state website, the view from Turnkey Peak is akin to a religious experience, a stunning panorama of jutting granite, mile-high scree slopes, and distant rivers of ice wreathing the Rockies beyond. Emma remembers only sitting at the edge of the cliff, chewing her peanut butter sandwich and laughing at Shawn’s jokes, because he’d finally caught her there and there was no escape short of the fatal drop. Shawn had a way about him. He was gentle, maybe a bit gawky, but quietly witty. Later, she would tell him that he reminded her of Schmendrick, the virtuous but slightly inept wizard from her favorite book, Peter Beagle’s The Last Unicorn.
She liked him. Even then.
But even then, on that drizzly mountaintop, she held him at arm’s length. She rationed her laughter. On the hike down she could feel herself sabotaging things, always a half step ahead, half listening, forcing him to chase her. She’d always known how to scupper a good thing.
At the day’s end they waved a polite but aloof goodbye at the trailhead gate, and Emma sat alone in her car with the engine running and the doors locked. She hadn’t given him her number or even her last name. They might never see each other on campus. She felt stupid, weak, and cold. Then, motion in her sideview mirror—it was Shawn again, speed walking toward her car. He held something in his hand. He looked nervous. Emma remembers rolling down her window and smiling at him, her heart fluttering with gratitude for another chance.
Until she saw what he was carrying.
A bloody severed finger.
She can’t remember if she screamed—she probably did—but what sticks in her memory is how deeply apologetic Shawn was the entire time. He needed a ride to the hospital because the rust-eaten trailhead gate had slid shut under a gust of wind at the exact moment he rested his palm on the hinge. Amputating the top knuckle of his pinkie finger.
I’m so sorry, he kept saying.
With shaking hands, Emma found the only container she had—a ziplock sandwich bag she’d packed her lunch in. She remembers the sickening little plop as he dropped his fingertip in. There was no ice. No cell service. Seconds counted.
Oh, my God, I’m bleeding all over your car. I’m so sorry.
She tried to reassure him as she stomped the gas: It’s totally fine. Don’t even think about that. Just keep pressure on it, okay?
I didn’t mean for this to— Shawn made a sudden, surprised grunt as she skidded down the road’s first switchback: Oh.
What?
He said nothing.
What is it? She couldn’t dare take her eyes off the road. What happened?
It’s fine. He was leaning forward in his seat, doubled over with his head between his knees, sounding almost embarrassed. I just . . . I dropped it.
You what?
I’m so, so sorry—
Like, under the seat?
Um, yeah. A brittle creak as he reclined the passenger seat, reaching under with his unhurt hand. As Emma’s little car bounced wildly over mud-splashed potholes, still barreling down the mountain. Her phone in her palm—no signal yet.
Find it?
No. It’s somewhere down there. I just can’t reach it. His breaths were shallow, his face pale and shiny with sweat. On the verge of tears, not from pain but humiliation. I’m . . . I can’t believe this happened—
She reached over and squeezed his knee. No biggie. We’ll find it when we park, okay? It’s always easier to find stuff under the seat when the car’s parked.
Okay, he sniffled.
For some reason, in all the blood and horror and lunacy of the moment as they hurtled down a steep mountain road, it’s touching Shawn’s knee that she remembers clearest. She met him just hours ago. She didn’t know his last name. And she was touching his leg.
It’s so strange, but losing a finger barely hurts at all. I feel completely fine, he said before vomiting on the floor of her car.
Five miles downhill, Emma parked at a run-down Shell station and ran inside for help. The clerk called 911 but insisted they pay full price for a bag of ice. When the ambulance arrived in a blaze of red and blue, gray-faced Shawn thanked her one last time and said he hoped to see her around on campus. This was almost it, their second goodbye—but instead Emma stepped forward and asked the paramedics which hospital they were taking him to. They gave her an address, and now it was Emma’s turn to say it.
I’ll meet you there, she told her future husband just as the ambulance door swung shut.
Before it did, he smiled.
Four words.
In her mind, they became a mantra for years. During a grueling day at work. During one of Shawn’s achingly long business trips to Phoenix. Their individual paths might differ, but they always ended up in the same place together.
I’ll meet you there.
Wherever there may be.
Ultimately, surgeons failed to reattach the tip of Shawn’s pinkie finger. His left hand remained forever stunted and he relearned a few guitar chords, but he often joked that it was a fair trade for meeting his wife. He meant it wholeheartedly, but this had always secretly shamed Emma—because in truth he’d already met her on that mountaintop, and she was a cold bitch to him. It took a severed fingertip in a sandwich bag to break down her walls.
She’s hard to know.
Now she uncaps her dry-erase marker and wipes away her last message to Deek. No more hiding. No more self-sabotage. No more waiting, because waiting on this beach is only a comfortable death glide. A warm seat and a good book on a stalled airplane.
Do it.
Do it.
Do it, Em. Be brave.
She exhales and writes: YES
YES, LET’S CHAT IN PERSON. DO YOU LIKE GINGER TEA?
But Deek is already gone. She’s too late. His living room is dark, and one final message remains on his whiteboard. She squints through glass blurred with running droplets.
GOOD NIGHT, GOOD LUCK
Lights out, his spaceship now cruising on autopilot.
So close.
Thunder rumbles over the rising tide. The house seems to shiver atop its foundation and she wonders if the figure who has haunted her—H. G. Kane, Demon Face, whoever or whatever he is—is close enough to hear it, too.
She’s made up her mind.
Not one more night here. She’ll pack her toothbrush and spend tonight in a motel. She’ll smuggle Laika in a suitcase if she has to. Then tomorrow morning, she’ll apologize to Jules and leave the island forever. She’ll roll the dice somewhere else, maybe somewhere dryer, somewhere warmer. Maybe inland, far from the ocean. Somewhere with witnesses. Anything to break the cycle, to stand up from her comfortable seat and storm the cockpit and grab the stick in a lucid moment when she’s herself, really herself, and fight the stall.
Before it’s too late.
If I don’t, she knows, I’ll die on this beach.
One way or another.