It was starting to drizzle. Let it get wet.

I hopped back in my mail truck and continued along the route.

At the office, my boss came out of her office and said, “The old lady at 5585 Meadowvale called to complain…”

“Yup. I’m sure she did,” I said. “I could barely lift that box, let alone schlep it up her driveway to the porch. Her kid can move it.”

“Yeah, I know. But she said the box is soaking wet now. She was yelling at me.”

“People who order everything on-line need to provide a bin or something. She’s lucky she got it at all. Babette would have written a pink for it. I’m still sorry she yelled at you. You don’t need that stress.”

Babette was the regular carrier on the route. In our rural office, I was a sub, an RCA—rural carrier assistant or associate—and I knew all five of the routes. I liked it that way. A regular carrier must do the same route every day, five days a week. I enjoy the change of scenery.

My boss said, “Speaking of stress…um…”

“Oh no. Please don’t tell me Tristan can’t do route three tomorrow…” I wailed, bracing myself.

Adelle’s face grew red as she grimaced. “I’m sorry.”

I sighed. I liked driving route three. Hellpico was very rural, very out-in-the-boonies; the route took me high up a mountain, down to a lake, through narrow dirt roads no wider than long-ass driveways. It was peaceful and secluded and full of awesome nature: I saw wild turkeys, deer, bobcats, coyotes, bunnies and turtles. However, route three delivered six times more packages than any other route. I said, “I’ll be writing up a lot of pinks tomorrow…just sayin’.”

Adelle nodded. “I’ll help you with that. Just leave whatever needs writing up, I’ll take care of it.”

“Okay.” That would save me at least forty minutes.

The other cool thing about Hellpico was that once you were done with the in-town deliveries and headed up the mountain, you saw hardly any people. Every once in awhile, on one of those one-lane roads alongside the edge of a steep cliff, a car would be coming down the road. And even though there’s signs all over the place saying ‘yield to uphill traffic’ AND you were in a mail truck, the locals never backed up to a pullout, they always waited for you to do it. If you didn’t do it fast enough you were sure to see a scary-looking, angry hillbilly face glaring at you as they drove by. Hellpico folks were scary looking. Long scraggly hair and beards, wild meth-addled eyes, missing teeth…it was best not to make eye contact. Eye contact could induce shouted curses and perhaps a shotgun pointed at you. The younger mountain folk—teens and

twenty-somethings—were rednecks with hair-trigger violent moods just as volatile as their elders, perhaps even more so cuz they had something to prove. These hillbillies had discovered they could order anything and everything on Amazon and it would come all the way up the mountain to them. Gosh, how special they felt.

Ironically, although the hillbillies and rednecks ordered everything on Amazon, Amazon didn’t deliver to Hellpico. The USPS does it for them. Amazon drivers are scared shitless of the mountain roads, and I suspect those clean-cut young kids in their blue and grey vests are scared shitless of the folks that lived there.

The next morning, I braced myself for the obscene profusion of packages in the route three hampers.

The clerk saw me grimace and said meekly, “Um…there’s a hamper under the carport too.”

“Yeah. I saw it.”

James smiled and released his breath. The regular carrier, Tristan, would be cursing and throwing stuff around.

At least the day was overcast, my favorite. Not too cold, not too hot. On hot days, the inside of an LLV (Long Life Vehicle) is literally ten to fifteen degrees hotter than the day. On chilly days, the LLV is like a drafty freezer. It wasn’t supposed to rain so no yelling about wet packages. And best of all, it was Halloween, the awesomest holiday of all.

Hellpico did not disappoint. In fact, it excelled at enthusiasm for Halloween. All the way up the first hill and down to the lake, the decorations were high and low, in every corner, up in trees, and bordering driveways: spiderwebs crawling with fat black arachnids the size of cats, rubber bats bobbing and weaving in the branches, and skeletons…skeletons were everywhere. Human, dog, cat, bird, flamingo (those were kinda cheesey) and rat, some in costume, some bare-boned, all grinning wickedly. Orange and purple lights on strings were plugged in early, glowing blithely in the gloom of the late afternoon.

It was indeed gloomier than the overcast sky should have influenced, as if time had sped up and twilight was just around the bend. I checked my phone. Three-fifteen. Forty-five minutes left. I turned left at the lake and started up my last and highest mountain. The road was less populated than the previous ones though the wholehearted efforts of these mountain folk were just as spirited in their creative Halloween displays, perhaps even more so.

Many of the ghoulishly dressed figures were of the animated variety, with motion sensors setting them shrieking and howling, shaking and shivering. Eyes glowed red and amber in the shadows…the ever-increasing shadows. But it was always dark in the tree tunnels between properties. I opened a mailbox and maniacal laughter issued from its black guts. ‘Ha. You got me that time,’ I thought. I pulled away from the mailbox and headed deeper into the dark. I was just about to speed up, anticipating the luminosity of the grey afternoon sky once through the tunnel of feathery boughed branches. That they seemed curled more closely around me was disturbing, the screeches of the branches scraping along the sides and roof of the metal box I was in was deafening.

There was something in the middle of the road. An animal…squirrel? No, bigger. Cat. It appeared dead. I braked jarringly, the remaining packages behind me slid and I winced as a ‘big heavy’ fell over. I got out, pulling on non-latex gloves, preparing for the worst.

It was a fake cat. A black one with its back arched in a Halloween pose, its wide grin displayed extra-long white teeth, its pale green eyes full of good-natured merriment. It would make an awesome addition to my collection of vintage stuffed cats.

“It’s okay now little fella. You’re going to a good home.” It was heavier than it looked. I could feel metal joints underneath its damp pelt of fake fur. It was of the more costly variety of

Halloween décor, perhaps it was vintage, perhaps my husband could tinker with it, get it to work again and do whatever it was it could do, he was good like that.

I put him in the half empty SPRS tray beside me. (That government and its acronyms—SPRS was small parcels and rolls.)

Coming out of the tree tunnel, I realized it had to be later than I thought. I’d come around the bend and into twilight. I checked my phone. Still read 3:15. ‘What the fuck.’ I pressed the accelerator and rumbled and clanked up the mountain, wanting to head to the office but ingrained inside my mail lady’s head was the need to finish the route. A white figure trailing a gauzy shroud behind it flew over the windshield. “Got me again,” I said out loud. I felt I was in a haunted house. ‘Hahaha!’

At the next property, a figure was posed over a stump with an axe in his hand. The figure had long scraggly white hair that fell over the shoulders of his grimy red plaid shirt. His stained overalls hung off his weirdly shaped body. He was thin but with a huge pot belly. The axe was slicked with glistening red gore.

I thought, ‘Wow. That’s a good one.’

Then the axe came down. ‘THUNK’ onto the stump. I couldn’t see what he was chopping but I realized with shock…he was real. I looked away quickly, skipping his mailbox.

I pulled up to the neighbor’s box, relieved to be out of his sight. The yard was a playground for vermin—overgrown brown grass and weeds and blackberry stickers. The small cottage up the dirt path had a single window aglow on its face, candlelight I was guessing by the inconsistent flickering caused by a breeze. A figure dancing in the room. If there was anyone else in the room, I couldn’t see them, the solo figure was slender with long dark hair. Her pale sheer dress was old-fashioned and wispy like Spanish moss, it trailed after her and whirled about her like a gauzy cocoon as she spun.

She suddenly froze, the wispy, insubstantial dress settled over bony limbs, the flickering subsided. She stood like a statue with her head lowered, the lank dark hair hanging like stringy curtains…as if she’d been a Halloween spook whose batteries had died. I could see that she was naked underneath the dress. She lifted her head and stared at me, revealing large black holes where her eyes should be. ‘Perhaps an animatron after all…’ No, she was real. Frozen and staring…and weird as fuck…but real.

I drove on, gravel by the road spitting wildly behind me,

fishtailing a bit, I took a deep breath to calm my heebie-jeebies. ‘An illusion. Caused by the candlelite. That’s all.’

At a row of mailboxes on a rickety warped railing I concentrated on putting the correct mail in each of the dozen or so boxes, glad for the distraction of concentration…although I did keep checking the mirrors to the left and the right for any sign of movement behind me. I felt I was being watched. Knew I was.

There was none though every bare branch was a skeletal hand outstretching to seize me; every pin prick of light the glowing eye of a creature that should be fake but wasn’t.

Near the top of the mountain a high-pitched gravelly whining suddenly assaulted the quiet near dark afternoon. It was very loud…a chainsaw. Chainsaws were a common sound in the mountains, everyone here burned wood in their homes for warmth. ‘But at this time of day?’

The sound was as ominous as it was clamorous.

And it was getting louder. Coming. Sweat trickled from my pits.

Then it cut off. I sighed with relief though I wasn’t certain why. I stepped on the gas, wary of loose rocks. God forbid I skid into a ditch or a big rock and find myself immobilized.

At the top of the mountain was another string of boxes. A light drizzle pattered on my windshield and dampened my arm as it reached into each box and deposited mail there. The large property beyond the mailboxes was a fenced in field with an old-fashioned three-story home at the far end. Lined along the driveway were skeletons of all varieties, creepy scarecrows, and ghosts dangling from fenceposts that swayed and dipped in the wind that had doubled intensity along with the water content in the atmosphere. Normally a rain lover, I felt cold with dread now. Rain would impare my vision, especially impeding my view from behind a windshield swept by the crappiest of windshield wipers.

A figure in the field caught my eye. Perhaps a hundred feet away…another scarecrow, dressed similar to the man with the bloody axe. His wild straw hair spiked from beneath a raggedy old cowboy hat. His face appeared to be covered with a mask, like burlap, with small black eyes that were staring at me. A line appeared in the ghastly face, splitting it in two, it turned upwards into a ghastly grin.

The man then bent and picked up the chainsaw. It howled to life like a hellish witch’s familiar.

He started walking towards me.

Screw the rest of the mail. I did a three-point turn at the top of his driveway and headed back down the mountain.

The chainsaw sound faded.

I relaxed.

A tiny bit.

I looked at my phone. Three-fifteen.

Full dark now.

The woman in the window was still frozen there, holes for eyes staring.

I heard the thunk of the bloody axe next door, still at whatever grisly work it was up to.

The black kitty’s eyes were glowing. Cool. I decided to name my rescue Spooky. He’d fallen over during one of my peal outs, so I righted him, propping him up with small parcels so he’d stay upright. As I did this, I noticed one of the parcels was an express from Japan. Expresses were tres important. And the mailbox it would fit into was coming up at the end of my last rural road in Hellpico.

At the bottom of the mountain, I turned right. I ignored the plastic skeletons, rubber bats, and animated ghouls and ghosties. I approached the last mailbox with small package in hand, figuring I’d waiver the signature whether it needed waiving or not. Most folks don’t even know that expresses from overseas usually require a signature.

Scan, scan, scan, squish the cardboard into the mailbox and…

A pale face popped up from behind the mailbox and scared the bejesus outta me! “Aaiieeee!” I screamed. “You scared the be—”

“Where’s my package!?” the creepy little gnome screeched. He was rawboned and hunched like a troll. His eyes were wild round orbs, the pupils dilated- one tiny, one nearly eradicating the watery grey iris. An oozing sore to the left of his crooked nose glistened in the dim light provided by the light on the home’s porch.

“It’s in the box.”

“No, it’s not! You left me this!” He then waved a pink in my face. “You have my package! You LIAR!” He grinned wickedly, revealing charcoal grey teeth spaced apart like tombstones in an abandoned graveyard.

I snatched the slip from his gnarled fingers and quickly perused it and saw the address was for the home across the street. “This is from yesterday,” I said. “I’m not your regular carrier—”

“Liar! I want my package!” His breath was ghastly, fetid and maggot-rotton. I threw up a little in my mouth as his spittle flecked my cheek. He took a step back from the mailboxes, I accelerated. He leapt in front of the truck.

I was shocked…the bright light of my headlights revealed this troll to have breasts! This was a female. She raised her hands, in one was a long thin blade that shone like frozen spear of lightening in the headlights. She was fast. Like a blur, she ducked and the next I knew my truck was listing to the right, the air hissing from the punctured tire.

Now I was angry. I wanted to run her over.

But…we aren’t allowed to do that.

I started driving slowly away.

“I want my package!”

“Your fucking package is at the post office! Fuck you and your fucking package!” We weren’t allowed to swear at customers either…but what the fuck.

She was suddenly at my open doorway, gripping my hoodie in her fist and pulling me out and towards her. She was intensely strong! And though she’d been hunched over, appearing gnome-like, she now unfolded…

This creature was taller than I was! The stiletto in her other hand was at my throat in a heartbeat. I had surreptitiously reached for the other small parcel on my tray and now whacked her hand away from in front of me and with my right hand grabbed her wrist. It was cold as granite in winter…and just as strong.

The blade inched closer towards my nose.

I registered a rustling noise from my left but dared not shift my focus.

With an ear-splitting howl, the cat leapt into my lap!

At first, I thought, ‘what new hell?…’

But the cat leapt from my lap and into the face of the troll. Blood spattered my face. I was surprised it was warm. “Meeeooorrr!” the cat was wailing as it clawed and was silent as it

chewed.

“AAAIIIIEEEE!!!” the troll howled and stumbled backwards. Blood dripped from her face from top to bottom, dripping from her chin, she looked like an old creepy Carrie. Blood spurted from her neck, and she used both hands to squelch the flow.

She backed up, heading towards her home across the street. “I…waaant…my…package,” she hissed. The voice could have been coming from the holes in her neck. I didn’t know what was real now and what was not. What was Halloween décor and what was real.

The cat turned back to me, grinning. Its huge Cheshire grin was of shiny silver metal teeth, dripping red. Spooky leapt back onto my mail truck tray and sat, purring…the sound like a far away chainsaw. It licked the blood off its paws while its eyes shone like pale green lanterns.

I made it back to the office, the tire completely flat. My phone informed me the time was now 7:26 pm. Spooky was just a Halloween cat again…although there were still drops of blood on its whiskers.

In the future, I would bring Spooky with me on every route. Halloween decorations in the future would not bring giggles anymore, just wariness. Mountain folk were scarier than

Halloween decorations.