Sheriff Ed Miller had been born in Anchorhead, and he would likely die here. He knew its streets not from a map, but from the scuffs on his boots and the ache in his knees when the coastal damp got into them. He knew its people not as statistics, but as a web of interconnected histories, grudges, and secrets—a web he navigated with a gruff, weary familiarity.
His father had been a fisherman, lost with the Star of Bengal in '53. The sea had taken his father, and the town had become his anchor, his responsibility. He'd traded a potential life on the water for one on the land, upholding a law that often felt as shifting and murky as the tide. He was a big man, going soft around the middle, his face a roadmap of burst capillaries from too many nights spent in The Kelp Bed, the town's one decent pub. But his eyes, a faded blue, missed very little.
Right now, those eyes were squinting through the windshield of his county-issued SUV into a solid wall of white. The world beyond the hood was gone. He was parked outside the Pugh sisters' house on Willow Street, the engine running to keep the heat on, the radio spitting static.
Agnes Pugh. The call had been more frantic than usual. Not just a misplaced sister, but a certainty. "She wouldn't, Sheriff. She wouldn't." He'd driven her home, found Mabel dusting, and had left them to their tea. But the old woman's terror had felt different this time. It had the sharp, metallic tang of genuine fear, not confusion.
He'd come back. Just to sit. Just to watch. It's what he did when a knot in his gut wouldn't loosen.
The Pugh sisters were a permanent, slightly eccentric fixture. Sweet old ladies. Makers of the best blackberry jam at the summer fete. But Ed Miller had a cop's memory, and it was long.
He remembered their husbands. Harold Pugh and Frank Pugh. Brothers. Loud, boorish men who'd worked at the cannery until it closed, then spent their days and their unemployment checks at The Kelp Bed. They'd been drinkers. Mean ones. The department had been called to Willow Street a handful of times over the years. Noise complaints. Arguments spilling into the street. Once, a neighbor reported seeing Agnes with a shiner she'd claimed came from a kitchen cabinet door.
Then, within six months of each other, both husbands were just… gone.
Frank had "left for a job upstate." Harold had "succumbed to a weak heart." The explanations were neat, quiet, and accepted by a town that didn't like to pry. The sisters had sold the men's things, drawn the curtains, and settled into their quiet, respectable old age.
But Ed Miller had poked. Not much. Just enough. There were no records of a Frank Pugh anywhere in the state after 1982. No death certificate for Harold that listed a cause of death beyond "natural causes," signed by a doctor who'd retired to Florida and died himself a year later. It was all just a little too tidy. The knot in his gut had formed then, a quiet, unsolved thing he'd carry forever.
He saw them sometimes, at the supermarket, two tiny, bird-like women supporting each other. He'd tip his hat. "Agnes. Mabel." They'd smile, those magnified eyes blinking behind their thick glasses. They looked so fragile. So harmless.
But he'd seen the iron in Agnes's eyes today. A core of pure, unadulterated steel beneath the fluttery panic. And he'd seen the way Mabel's hands, when she was dusting, were not the soft, weak hands of an old woman. They were gnarled, the knuckles enlarged, the grip strong. The hands of someone who'd done a lifetime of hard work.
What did you do? he thought, staring at their darkened house, the fog swallowing its edges. What really happened in that house?
A sudden, high-pitched scream tore through the muffled silence. It came from a few streets over. It was cut off with a wet, final sound that made the hair on his arms stand up.
The radio on his dashboard crackled to life, shattering his thoughts.
"—any units, respond to 425 Marine Drive, reports of a… Christ, I don't know, a disturbance—" The voice of young Deputy Walsh was tight, high with panic. "There's something out here! Something in the fog! It got Mrs. Gable! It just— units, please respond!"
The transmission dissolved into a scream of pure terror and a sound like rending metal, then cut to static.
Ed's blood went cold. Mrs. Gable. The tough old florist with the grinding-gear laugh. He slammed the SUV into drive and hit the lights, the red and blue flares reflecting off the solid white wall in front of him, illuminating nothing.
He nudged the vehicle forward, crawling blind. The scream replayed in his head. The sound from the radio. This wasn't a domestic dispute. This wasn't a drunk and disorderly. This was something else entirely.
His headlights caught a shape on the road ahead. He slammed on the brakes.
It was a body. Or what was left of it. It was mangled, torn open in a way that was not from a car accident. The pavement around it was slick and black in the lurid glow of his lights. And standing over it were two figures.
They were tall, too tall, their postures all wrong, limbs bent at sickening angles. They were hunched over the remains, their forms seeming to absorb the light, darker shades of grey in the grey fog. One of them looked up.
Its eyes did not reflect the light. They glowed with a faint, sickly greenish luminescence, like putrescent moss. There was no nose, just a series of slits. Its mouth was a wide, lipless gash.
It saw the SUV. It tilted its head, a sharp, mechanical motion. A low, clicking chatter emanated from it. The other thing looked up.
Ed Miller, Sheriff of Anchorhead, a man who'd faced down drunks with knives and meth-heads with pipes, felt a primal fear seize him by the throat. This was not of his world. This was not in his jurisdiction.
The first creature took a step toward the vehicle. It didn't walk. It lurched, its movement a horrifying, disjointed skitter.
Ed threw the SUV into reverse, his foot stomping on the accelerator. The vehicle shot backward. He craned his neck, trying to see through the whiteout behind him. There was a sickening thump and the sound of splintering wood as he took out a mailbox. He didn't stop.
He slammed the gear into drive, spun the wheel, and gunned it, plunging down a side street he hoped was clear. His heart was trying to beat its way out of his chest. He fumbled for the radio mic.
"All units! All units! This is Miller! Do not, I repeat, do not respond to Marine Drive! Stay in your vehicles! Stay off the streets! There are hostiles—"
Hostiles? What the hell was he saying?
A massive shape slammed into the driver's side of the SUV.
The impact was tremendous. The window exploded inward, showering him with glass. The vehicle rocked onto two wheels, teetered for a heart-stopping second, then crashed back down. The airbag deployed with a deafening bang and a cloud of white powder, smashing into his face.
Dazed, his nose bleeding, Ed fought against the deflating bag. The fog poured in through the shattered window. Outside, he could hear it. The clicking. The wet, rasping breath. And a new sound. A sound like talons scraping slowly down the metal of his door.
He fumbled for his sidearm, a Glock 17, pulling it from its holster. His hands were shaking. He aimed it at the empty window frame, at the swirling white beyond.
"Back off!" he roared, his voice cracking. "Get the hell back!"
The scraping stopped. The clicking intensified, a rapid, frenzied conversation happening just feet from him.
Then, silence.
He waited, the gun trained, his breath coming in ragged gasps. A minute passed. Two.
Slowly, carefully, he reached for the radio mic, which was dangling by its cord. "This is Miller. I'm at… I don't know where I am. I've been hit. My unit is disabled. Requesting immediate—"
A face appeared at the window.
It was not the creature. It was a man, his face pale and streaked with blood, his eyes wide with insanity. It was old Mr. Dempsey, who always fell asleep in church.
"Sheriff!" the old man shrieked, his voice raw. "The angels! The angels are here! They're cleansing! They took my Martha! They took her!"
He reached a trembling hand through the broken window, grabbing Ed's arm. His grip was shockingly strong.
"They're making us pure!"
Behind Mr. Dempsey, a long, spindly limb tipped with a hooked talon emerged from the fog. It wrapped gently, almost lovingly, around the old man's chest. Mr. Dempsey's eyes rolled back in his head in ecstasy or terror—Ed couldn't tell.
The limb pulled. There was a wet, popping sound.
Mr. Dempsey was yanked backward into the whiteness, his scream cut short.
Ed Miller sat in his wrecked SUV, alone, the fog coiling around him. The gun felt useless in his hand. His town was gone. His understanding of the world was gone. The only thing that remained was the knot in his gut, and now it was screaming one thing, over and over.
He had to get to the station. It was the strongest building in town. He had to get there, lock the door, and try to piece together what was left.
And as he pushed the deflated airbag aside and shoved the door open, stepping out into the nightmare, one clear, professional thought cut through the terror.
The Pugh sisters' secret, whatever it was, didn't matter anymore.
Nobody's did.