Chapter Four

I

Carlton awoke as he normally did-alone. He hated it after all these years, but by now he was used to it. In fact, the idea of not waking up alone seemed alien. The clock glowed 4:12 a.m., yet it felt as though he'd only been asleep for fifteen minutes. I wasn't drinking last night, was I? he asked himself. The inside of his mouth and his lips tasted awful. His eyes felt like they had sand in them. God, I feel like shit. But he hadn't been drinking, had he? He'd been cutting down at lot lately. Christ, if I was drinking last night, I'd remember...

Wouldn't I?

He lay back, muggy in the bed. The air-conditioning droned yet his skin was clammy, stale with sweat. Something nagged at his brain, the notion that something bad had happened, a subconscious terror that cruelly refused to reveal itself, like a hideous face behind a dark veil. Had he dreamed it?

He fought to remember, gritting his teeth. Then, in visual wafts, like smoke, it replayed in his mind, image by grueling image.

He'd dreamed about Marlene.

Oh, God. It was true. How could he feel more ashamed? And the dream itself?

Carlton felt ill.

If dreams could have a smell, this dream stank. It made him mentally recoil, just as someone would physically recoil after stepping in wormy road kill on a hundred-degree day. In the dream, he hadn't been making love to Marlene, he'd been fucking her. Using her body as a receptacle for pleasure, not a person, a thing to placate his sex drive. He also knew that he didn't care about Marlene at all in the dream-it didn't matter that he knew her, it didn't matter that they were friends. Carlton discarded all that; in fact, he even hated her in the dream, hated her for being more than simply a luscious physical body with a hole for his needs. The soulless lust and hatred made him think of serial killers who murder the women they raped after they'd had their orgasm. Marlene's hands were at his throat as he thrust into her, and his were on hers. They were strangling each other as they bucked, and when Carlton came and looked down at her-expecting her to be dead-she grinned up at him in lust as perverse as his own. "Do it again," she panted, "do it again. Do it real hard this time, do it to me till I pass out. You can even kill me if you want-I don't give a shit. Just do it to me again." It was awful, it was so wrong, and in the dream part of him knew this-and was repulsed-but it didn't matter. The sexual Mr. Hyde in him had been tapped and was unloading full force-on her. They did it again and again and again, just like that, spending themselves and bringing each other to near-death at the brink of each demented climax.

Carlton had chuckled after finishing. She'd been on top for the last one, and he simply shoved her off on to the dirt-flecked floor, his handprints throbbing on her throat. Had he actually killed her this time?

He didn't care. He'd had his fun.

An even more forbidden idea began to occur to him as she lay there unmoving, but then her puffed eyes opened to slits, and she frowned.

"You are one dull lay, Carlton, Jesus Christ," she griped, and then she was up in a huff, beads of sweat flying off her flushed skin. Stomping away, putting her postal uniform back on, grabbing her route gear. Carlton particularly noticed her carrier bag, and...

What appeared to be the wire-stock of a small machine-pistol sticking out of it.

"Now I'm gonna go have some real fun, you asshole," she said, and left.

The dream's fringes were throbbing, like the choke marks on her throat, pinkish-blue around the edges. That's when Carlton noticed where the demented foray had taken place: in the basement of the newly reopened west branch.

Awake now, head thumping as if hungover, he shivered at the nightmare in disgust. How could his mind create such a scenario? Marlene was a friend, a coworker, and I just dreamed about having sex with her. Hardcore sex, like nothing I've ever had or would ever want to have. She'd been married, had a son. She'd been a good person. Carlton had never felt so ashamed in his life. The shame tripled when he made this next observation: He was outrageously aroused.

What the hell is wrong with me?

A final image nagged him. It was something from the nightmare, but the nightmare had changed. It had changed places. The humid night beat down on him. He was standing outside, and could hear crickets. Mosquitoes buzzed around his head, some landing on his skin to taste his sweat and drink his blood. The moon shone behind him and in its light, when he looked down, he realized where he was.

A cemetery.

But not any cemetery. Winter-Damon Cemetery.

He realized what he was looking at.

Marlene's gravestone.

For a moment, just a single moment, he brought his hand to his erection in the most ultimate shame of all. But he stopped at the effort: His hand came away...gritty.

He jerked himself to one side, hugging the pillow, as if to turn away from all that disgust that his brain had produced. But...

The pillow felt gritty, too.

The awful taste in his mouth raged, and when he licked his lips...

They felt gritty.

Gritty as if with flecks of soil.

II

What a flippin' week, huh, Bobby? Bobby asked himself. He had a way of having conversations with himself, after so many years of first shift.  Who's on the mound for the Yanks tonight? Hmm, Bobby, I don't really know but I'd guess it's Mussina. Oh, yeah, I guess you're right. Like that. He was a little screwy. Bobby Weaver wasn't a carrier or anything. He was the maintenance supervisor for West Branch, more title than function, though. Pretty funny, huh, Bobby? You ain't kidding, it's funny. Yeah, like who the flip do we supervise when we're the only maintenance employee in the flippin' building!

You got that right, Bobby.

Bobby was typically the first employee in the building. Arrival time? 4:30 a.m. Bobby didn't mind. He made sure all the lights worked, prepped the sorting machines, cycled the circuits, that sort of thing. Not a hard job, but essential in its own way. The first drop-offs usually started coming in around five o'clock, so he had to get ready for that, too.

No biggie, right, Bobby? Naw, it's a walk in the park.

He whistled, going down his daily checklist. This building's unfamiliar look comforted him; until very recently he'd worked at the main branch, and nobody would ever forget what had happened there. Yeah, can ya believe that shit, Bobby? Flippin' broad MACHINE-GUNS the main branch! Yeah, but AFTER offing her hubby and kid! No, neither of them could believe that shit.

Bobby didn't know her, really, he'd just seen her coming in each morning to do her pre-sort. Never saw her when she got off because his shift'd be over by then. Seemed nice enough, though, huh, Bobby? Sure, and a looker too. Nice little apple-dumpling cart up front and not a bad bucket in back, either. Cut that shit out, Bobby! The broad's DEAD and you're rapping about her bod for chrissakes! Yeah, sorry...

Proof that it was a nutty world, though. A sure-fire, whacked-out flippin' world.

Bobby sighed. The last item on his checklist was always the kick in the tail. Come on, Bobby. Let's go reload ALL the flippin' stamp machines out front. Aw, Christ, I HATE doing that. There's TEN machines out there!

Tell me about it, Bobby.

Three-cent, thirty-seven-cent, Priority, Air, dollar stamps, ten packs, twenty packs, and hundred-stamp first-class rolls-all these slots had to be filled, the change removed, the changers topped off. Pretty tedious.

But there was nothing tedious about the rest of the day when Bobby waltzed into the vending lobby, keys in one hand, sack of packed stamps in the other, whistling Dixie.

He walked around the counters, passed the first rank of PO. boxes, then stopped cold.

Dropped his keys.

Dropped the stamps.

Then all the blood drained out of his head from the vision of horror that stared right back into his face.

A woman was standing there in the corner of the vending cove, her arms spread out as if in wait for Bobby. She was naked and very pale. Hair that was a blend of blond and brunette straggled to her shoulders. Bobby thought for sure that some nutty homeless woman must've gotten into the post office, or some drug addict or something like that. What else could explain this woman being here, and in this state? Naked, ragged, pale?

But then Bobby recognized the woman...

It was Marlene Troy, who'd been killed by police a few days ago, and who'd just been buried.

Bullet holes full of clotted blood pocked her torso. Dirt clods hung in her hair, while more grave dirt peppered her skin. The woman was dead but she was standing there on her own. Her eyes were open, mortician's glue unseated, their whites jaundiced by embalming fluid. Bobby knew it was impossible but for a split second it seemed as though she'd blinked.

And her smile glimmered like newly honed cutlery.

These were the details Bobby noticed in those first few seconds. Then he fainted and collapsed to the floor. What he hadn't noticed, though, was the bizarre design scrawled on the floor at Marlene's feet: something that looked like a bell.

After Bobby fainted, Marlene Troy's arms fell limp at her sides, then the cadaver collapsed right on top of Bobby.