Postmarked for My Bones

by Fendy S. Tulodo

I opened the envelope with my name on it, my full name, written in my own handwriting. Inside was a letter dated two months into the future. It warned me not to sleep near metal.

I laughed at first, thinking it was one of those harmless pranks left over from April. But it was July. And the handwriting wasn’t just similar to mine—it was mine. Not like mine when I’m trying to be neat, but like mine when I’m tired, bored, and honest.

I stared at the note. Three lines. A date. A typed warning. And a signature—mine.

“Do not sleep near metal. The body will not respond kindly.
Yours, H. Timm
Sept 17, 2025”

I live alone. The only metal I sleep near is the brass frame of my bed, and maybe the change I forget in my pockets. I crumpled the paper and tossed it aside. Probably some sick joke.

But that night, I moved to the couch just in case.

The next morning, another letter waited on the counter. This time, it was folded differently—tight, tucked, professional. I hadn’t written a letter the night before. I hadn’t even touched a pen.

Inside:

“Thank you for listening. You will feel the difference.
Do not let the mirror crack before Friday.”

This one didn’t have my signature, but the envelope had my name on it again. Same handwriting.

I checked every lock, every window. Nothing was open. No one had been inside. My alarm didn’t trip. I have a habit of checking my security system three times before bed. No signs of forced entry. No signs of anyone but me.

Still, I wrote a note to myself that night. Not a proper letter. Just something simple.

“If this is you, prove it. Tell me something you remember that no one else does.”

I placed it beside the toaster and turned in early.

The next morning, I nearly dropped the reply.

“The stain behind the third stair. The one you covered in 1999 with a rug and lies.
Sincerely, Future You.”

I ripped up the note and tore the rug from the stairs. The red blotch was still faint beneath the wood polish. I fell against the wall, breath shallow.

In 1999, my brother and I had fought. He’d pushed me. I’d pushed back harder. His head had hit the banister. We never told anyone. I cleaned it up while he cried and swore never to speak of it again. We never did. Not even years later, when he moved overseas.

No one knew. Except me. And now whoever was writing to me.

By the fifth letter, I stopped questioning if it was real.

The notes got longer. They came in the mornings, every day, even when I didn’t write one first. Sometimes they were warnings. Sometimes instructions. Once, it included a drawing of a place I hadn’t been to in years, along with a message:

“Go. Take the left path. Bring nothing but your watch.”

I didn’t go.

That week, a rash spread across my arms. The doctor called it stress.

The letter the next day read:

“You were supposed to go. Now your skin must remember. Don’t skip again.”

My name is Harold Timm. I am 47. I was a postal worker until five years ago, when the routes became digital and automated. I liked my work. I liked paper, stamps, handwritten letters, hand-delivered things.

Now, I sort junk mail in my kitchen for fun.

I started writing letters to my future corpse as a joke. A morbid way to pass time. I’d write them in a spiral notebook, fold them, and label each one with a different date. Sometimes I wrote things like, “I hope your funeral music wasn’t boring.” Other times I’d joke about who might cry at my grave.

Then, one day, I wrote, “If you can read this, write back.”

The reply came three days later.

“I can read everything. And I will write until you stop.”

I began saving the letters in a shoebox. All typed, never handwritten. All from someone who knew everything about me, down to how I bit my lip during movies or left my coffee spoons in the sink.

The most chilling letter came on a Monday morning, in an envelope smeared with ash.

“When the girl knocks, do not answer. She does not belong to this version of you.
Her eyes will lie. Her name is wrong.”

I read it over and over.

That afternoon, at 4:17 p.m., someone knocked.

It was a girl, maybe seventeen. Black hoodie, pale face, hands twitching at her sleeves.

“Is this Mr. Timm’s house?” she asked.

I didn’t respond.

She smiled. “Uncle Harold?”

I stepped back, closed the door, and locked it without a word.

Outside, she didn’t knock again. She stood, still as stone, until the sun went down.

The next morning’s note read:

“Good. You passed. She wasn’t meant for this timeline.
Next test arrives Thursday.”

I started marking the letters on a calendar. Matching the events, the warnings, the tests. Some letters didn’t warn me of danger. Some offered praise.

“Well done. You’ve delayed the loop.”
“Your awareness is growing.”
“Each note brings you closer.”

Closer to what?

One night, I decided to stop.

No more writing. No more reading.

I locked the shoebox and put it in the attic. I unplugged my toaster, my computer, my TV. I wanted silence. Not the scary kind. The real kind.

The letters kept coming.

One was left taped to the mirror.

“Avoiding change does not erase it. You can only move forward.”

Another was on the fridge.

“The letters will come even if you forget your language.”

They never stopped.

Two weeks passed.

Then something new arrived.

A box.

Not from a post office. No label. No tape. Just twine and an old tag that read: “RETURN TO SENDER.”

Inside were thirty letters. All addressed to Harold Timm. All in my handwriting.

I opened one at random.

“July 18, 2023: I watched you open the door and walk away. I forgave you.”

I read another.

“Oct 2, 2021: Your pulse slowed for three minutes. That’s when I first spoke to you.”

Each letter was from a different date, a different year. The past.

Letters I’d never written.

Each one was signed: Future You.

I opened the last one.

It read:

“Dig where the roots died. You’ll find the truth you buried in bone.
It is time.”

The shovel’s weight felt familiar in my palms as moonlight painted the backyard silver.

Where the old tree once stood, only memories remained in the dirt. It died a decade ago, and I never planted anything else. Just a square of dry dirt. I dug through rock and dust and old beer cans.

Then I hit something solid.

I scraped carefully. Wood.

A box.

Heavy. Metal-lined. Locked with an old chain.

I dragged it out, breath burning, arms shaking. No key. I smashed it open with a hammer.

Inside, there was a skeleton.

Not a complete one. Just a ribcage, a spine, and a skull with my gold wedding ring clenched between its teeth.

On top, folded carefully, was one more letter.

It read:

“You looped once before. This is how you survived. Sign the next reply. Become the sender.”

And beneath the paper was a mirror. Not cracked. Not scratched. Perfect.

And in the mirror, I wasn’t there.

Just the room. The box. The bones.

But not me.

I didn’t sleep that night. I sat across from the mirror, watching my absence. Every blink of the room’s light felt slower. The bones inside the box didn’t move, but I felt something leaking out from them—something heavy that made my stomach churn.

I waited for another letter.

By dawn, nothing came.

Then I remembered. The last note said, “Sign the next reply. Become the sender.”

I walked to my desk, hands trembling, and wrote:

“I saw it. I opened it. I know what’s buried now. What do I do next?”

I signed it with my full name.

I placed it in a blank envelope, set it on the counter, and went outside to breathe. When I returned, the envelope was gone.

In its place, a package.

This one was wrapped in black fabric, tied with red string. Inside: a fountain pen, a stack of aged paper, and a note.

“The sender writes with memory. You are not the first, but you might be the last.”

There was no return address. No further instructions.

My hands shook as I stared at the bones – leaving them here wasn’t an option, though I had no plan. I didn’t want anyone to find them, not even myself again. So I reburied the box. But this time, I poured cement over it, smooth and solid.

Still, the mirror wouldn’t show my face.

Days passed. No more letters. Not even a whisper of a reply.

But the silence wasn’t peace.

I started forgetting things. At first, it was small. I couldn’t remember what I’d eaten the day before. Then it was people. The phone rang—a friend’s voice, but strange and unfamiliar to me.

At dawn’s light, I found myself lying cold on hardwood planks. Ash filled my mouth. My tongue was black.

On the wall, scribbled in red:

“WRITE BACK!”

I used the pen. I used the old paper. I wrote without thinking.

“I am still here. I am still me. I want this to stop.”

The paper folded itself. I swear it moved on its own.

I left it on the counter.

By morning, a new note waited in its place.

“You’ve written the first key. You’ll feel yourself splitting soon. Let it happen. It is the only way out.”

That day, I caught myself moving differently. My left hand shook. My right hand wrote without me telling it to. I watched as it scribbled words in that same tired handwriting.

“You’re almost ready. The dead don’t remember. But the almost-dead? They never forget.”

The digital clock glowed 3:07 when the scraping sounds behind the bathroom mirror jolted me awake.

I approached it slowly. The sound stopped.

On the glass, fog appeared—though there was no heat, no steam.

Then, a sentence formed, as if traced by a fingertip on the other side.

“You’ve reached the doorway.”

I lifted the mirror off the wall.

Behind it was a hole.

Not into the wall. Into something else.

Dark, pulsing, like the inside of a lung.

I should have run. But something pulled. Not physically. Deeper. Like my name was being whispered by something with my own voice.

I reached in.

I don’t remember what happened in full. Not like normal memory.

I remember walking. Not on floors. On bones.

I remember hearing the sound of pages turning with no wind.

I remember faces without eyes reading letters without hands.

And I remember a voice that said:

“Harold Timm, Sender of the Fifth Line, you are now Postmarked.”

I woke up in my chair.

It was morning.

The mirror showed my face again.

But the date on my wall calendar said September 17, 2025.

The date from the first letter.

My hands stayed frozen – no plan came to mind, so I just waited.

The doorbell’s chime cut through the silence at exactly 10:04.

On the porch stood a deliveryman.

He handed me a package.

Inside were twenty sealed envelopes. All with different names. All with return addresses marked “Timm Archives”.

All in my handwriting.

I opened one at random.

“Dear Mr. Leavitt,
Tomorrow at noon, do not pick up the ring you find by the fountain. It is not yours anymore.
Yours, H. Timm”

That was my job now.

I was the sender.

I spent the next few weeks writing. The letters came through my sleep, through the holes in my mind. The paper never ran out. The pen never dried.

Each letter I wrote felt like lifting a weight from my chest. But it also felt like taking something from someone else’s chest and breaking it.

But it was working.

No more ash in my mouth. No more scratches behind the mirror. No more strange girls at the door.

Then came the final instruction.

“Mail the last one to yourself. Include the rib. Include the truth.”

I went back to the cemented grave. Broke it open. Retrieved the box.

The bones were gone.

Only a rib remained, wrapped in paper.

My fingers trembled as I lifted it, a jolt running through me—something had been patient for this very second.

With slow movements, I folded the paper neatly, printed my name in block letters, and pressed warm wax over the seal.

Then I mailed it to myself.

Today, it arrived.

I opened it slowly.

Inside: the rib, now white and polished. A letter. The final one.

“Dear H. Timm,
You made it through the loop. You became the sender. You have done what five could not.
This will be the last you receive.
Unless you choose to open the first again.
Yours,
You.”

I placed the letter back in the envelope and burned it.

The rib, I buried one final time.

Not behind the house.

But inside the hollow of an old mailbox, deep in the woods, where no one delivers anymore.

As I closed the door to the rusted box, I whispered:

“I’m done.”

I turned to leave.

But the mailbox creaked open again.

Inside: a blank sheet of paper and a pen.

The cycle never ends.

Unless you never write back.

Unless you choose silence.

Unless you stop wanting to know what happens next.

I walked away.

I didn’t take the pen.

I didn’t write back.

But part of me wonders—when the letter finally stops arriving, will I still be me?

Want

Want another gripping story by Fendy S. Tulodo? Read “Beneath the Boards” from Horrific Scribes, March 2025.