A wave of words passed through the crowd.
"He killed my Darla too!" David Adams called out. His voice was frightened, close to hysteria. "He promised her things! He lied about me and he made her . . . he made her . . ." David's voice trailed off.
"My business is ruined because of that son of a bitch!" Hunt James announced. "And so is Dr. Elliott's! He spread rumors about us and these assholes believed it!" He motioned toward the people surrounding him.
And now a lot of voices were speaking at once, people standing, yelling, screaming, competing for attention.
"-- knew my mother had a heart condition!"
"-- We've always paid our bills on time! Always!"
"-- never hurt an animal in my life!"
"-- illegal to send those kinds of things through the mail! Those videotapes! And those rubber --"
Doug held up his hands for silence. It took a few moments, but when the crowd quieted down, he continued. "We have to get him out of our town," he said.
"We have to exorcise him."
"Let him do the rope exercise!" someone called out.
Doug shook his head. "Lynching won't work."
In the front row of the bleachers right before him,Tril Allison, the owner of Allison's Lumber, stood up. He was not used to public speaking, and he shifted nervously from one foot to the other. Next to him on the bleachers sat his sons, Dennis and Tad, both of whom had been in Doug's English classes last semester.Tril cleared his throat. "What is the mailman?" he asked.
It was the question that had been on everyone's minds, if not everyone's lips, and Doug was about to respond when a shrill voice sounded off from somewhere in the upper portion of the bleachers.
"He's the devil!" An old woman stood up, a woman Doug did not recognize.
"Our only hope is prayer! Our only hope is to ask Jesus Christ for forgiveness and beg Him to protect us!"
There were low murmurs of frightened assent.
"He's not the devil!" Doug announced, raising his hands for quiet.
"Then, what is he?"Tril asked. "He certainlyain't human."
"No," Doug said, "he's not human. To be honest, I don't know what he is."
"He killed my daughter!" someone yelled.
"I don't know what he is!" Doug repeated, louder. "But I do know this: he can be stopped. We can stop him."
SmithTegarden , one of the police officers who had been on the ridge the other night, walked Out of the crowd and onto the gym floor. There was confidence in his step, but Doug could see that that was merely habit, reflex.
The Veteran cop was frightened. He stood in front of Doug. "We shot that bastard point-blank, and he didn't die," he said. "He fell off the ridge and walked away. How do you propose to stop him?"
. Doug took a deep breath. "We're going to starve him," he said. "We're going to cut off his mail."
"Cut off his male what?" someone yelled from the crowd, and there was a chorus of tension-relieving laughter.
Doug smiled. "We're going to stop sending or receiving any mail. Whatever he delivers, don't take it, don't pick it up. Let it sit in your mailboxes. The mail is his only real power. That's all he's ever really done to us." He thought of Billy, thought of Tritia , thought of Howard. "The mail is how he's gotten to us. It's how he's brought us to this point. It's his only weapon. If we can stop the mail, we can stop him."
Arguing broke out and Doug could tell immediately that his idea had not gone over well. He had been afraid of that. It sounded so stupid, so weak, so ineffectual, that it didn't seem as though it would do any good. He saw a couple of people heading for the door.
"Wait," Mike's voice cut authoritatively through the cacophony. He walked across the floor to stand next to Doug. "Hear him out."
The noise abated.
"I know it sounds idiotic," Doug continued. "But we have nothing to lose by trying. The police officer's right. Bullets won't stop him. I don't think he can be killed. But I've been watching him. There was a holiday on the Fourth of July. No mail was delivered. The next day he was thin and sick. This week, when he came back after disappearing, he was even thinner. He needs mail to survive.
That's where he gets his energy or his power or whatever it is. If we cut him off, if no one sends any mail or receives any mail, he will have nothing to do.
He will die."
"Maybe he won't die. Maybe he'll just leave," a woman said.
"Fine. At least we'll be rid of him."
"Then he'll come back."
"And we'll do it again. Or maybe by that time we will have found something else."
People were starting to talk again.
"We all have to do it. Every one of us. If even one person gives him mail, it may be enough to keep him alive." Doug swallowed. His voice cracked. "Look, he attacked my wife and my son. Or he tried to attack them. But he couldn't do anything. He couldn't touch them. He wanted to, he tried to, but in the end the only thing he could do was try to get them to read his mail. That's all he has.
That's his only power."
The sound of the crowd was different this time, louder, less argumentative, hopeful. They wanted to believe. Next to him, Tritia held his hand. She looked up at him and smiled. "No mail!" she yelled. "No mail!" She began to chant in a cheerleader cadence. "No mail! No mail! No mail! No mail!"
It was picked up by Mike and by some of the people in the front rows. Two of the school's real cheerleaders took up the cause, lending their considerable vocal talents to the chant, and from elsewhere in the audience the other cheerleaders followed suit.
"No mail! No mail! No mail! No mail!"
The sound grew, spread, and soon the entire gym was filled with the echoing reassuring sounds of theimpromtu cheer.
"No mail! No mail! No mail! No mail!"
Never before had Doug experienced such a sense of community, such a spirit of cooperative togetherness, such a willful optimism. For the first time, he really and truly believed that they might have a chance to put a stop to this nightmare. He grinned at Tritia , and she grinned back.
The lights in the gym flickered.
"Stay calm," Doug ordered. "Don't panic!" But his voice was lost in the cry of the crowd, in the thump of stamping feet.
A moment later the electricity went off for good.
But no one seemed to notice and the people of the town continued to chant.
"No mail! No mail! No mail! No mail!"
49
In the morning Doug awoke to see outside his window a winter wonderland.
The sight was beautiful. It had snowed during the night, and ground and porch, trees and bushes were all completely covered with pure glorious white.
Only . . .
Only the air was warm and humid, the sky cloudless, and the ivory blanket that covered the world outside seemed smoothly even, strangely symmetrical.
He opened the back door and looked down.
The ground was not covered with snow.
The ground was covered with envelopes.
He stood there stunned. The envelopes had been placed, facedown, end-to end over everything, their flat edges fitting perfectly against the side of the house in a straight line and continuing over the back porch, over the storage shed, over themanzanita bushes and the trees. The enormity of such an effort was overwhelming, and the fact that it had been completed in one night, directly outside his house while he had been sleeping undisturbed inside, was terrifying.
He was glad that Trish had spent the night at the hospital with Billy. He would not have wanted her to see this.
Gingerly, Doug bent down and picked up the envelope nearest the door, turning it over. It was addressed to him from his mother. He picked up the one next to it, addressed to him from his father. The one next to that was from his Aunt Lorraine.
He had the feeling that the mailman had grouped the envelopes in a specific order and that, if he made the effort to trace the pattern, he would find that the lineage of his life spread outward from that point in the return addresses of the letters.