Kenzo
IT’S A FULL HOUSE.
The bookstore ran out of chairs thirty people ago, but his parents got here early, his mom staking out front-row seats.
Now a bunch of people—friends, sure, but plenty of strangers, too—crowd the store.
They stand against the shelves, line the stairs; a few even sit cross-legged on the floor, like this is some kind of children’s read-along, and not the release party for a horror novel.
The publisher doesn’t market it that way, of course. They prefer terms like Literary thriller. Speculative suspense. Some quippy sales mash-up that’s shorthand for major cross-market appeal.
He meant what he said to Sienna when she asked why he’d chosen this genre.
Horror is about humans. What we’re capable of. And what we’re capable of surviving.
He takes off his glasses, shifts in his chair.
The ragged tear has healed into a thin pink seam, but it still bothers him.
It hurt like hell, getting impaled.
Weeks after, he was able to come up with a world of adjectives, revise and shape the details, describe it all in gory detail, but that night, when he came to and found himself skewered, the antler jutting between his hip and bottom rib, his favorite shirt torn and the pale bone slicked red, the only word Kenzo Gray could summon was fuuuuuuck.
For a moment, he honestly couldn’t remember how he’d gotten there.
It was such a strange place to be. But then it came surging back.
He’d gone to fetch the ax from the kitchen table, but it wasn’t there.
He’d felt it then, from the top of his skull to the soles of his feet.
The thing that washes over every character in a horror novel at some point.
The bad feeling.
He should have gone looking for another weapon, but he heard voices, and pounding steps, and then his body was betraying his mind, carrying him back toward the stairs, and he was halfway up when he caught the flash of pale skin, dark hair, looked up in time to see Cate’s face, her hands rushing out to meet his chest. He’d felt that single hard shove, and then the landing dropped away beneath his heels.
He’d gone ass over heels, down the stairs, landing on his feet, which would have been impressive if the momentum hadn’t slammed him back into the foyer table.
And the antlers.
He’s done plenty of research over the years, both on how to cause wounds and on how to survive them, but it turns out there is a big fucking difference between real life and fiction, and the Reddit forums really don’t do a good enough job conveying the visceral truth, the heart-racing, nerve-singeing, in-the-moment horror.
He tried to move, and promptly blacked out.
When he came to—seconds? minutes?—later, he knew he had to do something.
He tried to drag himself free, and the pain was electric. It made his vision go red, and white, but at least he didn’t faint again. He bit back the urge to scream, but only because the last thing he needed was for Cate to come back and finish the job.
Cate. He’d never have cast her as the villain in one of his books. Not because it was far-fetched, but because it was obvious. Which of these things is not like the other? But then, she was. She was there for the same reason they all were.
Because she was hungry.
But there was no sign of her, or Priscilla, or Millie. The house was dark, and the front door hung open, cold wind blowing in. Kenzo had to do something, so he took a few shallow breaths, and put his hands behind his back, and pushed against the table.
At which point he discovered that the only thing that hurt more than being impaled by one of Arthur Fletch’s questionable design choices was unimpaling himself.
He nearly blacked out again.
And he did scream—he couldn’t help it—but his voice rang through the house, and no one came. He didn’t know how long it took, but he’ll never forget the sucking drag of the antler withdrawing, the sound that tore out of him when he was free.
Kenzo stumbled, sank to his knees.
Blood was soaking through his shirt, front and back, too much, too fast, not a trickle but a stream. He knew he had to staunch the flow, but when he pressed his palm flat to the wound, his vision went wavy.
He looked around for something, anything, to use, and ended up grabbing Jaxon’s abandoned hoodie and pressing it to the wound.
He desperately wanted to sit down, but he knew he’d never get back up.
His mind cleared enough to remember he was still in danger, that he probably needed a weapon, but the only thing in reach was an umbrella in a nearby stand.
The front door hung open, cold air sweeping in, and Kenzo’s only thought was out.
He had to get out.
Easier said than done. Every step pulled at the hole in his stomach. Even bracing himself against the nearest wall, he had to stop twice to catch his breath, once to keep from fainting, and once to throw up in a potted plant.
Which hurt. Funny, how pain worked. In books, it was something stoically endured, or else muted by adrenaline. Sometimes people didn’t even know how badly they were injured until they looked down and saw the blood.
Kenzo knew. He knew, as he shuffled to the open door, as he staggered down the last four steps, as the fresh air bit into his sweat-damp skin and his head spun and his blood soaked the hoodie against his stomach and ran down his back, and he realized, bleakly, there was nowhere to go.
The storm was finally letting up, the wind dying to a nervous rustle, but that wasn’t much comfort, because he was still on an isolated island off the coast of Scotland, in the middle of the night, without a way to call for help, or any form of medical assistance. And he was going to die.
Kenzo had never really been the quitting type, but his body was calling it, legs folding for him, and then he was on the ground, his cheek pressed against the cold pebble path, and it should have been uncomfortable, but it wasn’t.
It felt good, too good, and the pain was starting to fade, and that sent a warning pulse through his thoughts, because that kind of feeling was probably a bad sign when you were bleeding out in the dark.
He couldn’t believe that he’d somehow become the final girl, only to die out here on the driveway, which really ruined the trope.
His heart nagged at him, Get up, get up, get up, but he couldn’t.
A shadow passed overhead, and he thought, Wow, death really does have a flair for the dramatic, but then a bony hand grabbed his shoulder, and rolled him onto his back, and Kenzo looked up and saw Arthur Fletch’s infamous red hat.
Hah, he thought bleakly. Called it.
But then the man knelt, and the face drew closer, revealing different angles, and more wrinkles than Kenzo remembered from Fletch’s last author photo, and when he spoke, the voice that came out wasn’t the bland midwestern drawl Fletch was known for but a thick Scottish brogue.
“Och, what happened tae ye?” And since it was a question, Kenzo tried to speak, but he managed only a wheeze and a groan before the man patted his shoulder. “Haud yer wheesht, son. And whit are ye planning on doing with that brolly? Nae the smartest weapon.”
Kenzo didn’t have a clue what a brolly was, but he assumed it must be the umbrella, since that’s all he was holding.
He dropped it, still trying to figure out the meaning of wheesht, as the man looped an arm under his bloody shirt and helped him to his feet.
A fresh swell of pain made him realize he wasn’t quite as close to death as he first thought.
“Bleeding,” he said, as if that wasn’t obvious.
“Aye, I can see that, right enough,” said the man, shouldering most of his weight as he steered Kenzo, not back toward the steps, but down a narrow path, away from the House That Petrarch Built.
Kenzo’s vision blurred, his memory dipping, minutes chewed up and swallowed by the fog of blood loss, and when his senses staggered back, he was in a small cottage.
A single stone room, with a bed in one corner and a stove hugging the other, a narrow table halfway between, where Kenzo was leaning, to keep from falling over.
The whole thing had taken on a dreamy haze.
The man swam somewhere at the edge of Kenzo’s sight, but he thought it must be some kind of figment, a ghost, even though he had never believed in spirits.
He was a skeptic against his own wishes—he wanted to believe, had spent nights in haunted houses in Savannah, gone to grave sites in Paris, even a séance in New Orleans, hoping to be convinced. But the world was just the world.
And it was scary enough.
He heard the crackle of radio static and realized that the man, whoever he was, was calling for help. And for the first time, he wondered if he’d actually get out of this alive.
But a body only had so much blood to lose, and he was still losing.
The man drifted back into focus.
“Who are you?” asked Kenzo. “And why are you wearing Fletch’s hat?”
“Name’s Angus,” said the man. “And it’s mah hat.
Arthur liked tae mooch it from time tae time.
Fer photos an that. Said it had an air of authenticity, whatever that’s supposed tae mean.
” The man lifted a cup to Kenzo’s lips. Kenzo took a long swallow, expecting water, only to discover it was Scotch.
He coughed, which sent a fresh wave of agony through his ruined stomach.
“Ah ken,” said Angus, holding him upright, “it’s rough, but trust me, it’ll help.”
With that, Kenzo saw what was in his other hand. A needle and what looked like fishing line. Nausea rolled through him at the sight.
“Need tae sew you up,” said the man, “tae stop the blood.”
Kenzo downed the rest of the Scotch and held the cup out with shaking, bloodstained hands. The man smiled and filled it again.
And then he got to work.
“Now,” said Angus, right before the needle sank in, and Kenzo’s vision dappled, black and white. “Why dinnae ye tell me who stuck ye?”