The Suspiciously Packaged Fate of the People of Summer Cypress

Suspac /ˈsəsˌpak/ n. Suspicious package wrapped in brown paper delivered every Sunday at dawn to a random resident of Summer Cypress. Suspacs are allegedly linked to both tragic and fortunate events, vanishing at dusk the Saturday after delivery.

Sunday, April 14, 1912

The Titanic sinks 400 miles east of Newfoundland.

Old Widow Anderson’s home was the only structure standing after a fire destroyed the mining town of Summer Cypress. Rescuers found her seated next to a suspicious package wrapped in brown paper. “Our salvation and our doom,” she said, refusing to hand it over for inspection, then adding, “You can have it over my dead body.” Ironically, she dropped dead a week later, but the package was nowhere to be found.

Since then, a suspicious package would appear at a random residence in Summer Cypress every Sunday, right at dawn.

Sunday, January 7, 1973

Serial sniper Mark Essex is shot two-hundred times by police in New Orleans.

When Mayor Philip Clairmont began his historic speech announcing the addition of the history of the suspicious packages to the high school curriculum, he didn't know his wife had just found one outside their door.

“The suspicious packages made the reconstruction of Summer Cypress possible after the fire of 1912, turning it into a unique town outside governmental control. They have inspired technological advances that—”

The assistant city manager interrupted Philip to inform him of the suspicious package at his home. Excited, Philip started to tell the crowd, but all they heard was “sus—pac—” before a stroke killed him.

“Suspac” became the official name for the weekly suspicious package.

Sunday, September 1, 1985

A joint U.S.-French expedition locates the wreck of the Titanic.

Ten-year-old Jake Hollister hoped to find a suspac by his front door that would bring Dad back and keep Mom from committing suicide. Although Mrs. Holman had said in history class that most suspacs were linked to tragedies, Jake believed they could also bring good fortune. If the suspac wasn’t at his door this morning, he would search the town with Carlie and try to beat Reverend Hooper to it.

He waited until the morning light was bright enough for the suspac to have already appeared, as Carlie had warned that it was dangerous to actually see a suspac coming into existence.

He opened the door. Nothing.

Disappointed, but not defeated, Jake ran to Carlie’s. There was a sudden explosion in the distance. I hope it wasn’t Carlie’s house, he thought, picking up his speed.

Sunday, March 18, 1990

Thirteen precious works are stolen from the Isabella Gardner Museum in Boston.

After Jake made love to Carlie for the first and only time in Mr. Kramer’s marigold garden, he put one of the yellow flowers in her hair and tried to steal one more kiss while she got dressed.

“It’s almost dawn,” she said, pushing him gently away. “We have a suspac to find.”

He tried kissing her again but stopped when he saw a panicked look in her face.

“What is it?”

“The suspac. It just materialized on Kramer’s doorstep,” she replied, making her way toward the house.

“Wait!” Jake shouted, buttoning up his shorts as he followed, but she had already picked up the suspac and was carrying it to the gate. “Didn’t Kramer’s wife, son, and daughter each die after he received a suspac?”

“Yes,” Carlie replied, already crossing the street. “And we’re going to save Kramer by hiding this one in the mines.”

Jake followed her, hoping she was right.

Except she wasn’t. Inside the house, Kramer had died of an aneurysm the instant Carlie had touched the suspac. It would be two weeks before they found his body, the scent of decay masked by the pungency of his marigold garden.

Sunday, October 31, 1999

All 217 passengers of EgyptAir Flight 990 die as the aircraft brakes apart in mid air over the Atlantic ocean.

Jake returned to Summer Cypress after nine years, meaning to cover the military takeover of the mines for his newspaper, but learning that he didn’t have the clearance to access them. Instead, he interviewed several townspeople regarding the suspacs, hoping to find an explanation for Carlie’s disappearance back in 1990.

He had been the last person to see her when he had left her alone in the mines with Kramer's suspac. After arguing heatedly, Jake had run home, only to find the police there, his mother dead, and his father ready to drag him away from Summer Cypress forever.

He now sat at a nursing home with Malena, the blind widow whose husband had vanished in the suspac explosion of 1985.

“That Sunday,” Malena said, “When Joel was checking the mail, I spotted the suspac from the window, unable to speak as I watched him carry it into his office.”

“Did you touch it?” Jake asked, thinking of Carlie’s hands on the same ugly brown paper nine years ago.

“No," Malena replied. "He was already busy at his computer, asking me to let him work. When I heard the explosion later, I ran to the office and found it engulfed in a light as bright as day, followed by total darkness.”

Jake shuddered. “And Joel?”

“They told me nothing was left: Joel, suspac, computer, everything in the room, gone.”

“Sorry.” He sighed. Like Carlie?

“I know you understand," Malena said sadly. "You lost your mother and then that young girlfriend of yours.”

After Malena, Jake had one more person to see at Trinity Hospital: Miss Dones, the recipient of that week’s suspac, whose comatose daughter had miraculously recovered.

“A miracle,” was all Miss Dones said to Jake. “And everyone keeps saying that suspacs only cause destruction and death.”

But they do, thought Jake.

Sunday, December 26, 1999

At least 140 are dead after cyclones Lothar and Martin cross France, southern Germany, and Switzerland.

At 10:00 a.m. Jake was lying in bed with a fever when his cell phone rang. “Hello?”

“Jake Hollister?” It was Shana, his older cousin, now the lead scientist and military liaison in Summer Cypress. He had emailed her about gaining access to the mines and obtaining information on the suspacs.

“Yes. Hello, Shana.”

“I couldn’t believe it when I saw your email. Jake Hollister, journalist extraordinaire. At least one of us made it out of Summer Cypress.”

He coughed. “Thanks.”

“Good news, I got you access to the mines for next week.”

“Great!“

“Suspac-wise, though, I only know about today's delivery. Sorry, busy couple months. Meant to call earlier but I had to drive out of Summer Cypress to get cell reception at all.”

“Any tragedies?”

Shana laughed. “Not this time. The suspac appeared in front of the church, you know, the one built where Old Widow Anderson’s house once stood. Anyway, people are going nuts, talking Y2K, the end of times, you name it, especially after the earthquake right at dawn.”

“Reverend Hooper found the suspac, I assume?”

“Nope!” She chuckled. “Old Malena did. She convinced her nurse to wheel her to the old church before dawn.”

“That’s insane! Is she okay?”

“More than okay! After finding the suspac, she ran to Reverend Hooper’s door, her eyesight restored, asking for his blessing.”

“She can see?”

“And walk! By the time I left town, she was sitting on the suspac like a holy woman, people lining up to touch the hem of her robe and hear her prophecies, which were mostly good, except for the one about the world ending in a week.”

After the call, Jake watched the news but found nothing about Summer Cypress and its miracle.

Sunday, January 2, 2000

The world hadn’t ended, Jake thought as he made his way to Summer Cypress. The place was as quiet as a ghost town and for a moment Jake thought that the first suspac of the new millennium had killed them all off.

Shana quickly dispelled that notion as she drove him to the old mines. “They’re all in church, silly, giving thanks. There was no suspac today. Second time since 1990.”

“But,” Jake started, stopping when he realized he was about to tell her that the missing suspac of 1990 had actually arrived, but he and Carlie had hidden it in the mines. “Maybe they just can’t find it.”

“Unlikely. Our sensors have detected every suspac for years now.”

“Not in 1990.”

She laughed. “Back then we relied on our suspac hound, Reverend Hooper.”

They reached the mines, fenced off and guarded by armed soldiers. Shana introduced Jake as her intern, badge and all, and then drove up to the end of the paved road.

That’s when the earth shook.

“What’s happening?” Shana shouted into her walkie-talkie as she stepped out of the car.

“We have activity in Sector 5,” a voice replied.

“Shit!” Shana said. “Jake, stay in the car. We might have a suspac after all.”

Jake did not stay in the car. He found his way down to the mines, locating the entrance to the one where he had abandoned Carlie. The opening was blocked by boulders twice his size. He checked the other entrances, but all were similarly obstructed.

“The earthquakes sealed them for good,” a girl’s voice said, young and sweet, making him think of marigolds and springtime.

He turned to see the impossible, fifteen-year-old figure of Carlie, wearing the same skirt and blouse he had last seen her in. Before he could speak, she had her arms wrapped around him.

“Carlie, is that really you?”

“Mostly,” she said, picking the marigold from her hair and putting it in Jake’s. “I was in a place out of time. The suspac took me there.”

“Where?”

“It looked like a cave with a man sitting in front of a computer, except he wasn’t a man and the cave was only my perception of his spaceship.”

“What was he then?”

“A being, trapped in our space time. He had been periodically deploying tiny singularities, both black and white holes, into our planet since 1912, trying to open a gate back to his galaxy—although from his perspective, it amounted to an hour’s work.”

“What?”

“He perceived reality differently, unaware of things like Summer Cypress, Earth, or time. We were but shadows from a lower dimension projected flatly onto the wall of his cave-ship. Naturally, I named him Plato. Anyway, to us, the singularities took the form of suspicious packages wrapped in brown paper, some kind of cosmic, interdimensional metaphor.”

“The suspacs? But they killed so many!”

“And yet we humans had trapped him here with our nuclear tests, which resonated back and forth in time, killing his entire crew.”

“How did you escape?”

“A computer glitch. He had received Malena’s husband’s computer, along with everything in the man’s office, in our year 1985.”

“And her husband?”

“Plato took over his body to access the computer and use it to schedule the deployment of singularities once a week to weaken the gate, which happened to be in the mines. He needed two more. One was the white hole that healed Malena. The last one was a black hole that would open the gate but would also destroy the entire planet.”

“Yikes!”

Fortunately, thanks to the glitch, all the black hole did was send me back.”

“What was the glitch?”

“Really? Think about it. Computer from 1985, the end of the millennium. Do I need to spell it out?”

Understanding, Jake slapped his forehead. “Are you kidding me?”

“Nope.”

They laughed for what seemed forever.

Somewhere Outside of Time

In his cave-ship, Plato looked glumly at the laptop that had come through one of the recent white holes. When the screen came on, he noticed a suspicious envelope-shaped icon on the desktop, just next to the trash. It was named, “FOR PLATO, WHO HAS PLENTY OF TIME.” He double-clicked it, triggering an installation process that culminated with a window that read, “Installation Complete. Windows 98 Year 2000 Update - Succeeded."

Plato smiled and without a moment to waste, resumed his task.