Beginner's Luck

Mason Wilder is a man haunted by silence—by a past he buried and a girl he never said goodbye to. His life is quiet, cautious, and forgettable until the day he receives a mysterious black box on his doorstep. No return address. No explanation. Inside, a single word was scribbled on a folded slip of paper -LUCKY—and the chilling knowledge that the box knows more about him than it should. The box becomes a fixture in his home, refusing to be thrown away, returned, or forgotten. Then it starts changing. At night, it moves. Its contents shift. One morning, Mason wakes to find a photo inside, a girl with green eyes, red hair, and a smirk that hasn’t changed in over a decade. Emily. The girl who vanished in a fire the night Mason ran and never looked back. From that moment, the box begins counting down. Each day, something new appears: a photograph of Mason sleeping, a key that fits a door he doesn’t remember locking, a note that reads only “REGRET.” The air in the house thickens. Shadows stretch too long. The number 3:14 begins repeating—on clocks, in dreams, etched in fog on his windows. He begins to dream of a long hallway with black tiles and no ceiling, a door marked “EMILY’S ROOM,” and a whisper that follows him everywhere: ” This is what you owe.” As Mason is drawn deeper into the mystery, the physical and metaphysical boundaries of his home begin to dissolve. Footprints appear in the dust. Voices echo through the vents. The box reveals a candle—white, pristine, paired with a single match. A note appears beneath it: “FIVE DAYS.” With each candle he lights, the ritual tightens its grip. Mason discovers he is not the first to receive the box, and he won’t be the last. Through haunted crawlspaces and buried memories, he finds records, boxes from others before him, ledgers of names, and signs that this “test” has been going on for decades. He uncovers the story of Leonard Kasner, a physicist turned recluse who vanished after documenting “the system of inheritance” Mason now finds himself trapped in. The candles change color. From white to black. From black to red. Each flame opens a door, not just in the house, but in Mason’s mind. He relives the night of the fire. The choice he made. The moment he turned his back on someone who ran into danger while he ran away. But the flames aren’t just memory; they’re transformation. As he lights the third candle, the line between victim and vessel vanishes. The haunting is no longer about guilt. It’s about passing the fire on. Emily reappears not as a ghost, but as a figure bound to the ritual Mason is beginning to understand. In the end, Mason is no longer running from a curse. He is the carrier of it. He receives a final message: “TAKE.” A red candle. A mirror image of himself. A choice. And when he lights the last flame, Mason becomes part of something much older, much deeper, and far more terrifying than a haunting. He becomes the next name in the box. The fire doesn’t end. It moves forward. The novel closes with a seventeen-year-old girl waking up at 3:14 a.m. in a home that doesn’t belong to her, where nothing ever sticks. She finds a box on her nightstand. Inside: a candle, a match, and a note. “Light this when you’re ready to know the truth.” The cycle continues.