Dead Letters Anthology Read Free Page A

inside, as I’d done the same a couple of days before. Supermarket coupons. Credit card companies urging me once again to consider getting further into debt. A small padded envelope.
    I shoved all the junk under my arm — remembering once again my idea of moving the recycling container so it was right next to the mailbox, a notion I’d again forget as soon as I started walking back to the house — and examined the envelope. It was four inches by six, a buff color. The most notable thing about it was the NOT KNOWN AT THIS ADDRESS scrawled across the front. It’d been sent to someone called Patrick Brice, who lived — or was supposed to live — in Rockford, Illinois.
    My name is Matt, and I live in California.
    I flipped it over. Someone had written ‘Return to sender’ on the reverse, in a different hand and colour. In a third hue — and different handwriting once again — someone else had further written ‘NO FORWARDING ADDRESS’.
    None of which explained what it was doing in my mailbox. I considered putting it back, but realised it’d likely been sitting there a couple of days already, and the mail person hadn’t taken it away, having discovered their error. So instead I carried it and the other stuff back to the house, where I dropped the whole bundle on the kitchen table and forgot about it.
    * * *
    Late morning found me back in the kitchen, making coffee. Karen had taken Scott out for a few hours, giving me an opportunity to work in peace and, coincidentally, have a smoke or two without being given a hard time. As I headed toward the back door, coffee in hand, I noticed the envelope on the table and grabbed it in passing.
    Outside, I looked at the package again for a few minutes without learning anything new. The only way to do that would be, of course, to open it. It wasn’t for me, self-evidently. It was to this Patrick Brice person. But — equally obviously — it wasn’t going to get to him. I could put it back in the box or take it down to the post office, but it had clearly done the rounds already without finding a home. So what should I do? Drop it in the trash? That felt wrong. Someone had sent something to somebody else. An engagement had been commenced, a baton proffered. To simply dispose of it, be a stranger summarily curtailing that journey, didn’t seem right.
    I could at least find out what was inside, and make a judgment as to how important it was. If it seemed like some big deal, there might be something I could do. Plus if I took my time over the process, I’d be outside long enough to legitimate having another cigarette.
    Sounded good.
    The envelope had been securely sealed with brown duct tape. I circumvented this by tearing it open at the other end, fairly neatly. Inside was an object wrapped in a small piece of white paper, secured in place with a piece of scotch tape. I used my thumbnail to slice through this — again, fairly neatly — and unwrapped something that was immediately recognizable.
    A chess piece. A bishop, to be precise, about an inch and a half high, quite nicely made out of a darkish wood. On the base was a thin pad of dark red/brown felt. The piece was in good condition, but a little worn, as if it had been used many times.
    So?
    Realizing that there was something on the paper wrapping, I took a closer look. A short sentence, three words, ending with a period — all of it in Courier, or some near equivalent, as if produced on a typewriter.
    ‘Over to you.’
    ‘Huh,’ I said. I lit my second cigarette, and tried to make a mystery out of what I’d found. Most likely there wasn’t one. Two guys playing long distance, I guessed, and this a notification of a move, presumably one in which the bishop had been taken. Though… instead of ‘Over to you’, or even ‘Your move’, shouldn’t the message have been ‘Knight to King 4 x Bishop’, or however it was they indicated those things? I’d never been a player, finding the game both hard and boring, and