 My uncle Lazlo was until recently, known as a quiet small town retiree. He collected stamps, watched documentaries, and was deeply involved with various local charities. I have nothing but fond memories of Uncle Lazlo. So when I heard he'd killed four people, I couldn't believe it. I'm sure some of you have heard of it, but from the other side of the media frenzy, an old man who snapped and killed his neighbors with a shovel. He would have killed more people if the police hadn't taken him down with deadly force. Something just made him snap. I was seeing everything from the outside as well. No one in my family knew what to say. There was no indication that Uncle Lazlo was so troubled. If anything, he was one of the saner members of my family. He had plans for years to come. I'd heard him talk about a trip around the world once he'd managed to sell off some of the stamps in his rare collection. Money doesn't add sand to your hourglass. He used to say he had no children of his own, so he spent a lot of time with his nieces and nephews. He always brought us amazing gifts for Christmas. So you can imagine my surprise when, just a few days after the murders, I received a letter from him, handwritten as always with a carefully placed stamp in the upper right corner, pristine condition with a picture of a blue sunflower. Tom Scog, Minnesota, it said, followed by the date 1912. Uncle Lazlo loved collecting various local rarities. And this one looked like a particularly old one. The letter itself was nothing out of the ordinary. He told me he was looking forward to seeing me on Thanksgiving and that he hoped everyone in the family were doing well. He seemed to be in good spirits. There was no indication of anything out of the ordinary. As the weeks passed, we were allowed to pick up his things. Mom couldn't bring herself to go anywhere near his things, so me and my two brothers were on our own. We took time off work to box up an entire life, mementos from various adventures, treasured keepsakes from his youth, pictures of smiling people that hinted at a life of optimism. I was the one supposed to pack up his stamp collection, years and years of meticulously collected squares, folders sorting them by dates, rarity, country, state, all kinds. Taking down the centerpiece of his collection, the CIA inverted stamp. That's what broke me. He'd shown it to me so many times, so proud that he'd preserved a piece of history. But it was when I started to clear out his desk that I noticed something strange. There among his stationery was an entire sheet of the blue sunflower stamp I'd received. I picked up the sheet, looked it over, and turned it around. One stamp missing, probably the one he sent to me. There on the back of the sheet, he'd written, not use. Two words, six letter, just not use. It was written with an orange highlighter, possibly the first thing he'd gotten his hands on. Looking around the floor, I found the highlighter thrown into a corner. I got this uneasy feeling that there was more to this and that these stamps were a part of it. I couldn't find much information about them online. Apparently they were the result of some sort of commission contest back in 1912. But that was all that was known about them. They were a bit of a rarity, but most collectors had just never heard of them. They were a local curio at best. I found a collector in the very town the stamps had come from, Tom Scog, Minnesota. I contacted them and was surprised to hear that they personally knew my late uncle Laszlo. They'd talked to him just a few weeks prior to the murders. They asked to meet me and to bring the stamps. Bringing the stamps seemed to be the most important part. How could I refuse? I took the family car up to Tom Scog, Minnesota over the weekend. I told my wife it was to meet an old friend of my uncles. It'd been a trying time for all of us. It'd be too hard to explain that there was a stamp collector that might know something about his nervous breakdown. By Friday night, I pulled up in front of a motel on the outskirts of the town. The second I got to my room, there was a knock on the door. There was a woman in her early fifties outside. She'd been running and she looked anxious. She had a frail physique and these thick glasses like something straight out of a cartoon. Even as I walked up to the door, she was still pounding on it. As I opened the door, she forced her way inside without even telling me her name. Do you have them? She asked, are they here? I nodded. I'd kept the stamp sheet in a folder and handed it over. She snatched it out of my hands. Okay. She said, her shoulder is relaxing. I have to go. Uh, I think I deserve some answers. I said, can you tell me anything about them? That's when I noticed she had a small blade in her hand. Just a pocket knife, but still, I'm just gonna walk away. She said, not breaking eye contact. Understand? I nodded. As she left, it took me a few seconds to accept I'd been robbed. Was she ready to kill me for a sheet of stamps? I called the local sheriff's office, but I didn't even get to file a report. As soon as I started explaining, the only thing they picked up was woman and motel, and that was all they needed to hear. They dismissed me entirely. I sat there in my room for at least two hours. I checked my phone and tried to get in touch with a collector at an emailing, but I got nothing. I started checking various social media for any indication of who my contact person could be. By chance, I found a subreddit for stamp collectors in a discussion where everyone said which state they were from. There was a user with the same name as the one who'd I'd been in contact with saying they were from Minnesota. It couldn't be a coincidence. I started checking their posting history and got a pretty good idea of who they were. Finally, I found a post titled the first thing I see when I get my morning coffee. It was a picture of the downtown area as taken from a hill. There were a few stores that I could use for orientation. Whoever my contact really was, they lived downtown. I took a walk and found the hardware store from the posted picture. During that, I managed to find a side road leading up through a forest path to a nearby hill. There was a long street with six almost identical houses, but I spotted a mailbox in the picture that seemed to stand out. It didn't take me long to find it. They'd actually painted a stamp frame around their name. How more obvious could you get? Walking up the graveled path to the front door, my heart was beating faster and faster. I felt like there was something awful around the corner, something in the air. Something had gone wrong. My fears were confirmed as I saw the front door wide open. I had to do something. I considered calling the sheriff's office again, but I figured they wouldn't take two calls from me the same night. I tried, but I was placed on hold. Instead, I armed myself with a shovel, leaving the phone on. I felt odd arming myself with something my uncle had been caught killing people with just a few weeks prior. I couldn't help but wonder what was going through his mind as he did it. I called out, but no one responded. Someone could be hurt. As I stepped through the door, I noticed broken glass on the floor. There was a broken wall sconce next to the kitchen doorway. There'd been a struggle. The kitchen was in disarray, the fridge was open, and two chairs had been knocked over. A few stamps floated in a puddle on the floor from melted ice cubes. There was a broken picture frame on the floor, showing an older couple smiling, next to what looked to be their grandson. I hung it back up on the wall. I don't know why it seemed like the right thing to do. I stepped back into the hall. I could see something on the floor in the living room, just a few steps away. But I had a bad feeling, so I stopped and listened. There was something outside. I clutched my shovel, but if it actually came to using it, I didn't know if I would suddenly I felt like a complete idiot. What was I even doing? Was it really this important for me to prove my late uncle wasn't the monster he was made out to be? I hesitated. As my pulse started to rise, I hid in the bathroom. Someone was coming. A pair of heavy boots stumbled through the front door. Someone was muttering to themselves, walking right past the bathroom door. There was a thump and a dragging noise, low rumbling, complaining. I considered bursting through the door, but I was paralyzed. I could barely breathe and my muscles weren't listening. A few minutes passed, then there was a second thump and another dragging noise. I fumbled my phone out of my pocket. I had to try and call the police again, and as soon as the other person left, I would. I couldn't risk them hearing me. They entered the house one more time, as if to check for something. Walking room by room, they started in the living room and made their way out. They were almost at the front door when they stopped. Come out. Something was flung across the kitchen, and the heavy boots started stopping around. If I was caught in the bathroom, I'd be cornered. I had to make room. I put my hand on the door knob, took a deep breath, and opened the door. I stepped out into the hallway and saw her. The woman from the motel dressed in heavy gardening boots and coveralls. She'd lost her glasses, and her eyes were going wild. They were twitching back and forth, seemingly changing size moment to moment. Her blue plastic gloves were covered in blood. She seemed taller. I backed into the living room. You. She growled. She slowly walked up to me like a lion stalking a gazelle. I walked into the living room, keeping the distance. I heard my feet step into something squishy, maybe blood. I readied my shovel. Are they valuable? Is that it? Is that why you're doing this? I said, I could barely keep my breath up to speak. I was on the edge of just making a run for it. They're magical. She smiled, her voice both dark and shrieking at the same time. If you know how to use them. She made a lunge at me, and I almost slipped in the blood. I managed to bring down a bookcase between us, giving me some space. I broke a window next to me with a shovel. It was a bit of a drop, but I needed a backup plan. Something told me she wouldn't let me get out of this alive. I had to stay calm. Then she broke into a sprint. Using my shovel as a bat, I swung. It connected with the side of her rib cage, and it flung her across the floor. Something cracked. I didn't stop the check on her. I just climbed out the window. Before I even had one leg out, she was back up, though, and coming right at me. And then I noticed the side of her head was lined with blue sunflower stamps. She'd put them all on herself, the entire sheet. She tackled me, and we both fell out the window. That moment of weightlessness came to a swift end as we crashed into the damp backyard. My entire weight came down on her, and her left shoulder was twisted in an unnatural angle. Something snapped, and I rolled away. She didn't slow down, not for a moment. She gripped my shovel and just threw it aside. You can't just have one. She slurred. You need a bigger dose to stabilize it, to see. There was no reasoning with this woman, and it was just a matter of time before she caught up to me. I was panicking, my heart was racing, and I could hear her footsteps coming closer. She was grunning like a wild animal, getting ready for the kill. That deep rumbling noise in her throat made her sound like a bear. And then she flung me to the ground. She didn't blink. Her pupils were dividing like cells, only to float back together in a pulse. Her veins were turning black along her neck, and there was a hint of blue along the edge of her hairline. It opens your eyes. She whispered, you can see her marks everywhere. It's so comforting. She held my mouth shut as she started choking me. Something in my neck cracked, and all I could smell was dried blood and plastic. She pressed down, leaning her entire body weight onto me. I'm so glad you brought them to me. Thank you. She smiled. As I was losing consciousness, I heard screaming further down the path. Screaming, a barking dog, and a gunshot. And then I passed out. I awoke the next day in a hospital. My family were already there. I could barely breathe, and I could hear a wheezing noise coming from my neck. I couldn't even move my head. Thank God for rednecks and their dogs. No one knows who she was. She'd taken a bullet to the stomach, but just kept running. The dog had refused to attack her, and it curled up in a ball next to the path. By the time they'd found me, my rescuer had to perform an impromptu tracheotomy with a pen knife just to make me breathe. My neck had been crushed. I'm still in recovery, and my voice is just starting to come back. I've learned that the blue sunflower stamps had an adhesive made from the stems of blue sunflower, which was later discovered to be toxic. They used to grow all over that town, but nowadays they're pretty much extinct. There was a local pharmaceutical company in Tomskog called Hatchet Pharmaceuticals that helped produce the adhesive, but they just assumed that blue sunflowers were just like ordinary ones. I guess they were wrong. Needless to say, Hatchet Pharma aren't around anymore. I think Uncle Laszlo just wanted to use a cool stamp to send me a nice letter. He was poisoned, and it drove him mad. Strangely enough, there was nothing on his toxicology report to indicate some kind of altered state of mind, but I know for a fact he wouldn't do this just out of the madness of his heart. What that woman was raving on about? I don't know. No one knows who she was. All we know is that she was looking for those stamps, and she was ready to kill to get them. See there's more to that adhesive, the history of that entire event, and the town as a whole seems spotty at best. If anyone knows anything about the blue sunflower stamps or whatever happened to Hatchet Pharma, please let me know. I'm still looking for answers, even though my wife forbids it. And if you find any of the stamps in circulation, just don't use them.