The Mailman

by Bentley Little

  The Mailman

  Bentley Little

  Once upon a time, waiting for the mail was filled with warm anticipation. But there's a new mail carrier in town, one who's delivering lethal letters stuffed with icy fear. Now nothing--not even the most outstanding citizens or the most secret weaknesses--is safe from the sinister power of this malicious mailman!

  Amazon.com Review

  It's the first day of summer in a small American town. We meet a school teacher, his wife, and their young son, Billy. One thing, one seemingly minor thing, goes wrong. And all that was safe and ordinary slowly unravels into nightmare. This familiar premise for the contemporary horror novel has rarely, if ever, been developed so brilliantly as in Bentley Little's The Mailman. A tall, pale postal carrier with carrot-red hair may seem an unlikely candidate for the embodiment of evil, but Little reveals the personality behind the mailman's ever-present smile with such finesse, you'll be more than happy to fall under his spell. By the time the frightened town folk are chanting, "No mail! No mail! No mail! No mail!"--and Billy ends up half-naked in a dark room, next to a soiled wedding dress--you'll be jumping right out of your skin.

  THE MAILMAN

  by Bentley Little

  1

  It was the first day of summer, his first day of freedom, and Doug Albin stood on the porch staring out at the pine-covered ridge above town. It wasn't technically the first day of summer -- that was still three weeks away. It wasn't even his real first day of freedom -- that had been Saturday. But it was the first Monday after school ended, and as he stood at the railing, enjoying the view, he felt great. He took a deep breath, smelling pine and bacon, pollen and pancakes, the mingled odors of woods and breakfast. Morning smells.

  It was cool out and there was a slight breeze, but he knew that that would not last long. The sky was a deep navy blue, devoid of even a single cloud, and by noon the temperature would be well into the nineties. He scanned the horizon.

  A hawk circled lazily overhead, moving in ever-widening circles away from its point of departure. On the ridge, he could see the thin gray line of a single campfire rising into the air above the line of trees. Closer in, small animals flitted about, stirred into hyperactivity by the breeze: rabbits, squirrels, hummingbirds, quail.

  Although he had arisen with the sun the way he did every Monday morning, he had done so out of choice not out of necessity, and the pressure of impending work that usually marred his mornings was absent. He didn't have to rush to get dressed, he didn't have to speed through his breakfast and read only the headlines of the newspaper. He didn't have to do anything. The whole day was before him and he could do with it as he pleased.

  The front door opened behind him and he glanced around, hearing the sound of the latch clicking.

  Trish stuck her head out from behind the screen. "What do you want for breakfast?"

  He looked at her wild hair and her still-sleepy visage, and he smiled.

  "Nothing. I'm not hungry. Come on out here with me."

  She shook her head dully. "No. It's cold. Now, what do you want? You can't skip breakfast just because you're on vacation. It's --"

  "-- the most important meal of the day," he finished for her. "I know."

  "Well, what do you want? French toast? Waffles?"

  Doug breathed deeply, smelling other breakfasts from other homes. "Eggs,"

  he said. "And bacon."

  "Bran cereal," she told him. "And wheat toast. You've eaten enough cholesterol lately."

  "Then why did you even ask me?"

  "It was a test. You failed." She closed the screen door. "After you're through communing with nature, please come inside. And shut the door behind you. It's freezing this morning."

  He laughed. "It's not that cold," he said.

  But she had already closed the door, and he stood alone on the porch, looking out across the acres of ponderosa pine at the rocky crags of the ridge on the other side of town. The thin trail of campfire smoke had grown larger, dissipating, a gray stream in the blue ocean sky. He took another deep breath, hungry for summer, longing to breathe in that delicious freedom, but something had changed and the odors on the breeze brought with them something bittersweet, a vaguely familiar fragrance that awoke within him a subtle sense of loss he couldn't quite place.

  The mood gone, he turned away from the railing. A hummingbird buzzed his head on its way to the feeder next to the kitchen window as he walked inside the house. Trish had already started breakfast and was busily cutting up slices of homemade bread for toast. She had relented a little on the bran cereal, but not much, and an open cardboard cylinder of oatmeal sat next to the pot on the stove. A pitcher of orange juice stood on the counter next to her. She looked up as he entered the room.

  "Wake Billy up," she said.

  "It's summer," Doug said. "Let the boy sleep if he wants. It's vacation time."

  "I don't want him wasting his whole day sleeping."

  "His whole day? It's six-thirty."

  "Just get him up." She returned to her bread, carefully slicing the round loaf into thin equally small pieces.

  Doug walked loudly up the stairs to the loft of the A-frame, hoping his exaggerated footsteps would awaken the boy. But Billy's still feet were sticking out from under the sheet at the head of his bed, and his head on the pillow at the wrong end of the mattress was covered and unmoving. Doug walked across the rug, stepping over the underwear, socks, shirts, and pants strewn over the floor. Sunlight was streaming through a crack in the green curtains, a wedge of brightness illuminating the posters of rock stars and sports figures on the slanting woodroofwalls . He pulled the covers off his son's head. "All right, bud spud. Time to get up."

  Billy moaned incoherently and reached groggily for the sheet to pull over his head.

  Doug kept the sheet out of reach. "Rise and shine."

  "What time is it?"

  "Almost nine."

  One eye opened to squint at the watch hanging by a string from the sloping wall above his bed. "It's only six. Get out of here!" He reached again for the sheet, this time more aggressively.

  "It's six-forty-five actually. Time to get up."

  "Okay. I'm up. Leave!"

  Doug smiled. The boy took after his mother. Trish was always a bear when she first woke up: silent, uncommunicative, nasty. He, on the other hand, was exactly the opposite. He was, as one of his old roommates had put it, "disgustingly cheerful" in the morning, and he and Trish had long learned to stay out of each other's way the first half-hour or so after waking.

  He let Billy reclaim the sheet, and although the boy instantly hid his head, he knew he was awake and would soon be coming down.

  Doug walked downstairs, offering a parting "Get up," which received no response. He sat down at theformica counter that separated the living room and the kitchen and that they used as a breakfast table.

  Trish, stirring the oatmeal, turned around. "What are your plans for today?"

  He grinned. "It's summer. I have no plans."

  She laughed. "That's what I was afraid of." She turned off the burner on the stove and moved over to the cupboard from which she withdrew three bowls. "I thought you were supposed to get that boy up."

  "He is up."

  "He's not at the table, and I don't hear any noise upstairs."

  "Want me to go up there and get him?"

  She shook her head. "I'll do it." She moved into the living room and looked up at the railing of the loft. "Time to eat," she called out. Her loud voice had an edge of anger in it, whether real or not Doug was unable to tell.

  "Breakfast is ready."

  A moment later, they heard the sound of feet hitting the floor and two minutes later Billy was coming down the stairs.

  After breakfast, Trish went out to
work on the garden. Billy finished watching the _Today_ show, then took off on his bike to practice motocross moves in the forest. There was a bike tournament coming up at the end of July, and he wanted to be in it. "Be careful," Doug called from the porch as the boy pedaled furiously down the dirt path that wound through the trees toward the hill, but Billy either didn't hear him or didn't intend to be careful and didn't say anything back.

  Trish looked up from her weeding. "I don't like him riding that bike the way he does."

  "It's okay."

  "It's not okay. It's dangerous. He's going to break an arm or leg someday.

  I wish you wouldn't encourage him."

  "I don't encourage him."

  She smiled teasingly. "Come on, don't tell me you don't feel a little macho thrill every time he goes careening off into the underbrush?"

  " 'Careening off into the underbrush?' "

  "All right, Mr. Teacher. It's summer. Quit lecturing."

  He chuckled. "Those who can, teach."

  She playfully stuck her tongue out at him, then returned to her weeding.

  Doug went back inside and turned off the television. He stood for a moment in the middle of the living room, thinking. There were a few things he had to take care of this morning, some correspondence he'd let slide through these last two weeks of finals and graduation, and he figured he'd better get them out of the way before settling down to some serious non-work. He was going to give himself a week off before starting his big project for the summer: the storage shed. It had been three years now since he'd first promised Trish he'd build a storage shed in the back yard to house their tools and firewood and extraneous garbage, and though each June he'd sworn that he was going to build the shed, somehow he had never actually gotten around to it. This year, however, he had finally broken down and bought a prefab construction kit. This year, he was going to do it. He figured he'd spend this week reading, lounging about, and just relaxing. Knowing his ineptitude with tools and his incompatibility with manual labor, the storage shed, which theoretically should be a one- or two-week project, would probably take all summer, and he wanted to make sure he enjoyed at least part of his vacation.

  He walked through the kitchen and down the short hall to the bedroom. His desk was on the other side of the brass bed, inconveniently close to the closet.

  A stack of books and papers sat next to the dusty uncovered typewriter, and he pushed everything aside as he sat down on the hard metal ice-cream chair he used in lieu of the wooden swivel seat he'd originally wanted. He quickly glanced through the pile. Bills. Bills. More bills. A letter from an ex-student who'd joined the army.

  His application for the grant.

  He dropped everything else on the desk and held up the yellow application form, staring dumbly at it. The application was for a federal program that offered teachers in specific fields year-long paid sabbaticals so they could conduct independent research. There was nothing he really wanted to, or needed to, research, but he desperately wanted the year off and had managed to put together a rather convincing application. He thought he'd sent it in last month, but apparently he hadn't. He looked at the deadline date on the form.

  June seventh.

  Five days away.

  "Shit," he muttered. He placed the application in an envelope, addressed it, and affixed a stamp. He went back outside and walked down the porch steps.

  "What is it?" Trish asked.

  "My study grant. I forgot to send it."

  She grinned up at him. "Those who can, teach."

  "Very funny." He walked across the gravel driveway to the mailbox, opening the metal door, throwing in the envelope and pulling up the red flag. He walked back across the gravel, stepping carefully in his bare feet. Ronda would pick up the mail around lunch; it would get to the post office around four, get to Phoenix by the next morning, and probably arrive in Washington two or three days after that. It would be cutting it close, but he would probably make it.

  He went back inside to make out bills.

  Doug and Tritia ate lunch on the porch, sandwiches, while Billy ate inside and watched reruns of _Andy Griffith_. The weather was warm but nice, and they tilted the umbrella on the table to keep out the worst of the sun. Afterward, Doug did the dishes and they both retired to the butterfly chairs on the porch to read.

  An hour passed, but Doug could not relax and enjoy himself. He kept looking up from his book, listening for thesputtery cough of Bob Ronda's engine, the metallic squeal of old brakes, thinking of his application wasting away in the mailbox, curiously annoyed that the mailman had not shown up on time. He looked over at Trish. "The mail hasn't come yet, has it?"

  "Not that I know of."

  "Shit," he muttered. He knew it was stupid to turn Ronda into a scapegoat when it was his own stupidity that had led him to wait this long before sending the grant application, but he could not help feeling a little angry at the mailman. Where the hell was he? He returned to his book, trying to read, but soon gave it up, unable to appreciate the words in front of him. His mind kept wandering and he found himself reading the same sentence over and over again, not comprehending. He placed his book on the plastic table next to him and settled into the chair, closing his eyes for a moment. He heard Trish get up, open the door, go inside. He heard the humming wash of water through pipes as she poured herself something to drink in the kitchen.

  But he did not hear the mailman's car.

  Trish came back out, her bare feet loud on the creaking wood, and he opened his eyes. Something was wrong. Bob Ronda inevitably came by about eleven or, at the very latest, twelve. He was a talker and he often stopped to chat with people, but he also knew his job and was extraordinarily efficient in his work. New people were added to the route each year, families arrived to vacation in their summer homes, but somehow Ronda found the time to talk, to deliver the mail, and to still finish his route by four. He had been delivering the mail for the past twenty years, as he would tell anyone who would listen, since Willis had been on a star route with so few people that being a mailman was a part-time job. He now wore a postal service cap, but he still favored Levi's and western wear, and he still drove his beat-up blue Dodge. A tall heavy man with a white beard and mustache, Ronda took his postal-service credo very seriously and had been known to deliver mail even when he was ill. Which was why he had never, to Doug's knowledge, been late with his delivery.

  Until now.

  He glanced at his watch. It was two-fifteen.

  He stood up. "I'm going to go into town and drop off my application at the post office. I can't wait any longer. Mail leaves town at four. If that thing doesn't get in on time, I'm dead."

  "You shouldn't have waited so long."

  "I know. But I thought I already mailed it."

  Trish stood up, pulling out her sweaty shorts where they stuck to her buttocks. "I'm going into town anyway, I'lldrop.it off."

  "Why are you going to town?"

  "Dinner," she said. "I forgot to pick up everything I needed yesterday."

  "I'll go."

  She shook her head. "You'll stay here and rest. Because tomorrow you are going to paint the porch."

  "Oh, I am, am I?"

  "Yes you are. Now go get your letter. I'll put on my shoes and sort through the coupons."

  Chuckling, Doug walked down the driveway to the mailbox. He withdrew the envelope from the box and returned to the house, stepping inside. The front curtains were drawn to keep out the afternoon sun, and there was a fan perched on the small table next to the hat rack. The swiveling head turned at a ninety degree angle, creating an indoor breeze that cooled everything from the Franklin stove and the bookcase along the left wall to the couch where Billy lay watching _The Flintstones_.

  "Turn that off," Doug said. "Why are you wasting your day watching TV?"

  "I'm not wasting it. It's _The Flintstones_. Besides, it's summer. What should I be doing? Reading?"

  "That's right."

  "You don't read for fun."
/>   "Your mother and I do."

  "I don't."

  "Why not?"

  "I read when I have to. That's good enough."

  Doug shook his head. "After this show's over, the television goes off. You find something else to do."

  "God," Billy said disgustedly.

  Trish came out of the bedroom, putting on her sunglasses, her purse over her shoulder, keys in hand. She was wearing new white shorts and a thin white sailor shirt, her long brown hair tied back in a ponytail. "What do you think?" she asked, turning around, fashion-model-style. "Susan St. James?"

  "Abe Vigoda ," Doug said.

  She punched his shoulder.

  "That hurt."

  "It was supposed to." She picked up her grocery list from the counter.

  "Anything else we need besides milk, bread, and dinner food?"

  "Cokes," Billy said.

  "We'll see," she said, putting the list into her purse.

  Doug handed her the application envelope and followed her onto the porch as she walked outside to the Bronco.

  "Cokes!" Billy called again from inside.

  She smiled, getting into the car. "I'll be back in an hour or so."

  Doug gave her a quick kiss through the open window. "Okay. Thanks."

  "Tomorrow you paint, though."

  "Tomorrow I paint," he agreed.

  Tritia backed out of the drive and headed down the dirt road toward town.

  She rolled up the Bronco's windows to keep out the dust and turned on the air conditioning. The first blast of air was stale and humid, but it quickly turned refreshingly cold and dry as she drove past the other houses scattered along this stretch of forest. The road curved around the side of a hill, then dipped down to the level of the creek. She sped over the lowered crossing with the confidence of a native, the Bronco's tires spraying up water as they rolled through the stream.

  She slowed down as the dirt became pavement and she passed the first cross street. She was glad that it was summer, that Doug was off work, but she could tell she was going to have to lay down a few ground rules -- the way she did each summer. Yes, he was on vacation, and that was good, but she needed a vacation too and, unfortunately, there was no way to take time off from being a mother and housewife. They were full-time, year-round occupations. If left to his own devices, Doug would spend the entire summer veging out, reading on the porch, doing absolutely nothing. It was up to her to point out that the meals he ate had to be cooked, that the dishes afterward had to be washed, that the house required constant maintenance and did not just rejuvenate itself. He couldn't be expected to be a mother, but he could help out around the place: vacuum, do the dishes, rake the yard. She would still do the lion's share of the work, but it would help immensely if some of the duties were divided.