I can’t leave it like that. Gotta put that panel back in…

  He crawled forward, moved his head and shoulders into the opening, and roved his light around. The area of space beneath the post office seemed vast but totally empty. No pipes, no wires, nothing he might expect. He didn’t even see the panel. It must’ve fallen below the opening.

  For whatever reason, and as hard as he was trying to forget about the illusion of his lost daughter, the vision’s strange words dripped back into his head for a sheer second:

  Behold the Messenger. The arrival of the Messenger is at hand. When Carlton leaned further into the opening, he saw the space wasn’t totally empty.

  There was something there. He reached forward to touch it.

  It looked like a box.

  CHAPTER TWO

  * * *

  (I)

  Marlene always had to have her morning coffee, a big one. Always black, no frills. So that’s what she got today, at the QWIK-STOP two blocks down from the Main Post Office.

  The only difference between today and any other day was this:

  Marlene didn’t work at the Main Post Office anymore. She worked at the West Branch office, which had only opened yesterday.

  She looked the same. Short, pretty, mocha-brown eyes, and buffed straight hair that could be called dark blond or light brunette, depending on the light. She was in excellent physical condition, after a decade with the post office; half of her delivery shift had been in a vehicle, but the other half was on foot, which left her legs toned and tan. Many an eye regularly glanced back at her official post office shorts, and at the light blue top which always seemed strained above a more-than-adequate bosom. In her mid-thirties now, Marlene looked as desirable as any woman in town a decade younger.

  “Marlene,” said Marvic, the gray-bearded proprietor of the QWIK-STOP. He was from the Balkans, and had the most interesting accent, which sounded part German and part Arabic. “Please do not take this the wrong way, but you do fine justice to those shorts.”

  Marlene smiled, nonchalant, as she pulled the plastic cut-out tab from her coffee lid. “Thanks, Marv. My husband tells me the same thing every morning but he has an easier way of saying it. He just tells me I’ve got a killer ass.”

  “I would definitely concur with that.”

  “Well, I better go, Marv. Work’s two blocks away, and I’m late.”

  “But wait,” the man interrupted. “I thought you mentioned yesterday that you no longer work at the Main Post Office.”

  “That’s right, Marv. I got reassigned to the West Branch.”

  “But that’s on the other side of town, isn’t it?”

  “Sure is. I just have something to drop off here first. Have a good day!” and then she left the store, knowing Marvic’s eyes were following her in a secluded delight. Marlene appreciated the compliment. It made her feel positive about herself. It made her feel complete.

  A few minutes later, she was parking in the front lot of the Main Post Office. She paused a moment in the sun, to look at the long and rather sterile brick building. West Branch looked so much nicer even though it was so much older. West Branch was quaint, its drab bricks painted a vibrant white, with pastel blue trim, and children’s artwork from the local elementary school adorning the front windows.

  But this place…

  This place looks like shit, Marlene thought in the rarest profanity. It wasn’t even her own voice in her head, but she wasn’t capable of comprehending that. It was something else.

  And the people inside…are shit.

  The voice darkened.

  It’s time, my lovely Marlene. It’s time to deliver a message, isn’t it?

  “Yeah,” Marlene replied to herself in a hushed voice.

  The motion-sensitive front doors parted; Marlene walked into cool air, so cool in fact, her nipples seemed to pucker. The sensation struck her with such intensity that she thought obliquely of her husband—the way he’d come up behind her by surprise, slip his arms around her, and tweak her nipples. Yes, yes, that’s exactly what it felt like—

  Someone standing right behind her. Right up against her. Pinching her nipples.

  But that was impossible. Even Marlene, in the strange daze that had struck her since yesterday when she’d gotten off her very first shift at the West Branch, knew that no one was standing right behind her.

  “Hi, Marlene!” greeted Emmy, her friend at the first teller window. The line of familiar customers looked over, too, and all smiled and waved. “How was your first day at the new office?”

  “Oh, it’s great. I love it.”

  “But I’ll bet you miss this place, don’t you? Just a little?”

  Marlene shot her friend the warmest smile. “Of course, and I miss working with you guys, too. A lot.”

  Really, really? she thought in that weird voice again, the voice that seemed like her own but with another voice hissing behind it.

  You don’t miss this place. You don’t miss these people.

  Marlene frowned to herself.

  And they won’t miss this world…

  “Well, we miss you, too,” Emmy went on, stamping a postmark onto a customer’s package. “But it’s all for the best. Opening the West Branch really takes a lot of the workload off of us. I still can’t believe how much Danelleton has grown in the last year.”

  “Yeah,” Marlene uttered.

  She was just standing there. Staring.

  “So what are you doing out our way?” Emmy asked.

  Marlene almost felt as though she were hovering. It took her several moments to answer: “Oh, I just…” Then a long pause.

  Emmy cast a concerned look past the register. “Marlene? Are you all right?”

  Now Marlene’s eyes felt hot, like coals punched into her eye sockets. Her words droned from her mouth. “I just stopped by to say hi.”

  Emmy was squinting over, and so were several customers in line.

  “Plus I needed to drop off this package.”

  “A package?” asked another teller. “For us?”

  “Yeah. Special delivery,” Marlene said.

  Marlene stood wavering in place, yet she felt quite secure in what she was about to do. That voice in her head, too—part hers, part someone else’s—hissed with confidence. I am the Messenger. Bring my message…

  Again, she felt as though someone were standing right behind her, surely a male figure, for she could still feel his incorporeal hands running up and down her sides and sweeping up over her breasts. Were someone to be looking closely, they’d be able to see it, the most minute indentations sliding up against the fabric of her work shirt.

  “Marlene, what is wrong with you?” Emmy said more sharply now. “And what’s this about a package? What, something of ours got misdelivered to your branch?”

  “No,” Marlene said, now swooning at the invisible touches. For the briefest moment, she cast an eye aside, at the long front window, and in it she glimpsed her reflection.

  She glimpsed someone else’s reflection, too.

  Someone standing directly behind her. A man, or something like a man. With his hands on her. The image was almost translucent, like an outline in distant fog. Then the nearly shapeless hands of that outline slid down Marlene’s arms, to her own hands. The figure began to move her hands down.

  “No,” she repeated. “Not really a package. It’s a message.”

  From her mailbag, Marlene withdrew an Ingram MAC-11 submachine gun. It was compact, weighed just over three pounds, and was scarcely larger than a typical pistol.

  Until she snapped in the high-capacity 32-round magazine. No one screamed at this point, they simply stared through a paralyzing hush.

  Marlene yanked back the charging handle with a metallic crack—

  “Behold the Messenger,” she said, and that’s when everyone in the lobby began to scream. She fired in controlled bursts, three 9mm rounds slammed into Emmy’s chest, then three more at the second teller, who’d been ducking but not quite in time. The bullets took off the top of his head and sent it across the room like a hairy Frisbee.

  Yes, she heard in her head. Yes. Yes.

  With the tellers dead, Marlene grinned and turned about. Her technique was tactically sound: she stood at the entrance door, the only exit for the remaining customers who were all screaming and backing up. Several tried to vault over the counter but when they did so, Marlene picked them off.

  Then she opened up on the crowd in the corner.

  She fired bullets as though she were spraying a garden hose. Her once pretty face was now twisted up like a grinning wooden mask. For some reason she didn’t hear the weapon’s ear-splitting reports, and as she swerved the spray of bullets into the crowd, their screams faded to a muffled silence.

  Gun smoke rose like tear gas. The smoke amplified the details of the mirage standing behind her; at one point she looked down and saw bony, yellow-skinned hands with long, manicured black nails wrapped around her own hands as she grasped the gun, the long triple-jointed yellow finger pulling her trigger finger back.

  Marlene emptied the clip into the mass of humans, then she smacked in another 32-rounder and emptied that. By the time she was done, the pile of collapsed post office customers looked as though they’d been run over by an aerating machine. Blood the size of a kiddie pool flowed out across the floor.

  Bring my message to them all…

  Marlene smacked in the next clip, then walked calmly around the counter and entered the office and processing areas.

  More staccato gunshots rang out, more gun smoke rising. Empty cartridges sprayed into the air in a golden arc. A few minutes later, the police charged in.

  (II)

  The blond newscaster looked more like one of those girls on an E-Channel beach show. The smart burgundy business dress didn’t work with the implanted breasts, platinum hair, and rich tan. Yet she held the microphone like a stoic, and spoke like one too, as ambulance and police lights flashed in the background, vehicles all parked askew in front of the main branch. “…an unimaginable tragedy today at the Danelleton Main Post Office on Rosamilia Avenue. Long-time employee Marlene Troy allegedly entered the office at approximately 9 a.m., withdrew an automatic weapon, and opened fire…”

  One after another, EMTs exited the building, bearing stretchers laden with black body bags. Trails formed of dots of blood tracked out to the lot, along with bloody footprints. The next shot showed the inside of the lobby, now that the bodies there had been extricated: more footprints and gurney marks running out of a pool of blood that stretched nearly to the front doors. It had to have been gallons of blood spilled there. Higher, on the back walls, more dots could be seen, not dots of blood but rip-stitch lines of bullet holes.

  “Authorities are mystified as to what might have caused the frenzied slaughter,” the newscaster continued. Next, the scene cut back to the front of the main branch, where more police hovered with clipboards and evidence-collection material. And in the foreground, still more EMTs loaded covered stretchers into ambulances. “The official death toll is twenty-six, no survivors of this hideous and inexplicable rampage.” To highlight bad taste, the camera homed in closer on one of the stretchers. By now, they’d run out of body bags and were left to resort to sheets. The sheet over the current body was almost completely saturated with blood, and when the stretcher was hoisted, about to be pushed into the ambulance, an arm flopped out from under the sheet, the top of the sleeve patched with the emblem of the U.S. Post Office.

  “The alleged assailant, Marlene Troy, is said to have opened fire first in the crowded lobby, trapping over a dozen residents and killing everyone in a matter of minutes. Then, Troy reloaded, swept the rest of the facility with gunfire, and killed the remaining occupants, all postal employees. Danelleton Police responded shortly thereafter and gunned Troy down in one of the loading bays. She was reported dead on arrival at South County General Hospital.”

  Jane Ryan bowed her head, finally looking away from the television screen. Her expression had gone from appalled to mystified. The brand-new office she sat in felt like an isolation chamber. She was unable to believe what was happening just a few miles away at the main branch. “Marlene was one of my best carriers,” she said. “We worked together for five years in Pasco County. She’s always been one of the most stable people I’ve known, not just a quality employee but a wonderful person.”

  Jane wiped a tear from her eye, then snapped off the TV with the remote. An older man—Buchanan, the county postal superintendent—sitting at the side of the desk, wanted to commiserate.

  “I know how you must feel, Jane,” he began. “When I got my first PM promotion in California, I had a carrier walk off his route and kill four people in a fast-food joint. Turns out he’d been cracking up for months over his wife leaving him, then he got into cocaine. Nobody knew. I guess sometimes people just snap. Doesn’t matter why. Stress, mental illness, drug and alcohol problems. No town is immune to it—it can happen anywhere.”

  The words didn’t allay her grief and confusion. Nothing could. It just didn’t make sense. Tragedies like this always happened somewhere else. All Jane could do was nod, repressing the last sobs.

  “Anyway, we’re all done here with the paperwork for now. If you need anything, let me know.”

  “Okay.”

  Buchanan was about to leave, to carry on with his own arm of the investigation, but he stopped just short of the door. “Oh, and there’s a cop out here who’d like to talk to you. One of the local ones. You feel up to talking to him? I’m sure you probably don’t, but you’re going to have to eventually.”

  Dread swept over her, but she forced herself to straighten up. She wiped her nose with a Kleenex, fixed her hair as best she could. “I’m fine. Go ahead and send him in.”

  Buchanan cast her a last consoling glance, then quietly left the office. A few seconds later, the door clicked back open, and a shadow crossed the floor.

  “Ms. Ryan?”

  The man Jane looked up at stood tall and lean, in dark slacks, white shirt, and a tie. He looked far more like an engineer or computer executive than a police officer; in fact the only hint of his actual profession was the police badge clipped to his belt. Jane guessed him to be in his early forties. Short sandy hair, perennial Florida tan. Something about his eyes—intense and bright-blue—seemed contrary: the hardline cop either confused or damaged.

  But damaged by what?

  “I’m Steve Higgins, chief of Danelleton Police,” he announced. “I know this is a bad time, Ms. Ryan, but I guess there never really is a good time for such things.”

  Jane shook his hand from behind her desk. “No, there isn’t.”

  “I’m sorry we have to meet under such unpleasant circumstances, but I need to ask you some questions, about Marlene Troy.”

  Simply hearing the name, in the context of this aftermath, shocked her. It prodded her that this was all real. An employee and a friend just went on a killing spree, she had to keep reminding herself. There’s just been a mass-murder in our town, and the killer was someone from MY post office…

  “Had Ms. Troy ever exhibited any…strange behavior in the past? Mood swings? Outbursts? Things like that?”

  “No, no. I was just telling my district supervisor—Marlene was an exemplary carrier as well as a very nice person.”

  “Any discrepancies with other employees?”

  “No. Everybody liked her.”

  “Any problems with the law that you know of? I mean, before working here? Her Florida record’s clean but are you aware of any infractions in the past? Anything she might’ve mentioned, even just in passing, say, from her teens, early adulthood, college? We’re particularly interested in any history of drug use or alcoholism.”

  Jane just shook her head no.

  “Do you know anything about her religious beliefs, Ms. Ryan?”

  Jane peered up at him. What a strange question, but come to think of it, she didn’t recall ever hearing Marlene mention any spiritual beliefs. Odder than the question, though, was the tone with which Steve had asked it. As though it were a loaded question of some kind. “I’m totally unaware of any of Marlene’s religious beliefs,” Jane finally answered after a bit more thought. “I can’t ever remember her saying anything about it. For all I know, she had no religious beliefs.”

  Steve looked puzzled, withdrawing a slip of paper from his pocket. He unfolded it, looked at it a moment, then passed it to Jane.

  “Does this…design mean anything to you, Ms. Ryan? Have you ever seen it in relation to anything that might have to do with Marlene Troy?”

  Jane gave the paper her own look of puzzlement now. It was a drawing, a sketch in black ink, crudely but deliberately formed, one clearly not from an artistic hand. It looked like a cup with a flanged edge, and hovering at the top of the cup was a single asterisk-like star. The drawing, in fact, seemed manic, desperate.

  “I don’t get it,” Jane said. “A sketch of a cup.”

  “Sorry, other way,” and he quickly took the paper, turned it around, and gave it back to her. “Not a cup, we don’t think…”

  No, Jane saw. The sketch inverted now, it was easier to guess what it was. “A bell?”

  “It would seem so.”

  “A bell with a star at the edge,” she observed. “How strange. There’s just something about it…”

  “Yes, there is. Hard to say what, but I know what you mean.”

  It’s just…creepy…

  “Is that design familiar to you in any way, Ms. Ryan?”

  Jane snapped out of a fog. “No, Chief Higgins. I’ve never seen anything like this before in my life. What is it?”

  Steve paused, almost as if he were hedging something. “It’s best that I just say this design pertains to the evidence on the scene.”

  “You found this at the Main Post Office?”

  “No, no, I mean secondary evidence. We found it at Marlene Troy’s house after the shooting.”