Letters in the Dark
I thought the crowd outside my gate at six in the morning was some kind of protest.
The streets were usually quiet this early, except for the occasional delivery truck or a jogger who hated being alone.
I grabbed the old baseball bat leaning against the porch rail, squinting through the frost-streaked window.
Turns out, they weren’t protesting anything.
Not exactly.
They were just… waiting.
For what, I didn’t know.
My name is Jack Harlan.
Seventy-one years old.
Retired from a paper mill that no one seems to remember existed.
My wife, Eleanor, passed ten years ago, and since then, my world had shrunk to my house on Maple Street, the occasional newspaper, and Rufus, my golden retriever.
Rufus was fourteen now.
His muzzle was white as frost, his eyes clouded with years, his hips clicking like rusted hinges.
He no longer chased squirrels.
His great adventure was the ten feet from the porch to the patch of grass beside the fence.
He would sit there for hours, nose poking through the slats, watching people pass by.
And maybe he waited for something too.
One Tuesday morning, irritated by the blank stares of people hurrying past, I did something impulsive.
I found an old piece of plywood, scrawled with a black Sharpie:
RUFUS’S OFFICE
Hours: Dawn to Dusk
Services: Listening, Advice Optional
Manager: IN
I nailed it to the fence, just above Rufus’s head.
I expected someone from the neighborhood council to call and demand I remove it, maybe threaten a fine.
Instead, the first visitor arrived by sunrise.
She was a nurse, eyes red-rimmed, hair falling in a messy knot.
She paused, read the sign, then bent down, burying her face in Rufus’s neck.
He didn’t flinch.
He just leaned into her, tail thumping a slow, steady rhythm.
I watched from the porch, coffee forgotten, as she stayed there a full minute.
When she stood, she didn’t speak.
She just nodded at me, tears dripping onto the sidewalk, and walked away.
By the end of the week, a line had formed.
Not a long line, but steady.
The hoodie-wearing teen who usually kicked trash cans now sat cross-legged, whispering things only Rufus seemed to understand.
The businessman in a dark suit scratched Rufus’s ears with almost desperate concentration, murmuring, “Good boy… good boy…” until his shoulders finally relaxed.
It was astonishing.
My lonely little block, the one that felt like it had forgotten human warmth, was suddenly alive.
And I, somehow, had become Rufus’s secretary.
I even added a mailbox to the fence: COMPLAINTS / FAN MAIL.
Each night, I would bring the letters inside and read them aloud to Rufus while he dozed on the rug.
“Dear Rufus, I failed my exam and I’m scared to go home. Thanks for not judging me.”
“Dear Manager, my husband left six months ago. You’re the only man I’ve touched since. Thank you. ”
“Dear Dog, I’m 42 days sober today. You’re the first one I told.”
I started replying with index cards.
“The Manager says grades don’t measure kindness.” “Keep counting the days. The Manager is proud.”
And life… life felt bearable again.
Then November came.
The cold hit hard.
Rufus’s back legs failed completely.
The vet gave me that look—the one you know even if you’ve never been told in words.
I carried him into the yard one last time, wrapped in his favorite blanket.
The wind bit at my face, the neighborhood muffled by frost and early darkness.
And yet, outside my window… the street had started to look different.
It started small.
Shadows moving at impossible angles.
People stopping and staring at nothing.
My neighbors were polite enough, but there was something under the surface, something waiting.
By mid-November, Rufus’s condition worsened.
I removed the “Manager is IN” sign and replaced it with plain cardboard: Manager on Sick Leave – Please Send Prayers.
The line stopped forming.
Silence.
Until one night, around 11:47 PM, I heard the mailbox rattle.
It wasn’t the wind.
I didn’t leave it out.
I froze.
My coffee trembled in my hand.
Slowly, I approached the fence.
The letters were gone.
The mailbox was empty.
But the sidewalk… it was covered.
Hundreds of tiny folded papers, each scribbled in neat, small handwriting, pressed into the cracks between the pavers.
They weren’t complaints or fan mail.
They were… directions.
Coordinates, times, and cryptic instructions, none of which I recognized.
Then I saw it.
A figure crouched at the end of the street, just beyond the lamplight.
Watching.
Not moving, just… waiting.
I squinted.
It looked human, but the way it stayed perfectly still, the unnatural elongation of its shadow… I couldn’t be sure.
Rufus growled softly, low in his throat.
Not like the warning growl at a stranger or a dog.
This was deeper.
Warmer.
Like he knew something I didn’t.
I stepped forward, and the figure disappeared.
Just like that.
Vanished.
No footprints, no disturbance, nothing.
The next morning, my neighbors were gone.
All of them.
The nurse, the teen, the businessman… the ones who had come to Rufus’s fence for comfort were nowhere.
I opened the mailbox.
A single card:
The Manager isn’t the only one listening.
Be ready.
And Rufus… Rufus was gone too.
Not dead.
Not in the yard.
Just… gone.
The bed was empty, the blanket folded neatly as if he had stood and left on his own.
I searched the neighborhood.
Nothing.
Silence except for the wind and the faint thump-thump-thump in my chest where his tail used to be.
I don’t know what happened that night.
I don’t know where Rufus went, or why the letters suddenly became directions, or who—or what—was watching.
But something is out there.
Something connected to Rufus, to the mailbox, to the people who came to the fence.
And I’m the only one left to figure it out.
Jack hadn’t slept.
Not really.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw shadows shifting at the edges of his street, the ones that weren’t there in the daylight.
Rufus’s absence had left a hole that echoed in every room.
The bed was neatly made, the blanket folded as if the dog had left in perfect silence—but Jack knew better.
Something had changed the rules of his world.
The morning came gray and brittle.
Jack went to the mailbox.
Empty.
He hadn’t touched it since the card with the cryptic message: “The Manager isn’t the only one listening. Be ready.”
But as he looked closer, the pavers under the mailbox were moving.
The letters.
Tiny folds flitted, almost like wings, shuffling in the slight breeze—but they weren’t just paper.
When he bent down, the letters seemed to scuttle away from him, gathering in a neat line pointing east, toward the old industrial district at the edge of town, the place where his old mill used to stand.
Jack felt his knees weaken.
He didn’t want to go, not alone.
But something, a pull he couldn’t name, forced him forward.
He grabbed his coat, bat in hand, and followed the trail.
The streets were deserted.
The houses that had been lively with Rufus’s visitors were shuttered, doors locked tight.
No cars, no birds, just an unsettling silence.
And yet… footprints appeared behind him.
Human-like, but too long, too precise, perfectly spaced, as if whoever—or whatever—was trailing him didn’t make noise.
The letters led him to the mill ruins.
Rusted beams leaned like broken bones, windows dark with soot.
Jack stepped carefully, the bat raised, heart hammering.
That’s when he saw it: A shadow, crouched on a concrete slab.
It looked like Rufus.
But wrong.
Wrong proportions, glowing faintly in the gray light.
The golden fur was darker, almost blackened, and the eyes… not eyes.
Just infinite depth, like staring into two tiny wells of stars.
“Rufus?” Jack whispered.
His voice cracked.
The figure tilted its head.
The letters at Jack’s feet fluttered violently, then shot upward like sparks.
They weren’t letters anymore.
They were instructions: maps, numbers, dates, names.
Directions to people Jack had never met, places he’d never been.
Then the shadow spoke—not with words, but in thought, directly into Jack’s mind: “You were the Manager. You were meant to lead them. You failed. Now it is time to follow.”
Jack stumbled back.
The bat dropped.
Suddenly, another shadow appeared behind him.
And another.
Shapes formed at the edges of the ruins.
They weren’t fully human, nor fully dog.
A crowd of watchers, silent, pressing closer.
He realized—they were the neighbors.
Not alive, not dead.
Somehow transformed.
Their eyes dark and glinting, faces serene but empty.
Jack’s first thought: I must be dreaming.
Then came a whisper from the shadows: “The fence… the mailbox… it was never about comfort. It was preparation.”
He backed up, tripping over a pile of broken bricks.
When he looked down, the letters had wrapped themselves around his ankles.
They weren’t just paper—they had weight, pressure, like something alive, constricting him.
He pulled, but the letters clung tighter, reading themselves in front of his eyes: “Fail again, and you’ll be next. The Manager must obey.”
Jack realized that Rufus had never just been a dog.
He had been the anchor, the filter between the world and… this.
The golden retriever that listened to human hearts had been guarding something.
Now, without him, the barrier was down.
The shadows lunged.
Not with claws, not with teeth.
But with questions, demands, expectations—pushing Jack to confront the people he had touched through Rufus, to decide who lived, who fell, who could survive.
Every face he had comforted, every secret he had read aloud, every note he had replied to—now became a trial.
Jack ran.
The ruins twisted unnaturally, hallways elongating, doors leading to nowhere.
Every time he paused, the letters fluttered back, circling him in patterns, spelling words: “Follow. Or be erased.”
In a desperate corner, Jack found a familiar shape: the folded blanket Rufus had slept on.
He grabbed it, feeling heat radiate through the fibers, pulsing.
The blanket hummed almost like a heartbeat.
He wrapped it around his shoulders.
For a moment, clarity returned.
He remembered a letter he had replied to, decades ago, from a man who claimed to see things “between the threads of the world.” He had laughed it off at the time.
Now, Jack understood.
Rufus’s office wasn’t just a place of comfort.
It was a checkpoint.
A test.
And Jack had been the keeper.
The shadows froze.
The letters hovered.
And then, impossibly, Rufus appeared—not fully dog, but not fully shadow either.
His glowing eyes fixed on Jack, and the letters stilled.
A voice, unmistakably Rufus’s, echoed: “You have one choice, Manager. Lead, or be consumed. Choose wisely.”
Before Jack could respond, a deafening crack split the air.
The ground beneath him buckled.
Concrete and rusted metal twisted, forming a gaping maw of darkness.
The letters screamed.
The shadows lunged.
Jack fell forward.
And everything went black.
