To anyone who finds this, my name is Sebastian Hayes. I’m writing this in hopes that someone will find this and tell my momma what happened and that I’m sorry.
The beginning of my hell began on Saturday March 2nd, 1968. It was like any other morning, I heard my mother turn on the kitchen radio and click the pilot light on the stove. She claimed she hated rock’n’roll but regardless she would tune in every morning. I knew it wasn’t for lack of options. They were still playing soaps on the radio and other stations had the news and old country and blues, but I guess that reminded her too much of daddy. It had only been two weeks since the funeral.
I begrudgingly sat up in my bed, knowing that if I didn’t get up soon momma would raise hell, regardless of it being a Saturday. For a moment I sat and studied the sword in flash Gordon’s hand on my poster, the last gift I got from my big brother Billy.
Billy wasn’t with us anymore, not due to the war, he was far too young to be drafted when he left us. I stretched and rubbed the sleep from my eyes before I stood up and shuffled over to my dresser, I locked eyes with the picture frame on the dresser. A photo of Dad, Billy, and me holding fishing rods with sticks and weeds wrapped around the line, it was taken near the banks of the chattahoochee.
I still remember that day, it was boiling hot. We were fishing for hours from sunrise to noon and we couldn’t even catch a cold. Daddy thought it was hilarious when both me and Billy finally caught something at the same time and it turned out to be the aforementioned sticks and weeds. He was laughing his head off while he had momma take the picture, that was only five years ago.
Not being able to bite back the overwhelming sadness and longing I felt while staring at the picture for a few short seconds I put on my socks, shirt, and pants while bitter tears fell down my cheeks like hot wax on the side of a candle. Once I was dressed I did my best to wipe the streams from my eyes and made my way down the lonely hallway to my seat at the kitchen table.
I stared sorrowfully at the four empty chairs before me while momma was still fixing breakfast. I grabbed the back of the chair placed in front of the only side of the table done up to be served. Momma heard the chair move and without looking behind she spoke.
“Oh there you are, I’m glad to see you’re up. Breakfast is almost done hon”
she turned around and noticing the redness in my eyes she laid the skillet down and kneeled next to me at the table.
“I ain’t gonna ask you what’s wrong, I know it well enough. It won’t get easier for a while. I feel the same as you every time I see his face and those eyes staring back at me from the portrait in the hallway”
I kept my eyes down, studying the grain in the table trying any trick in the book to keep my mind away from the oncoming flood of emotions. Momma’s words pierced my heart worse than she could even imagine, it took everything in me not to break down and sob. I could feel the dam starting to crack. It would’ve been easier had she not acknowledged it, acknowledgement means you have to confront the feelings.
“I know it hurts honey, but you’ve got to stay strong. For them. Their time has passed and they’re watching over you. it’s alright to be sad but don’t let it ruin you. Now, eat your breakfast. We can talk it out later or you can go to mamaw’s tomorrow, I’m sure she has some words that’ll help, your mamaw knows sorrow and sadness better than most”
I grab my fork from the neatly laid placemat as momma scooped eggs onto my plate. I wasn’t hungry, but I knew if I didn’t eat the soft demeanor would change and momma would lecture me on how being sad doesn’t mean you get to starve yourself. we’ve been through this a couple times already.
A few hours had passed after I had finished my breakfast and pushed my feelings down enough to where I felt normal. I began distracting myself with cartoons while momma cleaned and talked to aunt Deloris on the kitchen phone. I swear, those two women would talk the day away if aunt Deloris wasn’t so busy. She moved up to Knoxville a few years ago looking to find work in the music business with plans of later moving to Nashville to work on the grand ole opry, It seemed like a pipe dream to me.
She’s still hoping to “make it” but she found herself a man who had his own aspirations of starting a business. I never cared enough to learn what kind of business though, I had only met the man once and he seemed uppity and self important. Daddy didn’t care much for him either.
The call abruptly ended when the knocker on the door thumped three times.
momma hung up on aunt Deloris without even saying goodbye. This struck a chord with me, she wouldn’t do that. she’d let the world end before hanging up cold on someone, especially aunt Deloris. I spun around to look at her over my shoulder.
She had a wild fear in her eyes I’d never seen before, it disturbed me greatly. Her eyes never left the small window on the top of the door as she slowly walked up to it as if she was alert prey treading lightly in anticipation of an attack from an apex predator. The fear in her eyes never left but the rest of her face remained stoic except for a near imperceptible twitch in her lip as she leaned forward slightly to grab the knob.
She held the knob for a few seconds before I noticed the muscles in her forearms bulge in preparation. she flung open the door. The force of the slam sent the door stopper into the wall and nearly made me jump out of my skin. As she perceived what was outside of the door her stoic expression dropped and a look of dread washed over her face as she went pale. This deeply frightened me, which is why I was shocked when all I saw when I leaned around the corner was… just an average looking mailman with a cheery smile.
“Good morning miss, is everything okay?”
The mailman said
Momma looked as if she saw a haint, she struggled to find words. It looked as if her soul had left a vacancy in her frame. She stood for an awkward and uncomfortable amount of time before I saw the bulge in the side of her throat as she prepared to speak.
“Y-yes, everything’s fine”
“Oh…. glad to hear it. Anyways miss, I’ve got a letter for a Sebastian Hayes, it’s from an uncle Detty”
I didn’t think she could get any paler. She stood on shaky legs that couldn’t seem to find their balance. I could see her head tilt down slightly to look at the envelope in his outstretched hand just outside the storm door. A strange marbled milky yellow letter, almost like the color of pus from an infected scab.
“There’s no Sebastian Hayes here”
“Oh…. Are you sure?”
The mailman asked
“YES IM SURE!”
She shrieked before reaching down, pulling the knob out of the new hole in the wall and slamming the door shut hard enough to shatter a section of the glass on the storm door and nearly taking it off its hinges.
Before momma slammed the door I noticed the mailman’s pleasant smile deflated into a face of what looked like contempt. Momma locked every latch and deadbolt on the door before quickly turning on her heel and making an escape to her room. I was left frightened, I had never seen momma react that way to anything, let alone a seemingly normal postman. I had completely tuned out the cartoons playing on the tv during the whole exchange and when I noticed they were still going I turned the tv off. now wasn’t the time for the shenanigans of Tom and Jerry.
I sat in silence listening to my ears adjust before I noticed the sounds of quiet sobs.
Noticing this I climbed up to my feet and quietly made my way to the back of the house where the noise was coming from, momma’s bedroom. I stood in the doorway as momma was crying into clasped hands obscuring her face. I stood like a stone sentry guarding an old courthouse until I felt like I needed say something.
“Who was that momma? What’s going on?”
She unclasped her hands and looked up at me with wet puffy eyes. We stared at each other for what felt like an eternity. I was about to turn and go to my room before she opened her mouth, but nothing came out. I steadied myself and prepared to ask again.
“Who-“
I couldn’t get the rest of the words out before she held her hand up for me to stop. She searched the room with her eyes before closing them and resting her hand. When her eyes opened she seemed to regain herself, albeit not entirely.
“That man was a demon in the flesh, Sebastian”
I was shocked, I must’ve missed something because he had looked like an ordinary mailman to me. I admit I didn’t get the best look at him but from what I could tell he wasn’t anything out of the ordinary and nothing he said contradicted that to my memory. I stood pondering what momma said, it didn’t make sense.
I couldn’t work out rhyme or reason why momma would think that but there had to be something there, right? This woman has always been quant and good to people, I’ve never seen her chew someone out or raise her voice even if they did something wrong, on purpose or not. This didn’t make any sense, why would she be so adamant on such an average looking man being a demon?
“He said he had a letter for me from my uncle Detty?”
Fire filled mommas eyes.
“Sebastian I want you to listen well and good. You don’t have an uncle Detty”
I shuffled in discomfort. Why is she so upset? I didn’t feel like my question warranted this kind of anger. I reposed myself before attempting to interject.
“Bu-“
“No Sebastian! You never had an uncle Detty! You know I only have two sisters, aunt Deloris and aunt Margaret. Your daddy only had one brother and he died while running around with some bad people when your daddy was still a kid. Just leave it at that. Listen, that thing is not welcome here, don’t think about him, don’t look for him, and don’t ask about an uncle Detty! This is final, if you do see that thing again you tell me or you dial the law, do you understand?!”
“Yes ma’am”
Her face softened again but her voice stayed stern.
“Good, it’s still a nice Saturday but I don’t want you leaving the house with that thing still around, he’s looking for you. Stay in and entertain yourself, I’m calling off that visit to mamaw’s. I’ve got some things I need to talk to her about over the phone”
Without another word I slowly turned and headed towards my bedroom. I spent the rest of the day drawing on daddy’s old notepad and occasionally tuning in to the old Flash Gordon movies on rerun. At about 7pm I heard momma dialing on the rotary. I tried to listen in but momma walked around the corner and told me that if she caught me eavesdropping I’d be grounded for a month with no tv and no toys or books.
Roughly a week after that incident everything seemingly went back to normal, the mailman never showed up again and the whole incident was a relatively distant memory. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think of it on occasion but I had tricked myself into thinking it was just a bad dream, that was, until I found a marbled yellow letter on the foot of my bed a week after my 16th birthday.