The graveyard shift usually meant quiet streets and endless coffee for Sergeant Mark Reynolds. That all changed when his headlights caught something that didn’t belong – a mahogany coffin standing perfectly upright in the middle of an intersection. Reynolds rubbed his eyes, but the vision remained.
His training kicked in as he approached the mysterious object. The coffin looked brand new, its wood still smelling of fresh polish. When he mustered the courage to open it, his blood ran cold at the sight of absolute emptiness. In ten years on the force, nothing had prepared him for this moment.
The explanation came later – a funeral home delivery truck had lost part of its cargo after hitting a bump. But the security footage told a more unsettling story. For three full minutes before Reynolds arrived, every car had inexplicably avoided that stretch of road, and every pedestrian had crossed to the other side, as if some unseen force had cleared the path for the coffin’s mysterious appearance.
