We went back to the post office on a Sunday.
No deliveries.
No noise.
Just the low buzz of ceiling fans stirring hot air.
Hana had the key to the back room—the one no one used since the flood of '98.
She said we should log it properly, record everything.
The idea felt good.
Procedural. Safe.
We filmed on my old handheld and kept the audio running on two recorders.
One in the corner, one by the door.
For a moment, it looked like we were shooting a news segment, not walking into something sick.
The room smelled like wet glue and iron.
Paper everywhere—warped boxes, envelopes melted together.
Old ink stains had crawled down the walls and dried into black vines.
Hana whispered, "They called this place the Dead Letter Room."
I laughed softly. "Appropriate."
Then we both heard it.
A knock.
Not on the door—under the floor.
Three taps.
Then one more.
The same rhythm we'd been hearing for weeks.
We started filming.
The first minutes looked normal—flashlight beam cutting through dust,
Hana reading old addresses aloud.
Then something changed on the camera screen.
A shadow crossed behind her, but the beam of light didn't break.
When I looked up from the viewfinder, nothing there.
Through the lens—still moving.
I stopped recording. The shadow kept going,
circling her like it knew exactly how to stay out of frame.
We found a shelf half-collapsed against the wall.
On it were reels of magnetic tape, warped by heat.
Each one labeled by date.
Every label stopped on August 10, 2004.
The day Manit died.
Hana muttered, "Why would the post office have these?"
I didn't answer.
The air had gone heavy again, pressing against our lungs.
She threaded one reel into the recorder, hit play.
First: silence.
Then a single breath.
Then dozens, overlapping—people breathing out of sync.
The tape began to buckle, the reel turning unevenly.
The sound built into a tide of whispers, each wordless but shaped like speech.
I checked the other recorder—the one by the door.
Its red light blinked faster than normal.
I picked it up.
Something whispered right next to the microphone:
"We waited."
Every parcel on the shelves began to tremble.
One fell, split open, spilling black water instead of paper.
Another burst from the inside, the wrapping ballooning like a lung filling with air.
Then the letters.
They rose.
Hundreds of envelopes lifting, twisting mid-air,
paper snapping open in a fluttering wave that filled the room with a sound like screaming without mouths.
The fans above us stopped.
The room exhaled.
I remember Hana shouting my name, pulling at my arm.
Her flashlight dropped, rolled across the floor.
The beam landed on the far wall—where something had started to form.
Not a figure.
More like a smear of faces, too many for one body.
They shifted through each other like images burned onto film.
All of them were wet.
All of them were staring.
Their mouths opened in unison.
The sound that came out wasn't human—it was the same chant we'd heard in the cinema,
but faster now, furious.
Three long. One short. Pause.
The light burst.
Every bulb in the room cracked at once.
Something struck my shoulder—cold, but it didn't hurt.
Another impact followed, like being pushed by wind made of hands.
Hana screamed.
Not in fear—more like frustration.
"Stop recording!"
I dropped the camera.
The frame tilted sideways, catching our feet,
letters whipping around us like snow.
The chanting climbed to a pitch high enough to shred the speakers.
Then—nothing.
Silence.
When I opened my eyes, the letters were gone.
The room was wet again, dripping from nowhere.
Hana stood by the door, pale, shaking, a line of blood running from her ear.
"They're not ghosts," she whispered.
"They're the disturbed. They never stopped talking."
She locked the door behind us and didn't look back.
That night, the tapes replayed themselves.
Every device in my room turned on.
The chanting returned, slowed down until it sounded almost like breathing.
And under it, a voice I knew:
"We waited."
"For you."
I thought it was feedback.
But the sound had weight.
Each syllable pressed against the inside of my skull,
like someone knocking from behind my eyes.
I tried to sleep.
The chanting moved with the ceiling fan,
looping perfectly with every rotation.
When I finally turned the fan off,
the sound didn't stop.
It was coming from my own breathing.
(End of Chapter 7 — "The Postmaster's Room")