The evening that the tenth letter should have been waiting in my mailbox for me, it wasn’t.
I wasn’t that concerned. I figured that whomever was supposed to be sending the letters might have gotten to the mailbox a little too late for it to make it today. I shrugged it off and returned to my room to watch mind-numbing reruns and listen to my Lady Antebellum CDs on repeat, without a care in the world; without anything left to care about.
At about six fifteen, Devon was pounding on my front door.
I pulled the door open, surprised. “What?”
He pushed past me and into the house without me allowing him inside, but the protest died in my throat when he whirled around to face me again. He was visibly shaken, his hands quaking, his face pale and his hair messy from his hands moving through it restlessly. As I watched, his right hand raked through his hair, his left hand clenching something tightly.
“I want to know what is going on,” he told me, his voice loud but he didn’t care. No one else was home so there wasn’t a fear of someone overhearing our conversation. But I was a little taken aback by the emotions in his voice, the restless panic inside of his vowels. I staggered forward a step, concerned, but he flew backwards, as if fearful of my touch. “I want to know what is going on right now, Gia.”
“Devon, what are you talking about?” I demanded, so confused.
To answer me, he held up the object clenched in his fist.
With a jolt, I realized that it was two letters. One of the envelopes simply had my name written on it. The other had Devon’s name and address, all in his dead brother’s handwriting.
I grimaced.
“Yeah, you know what I’m talking about,” he remarked, looking like he had just seen the ghost of his brother. In a way, he kind of had. He shook the letters clenched in his hand, freaked. “He said that you would know. My dead brother told me that this wouldn’t be the first letter you’d be getting from him after he died.”
“It’s weird, isn’t it?” I whispered through frozen lips, unable to look away from the letter addressed to the man standing before me. “The first time is really strange. It really scares you. But I eventually got used to it.”
“You’re telling me that you’ve gotten more than one of these before?” Devon demanded, incredulous. “How?”
“He said that someone is going to mail them to me to arrive on certain days.” I shrugged, now shaking, too. “I don’t know a lot, Devon. This is the first one you’ve gotten.”
“This is the first time I gotten one of my brother’s sick sort of suicide letters?” Devon snapped. “Yes, it is.”
I winced at the thought of it being a suicide letter. It kind of was, and it kind of wasn’t.
Not for me, at least.
Devon looked at me for a long moment before he suddenly started pacing in front of me, muttering to himself under his breath, so low that I couldn’t hear it. I cautiously watched him for a couple of minutes, wondering what I could say, but the moment I got the words and opened my mouth he held up one finger, telling me not to speak. I sighed and continued to watch him, wondering what was going through his mind.
Without warning, Devon staggered and collapsed into one of the dining room chairs less than a foot away from him, still so pale. I started and stumbled even closer to him, my concern coming back with a new vigor.
“Devon?” I asked.
“It’s really him, isn’t it?” his brother demanded but it didn’t feel like he was asking me. Kind of more like he was asking the universe.
“It’s him,” I whispered.
That was all it took to break Devon Mueller.
“Oh my God,” he mumbled shakily, his hands coming up to grip tightly at his hair. The letters he had been holding fell to the ground and my gaze flickered to them momentarily before I looked back at the man falling apart before me, someone only five years older than me but looking so much younger in this moment of weakness. He doubled over a little bit, looking like he was going to be sick. “Oh my God. It’s him. It’s Holden.”
I flinched at the sound of his name but recovered quickly. I kneeled in front of Devon, not saying anything, looking up at his face. He was completely expressionless, but his eyes were filled with cold terror.
A shiver rolled down my spine at the sight. I bit my lip against showing it but I felt it, deep in my stomach.
“Devon?” I whispered.
“How come you didn’t tell me?” he demanded, looking at me finally. “You knew all this time that he was sending these letters to you and you never told me. You never mentioned it to anyone.”
“I didn’t think that people would do well with knowing,” I explained slowly, making a face. “Look at how you’re reacting now. If I wouldn’t have been able to prove it to you, you never would have believed me. You wouldn’t have been able to understand what I went through every time I found one of those envelopes in my mailbox, waiting for me like a little piece of him lingering behind.”
We both cut our eyes to the fallen papers. We both immediately looked away.
“This is so messed up,” Devon groaned, burying his head in his hands. I remembered back to when Norman had done the same thing only days ago but quickly shook the image free from my mind, knowing that there were hardly any likenesses between him and Devon, even if there were more than I would like to believe.
Cautiously, I reached toward him. Millimeters away from touching him, I let my hand drop uselessly, sighing.
“What did he say to you that’s got you so freaked out?”
“The fact that I just got a letter from my dead little brother is enough to shake me up,” he replied smartly but I could tell he was lying. The corner of his mouth twitched when he lied.
I frowned.
“He put your letter inside of mine. Asked me when I was done reading to come by and bring it to you.” He ran another hand through his hair, staring at me with those same eyes I would always know as belonging to him. “My dead little brother has me running fucking errands for him.”
“Stop saying that,” I snapped before I could stop myself. I bit down on my lip.
“Stop saying what?” Devon stared at me, his eyes flashing dangerously. “It’s true. Holden is dead. It’s not my fault that you can’t even bring yourself to say his name.”
I flinched. That hurt.
“So what else has he gotten you doing?” Devon demanded a little harshly. “Seems like he’s got you wrapped around his finger even in death; what could he possibly be asking you to do?”
“A lot of things,” I offered unhelpfully. He scowled.
“He told me that he was trying to help you,” Devon said. “That what he is doing with these letters is to help you do something. He didn’t say what.”
“He . . .” I trailed off. I closed my eyes, pain flashing through my chest. “He wants to teach me how to let go of him.”
Silence.
“Well, that’s great,” he exclaimed. “Holden’s giving you advice on how to mourn his untimely death. Wonderful.”
“I think you’re only being an ass about it because you don’t want to believe it yourself,” I argued back before it was too late to convince myself to back down. His eyes snapped to mine and I didn’t blink. “That’s why you keep making a point of saying that he’s dead, right? Because you don’t really believe it yet, and you think that if you keep saying it eventually you’ll convince your mind into believing it.”
His jaw clenched.
“Some of us don’t work that way,” I told him, my eyes narrowed. “And he knows that I don’t. So he just wanted to help me.”
“And you’re the only person he knows that needs the help?” Devon asked me, but his voice was soft. Vulnerable. There was pain in his eyes as he whispered, “He didn’t think that anyone else wasn’t going to be able to let him go?”
I looked at him, watched Devon as he tried to keep himself in one piece, and I was suddenly struck by the urge to ask him what his brother had said in his letter to him. This couldn’t all be because of the letters. It was the letters and all of the feelings that he had been pushing under the surface, sure, but there was something else underneath of it all. Something like . . . alarm.
But I knew that if there were any questions I should be asking Devon right now it wasn’t to spill his personal secrets. He hadn’t asked me about the specifics of his brother’s letters to me, so why should I feel justified in asking him the same?
I wanted to answer that as being because I was never that shaken up by them. That he had never said anything to freak me out before.
“Devon,” I whispered, reaching out to him. He flinched away but I laid my hand on his arm regardless, taking notice in that he froze under my touch on his bare arm. He was freezing cold. “I’m sure that’s not what this is about.”
“I’m sure it’s not,” he remarked breezily before standing, shaking off my hold. He bent down and scooped up the letter addressed to him, looking at it for a long moment before his fingers flexed around it, holing the paper so tightly that his knuckles were starting to turn white. “I only came here to give you the letter and to warn you that I’ll be here when you get the next one. He told me to be.”
I nodded numbly, still not moving from my spot on the ground, unable to understand the anger in his eyes.
He hesitated there for a moment, looking down at me. And then he turned and walked out of my house, closing the door so softly behind him that it could have been closed by the softest of wind.
I sat there on the floor and listened for his car, listening as he got in and started it and listened still as he pulled away. I didn’t have to look out the window to see if he was gone. I just knew.
~*~
I had to tell Devon.
It might not have been the smartest thing to do, because I know him—he wouldn’t be comfortable with it. When he came by to see you I bet he was disturbed by it. I can’t blame him.
I’m sitting here writing these letters to the people I’m leaving behind and I’m wondering if you’re going to be disturbed, too. I hope that you won’t be and that you’ll find some kind of closure in it. Maybe even a sense of adventure. One last hurrah, you know? Devon will at first just see it as something impossible and morbid. I wouldn’t be too shaken by his response if I were you.
I expect nothing different from my big brother.
I know that this letter isn’t very long, but it’s mainly just an explanation as to why I’m telling Devon about the letters now. His was the tenth letter. But I couldn’t leave you without at least a little bit of an explanation.
I can’t tell you much about what I told my brother in the letter, but I can tell you this—I can say that it’ll all come out in time. I think you two are going to learn to trust each other and one day you’ll both tell each other everything about this strange hunt or what have you that I have been sending you on. One day, the both of you will understand every single word I have said.
I had to write to him to explain the next couple of parts to him, so he will be ready when you come to him for help on this little journey I have crafted. The next letter will explain all of the cryptic remarks I’m making since I don’t want to ruin any of the surprise. But now it’s you and Devon in this little game of mine. You’re free to talk to him about it if you need to. He’s going to be there for the next thing I need you to do, so try not to bite each other’s heads off.
I wish I could explain it a little bit more, Gia, but I can’t be the one to tell you what was in the letter I wrote to Devon. He can be the only person to do that.
When the next letter comes, this might make a little more sense.
-Holden
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So what do you think was in Devon’s letter that made him freak out so badly?
x Riley