Postcards From the Beyond - Chapter 2

How the postcards arrived was also a mystery. None bore a stamp, or at least not one valid in the British postal system, and they arrived at odd times of day, never with the regular mail. Yet at some point every day a new postcard would appear on the front doormat. Even on Sundays and Bank Holidays!
One Saturday Sebastian and Maddy staked out the letterbox, determined to solve the mystery. They took it in turns to sit on the bottom most stair, eyes glued to the front door, awaiting the culprit. They watched all day. Maddy's eyes were drooping with tiredness as Seb sat down beside her to take his watch.
“Maybe it won't come today,” Maddy said disappointedly, rubbing her tired eyes.
“It'll come, it always does, we just have to keep watching!” Seb said with conviction, not even blinking as he stared at the frosted glass door. Just then Mrs Oakes bustled past them, her arms full of folded laundry. Their view of the door was obscured for only a moment, but as their view cleared they saw it. A postcard featuring a planet with swirling orange clouds and multiple moons had appeared on the doormat. Sebastian and Maddy glanced at each other in amazement.
“I didn't hear the letterbox rattle!” Maddy observed. Sebastian was already on his feet and reaching for the door handle. Together they flung it wide and burst out into the front garden. But there was no one in sight, no one in the garden with its neatly trimmed lawn and straight narrow path, no one in the street beyond the white picket fence. Sebastian ran to the gate and looked both ways along the street. There wasn't even a car in sight. Nothing moved in the orange light of the fading sun and the just lit street lamps.
“No one could have delivered that postcard and got away before we opened the door!” Seb said, swinging on the gate in frustration. But there was nowhere to hide, no explanation.
“Maybe it was faeries!” Maddy said hopefully.

The next fortnight was the Easter holidays. Sebastian and Maddy spent their time developing and executing various plans to try and catch the mystery mail man. Maddy had always been clever with numbers and gadgets and Seb was good at thinking up ideas and building things. Together they constructed a camera trap using Sebastian's ‘Lego Mindstorms’ set. It had a motion sensor which triggered the camera. They set it up on the hall table pointing at the door. But when they looked at the photos the next day on Mr Oakes's laptop, there were only snap shots of the real mail arriving, Mr Oakes going and returning from work and Mrs Oakes talking to a door-to-door salesman. There was a whole sequence of photos of the cat sitting in the sunspot on the mat washing itself.
“If you flick through them fast it's like watching a movie!” Maddy said, as she made the images of the cat flick past on the computer screen.
Of course a postcard had still arrived that day. In one photo there was nothing but the cat, then in the next photo where Mr Oakes was coming in from work, there it was, the postcard on the mat. But of the cards actual arrival, there was nothing.
Their next idea was to put paint on the doorstep outside. Whoever was delivering the postcards would have to step onto the doorstep to do so and so step into the paint. Then they could just follow the paint trail to the culprit. Sebastian found an old doormat in the shed and together they squeezed out almost every tube and pot of paint they owned. Seb was rather sad to see all his paints turned into one sticky muddy brown mess, but then he thought, it would be a worthwhile sacrifice if they caught the delivery person.
They placed the paint sodden doormat outside as soon as Mr Oakes had left for work. Then they promptly forgot all about it because Mrs Oakes called them to help her tidy the back garden. They spent most of the morning pretending to be jungle explorers in the wild undergrowth at the bottom of the garden. At twelve o'clock Mrs Oakes went in to make some lunch while Maddy and Sebastian dragged brambles and stinging nettles into a big pile on the lawn.
“The posts arrived,” Mrs Oakes announced as she came back out carrying glasses of cola for them. She handed a postcard to Sebastian. She knew he was collecting them. Ignoring the drinks Maddy and Seb raced past her, through the house and out the front door.
“Back in a bit!” Seb yelled as they ran. They stopped momentarily by the front door to study the trail of painty human-like footprints leading away from the door.
“Well they're too big to be faerie footprints.” Sebastian observed but this did not dampen Maddy's enthusiasm. They were still wet. Eagerly they followed the trail.
The trail visited several other houses along their street and then several more in the next street along. They were so intent on keeping the increasingly fading footprints in sight that Seb walked straight into someone.
“Steady there young Sebastian!” A uniformed arm reached out and steadied Seb as he rebounded off the person.
“Oh! Sorry!” Seb looked up startled to see Neil, the postman.
“Where are you two off to in such a hurry?” Neil asked smiling.
“Just running an errand for Mum,” Seb invented quickly. He felt Maddy jab him in the ribs with an elbow and caught her eye. She glanced at the ground and Sebastian followed her gaze. The trail of footprints led up to Neil and stopped. Seb could even see remains of the brown paint that had squiddged round the side of his well worn shoes.
“Did you deliver a postcard to us today?” Seb asked, almost fearful of the answer. If Neil was delivering the postcards it would be a disappointingly ordinary solution to the mystery, and they would never find out who was sending them. Neil thought for a moment.
“No, just letters today, are you expecting one?” Neil asked. Relief flooded through Sebastian.
“Our Uncle's on holiday,” Seb lied. “Anyway we'd better be going. See you!” Seb and Maddy turned and walked back the way they had come, leaving Neil shaking his head at their odd behaviour.
They were both starving by the time they got back, and totally forgot to jump over the painty mat. They spent the afternoon scrubbing paint marks off the hall floor.

After this they tried booby trapping the letterbox. They used rubber bands so that it would spring shut on anyone who used it and trap them. They set it up before bed one night. They were woken early the next morning by a pained cry. They raced downstairs still in their pyjamas, Mr Oakes followed, sleepily pulling on a dressing gown. The letterbox was rattling violently and they could hear muttered curses as whoever they had caught tried to free themselves. The fingers protruding through the mailbox looked disappointingly human.
“So much for your faerie theory,” Seb said to Maddy as Mr Oakes pushed his way past them and opened the door to reveal the red faced and irate looking Neil the postman.
After Mr Oakes had released the postman and apologised profusely, and Neil had gone away muttering and cursing and sucking his bruised fingers, Mr Oakes turned to his children. Maddy and Sebastian had been trying to slink away back upstairs.
“What on Earth were you thinking? We'll be lucky if we get any mail at all now!” Seb and Maddy looked appropriately ashamed. “I want no more of this nonsense, no more contraptions, you understand?” With that he marched off back to bed. Seb and Maddy sat side by side on the stairs, chins resting glumly on their knees. They still had nothing to show for the efforts of the last two weeks, except fourteen more postcards, and now no way to proceed.