She didn’t know how they ended up in her kitchen with a half-drunk bottle of red wine between them and pasta simmering on the stove.

It had been a dead night, even for the graveyard shift, until the faded clock above the counter singled 3am. The haunting started after that

The reaper-in-training set four cans of energy drinks atop the counter and rounded back down an aisle for a handful of candy.

It was the same hunting trip Robert took each October. The leased nine acres looked the same as every year: tree branches knotted...