Chapter 2: No Such Thing as Free Money
Mason didn't step outside for two whole days.
He kept the curtains drawn tight and locked every door. Lights stayed on in every room—including closets. The darkness felt too deep now, like it had weight, like it was waiting for him to blink first.
He carried the box everywhere. Every room he walked into, it came with him. It wasn't about the object anymore—it was the feeling. If he let it out of his sight, he was convinced something worse would show up to take its place.
The tooth was still inside.
He'd thought about getting rid of it. Just throwing it in the garbage. Or maybe driving it out into the woods and burying it somewhere it could never be found. He even pictured tossing it into the fireplace and watching it burn to dust.
But he didn't.
Instead, he left it sitting right in the middle of the kitchen table, like it was waiting to be acknowledged. He spent hours just looking at it. Every time he passed by, he checked—half expecting it to be gone, or worse, moved.
By the third night, the fridge started making a weird sound.
It wasn't the usual hum. It was slower, almost like breathing. Deep, steady breaths—just behind the door. He unplugged it. Waited. Even then, the sound took a while to fade.
Sweat crawled down his back. The air conditioner was blasting, but it didn't help. The house didn't feel hot. It felt wrong.
Then, at exactly 3:14 a.m., the TV in the guest room turned on.
He didn't go to look.
He sat on the couch instead, the box on his lap, gripping a baseball bat like it was the only thing keeping him alive. It was the same bat he'd used back in high school. Wood, splintered on the handle. He hadn't touched it in years, but it felt right in his hands.
The TV shut itself off five minutes later.
He didn't sleep.
When the sun finally showed up, he poured himself a warm beer and stood in the kitchen like a man trying to make a decision. Maybe he should just leave. Get out while he still could. Alaska sounded nice. Quiet. Cold. Isolated.
That's when his phone buzzed.
The screen said "Blocked Number."
He almost didn't answer.
But his thumb moved before he could stop it.
"Hello?"
Silence.
Not even static.
Then a single click.
A voice came through—calm, low, and way too clear.
"Task two."
Mason's grip tightened. "What?"
Another click. The call ended.
He stared down at his hand and noticed blood dripping from his palm. His fingernails had dug into his own skin again. Deep, angry little crescents.
He hadn't felt it happen.
That morning, he left the house just to feel normal again. Just to see people who weren't whispering in his dreams.
He wore a hoodie and sunglasses and tried to keep his head down. But people noticed. Of course they did.
At a red light, a woman leaned out of her car window and shouted, "You're that lottery guy, right?"
He gave her a small nod and drove off without smiling.
Later, he stopped at a diner. The waitress practically beamed at him. She brought him coffee before he ordered and said it was on the house. She kept eyeing the ring on his hand, like maybe she thought luck was contagious.
He left her a hundred-dollar tip and barely touched his food.
Answers. Distractions. Anything would help.
He ended up at the town library—not because he thought ghost stuff could be solved in a book, but because it was quiet. It felt neutral. No mirrors. No TVs. Just paper and silence.
He sat down at one of the dusty old computers and typed in one word.
Kasner.
At first, nothing.
Then one result.
An obituary. Ten years old.
LEONARD KASNER, 49. Found dead in the Florida Everglades. Presumed suicide. No family. Former professor of statistics. Reported missing three years before his body was found. What remained of him was recovered in pieces.
Mason leaned in. His stomach flipped.
There was a photo—gray hair, glasses, tired smile. Something in the man's face looked familiar.
It was him.
The man from the dream. The whisper. The mirror.
Mason leaned back in the library chair and muttered under his breath.
"Son of a bitch."
That night, he stood on his porch and looked up at the sky.
No stars. Just thick clouds rolling low across the sky like a blanket. The air felt heavy.
In the upstairs window, he saw a shape.
Just a shadow. Still. Watching him.
He went inside, checking every room. Closet to closet, light to light.
Nothing.
No one.
But everything felt like it had just been moved.
In the kitchen, the box was gone.
He stopped cold.
Checked every room again—under the sink, behind the couch. Then he saw it, sitting on the edge of the downstairs bathroom sink.
The lid was open.
He hadn't put it there.
Inside, something new had been added.
A piece of paper, folded three times. The edges were yellow and cracked, like it had been folded for years.
He opened it.
Six words, written in shaky, old handwriting:
BRING BACK WHAT I LOST.
No name. No signature.
He turned it over.
On the back, someone had drawn a building in ballpoint pen. The lines were wobbly, almost childish.
It was a long building, with a sloped roof. A flickering neon sign in the sketch read: BILL'S GARAGE.
Mason recognized it immediately.
It sat off a stretch of highway he used to drive often. Five years ago, the place burned down. Now it was just an empty shell surrounded by weeds and cracked pavement.
He'd driven past it a hundred times without a second thought.
He didn't want to go back.
But he already knew he would.
The drive out to Bill's Garage took about twenty minutes. But it felt longer.
The highway stretched endlessly. Trees blurred past on either side, and the same cracked road signs seemed to repeat every few miles. Mason didn't play music. Didn't open the windows. The silence in the car was sharp, like it had teeth.
When he pulled over near the ruins, he let the engine idle for a moment. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel. He sat there, staring at the place, barely blinking.
What was left of the garage looked worse up close. The walls were mostly gone. The roof had caved in. Ash clung to everything like gray snow. A rusted car door leaned against a beam that looked like it might fall over at any second.
The air smelled like wet metal, old oil, and something else—something faintly sweet and rotten.
He stood outside for a while, listening to the wind. It pushed against him, like the air itself wanted him to turn back.
But he didn't.
His boots crunched on broken glass as he stepped inside.
The flashlight beam scanned across scorched concrete and twisted metal. He passed what used to be a workbench. A pile of melted wires. A wheel well that had fused into the floor.
There were no sounds. No animals. No rustling leaves. Just him.
And then he saw it.
A section of the back wall that looked different. The bricks were newer and cleaner. Slightly different color. Like someone had patched it up recently.
He walked over.
The air got cooler as he approached.
When he reached out and touched the bricks, a voice slipped into his mind.
"The body is in the wall."
Mason pulled his hand back like he'd touched fire. "Nope. No. I'm not doing this."
But his body disagreed.
He spotted a rusty crowbar near a pile of junk, picked it up, and stepped closer.
He began pulling bricks loose one at a time. They slid out easier than they should've. The wall almost felt… willing.
Dust rose in thick clouds. Sweat ran into his eyes. His hands ached. But he didn't stop.
After what felt like forever, the last brick fell away.
And there it was.
A body.
Wrapped in plastic, curled up like someone trying to sleep. Mostly bone now. Maybe a child. Maybe not.
Mason's stomach flipped. He stumbled backward and threw up in the corner.
He didn't take a photo. He didn't call the cops. He didn't even think about it.
He just got in the car and drove home, shaking the entire way.
When he stepped onto the porch, he noticed the light wasn't on.
He always left it on.
Inside, the TV was on again. Static.
He unplugged it—but the whisper didn't stop.
It was in the kitchen. The bathroom. His head.
The box was back on the counter.
Open.
Inside it, a Polaroid photo.
The corpse. The one from the garage.
But now it was smiling.
Mason dropped the photo. Then he picked it up and burned it in the kitchen sink.
He turned the faucet on full blast, trying to wash away the ashes.
They clung to the porcelain like oil.
His phone buzzed.
One new message.
"You're doing well."