Letters From The Grave

by Jeanie P Johnson

  April 7, 1979

  Dear Doran,

  By now you have seen a picture of what I look like, if it, like the pen I sent, has appeared with the letter I am writing. I would love to see a picture of you as well, so I can put a face with the words that you write to me.

  I did some research on my ancestors, and have discovered that I am related to your late wife, so perhaps that is why we are able to converse as we are. My father is a historian, and I have asked him to look up your family line as well, and see if it reaches into my time, and if perhaps some of your future relatives still exist today. I did find a man with your name listed in the phone book… well I guess you don’t know what a phone is, but anyway, because he had your name, it makes me feel that your family line has survived. It would be interesting to meet someone related to you and discover how much they know about their long dead ancestor…. Sorry, but of course in my time you have been long dead, even though you seem so alive right now, as I write to you.

  I am sad to inform you, that your plantation no longer exists in my day. It was by chance that I even happened upon your wife’s grave. I got lost and found myself in an abandoned graveyard, so no…no one has been caring for either your or your wife’s grave. In fact, my father had been looking for your wife’s grave, since she is related to us, and he does research on everything concerning the past, not to mention our past relations. He was unable to find the grave, so it was by pure accident that I happened upon it.

  The only thing remaining here is a ruin of an old church, not far from the gravesite. The walls are still standing but the roof has caved in. Apparently your place was burned down during the war, which means that you should prepare for that, and make sure you have hidden anything of value before the war even starts, because it will surely be confiscated by the troops that happen upon your home, whether the enemy or not. They will take whatever they need to survive and to support the cause.

  I hope I can discover if your family survives the war, and if so, they will need something to start over with when the time comes. So please heed my words. Store food, and anything of value in a place where no one can find it, so your family will be preserved. You will have plenty of time, since the war is still quite a ways off as of yet and it will last for several years.

  Do not believe the insistence that it will be over within a few months, which will be assumed by the leaders when the war starts. It will turn out to be a devastating war, I am sorry to inform you. It is better to be prepared for the worst, though, than to pretend it is not going to happen. Thousands of men will be killed. Even today, there are repercussions caused by that war, especially in the south.

  Now that I have warned you of what is to come, I will tell you a little about myself, which is not that interesting, but perhaps you may find it of interest. I live only a few miles from where your Plantation used to stand. I live alone, as I have left my parent’s house, and I work as a waitress in a little Mexican joint….a place to eat Mexican style food…while I work on my art.

  I am an aspiring artist, and the way I found your grave is because I do etchings of old tombstones, and then paint things around the engraving, to represent the people buried there. I suppose it sounds morbid to you, but it is a different kind of artwork, and it is not sacrilegious because, I believe it memorializes those who have gone before us in a way that a simple gravestone cannot. Anyway, I am always looking for old grave yards to find new subject matter to use in my paintings.

  The one I am doing of your wife’s grave is very exceptional, and the man who owns an art studio in Saint Louis, says that if I finish that one, he will show my other artwork as well. So I am sure stumbling upon Emma’s grave, will change my future in a good way. I am now caring for both her and your gravesites, so you can rest assured that someone is tending them. And as I get time, I will tend the other graves here as well since I am sure they are all related to you in some way.

  I am not married or have any men friends interested in asking me to marry them. I had been engaged to be married, but the young man backed out a week before the wedding, and I never learned why. He accused me of having a lover, but since I didn’t have one, I didn’t know what he was talking about, or where he even got the idea I was betraying him. Perhaps it was just as well we did not marry, if he did not trust me to stay faithful to him, anyway. Other than that, my life is not that exciting.

  There are so many things that have changed in the world, which you will find it hard to believe or to understand even. It will be difficult to explain some of it to you, and some things you probably will not be able to imagine, even if I explained them to you. Only that will have to wait for a future letter. I need to get back to work on the painting I am working on, and later, I will do a painting of your grave as well, once I discover what you look like. I hope you have some sort of small photo of yourself you can send me, which will fit in the cubby hole. Until I hear from you again, I will be waiting with bated breath.

  Always your friend, Emma

  Doran put the letter back in the envelope, and stared at the photograph in his hand. He could not get over the shock of seeing his dead wife’s face staring out at him from the thin, glossy piece of paper. Even if she was a distant relative of his wife in the future, she looked too much like Emma to be that far removed. There must be some truth to the possibility of coming back into a new body in the future after one’s death, he thought. Finally he turned and started back to the house. He had to show his mother this new discovery, and see what she thought.

  When Doran entered the house, Mellissa was just coming down the stairs. When she saw the troubled look on Doran’s face, she feared he had discovered something upsetting about this new person from the future, for she saw he held a letter in his hand and something else she could not see.

  “Is there something wrong?” she asked, coming up to him and touching his shoulder.

  “Not really, but I can’t keep these things I am learning secret from you, even if I tried, for some of it concerns us both. Like what she tells me about the war, and that our plantation will be burned down during the war. She tells me we have to plan for that time, and I am sure she will tell us when it is supposed to start, though there is no way she would know just when they burn down our house. She suggests that we store food and hide it along with anything of value that we want to preserve, so when the time comes, we will not lose everything. Yet what is really astounding is the likeness she sent me of herself. Look at this mother…..” He held the photograph out to her.

  Mellissa gazed at the picture and drew in her breath. It could have been Emma, she thought, except for the strange clothes and the different way she arranged her hair. This was all very astounding indeed.

  “She must be Emma reborn,” she murmured softly.

  “I am thinking the same thing,” Doran remarked. “We need to start making plans about storing food, and where the best place to hide it might be. Somewhere away from the house would be best, seeing as how it will be burned down. I hope they don’t burn all the buildings. I will ask Emma if there are any buildings standing, besides the old church.”

  “Only the church is left? Does anyone from the family survive?”

  “I don’t know, but she tells me she is going to ask her father, who is a historian, to discover if anyone related to me does continue into the future. She claims that she saw someone with my name in a book, called a phone book, whatever that is. If they do exist, then we will know that someone carried on.”

  “Oh, this is very frightening! When Abraham Lincoln is elected as president, we will know that the time is getting closer. But who is this Abraham Lincoln? I have never heard of him before.”

  “Do not worry about it, Mother, I am sure we will discover who he is when the time comes. Since we are pre-warned, I am sure we can make plans far enough in advance to save us all. I am going to my study to respond to this letter. There is so much, now, that I wish to know, and it does not seem like there is time enough to learn it all.” />
  He strode past her and down the hall to his study and closed and locked the door. He wasn’t sure if he was happy about this discovery, or upset about it. He now realized that no matter what he did to improve on his property, in the end, he would lose it all.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  1979

  Emma was working on the painting of her namesake’s tomb stone. The angel continued to look like her, no matter how she tried to change the features. It seemed like her hand had a mind of its own, and refused to follow her direction. She also wanted to paint the face of Emma and wondered if there was any way she could discover what she looked like? Maybe Doran had a likeness of her that he could put in the cubby hole. She would ask him in her next letter, she thought.

  This writing to someone in the past was exciting, yet a little unnerving. She wished she could discuss it with her father, but she knew he would think she was crazy. He would accuse her of becoming so obsessed with graveyards that she thought she was communicating with the dead. It was bad enough that Cassandra knew about it, but she was being such a good sport about it. She had even looked up Doran’s name in the phone book.

  Thinking about that, she abruptly decided she would call the number. Emma pulled her heavy phone book off the shelf by her phone and started thumbing through the pages, but could not find his number. That was strange, she thought. She had seen it with Cassandra when they were at the restaurant. Now she was determined to discover why it wasn’t in her phone book, or if it had just been a fluke. She ran out and jumped in her car, anxious to drive to the place they had eaten that night. When she got there, she leaped from her car and sprinted to the door having to slow her pace once she was inside. Anxiously, she walked straight to the pay phone booth. She scanned through the names in the book, and there was the number. Why wasn’t it in her phone book, she wondered? Then she looked on the date of the phone book. It was three years old! Didn’t they ever change their phone books in this place, she hissed aloud?

  Emma decided she would try it anyway, and dropped a dime in the pay phone, then dialed the number. “I am sorry, but the number you have reached is either disconnected, or is not in service at this time,” the recording announced. Rats! Had he moved, she wondered? She called information, and asked for the number, of a Doran F. Foster, but learned it was unlisted. Why had Doran Forster, changed his number to an unlisted number, she wondered? Apparently, he still lived around the area somewhere, if his number was unlisted. The only way she would be able to get it was if there was some sort of emergency concerning him, and of course she didn’t even know him, so that was never going to work.

  Well, she decided that she would not worry about that right now. Apparently someone related to Doran Foster from the past still existed, which meant that his family must have survived the Civil War, and that made her feel happy.

  She went back out to her car and drove home. Maybe she would stop by the grave yard and check her mail, she smiled. How absurd people would think she was to be checking mail at a graveyard! She turned off the main road and headed out to Emma’s grave.

  When she arrived, she eagerly threw the door of the car open, without bothering to close it. She headed for the grave and was rewarded by finding a new letter inside, but with it, something astounded her. Placed on top of the envelope was an old fashioned photograph of a couple. The woman was dressed in a wedding dress, and the man standing beside her was surely her husband, but what was amazing was that the face of the woman, was her own face staring back at her, as though she had existed in the past, or this picture was taken at one of those old fashioned photo shops that dress you up in old clothes to make you appear to have come from the past. The only problem was, she had never posed for such a picture, so why was she dressed in an old fashioned wedding dress, standing beside the man?

  The man, she noticed was rather handsome, and of course it must be Doran, because she asked him to send her a picture of himself, and she had the unsettling feeling that the woman, apparently his wife, was none other than Emma of the past. He probably fell over when he saw the photo of herself that she had sent him, she thought as she impatiently broke the seal on the envelope and opened it. She held the sheets of paper that she pulled from it with trembling hands.

  April 13, 1859

  My Dearest Emma,

  You can well imagine how shocked I was to discover that the likeness that you sent me of yourself, looked so much like my deceased wife, you could have very well been her twin sister. This makes me believe that perhaps you are her, reborn in the future, and if that is the case, perhaps I too am reborn somewhere in the future, looking for you.

  I have sent you our wedding photograph, which you have looked at by now, and so if you happen to meet a man looking like me, please give him a chance to make your acquaintance, for he may well be me. It seems that if you look so much like my wife, I should probably look a lot like myself in the future as well. Or anyway, I hope so. Perhaps this man you said you saw listed in that phone book is me in the future. I hope we will be able to meet, but what good does it do if we do not know if we are from the past and have found each other again?

  Thinking about this almost hurts my brain, because it does not seem right that neither of us, from the future, could actually remember who we were in the past, or how we felt about each other. How does one discover who they were in the past, and the people they loved back then? How does one discover where that person they loved in the past is in their future? And if I found you in the future, would you still be writing to me in the past as well?

  And then I ask myself, have I loved you before in a past life before the one I am living now? Do we continue to meet and continue to love each other, over and over again in each life we experience? I could not imagine loving anyone else but Emma, and I wonder, would we have had the same names back in another life, as well as in a future life? There are so many unanswered questions, that I fear that you do not know the answer to either, but I cannot help but ponder over them.

  However, your letters have lifted my soul, knowing that you exist and have not only my wife’s name, but her face as well, in some future time. For the first time, since my son was born, I have held him and realized that I must raise him to be a strong honorable man, so he can carry on my seed, and eventually make it possible for my future self to be born, if that is how it works. It stands to reason that if you are related to my wife from the past, that I could very well be related to myself in the future. If that is the case, then it is best that future generations of my family live on.

  I worry about the on-coming war, and you mentioned that the church still remains there in your time. I need to know if any other buildings have remained, because I need to have a safe place to store food and whatever else we may need that will not be destroyed when the house is burned. It saddens me to know all my hard work on this plantation will not withstand the war, but I assume there is no way to change the past, even if you know what is about to transpire in the future of that past.

  I often wonder how time works, because it is all a mystery to me. I only know I am lucky to have discovered someone who can tell me about the future, so I can learn things that no other human in my day and age has the ability to discover. Perhaps Emma dying is a hidden blessing in ways I have not discovered yet, for had she not died I never would be conversing with someone in the future, as I am now. Life itself is such a mystery, that I may never learn to understand it.

  I hope I can continue to converse with you for a long time because your letters bring me comfort. And I also hope that if you are my wife reborn, that somewhere I am reborn as well, and will find you soon, and if I do, I hope that we have a long and loving life together.

  Lovingly, Doran

  Emma looked down at the picture again, and as she stared into the eyes of the man standing beside the woman that could have been her double, a strange feeling came over her. He looked perplexingly familiar. Was she remembering him from some past existence, or was it something else? She was a
lmost positive that she had seen him before. Was this a hoax after all, she wondered? She held the picture and the letter to her breast. She was having a hard time breathing. Why did the picture of Doran, seem so familiar? Maybe she had been married to him in some past life!

  Emma kept staring at the picture of herself, standing next to him in her wedding gown, trying to remember the incident, but nothing came to her, except for the feeling of familiarity she felt, every time she looked at his face. This was starting to affect her too much, she told herself. She remembered how she told Cassandra how she wished she could meet someone like Doran in this life, because he seemed so romantic. Was he somewhere searching for her, she wondered? Was he the same romantic person he was in the past, or would he be different?

  Finally she, rose from beside the tombstone, and slowly walked to her car, putting the picture and letter in her purse. She couldn’t wait to show Cassandra and see what she thought.

  When she returned home, though, she couldn’t bring herself to dial Cassandra’s number. What if just showing her the picture changed everything? What if she did run into Doran in this life? Would the letters from Doran in his past life stop coming to her? Was he writing her so she would wait for him to find her in her own time, and once that happened the spell would be broken?