Countless Haints (Part 3)

The woods stretched away from the farm and into forever.

Madi grabbed a crooked switch from the ground and swatted at weeds and spider webs as she followed the pine straw-carpeted trail.  Trees—mostly pines, but oaks and black walnut and white ash, too—loomed on either side of the path, taller even than the silent, lightning-scarred sentinel upon the hill.  She wondered if the blighted oak had once been part of the forest, separated from its ilk when the farm was raised.  If the oak had not...