'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.
So why did he feel so up, so alert, so aware?
Outside, the crickets stopped chirping and in the resulting silence he heard a low bass oscillation, a slight auditory disturbance that he knew would resolve itself into something familiar but that he now could not quite place.
The noise grew louder, approaching, and he realized that it was the sound of a car engine.
The sound of the mailman's car engine.
It wasn't possible. Yesterday the mailman had been too weak to move, almost too weak to stand, in nowhere-near-good-enough shape to drive a car. Even if he had successfully delivered a letter, or several letters, between then and now, it was impossible for him to have so suddenly improved.
But there was no mistaking the sound of the car. In the stillness of the night he heard its tires crunching gravel, heard the low purr as it idled at the foot of the drive.
The low purr.
The sound was not frightening to him, but it was compelling, and he sonically followed its approach.
The purr.
The alertness with which he'd awakened began to fade. He wanted to sit up in bed, to walk to the living room and peek put the front window to see just what was happening, but either his mind was too tired to issue the command or his leg muscles were too tired to follow it, and he remained in bed, listening to the purr.
The purr.
He realized that the low drone was acting as a somnolent, that its unchanging rhythm was hypnotizing him back into sleep, but he was unable to fight against it. His eyes began to close. He faded back into dreamland still hearing the low sound of the quiet engine.
He knew when he awoke that the mailman was gone. He knew without hearing, without seeing, without checking. It was a feeling, a subtle difference in the air, in the atmosphere, that he could not have explained if he'd had to. An oppressiveness was missing; and the feeling of lurking dread to which he had grown accustomed, which had awakened with him each morning, which had seemed after all this time to have become an integral part of his makeup, had disappeared.
He picked up the phone and called Mike. The policeman was not at home, but he was at the police station, and he answered immediately. 'Willis Police Department, Mike Trenton speaking.'
'Mike? This is Doug.'
'He's gone.'
Doug was silent for a moment, closing his eyes, feeling the relief wash over him. Confirmation. He was gone. 'I knew he would be,' Doug said.
'I noticed this morning as I drove in that his car was not in the post office parking lot, and I went in there withTegarden and Jeff. Nothing. The place was empty. He may be coming back, though --'
'He's not,' Doug said.
'We don't --'
'He's not.'
'You may be right,' Mike said slowly. 'We got a report this morning over the radio, from the DPS, that there was a single-vehicle accident out on Black Canyon toward Camp Verde. There're no details, but it could be him; the car was headed in the right direction. The vehicle and driver were so badly burned that they were unrecognizable, but we'll know soon enough. Even if we can't find dental records, an examination of the car should show if it was his make and model, and we can go on from there. We should know in a few days.'
'It doesn't matter,' Doug said.
'It doesn't matter? You don't seem too concerned about this.'
'He's gone. Can't you feel it? I don't know whether we drove him out or he accomplished what he wanted to accomplish or he died or whatever. But he's gone.
He's not here. He's not coming back.'
'I hope you're right.'
'I am right.'
'Wait a minute.' There were muffled voices on the other end of the line as Mike put his hand over the receiver. 'You still there?' Mike asked.
