Letters From The Grave

by Jeanie P Johnson

  “You can tell me later,” his mother insisted. “They are getting ready to burn down the house!”

  “We need to get to the church,” he slurred. “It is the only safe place… it can’t burn. It’s made of stone. Emma said it was still standing in her day.”

  “Yes, yes,” his mother agreed. “We will all go to the church.”

  “I need to tell you something about the church,” Doran whispered as he was assisted to the building.

  He stopped. They all stopped and turned. Flames were roaring up the sides of the plantation, and the Confederate soldiers were hurrying away with their bounty of animals and what food they could find. They all stood and stared as the house became engulfed with flames, while clutching their few belongings to them. Melissa and Julia started crying.

  “Let’s go into the church,” Melissa mumbled. “At least it is safe in there. It is bitter cold out here!”

  She helped Doran through the door, the cold building greeting them. It was November, but no snow had fallen yet. Only the stark cold surrounded them. Melissa ordered the servants to build a fire in the parlor-stove there, as she lowered Doran down on one of the pews. Matthew was whimpering in the muffle of blankets Nanny Doris had him wrapped in. Julia held the hands of her two children as they stood around the parlor stove, while the fire was lit,.

  “I have to tell you…” Doran said, his voice weak.

  “Don’t try to talk,” she whispered. “You need to get warm. You have lost so much blood.” She noted the dark stain that was soaking into his jacket. Then she noticed the letter in his hand. “You got a letter from Emma,” she breathed. “Do you want me to read it to you?”

  He nodded, and she began to open the letter hoping it would sooth him in his pain to hear Emma’s words.

  November 10,1983

  My dearest, Doran,

  I am not sure how to write this to you. I believe it will be the last letter you will ever receive from me. This is the date that is engraved on your tombstone as the day you died. It says you were killed by Confederate Raiders. It breaks my heart to know this, even though I know your death actually happened over a hundred years ago in my time.

  At least now, you can go and join Emma for the next hundred years, or perhaps just a blink of the eye in the scheme of things, until you come to earth again to join her there. I do hope you can join me here, even if I am not the Emma you were married to. I feel like I was her, and have learned to love you the same way she probably did.

  For the last four years, my days and nights have been filled with thoughts of you. I don’t know if I have fallen in love with a Ghost or someone who will appear in my life in the future…in all of my futures, I hope. I have dreaded this day for these four years, yet I also look forward to meeting you in this day and age. I know you are aware that I exist. I don’t know how the Doran of today discovered this, but he seems to know in advance what is going to happen. He even gave me the same globe you gave to Emma for her nineteenth birthday, on my nineteenth birthday, even though back then I had no idea you even existed, and didn’t find your grave until the next year.

  This is why I am sure you are here in my time. Only I believe you did not want to stop me from writing letters to you in the past, by appearing to me in the future. Now it is time to let the Doran of the past go, and look forward to the Doran of the future. I only hope you do not keep me waiting too long. Even if you never show up in my time, I will still love you for eternity.

  Lovingly, your past and, I hope, future wife,

  Emma

  The perfume filled Doran’s head, as his mother handed the letter back to him, and he brought it to his nose. “Put it with the other letters,” he mumbled, handing the letter back. “Keep them safe, like I told you. Did you hear that? She has the snow globe!”

  “Yes, it must have survived over the years. Only, you said you had something to tell me,” Melissa changed the subject. “Something about the church…”

  Doran nodded. “You will be safe here. I have made sure of it. When this is all over, I want you to rebuild the plantation again…I just don’t understand why it wasn’t done by the time Emma found it. You have to promise that you will instruct Matthew or someone in our future family to find a way to rebuild it!”

  “I will,” Melissa mumbled, “only I don’t know what you did with all of our valuables. You said you would let me know where you hid them.”

  “There is a list of them in the false bottom of the box where I keep Emma’s letters,” he whispered. It was getting so hard to talk now.

  “Yes,” Melissa encouraged. Only when she looked into his eyes, they were staring into space, not focusing on her.

  She took in her breath. Doran had died before he could tell her where he had hidden everything. Maybe he had indicated where he had hidden everything in the list he mentioned. She removed the box from her carpet bag, and slid the false bottom out. The list was there, but no indication of where all their wealth was put for safe-keeping. Disappointment filled her as she replaced the list and slid the bottom back in place. They would have to search the whole property to look for the hiding place, she determined.

  For now, she lowered Doran’s body to a prone position and placed her shawl over his face. She knew that would be the end of exchanging letters between time and space. She wondered if it was true that his future-self knew Emma was waiting for him? Melissa decided she would do her part and make sure the box of letters were kept safe, and when Mathew grew up and had children of his own, she would pass it on to them. She would be long dead before the letters ever reached Doran’s future-self, she realized.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  November, 1983

  Doran stood in the doorway of the stone church, looking over to where Emma knelt at his great, great, grandfather’s grave. He had been waiting for this moment to come, yet now it frightened him. What if Emma was disappointed when she finally got to meet him? What if her infatuation with Doran of the 1800’s overshadowed her emotions and she was expecting some southern gentleman to appear when he showed up?

  He had started cleaning up the property in preparation to rebuild the plantation, even though it was going to take every penny the family had saved over the years. His grandfather claimed that every generation planned on doing it, but with the First World War and then the Second World War coming along, among many other distractions, the funds never seemed to materialize. His grandfather had discovered blueprints of the original house, when he began doing research on it, and wanted to replace it the same way it had stood back before the Civil War.

  The roof of the church had been completely removed and the debris carted away, so now the November sun streaked down between the cross beams above. It was the first time he had been in the church because it had always been full of too much rotted wood that had fallen down, littering the room and covering some of the pews. Many of the pews had been removed, and he remembered his grandfather telling him that the family had lived in the church until after the war ended, the whole time searching for the wealth that was listed on the piece of paper hidden in the false bottom of the box he held in his hands. Only they had never found the place where Doran had hidden their valuables, so they could not rebuild the plantation, and moved into town instead.

  Now Doran looked down at the last letter Emma had written Doran, which he had removed from the box of letters as he stood in the church, looking out at the graveyard. Emma had barely put it in the compartment of the headstone, yet it was there in his hand, aged as much as the rest of her letters. He finished reading it for the hundredth time, the same as he had read every other letter in the box over the years. Then he replaced it in the box and closed the lid. It was time to meet his soul mate, he told himself.

  Emma was so preoccupied in her emotions, that she hadn’t heard him approach. It wasn’t until she heard his voice that she turned in shock and looked at him.

  “I’ve been waiting seven years for this moment,” he said in almost a whisper.


  She was looking up at him, questions in her eyes. The sun was behind his back and Emma could not see his features, even though she knew what he looked like. She placed her hand over her eyes to shade them. “Doran?” It was the second time she had uttered the Name since she had arrived.

  “Yes,” he murmured. “I am Doran Frederic Foster. I think you know me already, though.”

  “Where did you come from? There was no one here when I arrived. Am I just dreaming? Do I want you to be real so badly that I just think you are here?”

  “I’m real enough,” he smiled. “I was inside the church, waiting for you to come. I knew you would come on the day my great, great, grandfather died so you could put your last letter in the headstone.”

  “You knew about the letters?” she asked in astonishment.

  “I have read every one over and over for the last seven years. It is as though you were writing them all to me. Well, actually, you were writing them to me… in the past. Although I can’t remember any of that life except for a few brief glimpses that vanish as fast as they appear, I am certain I used to be Doran Frank Forster back then and that you were Emma, my wife.”

  Doran held the box out to her, and opened the lid. “Your letters have been passed down through my family. We all knew about you. Only my Grandfather cautioned me not to contact you until you had written the last letter.”

  “That’s how you knew what I had written to your great, great, grandfather back then. You had the letters!”

  “I didn’t know what he had written you, though, but I could guess some of it by your responses.”

  “I have kept all of his letters too. I’ll let you read them sometime if you want.”

  “I would like that very much. I just feel so clumsy about all of this,” he mumbled as he held out his hand to help Emma to her feet. “There were so many things I wanted to tell you over the years, but now they all seem to have flown from my head!”

  “You were the one who called me before the senior prom,” Emma exclaimed, starting to put it all together.

  “Yeah, you caught me. I had the letters a few years before you ever found the first letter Doran wrote. I couldn’t wait, like my grandfather told me to. I know I was screwing things up, but I had read the letters and had already fallen in love with you, so I just had to meet you.”

  “And you danced with me at the prom, telling me I was going to end up marrying you, instead of David.”

  “Yeah, I have a confession to make, though. I was the one who told David you had a secret lover behind his back. I had to do something to get you to wait for me before you married someone else. Sorry for causing you to feel hurt about him dumping you.”

  Emma started laughing. “This is crazy, but it all makes sense now. The globe, the blue flowers, the poem…”

  “Yeah, it is crazy, but I think it was meant to be, don’t you?”

  “I told my parents that I had already met my soul mate, but I was just waiting for him to show up,” she admitted.

  “Well, I’m here now. Do you still believe I am your soul mate?”

  “I guess I am hoping you are. After all, why would I be able to contact you through time and space if you were not the one?”

  “So does this mean you will…uh…I don’t know…agree to marry me? I don’t mean right away, we still have to get to know each other, but if we are soul mates… it stands to reason…”

  “Yeah, I guess it does stand to reason,” Emma breathed, as she stepped closer.

  “I plan to rebuild the plantation. What do you think about that?”

  “Doran was so worried about it burning down and couldn’t understand why no one rebuilt it.”

  “We planned to. We just couldn’t scrape up enough money to do it over the years. I barely have enough to do it now, but my grandfather had dreamed of doing it, so I decided it should not be put off any longer.”

  “What happened to all the stuff Doran hid under the church?” Emma asked. “According to him he hid all his wealth there and food to use because I warned him about raiders coming to take everything of value.”

  “My grandfather said that his great grandmother claimed he had told her he was going to hide it, but he never got around to telling her where he put it. There was a list of the things he hid away in a false bottom of the box you are holding. You say it was put under the church? How?”

  “He said there was a hidden door that led down to a room beneath the building where they used to hide slaves who were to be passed onto the Under Ground Railroad. Didn’t anyone find it?”

  “Not that I know of, no one has been in that church since the family moved to town. I think the family lived in that church, looking for their hidden property, and then finally gave up and bought a little place in town and tried to build up their wealth again. The servants remained with them, helping them out until they could get on their feet after the war was over. Eventually, the roof on the church caved in. I just had finished having it cleaned up a few days ago.”

  “I can see you have done a lot of work around here,” Emma said, looking around. “Only I can’t believe they lived in that church for several years and never noticed the trapdoor to the underground room!”

  “This is outrageous. You mean to say it has been here all along. We were beginning to think that my great, great, grandfather had given it to the Union soldiers, the way he told the Confederate Soldiers he had. Anyway, that’s what his mother claimed he had told them before they burned the house down.”

  “You want to go check?” Emma asked. She was starting to feel more comfortable around him. She couldn’t get over the fact that he looked so much like the picture Doran had sent her of him and his wife.

  Doran smiled. He still had a hold of her hand, and he grasped it tighter. “Why not...? I won’t complain about two dreams coming true on the same day.” he chuckled.

  Emma followed him across the grounds to the church. The feel of her hand in his large, strong one, was already sending shockwaves through her body, and she kept glancing up at him as they walked together.

  “I could tell you were here somewhere, watching me,” she told him as they walked. Only I never saw you. You had scattered the blue flowers and marked that poem book. Where were you?”

  “Heck, I have been watching you ever since my grandfather told me about you. I have to admit I was stalking you because I wanted to learn all I could about you before we finally met. I drove my motor-bike in the backway and hid in the barn,” he admitted.

  “I feel at a disadvantage here. You have been watching me all these years, but I never got more than a brief glimpse of you, just that one dance and the chance meeting in the park. You must have been at my nineteenth birthday party, though. I still have the globe.”

  “I’m glad. I understand that globe was what caused my great, great, grandfather to get shot. The soldiers were going to take it, and he tried to stop them. It meant a lot to him. I took a big risk giving it to you, since it was the only valuable item the family had from back then.”

  “I know. I had it appraised. It is worth more than my car! Did you know there was a little door in the bottom where Doran put a little card he signed?”

  “No, I don’t think anyone ever checked. It was always kept in the box I wrapped it in. Everyone who read those letters in the family knew you were going to end up with it, and didn’t want anything to happen to it.”

  They had reached the door, which was still standing open and the two stepped inside. “So where is this trapdoor supposed to be?”

  “I don’t know. He just mentioned it to me in one of his letters and claimed he would tell his mother about it when the time came.”

  “I guess he never got a chance to do that,” Doran mumbled as he stood in the middle of the room and looked around.

  “Look,” Emma said. Is that a blood stain on the floor next to that pew? The moment I touched the pew I got the feeling Doran had been sitting here.”

  “He must have been here after he got s
hot. They said he didn’t’ die right away,” Doran mentioned. He knelt down and took a closer look. “It’s hard to tell. It would have been hard to clean blood off these flagstone tiles, though.”

  “There has to be a loose tile somewhere in this room,” Emma insisted. “He said he discovered it because the tile was loose.”

  “Only so many years have passed by, it could have gotten encrusted with dirt by now,” Doran grumbled, as he started studying each tile as he walked across the floor. “That tile looks bigger than the rest, though. We should check it out.”

  Doran walked over to the tile, and crouched down, taking his pocket knife out of his jeans pocket, and starting to scrape the dirt out of the cracks around the tile.

  “There is a small opening big enough to reach a finger in,” he mumbled, as he scrapped more dirt out of the hole. Then he put his finger in, to investigate, and felt the latch. “I think I found it!” he exclaimed and in the next moment the stone was moving and sliding back, exposing the staircase that led down under the floor. “Awesome!” he cried. “Only we need a flashlight.”

  “I have one in my car,” Emma offered. “I’ll go get it!”

  Emma turned and ran to where her car was parked. Her heart was beating out of her chest, not because they had found the hidden room, but because she was starting to realize all of this was real. She had finally met her soul mate and he was about to discover whether Doran’s riches were still hidden under the church.”

  When Emma came into the church, handing Doran the flashlight, he grabbed her shoulders. “Before we go down there, I need to ask you something.”

  “Sure, Emma said, looking into his striking green eyes.”

  “Even if none of the stuff he hid is still down there, would you be willing to help me rebuild this place? It will take time and all the money I have, but we both know how my great, great, grandfather felt about the plantation. However, it might take a lifetime to do it, and if that is the case…” He merely looked down into her eyes.