I stopped at a red light and looked down at the large black box sitting on my passenger seat. It was the size of two shoe boxes placed side to side. It looked unassuming, but it held a world of secrets. To even open it, I was going to have to recite a spell.
At the reading of the will, my father’s lawyer had given me the box and had told me that it contained my father’s most powerful possessions. I felt the weight of it all. Not the box. It was surprisingly light as a feather. I felt the weight of the power my father had and what he was passing on to me.
A car honked behind me, taking my attention away from the box. I looked up to see a man standing in front of my car. He wasn’t human. He had bumpy gray skin, the texture of a rhinoceros, and yellowed eyes that looked almost infected. He wore tattered clothes. He smiled at me, his mouth full of razor-sharp teeth.
Ugh, a ghoul. Ghouls were notoriously unstable. To see one in the open like this wasn’t a good sign.
The ghoul pointed at me. “Time’s a ticking,” he cackled.
The hairs on the back of my neck raised, and my heart raced. What did he know about my life? There was no way that creature could have known what I was going to become. Ghouls didn’t track that kind of thing, and my spell was supposed to stall my change. I should still be hidden.
The car behind me continued to honk, oblivious to the monster in the street.
I swerved around the ghoul and drove forward, my foot on the gas.
When I finally arrived at the garage in my building, a high rise in Brewer’s Hill, I sat in my car for another moment, calming my nerves from my close encounter. I hoped the police caught that thing tonight. I called in a tip of its location in hopes they would track it.
I finally let out a breath and got out, grabbing the black box and dragging myself to the entrance of my apartment. Once on the elevator, I pressed my floor number before leaning against the wall. It was still early evening, but I felt exhausted, and I just wanted to sleep.
I was also unnerved by the ghoul. The last time I’d seen one in person, I’d been in middle school on a field trip. It had attacked a teacher in front of us, and we’d grouped together to beat it up. It had run away, and days later, we’d learned the police had caught it and killed it. I still had nightmares off and on about it all these years later.
As soon as I stepped out of the elevator, my cellphone buzzed in my purse. I already knew who it was. I didn’t want to pick up, but if I ignored her, she would just come over.
I walked down the hallway to my apartment, grabbing my phone out of my purse. “Hey, I’m home,” I said into my phone.
Lila let out a huff. “Why did it take you so long?”
I got to my door and pressed the key code to enter. “I spoke to Chilli for a while and then got a little lost.”
“Bill, let me come over.”
She was the only one I let call me that. Most people called me Billie. It wasn’t a nickname for anything. It was the name my parents gave me straight from birth. Billie Bellamy. They said it sounded like a star’s name. Unfortunately, I had no creative talents.
At the thought of my parents, I let out a shuddering sigh. I was completely alone now.
“Bill?” Lila called, a concerned tone in her voice.
I shook my head and kicked my heels off at the door where some of my other shoes sat. “I’ll be fine. You don’t need to come over. You’ve been here enough, and you need to be in your own place. It’s not like my dad lived here with me. I’m used to being in this apartment alone.”
“I know, but today was a tough one.”
“The day of his death was harder, but I’ll survive. I’ve done it before.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s okay.”
I shivered against the chill in my apartment. Why was it so cold in here? I walked down my short front hallway and went to my thermostat near the half bathroom. It read 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Absolutely not! Lately, I had been running on hot, but this was way too low. I never kept the temperature below the high sixties. Not even in the summer, and it was the dead of winter right now.
I angrily punched the up arrow to 69 degrees. How the hell had the temperature got this low? Had maintenance been in here and changed it by accident?
I trudged through stockinged feet on dark gray, faux wood floors to my open kitchen and placed the box on the marble counter, tossing my coat over it. I wasn’t ready to deal with what was inside just yet. I then went on to my bedroom toward the back of my apartment. I flipped on the light switch at the entrance and stared at my bed.
I felt physically exhausted. I knew I couldn’t just flop on the bed. I had to wash my face and change my clothes. But maybe I could take just a little nap and wake up to do it later. I glanced at the clock on the mirrored nightstand. It read after 7 p.m. That wasn’t too late for a nap, was it? It was completely dark outside.
“Hello?” Lila shouted in my ear through the phone.
“Hey.” I walked to the right side of the bed and sat down. I had to appease Lila someway, or my bestie was never going to let me get off the phone. “I know it isn’t okay. My father’s dead. My mother died years ago. Death is all around me. I’m officially an orphan. Although, I guess at thirty, you’re too old to be an orphan anymore, right?”
I heard Lila pfft through the phone. “Never too old. Okay, okay. I won’t keep nagging you. Let me know when you are ready to go pack up your dad’s place.”
