"Giselle," Doug said, moving forward.
She moaned.
It was then that he saw on the white skin of her forehead several wavy lines of black ink protruding from a circle filled with writing.
The mark of cancellation.
From under her hairline he saw an even row of pasted stamps.
He turned on the mailman. "What is this?" he demanded. "What happened?
What the hell have you done to her?"
The mailman laughed again, the rasping sound as grating as that of fingernails scraping across a chalkboard. "Mail accident," he said. His voice was a low whisper, barely recognizable.
"You bastard," Doug breathed. He suddenly realized what the mailman had done. He had turned her into a package. A fucking package ready to be mailed.
The creature coughed. "The Postal Service cannot be held responsible for injuries occurring as a result of delivered mail. If she had been injured as a result of her work, she would have been covered under federal employment statutes. But she is a part-time worker injured in anonjob related accident. I
have helped her as much as I can. I have bandaged her wounds. I can do no more.
Now it is up to you." There was hunger in hisinsectile eyes. "If you do not take her to the hospital immediately, she will die. It may already be too late."
This time the young woman's moan was a word. "Help."
Doug stood unmoving, not knowing what to do. The seconds seemed like hours, endlessly long. He could almost hear them ticking off, one after the other. The room was still, silent, and so, he noticed, was the room out front, the town outside. Not a sound disturbed the perfect quiet. It was as if the whole world awaited his decision.
"Help me," Giselle pleaded. Her voice was weaker than her moaning. Fresh blood spread over her chin from her serrated lips.
"She will die unless you save her," the mailman whispered.
This was not something that could be decided quickly. This was not the sort of answer that could be decided byeeny-meeny-miney-moe , in which the outcome didn't matter. The outcome _did_ matter, and both the possibilities were wrong. He took a deep breath. If he had been a doctor, he might have been able to judge if recovery was possible or death inevitable, he might have been able to base his decision on knowledge and experience. But he knew nothing.
He needed time to figure this out. He needed time to ponder, analyze, study the situation.
But there was no time.
"Mr.Albin ," the mailman whispered.
"Help," Giselle pleaded.
Doug closed his eyes. Everything within him, his heart, his soul, all of those elements that made him human were telling him to get moving and take her to the hospital. But a stubborn core of icy resolve kept him from acting. If he helped Giselle, all would be lost. The mailman, obviously, was near death. This was merely a last gasp, a final attempt on his part to turn the tide. If Doug accepted this "mail," it might energize him enough that he might be able to really fight back. If mail's power was proportionate with its weight or value, Giselle was the equivalent of hundreds of checks and letters.
"Help me."
He could not let her die. She might die anyway, but he could not be responsible for her death. It would mean sacrificing all of the work, all of the effort performed by himself and everyone else in town; it could even mean that the mailman would be restored to full power, free to kill other people. But Doug could not stand idly by and watch Giselle die. He had to take her to the hospital. By refusing to condemn her to death, he might be condemning others to death. But he had to take that chance.
He took a step forward. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the mailman's skeletal arm trace a pattern in the air. He stopped, turning.
A tear rolled down Giselle's cheek, diverted by the paper cuts into increasingly smaller rivulets. "Mr.Albin ," she cried softly.
The mailman's twisted lips moved silently. His eyes wereclqsed .
"Don't let me die," Giselle pleaded.
Her voice sounded different than usual, Doug noticed, more rhythmic, less natural, and there was something about her words that seemed stiltedly formal, which did not ring true. He looked from Giselle to the mailman and back again.
The mailman's head moved to the right.
Giselle's head moved to the right.
He stood unmoving, unsure of what to do.
"You're the only one that can save me," Giselle pleaded, her voice fading.
Doug stiffened. "The only one _that_ can save me."
_That_.
Giselle would have said "who."
She was already dead. She had been dead even before he had stepped through the door. He looked closely into the young woman's face, saw now the slightly glassy sheen of her eyes, the vaguely translucent thickness of the tear that had coursed down her serrated cheek. She had died sometime earlier, maybe today, maybe yesterday, maybe the day before, and the mailman had kept her here to use as bait, knowing Doug would come eventually and knowing that he would not be able to let her die. The mailman had played her like a puppet, manipulating her limited facial expressions, using her voice to say his words, animating her dead form with whatever was left of his power.
"Nice try," Doug said coldly.
The mailman opened his eyes, glared. Their glances locked, and this time Doug did not look away. His gaze remained hard, even, unblinking. The mailman's stare was equally unwavering, but the strength was tentative, a front maintained at great cost. There was defeat behind the iron, fear behind the aggression, recognition that he had miscalculated. He had lost, and he knew that he had lost, and he knew that Doug knew he had lost.
"You're finished," Doug said.
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!"
Tegardenaimed 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 atTegarden .
"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.