He looked around. The university had not been scheduled to conclude their excavation until sometime in late August, but obviously they had decided to leave early. Billy’s first thought was that they had all taken a day off, gone to town or to the lake or to one of the streams, but it was clear that they had packed everything up, finished their work, and gone home. Nothing was left save a few stakes embedded in the ground and a scattering of torn envelopes on the dirt.

Billy frowned. Something was wrong here. There had been no litter left behind on the dig last summer. None at all. The professor’s motto had been “Pack it in, pack it out,” and he’d made sure that his students left the area as close as possible to the way they’d found it.

He was suddenly scared, and he realized that he was all alone out here, that the closest person to him was up at the top of the hill. It came over him instantly, this feeling of being isolated, cut off from everything and everyone, and he quickly turned his bike around…

And he saw the mailman.

The mailman was striding toward him across the dirt, his hair a fiery red against the green background. There was no mail sack on his back, no letters in his hand, and the fact that he had come here to do something other than deliver mail scared Billy more than anything else. He jumped on his bike, swung it around, and began to pedal.

But he did not see one of the excavation trenches, and his front tire slid sideways, spilling him onto the ground. His head connected with the hard dirt. He was stunned but not hurt, and he jumped to his feet. The mailman was standing right next to him, smiling.

“Billy,” the mailman said quietly, horrifyingly gently.

He wanted to run but was powerless to do so. All the will seemed to have been drained from his body. The forest around the archaeological site seemed heavy and impenetrably thick, like a tropical jungle.

The mailman put a hand on Billy’s shoulder. His touch was soft and tender, like a woman’s. “Come here,” he said.

He led Billy with unused force across the empty dig to a large pit at the far end of the clearing. Billy could not remember seeing the pit before, and he tensed as the two of them drew closer to it. He knew he didn’t want to see what the mailman wanted to show him.

“Look,” the mailman said, smiling.