Free Hawthorne: Tales of a Weirder West by Heath Lowrance Page B

mind's eye, standing close together and hissing unholy secrets to each other in the dark.
    So he would sleep in troubled fragments, waking with every creak of wood or howl of wind or rowdy caterwauling from one of the fort's newer residents.
    Funny thing was, Charlie was probably the only man in the fort relatively safe from the Sisters. He was the one they called upon when they needed fresh blood. And Charlie provided it.
    That night, as he lay there not sleeping, they summoned him once again.
    It started, like always, as a dull hum at the back of his skull, as if a distant train was rumbling in on the long-disused tracks that ran by the station house. The humming grew until his brain rattled and he gritted his teeth and pushed palms against his temples.
    And then the dual sing-songy voices, lilting and sinister in their seeming innocence—
Charlie. Charlie Peeples ... You must come to us, Charlie ...
    He rose from his cot, trembling, as the voices trailed off into little girl laughter. He stumbled in the dark until he found the lantern, lit it, and made his way to the trapdoor behind the dusty ticket counter.
    Come, Charlie
, the voices buzzed.
    He stared at the trapdoor for a long moment, dreading it as always, until the Sisters sent a jagged current of pain through his skull and he winced and scrambled to open it.
    The smell of them came rolling out, through the close quarters of the station house. They stank of rotten meat and death. Charlie knew he'd inherited that from them, that stench. They took and took, and gave only that in return.
    He raised the lantern and descended into the dark.
    The Sisters lived in blackness. The cellar amount-ed to nothing more than a small, wet hole in the ground, but it was their home. It was where Charlie had first found them, where they had always lived, as far as he knew.
    He negotiated the treacherous wooden steps, breathed in the stink. The numerous wounds on his chest from the Sisters' attentions ached dully.
    Charlie
, they said, from somewhere in the darkness.
Come closer.
    The lantern light bathed the cellar in pale yellow blotches. Charlie peered through it. Near the far wall, he spotted their small, slender forms.
    To an outsider, and in the dim, uncertain light, they would have been mistaken for two little girls, about ten years old, wearing torn and dirty dresses and holding hands. Dark tangled hair hung over their faces, obscuring their features. Charlie was thankful for that.
    "I'm here," he said, his voice shaking and weak. "Do you ... do you need to feed?"
    Soon enough
, the Sisters said.
We will have our fill. But now, Charlie, there is something more pressing.
    Their voices cut through his skull and pounded in his brain. They had never spoken to him with actual words. He doubted they could.
    He said, "What ... what is it?"
    A man comes. He is the Son. We must have him.
    Charlie frowned. "I don't understand that. I don't know what you're talking about. You're gonna have to use plain words."
    We sense him coming. He comes for us. He is the Fallen Son, Charlie. He is the Scarred Man. He will come with the sunrise.
    Charlie shook his head, confused. "Scarred Man," he said.
    You will know him by his mark, Charlie. He would kill us, but for you. You will bring him before us.
    "I don't rightly know what you mean. Some fella coming here? Someone you want me to bushwhack or something?"
    When midnight comes. When midnight comes it will be time for Plague. Fun, fun Plague. And the Fallen Son will be our feast. You will bring him.
    Charlie said, "Well ... I'll ... I'll do what I can, I reckon, but I don't rightly understand."
    The Sisters giggled in the dark, holding hands, shaggy heads pressed together. They didn't move.
    Charlie said, "Anything ... anything else, then?"
    Yes. Feed. We believe we will feed after all. Something to whet the appetite.
    "You mean ..."
    The Sisters looked up at him and their hair parted and he could see their horrible, inhuman faces.
    Come closer,