I live in a small town on an island off the coast of New Zealand, and I don’t think anybody except our own townspeople know we exist. Yes, New Zealand - the place our brother-country Australia says is full of sheepfuckers, the place America thinks is Australia, and the place the world thinks is next to Atlantis and opposite Narnia.
All of that is nonsense, of course, save for the fact we do actually have sheep fuckers. Not sheep fuckers as in sheep shaggers, I’m talking sheep fuckers as in sheep-looking fuckers.
Okay, I’ll cut the expletives out from now on, because what I am about to divulge is a serious life-or-death situation involving Maurice, the curly man-sheep that ate my friend’s arm. More importantly, I will cut the language because the Aussies started the swearing business first, for the record, and we’re better than that.
I currently reside in a harbor town in the South Island home to fewer than a thousand people, and I have spent most of my life here. It’s a small town that you have to reach by taking the highway from the central city through a dingy tunnel in a mountain. Once you’re out the other side, the fresh air that rolls off the bay is breathtaking.
Most of the houses here face the small bay in the middle; the buildings sit staggered in height from the mountainous ranges down to the seagull-squawking body of water beneath. I hope that I am not painting a picture of Greece at the moment, because it certainly isn’t that. A lot of the houses are severely weathered, and some are still wearing scars from the earthquake that shook them a decade earlier, something that wasn’t kind on cliffside homes. But despite this, Lyttle is where I call home. When you finally come out the mouth of the tunnel and stare into the crystalline blue below, when you finally take in that fresh air, when you finally witness her charm, it puts you in a trance. That’s why I’ve stayed.
A few years ago, though, the only tunnel in and out of the town collapsed.
To this day, it’s still closed. Everybody that once lived here still remains here. Everybody that had owned a boat by the port has taken off and never returned.
Some have tried to simply climb over the mountain and cascade down the back to the main city. Police had found their bodies scattered in the scorching afternoon sun between flower beds and daisies. Something is stopping people from leaving the town that way, too.
I’ve had a handful of people arrive at my doorstep asking me to deliver letters for them to the outside world. They told me they had tried to throw a message-in-a-bottle into the water, but something enormous always managed to swallow it up before it disappeared into the horizon.
In summary: We’re stuck, and everyone’s growing tired of one another. Especially tired of Jim. No-one really likes Jim.
Coincidentally, the date of the collapse of our tunnel was around the same time Maurice, the man-sheep, started being spotted around town. Oh, and Mrs. Landry’s cats turned translucent. Cool in theory, horrifying in person.
I’m beginning to think something locked down Lyttle on purpose.
Everyone knew me as Calfy Cole during the time after the tunnel collapsed, but before the strange occurrences began.
When the golden sun was still hanging low over the misty bay, my morning as the Lyttle postman began. Zigzagging around the houses that met the water was the easiest stage before I had to climb the roads to reach the letterboxes that were darted up the mountainside. That’s how the nickname came in – the job was tough on the legs, that’s for sure. But damn – were they toned, Calfy Cole.
Thomas (real name Tomothy, but let’s not get into that), is my scraggly black-haired and gawky postage-partner. I always start my route at the bottom of the town by the harbor with my bundle of letters and work up; he starts at the top of the hill and works the roads downward toward the bay. We usually meet around the halfway point outside Fritz’s pizza joint. However, that mid-morning, the same morning that I had seen the pant-wearing pig walking on two legs by the pier, Thomas was a no show.
I was of course already winded from my route, and hot-red with a clenched fist having to climb up the rest of the way to try find the lanky son-of-a-bitch.
“G’day Cole!” My stick for a partner was yelling at me from upon the grassy hilltop overlooking the city.
“Tom? The fuck?” I called back.
“Sunshine sure is lovely up top, man.” His figure was a thin silhouette against the backdrop of the lamp in the sky.
“What happens,” He threw a thumb over the back of his shoulder. “If I just hike down the track back to the city. Leave Lyttle.”
“Haven’t you heard? People don’t come back.”
“Ain’t that the point?” I couldn’t see his shadowed face, but knew he was smirking.
The wind blustered up my coat and took away some of the heat that the summer daylight had left on my skin.
“Just come down, it isn’t safe.”
He was shaking his head. “You know, maybe it isn’t. But it sure as shit beats living here, Cole. Something weird is going on, why hasn’t anybody come for us?”
Clouds began to roll over the sun, and I briefly caught a look of his gaunt face. “Melissa from the pizza place tells me every time she turns the TV on, static or no static, the room begins to feel heavy. Like a magnet is in the ground, pulling everything down two-fold. She told me it hurts to even walk when it’s on.” He lit a cigarette. “Oh, oh, and the letters Cole, the damn letters. If you haven’t noticed, the tunnel fucking collapsed! So, tell me, friend, where are all the goddamn letters coming from?”
I wanted to say something, in fact my lips may have moved to begin to form words, but deep down I knew he was right. How was there so much mail, anyway?
Tom tucked his smoke between his lips before he swiveled his side-bag to his hip. “Let’s find out, shall we?” He pulled out a singular, card-sized envelope from one pocket.
“Don’t, Tom. We’ll lose our work.”
“Ah,” he tore the paper sleeve open. “Listen to yourself, man.”
The contents were in his hands then; his eyes scanning the words on the paper within. He was mumbling quick, unformed words as he read.
“Thick muscle meat… Yep, yep.. Bones… Grind.. Yep.”
“What does it say?” I asked.
Tom slowly folded the letter back into the torn sleeve and deposited it back inside his mailbag.
He threw away his cigarette butt onto the unkept grass before he came cascading down the hill in a jog back to the road. “Yep,” he said, mid stride.
“Tom?” I asked to his back as he was already walking back down the hill without saying a word. All the spirit he had for leaving Lyttle had escaped him with whatever he read.
He turned around and clasped his hands together in a clap like a father about to give a Birds and the Bees talk. “Yep.” He shot me two finger guns. “You’re fucked.”
I leaned over to him and pulled the letter out from his mailbag. It slid easily out of the torn jacket.
The handwriting inside was messy and hard to make out; broken and misspelled words littered the page.
As it turns out, the letter was addressed to one MAURICE JENKINS, from an unreadable name. The sender’s address was 39 Aberfeldy Lane, which was near the bay. Whoever this envelope was from was sending a letter from the beginning of my route to the beginning of Tom’s route.
The content’s made my stomach swirl. Something from deep in my throat lurched acid with every waver of my eyes against the text.
To bluntly summarize the letter, Mister Jenkins here wants to eat me and grind my bones for soup. Our old friend the sender, let's call him Mister Scribblename, overheard people around town calling me Calfy Cole and thought I’d make a tender meal. They both mistakenly thought that I would hand-deliver the letter, and right now I’m probably supposed to be sliced into cubes in a boiling pot of beef stock.
Luckily for me, Tom is responsible for delivering the upper town mail. And luckily for him, he was suddenly inspired to run away from Lyttle.
I swallowed the ball in my throat and broke the silence. “This is bull, Tom.”
“You think, Cole?” He smiled. “You think? After everything we’ve seen?” He shook his head. “If you wanna’ find out, go ask him then!” His finger drifted to the farmhouse on the mound behind us.
The first letter on his list to deliver would be the highest property in the town. Maurice’s house.
“Come with me,” I said, my voice quiet and distant. I coughed. “Come with me.” More sternly, that time.
Tom and I trotted up the field through the wavering grass with our two mailbags bobbing in the wind.
The porch creaked as we stood outside under the shade. Bells hung free from the posts that held up the roofing, chiming as a gust brought under warm air from the scorching field.
“Tom,” I said. “They’re not opening up because we look like two Jehovah’s witnesses. Get away from me, dumbass.”
He made a noise through his teeth as he stepped down from the porch.
The thinly boarded plank-door of the farmhouse slowly peeled open. A man emerged from the shadowed lounge inside; his eyes looked almost golden as they reflected the sun and planted wheat from outside. His hair was white and curly, paled slightly blonde, showing some of his earlier years.
“Hello, chaps.” He spoke. “How can I help?”
Tom was peeking over my shoulder behind me. “Mister Jenkins?”
His eyes narrowed and flickered between us for a while.
“Yes, that’s me. What’s the trouble?”
I looked back at Tom. At that moment we weren’t exactly sure what it was we wanted to accomplish by talking to the man.
“It’s about your mail.” I was spitting nonsense on the fly. “We’re from the post office, it appears a few letters that were addressed to you were damaged in the mail.”
“Oh my,” Maurice was frowning. “How does such a thing happen? Please,” He gestured an arm in. “Do come in. The wind is quite loud, old ears you see.”
And so, we went inside. Help us, we went inside.
To us, Maurice was a perfectly normal old man until he served us some tea.
“I’m fine,” Tom and I said when he brought the pot over to us.
“Are you sure? It’s not ba-ad.”
Tom, the jumpy prick, almost jumped out of his seat. “Excuse me?”
“It’s quite a tasty leaf,” He nodded. “It’s not ba-“
I began to slide my chair out from under the table, too.
“It’s not ba-a”
Green slop ejected from the old man’s mouth onto the oak table as thick white locks began to spread across his skin like wildfire. Any peach-colored flesh was disappearing like a puddle on a summer afternoon, easily replaced by spreading tufts of curly hair.
We made for the door, but the handle didn’t twist open. My heart felt like it was going to give out.
The thing’s golden eyes behind us began to bloom wide, black, horizontal pupils - the globes of a sheep.
Tom was kicking the door to no avail, and the beast was at his heels.
I made a right for the hallway, tumbling over fallen chairs as I went. Tom saw where I was going and tried to follow me, but he was too late.
The snout of the thing clasped over his forearm like a metallic brace. Teeth once meant to chew grass dug into his flesh like it was wet mud, snapping and cracking his bones loudly and in one spurt of hot pain like fireworks inside of his skin.
With one quick hurl I threw the boiling tea over the beast’s eyes. It began screaming like a man, screaming like a wild dog.
But it was already too late for Tom.
His arm had come free from where it had once been, syrup strings and nerves. It was tossed onto the floor, alongside his mailbag, staining the letters he had yet to deliver.
The thing’s rotten bedroom smelled like decay. I tossed an elbow into the window, letting wind bellow throughout the dusty farmhouse. Tom and I managed to roll out and jog back to town.
I’m glad Tom lived that afternoon. For if he hadn’t, I would be alone. And worst of all, it would be a real bitch to deliver double the letters.
Those are about all the wild things that happened to us that afternoon.
I want to come back to tell a few more stories, though, for there are many more.
If I were to tell you of the oddities of this town, I wouldn’t know where to start. I heard from someone that the water here is beginning to freeze from the taps, no matter how warm it is out. Someone else told me they’ve seen a few men in spacesuits patrolling the hills at midnight with flashlights.
I don’t know why the tunnel is still blocked off after all this time. I still don’t know why Mrs. Landry’s cat is reportedly see-through. Hell, or why people in our town are turning into unrecognizable horrors.
For now, I need to deliver some mail,
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Credits
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