Ludlow County is a smear on the edge of the map made when a cartographer’s attention slipped. It has a population of about two or three hundred, give or take a hundred. It doesn’t even have a post office.
Someone wanted to change that.
***
The postman rolled into town early in the morning after a long night’s journey and bought a breakfast of candy bars and coffee at the general store.
“No sense trying to get any sleep now,” he said to Truly Shirley at the counter. “Might as well get started, right?”
Truly eyed him flatly, and nosed him and eared him flatly for good measure. There were lugworms less flat than the once-over he was receiving.
“So, that’ll be what?”
“Best if you’re on your way,” she said, with a voice like crumbling hopes and dreams.
“Sorry now?”
“Get back to your big city, where you belong.”
The postman frowned. “I’m from Milton County, a buck forty east of here. About two thousand people.”
“We don’t like big city people around here,” said Truly. “Bringing in ideas from far away.”
“It’s mail.”
“High-faluting nonsense. Better watch your back.”
“Can I get my change?”
“Not around here you can’t. Folks will stop it.”
“I mean my coins.”
Truly Shirley dumped a handful of bronze and copper tokens on the counter in a variety of shapes and sizes and levels of corrosion. The postman sorted through them until he found something that he was pretty sure had Latin written on it, pocketed it, and left.
“They’ll find you, you know!” she called after him as he stepped back into the sun. “They can smell the big city on you! It’s in your blood! In your boots! IN YOUR PANTS!”
The postman considered this and his pants, but they were nothing but worn and slightly dusty denim, and so he was left none the wiser. His musings were then interrupted by Truly Shirley throwing her call bell at him, and he departed in some haste and tumult while she fumbled in her purse for a reload, curses following him out of the parking lot and up the street.
***
The post office wasn’t what he’d expected. A building had been rented on the edge of town – small, two stories, enough space in the back to cram a postman in. Instead, there was a small pile of smouldering charcoal and soft ash that the breeze stirred aimlessly.
“Looks like it happened pretty recent,” he told the officer. “I mean, it’s still warm, and nobody saw anything last night.”
“Damn right they didn’t,” said the officer, whose name was Euphonious Harper. “I made sure of it.”
“I’m sorry, what do you mean?”
“This was the old Murgatroyd place, back far as anyone can remember, until that spineless, shiftless, faithless son of a bitch Maurice sold it to you and your sort for his miserable thirty pieces of silver. There’s been more done here under the new moon than could be imagined by anyone anywhere, and those who know about that sort of thing would never stand to see the ancient ways disrespected and defiled by the scent of a soft-souled outlander who doesn’t know the handshakes or the hand signals or the hand-binding of Holmsome Hrrrg.”
“The what of wholesome who?”
Euphonious Harper spit in the dirt at the postman’s feet. “Exactly. You’d better be out of town before Bile Tuesday’s waxing half-moon, that’s all I’m saying. Fhtagn cordynk.”
Thus speaking, the officer hissed three sibilant syllables between his teeth, twisted his fingers like a wire puzzle gone rogue, stepped into the shadow of a thin and sickly sapling, and vanished without a trace.
The postman wandered around the burning remnants of the building, poked at the tree’s shadow for a bit, and elected to work out of his truck.
***
When the postman returned to his truck he was surprised and marginally pleased to find a letter already wedged under his windshield wiper. It appeared to have been written in blood, but the stamp was legitimate (if rumpled and old) and the writing was readable (if shaky and misshapen) so he did his duty and delivered it, hampered only slightly by the address being as follows:
Behind the big rock
The biggest rock
Under it
Near the grove of dead pines
The postman saw the dead pine grove from the road after spending half the afternoon cruising up and down the backwoods of Ludlow County. Each tree was brittle and dryer than a bone, and each tree had nails driven into its sides, and each pair of nails had a jawbone dangling from them in an empty soundless shriek, with colour from flesh-fresh white to tea-stained brown.
Behind the big rock near the pine grove (which was splashed with rusty stains that seemed as old as the stone surface itself), there was the biggest rock (which was painted with odd symbols and figures that made the postman’s eyes twist), and under the biggest rock was a hole just wide enough for a big man’s shoulders that was dark out of proportion to its apparent depth. A moonless night had taken up permanent residence in it.
There was no mailbox, so the postman knocked on the stone. Something shifted underground – a rabbit, or maybe a fox, or a badger? – but came no closer.
“Mail,” he spoke into the still air.
A fly buzzed. There were a lot of them around, and the stink of death was heavy, but no meat was to be seen. The sky was hopelessly blue.
“Mail,” repeated the postman, and knocked again.
After an hour of waiting, he bent regulations just a little and left the mail at the mouth of the hole by pinning it under a gnawed human skull he found sitting in the crotch of one of the pines. By the way the skin of his neck crawled, something watched him all the way back to his truck, but it didn’t speak up about it so he didn’t try to start a conversation.
***
The day was wearing thin, and so too was the postman’s wakefulness. He ventured to the outer rim of town, found the county’s three-room motel, and requested a room.
“You can’t have room four,” said the proprietor, who was a whip-thin and wide-eyed man named Harry Bacon.
“I thought there were only three rooms?”
“There are,” said Harry, making unflinching eye contact with someone hypothetically standing three inches to the left of the postman. “You can’t have room four. Don’t ask about room four. There’s no hidden money under room four. You got it? I’m clean. You got it? I’ve been in town for years. You got it? There’s nothing suspicious going on. You got it? You got it? You got it?”
“Yes?” hedged the postman.
“FUCK!” screamed Harry. “They found me!” And with a wail of despair, he pulled out a sawn-off lug of a shotgun from under the desk, fired it into the ceiling, and hurled himself through the window.
The postman left money on the counter (and after a moment’s thought, the odd coins he’d received from Truly Shirley too) and took the key for room three, which was already unlocked. The bed was dusty and there was a kilogram of soft white powder wrapped in plastic hidden in the toilet tank that messed with the flush a little, but other than that it was pretty alright.
***
At three PM the postman woke to the sounds of voices raised in anger. Strange flashes of colour etched their way past his windowsill, illuminating a standoff between robed locals chanting words not meant for human mouths, slick-haired men in nice suits with desperate eyes and expensive firearms, something with too little hair and too many teeth, and Truly Shirley.
He gazed at the tableau for a moment, watching it flicker like bad stop-motion-animation between the flashes of lightning striking from a dim and rainless sky. Then he brushed his teeth, combed his hair, and took a good, long look at himself in the mirror.
“I like my job,” he asked himself. “But do I like it THAT much?”
There was no reply save for a wordless wail from outside the door, immediately followed by gunfire, explosions, screaming, and the wet, leaden thudding of flesh against the motel’s siding.
“I’ll sleep on it,” he decided. And he did, though it took him some time and a pair of earplugs.
In the morning he found the bodies missing, but also his answer: several cars left lonely in the parking lot with keys still inside and wallets tucked under the dashboard.
***
Ludlow County was a smear on the edge of the map made when a cartographer’s attention slipped. It had a population of about two or three hundred, give or take a hundred.
It used to have a post office, but now it doesn’t.