The mailman hissed. Behind them, Giselle’s body slumped to the ground in a loud crinkle of paper as around the room letters, envelopes, bills, began swirling up from the floor as though caught in a dust devil. Doug half-expected the mail to attack him, to fly at his face, but all it did was circle impotently upward in the air.

The mailman did not even have enough power left to control a few small envelopes.

“It’s over,” Doug said.

The door flew open, Mike, Tegarden, and the others bursting in. “We couldn’t—” Mike began. He saw the swirling letters, saw Giselle’s body. “Jesus!”

Tegarden aimed his revolver instantly and fired at the mailman. The bullet passed harmlessly through him. The mailman laughed, a rasping chuckle that was supposed to be frightening but somehow was not.

Doug suddenly remembered that he was holding a weapon himself.

The mailman pulled an envelope from the air. He lurched forward on skeleton feet, the envelope in his outstretched claw. He smiled up at Tegarden. “For you,” he croaked.

The policeman shook his head in disgust.

The mailman’s smile faltered.

“Let’s get out of here.” Doug’s voice was calm and self-assured. “We’ll come back in two more days.” He returned the revolver to Mike.

Mike looked from Doug to the mailman, then back again, taking everything in. He nodded silently and motioned the others to leave.

“No!” the mailman rasped, screamed.

They ignored him as they walked over the broken glass out of the office.

55

Doug awoke fully alert, the dream he’d been experiencing disappearing instantly without leaving even a vestigial memory. At first he thought he must have been awakened by a noise—the telephone, a knock on the door, something falling over—but the air was still and silent, only the ever-present sound of the crickets outside disturbing the peaceful night air. He glanced at the clock, its blue letters glowing in the darkness. Three. Three o’clock. The dark hour of the soul. He had read that somewhere, “the dark hour of the soul.” Three in the morning was supposed to be the time when the human body is physically closest to death, when all functions are at their lowest ebb.

So why did he feel so up, so alert, so aware?

Outside, the crickets stopped chirping and in the resulting silence he heard a low bass oscillation, a slight auditory disturbance that he knew would resolve itself into something familiar but that he now could not quite place. The noise grew louder, approaching, and he realized that it was the sound of a car engine.

The sound of the mailman’s car engine.