The ridge was not entirely flat, he saw now. It appeared so from a car, but walking, he noticed that a slight rise continued imperceptibly forward, the grade just enough to shield the center of the ridge from view.

The murmuring grew slightly louder.

Doug continued walking. His keys and change were jingling in his pants and he put his hand in his pocket to muffle the noise. The road curved slightly, the land leveling off, and he came to an abrupt stop, his heart thumping loudly in his chest. The mailman was about half a mile directly ahead of him, off the road, in the middle of the field. Even from here, he could see the lithe thin figure dancing madly amid the rocks and boulders, arms flailing with wild abandonment. He knew who it was without moving closer, but he wanted to be near enough to see everything, and he left the road, ducking through the grass, creeping forward, the fear a palpable presence in his body. Behind him, the moon was rising, full and bright, throwing the top of the ridge into phosphorescent relief, casting a soft light on the entire scene.

He moved silently forward. The sounds grew louder. The mailman was chanting something. At first it sounded like a foreign language, so strange and alien were its rhythms and cadences. But, listening closer as he approached, Doug realized that the words of the chant were English.

“Neither rain nor snow nor sleet nor hail…”

He was chanting the motto of the Postal Service.

The skin on the back of Doug’s neck prickled, peach fuzz standing on end. He crept behind a large irregularly shaped boulder and peeked out from behind its bulk. The mailman was leaping in the air, twirling joyfully, not following any steps or preplanned moves, dancing wildly and impulsively. This close, Doug could see that the mailman was dressed in his full postal uniform: shoes and pants, shirt and cap. Brass buttons glinted in the moonlight. Blue-blackness was reflected off the spit-shined shoes.

Doug’s mouth was dry and cottony, his heart pounding so loudly that he was sure the mailman would be able to hear it. He had known there was something odd, something strange, something evil about the mailman. But he realized now that he was in far over his head. The mailman’s dance was spontaneous and celebratory and could very well have had something to do with witchcraft or satanism, but he had an intuitive feeling that the dance was related to something much worse, something much more primal and unfathomable, something he did not and perhaps could not understand.

The mailman stopped chanting and grinned crazily, perfect teeth seeming to glow in the moonlight, staring raptly up at the sky as his legs moved in impossible steps, his arms mirroring each foot movement. He began to chant again. The Postal Service motto.