Just the key to a door I’ve never seen.

I was a process server, and for three weeks, I’d been trying to serve papers to a ghost.

“To the Process Server: You are not here to serve a summons. You are here to witness. Suite E-520 is not a room. It is a lock. And I am the key. Deliver this message to Aethelred Capital: The debt is not financial. The debt is mortal. They know what they lost in the fire.”

On a Tuesday, just before midnight, I decided to wait inside the freight elevator. I left the door cracked an inch, the control panel’s orange light painting my face like a jack-o’-lantern. I drank cold gas-station coffee and listened to the building settle—pipes groaning, the distant thrum of freeway traffic.

1250 West Glenoaks Blvd. looked like a monument to forgotten ambition. A sprawling, beige stucco labyrinth set back from the busy Glendale artery, its parking lot was a graveyard of sun-bleached asphalt lines. Most of the suites were occupied by bail bondsmen, immigration consultants, and chiropractors whose “Open” signs flickered with the indecision of a dying heartbeat.

Here’s a short story developed around that specific address.

But I asked questions. That’s what they paid me for.

I waited sixty seconds. Then I crept forward, papers in hand.