The Letter

It’s October 2020, and the upper peninsula of Michigan is beautiful this time of year. You’ve been taking an early fall vacation at your family’s lake side cabin every year since you were a small child.

The trees are in the process of changing, making the whole world around you seem on fire. In the early morning light the first of the birds, and the last of the bats, whip past your head as you begin the return portion of your daily walk. The sunlight filtering through the reds, oranges, yellows, and greens of the world around you create a kaleidoscope of colors and shadows on the gravel road you walk.

It’s like the world is painting with an artist’s eye.

The dark blue of your jean shorts contrast the vibrant red flannel jacket you need for the cooling morning walks. Small puffs of dust lift with every booted foot fall. You’re sure the locals will be complaining of an unseasonably dry year again.

You pass beneath the old street light on the final bend towards your cabin. The lamp light still on and shining brightly in the shadow of the early morning. The familiar landmark indicating the nearly hidden driveway opposite from it that leads into your family’s generational property. The old county sign S15336 mostly hidden in the roadside grasses and shrubs does nothing to help passersby notice the driveway peeking out into the bend in the road.

As you turn into the hidden path, you notice that the center row of grass between the hardened dirt ruts from generations of vehicle tires needs to be trimmed shorter. After a few steps, you turn around to check the mail. It’s been days since you have remembered to do so, having forwarded any incoming mail to this address during your vacation. You open the box and see a small stack of letters, magazines, and other assorted junk mail. You also notice the beginnings of a web being formed by a black gem-bright spider. Its legs arch high and tight to its body as it scurries from the sudden day light.

A few moments with a dead branch clears the offensive obstruction, and you hurriedly grab the stack of mail, shacking it to clear any possible arachnid stowaways.

The quarter mile walk down the driveway leads you deeper into the great Northern trees that dominate the area. The painter from earlier now working with nearly all shades of grey. The exception being the beams of sunlight spearing down onto the cabin at the end of the drive.

A new bright blue steel roof tops a small rustic log style single story cabin. An above ground electricity line hangs almost low enough between the pole and the cabin for you to reach up and touch. The modern satellite dish mounted to the top of the unused chimney speak to some of the modern updates you’ve had done in recent years. Even so, it’s the picture of “getting away.”

Your old forest green Subaru Outback is parked close to the screened in front porch, the majority of which is stacked nearly to the ceiling with split and dried wood on both sides of the small door into the cabin.

Upon entering, you drop the stack of mail onto the small kitchen table, light a fire in the old cast iron wood stove, and begin to heat water in a long familiar kettle for your morning coffee. You head into the single bedroom, and change into clean clothes, checking for ticks and other clinging insects as you do, not finding any.

As the water continues to heat, you sit at the table to begin sorting through the forwarded mail. The internet bill and ads for several stores go in one pile. A document that you have been waiting for from work arrived, so you immediately open it and sign on the indicated line. A political ad from the candidate you don’t plan to vote for immediately gets tossed into the trash along with an ad for a new dentist opening up near your home address.

The last piece of mail catches your eye for a moment, but before you can open it the kettle begins its piercing wail and hisses like a coiled serpent.

A quick grind, a French press, and a few minutes later you douse the wood fire and lean against the counter with an old mug in hand to take your first careful sip of black nirvana for the day. As the first of the steaming liquid slips past your lips, your eyes come to rest on the unusual letter again.

Sitting back down, with the coffee mug resting within easy reach, you pick up the letter once more. It feels light and flimsy in your hands. Almost as though the envelope is empty, or nearly so. You turn for a moment and hold it up to the morning light streaming in from the window behind you out of curiosity. The light only able to bleed through around the edges. Something dark fills the envelope. Something that blocks the sunlight completely.

You didn’t notice earlier, but now you see that the letter is addressed to you. That wouldn’t be strange, except that it is addressed to you here. At the cabin. It wasn’t forwarded like the rest of your mail, but rather someone knew to send it to this address. You’ve never used this address for anything other than to have your mail forwarded.

You look to the return address…it’s yours. It’s your home address in the return space.

Reluctantly, you open the envelope. While running your finger along the seam to rip the paper, a sudden flair of pain causes you to stick your finger briefly into your mouth. You taste the faintest coppery flavor of blood and pull your finger out to examine the small cut. Right at the inner seam of skin at your second knuckle. Every small flex of your finger causes a renewal of the original flair of pain.

Cursing, you rip the envelope wide open and a single sheet of folded paper lands to rest on the tabletop.

The white of the paper seems dark somehow. Not as white and crisp as you expect from paper. What you can see is blank, and it is folded in customary thirds. Picking up the sheet of paper you unfold it to reveal that the opposite side is printed black. It’s not black paper. It’s been printed on to be completely black on one side. Or nearly so.

Opening the folded paper fully, reveals that in what you think is the exact center of the blacked out side of the page is a single letter in white. The letter X.

Bam!

You jump and drop the paper as a sudden sharp slamming noise comes from just behind your head. Your sudden movement hits your thighs against the underside of the table, and the nearly full mug of steaming coffee tips over to pour itself down your legs. The burning heat takes all of your attention as you rush to the small bathroom and slam on the cold water in the shower.

The pipes make a familiar groan as the shower slowly begins to trickle water. You franticly strip off your shorts and see that your legs have deep red burns from the scalding liquid. The pressure from the shower builds as more water begins to stream out at its usual sluggish pace. Angling your legs into the water is difficult and you soak your underwear while getting your legs in just the right position. The cold water from the deep well is agony and ecstasy together.

The groaning of the pipes takes on an unfamiliar tone, and the sluggish water slows back to a trickle without your prompting. You almost feel the pinging sound that comes from somewhere below your feet, and the trickle of water stops altogether.

You turn the knob a few times, but nothing changes. The pain in your legs begins to build again now that the cooling water is gone. You grab a towel and head back to the kitchen to soak it in the cold water from the sink. Wrapping the saturated towel around your waste, you limp over to the bedroom to grab the keys. The pain in your legs telling you that you need help.

As you pass back through the kitchen on your way to your Outback, you notice the ominous letter resting on the tabletop where you dropped it. The dark black surface with its single white letter X is face up. You can barely make out a few wet spots where the spilled coffee dripped.

Not really knowing why, you grab the letter and take it with you as you head to the car. You carefully step around the slowly cooling pool of coffee and the cracked mug on the floor.

As you pass between the stacked piles of wood, your towel catches on a quartered and splintered section of oak. As you try to pull it free from the grasping log, the pile shifts and pieces of precariously stacked wood begin to rain down. One piece strikes a glancing blow on your forearm and scrapes down the front of your bare and burning thigh. Crying out, you quickly abandon the towel and retreat out of the porch as the entire stack tumbles down.

Keys and letter still in hand you limp, barefoot, over to the Outback. On your way you notice something bright red laying on the ground beneath your kitchen window. It’s a cardinal. Likely the one you often see around your cabin as you return from your morning walk. It lays still and unmoving. Its wings outstretched as if still in flight. Its neck impossibly twisted.

The burning in your legs demands your attention once more, and you stumble over to the Outback. Starting the car, you crank the AC on full blast and aim jets of frigid air directly at your legs. A deep long scrape from the falling log crosses over the burned skin shooting pain through your right leg with each heartbeat. You begin to reach for your cellphone and stop short. It’s still in your shorts pocket, on the bathroom floor, inside the cabin. A cabin that has its door blocked shut by chords of fallen logs.

You toss the letter onto the passenger seat, its black surface and white X a reminder of what has gone wrong since opening it.

Pulling out of the driveway, every turn of the steering wheel a small painful reminder of the paper cut on your finger, you barely avoid hitting another car coming from your left on the gravel road. You’re close enough to see the startled expression on the other driver’s face before he lifts an extended middle finger in your direction.

Turning left out of the driveway, you begin to head into town. You notice as the old street light flickers and dies. You can’t recall ever seeing the light out, even during the brightest time of day. It weighs heavily on your mind as you start heading for the small town clinic that isn’t more than a half hour drive away.

The cold air from the AC bathes your bare legs for several minutes as you bump along the gravel road. You dip suddenly into a particularly deep pothole, and hear a flutter of paper, and then a whining sound comes through the vents. The AC clicks on and off several times before finally stopping all together. Turning the dial on and off several times does nothing more that anger you, and you slam your hand on the steering wheel several times. A sharper pain and a slick spot on the wheel tells you that you’ve opened your paper cut wider and deeper than it had been.

A few minutes later the open window of your car does nothing to sooth the building pain in your legs. Your finger stings from the constantly reopening paper cut, and the cursed letter, now on the passenger floor, continuously flutters from the circulating wind. The noise of it sounding more and more like laughter mocking your anguish. Its black surface a doorway to the hell. The source of your agony. The focus of growing fear within you. The single spot of white, the letter X, revealed over and over by the snapping paper. Its movement hypnotic. Snap, snap, snap, snap…

The blare of a car horn pulls you from the call of the letter. A black truck looms in front of you. The headlights and chrome grill guard seeming a predatory smile as the larger vehicle bares down on you.

Realization dawns. You’ve drifted into the wrong lane. You jerk the wheel to the right, the piercing agony in your finger a momentary distraction. Your right leg spasms in pain and does not respond well to the sudden shift from gas to brakes. The gravel beneath your old tires slips, and your vehicle begins to slide perpendicular with the direction of the road. The change in the direction of the wind howls through the open window and snatches up the black letter, swirling it around the inside of the car. You turn to look towards the truck as you hear it slam on the breaks.

Too late.

The floating letter blocks your vision. The blackened face, the single white X, blocks the sight of the truck about to hit you. It fills your entire vision. It’s the final thing you see before the whole world explodes. Noise like a thunderstorm. The impact of your head suddenly lashed to the side makes your vision go blank. You feel a sense of vertigo as the direction of gravity changes. After an eternity you hear a car door open. A man’s voice pleading for a response. And as you begin to lose even that sensation, you hear the sound of paper wings fading into the distance.