When I first saw it, I thought I simply needed a cup of coffee.
I had been to a wedding the night before, my old school friend Angie was getting hitched, and to be honest, I hit the open bar a little too hard, especially when I had plans to finish a story early the next day. Though they are rarely read, the Habitsville Gazette articles don’t write themselves, and my boss would have my neck if he gets another ‘sorry I’m late’ e-mail from his least punctual small-town reporter, Sam Singer. That’s me.
So I went to the Sage Diner. I like the Sage because it’s a hidden gem, tucked between a laundromat and a tattoo parlor. The coffee machine in my apartment had been broken for a while now, and though I had ordered a new one, it had yet to be delivered—so getting my caffeine fix required an outside excursion.
I opened the door with a quaint little jingle, and took my usual seat in the back corner, away from the scattered elderly couples having brunch, past the yawning truckers having dinner, and across from the television so I could watch the local news.
I hate the local news in Habitsville. Not just because they don’t ever report on the strangeness of our small town, or because digital news is putting print media out of business—but because they’re so good. They’ve got this new field reporter, Meg Carlisle, and she puts my work to shame. So quick-witted, well-spoken, a real professional—nothing like me, still buzzed on a Sunday morning, trying to wave over a waitress for some coffee before I write my next piece.
Meg was on that day, reporting from Western Habitsville—apparently a huge sinkhole had opened up by the post office—and she was standing on the sidewalk, her forehead creased as she motioned to the disaster.
“—the sink hole has overtaken the eastern corner of the Habitsville post office parking lot now. Citizens are advised to stay clear of the area until government resources can be dispatched and damages can be assessed—”
Her voice came through, tinny and faint over the clinking of dishes and chatter of the diner, but my eyes were glued to the image on the screen. The sinkhole was enormous, and quite unusual. In fact, it might have been the first sinkhole we had in Habitsville in decades. I wondered what caused it, whether it was truly a natural disaster, or something more up my ally—but amongst all of this thinking, there was a distraction.
Past Meg Carlisle and her gesturing hands, behind the gaping sinkhole full of debris, there was a man, on the front sidewalk of the Habitsville Post Office.
It was hard to see his face, but he clearly wasn’t part of the police nor clean-up crew. I could. Just make out his shape—of medium size and build, standing perfectly still, looking in the direction of the news crew.
“Cup of joe for you today, Sam?”
I jumped slightly as Pam, my favorite waitress at the Sage Diner, spoke behind me. “You know me well, Pam,” I answered, laughing nervously. She smiled, and nodded, then looked to the TV.
“Can you believe that?” she said, as her grin fell and she shook her head. “Thank goodness no one was hurt.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, looking back to the screen. I could still see him, the shape of the man in the background. “They say nobody’s allowed on the premises. Do you think anybody’s noticed that guy?” I asked, motioning towards the man.
“What guy?, Pam asked, leaning forward and squinting.
“The man,” I answered pointing this time. “Right over Meg’s left shoulder, right in front of the post office on the other side of the hole. He’s even inside the caution tape.”
Pam furrowed her brows and peered into the screen for a few more seconds, then laughed. “You’re a strange one Singer. It’s too early in the morning to play jokes on me.” I opened my mouth to say that wasn’t the case, but Pam walked away to take the next table’s order.
I turned my attention back to the screen, but Meg Carlisle, the sinkhole, and the strange man within the caution tape were gone. Instead there was a commercial for laundry detergent.
Eventually, Pam brought me my coffee, and as the first few sips warmed me, I took out my little red notebook to start piecing together my next story for the paper. Though the caffeine made my head a little less foggy, I have to admit, I was fresh out of ideas. Habitsville had been quiet for about a month, and there wasn’t much material to work with. I could write about the sinkhole, but with the news covering it 24/7, I doubted my boss would want me to put in my two-cents—he tends not to trust me with the big stories.
I let my eyes drift away from the empty note page in front of me and back to the television. Meg Carlise had come back on and repeated much of the same facts about the sinkhole she had shared before; and then it was a commercial for a blood pressure medication—some picturesque, perfectly gray old man playing with his grandkids at the park, successfully staying alive to do so with the help of a little white pill.
I had my coffee cup halfway to my mouth when I saw it.
I blinked one, twice, three times, but the image wouldn’t go away—there, on the park bench behind the old guy and his grandkids frolicking in the grass, was the man.
It seemed impossible—it was impossible. And yet, there he was.
The man on the bench—the man by the sinkhole—was middle-aged, in a beige windbreaker and navy pants. He had close-cropped hair, sensible shoes, and an ordinary face. He had those big square glasses, the one’s from the 80’s that reflect so much light you can’t see the wearer’s eyes.
This much I had already been able to gather from seeing him within the caution tape on the live news. But what I hadn’t been able to see before, was what he was saying.
By the position of his head, I could tell that his gaze didn’t linger on the children, nor the old man on blood pressure medication. Instead, he stared directly into the camera. As the voiceover droned on about side effects and ‘asking your doctor is blah blah blah is right for you”, I could see the man’s mouth moving, though I could not hear his voice.
His lips twisting silently, I could have sworn the man was saying, “you.”
My spine prickled once I recognized the word, and a deep sense of dread crept its way into the very marrow of my bones. I should have felt silly. Like I said, the man was average looking—it was entirely likely that he merely shared a passing resemblance to the man on the sinkhole footage. And perhaps my eyes were playing tricks—maybe what I thought was ‘you’ was actually an attempt by a commercial extra to suppress a sneeze.
Realizing I had been holding my cup halfway to my open mouth for about forty-five seconds, I placed the ceramic back onto the saucer, and tried to shake myself out of whatever had taken hold of me. Perhaps I was still drunk from the night before.
Eventually, Pam came back and refilled my cup. I thanked her, then asked, as politely and normally as I could, “Can we possibly change the channel on the TV?”
She raised her eyebrows and rested the coffee pot on her hip. “Sure, hon’, if you want.” Then she fished into her apron and pulled out an ancient remote, stained with coffee and sticky with decades of maple syrup.
I was embarrassed when hand that accepted the remote shook, but Pam didn’t seem to notice that, just as she hadn’t noticed the odd specter inside the caution tape. I switched channels quickly—the TV was one of those old, chunky ones with antenna protruding from the top, so it didn’t pick up much. Eventually I settled on a sit-com from the early 90’s with some mundane, but harmless plot. A teenage girl doesn’t like her new stepmom. Perfect. “You’re not my real mom,” the girl was saying, crossing her arms.
I turned back to the page in front of me, the one that hadn’t yet been kissed by my pen. There was nothing, absolutely nothing to write about, whether my head was clear or not. I could try to put together something about the sinkhole—maybe my boss wouldn’t turn it down if I had it ready Monday morning, a fresh article about fresh news, placed on his desk first thing.
“You’re not my—real—mom.”
Something wasn’t right. That line—the girl had already said it.
“You’re not my—real”
“You’re not—real”
“You’re n—”
“You—”
“You—”
I looked up.
There was the teenager, arms still crossed, and the stepmom, botox-forehead just barely creased, standing in the middle of the living room. The girl was saying her line over and over as the TV skipped, and between the glitches of static as the tape rewound, I could see him.
There, sitting on the couch in a late 90’s living room, was the man.
My mind told me I was being ridiculous, but the surge of fear that instinctually raced through me told me otherwise. It was the same man. He wasn’t partaking in the argument, nor milling about like an extra. As the footage continued to skip and the girl’s mouth opened and closed, the man stared ahead, directly into the camera. Directly at me, sitting in the diner.
As the girl’s voice repeated itself, so too did the movement of the man’s lips. “You” he was mouthing, as the actresses voice echoed the same statement. “You, you, you.”
He continued like this, and I continued to watch. The remote felt cold and heavy in my sweating hand. Trembling, I tried to hit the power button, to shut the machine off entirely—but it wouldn’t work. I pressed it again, and again, and again, but whether it was stuck due to a lifetime of hash brown grease or something far more sinister, the television would not turn off.
I changed the channel, and for a blissful moment, the torturous repetition of that terrible word ceased, and I could breathe. It was a game show, one of those trivia ones. A math teacher from Ohio was trying to name a hit song from 2010, but he wasn’t coming up with anything.
“You can do it,” the host said with a plastic grin. The camera cut to the audience, a crowd of smiling, entertained people. I felt my shoulders relax, the pain in my chest lessen.
“You can do—”
The air stopped dead in my throat.
“You can—”
“You—"
“You—”
I lifted my gaze. Third row, sixth seat, between a Midwestern family of four and an old woman doing a crossword, was the man. His mouth was moving, gray grainy lips fixating on that same word as the same few frames replayed over, and over again.
Finally, with a deep pit of dread in my stomach still hot from my coffee, I did something incredibly odd, and immensely disturbing.
I raised my shaking hand, and slowly, pointed a finger towards my chest.
“Me?” I asked out loud.
At first, nothing happened.
Then, the man raised his own hand, and pointed at the camera.
“You” he mouthed again.
Then, the television changed its own channel. We were back to the local news, with Meg Carlisle talking about the sinkhole. The huge, cavernous thing was still in the background, framed by bright yellow tape.
And there, in the very back, was the man, just as I had seen him before.
Waiting.
It’s hard to explain why I went to the sink hole.
Perhaps it was a compulsory need to satiate my own curiosity, or maybe it was just plain masochism. Truthfully, I was a little afraid of what would happen if I didn’t show up, to that spot just outside of the Habitsville post office, where I knew he would be.
It was easy to get past the police, since they were used to me creeping around news spots with my little red notebook. I could see Meg Carlisle holding her microphone, speaking to the camera. I ducked around the side of the post office, and approached the sectioned off area.
Up close, the sink hole was terrifying.
It had that great, ancient feeling that humans often live their entire lives without experiencing—the same sensation of staring into the inky abyss of an underwater trench, or the center of a black hole sucking up asteroids, stars—entire worlds.
But the sight of the sink hole was nothing compared to seeing the man from the television, in the flesh.
But disturbingly enough, he wasn’t flesh—the man looked exactly the same as he had on the screen, not just in terms of his beige windbreaker and ambiguous expression, but in the physiological make-up of his body. He was… grainy. The edges of him were unclear, constantly moving, and as I stared, I could see one of the frames of his glasses glitch in and out of existence. I would have said he was some sort of hologram, but there were no projectors, no hidden devices, and the wood underneath him creaked as he shifted his weight on the bench.
We stared at each other for a moment, the TV man and I could feel each of the pretenses, that of the great sinkhole just in the corner of my eye, and of the man. Though he was much smaller than the gaping hole in the Earth, they had similar sensations—powerful, gravitational pulls, as though coaxing the minds of mortals to wander a bit closer to their edges.
And then, the man spoke. Or rather, he mouthed a word, but after hearing him borrow voices to say it so many times, I knew what it was.
“You—” he said silently, pointing a hand towards me.
I didn’t know what else to do but nod.
Then, he did something he had never done before.
He pointed away from himself, the tip of his grainy finger directing my eyes towards the very center of the sinkhole.
A surge of fear ripped through my body. “You want me to… what, to look at the sink hole?” The man kept pointing, his expression difficult to read, his face flat and expressionless. The more I looked, the more I could see there were no signs of maliciousness on his face, no threats—he just simply watched me, pointing.
I took a few more steps towards the sink hole to appease him. “Like this?”
I breathed in sharply as the man stood up. He took a few steps towards me and pointed again, as though trying to make his point clearer. “I don’t—I don’t want to—” I started to say, my feet shuffling only inches closer to the crevasses’ edge. I didn’t know what he wanted, or whether he wished me harm. I turned my head over to the news crew, to the shape of Meg Carlisle in the distance, but no one seemed to notice me, or the creature of static commanding me.
I looked back at the man, his face flat, with sparks of white glitching through on his cheek. A gust of wind came, seemingly up from the center of the sink hole, and it brushed against my skin, warm and earthy like animal’s breath. The air tussled the man’s hair, even blew open his windbreaker a bit—
And then, I saw what the T.V. man was wearing.
Underneath the beige windbreaker was a pale blue shirt, carefully pressed and buttoned to the chin. It was tucked into his navy pants, cinched with a belt. It all looked very neat, very official.
And there, right on the left shirt pocket, was a logo. A blue eagle, framed by gold stars—and words, between thick red and blue line: U.S. Mail.
He wasn’t a TV man at all.
He was a Mail Man.
I tore my eyes away from him and peered over the edge of the sink hole, towards where he was pointing. My heart was beating fast and hard in my chest, and my head swam with the sheer height of it, but even despite my anxiety, I could see it. There was something small, white, and square down in the pit of the sinkhole. It was smudged with dark, wet dirt, but even so, I could deduce what it was.
A package.
I looked from the Mail Man, to the package, then back. “Are—are you serious?” I asked, not bothering to hide the disbelief in my voice.
The entity said nothing, only continued his steadfast gesture.
I thought about leaving, in fact, I even took a step back, away from the sinkhole. But when I did, a new feeling of dread surged through me—the waviness around the man’s edges quickened, as though he was vibrating. It seemed as though his image stretched outwards, expanding, and though his face didn’t change, nor could I see the expression behind his glasses, I could guess what that meant—if I tried to leave, he was going to get angry.
“Okay, okay,” I said, putting my hands up in defeat. “I’m going.”
The descent into the sinkhole was treacherous and frightening. Gusts of humid wind kept coming up from the dark pit below, and my knuckles were white and aching from handing on to any handholds I could find as I stumbled farther and farther down.
Eventually, I made it down to the white box.
I looked up, to see the Mail Man, now pointing down at me, still vibrating slightly at the edges, as though he was growing impatient.
I picked up the box quickly, and half tucked it under my shirt in order to free up my hands for the climb back to the surface. I reached the top huffing and puffing, dirt caked under my fingernails—I blinked the sweat from my eyes, and I could see the image of the Mail Man in front of me, his arm finally down, no longer pointing.
I retrieved the package from the inside of my shirt, and catiously held it out to him.
“Here,” I said.
He didn’t say anything, but I saw his lips move. One last “you—”
And then, with a flash like a television turning off, the Mail Man collapsed in on himself, and blinked out of existence.
I sat down on the ground. I could still hear the voice of Meg Carlise, somewhere over my shoulder, describing for at least the 15th time about how the sinkhole came to be, where it was, and what was being done about it.
I used my dirt-stained shirt to brush the soil away from the label, to read the name and address that was printed there—though the street was smudged, I could read the name.
“Samuel Singer.”
I opened the box, right there, outside of the post office.
It was my new coffee maker.
But that wasn’t all—inside, on a brightly colored piece of paper, was a coupon. Five dollars off my next purchase for late delivery.
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