Free Sawyerville: Horror Short Stories From Another Earth Vol.3 by Remi Aubert

Chapter 1 – The Message
     
    The town of Sawyerville was the kind of place that no one would really care to talk about, at least not until after the incident. The place was home to 987 residents, each of them being self-sufficient enough with their small farms and engaging in occasional trades with other towns to make ends meet. Gail Fuller's pa, for instance, is the town's go-to guy for organic cantaloupes.
    "Pa, why haven't you ever tried leaving Saw' and went to one of the bigger cities to make a living?" Gail had once asked her father while he was piling up cantaloupes after a modest harvest.
    "It's too bad a place out there, Gail," her father had replied, his one good gray eye looking at her before it focused back at the pile of fruit. "I tried leavin' when I was a young lad and look what it did to me? The devil himself came out of nowhere, knocked me out cold, and left me bleedin' and half blind."
    Gail had wished she hadn't asked. When she was 5, she wondered why her pa only had one eye and other little girls' papas have two, so her mother had told her that her father lost his left eye to a very bad man who wanted to steal her father's money. Her mother had not told her that it happened when her father was on his way to the city, trying to find a better-paying job.
    The authorities never caught the criminal.
    While on her way to the post office one afternoon, Gail thought about what her pa had said to her, about the city being a bad place to live in. She kind of doubted that now. She's 19 and fresh out of high school. She had heard that some of the town's rich families' daughters were planning to leave Sawyerville to go to college in the city. She had always dreamed of becoming a nurse, and what she was hoping to find at the post office would determine her fate. She knew that her father alone could never afford to send her.
    All of her parents' hard-earned savings went to pay for the hospital bills 6 years ago, when her mother had found out that she had cervical cancer. The cancer had metastasized when they had brought her in for a check-up, and by the time her mother was admitted to the hospital, it was too late to save her. Now, her mother is gone and all Gail has left to remember her ma was an old brooch and a few faded photographs.
    As she continued to walk, her thoughts started to drift toward her memories of Ma. Ma, who always knew how runny she wanted her porridge. Ma, who always sang old love songs in her soft voice as she faithfully washed the linen in the wee hours of the morning. Ma, who had loved her and her little sister, Shaney, more than anything in the world.
    My little ladybugs . That's what her Ma used to call them. Ma, who was now buried deep beneath the earth.
    But it's not her ma down there anymore.
    It's just a shell , she thought. Because Ma is now an angel who is up in heaven and looking down at me and Shaney . I'll see her again, someday. At least, this was what she has been telling herself for the last 5 years. She was the one who has been taking care of her now 12 year old sister, Shaney, ever since.
    Gail sighed deeply then composed herself. Stupid girl, she thought. Why do you always have to think of something sad right before meeting other people?
    She had shed a tear once, while waiting in line at the local grocery store. The memory of her mother had come to her when she had caught the scent of the lavender soap her mother had always used. When old lady Fatima had asked her what was wrong, she had said that something got into her eye.
    Now, she's at the post office and about to talk to Ronnie, the pimply teenage son of Mr. Bertrand, the postman.
    "Is there anything in the mail for me?" she asked, staring at Ronnie's severe cystic acne on his forehead. Poor boy, she thought. I wonder if it hurts.
    "Hey, Gail," Ronnie greeted in a squeaky, adolescent boy voice. "Lemme just check your PO box. Number 433, right?"
    "Yes, please," Gail replied.
    As Ronnie shuffled to the back of the office,