Postmark, USA Back Story - Part one of a three part series
Spencer Reed pulled into the high school parking lot where he worked, blasting Offspring’s “Smash” at full volume. As he pulled into a parking space, two students walked by. One rolled their eyes and said something to the other, who laughed.
“Yeah, yeah, go make a TikTok or something,” Spencer muttered under his breath as he grabbed his satchel and sack lunch from the passenger seat, knocking a couple empty bottles of Mountain Dew onto the dirty floor of the car as he did. His wife had always chided him to clean up his messy car, and he knew she was right, but now she was gone, and so was the reminder to clean up after himself.
It wasn’t that he was a slob on purpose, or willfully disorganized. It was just that his damn brain was always full of random thoughts, and the daily struggle to focus on what everyone else thought was important was a monumental task on a good day.
He brushed past students chattering in the halls, and unlocked the door to his classroom. His planning period was first thing in the morning this semester, which was fine with him. Spencer was a morning person, most awake right after jumping out of bed. He settled into his somewhat uncomfortable and incessantly creaky desk chair and mostly ignored Principal Stevens as she read the morning announcements. One caught his attention though, and caused him to swear under his breath.
“And just a reminder, we will be opening the time capsule from the 1800s today at 3:30 by the flagpole at the front entrance of the school. Our own Mr. Reed will do the honors of opening the box, so don’t miss it!” The nerdy part of Spencer was excited to see what was in the box, but he also totally forgot that he had promised to give a speech and lead the festivities after school today.
Two weeks earlier, while researching a lesson plan in the school’s library, Spencer had made a fascinating discovery. A small newspaper article, no doubt torn from the local newspaper decades earlier, had dropped to his desk while he was leafing through a book about the American Civil War. The book clearly hadn’t been opened in years, and Spencer wouldn’t have opened it either if he hadn’t been looking for a passage to use to explain historical perspective and historiography to his AP US History class.
The article, dated 1894, read:
This week, Lincoln High School’s history club will bury a box of momentos and curios for a future generation to unearth. They will host an event out in front of the school at 3:30 PM sharp. We are assured it will be a real lally-cooler, so bring a chum and come watch the festivities! Bring something to include in the box if you feel so inclined. The bottom fact is this could be the event of the month, and in 1994 future students will be amazed and amused by our treasures!
Spencer had looked up “lally-cooler” on his phone, and chuckled. He enjoyed making his students’ eyes roll by using period slang, and his favorite was describing things as the “bee’s knees!” when talking about the 1920s. He wondered if the time capsule had been unearthed in 1994, and asked Mr. Hurt, the oldest teacher at the school, if he remembered any such event. Mr. Hurt, buried in his copy of the New York Times in the teachers’ lounge, had merely grunted and shaken his head no.
It took Spencer an hour or so of poking around with a shovel in the flower bed around the flagpole to find a medium-sized brass box. Despite his curiosity, he did not open it, and instead set off for the main office to tell the principal to set up an event. That was two weeks ago, and as usual he had procrastinated when he could have easily had the speech written days earlier.
The rest of the day passed quickly, and by the time 3:30 rolled around, Spencer was exhausted, but relatively happy with the written address he had penciled out for the event. A decent crowd of 50 or so curious students and teachers braved the chill afternoon air to see what was in the capsule. They patiently listened to Spencer’s mildly uninspired speech about appreciating history and our past, and then huddled around the box as he pried it open. He wore gloves not just because it was cold, but also to make it seem like he knew something about preserving historical artifacts. (This was barely true.)
Lying on top of the pile of items inside was a cardboard-backed black and white photo of about ten teens, with “Lincoln High History Society - 1894” scrawled in penciled cursive. Spencer flipped it over and saw that the students had all signed the photo, and smiled. It was pretty cool imagining the kids adding their items one at a time to the brass box over 100 years ago. Their capsule missed its 100th birthday, but at least it got some belated attention.
As the students and teachers pulled out and examined notes, trinkets, photos, coins, and other items from the box, Spencer’s eye was drawn to a small yellowed paper envelope near the bottom. He picked it up and stepped back from the crowd a bit to give himself some light. In the hubbub of examining the contents of the box, no one paid him much attention.
Written in neat script on the front was this note:
I pass this on from shackled hand
Trapped in time, a lonely man
Beware its power, and know this
I dare not whisper, even hiss
For if I plainly share its power
I surely can’t predict the hour
Or date, or place or even year
Where I will travel on from here
Spencer felt a small heavy object in the envelope and took off one of his gloves to tear the envelope open. He wasn’t a superstitious person, and pretty much ignored the cryptic poem. He tipped the object into his gloved hand and examined what appeared to be a rather large solid silver coin. It was oddly heavy and was covered in strange symbols and letters that he had never seen before. He flipped the coin over and ran his ungloved fingers over the raised markings on the reverse side. Brilliant shining light assaulted his eyes, so powerful that he was immediately disoriented. The coin began to rapidly spin in his hand, and then the world went black.
_______________
Samuel Jenkins was one of those men who looked 70 when he scowled, and 40 when he smiled. He was actually 54 years old, and he scowled often because of a lingering war wound in his leg that bothered him constantly. He reached into his coat pocket and drew out a small metal flask, tipped it to his lips, and drank a swallow. It would help the pain for a few hours. He lounged in the back of a small wooden fishing boat, he was mostly there as a counterweight while his friend Clarence stood in the front, lazily casting a fishing line out into the river. Their boat was loosely anchored on some rocks in the middle of the stream of water, so there wasn’t much danger of Clarence falling in, but the water was ice cold, and it wasn’t worth the risk.
Suddenly, a brilliant light appeared as if from nowhere, right in front of Clarence. He stumbled backwards into the middle of the boat, and Samuel had to shift himself suddenly to keep the craft from capsizing.
“What the actual hell is that?!” Clarence gasped as he got unsteadily back to his feet. Samuel just shook his head, at a loss for words. The orb of light was only about the size of a large apple, but brighter than anything he had ever seen. The day’s sun seemed dull and muted by comparison.
Overcome by curiosity, Clarence slowly reached out with the fishing pole and tried to prod the light. The rod passed through it. He leaned closer, shielding his eye from the brightness. He saw what appeared to be a small sphere at the center of the bright aura. It looked like a metal disc or coin revolving at an almost blinding speed.
He reached out to nudge the coin with his hand, still somewhat inexplicably holding the fishing rod, as if it offered some kind of protection from his reckless inquisitiveness. The instant his skin came in contact with the coin, the light was extinguished, seemingly swallowed by the swirling rapids of the river. Clarence fell backwards in shock yet again when a man bobbed up out of the river, coughing and sputtering and blindly reaching out. Without thinking, both men in the boat scrambled forward and pulled the hapless man up into the boat. Icy water poured off of him and their hands slipped, the man sliding back into the frigid water. The boat became dislodged from the rocks in the middle of the water, and began drifting away.
The man, wild-eyed and panicked, swam for land. Clarence and Samuel managed to steer the boat back to shore, but by the time they felt the bottom of the boat scrape the river bank, the mysterious man was running and stumbling into the woods a couple of hundred feet away, glancing back furtively as he ran.
To be continued….