The fog didn't lift that morning.
It clung to Ashwick like a second skin, smothering the streets, swallowing the treetops, muting the world into a gray, breathless stillness. Sheriff Samuel Reeves stood outside the station with a cup of coffee gone cold in his hand, staring into the swirling mist as if it were staring back.
He had slept barely an hour. Every time his eyes closed, he saw the Warren house in his mind—the footprint in the dust, the fresh note pinned to the wall, the words Henry Warren had whispered in that too-bright nursing home:
"Tell me, Sheriff… do you hear it yet?"
He did.
That was the problem.
A door creaked open behind him.
"Sheriff," Deputy Miller called, stepping into the cold morning. "We've got something."
Reeves turned, not surprised. In Ashwick, calm never lasted long.
"What is it?"
Miller swallowed. "You'd better come inside."
They walked into the operations room where two officers hovered over a table covered in photos. Reeves felt the air shift—tight, tense, as if the walls themselves were listening.
Miller handed him a picture.
The sheriff studied it. A deer carcass lay in a ditch near Boulder Creek. Its eyes were glassy, its limbs stiff. Nothing unusual… until he looked closer.
The chest cavity was intact.
Completely intact.
Reeves felt a cold shock crawl through him. "Tell me this isn't what I think it is."
Miller's voice dropped. "Dr. Holloway says its heart is gone."
Reeves flicked to the next photo—another deer, found near the logging trail. Then a raccoon. Then a fox.
Four animals. All heartless. All untouched.
The sheriff set the photos down slowly. "When?"
"Past twelve hours," Miller said. "All found before sunrise."
Reeves scrubbed a hand across his face. "So it's escalating."
Miller shifted nervously. "Or moving."
The sheriff's eyes snapped to him. "Meaning?"
"Every animal was found close to the old trails leading to the Warren house," Miller said. "It's like whatever's doing this is… circling."
Reeves didn't like that. He didn't like how it matched the feeling gnawing at him since California—that the house wasn't just a location.
It was a center.
And everything was gathering around it.
At noon, the sheriff drove out toward Boulder Creek, the one-lane road cutting through the forest like a scar. The trees towered above him, suffocating the light. Reeves rolled down the window, letting the cold air brush against him. Even the wind felt wrong—thin, hesitant, carrying a faint hum that made the skin on his arms prickle.
He pulled over near the trail marker, stepping out into the silent woods. The smell of pine was heavy, mixed with the metallic scent of damp earth.
The creek ran low this time of year, but today the water seemed sluggish, as if even its movement had grown uneasy. Reeves crouched near the site where the deer had been found. The ground was disturbed—tracks, broken twigs, something brushed aside.
But what chilled him wasn't what he saw.
It was what he didn't see.
No blood.
None.
"How the hell…" he muttered.
He stood, scanning the trees. The forest stretched out in all directions, each trunk leaning like they were eavesdropping. Reeves breathed slowly, steadying himself.
That's when he felt it.
A vibration—barely perceptible—beneath the ground, like the heartbeat of something buried deep in the earth.
Reeves stepped back instinctively.
And then the whisper came.
Soft.
Thin.
Trailing through the trees like a sigh.
"Sam…"
Reeves spun, hand on his weapon. "Who's there?"
Nothing.
Only the trees. Only the mist. Only the hush of the forest inhaling and exhaling around him.
He reached for his radio, fingers trembling. "Miller, I need you at Boulder Creek. Now."
Static answered, long and cold.
"Miller, do you copy?"
More static.
Reeves lowered the radio slowly.
Something in the woods shifted.
A branch cracked.
A shadow moved—fast, too fast.
Reeves raised his weapon. "Show yourself!"
Silence.
A crow croaked overhead and took flight, disturbing the stillness. Reeves watched it vanish into the fog.
His heartbeat settled, though unease curled deep in his gut.
He stepped back to the road just as Miller's cruiser finally appeared through the haze.
"Sheriff!" Miller called, stepping out. "Radio's been acting weird. Thought you said you were heading to the river bend—"
"I said Boulder Creek."
"You didn't," Miller replied.
Reeves stared at him. "Yes, I—"
He stopped.
No.
He hadn't said it on radio.
He'd only thought it.
The trail beneath his boots suddenly felt colder.
"Let's go," he muttered. "We're done here."
By late afternoon, the sheriff sat alone in his office, the woods still gripping his thoughts. He stared at the photos again and again. Same pattern. Same impossible result.
Henry Warren's words echoed:
"It doesn't stop with her."
Reeves opened the last page of the old case file, the half-burnt coroner's note from 1962. His fingers traced the faded handwriting:
"Family reports unusual sounds inside the house before death. Entity unconfirmed."
Entity.
They'd actually written that.
He leaned back in his chair, exhaling through his teeth.
Miller knocked. "Sheriff? There's someone here asking for you. Says it's urgent."
Reeves straightened. "Who?"
Miller hesitated. "Someone from the historical society. Woman named Agnes Porter. She says she knows about the Warren family. And… about the deaths."
Reeves blinked.
"Send her in."
Footsteps approached slowly—measured, deliberate. Agnes Porter entered, a woman in her late sixties with sharp eyes that carried decades of secrets.
She didn't sit.
"Sheriff Reeves," she said quietly. "I came as soon as I heard."
"Heard what, exactly?"
"That it has started again."
Reeves froze.
Agnes stepped closer, lowering her voice.
"And if the pattern holds, Sheriff… you don't have much time before the next one."
Reeves stared at her. "Next what?"
She held his gaze with grim certainty.
"The next heart."