Amabile by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Amabile

Page 106

It wasn’t dramatic. No broken window, no overturned furniture, no eerie draft. Just a subtle wrongness, like a note slightly off key in a familiar song. He stood, listening. The house was still. But the stillness felt .... attentive.

He walked down the hallway, past the framed sketches he’d done years ago, past the coat rack that always leaned a little to the left. Everything looked normal. But the feeling persisted, tugging at him like a thread.

The box was sitting on the floor of his study.

A small wooden box, about the size of a thick novel. Dark walnut, smooth, with a brass clasp that had tarnished into a soft green. He had never seen it before. He was certain of that. He would have remembered something this deliberate.

He crouched beside it. No dust on the lid. No scratches on the floor where it had been placed. Someone or something had set it there gently.

There was no note.

He lifted the box. It was heavier than it looked. Inside, something shifted with a soft, padded thump. Not metal. Not fragile. But something dense.