Bentley Little - The Mailman

"Okay," she said finally. "Ready."

"I don't want to go," Billy said.

"You have to go."

"Why?"

Tritia looked at her son. He was mature for his age, intelligent, strong, but he had been forced to absorb far too much the past two months, had been expected to deal with things that most adults never had to deal with. She felt a strange sadness settle over her as she looked at his weary face. She hadalwaw wanted Billy to remain a child as long as possible and not grow up too fast.

Childhood was a magical special time and could only be experienced once. Yet at the same time, she did not believe in sheltering children from reality. Like it or not, they eventually had to live in the real world, and they could adjust to that world better if they were adequately prepared to deal with it.

This summer, however, had not been the real world. The horrific events of the past two months would not prepare Billy for things to come. Nothing like this would ever come again.

She stared at him, saw the pleading in his tired eyes. Her tone of voice softened. "Okay," she said. "You don't have to go."

Billy smiled, relieved, although there seemed to be something else in his eyes, something lurking just beyond the obvious emotions mirrored in his face.

This had probably scarred him more than she would ever know. "Thanks," he said.

"But," she warned, "you have to stay in the house. Keep all the doors locked and don't let anyone inside until we get back. Understand?"

He nodded.

"Okay." She looked over at Doug and saw his slight smile of approval. It never hurt to be careful.

Billy got dressed and stood on the porch as his parents got in the car and backed up the drive. "Lock the door," his dad called.

"I will."

He went back into the house and locked the door. His eyes were drawn to the piece ofplyboard still covering the broken window. He hoped the guy was going to come and fix the window soon. The board helped television viewing in the afternoon, virtually eliminating the glare from the sun, but it also made the house seem far too dark.

He didn't like darkness.

He wasn't sure what he was going to do today after his parents got back.

He thought of calling the twins, but then decided he really didn't want to see them. What he really wanted was to do something with Lane, but he was afraid to call his old friend. With the mailman gone and everything over, Lane might be back to normal. But then again, he might not, and Billy wasn't brave enough to find out.

Right now, he had to go to the bathroom, and he walked through the kitchen to the hall. He went into the bathroom, already unbuckling his belt. He froze.

An envelope was perched on the edge of the sink.

Another lay atop the closed lid of the toilet.

He wanted to scream, but he knew no one would hear him. His cries would only alert whoever the mailman? -- was out there.

Or in here.

He backed into his parents' bedroom. He saw one sealed letter on the dresser, another on the bed.

The house seemed suddenly much scarier, much more frightening. He walked slowly, silently toward the front room. The board over the window cut off an awful lot of light, he noticed, throwing nearly half of the room into darkness, creating pools and boxes of shadow within which a figure could hide. He saw a trail of envelopes leading upstairs to the loft, to his bedroom.

He carefully picked up the phone next to the TV. It was dead.

He heard a rustling noise upstairs.

He had to get out of here. But where could he go? There were not many homes nearby. He certainly couldn't stay at the Nelsons'. He couldn't go to Lane's house.

The Fort.

Yes, The Fort. He could go to The Fort and wait there until his parents came home. He and Lane had purposely built the structure sturdily in order to withstand outside attack, and he would be able to hide safely in there.

As quietly as possible, he opened the front door and stepped out onto the porch. The boards creaked beneath his feet and he stood still, unmoving, listening for any reaction upstairs, ready to run at the slightest sound, but he heard nothing.

He had never realized before how noisy the porch really was, and it seemed like a squeaking creaking eternity before he reached the steps and hurried down.

Beneath his feet, the gravel crunched with thunderous volume, but he ignored it and ran as fast as he could down the path toward The Fort. He leapt over familiar rocks and logs, skirted known sticker bushes. With one leap and expert footwork, he was on top of the camouflaged structure's roof, and then he was dropping inside, closing and locking the trapdoor.

He lay panting on the floor for a moment, trying to catch his breath, listening for any sounds that he had been followed, but the only noise he heard was the obnoxious cawing of a blue jay in a far-off tree.

He was safe.

He stood up, praying that his parents would come home soon. Praying that when they did come, he would be able to hear the noise of their car. He listened again for foreign sounds, alien noises, but the woods were clean.

He looked around the Big Room. The Fort seemed different with Lane gone, abandoned. The other time he had come in here without Lane, it had felt strange, but it had still been _their_ Fort. Now he wasn't sure whose it was. The structure was in the green belt by his house, but the materials had come from Lane's father and they had done all the work in tandem. He walked slowly through the room like a stranger, touching objects which had once been familiar to him but from which he now felt impossibly distanced. Everything seemed weird, as though it had once been his but was his no longer.

He supposed this was what a house must feel like to people who got a divorce.

Every so often, he stopped in his tracks, unmoving, listening to hear if there were any sounds outside, but always there was nothing.

He walked into the HQ, looking down at the pile of magazines on the floor.

Even the _Playboys_ no longer seemed as though they belonged to him, although they did not seem as though they belonged to Lane either. They were caught in some timeless netherworld in-between, ownerless. He picked one up. The page opened to the spread of "Women in Uniform," and he saw the naked body of the female postal carrier.

"BillyAlbin ."

He stopped moving, holding his breath, trying not to make any sound. His heart was trip-hammering wildly.

"BillyAlbin ."

The mailman was just outside The Fort. He had tracked him somehow and had found him. Billy was too terrified to move. He tried to exhale silently, unable to hold his breath any longer, but the noise sounded like a hurricane in the silence. Outside, the feet stopped moving.

"Billy."

He did not move.

"Billy."

Now the voice came from the other side, although he had heard no scuffling feet, no rustling leaves, no sound of any kind.

"Billy."

The voice came again, a low insistent whispering. He wanted to scream, to cry out, but he dared not. The mailman obviously knew he was here, but Billy did not want to confirm his presence. Maybe if he pretended that he wasn't here, if he just laid low and waited it out, the mailman would go away.

"Billy."

No. He wasn't going to go away.

Billy stood stock-still, only his mind moving, his brain trying desperately to think of something he could do. There was only one entrance to The Fort, no way to get out without the mailman seeing him. He and Lane had often talked about making an escape hatch, an emergency exit, building an escape tunnel under the dirt, but they never had. Now, he considered his choices. Or his choice. He had only one, really. If he could make it up to the roof, through the trapdoor, without the mailman seeing or hearing him "Billy."

-- he could jump and haul ass to safety.