All the hearts you eat, p.1
All the Hearts You Eat, page 1
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Leave us a Review
Copyright
Part One: The Ghost
1. The Body
2. The Fool
3. The Heart
4. The Invitation
5. The Visitor
6. Haunted
7. The Angel
8. The Cemetery
9. Secrets
Part Two: The Night of Fools
10. The Séance
11. An Ocean of Ghosts
12. The Answering Cry
13. Star Ocean
14. Cape Morning
15. Creatures of The Night
16. Prey
Part Three: Patient is the Night
17. All Manner of Beasts
18. The Hunger
19. Lie Still in the Dark
20. The Shaping Place
21. Twilight
22. Real and Dangerous
23. Heightened Senses
Part Four: The Drowning Place
24. Symptoms
25. The Plan
26. Purpose
27. In The Belly of the Brite
28. The Hunters
29. The Clean Room
30. Out
31. The Hunted
32. A Dance With Devils
33. The Key
34. The Night Wind
Part Five: The Night of Beasts
35. Those Who Remain
36. The Sea Takes Blood
37. The Dead
38. Sister Night
39. The Laughing Beast
40. The Man With The Machete
41. Cape Shadow
42. Her Smile
43. The Broken
44. A Creature of Death
45. Revenge
46. Another Bite
47. The Brite Girl
48. In The Earth
49. A Shard of Ivory
Acknowledgements
About the Author
A PASTE MAGAZINE MOST
ANTICIPATED HORROR NOVEL OF 2024
“You think you know how this haunting will go, but you don’t. All the Hearts You Eat has a dark and powerful undertow, and it’ll pull you far, far out to sea.”
Chuck Wendig, New York Times bestselling author of Wanderers and Black River Orchard
“All the Hearts You Eat is a secret spell, a starless sky, the chambers of a heart and the depths of sorrow. Hailey Piper grips us in this gorgeous yet tragic death poem and life poem, in which we’re struck with the utter heartbreak of how when we are starved of friendship, love, and care we are turned into a monster. As beautiful as the sea and as unsettling as its destructive waves.”
Cynthia Pelayo, Bram Stoker Award®-winning author of Crime Scene
“Sharp but tender, delicate but bloody, tragic but triumphant, All the Hearts You Eat will curl cat claws into your chest and take hold of your heart. This is Stephen King’s IT for a new generation.”
Delilah S. Dawson, New York Times bestseller and auhor of Bloom
“Piper delivers not only a fresh twist on the vampire mythos, but a juicy reimagining of horror’s archetypal Dead Girl Story. This book contains an ocean of feminist rage, queer love, and trans resistance—and like an ocean, it’s as violent as it is beautiful. All the Hearts You Eat is here to rip a hole in your world.”
Lindsay King-Miller, author of The Z Word
“Piper writes about the big, overarching things here—love, loss, desire, belonging—with the same nuance and precision she brings to this novel’s haunting, braided narratives. All the Hearts You Eat has the insistent pull of a fever dream.”
Keith Rosson, Shirley Jackson Award-winning author of Fever Dream
“All the Hearts You Eat paints monsters from the whispers of the waves, scrying secrets from bittersweet death poetry. Piper examines with uncompromising force the ghosts we leave behind when sorrow is unclaimed by the sea but still eroded by its waves. Utterly haunting.”
Sofia Ajram, author of Coup de Grâce
“Sad, furious, hopeful and absolutely lovely.”
Hildur Knútsdóttir, author of The Night Guest
“Weaving classic horror elements into a powerful tale of trans solidarity and the life-sucking toll of being forced back into the closet, Piper cements her place in the queer horror canon.”
Publishers Weekly, starred review
“All the Hearts You Eat is filled with mesmerizing and breathless words that explore violent pleasures, painful desires, insatiable thirst, sacrifices in hopes of acceptance and belonging, scraping both across and under the skin with effortless lyricism—a novel with an alluring pull, like following a hypnotic trail, and by the time you notice how deep you’ve tread, it’s already far too late.”
Ai Jiang, Bram Stoker® and Nebula Award-winning author of Linghun
Also available from Hailey Piper and Titan Books
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All the Hearts You Eat
Print edition ISBN: 9781803367644
E-book edition ISBN: 9781803367651
Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP
www.titanbooks.com
First edition: October 2024
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.
© Hailey Piper 2024
Hailey Piper asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
“We are the saddest of all the animals.”
—Lindsay Lerman
“Most people have a ghost story of some kind, even if they don’t believe in ghosts.”
—Alison Rumfitt, Tell Me I’m Worthless
Once there was a ghost who fell in love with a lady by the sea. It happened here on the sand and rock, against the brine and rhythm and salt.
The ghost first fell in love with her forlorn beauty. And then her smile. And as the ghost haunted her, it fell in love with her spirit. It loved her so hard that it clawed a hole from the world of the dead into the world of the living and tried to take her home to that dead place.
But the ghost was part of the sea, and the sea wants blood. Everyone who lives on the coast and alongside its waves should know that.
The cold of the sea sank its fingers into the lady’s once-warm flesh, into her slowing heart. For a moment, the ghost and the sea were one, and she became one with them, and in another kind of story, this might have been an ecstasy.
We only know the one kind of story: the life in her seeped away, and she died, like all tragic lovers torn between worlds.
The romantics would say they are now ghosts together in the world of the living. But those who walk the coast and brush against its enigmatic nature know the story better. We say that when the ghost broke through the worlds, something shattered in the way people die here, and no one can mend the wound. The romantics might also say that lovers who’ve been torn apart between worlds can at least reunite in the world of the dead.
But those aren’t the kinds of stories we tell in the uncertain places by the sea.
PART ONE: THE GHOST
1. THE BODY
The sea wanted blood. Ivory Sloan had known that all her life, traveling from one coastal town or another along the eastern United States. She had spent most of her twenty-nine years with a passable understanding for the Atlantic Ocean and its hazards—jellyfish, undertow, strangers.
She should have expected to find death at the shores of Cape Morning.
A gray overcast painted the sky as she approached the water; New England coastal summer made for uncertain vacations against its sudden storm fronts, and there was no better deterrent for tourists than a chilly early twilight mixed with chances of unpleasant weather. Unlikely for other locals to wander the shore yet, either.
For a few minutes each morning, this stretch of beach belonged to Ivory. One of the rare perks of renting her stuffy attic room—ready access to the water. Before true daylight lured overheated tourists to the beach and cooped her up in the café until evening, she wanted her morning swim.
Down wooden steps and a grassy slope, white sand led the way to chopping waves. Ivory passed an enormous driftwood tree that had been lying on the shore the past few months. It had supposedly floated down from Canada, but no one could be sure. Scars marked its
Ivory crossed her arms and slid her pastel pink hoodie up her midriff, past her chest, and over her head. She folded it with care and laid it in the sand beside the driftwood tree, and then she set her boots and socks on top. Her jeans joined the pile last, revealing in full her black one-piece swimsuit and her inner thigh tattoo.
I am a creature of life, it read in curving letters and black ink.
Her swimsuit’s dark hue made each part of her torso look smaller, shrinking her chest, belly chub, and the swell between her legs. She didn’t want anyone to see that part of her, especially after she emerged from the water, swimsuit clinging to her skin. Neither locals nor tourists would understand. Or worse, they might understand, and she had no control over what they might decide to do with that understanding.
One quick swim, that was all she wanted. In and out from here to Ghost Cat Island, the tiny sea-slick patch of rock standing not far from shore, and no stranger would stroll close enough when she fetched her clothes off the beach to eyeball the outline of her tits or her dick.
The sand was cold against her feet as she padded toward the Atlantic. Wet impressions dotted the shore’s edge behind her before the next wave splashed her knees and flattened the sand. A chill hit her skin, but it would fade once her muscles went to work.
She had reached waist-deep water, the waves frothing at her arms and chest, when she noticed the man standing on the beach.
Her knees buckled, tugging her down so that the surf pushed at her chin. She hardly ever saw anyone out this early, at least not in June. Maybe in July or August when the daytime sun boiled the air, but not in the beginning stretch of summer.
Had the man seen her swimsuit, its details? He might spot her now if she slid away. She didn’t know him, his intentions, anything. Why the hell was he here?
Maybe because the sea wanted blood.
She couldn’t hold here in the shallows to wait for him to leave, no telling how long that might be. Better she risk going back for her clothes and heading home now.
She kept one dark blue eye on the beach as she retreated from the water. The man stood stiff in his khakis and coat, a white ballcap hugging his gray locks. He didn’t seem to notice her, all his attention zeroed in on the tide three feet past his boots. A pale tangle of driftwood lay ahead of him. Was he local? One of the summer people? A drifter? Ivory had never seen him before, but that hardly mattered with eight thousand people living here, not to mention the legion of tourists. The man held a phone to his ear, scowling as he spoke.
Ivory only realized who he’d been talking to when the sirens sounded from afar. Within moments, flashes of red and blue flickered over the grassy slope between the summerhouses and the beach. She froze halfway between the water and the driftwood tree and looked—really looked—at where the man was staring. And exactly what he’d called in.
The white shape lying in the tide was a dead body.
Ivory stumbled toward the driftwood tree, eyes locked on the frothing water, splashing at pale skin.
Over the past few days, families and college kids had swarmed Cape Morning’s tree-choked roads, cramped town, and windy beach to swim and tan and drink themselves brainless. A different scene from Florida, but a clean beach on a warm day drew tourists nonetheless. Did this body belong to one of them?
Ivory kept backing up until her hip banged against the driftwood tree. Her clothing pile collapsed in her shaking hands. She pushed her head into the hoodie and yanked her damp hair through in clingy dark red locks. Never mind the wet swimsuit getting her clothes and boots soaked as she hurried into them. There would be time to dry and change into something else when she reached home before her barista shift.
But she couldn’t leave yet. A sudden heaviness tugged her toward the prone trunk of the driftwood tree.
She sat and watched as the man with the phone turned toward the distant uniformed strangers, descending the wooden steps to the beach. No rush—dead was dead. Nothing they could do but investigate and then carry the dead away.
Ivory sucked at the wind, trying to catch her breath. Lightheadedness sent her doubling over, and it became easier to breathe with her eyes focused on the sand.
Where she spotted a piece of pink-tinted paper at her feet, partway pinned beneath the driftwood trunk.
She pinched its corner and worked it free. The wind tried to snatch it, but she held on firm. It looked torn from a journal or diary. A transparent flower pattern wreathed its edges, and curls of black ink scrawled over its front.
Don’t call me a suicide. I want to live.
I’ve simply chosen one death over another
After I’ve been robbed of life.
—Cabrina Aphrodite Brite
Ivory glanced at the dead body, and then back to the words. The authorities had neared the man who’d called them to the beach. If they spotted Ivory, they might want to question her, and she didn’t care to talk.
What about her secret find? A suicide note might determine the future of Cabrina’s body, how her family saw her life. But it wasn’t really a suicide note, the first line said as much. It was more a death poem, and a poem couldn’t count as evidence, could it?
Ivory understood, but others might not. The family would ache to think their dear girl, Cabrina Brite, had taken her own life. Broken hearts. Only pain.
But Ivory could help. She folded the poem in half and tucked it inside her hoodie pocket.
Her legs shuddered as she stood from the driftwood seat. Not ready to go, but she couldn’t stay here. She didn’t want to watch the authorities, closer now, take photographs of Cabrina Brite, or inspect her every inch, or draw her from the water like scavenging gulls picking at beach debris.
As she walked back the way she’d come, Ivory turned to watch the sea. She scarcely made out Ghost Cat Island beneath the overcast. It was so tiny that she never tried to stand on it when she swam out, only touching it and then returning to shore.
But that was the nearest land to where Cabrina might have died in the night. Had she, too, meant to swim out to the small scrap of rock?
Ivory had heard stories of locals glimpsing feline shapes upon the island. There were tales old and new of their lithe paws walking on ocean waves as if the bobbing water were gray-blue hills, fur glimmering with sunshine. No one ever found them—there was nothing on that lifeless rock to find—but that didn’t stop anyone from looking. Or from telling the stories.
Cabrina might have been the same, looking for ghost cats, no more solid than flying saucers or that monster at Lake Champlain. Mirages at best, lies at worst, but sometimes people liked the lies.
Ivory knew she shouldn’t entertain fantasies of ghosts. They might show up and then stick around.
Gray clouds parted, and the sun cast a sharp glare off the water. Shapes flashed across the glittering waves. Ivory shaded her eyes under one hand and squinted for a better look at Ghost Cat Island.
A figure slid over the island’s rocky nub, its shape bowing under the sun like a distorted shadow play on a bedroom wall. One sleek leg stretched in a molten glow, almost human. The figure’s next step dragged it down, close to the rock, and sprouted new limbs, melting its shape into that of a pacing four-legged beast.
It briefly sloshed and crawled above the watery sunshine. Then the figure’s next step sent it climbing a slope of light until it stood tall on two legs, with two arms at its sides, its glowing silhouette thin and pale. Like someone Ivory might have seen lying in the surf. Someone who’d left a death poem wedged beneath a driftwood tree.
Cabrina? she wondered.
The sunlight glinted off a fresh wave and stabbed Ivory’s eyes shut. She threw both hands over them, croaking with pain, and then she blinked into the shadows of her palms until the dancing white dots settled behind her eyelids.
When she looked again, grayness had retaken the shore, and only rolling waves broke across Ghost Cat Island. No light, no animal, no human. Nothing at all.
Someone laughed in the wind, and Ivory turned from the water. Beachgoers were strolling far down the sands. They were only vague puddles of likely tourists in hoodies snatched from different state colleges, but soon they would pincer her against the authorities. Someone might say they’d spotted her, a woman in a pink hoodie, acting suspicious even though she’d done nothing wrong.
