The Midnight Postcard

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Rain slanted across the window of the Seabrink Post Office, needling the glass like it wanted to write something on the surface. The last ferry horn moaned far out in the bay, its sound swallowed by thunder. Ava Kerr stood behind the counter, flicking through the small stack of undelivered mail that nobody wanted to claim after dark.

Seabrink wasn’t the kind of town that stayed awake late. By ten, the bakery had shuttered, the bar emptied, and only the lighthouse beam still swept across the black tides. Ava liked those last hours in the post office—quiet except for the rain and the occasional clack of her sorting machine. Tonight felt different, though. The air carried a restlessness she couldn’t label, the same way static prickles before lightning.

The bell above the door jangled. A shape entered, umbrella dripping. “Evening, Ava,” said Tom Linton, the deputy who covered night patrols. His uniform looked damp at the edges, and his shoulders slumped as if weighed by more than weather.

“You shouldn’t be out in this,” she said. “Storm warnings again.”

“Can’t help it.” He placed a small cardboard box on the counter. “Found this dropped by the steps of the lighthouse.”

It wasn’t unusual for tourists to lose things. But the box had Ava’s name on it, in looping blue ink. Her stomach dipped.

She slit the tape with a letter opener. Inside were stacks of postcards—each showing familiar Seabrink landmarks. One was the fish market, another the cliffside chapel, and the rest—dozens of others—each bore the same postmark: MIDNIGHT DELIVERY. No return address. No stamps either, yet each had been handled, edges smudged by rain.

Ava turned over the top card. The message was brief: “Before the storm, warn them.”

The next card showed the fish market collapsed, stalls overturned, crabs spilling over cobblestones. It looked too real, not like a painting or photograph retouched badly, but as though shot yesterday.

She met Tom’s puzzled stare. “You ever seen anything like this before?”

He shook his head. “Probably some crank. I’ll take them to the station.”

But even as he said it, the lights flickered. Somewhere in the back room, a fuse hummed. The radio on the shelf hissed to life though she hadn’t touched it: “Coastal watch reports—flash flooding near—” Then static swallowed the words.

That week, the fish market roof actually caved in after a lightning strike. No one was killed, but the resemblance to the postcard photograph was exact, down to the overturned crate of crabs.

Ava began waiting for the post at night. The postcards never arrived with the morning route—they came after midnight, slid under the door or left in her office drawer, always damp, smelling faintly of seaweed. Each showed a new scene: the bakery drowning in water, the lighthouse extinguished, the entire harbor swallowed by waves.

At first, she told no one. Then Tom noticed her nerves, and over coffee, she confessed. “Each one comes true,” she whispered. “A day or two after I get it.”

He frowned. “Coincidence, Ava.”

“Too many coincidences,” she said. “Look.” She spread the next card between them—a view of the cliff path slick with rain, a woman’s shadow blurred along the edge. Someone had written beneath it: ‘Tomorrow, she falls.’

And the following morning, Mrs. Hensley slipped on that same trail while walking her dog. The papers said it was tragic but unsurprising; the old stone had been crumbling for years. Yet Ava kept seeing the blurred edge of that shadow.

Soon, fear grew into obsession. She tried tracing the handwriting—neat, slanted left, as if written in haste. She searched delivery records, local tourist shops, and online databases for the brand of cards—no results. Nobody sold that stationery, nor printed that particular photo style.

On the tenth night since the first package, she heard a soft tap against the window. She rose, heart hammering. Rain streaked the glass, but between flashes of lightning, she saw a figure across the street—a woman in a pale raincoat, standing where the lamplight struggled to reach. Something about her stillness unsettled Ava; she faced the post office but never moved.

When the next lightning bolt cracked open the sky, the woman was gone. Only another postcard remained stuck beneath the door, dripping onto the floor. This one was different—blank on the front except for a painted horizon of roiling sea. On the back: “I tried to warn you sooner.” Below the words, a date—December 16—tomorrow.

Tom arrived near dawn, bleary-eyed. “You look awful.”

“Someone was here,” she said, showing him the card. “She left it.”

He ran a thumb over the ink. “Looks dry—maybe written days ago.” He squinted. “You said the other cards showed disasters. This one doesn’t show anything.”

“Maybe it’s what’s coming.”

He hesitated, then nodded toward the lighthouse visible through grey sheets of rain. “I’ll ask the keeper if they’ve noticed anything strange.”

When evening fell, the storm worsened. Wind screamed through cable lines, and the sea grew wild enough that fishing boats didn’t risk the docks. Still, Ava stayed at her post, as if duty could root her against the encroaching roar.

Near midnight, the door shook violently. She jumped but realized it was Tom, soaked through, uniform plastered to his frame. “The keeper,” he gasped, “no one’s seen him since yesterday. His radio’s dead.”

Lightning flashed again—briefly revealing movement in the distance, near the lighthouse’s base. Ava grabbed her coat.

“You’re not going out there,” Tom said.

“She’s warning us,” Ava said. “If something happens to that light, we’ll lose power over the whole bay.”

He followed anyway.

Outside, rain tore at them. The storm smelled of salt and metal, like the ocean was rusting. Waves slammed the harbor wall high enough to spill over streets. As they trudged toward the cliffs, the beam above flickered, then steadied again—then off. Only darkness remained.

By the time they reached the lighthouse, the keeper’s cottage door was open. Inside, candles burned low, illuminating a table scattered with the same postcards. Dozens of them—but here they were unfinished, some half‑written, many featuring the lighthouse before the storm.

Ava lifted one. At the bottom corner, a photograph showed a child playing on this very shore, the next card revealing the same child lying still, eyes closed.

“She’s been sending them,” Ava murmured.

On the mantel stood a framed photo: the woman Ava had seen in the rain, beside a boy smiling with a toy sailboat. A date scrawled beneath—Taken two years ago, the night before the wave.

Tom crouched by a chest, opening it carefully. Inside were newspaper clippings: ‘Local boy lost in rogue tide, lighthouse delayed in relighting beacon.’ The articles told how the lighthouse light had failed briefly during a storm two years prior, and rescue boats missed the boy adrift in darkness. His mother’s name was Margaret Hale—the same handwriting signed each postcard.

“She’s been warning us,” Ava said, fingers trembling. “Trying to prevent it from happening again.”

Thunder crashed so loud the glass rattled. Tom looked outside and blanched. “Ava,” he said softly, “look at the tide.”

The sea was gone.

For a heartbeat, that absurd emptiness—the entire bay drained, leaving boats stranded on the sand—stretched before them. Then the horizon bulged outward, rising higher, faster.

Tsunami.

They ran. Wind threw pebbles like bullets as they scrambled up the cliff path. The roar behind them deepened into something primal. Ava stopped halfway, whipping out the final blank postcard from her pocket. The ink now bled slowly into words: ‘Get to the high light.’

“The lantern room,” she shouted.

They climbed the spiraling stairs as the wave thundered in. Through the glass panes, Ava saw it hit—water devouring the town, swallowing the market and docks. Buildings dissolved in seconds beneath silver foam.

Tom leaned against the wall, gasping. “Who could’ve known?”

Ava pressed her palm to the glass. The deck beneath them shuddered but held. “She did,” she said. “She saw it once before.”

As the wave’s rage subsided into the hiss of retreating foam, Ava looked at the scattered postcards on the floor. Every one now showed calm seas and sunlight breaking through clouds. Only one remained unwritten. She took a pen from her pocket.

“I don’t think it’s over,” she whispered.

Tom frowned. “What do you mean?”

“It’s prevention,” she said slowly, as if understanding the lesson too late. “She wanted someone to continue warning before the next disaster. The tide always returns.”

She wrote on the blank card:

‘When the sea sleeps, remember the sound it can make when it wakes.’

She set it by the window for whoever would find it next.

Below them, the flooded town twinkled faintly beneath moonlight, half‑drowned but not lost. The first survivors’ lanterns began to flicker in the ruins. Ava whispered a quiet promise—to watch the horizon, to listen.

The sea kept its rhythm, patient and endless, as if testing when mankind would forget again.

And in the silence between each fading wave, she could almost hear the whisper of ink against paper—the beginning of another warning, already writing itself.

source: Perplexity

prompt:

Write a brand new short story nobody has read before (≈1 000‑2 000 words) titled **The Midnight Postcard**.

Genre / Category: Mystery
Mood / Tone: Foreboding‑urgent
Core Theme: Prevention

Setting: A small seaside town’s post office, rain‑slick streets, lighthouse in the distance.

Premise / Hook (Idea): Nightly postcards depict locations that later suffer disasters.

Story Prompt (full instruction):
Begin the story in the setting described above. Introduce the main character(s) and quickly establish the central conflict hinted at in the premise. Keep the narrative voice and mood consistent with the tone indicated.

Twist (optional but encouraged): The postcards are being sent by a grieving mother trying to warn the town about a pending tsunami she foresaw.. Foreshadow it subtly earlier in the story.

Additional constraints:
- Choose a narrative voice (first‑person / third‑person limited / omniscient) that fits the mood.
- Include at least one vivid sensory detail.
- End with a line that reflects the story’s theme.

Deliverable: Return the completed story only – no extra commentary or headings.