Ludlow County is a smear on the edge of the map made when a cartographer\u2019s attention slipped. It has a population of about two or three hundred, give or take a hundred. It doesn\u2019t even have a post office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Someone wanted to change that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
***<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The postman rolled into town early in the morning after a long night\u2019s journey and bought a breakfast of candy bars and coffee at the general store.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNo sense trying to get any sleep now,\u201d he said to Truly Shirley at the counter. \u201cMight as well get started, right?\u201d
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSo, that\u2019ll be what?\u201d
\u201cBest if you\u2019re on your way,\u201d she said, with a voice like crumbling hopes and dreams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSorry now?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cGet back to your big city, where you belong.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The postman frowned. \u201cI\u2019m from Milton County, a buck forty east of here. About two thousand people.\u201d
\u201cWe don\u2019t like big city people around here,\u201d said Truly. \u201cBringing in ideas from far away.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s mail.\u201d
\u201cHigh-faluting nonsense. Better watch your back.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCan I get my change?\u201d
\u201cNot around here you can\u2019t. Folks will stop it.\u201d
\u201cI mean my coins.\u201d
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey\u2019ll find you, you know!\u201d she called after him as he stepped back into the sun. \u201cThey can smell the big city on you! It\u2019s in your blood! In your boots! IN YOUR PANTS!\u201d
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
***<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The post office wasn\u2019t what he\u2019d expected. A building had been rented on the edge of town \u2013 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLooks like it happened pretty recent,\u201d he told the officer. \u201cI mean, it\u2019s still warm, and nobody saw anything last night.\u201d
\u201cDamn right they didn\u2019t,\u201d said the officer, whose name was Euphonious Harper. \u201cI made sure of it.\u201d
\u201cI\u2019m sorry, what do you mean?\u201d
\u201cThis 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\u2019s 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\u2019t know the handshakes or the hand signals or the hand-binding of Holmsome Hrrrg.\u201d
\u201cThe what of wholesome who?\u201d
Euphonious Harper spit in the dirt at the postman\u2019s feet. \u201cExactly. You\u2019d better be out of town before Bile Tuesday\u2019s waxing half-moon, that\u2019s all I\u2019m saying. Fhtagn cordynk.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The postman wandered around the burning remnants of the building, poked at the tree\u2019s shadow for a bit, and elected to work out of his truck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
***<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Behind the big rock<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The biggest rock<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Under it <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Near the grove of dead pines<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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\u2019s eyes twist), and under the biggest rock was a hole just wide enough for a big man\u2019s shoulders that was dark out of proportion to its apparent depth. A moonless night had taken up permanent residence in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was no mailbox, so the postman knocked on the stone. Something shifted underground \u2013 a rabbit, or maybe a fox, or a badger? \u2013 but came no closer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMail,\u201d he spoke into the still air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMail,\u201d repeated the postman, and knocked again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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\u2019t speak up about it so he didn\u2019t try to start a conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/p>\n\n\n\n The day was wearing thin, and so too was the postman\u2019s wakefulness. He ventured to the outer rim of town, found the county\u2019s three-room motel, and requested a room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou can\u2019t have room four,\u201d said the proprietor, who was a whip-thin and wide-eyed man named Harry Bacon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI thought there were only three rooms?\u201d \u201cFUCK!\u201d screamed Harry. \u201cThey found me!\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The postman left money on the counter (and after a moment\u2019s thought, the odd coins he\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI like my job,\u201d he asked himself. \u201cBut do I like it THAT much?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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\u2019s siding. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019ll sleep on it,\u201d he decided. And he did, though it took him some time and a pair of earplugs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ludlow County was a smear on the edge of the map made when a cartographer\u2019s attention slipped. It had a population of about two or three hundred, give or take a hundred.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It used to have a post office, but now it doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ludlow County is a smear on the edge of the map made when a cartographer\u2019s attention slipped. It has a population of about two or three hundred, give or take a hundred. It doesn\u2019t even have a post office. Someone wanted to change that. *** The postman rolled into town early in the morning after […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-short-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamieproctor.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamieproctor.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamieproctor.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamieproctor.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamieproctor.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2862"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jamieproctor.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2864,"href":"https:\/\/jamieproctor.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2862\/revisions\/2864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamieproctor.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamieproctor.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamieproctor.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\u201cThere are,\u201d said Harry, making unflinching eye contact with someone hypothetically standing three inches to the left of the postman. \u201cYou can\u2019t have room four. Don\u2019t ask about room four. There\u2019s no hidden money under room four. You got it? I\u2019m clean. You got it? I\u2019ve been in town for years. You got it? There\u2019s nothing suspicious going on. You got it? You got it? You got it?\u201d
\u201cYes?\u201d hedged the postman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n