The Last Word

After three in the morning, Emma wakes to a figure in a coat and hat watching her in the upstairs bedroom. She turns on the light, but the figure is gone. She searches the entire beach house, including its damp basement, and finds no intruder. Laika startles her in the basement, and she wonders whether she experienced a nightmare. Her isolation continues the next day, punctuated by telescopic whiteboard conversations and Hangman games with Deek, a neighbor a quarter mile away. The house makes unsettling noises, and its neglected bedroom troubles her. Emma remembers a conversation about immortality with Shawn, the husband she has left behind, and feels Deek's observation of her more keenly. On a beach walk she notices another set of footprints. At this point the source has not established Shawn's death.

Laika returns from the dunes with bloody gums and a piece of raw flesh. Emma extracts the flesh and cares for the dog, worried that somebody has left dangerous bait nearby. Her whiteboard exchanges with Deek provide companionship, but the distance and his telescope also remind her how exposed she is. Emma weighs whether the figure in her bedroom was imagined. Emma also notices a recurring buttery odor in the house, strongest near the neglected bedroom, but cannot explain its source. A motion light later activates outside as Laika reacts to something in the dark. No culprit is identified.

The next morning, Emma, still troubled by the mysterious figure she saw in her bedroom, spreads a thin layer of sand under every door and windowsill to detect any intruders. Rechecking the locks, she finds them secure but remains haunted by the indistinct nature of the figure, attributing it to her recurring nightmares. Determined to gather evidence if the figure returns, Emma's resolve strengthens.

Deek, her neighbor, denies seeing anyone suspicious the previous night. Emma refrains from sharing her concerns, fearing she might sound paranoid. Their conversation during a game of Hangman reveals Deek's medical vocabulary and isolated lifestyle, leading Emma to speculate about his background. Her thoughts drift to her absent husband, Shawn, and their shared hobbies, including his passion for model trains and her interest in astronomy, highlighting the deep connection and the void left by his absence.

A text from Jules, the owner of the house, contains a photo from the doorbell camera showing a strange, masked figure outside the house last night. Jules informs Emma that previous house-sitters reported unsettling incidents, including a human mimicking dog barks and attempts to break in. Realizing the importance of the doorbell camera, Emma formulates a plan to catch the intruder if he returns. Despite Jules's offers of a stun gun, Emma remains focused on her strategy and the need to stay in the house.

Emma reflects on the masked figure captured by Jules’s doorbell camera, drawing parallels to the killer in 'Murder Mountain,' who wore a mask to avoid detection but didn’t bother when close to his victims. She recalls her one-star review and the escalating threats from H. G. Kane, questioning whether the masked figure is a message from the author. Despite her rational mind telling her it's impossible for an online stranger to find her, Emma feels a growing sense of unease and paranoia.

Delving into H. G. Kane’s author bio, Emma finds it both boastful and bizarre, filled with exaggerated claims and a desperate need for validation. She notices that he has written a long series of similarly titled horror novels, with scattered reviews that Emma suspects include fake accounts. Realizing how easily her personal information can be found online, Emma sends a defiant message to H. G. Kane, reaffirming her intention to keep the one-star review. The chapter highlights her increasing isolation and the tension building as night falls.

Feeling vulnerable, Emma sets up a decoy in her bedroom, arranging pillows to look like a sleeping person, and positions herself in the closet with a knife and her phone, ready to confront the intruder. Despite the caffeine-induced jitters, she finds a strange comfort in the presence of her absent husband, Shawn, in her imagination. The chapter ends with Emma determined to face whatever comes, her resolve strengthened by the memory of Shawn.

Emma finds no proof of intrusion in her sand traps, apart from Laika's pawprint. Her loneliness is more serious than her outward routines suggest: a rock-filled green Osprey backpack reflects her contemplation of drowning herself. Researching Deek reveals that he is Deacon Cowl, a formerly celebrated true-crime author who wrote Silent Screams about the Stockyard Slayer. He acknowledges the identity over their whiteboards. Emma asks Jules about the house's entrances, but Jules knows of no secret route. Jules also warns that Deek drinks and lies, advice Emma does not repeat to him. Jules's Christmas greeting reminds Emma how detached she has become from everyday time.

Kane emails Emma another angry demand to withdraw her review. She replies by correcting a grammatical mistake, further defying him. Deek offers to keep watch for the stranger. When he asks after her well-being, Emma confronts her severe isolation and suicidal thoughts, including the disturbing notion that the intruder might kill her without requiring her to act. She remembers meeting Shawn after he injured his hand while hiking, and how his promise to meet her after treatment became important to their relationship. Emma considers an in-person conversation with Deek, but his house is already dark. Ultimately she resolves to take Laika to a motel and get away from the house. The full nature of Emma's loss remains concealed.

While Emma prepares to leave, a visitor knocks violently and impersonates Deek, claiming a killer has attacked his house. Emma recognizes inconsistencies and refuses to unlock the door. The voice then claims to be the author whose book she criticized, and reads her one-star review aloud while demanding she defend it. She tries to contact 911 and give her address, but the stranger keeps the peephole covered. When Emma calls the novel amateurish, the visitor threatens to turn her into the subject of his next book. He names it Murder Beach and damages Jules's doorbell camera. Emma has not yet independently verified the stranger's real identity.

An excerpt labeled as a draft of Murder Beach recounts the purported author's arrival at Strand Beach, a purchase of fishhooks, his childhood story Propeller Head, and his surveillance of Emma. The embedded narration's claims about his abilities and plans are not independent testimony. Meanwhile Emma suspects that earlier bait contained hooks meant to injure Laika. Her emergency calls fail, and her phone and other devices lose internet access. Preparing to drive away, she finds that Laika has escaped through damaged fencing. She searches the dunes and catches the dog eating raw chicken with red rodent-poison pellets. Emma removes the meat she can see but cannot tell whether Laika swallowed more.

Emma takes Laika to the Corolla, but the engine will not start. An inserted account says the attacker had cut the battery cables. Emma remembers an unplugged landline in Jules's house and risks a short run back inside with Laika. The landline fails too, with the attacker having cut local telephone cables. Without a car or working communications, she looks toward Deek's house for help, lights a cigarette, and arms herself with a kitchen knife. She understands the danger but decides she will not be the passive victim her attacker expects; her prior despair has complicated her fear of dying.

Emma remembers a bird striking a window during an earlier conversation with Shawn about having children. Kane's insult about sapsuckers raises the possibility of surveillance. Using Jules's Polaroid camera and flash, Emma searches the yard and photographs a crouching man beyond the motion sensors. She defiantly writes AMATEUR on the glass, although an embedded version of Murder Beach falsely claims she begged the man not to kill her. Retreating upstairs with Laika, she watches the attacker disable each exterior light. The photograph develops, revealing a pale fedora-wearing man and a long swordlike object. Then Laika vomits another piece of poisoned chicken. Emma realizes she may have swallowed a fatal dose and resolves to find hydrogen peroxide to induce vomiting.

Emma descends to the kitchen in darkness to find hydrogen peroxide for Laika. She avoids switching on a light that might reveal her position, but accidentally kicks the dog's metal food bowl. She remembers the strange swordlike object in her Polaroid resembling the curved weapons depicted on an old poster. Searching under the sink, she discovers that the peroxide bottle she stored there after cleaning Laika's gums is missing. Before she can find an alternative, the living-room window shatters and the intruder enters.

The intruder drives a katana through a reinforced window and climbs inside. Emma crouches behind the kitchen island while he searches the room, knocking objects from the counters. The accompanying account exaggerates his nearly supernatural awareness, an unreliable claim rather than an established ability. Emma escapes his sword strike by circling the island, then races upstairs. She topples a heavy armoire against the bedroom door and force-feeds Laika salt in an effort to make her vomit. The attacker pounds on the barricade but fails to get in and eventually becomes quiet. Emma cannot tell where he has gone or whether Laika is safe.

Emma takes Laika into the bathtub and remembers Shawn encouraging her to trust her abilities while they built a model railroad. Headlights then approach the house, and a man calls out that he is police. Emma believes Deek must have summoned help. She listens as the apparent officer orders a man to surrender and hears what sounds like compliance. Relieved, she begins to think that her ordeal is over. Laika finally vomits after taking the salt, and Emma imagines a future meeting with Deek, expressing renewed interest in living. She taunts the apparently captured man from her bathroom. All of this is Emma's interpretation of sounds outside, however, not a confirmed police arrival or arrest. The following chapter reveals that the voice was an impersonation.

The apparent police arrival is revealed to be the attacker impersonating an officer and subduing Jake Stanford, a FedEx driver who has unexpectedly arrived at the beach house. Emma goes to the front door and finds Jake held at swordpoint. She offers herself in exchange for his release. The attacker displays a pistol and taunts her with personal details learned by observing her. He also claims someone else told him to kill her, although he says he wanted to spare her. Emma wonders if the earlier demon-masked figure was a different person. The man seemingly agrees to release Jake, but the driver tries to strike him with a rock. The killer slices off his hand and inflicts fatal injuries with the katana. Emma retreats inside, horrified at the killing.

Emma is traumatized by Jake's murder and hears the attacker rage outside. An interwoven narrative recounts Howard Grosvenor Kline's teenage fixation on Laura Birch, a disturbing unpublished novel, her disappearance, and hidden trophies connected to her death. These facts do not prove that the murders depicted in his sixteen published novels actually happened. Emma uses her telescope to signal Deek, but his telephone is also cut. He advises her to flee. Emma refuses, realizing she would be exposed to gunfire in the dunes and unwilling to abandon Laika. Deek reports that his old revolver has no bullets. Since the killer said somebody ordered him to kill her, Emma considers an accomplice and briefly wonders whether Deek himself can be trusted.

Emma and Deek track Howard around the house through telescopes and whiteboards. Emma suggests that Deek escape toward a vacant cabin to use a telephone, but the attacker's sabotage and exposed ground defeat the plan. Deek urges them to fight. Emma retrieves a hammer and screwdriver, then starts heating water as a weapon. Howard searches Jake's FedEx van and overlooks a parcel containing the stun gun Jules ordered for Emma; he moves the van behind the garage. Deek then insists he should come over to reason with the attacker, whom he recognizes as a former admirer. Emma warns him to stay home. He confesses that his recommendation of Murder Mountain was a joke, and finally writes the writer's real name: Howard Grosvenor Kline.

Deek recounts his first encounter with Howard Grosvenor Kline, detailing how Kline stalked him and his daughters years ago, breaking into his home and waiting for the family to return. Kline’s obsessive behavior and his history of sending unsolicited manuscripts to Deek underscore his dangerous and unstable nature. Emma, watching through a telescope, feels a growing sense of dread as the storm intensifies and the threat of Kline’s presence looms closer.

Deek’s frantic search for Kline proves fruitless, and Emma’s frustration mounts as she realizes Deek has lost sight of the intruder. She takes stock of the house’s defenses, ensuring Laika is safe upstairs and the doors and windows are barricaded. Her anxiety spikes when she spots Kline standing behind Deek, who remains oblivious to the danger. Emma desperately tries to warn Deek without alerting Kline, writing urgent messages on a whiteboard.

Understanding the gravity of the situation, Deek makes a bold decision to confront Kline. Despite Emma’s frantic warnings to run, Deek stands up with a letter opener, preparing to face the intruder. The chapter ends with Emma’s desperate plea, “No,” as Deek turns to face Kline, setting the stage for a potentially deadly confrontation.

Deek turns on his living-room light, revealing that the sinister silhouette Emma thought was behind him is only a coat and black hat on a hook. As he searches his rooms, Emma feels ashamed for having panicked at a shadow. Then a nearby draft and the smell of Mtn Dew, sweat, and butter alert her to a presence in her own room. Howard suddenly grabs her hair and pulls her head back, raising his katana toward her throat. The decoy silhouette has distracted Emma from the actual intruder behind her.

Emma tears herself from Howard's grasp, losing hair in the struggle. Deek fires fireworks, distracting the killer and illuminating the house. Emma draws Howard into the basement deliberately: she knows where he will reach for the light switch and where his long katana will be difficult to use. She smashes his hand with a claw hammer; his sword lodges in a structural post beside her. The intruder's narrative downplays the injury, but Emma gains time to escape upstairs. There she positions herself around a blind corner with a screwdriver as Howard approaches with a pistol. Emma attacks the figure who rounds the corner, believing she has stabbed Howard. The chapter does not yet establish the victim's identity.

Emma's screwdriver pierces the approaching man's throat, and his gun tumbles to the floor. A final white firework lights the wounded man's face. He says Emma's name, and she suddenly recognizes Deek, not Howard. Emma whispers his name in horror. The extremely short chapter ends at the mistaken-identity revelation and does not establish his death or contain further conversation.

Emma remembers driving with Shawn toward Denver and checking work email while a large truck moved into their lane. Shawn warned her to look up; the full result of the accident is not yet disclosed. In the present, she realizes she has mistakenly stabbed Deek. She tries to staunch his neck wound with her clothing, pressure, and clear tape. Deek gestures desperately toward something in the room, but she misunderstands him. Overwhelmed by guilt, she refuses to abandon him. Howard returns from the basement while Emma and Deek are still on the floor, leaving her exposed. The chapter does not confirm Deek's death or that Shawn died in the remembered collision.

Two genuine Strand Beach officers, Corporal Eric Grayson and Officer Greg Hall, arrive at Emma's address for a welfare check. Howard presses his pistol against Emma's head while the badly injured Deek remains on the floor. The police knock and call out from the porch. Emma cannot answer without risking a shot; Howard cannot shoot without alerting the officers. The stalemate remains dangerous for everyone. Howard finally orders Emma to open the door, falsely assure police that she is alone, and send them away. He threatens to finish Deek if Emma disobeys.

Emma opens the front door halfway and answers the officers' questions while Howard listens from inside with Deek as a hostage. The officers become suspicious of her evasions. Emma hears the water boiling in the kitchen and realizes Deek had been trying to tell her about a gun, not urging her to run. He brought a weapon to the house. She also wonders who called the officers, since Deek could not use his telephone. Then another car arrives: Jules Phelps, owner of the beach house, walks up to the porch. The officers explain that Jules requested the welfare check.

Jules adds unpredictable questions about the internet, motion lights, and an electric stun gun she bought Emma. She recalls a demon-masked prowler terrifying her family at this property the previous winter, before Emma's review, raising doubts about the threat's origin. Howard hides behind a curtain close to Officer Hall, making any whispered warning dangerous. Emma speaks instead about her isolation after a traffic accident and a terrible loss five months earlier, without identifying the deceased. Corporal Grayson offers sympathy and advice. As Jules and the officers leave, Emma silently mouths Howard Grosvenor Kline's name to Jules and signals that he is armed and holding a hostage. Jules appears to understand, but Emma cannot verify she will alert police.

After the visitors depart, Howard gives contradictory explanations of his intentions. He weeps over Jake's death while the embedded account says he planned substantial violence. He tells Emma his sixteen published horror books were fictional and that Murder Beach is not a real book he has been writing. He makes a disturbing, self-serving admission about Laura Birch, whom he restrained and left to suffocate, while denying that he technically murdered her. Emma distrusts his claims. Howard says he became interested in Emma before she reviewed his novel and offers to spare her if she leaves with him as his captive partner. Then Deek, seriously injured but alive, appears with a revolver apparently aimed at Emma. His intention remains concealed until the following chapter.

The remembered truck crash was relatively minor, and Shawn survived physically unharmed. In the beach house, Deek orders Emma to duck, showing that he is actually aiming past her at Howard. He disarms the attacker and forces him to kneel. Emma picks up Howard's unusually light pistol, believing she now has him covered. Deek is badly weakened by his injury. Howard threatens to subject him to a ritualized death, but Deek continues to hold him at gunpoint. Then someone enters. Emma hopes the police have returned, but Jules appears. Seeing Howard, she calls him Howie. He replies Mom, revealing that Jules is Howard's mother. The identity of the person Emma lost in the car crash has not yet been revealed.

Jules explains that Howard formerly lived in her house and kept access to it, accounting for his knowledge of the property and his ability to stalk Emma. Emma checks his unusually light pistol and learns it is a pellet gun, not a firearm. Deek's revolver remains their only effective gun. Deek discusses the disappearance of Howard's classmate Laura Birch and his own remorse about having influenced the aspiring writer. Jules refuses to leave her son alone with Deek. Deek gives Emma keys to drive out for police, while Jules stays as a witness. Emma nudges Howard's katana across the floor toward Deek for protection; he does not hand the sword to her. Howard claims Emma lied about what happened to Shawn and suddenly lunges at her.

As Howard lunges at Emma, Deek aims at his chest and fires. Jules grabs Deek's wrist to stop him from shooting her son. The shot strikes the ceiling instead. This extremely brief chapter contains only the diverted shot, not a subsequent plea, argument, or accusation.

Howard tackles Emma and chokes her while insulting her one-star review. Deek fires another shot during a struggle with Jules, giving Emma a moment to flee. She barricades herself in the laundry room and hears a violent blow cut off Deek's words, leading her to believe he has been killed. Emma climbs the narrow laundry chute toward the upstairs bedroom. Howard takes Deek's revolver, binds his mother with rope, and discovers Emma's route. He drives his katana through a wall, cutting Emma's cheek. Trying to force the curved blade back through the wall causes the sword to shatter. Emma keeps climbing while Howard despairs over his broken weapon. Deek's ultimate fate is not yet established.

Emma reaches Laika in the upstairs bedroom, breaks open a window with a nightstand, and carries the retriever onto the steep roof. She jumps into hedges below as Howard breaks through the barricade. Gunfire frightens Laika into fleeing, leaving Emma desperately calling for her in the storm. Emma then starts Jules's Lincoln, but it is a decoy: Howard fires at the driver's window and discovers the car empty. Emma has taken Jake Stanford's FedEx van from behind the garage. She drives it into Howard, knocking him onto the wet driveway, then flees while he recovers his gun. Her apparent escape is incomplete because Laika has disappeared.

A 2021 epigraph introducing Part Four quotes Howard praising Deacon Cowl as a personal mentor who encouraged his writing and let him handle a revolver. This first-person account complicates Deek's earlier description of their relationship. In the chapter proper, Howard lies injured in the driveway, initially trying to rationalize Emma's escape as an acceptable ending to his intended horror story. He returns to the house and finds his mother, Jules, dead. The autopsy later attributes her death to positional asphyxia from the restraints Howard tied too tightly; Laura Birch died the same way when he left her restrained as a teenager. Howard recognizes that he has killed three people through cruelty and incompetence, even though Emma escaped. Resentful that she survived without sufficient cost, he sees Laika returning to the house, coaxes the dog close, and raises the broken fragment of his katana toward her throat. This chapter stops before he harms her.

Emma returns to the house, rather than escaping permanently, because she deliberately took Jake Stanford's FedEx van to retrieve the undelivered stun gun Jules had ordered. She stops Howard as he is about to attack Laika by applying the stun gun to his face. Laika escapes unharmed. Howard manages to shoot Emma in the thigh with Deek's revolver, leaving her badly injured. He appears to have a final cartridge and raises the gun again. Emma strikes his face with the aluminum pan she previously filled with water; the water has cooled, but the metal pan breaks his nose. Bleeding and nearly unable to stand, she crawls into Howard's old bedroom. She abandons her imagined conversations with Shawn as imagined, then remembers Howard said he concealed evidence and a weapon behind a board over his bed. Emma finds Laura Birch's trophies and a wakizashi sword. When Howard kicks open the door, Laika bites his gun arm, creating the opening Emma needs to stab him through the chest. His death is not yet confirmed.

Bleeding from the gunshot, Emma takes Howard's phone and places an emergency call using its emergency-dial function. She reports that Jake, Jules, and Deek may be dead and says she killed Howard. Although she believes he is dead, movement from the bedroom interrupts the call. Howard staggers into the living room with the wakizashi still embedded in his chest. Emma has already recovered Deek's Smith & Wesson revolver. Before Howard can reach her, she shoots him in the head. She then tells the dispatcher that she is now sure he is dead. The chapter explicitly establishes Howard's final death, but Emma still believes Deek is dead because she did not witness his recovery.

Emma awakens in hospital after surviving her thigh wound and blood loss. Corporal Eric Grayson updates her on the inquiry. Investigators conclude Howard became obsessed with finding and punishing an online reviewer who happened to be staying in his former home. They attribute his violence partly to his fixation on the review, while Emma cannot reconcile that simple account with his claims that someone directed him to murder her. The possibility of an unseen accomplice remains unproven. During recovery Emma withdraws, but she eventually returns to the beach house with Laika, briefly rediscovers happiness on the shore, and resolves to leave the Strand for Utah the next day. She and Deek share the long-promised ginger tea. Deek is alive: he survived a skull fracture and concussion despite Emma's mistaken stabbing and Howard's apparent final blow. He says he plans to reconnect with his estranged adult twin daughters and is drafting a book about the attack. Emma agrees to talk to him for the book. Her telephone rings with Shawn's number. The chapter ends before the true circumstances of their separation are fully disclosed.

The narration reveals that Emma's husband Shawn is alive in Salt Lake City. They remain married but have been estranged since Emma fled their home after a tragedy. Their four-month-old daughter, Shelby, died in a minor traffic collision when Emma glanced at an email while driving. Both adults survived. This is the loss Emma has repeatedly described in ways that encouraged assumptions about Shawn's death. As Emma reaches for Shawn's call, Deek raises a revolver and orders her not to answer. He implies Howard was supposed to kill her and that Emma's admission of suspecting his involvement made her too dangerous to leave alive. Emma reconstructs the improbable chain linking herself, Howard, and his former home: it was Deek who recommended Murder Mountain. She has not simply fallen into a series of coincidences. Deek thinks he has trapped her, but Emma has concealed Jules's stun gun beneath the table. She shocks him in the groin, momentarily gaining control.

Deek collapses after Emma shocks him. She takes his revolver and confronts him with her reconstruction: he exploited an isolated woman, encouraged the aspiring killer he had mentored to attack her, and intended to intervene dramatically so that his account of the massacre would revive his writing career. Emma describes the scheme as an inference based on his behavior; Deek does not confirm every detail aloud. She reveals that her audio recorder has been collecting his words. Searching his pockets, she finds zip ties, tape, gloves, and a bottle labeled with propofol, a drug associated with the Stockyard Slayer. This seems to confirm his preparations to incapacitate her. Deek finally breaks his silence and states that he has already poisoned her. The chapter ends with that revelation, before Emma identifies the delivery method.

Emma realizes Deek had contaminated her ginger tea in advance, likely during her hospitalization, though the precise moment of dosing is never established. Her body becomes sluggish as the drug takes effect. Deek tells her he encouraged Howard to pursue her, then deliberately recommended Murder Mountain when Howard began losing interest in killing Emma. He intends to arrange a suicide, write a self-serving account of the massacre, and portray her death as the result of grief. Emma attempts to stun him again and, after he seizes the device, to fire his revolver, but it is unloaded. Deek stages the room, begins fabricating a suicide note on her laptop, and describes taking care of Laika. With her remaining strength Emma uses a knife to carve DEEK KILLED ME into her forearm, leaving physical evidence he has not anticipated. Shawn's voicemail plays as the chapter ends, telling her that their daughter's death was not her fault and asking her to come home. Her death is not yet confirmed.

Emma drifts in and out of consciousness as Deek drives her toward the seawall. She imagines a car filled with the dead, including Howard, Jules, and Jake. Howard's presence and speech are part of her drug-induced experience, not proof that he survived the earlier shooting. Deek carries Emma to a rocky jetty and straps a backpack weighted with stones onto her. He takes care to leave her locket and other belongings so her death will appear self-inflicted. He admits abusing his former wife and having no intention of reconnecting with his daughters. Emma shows him the message carved into her arm; he dismisses it, believing the sea will erase the evidence. He pushes her into the ocean. Underwater she struggles to unbuckle the backpack but cannot immediately free the last strap. The narrative then shifts into Deek's manuscript, which presents her death as suicide and depicts him as a sympathetic friend. Those claims are deliberately false and do not establish her final fate.

Emma arrives at Strand Beach police headquarters barefoot and injured after walking eleven miles from the shore. She describes her memories of Deek's attempted drowning cautiously, but the narrative reveals her actual underwater struggle. While drugged and sinking, she imagined holding her daughter Shelby alive after the highway collision. She tells the child that she will see her again, but not yet. That decision gives Emma the strength to release the last jammed strap of the weighted backpack. Freed from the rocks, she rises to the ocean's surface under the stars. The chapter confirms that the drowning and Deek's claimed suicide were not her final fate.