Noah clutched a daisy in his hands as he stared down at the small gravestone, its polished surface catching the low rays of sunlight that trickled through the trees. He looked back at his friends picnicking a ways back at a wooden table, his fingers tracing up and down the length of the flower’s stem. With a quiet sigh, he quickly knelt and laid the flower before the stone. He paused with his head bowed, breaths quickening as a sense of overwhelming loss swept over him. He squeezed his eyes shut and stood in silent remembrance for a long moment. 

He eventually turned around and meandered between several rows of gravestones back to the table where three figures were unpacking sandwiches. 

“This better not be bologna,” the girl named Leah said threateningly as she took a wrapped bundle from the backpack her brother Brian had set out. 

“It’s all bologna. The whole container went onto that sandwich. It was at least three pounds,” Brian said with an evil smile.

Leah narrowed her eyes at him and opened her sandwich to reveal sliced turkey and cheese. She grinned and smacked Brian immediately. “You liar.”

Noah smiled as he sat down next to Brian. May sat across from him, laughing at the two siblings’ behavior. Noah hardly knew her at all, but she was Leah’s friend, so he didn’t overly mind her presence. She hadn’t spoken much to him anyway since that morning when she joined them. She mostly just seemed to sneeze a lot.

Noah glanced at her warily as she began to lean back, inhaling deeply. The girl explosively sneezed once more, quickly stifling herself and rubbing her bright red nose. 

“Sorry,” she squeaked. “I promise it’s just allergies.”

Leah nudged her playfully. “We’ll see about that in three days, huh?”

“Don’t even joke. I get like this every year, you know me,” May grumbled.

They were, of course, referencing the Reaper’s Wager, or else just the Wager, an incurable illness that could kill a man in three days flat. The somewhat romantic name had grown in popularity despite its deadly nature due to the illness’s perplexing quirk of either killing its victims or leaving them unharmed after precisely three days. The sole symptom was a runny nose. 

The Wager was quite a rare illness, but the first case had been just a few years ago,  so its recent emergence paired with its mysteriousness caused word of it to travel fast. Noah’s mom had come down with it exactly one year and three days ago.

That fact must have suddenly occurred to Leah, for she glanced over at Noah apprehensively. He just waved a hand. The Wager was far too popular a topic of discussion for him to have not long since grown inured to its mention.

Brian looked between them before grabbing an armful of sandwiches from his backpack and distributing them around to the rest of the people at the table. Each one was wrapped very neatly in a checkered blue and white cloth, in typical Brian style.

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“You, uh, doing okay?” Brian asked hesitantly after Noah had gratefully received his sandwich.

Noah nodded as he lifted the fold of cloth, carefully unwrapping it. Something about it being so nicely packaged made him want to handle it with the same care Brian put into putting it together. Once the sandwich was framed by the unfurled petals of the cloth, Noah smiled and looked at his friend. “Yeah. I miss her. Of course. I’m glad you guys came out here with me.”

Brian took a large bite of his sandwich and nodded seriously, then opened his mouth and started talking, spraying Noah with food detritus. “I don’t know what I would do if I lost someone like that. You seem to handle it so well, but… uh, we’re here for you, you know? What kind of lousy friends would we have to be to leave you alone today?”

Leah nodded vigorously along with his words, and May smiled supportively despite only having met him a scant few hours earlier. 

Noah grinned at Brian and bit into his sandwich. “Hmm, I only invited you for your expert cheffery. I would definitely be despairing all by my lonesome right now if you didn’t do such excellent work with these sandwiches.”

Brian scoffed and punched him lightly while May and Leah laughed at him. 

Silence soon overtook the table as the four of them focused on finishing their food. By the time each of them were shaking the crumbs out of their napkins, the shadows had lengthened enough to make Noah glance around at their darkening surroundings and roll his cloth napkin up pointedly.

“I don’t want to be stuck out here when it really starts getting dark. Way too many small hard tripping hazards lying around this particular environment.”

“Yes, that seems like a highly ironic way to go out,” Leah said as she stood up. 

The other two followed suit without complaint, with Brian carefully re-folding everyone’s napkins before placing them one at a time back in his backpack.

They collectively made their way onto the cemetery’s gravel path. It wound around the edge of the clearing before veering into the woods, cutting through a small section of it to eventually end up at a paved road. 

Noah tried to take one last look at the gravestone marked by a freshly cut daisy, but it was already too dark to make it out among the rows of identical grave markers.

Walking into the trees was like passing into a dark veil. They had severely underestimated how dark it would be in the woods. Noah followed his friends down the path nearly blindly, gazing around at their surroundings inefffectually. His vision was like a bad camera in the dark, full of shifting grainy artifacts.

Nearly a full minute passed before Brian suddenly blurted, “Hey, I’ve got flashlights!” His tone implied he had only just remembered this fact.

They all stopped as he fished them out of his backpack, passing them around. It was too dark to see what color they were, but Noah knew they were all black. They had a slim handle that widened into a square socket for the LEDs to fit into. Brian carried them around everywhere, but Noah had never seen him actually use them until now. There were only two. Brian gave one to Noah and kept the other for himself. 

Noah flicked his on and shone it around. The gravestones cast long, square shadows in gridded patterns as he swiveled the light back and forth.

They walked quickly, all of them eager to get back to the main road. The gravestones were soon left behind and replaced by trees.

After only thirty seconds, Brian began to slow down for no apparent reason.

“Why are we stopping?” Leah asked impatiently.

Brian just pointed his flashlight forward. Noah peered ahead, realizing after a moment that the path split into two just a few meters ahead. 

“Which way did we come from?” Brian asked.