THE PIKE SISTERS’ SECRET

The first time anyone in Hawksburg mentioned the Pike sisters to Alden Brooks, he dismissed it as mountain gossip—one of those stories old men spat into tobacco cans to hear the echo. He had been the sheriff of the town for only four months, still new enough to believe law made sense here. Still naïve enough to ignore the way people looked over their shoulders before speaking.

But in the autumn of 1901, after the rains washed through the valley and dragged half the leaves off the trees, a boy named Henry Cole ran into Alden’s office barefoot and ash-pale, claiming he’d seen “lights moving in the old Pike barn.”

No one had lived on that property for nearly twenty years.

The boy’s mother tried to drag him out, whispering apologies, but Alden had already taken his coat. Something in Henry’s voice wasn’t fear—it was certainty. And certainty, in these hills, was often a sign someone had stumbled into the truth by accident.

He saddled his horse and followed the boy’s trembling finger toward the ridge. The Pike farm sat at the end of a crooked dirt road, encircled by trees thick enough to choke the sky. The house itself leaned like it was trying to escape its own foundation. The barn stood farther out, a hulking shape against the mist.

As Alden approached, he felt it—that wrongness people talked about but could never define. The quiet here wasn’t silence. It was the kind of stillness that suggested something was listening.

The barn door hung slightly open.

The hairs on his arms rose before his hand even touched it.

Inside was dark, but not empty. A lantern sat on a wooden crate near the entrance, still warm to the touch. Whoever had lit it hadn’t gone far.

Alden lifted it, and the light spilled across the room.

That was when he saw them.

Rows of narrow stalls. Chains bolted to the beams. And inside—men. Dozens of them. Thirty-seven by the final count. Thin, hollow-eyed, their clothes ragged, their faces ghostly under the flickering lantern flame.

A few flinched from the light. Most didn’t move at all.

Alden’s breath hitched. He took a step toward the nearest prisoner.

“Sir? Can you hear me?” he asked gently.

The man lifted his head. His lips were cracked, but he managed two words—words that chilled Alden more than the sight of the chains.

“They’re back.”

Before Alden could ask who, a sound split the air behind him.

Bootsteps. Slow. Purposeful.

He turned, expecting—hoping—to see other officers, farmers, anyone.

What he saw instead was a woman.

Tall. Worn shawl draped over her shoulders. Hair tied back with twine. Eyes the color of thawing river ice.

Caroline Pike.

She had been nothing but a rumor before today.

“A curious sheriff,” she murmured, stepping into the lantern’s glow. “Curiosity’s a fine thing, Mr. Brooks. Until it ain’t.”

Alden reached for the gun at his waist, but before he could draw, something struck the back of his skull—a blunt, heavy force that exploded the lantern’s light into shards of brightness. He collapsed.

His last thought before darkness took him was that Caroline hadn’t come alone.

When Alden awoke, his wrists were bound, though not with chains. Rope. Freshly cut. Whoever tied it had skill—knots tight enough that his fingers tingled from lost circulation. He was lying on a cold dirt floor inside a smaller room at the back of the barn.

His temples pounded with each heartbeat. But through the throbbing, he heard voices—three, maybe four—discussing him like he was livestock, not a lawman.

“…should’ve left him in the woods,” one hissed.

“No,” another replied. “We need him. He’ll understand. They always do.”

Alden recognized that voice.

Caroline.

Footsteps approached, and a moment later she slipped inside the room, shutting the door behind her. She carried a lantern, its flame low but steady.

“You took quite the hit,” she said, kneeling. “But don’t think too poorly of Ruth for doin’ it. You startled her. She gets nervous around men she don’t know.”

“Untie me,” Alden rasped.

Caroline smiled—not cruelly, but in a way that said she had lived long enough to find defiance amusing.

“Can’t do that. You’re trespassin’, see. And I reckon you’ve seen things that ain’t yours to see.”

Alden swallowed hard. “Those men. You’re holding them hostage.”

Caroline’s eyes softened in a way that made his stomach twist.

“Is that what you think this is? Hostage-taking?”

“What else would you call it?”

“Survival.”

The word landed strangely, out of place—wrong, yet heavy with a meaning Alden hadn’t grasped.

Caroline stood, motioning for him to follow. “You’re a decent man. You came alone to help a terrified child. That’s the type we need. The type who might listen.”

She led him into a corridor he hadn’t noticed before. A false wall had hidden it. They walked until the wood gave way to stone—an older structure beneath the barn. Older than the Pike family. Older, perhaps, than the town itself.

Alden tried to track their turns, their distance underground, but the lantern light made shadows writhe, confusing his sense of direction.

Finally they stopped in a wide chamber carved directly into rock.

Three women stood inside. Mae and Ruth Pike were instantly recognizable by their resemblance to Caroline—broad shoulders, sharp jawlines, eyes too alert to be comfortable. But a fourth figure stood behind them, shrouded in cloth from head to toe.

“What is this place?” Alden demanded.

Caroline didn’t answer immediately. She stepped forward, placing the lantern on a stone table.

“There’s a sickness in these hills,” she began quietly. “Old as the bones beneath us. My family didn’t cause it—we inherited it.”

Mae continued, “Every generation, it comes for us. For the men first. They weaken. Fade. Lose themselves.”

Ruth added, voice trembling, “If we don’t… help… if we don’t provide bodies… it takes the whole town.”

Alden stared, disbelief breaking through his fear. “You’re saying those men are sacrifices?”

“No,” Caroline corrected gently. “Hosts.”

The figure behind them stepped forward, and Alden’s breath caught.

It wasn’t a person.

At least, not anymore.

The thing wore the shape of a person the way a shadow wears the shape of a tree—similar, but wrong. Limbs too long. Movements too fluid. A face that shifted like smoke caught in a jar.

Mae’s voice broke. “Our bloodline is the reason Hawksburg still stands. We keep it fed. Contained. Bound.”

Caroline looked at Alden with genuine sorrow. “We didn’t choose this. But we shoulder it, because someone must.”

Alden struggled against his ropes, heart hammering. “You expect me to believe you’re protecting the town by chaining innocent men?”

“We give them purpose,” Caroline said. “A terrible one. But purpose all the same.”

Alden spat onto the dirt. “You’re monsters.”

“No,” Caroline whispered. “Monsters don’t guard the door. Monsters don’t sacrifice themselves so others can live.”

She stepped aside.

The creature drifted toward Alden.

Every instinct in him screamed to run, to cry out, to claw through the rock with his bare hands. The creature paused only inches away, its head tilting like it was studying him.

Then, softer than breath, it spoke.

“You… remember.”

Alden froze.

“What did you say?”

The creature’s voice echoed strangely, as if more than one thing spoke at once.

“You remember the water. The night. The cold. And the ones who took you.”

Alden’s vision blurred. Memories he had spent decades burying clawed up from the dark.

He was eight again. Falling into the river. Hands grabbing him. A barn. A rope. A whispering voice that slipped into his dreams for years afterward.

“No,” he whispered.

“Yes,” Caroline said gently. “You were one of ours once. A host who survived. One of the very few.”

Alden shook his head violently, denial ripping through him. “My parents found me. They took me home.”

“They found your body,” Mae corrected. “But what came back wasn’t entirely you. The sickness tasted you and let you go—marked, but not taken. We thought that meant something. We thought it meant you would help us one day.”

Alden sank to his knees. His pulse roared in his ears.

Caroline knelt beside him, cutting the rope from his wrists with a small knife. “You can leave, Alden. But if you do, Hawksburg dies. This thing doesn’t stay locked forever.”

Ruth stepped forward. “If you walk away, the men in those stalls aren’t the only ones it will need.”

“And if I stay?” Alden asked hoarsely.

Mae placed a hand on his shoulder. “Then you become what you were meant to be—a keeper. A guardian of the door. Like us.”

Alden looked at the creature, its shape wavering like heat on a summer road. It stared back with something that wasn’t quite hunger, wasn’t quite recognition.

Something worse.

He thought of Henry Cole. Of the people in the town who trusted him. Of their quiet lives, their small joys, their fragile safety.

He thought of the boy he had been—the one who lay in the river, drowning, until something pulled him into a nightmare he had chosen to forget.

His voice cracked.

“I’ll stay.”

Relief washed over the sisters like a tide. Mae wiped her eyes. Ruth whispered thanks. Caroline touched his cheek with a tenderness that felt centuries old.

Then she said softly, “But there is one more truth you must know.”

Alden lifted his head.

Caroline’s next words hollowed him out.

“The creature wasn’t the one who chose you that night. We did.”

The air left his lungs.

“You were dying,” Mae said. “We needed someone pure, someone the sickness would spare. We pulled you from the river and offered you to it. It marked you, but didn’t keep you.”

Ruth’s voice trembled. “We’ve been waiting your whole life for you to return.”

Alden stared at them, betrayal and purpose warring inside him.

“You saved the town,” Caroline whispered. “And you will again.”

Alden didn’t speak. Didn’t nod. Didn’t move.

But he didn’t run.

And in Hawksburg, that was the same as a promise.

By winter, the Pike barn had a new caretaker. Lanterns glowed through its cracks some nights, though no one approached close enough to confirm who carried them. The valley grew quiet again. Calmer. As if something beneath the soil had been fed well enough to sleep.

People whispered that Sheriff Brooks had taken sick and traveled west. Others claimed they’d seen him wandering near the ridgeline after dusk, talking softly to someone no one else could see.

But Henry Cole—who had once stood trembling in Alden’s office—insisted on a different story.

He said the sheriff never left.

He said the Pike sisters gained a brother.

And he said that some nights, when the wind cut through the pines just right, you could hear four voices—not three—speaking in unison beneath the old barn.

A prayer.

A warning.

A promise.

Whatever it was, the valley survived another year.

And that was enough.