For the first time in his career, renowned bestselling horror writer Milton K. Webb is struggling to finish his latest thriller. As the pressure to deliver mounts from both publishers and fans, he decides, as a last resort, to anonymously leak his opening chapter online under the guise of a piece of fan-fiction. Hoping to get advice and feedback from his dedicated followers, and maybe even steal some of their ideas, he never anticipates that such an under-handed move could have such horrific consequences.
Terrible and frightening things start happening inside his little writer’s cottage; faint scraping sounds at the end of the hallway, shadows behind him in the mirror, a movement at the foot of the bed. But what terrifies Webb most of all, is that it’s all happening exactly the way he wrote it down. Panicking, he removes his excerpt from the website, and to his relief, it all disappears. Until the next night. And the next. And the next…
Slowly, methodically, the chilling events begin unfolding again; except now each nightly repetition reveals some new horrifying variation. His fans are re-posting his work; altering it, improving it, cannibalizing it. For every post he deletes, another appears in its place. Each newly added piece raises the bar; trying to outdo the last, and as the craze catches on, the global Webb community collectively pushes the horror genre to its most terrifying limits. And it’s all happening to him. All of it.
As his torment progresses from crude clichés to sophisticated psychological terror, Webb tries in vain to escape from his haunted cottage. But the fans are getting faster and better and smarter. No matter what he does, they’re two steps ahead with something new and terrible lurking around every corner. As a last desperate measure, he makes an impassioned online plea and exposes the awful truth.
But he’s starting to wonder if they knew what was happening all along. Because it’s become a kind of twisted competition now, and it’s starting to feel like the faceless authors, comfortable and confident in their anonymity, have turned their collective minds against him. After all, they’ve studied his work, they love him, they know what makes him tick. And now they have a chance to impress him. To make him proud.
And now he’s told them exactly where he is. And what he fears more than anything. And they’re about to release their most horrifying chapter yet…