Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. I set the package on the
blackened steps, felt suit flake on my palm, and the
scanner chimee delivery confirmed to an address burned to foundation
three years earlier. Suspicion robe with me the whole way
back to the van. I could not make the scanner lie.
I tasted metal on my tongue and kept my hands
steady while the little screen showed a green check and
the same street number that mashed a pile of charred
beams two yards away. I had been a delivery driver
on rural Route forty seven for five years. I knew
which mail boxes leaned, which potholes cracked my robes, which
porches still had boards you could step on without thinking.
That afternoon, I was doing the usual loop east lot.
The general store dropped, then the burned row, pass the tracks.
I pulled off at the dirt turn up because the
piece me too, because the label and the parcel said
a full name and an address, and because the scanner
confirmed it. That is the concrete problem. My company told
me were to stop. My scanner told me were market delivered?
And the place on the ground was only ash and
a foundation ring. I washed a smear of suit from
my knuckle against my shirt and called Maggie coll on
Channel three. Maggie, this one is, I said, She cut
me off marks. Your route ends at the tracks. Stop
messing with burned lots. Maggie's voice was sure to change
the record and move on. It'scanned a confirmed delivery. I
kept my voice flat because arguing inter radio was how
you lost time on a route. Change it. Even she
sounded like she cared about the run sheet more than
whatever I was seeing. The argument snapped the first shift
in me suspision easten to doubt. I doubted the device,
then doubted the company's priorities. My hand shook as I
slid back into the van. The smoke smell stayed, and
I nose like a person who refuses to leave a room.
At the general store. Later, a trout shehareff Dale Hargrove.
He was leaning on the counter, fingering a battered pen,
the store lights buzzing above the coal displays. I said, Dale,
the house at sixty to West Hollow, It's just a foundation.
I put the words as simple facts because I wanted
him to give me a simple answer. Sheriff Hargo did
not look at me the way a man who believed
me would. He gave a short, practice half smile and said,
even you and I both know nobody loves pass those tracks.
We done to do business there. He kept his voice
even stop making trouble. Pew that I asked, because their
distance felt like a shove. The counter rode it down.
Burn lots are closed, Move on. The store keeper stack
bred behind him without meeting my eyes. Dare turned toward irritation.
I left with a wet spot in my throat and
nullis of unasked questions. Back in the vain, driving between foundations,
the scanner blinked again. A phantom green check appeared on
my hand held, then a delivery lock that had not
been there three minutes ago. My GPS snapped to a
point in an empty field, as though a house had
been there the whole time. I thumbed the unit, trying
to force a refresh. The GPS recalculated and centered on
a blank patch of dirt. Lewis order get cold on
my truck line, laughing at first, he delivering ghost towns
now ivan. His laugh at the warm edge of someone
who worked nights in trade of rubing friars. Very funny,
I said. Louis's voice changed mid jerk. It's douted, then thin,
ivan are you? And then his voice went tight, and
the space a sound opened like a cut wire. Louise,
I said, I could hear kloff, rustling, like someone moving
fast against the microphone. The transmission broke into static. When
his voice came back, it was breathy and frightened. Dawnty,
go back there, dawnty. The sentence dissolved into a sharp, high,
pinioned and silence. My chest tightened. That was the first
real shift fear. I put the van in pack and
turned my face into my hands. The radio was a
cheap thing. Colls clipped all the time, but Louise did
not joke. His voice had the small hair raised at
the end of a sentence. When the man tells you
he has seen something he could not explain, curiosity pushed
me past caution. I had a return parcel in the
back of the van, the kind you keep in the
cab until you can drop it at the hub for processing.
I opened it on the hood under the van light. Inside,
folded against a layer of brittle packing, lay an envelope
stamp with the governments that had been carefully redacted with
black ink. The paper felt like it had been partly
scorched and soaked at once. Tucked under the sail was
a photograph half burned along one edge. The image was
of the exact foundation I'd stood on that afternoon. The
picture showed the foundation at dawn, with a single parcel
sitting on the top step and prints in the ass
f leading up to it. Some one had taken a
picture of what I had just done. The prince looked
fresh in the photograph. I ran a thumb across the
charred corner and felt grit under my nail. I texted
my dear photo of the envelope. Her reply arrived as
a single line stopped deliver as past the tracks file
a routine report. No question, no curiosity, just directive. I
drove back to the foundation, because leaving things unresolved is
not in my bones. I set the package again, this
time on a patch of clay of concrete where a
porch had once been. The van idled with the engine
a slow hum. My scanner sat on the passenger seat
like a small black animal. I reached for the parcel
and felt something meat my hand. I felt pressure, like
a second grip where no hand should be. It was
cold and damp, and it matched the angle of my
fingers exactly. My fingers closed round a flesh that wasn't
he flesh. I pulled back, and a dock shape shifted
where the doorway would have been. The air did not move,
no wind push, but the ash along the foundation as stirred,
as if something heavy had stepped through it. I said,
who is there? Because speaking can force something into naming.
The sound of my own voice apprised me. It came
out quieter than I intended. Nothing answered. Then a shadow
rose where a wall once stood. It took the shape
of a shoulder, then an arm, then the suggestion of
a head. The form did not of color, at a
depth of scorched wood and the density of old smoke.
When I stepped into the space, it made the soles
of my boots tremble. I tried to pull my hand free,
and the shape tightened its hold. I felt pressure on
my palm and the brief scent a paper burning. My
right arm jerked in the ribbon of pain slid from
my wrist to my elbow. I hit the ground, and
my breath came sharp. The struggle was all physical. I
shouted Maggie into the radio, Maggie, help. She did not answer.
I flailed, reached for the keys, out the shape pressure
again and managed to kick it empty air where a
step would be. The shadow answered with a shove that
did not hout like a bruise. It hurt like the
sudden failure of a joint. Then clear as a bell,
I heard Louise in the line, but not from my channel.
He was a faint voice through the static, saying dun
tee in breaking off. The sound came from the direction
of the track, so I had not called him. I
scrambled to my feet and staggered towards the van. The
shadow did not follow me. It stood at the threshold
of nothing and watched. I locked the van door and
threw the engine into gear. My hands were shaking so
badly that I could barely stair. I drove until the
road flattened and the street lights began, and only then
did I let myself breathe. I called Maggie and Sheriff Hago,
both numbers lowered in my phone. Maggie answered first, even
what did you do? She said, I delivered it. The
scanner confirmed it. Something touched me on the doorstep. I
forced each word out. Don t make trouble, file report,
go to the office tomorrow. Her voice was business like,
but I heard a tight edge I had not noticed before.
Do not put yourself in those places again. I called
Sheriff Hargrove next. He answered, with less polish even YE
need to stop poking at burn things. Are you hurt?
I was grabbed? Why what? His voice shortened. Ye know
what people say around here, Ye know the rules. He
did not say what people said. He did not have
to implication pressed like a hand at my shoulder. Ye
tell me what to write on the report, then, Dale,
tell me how you wanted to read. I tried to
keep the question practical. Write there you thought, YE saw
movement and you laugh. File it as an animal disturbance.
We'll lock it and close it. He used the pronoun
me the same way a man uses a shovel to
bury bad things. That exchange forced an action on me.
Thout bent toward defiance. I did not trust them to
file honestly. I parked under the sodium orange light of
a highe lamp and to cut the envelope again, the
photographs burnt edge crunch between my fingers. Under the suit,
I found a stamped designation, the same reductive government mark
printed in the envelope. On the back of the photograph,
some one had written and granting a sequence of numbers
in a single word keep out. I typed the numbers
into my scanner's free text, filled and saved it. I
emailed the photograph to myself into a private account I
kept for oddities. I stabled the envelope to the inside
of the van's glove box with a receipt and a note,
do not discard. The van smelled of coffee and burnt insulation.
My hands left dark smudges on the paper. This was
a small, concrete act. It was also a defiance. I
wanted a record that I had seen what I had seen.
The next morning, I went to the depot to file
the report. Like Maggie, but I wrote more than she instructed.
I typed the sequence of events scanno locks, the envelope, description,
the burned photograph, and the exact word Sheriff Harger re
used on the call. I folded three copies and left
one in my locker, put one in a sealed envelope
addressed to the office and kept one in my pocket.
I slid the third under the deeper manager's door with
my name on it. I did the work because I
needed some one else to touch a document, and was
borne at noon. Now received an automated reply. It received
then a second message, the body of which had entire
lines blocked out with a digital bar at the bottom
of HER's instruction cease deliverers passed the tracks. Failure to
comply will be addressed administratively. No signature. The black bars
made the message feel like a hand with kuffingos. I
forwarded it to myself and printed it. The paper felt
colder than any print out should. There was a meeting
in the break room that afternoon. Maggie sat at the
table with her coffee cup, eyes on the stain ring.
She did not look surprised to see me. You didn't
listen to me yesterday, she said. I did what a
driver does. I delivered a package. My reply was short
cause the room felt small, even through ronandes at the tracks.
The company policy is clear. If you keep doing this,
we will have to reassign you. She spoke like a supervisor,
not like a person she might name the way someone
reads an eye to my awful list. Sheriff Hargrove came
in behind her. Even he said, more direct than Maggie.
We appreciate your work, but there are legal liabilities with
burn sights. Leave them alone. I remember the meeting as
an argument made of short sentence. You need a change
the record, I said, Maggie, me that you should follow procedure.
Maggie followed procedure or face consequences. The exchange became a
small private battle. Three quick lines pushed and checked each other.
Dale's tone changed when he stared at the envelope. I held,
where did you get that? He asked, Found it in
a return package? I said, Dale stores it. Leave it
on the counter, don't touch it. He spoke like a
man handing over a live wire. I left the envelope
on the counter. When I turned to go, lou blocked
the doorway. His face was ashen in his hands were empty. Louis,
I said. He looked at me straight. Don't go back
by the tracks, even not alone, not again. His voice
had the flatness of someone repeating a warning he had
already failed to follow. Why won't you say more? I
asked Louis. Eyes moved to the window, because there are
people who listened, even because some things have kept on purpose.
He closed his mouth as if he had been about
to say a name, and swallowed it. That was the
second emotional shift. Fia moved into wary caution. I left
the depot with the envelope heavy in my chest. That evening,
I went back one last time before dark. I told
myself I would do at once, make one controlled approached,
then stop. The photograph sat on the passenger seat, the
scanner rested beside it. I wore the Fray delivery jacket
with the crooked brass nameplate. My keys made a steady
clink in my pocket. At the foundation, I set the
parcel again. This time I poused with my hand on
the top edge. My fingers rested on cold concrete and grit.
The atmosphere had weighed only because I expected something to happen.
I placed the package down and stepped back. The scanner chimed,
the green check appeared, The JEP sticked. Then the space
in front of me moved like a sliding curtain of
darker ash. Something filled the doorway and took a half
step onto the cleared concrete. It had a torso the
suggestion of hands. It did not have eyes. I could
not see a face. I felt a presence. Instead. It
inhaled in a way that made the hair on my
arms prickle. I reached out because I was compelled to touch,
proof of what I had been told not to touch. My
fingers met dry, scorched resistance, and then pressure. It matched
my movement exactly the object if object it was mirrored me.
My right hand shoved against it and felt the echo
of my own strength returned. I cried out, and the
sound was swallowed by the trees. No one answered my shout.
The van's hazard lights flashed in the distance like a warning.
I yanked my arm free and stumbled backward. The thing
did not pursue me. Its dead sideways and stood where
a door where shadows should be, and watched me like
a man watching another at a distance. I drove then
without looking back. When I reached the highway, I pulled
on to the shoulder and opened the envelope one more time. Inside,
beneath the burnt photograph, I found a single sheet where
a stamp line of red ink and a REDATA signature
where the signature should have named a person a black
bar rested under the black bar, A tight fline reed.
The sight is monitored, do not interfere. I folded the sheet,
slid it into my jacket, and drove home with my
knuckles wide in the wheel. I parked in my driveway
and left the engine running. I did not want to
walk into my kitchen yet. I wanted the van as
a barrier between me and whatever bureaucratic hand had stamped
a warning into official paper. Late that night, I sat
at my kitchen table with the scan of logs printed
in front of me and the envelope on the counter.
I tied a formal incident report and attached scans of
the photograph and the redacted sheet. I hit send and
watched the progress bark crawl. Then my inbox chimed. I
aught made a reply with blocks of black where a
NAE might be in a final line that read directive
sea silvers beyond track boundary file clothes pending review. I
folded the printed reply and slid it under the stack
of unpaid bills. I left the light on in the
kitchen because I could not force myself to go dark.
I slept in short bursts with the radio tune to static.
When the sun rose, I packed the envelope in a box,
labeled it Rode forty seven Incident, and placed it in
the back of the van, where the returned parcels waited.
The photograph peered at me with as burned edge. The
smell of smoke clung to my jacket. I drove to
the depot with a box in place, and parked under
the same sodium lamb. I did what I had promised
myself I would do, filed the concrete events, keep copies,
and refused the easy erasure. Maggie stood at the deepo
doors I came in. She did not stop me. Sheriff
Hargrove watched from the general store window across the row.
Louis kept his gaze down. Each of them had made
a choice that pushed me one way or another. Maggie
to enforce silence, Dale to stay me away with authority,
Louis to warm without explanation. Their actions had changed the
direction of the story. I left the box in the
manager's office with my name in the corner. I walked
back to the van, closed the door, and put the
key in the ignition. Before I started the engine. I
looked at the burned photograph one last time. The prints
in the picture were not mine, not exactly. They matched
a size and gait I could not name. They led
away from the foundation toward the tracks. I backed the
van out, set my hands on the wheel, and drove
away from the burn lot. The scanner was quiet on
the passenger seat. My chestage from the grit the shadow
had taken on my arm. The envelope sat in a
glove box, like a thing with instructions. My choice was
simple and immediate. Follow the directive and stop, or keep
logging what my scanner said and see who answered. I
drove toward the deeper because deciding to hand the box
to other people felt like the only rational thing left.
When I pulled into the lot, the manager opened the
office in a slow motion that looked like his way
of saying he had been waiting. He took the box,
looked at the sealed envelope, and folded his hands. He
did not ask questions, he did not need to. He
slid a pure white form across the desk and said,
fill this out. We'll all forward it. He used the
same bland civility any mine uses when he wants trouble
to fit into a folder. I filled out the form
in short, plain sentences. I wrote who I was, what
I had done, and what had happened at the foundation.
I included the scanner logs, the photograph, and the redacted sheet.
My handwriting was tight. Each line felt like a testimony.
The man who just stamped the form slid it into
a folder and then placed the stamp folder into a
lock drawer. He turned the key and handed me back
a re seat number. We'll let you know, he said.
On the drive home, the sun was low and the
trees threw long, straight shadows across the two lane My
throat was dry, my right form throb where the shadow
had gripped. I tapped the steering wheel in a rhythm
I had used to count myles for years. That night,
an automated message arrived at my work email. The body
was mostly blocked out, but the end, a short line remained.
Do not deliver past the tracks. This file is discontinued.
I closed my laptop. I folded my hands on the
kitchen table and listened to the quiet hum of a refrigerator.
The envelope sat in the glove box of my Vanka thing,
waiting for some one else to open it. I would
keep a copy of the photograph. I would keep the
scandal locks. I would keep my receipts in the note
with the type numbers. I had done what I could do.
I had recorded, filed, and handed the physical evidence to
other people. The reactions had pushed the story into a
place of closed forms and reducted replies. The last action
of the chapter is small and concrete. I take the
receipt with the file number to the inside of my
delivery jacket and slid the jacket into the locker. I
locked it. I walked out into the dusk and paused
at the deepodor. I looked past the tracks toward the
chow of foundations, and then turned my face away. I
drove home, and later that night, as I folded the
packet and placed it in the back of a kitchen chair,
my phone buzz with an email notification. I opened it, Bodie.
It was a single line, directly reiterated cease wrotes beyond
the railway boundary. I folded the email, closed, put the
phone face down, and left the kitchen light on. The
envelope remained in the glove box. The file was stumped closed,
yet the photograph of the parcel on scorch steps sat
in my memory like a detail threaded through a circuit.
The chapter ends with me placing a printed copy of
the redacted reply under the stack of bills and hearing
through the thin walls of the house a radio in
the distance call a name I could not make out.
The final moment is not a decision to continued. It
is a concrete beat, a stamp file sealed envelope in
my van, and the knowledge that some one had watched
the foundation enough to take a photograph and send a message.
I folded the reply into a small square and put
it into the inside pocket of my jacket before turning
out the kitchen light. Choon hit the hold of my
van with the manifest and it rattled against a dent
where I kept the thermous finished rout or you re
off the line, she said, and her voice did not
ask suspecion titan might jaw the way it At the morning,
I set a package on blackened steps, and the scan
of chimed delivery confirmed to a foundation that had been
mubble for three years. I did not want be begged
into this. I wanted the manifest to be a mistake.
I told you nothing. I folded the paper and put
it on the passenger seat, where the scanner scored cross
the brass, namely on my jacket. The manifest listed a
dozen addresses burned to foundations, and time lens stamped for
that morning. The time stamps were current. The names matched
the county records in a way that made me dizzy.
I thought of the sooth under my nails from the
last delivery, and the way the scanner refused to lie
suspicion was doing work. Now it moved my hands. I
checked the scanner like a man checking a gun. I
drove out before the sun climbed. The dippet smelled of
diesel and old coffee. The morning slight cut a crossed
the lot un picked out the frayed edges of my jacket.
On route forty seven, the trees pressed in. I kept
my hands in the wheel and my eyes in the
gear piece, but the manifest sut in the seat like
a thing that wanted me to look at it. I
remembered the way ash of flake into my pom when
I set that package down in chapter one. The memory
came as a flat sensory detail, a thin dry grate,
the way the skin on my knuckle smelled of burnt paper,
the time I had kept my hands steady, the time
the scanner chimed. I stopped Roseide pump and ran into Marco.
In the shade, Marko's van still hit modern the wheel
wells and a duct taped scanner cradle. He looked at
my manifest and then at me. They gave you the
less he asked. Marko's voice was low and direct. When
he spoke. He moved his hands like he was sorting mail,
and many a got the same at mine. To day
Scannercue delivers to burn. Pliss took a picture of one
parcel Pooh fashioned the step. He tapped the screen on
his phone. In the photoglow a rectangle of brown corrugated
and a scatter of gray where something had been. You
saw this before, I said, yesterday, yesterday, and the day
before on my lane, Marko, I thought I was losing
my mind. He wiped his palms on his work pants.
We should check one, compare notes. If it's a glitch,
we'll log it. If not, his mouth tightened. We agreed,
and the nearest ruined foundation and drove together. Marko's van
kept pace with mine until the road narrowed. We pulled
off at a wash at driveway and walked between the
charred footings the sunlight. There was a hard flatt thing
that made as sparkle like salt. The foundation was a
rectangle of black stone and white powder. The scanner on
Marco's leean had blinked and sured the delivery ten that
we read only minutes old. There was a parcel on
the scorched step. It sat in the middle of the
chard's lab like something placed on an altar. It was warm.
I put my palm against the cardboard and felt a
small heap pulse through the fibers. Marco Crouch took a
picture and whispered stamped to day. He read the printed
label outloud. The time samp matched both manifests. We bagged it.
We both moved like men handling evidence. By the time
we climbed back into the vans, the quiet between us
had changed. Marco, we take it in, We log it.
I don't want to be alone with it. Is rhythm tightened.
When two drivers share things, they trade responsibility. I nodded.
The plan was to take the parcel to the Sheriff's
office and have someone else verify it. Sheriff Harland's office
smelled of disinfectant and old paper. He met us in
the lobby under a buzzing fluorescent fixture. Sheriff Holand is
a broad man who keeps his jaw tight. He has
a habit of folding his hands and tapping the inside
of his wrist when he has thinking. He opened a
drawer and produced a heavily reducted report. The paper looked
like a page some one had eaten round with a
whole punch. NaN's blacked out peregrascon He slid it to
Marco and me without meeting our eyes. Harleans's voice was
flat containment. No, we keep it local. Don't poke at
it more than you have to. He tapped the reductions
with a coffee stained finger. You two shouldn't be touching
these deliverers. They were flagged operative noise. He hesitated, and
then lowered his voice. If you insist on doing your routes,
do not bring packages back into tam And, for God's sake,
don te bring things from those foundations into other people's hands.
His hands flattened on the desk, understood, I said, understood,
Sheriff Marco understood. But under my skin the suspicion turned
into a new thing, fear mixed with the tightness of betrayal.
The Sheriff's warning had the shape of an order. Rather
than help. It reassured no one. We left with more
questions than answers. On the way back to my van,
Marco's phone buzzt. He stepped behind the Sheriff's cruiser and
answered his voice. Then he said, what do you mean
it'skewed again, and moved his hands while he listened. I'll
meet you at the Coltia Sac I'm heading over now.
He cut the line and looked at me. Muskanner started
adding more stops on my list, same names, different time stemps.
It's like the system keeps pushing them on to the day.
He swallowed. We should go see the mail box. The
Culdi sack hid the look of a place that time
had given up on, ring foundations, stumps of tree limbs,
and one mail book standing like an accusation. The mail
box was intact and stubbornly green. It had a dent
were child's baseball once hid it, and a faded house
number Marta sturbed beside it with her arms crossed. She
was small and wiry, and the lions by her mouth
were carved from smoke and ears of yelling. She did
not flinch when the three of us approached. You shouldn't
be bringing things back here, Marta. Before we could speak,
her voice arrested the air. You bury things in those foundations.
When you return them, you bring them back to people
who were gone. You bring the living to the dead.
She held my gaze. People used to keep their packages
of the post. Now you lot come and set them
down like they will go on living. Her hands were quick.
There are rules here. You don't carry things back across
the line. You don't give the dead possessions. Ye bury
the delivery at the foundation if you must. You do
not put objects into the hands of neighbors who remember faces.
You understand, I said Marto. We found a parcel on
the step. It was warm, the scan of stout to
day's time. She blinked once, and her face softened only
for a second. Then you already know the rule was
made for a reason, she said. Dantes make it worse.
Dantes bring things to the living that belonged to the burned.
If you do the burned will pull, they will take
her voice went thin. Marco and I exchanged a look.
Marty's words did not explain anything, but they carried weight.
At dusk, I called Marco and told him my deep
o parcels we found into the van and meet him
at the empty lot behind the feet store. On the
way it checked a passenger seat and found a seal
parcel I had not noticed before. The label had my
name on it in an alder dress from when I
lived with my mother in a trailer off County Roade nine.
My throat closed the manifest listed it the times stump
mashed the morning's deliveries. I did not recognize placing it.
I tested the seal with my thumb. It was tight.
My hands moved the way suspicion moved automatic. Not yet trusted,
I took the parcel out and set it on my knee.
I could feel a faint warmth through the cardboard, like
breath across my skin. The scanner lay between the folded
manifest and a brass n input. The scanner had an
active key that included an entry that rate delivered even
Mark's full trailer. So nine hundred twelve the delivery log
clothed like an accusation. I called Marco Dawnty, come alone,
I said, bring the dash cam and your scanner. Hwyon,
I told him, because mine has my name on it.
Now Marco's silence was a reply he I'll be there
in ten. He drove up, as the light led out
and the ties crunched on gravel. You open it, he asked,
Not yet. I said, let's bring it to the lot,
sure if not to bring things into town, but I
need someone to see it with me. My voice did
not carry certainty. Marco's brow folded. We take it to
the feed a lot and open it with witnesses, he said.
We part the vans three feet apart under a single
sodium street lamp and set the parcel between us and
the hood. There was wind that smelled faintly of smirk.
Marko pulled his phone from his pocket and recorded Marko.
He said, into the screen, dash Camon, even you were gay.
He kept the camera steady. I unsealed the tape. The
cardboard gave with a small crack, and a smell of
something like an old photograph rose up, varnish and smoke
in a faint sweetness. Inside, wrapped in brown paper was
a single item, an old driver's badge with my name
stamped in the den from years of keys. Un Beneath
it a folded photograph tape. Jat the photograph looked like
a faded polaroid. When appealed the tape, the image showed
a burn porch with the smiling family, my mother among them,
standing where the foundation now sat. Something in the picture's
edges was off, like the light had being overexposed in
a way that left a whitewash where a face should be.
I handed the badge to mark on my badge, he
said why with someone? He trailed off and then hid
the dash camp stop and Reaply. The footage showed our
faces lit by the lamp, the parcel, the photograph, and
then a small static polip I had not noticed when recording.
It was a glitch that looked like snow formed an
almost lettered smear across the frame. My phone vibrated. It
was a message from a number I did not know.
Do not bring it inside. We are watching. I looked
at Marco, he who said I did not know. I
drove to the deeper the night, with the parcel wrapped
in a plastic evidence back and my jaw set. The
deeper smelled the same diesel and old coffee and shift
of paper, but the night crew at a different air.
June and a company official met me in the office.
The official was a slim man with the hacket, who
kept his hands folded like he was holding the shape
of an apology operational noise. He said, when I laid
the bag on the table, system anomalies. We need logs
rays to prevent confusion. He slid a lap up toward me.
We can wipe your scanner. We can remove the cube
interest for everyone's sake, we prefer you prioritize wrotes over questions.
Do not make this an incident. His words were a
demand disguised as an offer. June, we can tea of
drivers raising alarm and slowing the lines down. Business is business.
Even her voice said the same edge before she pushed
the manifest back across the table and did not look
me in the eye. You want to keep your route,
follow the manifest and move on. My hands closed round
a bag like fists. I remembered the Sheriff's redacted report
to Martyr's rules. I remembered the photograph and my badge
and the scanner confirming a delivery that I had not made.
I thought of Marco's photo of a parcel vanishing into ashen,
of packages stamped with a day's time. The suspicion had
been the first rod of a cage, now betray a
le Acrossabar's company and county. Leaning in the same direction,
I said, you can teach us to lete logs. People
are missing, names are here. This isn't just a glitch.
My voice sounded small against the office hum. The company
official looked at June and then at me. The files
are operational. We will minimize impact. We will make sure
your record is clean. You will remain on the schedule.
Dawn t make problems. He packed up the laptop. That's final,
Jane added, you want to keep your job, even keep
your rote. That's the only way to make sure your
bills get paid. Sh it with a practical That meant
she expected no one to ask for more. I left
with nothing but the parcel in the evidence back, and
a feeling like someone had closed a door arm me.
The deepost slot stretched empty under sodium lights. My scanner's
cue was back to normal. No terest bearing my name,
nothing for all the dresses the manifested burnt into my
pocket like a memory that would not be raised at home.
I unfolded a forded note I had found in my
jacket pocket the morning and could not remember placing. The
note had one line written in a hand I recognized
from when I was a kid. My mother's slant meet
me were the porch burns. The address matched the old trailer.
My hands trembled when I read it. The emotion that
led me now was not only suspicion, It had shifted
into betrayal and into a straining kind of resolve. I
could fill the two shifts in me suspicion to fear, fear,
or resolve. The shifts moved my feet. I went back
out at dawn. The light was thin and gray. I
drove to my old trailer and popped with a gravel
dept The trailer was gone down to foundation. The flagstone
where a porch once had been was a rectangle's suit
and all old nell's and the scorched slab sat a
single package, unburned. It took my name on it and
a small recorder taped to the top. The recorder had
a battery pack taped to its side, and a single
redly blinking like a heartbeat. I set the recorder on
the slab and punch play. My own voice came from
the speaker, older and softer, and recorded years back. Even
if you ever come back to this place, don't answer
the door, dawn t take the badge, leave the deliveries
in the ash. We kept the line closed for a reason.
The voice and the recorder was mine, but with a
distance that made the syllables thin. The tape hummed and
then went quiet. Under it, there was a second voice,
muffled and shaky. They take what you returned. The voice said,
they make the living carry the dead's things, and the
living take the place of the missing. Dun'tee bring them back.
The second voice was Martis. I looked at the foundation
and then at the recorder. My name on the label
and the old address tied me to whatever pattern. This
was Marko's dash camfootage, the sherifsh reducted file, Jeane's manifest,
the company man's laptop. Each thing connected to a system
that pushed deliveries to addresses that should not receive them.
The recorder changed a frame. If my own voice had
warned me then I had been part of the sloop before.
There was a twist that altered what I had thought.
I had been tangled into this routine in a way
I could not remember. I slammed my palm onto the
slab and felt the sting of old nails under the ash.
The shift to me was raw. I had moved from
suspicion to fear, then to a brittle clerky that I
had to make a choice. The parcel in my van
had my badge and a photograph that placed my mother
in the burnt porch. The recorder had my voice saying,
do not answer the door. If I followed what I
had recorded myself saying, I would refuse to be part
of the deliveries. If I ignored it, I would risk
bringing more things back across the line. Markell called, and
I told him to meet at MARTA's mail box. When
I drove in, Marto was there with thermis and a
paper cup. She did not ask why I had the parcel.
She only watched the way I moved. You know the
rules now, she said. I set the badge and the
photograph on the hood of my van and pushed the
recorder towards her. You recorded me, I asked. She shook
her head. You recorded yourself years ago. You left the
recorder in the trailer when you left town. When the
fires came, some one said her things back in place.
We kept some of the records. We kept the rules.
The sheriff keeps other records. The company. They clean what
must be cleaned. We watch who follows the road, We
warn drivers. Her voice had no flourish if facts. I asked,
why my badge, why my photograph? Marta picked up the
photograph and pinched at the corner. The burned aunty, like
being forgotten in names. Even sometimes they find ways to
keep themselves in the world. Maybe your badge was one
of those ways. Maybe it was a mistake, Maybe it
was meant to pull you back. She handed me the recorder.
Whatever the cause, you have a choice. You can keep
the job and let them scrub the files, or you
can take the evidence to some one who will not
be paid to close it. Either way, you do it
with witnesses. She spent the last word. We don't want
any more people coming in with things they don't understand.
They caused the living to vanish after they take cold.
You saw Marco's photo, ye know what happened to people
who passed things along. Her gaze was steady. We drove
to a local reporter's office. I had thought of anonymous
drops and dark websites, but mart insisted on some one
with a name. The reporter's name was Claire Evans. She
had a reputation for not flinching. When she looked at
the manifest and the photograph and the recorder. She did
not blink. YE want me to run, as she asks,
I want you to take a copy, I said, I
want evident out where other people can see it, not
just to erase it, not to file it in some
redacted drawer. My voice was flat. Claire sat up a
recorder of her own, and I handed her copies of
the Manifest and photos of apostles. She questions that pulled
things taut. Who else knows? She said, she knows. I said,
the company man knows, the sheriff knows, Marta knows, Marker knows.
I left a copy with Marda. I sent an anonymous
coppy to a drop. I don't want to be the
only one hold in this. My words came in short bursts,
the kind of speech of man uses when he's counting steps.
Claire's fingers moved as she wrote. If you published this,
y'll make people listen. You'll make them ask questions that
the company can tease, simply wipe away without a fight.
She looked up. Are you willing to go on record?
She asked. I thought of the recorder with my own
voice on it telling me not to answer. I thought
of Sheriff Holland's blacked out lines and Jean's horrid pragmatism.
I thought of Marco's face when his parcel had disappeared
into ash. I had two changes in me. Now, resolve
hardened into decision, and then moved into a deliberate acceptance
of risk. Yes, I said, I'll go on record. I'll
tell you what I saw. I'll show you the manifest
in the parcels. I will say that the company is
complicit in cleaning the logs. I'll tell you about the
sheriff's redaction. I will put my name on it. I
am done keeping quiet. My Joe felt like something set.
Claire set the recorder between us and turned it on.
We spoke for an hour. We showed the manifest and
the photograph. There's questions made me lay out a chain
of concrete events, not conjecture. I told her about the
parcel that warmed under my hand, the scan of chiming
against ruble, the manifest slapped down by June, the Sheriff's redacttiontion,
Marcu's picture, and the parcel addressed to my old trailer.
I had described MARTA's rules and the recorder with my
own voice on it, each detail clipped clean and precise.
The reporter nodded and typed. At the end, she said,
I'll publish what I can add on. If they try
to scrub it, we'll use back ups. If they threaten you,
we put it online and send it to several outlets.
The conteer raise everything. Her voice hid the hard angle
of someone used to pushing a stone a pail. When
I left Claire's, I felt something ease, like the immediate
pressure of holding things alone, But the relief was small.
The wall did not change in an instant. The corporation
could still erase logs from its servers. The Sheriff's redactions
could still keep names hidden. The nether were copies outside
the dip its, locked drawers, and outside the Sheriff's office.
Marda had to duplicate. Claire had a duplicate. I had
the recorder in it, and the manifest burned into the
back of my memory. That night, Marco came by with
blank eyes and a quieter step. He did not meet
my gaze at first. They took my van even he
said gone. When I came back from the lot, tire
tracks stopping at the fundation like they drove off into nothing.
My dash camp foot is shows apoarscel on the step
and then vuzz. Then the footage froze and the van.
Wasn't he there? Sheriff is not recorded in any towing logs.
G and I misremembered. He clinched his jawl. I have
nothing left at home but a picture and a scanner
that now reads nothing about the parcel. The scanner ast
you is clean, but I have the furtile of the
parcel turning into ashen the step. I don't he know
what to do. His voice broke. I put my hand
on his shoulder. We'll give your photo to Claire, I said,
We'll make sure it's backed up in three places. We'll
make sure someone else sees it. I wanted to promise
more than I could deliver. Marko's face folded into something
raw and close to panic, and I felt responsibility rise
into something solid in me. The emotion had shifted again,
from resolve to protective urgency. The shifts changed my decisions.
Sheriff Harlan called me in the morning. His tone had
a new bluntness even He said, I know you handed
things to Claire. You need to be careful. People ask
questions and people get hurt. If you want to keep
breathing easy with the rule, he paused, and then added,
I can protect you if you corperate. I heard the
offer and the threat braided together. I hung up and
burned the original manifest in the sink at home. I
watched the paper call on Blacken while my hand shook
the flame ate the ink and the names. The ash
drifted and settled into the metal of the sink. MARTA's
voice from the caldisse I kept looping in my head,
done to bring things back into the living's hands. The
recorder on my kitchen counter blink like a pulse. I
had given Claire coppers and left backups with Marta and herself.
I had borrowed the reporter's willingness to publish. I had
burned the one manifest. I did not want anyone to
find in my hands. I had chosen distribution over a rusher.
I turned in my uniform the next day. I left
the jacket folded on the depot office chair, where she
impassed her coffee across. I told you I was done.
She did not ask why it had coppers of manifests
or whom I had given them to. She only said
you sure, and I nodded. The official watched me fold
the jacket. June's face was unreadable. She slid my brass
nameplate back across us the desk and serid then Dante
dig for trouble. It was not a plea, it was
an instruction. I walked up with the recorder in my
pocket and the photo in a syal envelope. Marco kept
the badge I had given him for safekeeping. He if
anything else happens, call me. We'll meet outside town. We'll
not go alone. Martha took the other duplicate and pinned
it inside her mail books. If the burncun knocking, Dante answer,
She told me. If you must carry a thing, bury
it at the foundation and market for the county. Dantes
handed anyone. Dantes let things be given back as gifts.
Her words were specific and repeated the rule precisely. Claire
published the story with the photos in the reducted rapport excepts.
The company issued a tost statement calling the events operational
anomalies and promising an internal review. Sheriff Harlane issued no comment,
but a local editorial asked point of questions. For a week,
the depot had people outside asking for records. The company
moved a scrub and then to obuscate. They made legal
threats and tried to buy silence, but coppers of the
manifest had already been sent to other newsrooms and posted
public archive. People began to call the Sheriff's office with
memories about names and houses that had burned. Scowls who
had once been invisible. An official redaction reappeared as callers
who wanted answers. Nothing erased the fact that some possels
still showed up a foundations. Some drivers recorded things turning
to ash on porches. Marko's van never reappeared. He kept
a low profile, and some nights I would see his
tailights in a Dinoh window two towns over. Claire kept
digging martikep watching the cul de sac Sheriff Howland's redaction
shrunk in public view, but the files he had been
given to hide could not be fully undone. Systems that
bend to hide themselves do not yield quickly. On a
morning six weeks after the manifest I drove by the
Cal de Sac. The green mail book stood as that
always had. There were new dents on the foundations where
people had tested fences. A small crowd had gathered, reporters,
county inspectors, locals with notebooks. Marta stood beside the mail
books with two thermoss. She waved when she saw me,
and then turned away to answer some one who had
come to ask about a name. I stopped and placed
my palm on the old porch slab where the recorder
had sat. There was a ragged scar of black and
a ring of lighter stoneware fired Eitian. The photograph of
my mother in the burn porch I had framed and
given to Claire came up in conversation again some one
had recognized a face At the County archive. Names that
had been reducted returned to public record, and with them
came questions and subpoenas. The company tried to mounted offense
the sheriff was forced into brief explanations. People who used
to be ignored now pressed down doors. I do not
say everything ended. It did not. The burn do not
come back as they were. Impostles still arrive. But the
choice I made change the balance of what could be hidden.
I quit the road and kept the recorder. I left
coppies of manifests where other people could find them. I
gave the photograph and the badge to Claire to Arcave
Marty keeps a watchless pinned inside her mail books, and
lets drive as know where not to foundation line. The
final act in the chapter was simple and concrete. I
drove back to the old foundation at dawn with a
small packet of sealed evidence at a folded note address
to no one. I knelt and dug a shallow hole
at the edge of the slab and bared packet and
the note beneath the ash. I tamped soil over it
with the heel of my hand. I left a stone
on top as a marker. Then I stirred and walked
to my van, folded the manifest in my jacket, and
dropped the recorder into my pocket. I started the engine
and drove away. When I pushed the van onto the road,
a scanner on the daftbowd chied once with an automated
ping from the company's servers, the screen flashed a single
line deliver It tempted a dressed not found. I drove
through the morning with the radio often the recorder humming
in my pocket. The present in my hands was coppice
stowed a reporter who would publish, martyr who would watch,
and a badge and photograph handle the way evidence must
be handled. I had chosen to stop making deliveries to
places that were not there. I had chosen to hand
the story to people who could cry open a close fire.
The last concrete thing I did in the chapter was
followed the final scull to dress into my jacket, lock
the van, and walk away with the manifest burned down
to embers in my palm. And that is the end.
Thank you for listening, and I will see you in
the next one.