Why do certain letters never reach their destinations while others arrive decades late? What's behind the postmaster's nervous glances toward the harbor, and which packages does he refuse to handle? Who keeps sending those unmarked parcels with no return address?
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Certainly, the terror of a deserted house swells in geometrical rather than arithmetical progression as houses multiply to form a city of stark desolation. The sight of such endless avenues of fishy-eyed vacancy and death, and the thought of such linked infinities of black, brooding compartments given over to cob-webs and memories and the conqueror worm, start up vestigial fears and aversions that not even the stoutest philosophy can disperse.
― H.P. Lovecraft, The Shadow over Innsmouth
The brass fixtures of the Innsmouth Post Office had tarnished to the color of old blood, though Cornelius Bramwell couldn’t recall them ever being properly maintained during his fifteen years as postmaster. The building itself seemed to exhale with each gust of salt wind, its walls expanding and contracting in a rhythm that matched no earthly breathing.
It began with the letters that arrived without postmarks---thick envelopes that felt warm to the touch and left his fingers tingling with an electric numbness. Cornelius had tried to return them to sender, but the return addresses were written in symbols that hurt his eyes to look upon directly. The postal regulations manual, yellowed with age, offered no guidance for such irregularities.
His assistant, Helena, had grown increasingly pale over the past months, her once-bright smile replaced by a vacant stare that seemed to peer beyond the confines of their small office. She sorted the peculiar mail with mechanical precision, her movements becoming more fluid and graceful, as if she were learning to move through water rather than air.
The breaking point came when Cornelius discovered the sorted mail didn’t match the delivery logs. Letters addressed to long-dead residents were being processed alongside packages bound for locations that existed on no map he could find. When he confronted Helena about the discrepancies, she turned to him with eyes that had developed an inner membrane, translucent and pearl-like.
“The correspondence must flow,” she whispered, her voice carrying harmonics that resonated in his bones. “The ancient routes must remain open. We are custodians of more than mere human communication, Cornelius. We serve a postal system that spans dimensions beyond your comprehension.”
That night, alone in his quarters above the post office, Cornelius heard the sorting machines running despite being unplugged. Through the floorboards came the rhythmic thump of mail being processed, accompanied by a wet, sliding sound that spoke of tentacles rather than human hands. He realized then that he had never truly been the postmaster---he had merely been the latest caretaker in an unbroken chain of service to entities that had been sending messages across the cosmos since before humanity learned to write.
