Chapter Fifteen

I

The high sun blazed over Jane's west branch post office, sitting in the middle of another perfect Florida day. Wild parrots cackled, not a cloud in the sky, hot but breezy. Customers came and went, careless and content. Everything was normal.

Jane felt anything but normal. Last night, Steve had spent the night, but they didn't make love again. It had been late, and the incident with the toad had knocked the rest of their time together off kilter. I don't know what I was thinking. What was I thinking? She simply felt bewildered, and sitting across from her was Sarah, who looked equally bewildered, but by something else.

"It's just so strange," Sarah said.

"Well, what you have to understand is that Martin is a very strange man. He's always been strange. Very antisocial, a loner. And now, obviously, a peeping tom," Jane observed.

"So where is he? What happened to him? Nobody's seen him since yesterday morning when you gave him his notice, and he still hasn't come back to get his car. It's been in the lot all night."

"Steve thinks-"she began, but then corrected herself. She wasn't ready to let her employees know that she was involved with the chief of police. "The police think he left town. There's a warrant out for his arrest. It's probably all for the best."

"Sure, but what if he didn't? What if he's still around town, hiding somewhere? Aren't you afraid he might come back to your house, drunk and mad as hell?"

It was a consideration, but one she pushed away. Steve had stepped up patrols on her street, and every cop in town was looking for Martin. She wasn't going to let the prospect bother her. "I know, Sarah, it's a little scary, but you let me worry about Martin. He's a harmless pervert, I'm sure. Let's just both get back to work now."

"Okay. See you later." Sarah walked out of the office, leaving Jane to her thoughts. A few minutes later, one of the front clerks stepped in, Doreen Fletcher, a young, slender brunette in her early twenties, who'd just started a few months ago.

"Jane, sorry to bother you, but there's a man here to see you."

A man? It must've been Steve. "Thanks, Doreen. Just tell him to come in. He knows he doesn't have to knock."

Doreen went back in the hall. "Ms. Ryan's right in there, sir. Just go on in."

"Thank you," came the reply.

That voice, Jane thought. It's definitely not Steve. But she was certain she'd heard the voice before.

Then a tall, imposing figure entered the office, and when Jane took one look, she knew. Long dark hair with some streaks of gray, trimmed beard, a dark and tidy but rather out-of-date suit.

Alexander Dhevic, Jane thought.

"Ms. Ryan? Jane Ryan?" he asked. "I apologize if this is inconvenient, but it's essential that I speak with you. My name is-"

"Come in, Professor Dhevic," Jane said.

II

Claudette Peterson heard the doorbell from the auxiliary speaker her husband had wired to the back deck. It was easy for him-he was a successful electrical contractor-and they were tired of missing visitors when they were lounging by the pool. Claudette never tanned well, her only disappointment with Florida; she was a flaming redhead with flawless white skin sprayed with freckles. But nature had graced her with a slim, voluptuous body that made bikinis irresistible for her-she simply used copious amounts of sunblock. She groaned in the lounge chair when the doorbell rang, put her margarita down, and went through the house to the door, skin shining from all that oil, her hair tied up in a scarf. Her nipples constricted when she passed from the outside heat to the inside air-conditioning.

"Yes?" she said, opening the door.

It was the mailman. Not the usual one; one she'd never seen.

"I have a telegram for you, Mrs. Peterson," the carrier said. "I need you to sign for it. Right there at the x"

"Oh, of course." A telegram? Claudette didn't think she'd ever received a telegram in her life-she didn't even know what they looked like. "I hope it's nothing serious," she said, concerned. Telegrams were usually bad news, weren't they? A death notification, a relative in a car accident, or some such crisis. Her husband was safely at work, an office job,and her parents had died years ago. She did have a few relatives spread out over the country, but she was close to none of them.

The mailman handed her a clipboard. "Just sign at the x, please."

When she took the clipboard, she frowned. The mailman was staring at her body, feeling her up with his beady eyes. Great, was her cynical thought. She was realistic, of course. She could have put a robe on before answering the door, or wrapped a towel around her. I guess I'm getting what I asked for. His stare made her distinctly uncomfortable but-if I don't like it, I shouldn't wear stuff like this around other people. Her peach-hued bikini couldn't even be called a thong, it was more g-string than anything, the cups of the bra minuscule, and the shiny polyester patch down below stretched so tightly across the triangle of her crotch, very few details of her sex were left unrevealed.

Goosebumps crawled up her back when she returned the clipboard. The mailman was staring directly at her crotch. He was grinning.

"I don't appreciate that," she said.

"Don't dress like a stripper if you don't want to be stared at by men." He couldn't have replied more rudely. "Christ, lady, your pussy looks like you painted it."

Claudette was revolted. The man was almost drooling! "You're not the regular mailman. What's your name? I'm reporting you."

"My name's Martin Parkins, and guess what, bitch? I don't even work for the post office any more. So go ahead and report me."

"Martin Parkins," she repeated. She wouldn't forget, and she was going to call the police, too. Was he impersonating a postal employee? That sounded like a federal offense. But if so...

What was this slip of paper in her hand?

"At least read your telegram before you report me," the man said.

Claudette looked at the paper. It was no telegram, it was just a sheet of Xerox paper on which had been scrawled: welcome to hell.

Then Claudette screamed, but only for a second. Martin had shoved her backward into the room and, almost instantly, from behind, a hand clamped over her mouth. Someone else had already gotten in the house! But the hand...

What in God's name? she thought.

There was something wrong with the hand. It wasn't normal. It stank, it was covered in slime, and the long thing fingers seemed to have more joints than a normal hand. Her eyes bulged as she was held in place by the second intruder, but then it occurred to her-in sheer horror-that several other men must be in the room, because she could feel more hands wrap around her from behind, molesting her. A half dozen more hands at least. Who were these people?

Shock was beginning to dim her vision; she noticed the mailman close the door and lock it, then he walked over and sat down on the couch. He sat intently at the edge of the cushion, staring raptry as Claudette squirmed in the multihanded embrace. "I'm at the end of the line, if you know what I mean," he said, and lit a cigarette. "Sloppy sevenths. I'll watch until it's my turn."

But Claudette was essentially not comprehending now. The room seemed darker than usual. Had the other men closed the drapes? But she also noted weird orange light flickering behind her. And what those awful hands were pinning her down to wasn't the plush heather-green living room carpet.

It felt like mud.

Shapes shifted above her. Long fingers wormed at her crotch and breasts, popping off the bra and tiny bottoms. Someone, or thing, was kissing her now; Claudette was so revolted she almost threw up when a tongue that seemed a foot long pushed through her pressed lips. When she bit the tongue, nothing happened. It was like biting leather. The only reaction from her attacker was a hot chuckle that flowed into her mouth, then the tongue went all the way down her throat until she could feel it wriggling in her stomach. Meanwhile, fingers invaded her sex, and her breasts were kneaded like raw baker's dough. When Claudette began to convulse from suffocation, the impossible black tongue retracted. She heaved in a breath just before she would've died.

"They're called spermatademons, ain't that a hoot? I mean, that's what they call them down there," the mailman rambled on. "I had to be on the other end of that, too, just like you, only with me, it was part of my punishment. Oh, I guess you don't know what I'm talking about, huh?" A bleak laugh. "Let me put it this way: it hurts to sit down. Those boys ain't particular."

One was on her now. The other pinned her shoulders down and spread her legs with hands that gripped like metal bands. Her vision began to clear; when she turned her face away, she saw-

What in God's name?

Claudette wasn't in her living room. She was in a cave whose hewn rock walls oozed and steamed. And she noticed at once the source of the weird flickering orange light. Torches topped by wads of pitch were flickering from various areas, their shafts stuck into rock. It looked medieval.

I'm in hell, she realized through the madness.

"It's this," the mailman said. He pulled something out of his bag that at first she thought was a club. "You got any idea what this is, Mrs. Peterson?"

Claudette could hardly answer. Huge fleshy things were entering her, thrusting in and out like pistons.

But she could hear, and she heard the mailman say this: "It's kind of like a key, I guess. It opens a door that they call a Rive. You're on the other side of that door right now."

Something was changing her. She should be horrified but she wasn't any longer. She was excited, she was eager for each new lover who climbed on top of her. The mailman was still holding that club-like object. It must've weighed twenty pounds: a stout bar of old metal that looked like iron, a ring at one end and a star-like ball at the other end.

"This is a bell striker, Mrs. Peterson," the mailman continued, "and believe me, it ain't from around here. Has special powers is what the Messenger told me. It opens that door I was telling you about. It opens that Rive."

Claudette wasn't really even hearing him anymore. She was climaxing in spastic quakes. Even when she saw the details of the impossible men who were taking her, she wasn't disgusted. Brownish veins could be seen through their semi-translucent white flesh. Primeval, huge-eyed with fang-filled slits for grins, heads misshapen like small boulders. And horns.

So her lovers weren't men at all.

She stole a peek out of the cave and could see more of the void beyond. It looked endless. She saw masses of naked people, some deformed, some missing limbs, others only retaining part of their former humanity after undergoing some process of hybridization. She could also see a lake not too far from the mouth of the cave. The lake was steaming, and it wasn't water that filled it, it looked like blood, bubbling. From the lake things that seemed to have beaks rose up and plodded into the mass of humans, tearing into them, ripping off strips of skin and pecking out eyes with gleeful abandon. Some were actually pulled into the lake, screaming as they were devoured by still more unspeakable things below the surface. All the while, the chasm echoed in a never-ending cacophony of moans, laughs, shrieks, and screams.

Claudette was pretty much insane by now, out of her mind in an erotic frenzy. She didn't care what happened to her. She wished she could be here always. She could see the mailman on the other side of the Rive. He put the bell striker back in his bag, then took off his clothes. Around Claudette, the pallid demons lay exhausted; she'd spent them all and only wanted more. She panted, muck-covered, inflamed, and looked up.

The mailman's naked body looked strange. His stomach was swollen and his skin was covered with blue and black blotches. "I'm dead," he said and kind of chuckled, "but the Messenger keeps me alive to do his business.  He has messages that need to be delivered, and I'm helping him. I'm being punished"-he held his hands out, to display his slowly rotting physique-"so this is what I get. I gotta earn back his respect, you know? Now I'm gonna take my turn and when I'm done, I'm gonna slit you open and clean you out like a Thanksgiving turkey. Nothing personal. It's just what I gotta do, okay?"

He began to walk forward, approaching the Rive. Claudette waited anxiously, squirming in anticipation. But then the mailman stopped and yelled, "Damn it!"

He was looking down at his bare groin. His penis, which was already half gone to rot, fell off. It sat curled on the carpet like a lost tidbit.

"So much for me having my turn. Ain't that just my luck? I'll tell ya, life, death, either one. They're both a kick in the ass."

The mailman went back to his bag and pulled out a large carving knife.