Episode 1.03: Dead Letters
Written & Produced by Rae Lundberg
Content Warnings (Click to expand)
Death mention, mental illness
NICHOLAS: (as the intro plays) At the edge of Gilt City, loss and longing permeate every bated breath, and all await the arrival of the Night Post. NICHOLAS: Hold on. Where are you all going? VAL: Show the new guy his haunt. NICHOLAS: I would think just one of you could do that, but...fine. Make it fast. Get your own routes done by dawn. VAL: Always do. [OFFICE DOOR OPENS AND CLOSES] VAL: Clementine, you drive. CLEMENTINE: Fine. [THE VAN’S SLIDING DOOR OPENS AND CLOSES. THE ENGINE SHUDDERS TO LIFE. THE SOUND OF TIRES RUMBLING OVER ROUGH ROAD UNDERLIES THE DIALOGUE.] MILO: (deep breath) So this is it, huh? CLEMENTINE: Your first run. You feel up to it? MILO: No, not really. But I understand I don’t have much of a choice, either. VAL: No one does. Now let’s see if we can find some sign of Ashley on his route. MILO: You mean you all haven’t done that yet? CLEMENTINE: Postmaster Best told us to leave it alone. VAL: He did, didn’t he? MILO: You mean your boss ordered you not to look for Ashley. CLEMENTINE: Not like that, just--there are a lot of things in this job you need to stay clear of. Things not worth finding out. Nicholas is just trying to protect us. MILO: No offense, but that all sounds kind of insane. VAL: Why do you think no one wants to be a pigeon? [SILENCE FOR A FEW MOMENTS, BUT FOR THE RUMBLING OF THE TRUCK. THEN, THE RUSTLE OF SEARCHING THROUGH PAPER.] VAL: This look like a good one? CLEMENTINE: Speaking of leaving well enough alone-- (paper tearing) --what are you doing? VAL: It’s a little routine of mine. I read one per shift. CLEMENTINE: You open letters? Do you want to get cursed? VAL: Maybe I do. Or fired. Or disappeared. MILO: I don’t appreciate that. VAL: Apologies. No disrespect to the departed. (paper unfolding) Dear Maria-- CLEMENTINE: I’m not listening. [THE NOISE OF THE TRUCK DIES AWAY.] VAL: (reading) Dear Maria, I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to write. I guess it’s what they say about no news being good news. It was good news, at first. Mom was doing so well for a while. Sleeping through the night, getting enough to eat, making new friends here. She even took up painting again. I really thought that moving her to the city was the answer to our problems after all. And I like it here. Our apartment is small, part of a building with a dozen other tenants, but we have electricity and everything that runs on it, from the dishwasher to the curling iron. We don’t have a yard, but at least that means no hidden things under the ground, no burning vines or sudden sinkholes to suck in your leg to the knee. No need to leave salt on the doorstep at night or burn rose petals when it rains. For all the noise and activity here, there’s order, a kind of purpose to it all. Isn’t that just what we said Mom needed? A few weeks ago, I was woken by the sound of her voice in the sitting room. Since moving here, I’ve learned to sleep through a lot--after all, the walls are not very thick, and there are families on either side of us. I’ve gotten used to tuning out the cries of the baby next door or the heavy footfalls of the widower upstairs. None of it really bothers me like I thought it would. They’re just the signs of life, intricate personal dramas unfolding on the other side of the drywall. I don’t know why Mom’s voice cut through my dream that night. Maybe subconsciously I was already worried she was talking to her old friends again. I should have waited at my bedroom door to hear what she was saying, but I barged into the sitting room without thinking. Mom was leaning back in her armchair, relaxed as you please, but she started when she saw me. I asked who she’d been talking to, and she said it was nothing, that she couldn’t sleep and was just passing the time by herself. I almost believed her until I looked closer. She was wearing one of her nicer dresses, the one with the white lace around the hem, and her hair was still pinned up. She didn’t look like she’d been to bed at all. More like she’d been expecting company. Still, I had no reason to accuse her of anything, so I sent her off to bed and went back to my room. I couldn’t fall asleep after that. Every little noise put me on edge, and I couldn’t help straining my ears for the creak of her door or the shuffle of her slippers. By morning, I convinced myself it was nothing, and she didn’t give me any more reason to worry. There was no telling what she might have got up to while I was at work during the day, but I slept soundly all that week, and Mom seemed like her usual self. She was working on a painting of the view from our front window in the golden hour. True to her style, with bright colors and lots of charming detail. I told her she should send it to you when it was finished. So we slipped back into our routines, into the comforting pulse of life here, and I might have been no wiser if a splitting headache hadn’t ruined my sleep one night. I dragged myself out of bed, pulse pounding in my temples, and staggered to the kitchen for some water. It must have been two or three in the morning, but Mom was sitting at the table with a mug of tea. Before I even asked, she said she couldn’t sleep and had only been out of bed a moment. She was in her night clothes this time, so I didn’t question it until I spotted the second steaming mug on the table across from her. Even if she had heard me stirring in my room, she knows I don’t like hot tea. When I asked who the second drink was for, she just sipped her own and pretended not to hear me. My headache felt like a claw hammer to the front of my skull by this point, and I didn’t want to argue with her. I picked up the second cup to pour it out, but Mom stopped me, saying not to touch my father’s tea until he’d finished with it. For a moment, I thought I must have misheard. For all the nights Mom spent laughing or shouting or crying with her invisible visitors, all the times we tried to calm her down and begged her not to let them in anymore, I’d never heard her mention Papa among them. But her grim little smile and the way she wrapped her mug in two shaking hands told me that was exactly what she meant. There was a dangerous silence between us then. We stared in each other’s eyes as I dumped the tea slowly and deliberately down the drain. I thought she would try to explain, or at least give me some excuse, but she turned away from me, gazing across the table at the empty chair. Then she pushed her own tea, half-drunk, to the other side of the table. She was offering it, I understood, to her guest. I said something then that I’d rather not repeat. It was unfair to Mom, an insult that came as much from the furious pounding behind my eyes as the frustration that moving her here had apparently not solved anything. She didn’t lash back, just shook her head toward the empty chair and said not to blame me, that I was just tired and didn’t understand. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that made me even angrier. How many years did we practically raise ourselves while she was playing with her fantasies? She's been like a woman in a dream since Papa died, and we looked after her all that time. So sure, I understand plenty. That's how I felt at the time, anyway. There’s no talking any sense into Mom when she’s like this, and I’d already said something I regretted, so I decided to just get my water and go back to bed. I filled the mug from the tap, and as I turned, a flash of movement caught my eye. Mom’s cup lifted into the air and tilted slightly, as though someone in the empty seat were sipping from it, or warming their face at the rim. I froze, water sloshing over my wrist as I nearly dropped my own drink, and the mug gently lowered back to the table. Despite the dim light in the kitchen and the pain making spots pulse in front of my eyes, I felt sure of what I’d seen. I know you’ve always thought Mom was crazy, that her grief and loneliness created delusions that she came to depend on. I don’t mean that as a judgment--you’ve always been the skeptic of the family--but you have to admit that our childhood was marked by things we couldn’t explain. The Skelter is a strange place, and Mom has a kind of closeness to whatever forces make it that way. She’s touched, you might say. Steeped in the old traditions. Still, that kind of thing isn’t supposed to happen in the city. Did Mom’s old friends follow her here, or is The Governor’s promise of order and tranquility just a comforting lie? What would even happen if I reported a ghost in our apartment? Would Public Works agents swarm the building, hunting for it? Or would they take Mom to a hospital, and call me crazy too? After that, I couldn’t-- [TIRES SCRAPE ACROSS GRAVEL AS THE VAN STOPS SUDDENLY] VAL: Clementine, can you please-- CLEMENTINE: Ashley’s truck. VAL: Good eye. [THE SLIDING DOOR OPENS AND THEY CLIMB OUT, BOOTS CRUNCHING OVER ROCKS] MILO: This can’t be his. It’s been out here way longer than a week. CLEMENTINE: Don’t let the vines fool you. Out this far, the land is very efficient at taking back what belongs to it. VAL: We don’t belong to it. CLEMENTINE: That’s debatable. [MILO TUGS AT THE DOOR HANDLE, AND GROANS WHEN IT DOESN’T OPEN.] MILO: Locked. CLEMENTINE: So Ashley parked it here himself. VAL: In a hurry. Look at these tracks. I’m surprised he didn’t tip the truck over. MILO: So how do we get into it? VAL: No point. It’s empty. Nicholas has a key, he can come get it later. MILO: So this is just a dead end? CLEMENTINE: Relax. We’re not giving up. He went on foot from here, so we’ll follow. [THEY WALK IN SILENCE FOR A FEW MOMENTS. THEIR OVERLAPPING FOOTSTEPS GIVE WAY TO THE NIGHTTIME NOISES OF INSECTS BENEATH THEIR CONVERSATION.] MILO: Hmm...not many houses out here. I can’t decide if it’s lonely, or peaceful. CLEMENTINE: Just quiet. No phones, no electricity. That’s why they need the Post. VAL: Too bad needing us doesn’t translate to liking us. CLEMENTINE: Maybe people would like you better if you didn’t open their mail. VAL: You know, you may be on to something. CLEMENTINE: That letter...do you have it with you? VAL: I thought you weren’t listening. You want to know how it ends? MILO: I mean, if it’s true, and there are ghosts in the city, that sounds pretty serious. VAL: See, I knew you both were too curious for your own good. Let me just find my place...here. (reading) After that, I couldn’t make myself sleep, could hardly think of anything else. This was different from Mom’s usual episodes because she hid it from me. I know she was still talking to it, or them, but she was careful not to let me catch her at it again. A week ago, I came home from work, and Mom wasn’t there. On her easel was a painting I’d never seen before. Her palette sat beside it, the colors still wet. The tones were dark and the strokes impressionistic, almost gestural, very different from her other work. It was a large portrait, and though the man pictured was older than I remembered, it was unmistakable: Papa. There was gray at his temples, and deep lines around his eyes and mouth. He didn’t smile, but there seemed a kind of melancholy contentment in his look. It struck me deeply. I felt, somehow, that this was exactly how Papa would look if he were alive. Mom had painted him with a bright blue aura, a glow around him that tinted his skin and stood out against the dark background. The only other bright spots in the painting were the large pools of light in his eyes, nearly swallowing the irises. I looked again at the palette, drawn by that striking blue, but my attention caught instead on the background color, a red so deep it was almost black. A crater appeared in the pool of paint, as though an invisible finger had dipped into it. I held my breath as the white spots in the figure’s eyes were carefully daubed over, filled in with dark red. I called out, demanded that whoever was there show themselves, but of course there was no answer. The unseen painter appeared to be finished. Up close, I could make out the faint whorls of fingerprints in the wet paint. When I stepped back, the effect was more dramatic than I expected. Now it really looked like Papa, not a bright-eyed spirit, but the thoughtful, morose man he was. It feels foolish now, but I stood in front of the painting for nearly an hour, calling for him, hoping he would give some further sign. Maybe he wanted to keep me waiting one more time. Mom came home not long after that, but she seemed different, distracted. I could barely get two words from her before she shut herself in her room. Now she seems to be avoiding me. She goes out at unusual hours and won’t tell me where or why. Is she following that thing somewhere? I’m worried, Maria. If she believes she sees Papa, who knows what she might do. Who knows what it might lead her to do. The only thing that scares me more is...what if she’s right? Please come as soon as you can. If you can’t make Mom see reason, maybe you can talk some sense into me. Your loving sister, Alma. (paper folding) Well, that was enlightening. Sometimes it’s just nice to know you’re not the only one with problems. Disturbing, inexplicable problems. [AMBIENT NATURE NOISES RETURN] CLEMENTINE: Now that ghost is going to come after you. VAL: Guess you’d better steer clear of me, then. CLEMENTINE: Wish I could. But we’re all stuck with each other until you meet whatever awful fate you’ve brought on yourself. VAL: Chin up, Milo. I’m sure Ashley’s fate was...not so awful. MILO: And what’s the best case scenario? That he’s a ghost who wants to paint with me? VAL: Good question. If only I had an answer for you. CLEMENTINE: We're almost to the end of his route. Past here is...well, not much. MILO: I see something. What's-- [HURRIED FOOTSTEPS OVER GRAVEL] CLEMENTINE: It's Ashley's mail bag! VAL: Don't--don't touch it. It's his haunt now, let him do it. [FABRIC RUSTLES AS MILO PICKS UP THE BAG AND SHAKES OUT ITS CONTENTS] MILO: It's... (sigh) it's just ashes. VAL: Hm. Dead letters. CLEMENTINE: Let's get out of here. We have our own runs to make tonight. [THE CALLS OF CRICKETS FILL THE AWKWARD SILENCE] VAL: Hey. You coming, or what? MILO: Huh? Yeah. Yeah, I'm--I’m coming. NICHOLAS: (as the outro plays) Thank you for joining us on tonight's route. You can reach the couriers of Station 103 at nightpostpod@gmail.com or on Twitter @nightpostpod. If you're satisfied with your postal service, please rate and review us. Send a letter to your noisy neighbor, and tell them about The Night Post.