Lucas Mackenzie and the London Midnight Ghost Show by Steven Bryant

Author:Steven Bryant [Bryant, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: children's fantasy, death and dying, middle school, scary books, spine chilling horror, ghosts, Horror, Magic, life after death
Publisher: Month9Books, LLC
Published: 2015-02-24T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

The Postmaster

The United States Post Office in Vernon, Ohio, looked like a fortress. Its walls, vast slabs of granite four stories high, imposing enough to guard the gold at Ft. Knox, surrounded and protected the delicate hardware and human machinery that moved letters, postcards, and packages into and out of central Ohio. Gray clouds gathered and darkened directly over the structure as if to single it out for some special form of misery.

At its entrance, amid the gathering gloom, Lucas was convinced that no one in the company suspected his being at the post office. Yorick was still missing—it had been over two weeks—and this weighed on everyone in the cast. Oliver seemed especially affected. He took to lying in bed all day reading Zane Grey Westerns. With one close friend missing and the other absorbed in the likes of Riders of the Purple Sage, Lucas became aware that no one was tracking his every movement. The others had long gotten over the fear that Lucas might soar off a rooftop again, and they left him to his ways. With this unexpected freedom, he found it easy to slip off to anyplace he chose, so long as he returned before his absence raised any alarms.

Today that place was the Vernon Post Office. If anyone could get in touch with his family, Lucas had finally decided, it was the U.S. Mail.

Filled with apprehension, he turned the brass doorknob and heaved the great door open.

A cavernous interior lobby greeted him. High ceilings made miniatures of the few visitors conducting business, and a green marble floor appeared to extend forever. The vast chamber seemed immaculately clean, antiseptic, and footsteps echoed noticeably as people went about their business.

Lucas approached the first service window, its opening guarded by vertical brass bars like the teller cages in banks. The window was so high that Lucas had to look straight up at it and therefore couldn’t see the employee behind it.

“May I help you?” a lady behind the bars asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” Lucas said. “My name is Lucas Mackenzie. I’m expecting a letter. General Delivery.”

Lucas tried to make his voice sound nonchalant, as though he picked up a General Delivery letter every day. He had set the correspondence in motion himself a week earlier, when the show had played at the Victory Theatre in Dayton. It had taken only a moment to slip around the corner and drop the envelope into a mailbox on the street. Whether he would receive an answer or whether the letter would be returned unopened remained to be seen.

He had composed his inquiry carefully.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Mackenzie,

Please do not be alarmed. I am not a crackpot. If you receive this letter, please write to me at L. Mackenzie, General Delivery, Vernon, Ohio.

Yours truly,

L. Mackenzie

To the envelope he had licked and attached a four-cent stamp with Abraham Lincoln’s face on it, and he used the same Vernon address for the return address, in case the envelope had to be returned unopened. This

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