The next morning dawned heavy and gray, the kind of sky that pressed down on Redpine like a weight. Sheriff Reeves hadn't slept. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Harold Tate's face — those empty eyes staring back through the rain, the faint echo of the woods whispering behind him.
By seven, he was back at the station, a steaming mug of coffee in one hand and a stack of reports in the other. The office smelled of paper, dust, and old worry. Deputy Miller was already there, poring over the county maps.
"Morning, Miller," Samuel said, setting his coffee down.
"Morning, Sheriff." Miller pointed to the map spread across the table. "I marked both victims' houses. Greeley's place here, and Tate's down south. I noticed something weird."
Samuel leaned over. The two red pins were nearly two miles apart, both near the tree line.
"What am I looking at?"
"Here," Miller said, drawing a line between them. "There's an old logging trail that runs through this stretch. Hardly anyone uses it now. It cuts right between both properties."
Samuel frowned. "You're saying someone could've used it to move between them without being seen?"
"Exactly. And get this—there's a third house near the trail. Abandoned. Belonged to a family that left back in the sixties. Locals call it the 'Warren place.'"
Samuel straightened, a spark of focus cutting through his fatigue. "Let's go."
The Warren property sat deep in the woods, half-swallowed by vines and silence. The old house leaned to one side, its roof sagging like a broken spine. Windows were boarded, the door barely hanging by its hinges.
As they approached, the smell hit first — damp wood, rot, and something faintly metallic.
Samuel pushed open the door with a gloved hand. It creaked like a groan from the past.
Inside, dust coated everything. An old chair lay overturned near the fireplace. The wallpaper had peeled away in strips, revealing the skeleton of the house beneath.
Miller swept his flashlight across the floor. "Sheriff," he said quietly. "You need to see this."
Samuel stepped closer. There, beneath a layer of dust, were faint markings carved into the wooden floorboards — circles intersected by triangles, lines of text too worn to read.
He knelt, tracing the grooves with his glove. The symbols were old, uneven, but deliberate.
"Teenagers, maybe," Miller offered. "Satanic panic kind of thing. You know how it was back in the '70s."
Samuel didn't answer. Something about the symbols felt… precise. Not random scribbles or teenage vandalism, but purposeful, patterned.
He took out his notebook, sketching what he saw.
In the fireplace above the carvings, a few scraps of paper remained half-burnt. Samuel carefully lifted one out with tweezers. Faded ink, water-damaged — but a few words were still legible:
"...to call what sleeps..."
"...the heart must be given..."
He felt his stomach twist.
"Bag these," he said curtly. "Everything."
Back at the station, Samuel spread the evidence on his desk — photographs of the carvings, the burned papers, and the two coroner reports. The words heart must be given kept echoing in his mind.
He didn't want to admit what it sounded like. Ritual. Sacrifice. Religion.
He refused to go there.
Instead, he told himself it was human. Always human. Someone obsessed with symbols and myths, trying to make sense of something twisted in their own head.
He flipped open a new folder and began writing:
"Possible cult activity. Symbolic extraction (postmortem). Motivated by ritual delusion."
Even as he wrote it, the explanation felt like a lie.
Miller knocked and entered with two files. "Sheriff, I checked property records on the Warren place. There's something you'll want to see."
He handed over the papers. Samuel scanned the document. The last registered owner: Elias Warren, died 1962. Cause of death: heart failure.
Samuel's eyes froze on the line. "You're kidding."
Miller shook his head. "Autopsy report says his heart was missing too. They wrote it off as an incomplete record, said the coroner's notes were lost in a fire."
A chill crept up Samuel's arms. "That's three."
"Three?"
"Three men. Three hearts gone."
For a long moment, the only sound in the room was the ticking of the wall clock.
Then Samuel stood abruptly. "Get the lab on those papers. I want chemical analysis, dating, everything. And have someone dig into the old police archives. I want every death in this town that didn't make sense. Anything missing organs, anything unexplainable. I don't care if it's from fifty years ago."
Miller hesitated. "Sheriff… do you think this is something old?"
Samuel looked up sharply. "I think it's something clever. Someone's using old stories to scare people. Nothing more."
But his voice lacked conviction.
That night, after everyone had gone, Samuel sat alone in his office. The evidence was spread around him like a mosaic of madness—carved symbols, burned paper, photos of lifeless faces.
He poured himself another cup of coffee and stared at the sketches from the Warren house. Circles intersecting, lines pointing inward.
And at the center of each carving, the faint outline of a heart.
He flipped through his notebook, comparing each symbol. His pen tapped nervously against the desk, an old habit that usually helped him think. But tonight, it only filled the silence with a hollow rhythm.
The desk phone rang suddenly, shattering the stillness. He snatched it up.
"Reeves."
"Sheriff," said a voice he recognized—Dr. Holloway, the coroner. Her tone was low, uncertain. "You asked me to recheck the first victim's body."
"Yes?"
"There's something you should know. I ran another scan this afternoon. The tissue around the chest cavity—it's… sealed."
He frowned. "Sealed?"
"As in closed. Perfectly. Like the heart was never there to begin with. No incision, no trauma, not even cellular rupture. It's as if it vanished before death."
The line went quiet. Samuel could hear his own breathing.
"Doctor," he said finally, "that's not possible."
"I know," she said softly. "But it's what I found."
She hung up before he could respond.
Samuel sat there, phone still in hand, pulse pounding in his ears.
He looked again at the photos on his desk—the hollow expressions, the missing hearts, the symbols drawn by hands long gone.
For the first time in his career, he didn't know what to write in his report.
He rose, walked to the window, and stared into the darkness beyond the station lot.
The pines loomed in the distance, black against the horizon. And for a fleeting second, he thought he saw a faint red light flicker among them—like a heartbeat pulsing in the woods.
He blinked, and it was gone.
But the air around him felt colder now, and somewhere deep inside, he could feel the first tremor of something old waking up.