Letters From The Grave

by Jeanie P Johnson

  He decided to go and compose a letter to her at once, because he was anxious to discover the results, when she read it.

  CHAPTER TEN

  1976

  Doran Frederic Foster, lived with his grandfather, ever since he was born. His father, Samuel Rafe Foster, had died in the second world war before Doran was born, and his mother, who had been staying with Samuel’s father while he was away at war, remained there. His grandfather was the only father figure that Doran knew, and it saddened him that his grandfather’s health was failing him, and he did not have much longer to live.

  He pushed the bedroom door open, where his grandfather stayed most of the time, because it was so difficult for him to move around. “Come in. Come in,” Alex Foster said cheerfully, as the door was pushed open. “Close the door, I need to talk to you, and no one else should hear.”

  Doran raised his eyebrows. He figured Grandpa had something up his sleeve. There had always been a twinkle in his grandfather’s eye, and his mother claimed grandpa was too full of mischief. “What is it, Grandpa?” Doran asked, as he walked across the room.

  Doran had been told that he looked a lot like the great, great grandfather he had been named after. He had the same dark hair and green eyes. Even the dimple that showed when he smiled was similar, but Doran never gave it much thought. He was a strapping twenty-year-old and his thoughts mostly centered around women, and a long hopeful plan to someday rebuild the plantation that their family had owned back before the Civil War. It had been his grandfather’s dream as well, and they often spoke of it, as he was growing up, but even though the Forster family was well off, rebuilding the plantation was way beyond their means.

  Now he looked at his grandfather and realized his grandfather would never see that dream fulfilled, and he wondered if he would either? The expression on his grandfather’s face now looked serious, so he sat down in a chair next to the bed, and merely waited for his grandfather to speak.

  “I have something very important to tell you, Doran. Your mother doesn’t even know about it, but I feel you should learn of it now.” Doran noticed that his grandfather held a box in his hands. The lid was opened and inside was a stack of letters, tied in a faded ribbon. The letters looked old and tattered, but the envelopes were covered with roses, so they must be from a woman. Perhaps they were old love letters written to him by his wife who had died when Doran was very little, so he did not remember her.

  Alex noticed his grandson looking at the box in his hand. “You are wondering what this is all about, aren’t you?” he smiled. “These letters in this box are very important, and when I tell you the story of where they came from, you won’t believe me, but because the incident hasn’t even happened yet, in our time, you will be able to prove it to yourself in time.”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about,” Doran murmured. Grandpa was always saying strange things from time to time.

  “It is about the past and the future,” Alex chuckled. “Now don’t interrupt me while I am telling you about it, until I am through. Then I will show you the letters to prove it. These letters were written to your great, great, grandfather. The man you were named after. You resemble him, you know. Anyway, his mother gave them to her great grandson, who happens to be me. She did not give them to my father, Matthew, because she did not think it was proper to explain to her son’s own son, that his father had fallen in love with the woman who wrote these letters, after his own mother died.

  “However in our time, these letters have not even been written yet.” He gave Doran a sly smile. “This is 1976 and they will not be written until 1979.”

  “That is ridicules, Grandpa. If you have the letters, they have to be written already.”

  “They were sent back in time from the future, and so they existed in 1859, when your great, great grandfather received them, but they have not been sent back in time yet. So the person who wrote these letters knows nothing about them, and won’t know until April of 1979. Now that I have your attention, I will tell you the story,” Alex smiled and began relating to Doran the story of Emma and Doran, both past and future.

  When he was finished, he handed Doran the box. “Read them, and you will see. I was hoping that I would be able to meet this Emma who sent the letters to my grandfather, but until she stops writing the letters, around 1983, it is best that she does not meet me, or discover why I want to meet her. So it is left up to you to seek her out, but you can’t do it for the next seven years. She won’t even know who you are, because she doesn’t know about your great, great grandfather yet.

  “You have to promise! If you met her and told her about this, it will confuse her, and she wouldn’t believe you anyway, since she hasn’t even written the letters yet. You must wait until after your great, great, grandfather died, which in Emma’s experience with him, will be sometime in November of 1983. The date of the last letter she sent is the day he died November 10th. After he died no more letters were sent. She would have no reason to send any. She knew when he was going to die, because she had seen his tombstone.

  “Doran, your great, great grandfather, was married to an Emma Harrison, and this woman that wrote the letters was born on her birthday, and has the same name. When he ended up getting letters from her in a compartment he had designed in the tombstone of his wife’s grave, they believed they might be soul mates, and that is why she was able to contact him through time. Therefore, I believe that you are Emma’s soul mate. You look like your great, great Grandfather, and she looks like Emma, his wife. Because of that, she must not meet you until after he dies, or she would stop writing him, thinking she had found him in the future, and that may change the past and the future. So before you decide to get married to anyone, you need to meet this woman first. Only it will have to wait for seven years.

  Then his grandfather gave a weak laugh, and shook his head. “The only problem is, according to these letters, you have already changed the future. Even you are in these letters, like I mentioned, which is how I knew you had to receive them and meet her.

  “When I first read the letters, you were not even born. I did not know it would be my own grandson who took part in this strange history of the past and future, even though I had my suspicions. Yet now it all makes sense. I realized when you were born, that you were probably the soul mate she was waiting for. Your age would end up matching hers, by the time this all happened. I talked your mother into naming you Doran because it mentioned in her letters that a Doran Foster had purchased her artwork. I knew it would be you, so I sort of fudged and made sure you had that name. I know you won’t wait the seven years, since the letters indicate you had some hand in the forming of her future. When you read the letters, you will understand.”

  Doran stared down at the box in his hand with the letters inside. His grandfather must be crazy, and this was just a big hoax. What his grandfather had told him was unbelievable, but the story intrigued him all the same. Only if this woman was his soul mate, he wanted her to fall in love with him for who he was, not because she believed he had come back from the past. She would be in love with his past self, not the person he was today.

  Perhaps they were soul mates, since he could not get interested in any other women. Still, he wanted to check her out, just the same. His grandfather was right. No way was he going to wait for seven years, he grumbled to himself. Even if he just met her and never told her who he was. After all, she had not seen a picture of his great, great grandfather yet, to compare him with. He went to his room and began reading the letters.

  When Doran had finished reading the letters, he felt like he had known this girl all his life, and she hadn’t even written the letters yet, nor were they to him personally, but somehow he had become entwined in the history of his great, great grandfather, and this woman, who as of today, knew nothing about either of them .

  He was beginning to believe that maybe she was his soul mate, but how could he wait for seven years before he could prove it to her, he wondered? Seven yea
rs was a long time. She might end up marrying someone else. She had mentioned something about getting engaged, in one of her letters, but the man had jilted her. The rest of her letters never mentioned her meeting anyone else, after that, except for her suspicions that he, as her soul mate, was involved in her life somehow, and she wanted to discover how he knew about her. So maybe there was a chance, he decided, only according to the letters, he hadn’t been very careful about keeping his existence a secret. Only, perhaps, in the end, that would be a good thing, he told himself.

  After reading the letters several times, he decided to go get his old school yearbook and see if she had gone to the same school as he had. Sure enough, her picture was in it. She would be a senior right about now. Being several years younger than him, it was no wonder he had not met her. He wished he had met her back then, because she seemed to have a lot of things in common with him.

  Next he went to the phone book to see if he could find her address and phone number. He knew what she looked like, since she had sent that snapshot of herself. Even though it was taken three years in the future, she hadn’t changed that much, from her yearbook picture, he thought as he compared her snapshot to the pictures in his yearbook. He began thumbing through the phone book. There were several different Harrisons. He was just going to have to call every one until he discovered if an Emma Anne Harrison lived there, and if she was the right Emma.

  He started dialing numbers. After a half hour of calling, he still hadn’t run into anyone who knew Emma Anne. Maybe her number wasn’t listed, but she had to live around there someplace if she found the graveyard at the old plantation.

  He had been to the old plantation a few times, but never bothered looking at the graves of his ancestors. Besides it was all overgrown, and would take a lot of work to put it back in order, and he planned to do that when he started building the plantation again. It had started out being his grandfather’s dream, and he hadn’t paid much attention, since he was involved with school and sports, and everything else that occupied a young boy’s life, but as his grandfather started getting up in age, and he realized that he probably would never get a chance to build the plantation, he started making plans himself and discussing it with his grandfather to keep the dream alive, and give his grandfather a reason to keep living.

  Doran dialed the next number, and a girl answered it. “Hello, is an Emma Anne Harrison there?” he asked.

  “This is Emma,” the voice said, and hearing her voice made him choke. “Hello? Are you okay? Can I help you?” she asked, as he started coughing in order to get his breath.

  “Uh, yes, I…I was just wondering if you go to Lincoln High. You would probably be a Senior there.”

  “Yes, that’s right. Who is this?”

  “Oh, I’m just someone who used to go there. I remember seeing you at school. I think you were a sophomore or something at the time.”

  “So why didn’t you talk to me back then?” she asked, “and why are you calling me now, three years later?”

  “Well, it is complicated. I really didn’t know much about you then, and I was going through my old yearbook, and realized we had a lot of things in common, and I didn’t even know it, like you being a member of the chess club, and you singing in the chorus, and being in drama. You were a cheerleader, and I was on the football team.”

  “You were? I am still a cheerleader. What is your name . Maybe I will remember you.”

  “Listen, I gotta go, right now. I just wanted to check to see if you were still around. Maybe I’ll bump into you sometime.”

  “You must know I have a boyfriend. He is on the varsity football team. He wouldn’t like it if you kept calling me.”

  “Oh, well I guess I won’t call you any more then,” Doran said, and hung up.

  Doran smacked himself in the forehead when he hung up the phone. He must have sounded like a complete idiot to her, he groaned. On top of that, she has a boyfriend, he thought glumly, but wasn’t every young girl in high school involved with one boy or another?

  She was probably going to go to the prom with that football player, he reasoned. He had to discover when the prom was going to take place, he decided. He had to meet her in person, and what better place but at a dance where she wouldn’t even know who he was, since some girls bring dates from other schools.

  She was the right age. She had to be the Emma he was looking for, and the only way to find out was to meet her in person, and see if she looked like the person in the snapshot and in the yearbook. What was so amazing was that she hadn’t even sent the snapshot to his great, great grandfather yet. This was getting really weird, he mumbled to himself, and headed out to his car, so he could drive to the school and find out when the prom was going to take place.

  Even though school was out for the day, he could see there were several cars in the parking lot so someone must still be there. When he walked into Lincoln High school, the first thing to greet him in the hallway was a huge poster. Vote for Emma Harrison for prom queen. It had a picture of her pasted to it, and he knew she was the one he was looking for. There was another poster advertising David Randle for Prom king. He was surprised to realize that David resembled himself a little. He must be the football player she was going out with, he thought. Maybe she was attracted to him because subconsciously he reminded her of her soul mate, she supposedly was married to a hundred years ago, he reasoned. After all, he too had been on the football team when he went to this school. Funny, even though she was supposed to be his soul mate, they had lived in the same town together, and gone to the same school, and yet still hadn’t met. Maybe fate was waiting until after she stopped writing to his great, great grandfather, so she would recognize him when she saw him, only he was going to have to interfere with fate.

  He made his way to the office, and the woman behind the counter looked up at him. “When is the prom?” he asked.

  “You don’t know?” she said a little astonished.

  “No. I am visiting my cousin, and she wants me to take her girlfriend out to the prom, but she didn’t mention when the prom was.”

  “Strange you didn’t just ask your cousin,” she smiled, and he cringed. “It is in three weeks, on the tenth,” she stated.

  “Thank you,” he smiled, and headed back out the door. He wondered if he could wait for three weeks. However, it was a lot shorter time than seven years, he chuckled to himself. He just wouldn’t mention it to his grandfather, or anyone else, for that matter.

  When the night of the prom arrived, he was more nervous than he had ever felt when he went to his own prom, three years earlier. He didn’t bring a date. The only reason he was going was so he could have at least one dance with Emma, and then he would leave. He just had to see her and talk to her, and discover how he felt when he held her in his arms.

  He made sure he came after the dance was well under way, so no one would notice him as he entered the gym where the dance was being held. People were milling around outside, as well as couples dancing inside, and he went to the gym doors, and peeked in.

  His eyes searched the room, until he finally found her, literally floating over the dance floor in a lace and net dress of pale blue with a white flower attached to her wrist. It took his breath away, just looking at her, and his heart started to speed up. Perhaps his grandfather had been right. This could be the woman he was destined to marry, if he could only wait eight more years before asking her.

  She was dancing with the football star, and they were laughing about something, and then she turned her head and glanced at him. He couldn’t pull his eyes from her, but she didn’t even seem to notice him, as her eyes turned back to her partner. Well, what did he expect? He was just a stranger, crashing a high school senior prom.

  He came into the room, and stood against the wall, watching her until the dance ended, and she followed her partner over to the punch bowl. David whispered something in her ear, and she gave him a face, and then shrugged. Doran watched him, along with Emma as he ambled over to
a group of boys, who were most likely on the football team as well, since they all looked buff, and started talking to them, laughing and discussing something that seemed to entertain the whole group.

  The music started up again, and he could see the look on Emma’s face, as she watched her boyfriend from across the room. She seemed impatient with him, and she probably felt neglected. This was his opportunity, so he walked across the hall to her, and stood in front of her.

  “You look abandoned at the moment,” he smiled. “which gives me the opportunity to ask you to dance. Dance with me and I will vote for you for prom queen,” he coaxed.

  “I don’t believe I know you,” she said.

  “Sure you do. You just don’t remember me,” he told her.

  “What’s your name?” she wanted to know.

  “You will have to guess it,” he smiled.

  “Sort of like Rumpelstiltskin?” she laughed.

  “Sort of, but that is not my name,” he laughed back, and offered her his hand.

  “How can I guess it, if I have never met you before?” she asked as she took his offered hand.

  The moment that she touched his hand, Doran felt an extraordinary feeling rush through him, like he had held her hand before, and an instant recall came to mind, but it past so quickly, it was like Da’ja vu. She got a peculiar expression on her face, as he pulled her to him, and put his hand against her waist.

  “Oh, I almost remembered,” she said softly. “I think I have met you before.”

  “I told you,” he smiled, as he pulled her closer in the dance.

  “But I can’t remember your name, for the life of me. Wait! Are you the one who called me a few weeks ago?”

  Doran shook his head. If he admitted to calling her, she may try to look him up in the year book, since he had told her he had been on the football team. “Nope… I don’t have your phone number, but I wouldn’t mind getting it from you,” he teased.