Letters From The Grave Read online

  LETTERS FROM THE GRAVE

  Jeanie Johnson

  OTHER BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR

  Native American books

  Across The River

  Apache Pride

  Beyond The Heart

  Cherokee Courage

  Gentle Savage

  Gedi Puniku (Cat Eyes)

  Kiowa White Moon

  Kiowa Wind Walker

  Little Flower

  No Price Too High

  Paiute Passion

  Sagebrush Serenade

  Savage Land

  Shadow Hawk

  Shoshone Surrender

  Son of Silver Fox (sequel to Gentle Savage)

  White Hawk and the Star Maiden

  Within The Heart (Sequel to Beyond the Heart)

  Historical or Regency/Victorian Romance Books

  A Bride for Windridge Hall

  Defiant Heart

  Highroad

  Indentured

  The Deception

  Wild Irish Rose

  Winslow’s Web

  Contemporary Western Romance Books

  Georgie Girl

  Grasping at Straws

  Mattie

  Passion’s Pride

  Single-handed Heart

  Historical Western Romance Books

  Elusive Innocents

  20th Century Historical Romance Books

  Italy Vacation

  Moments of Misconception

  Radcliff Hall

  Samuel’s Mansion

  Taxi Dancer

  Action and Adventure Mystery Romance Books

  Ghost Island

  Holding On

  Payback

  Futuristic Action and Adventure Romance Books

  Chosen

  Pony Up

  Surviving

  The Division

  The Dominion

  The Mechanism

  Time travel/Reincarnation Romance Books

  Egyptian Key

  Seekers

  Seekers Two

  Seekers Three

  The Locked Room

  The Vortex-book One

  Non Fiction Books

  A Collection of short stories (some true)

  Chief Washakie (short history of Shoshoni Chief)

  Dream Symbols Made Easy (how to analyze dreams)

  Peaches (inspirational)

  The Prune Pickers (my childhood)

  Whimper (true story of racial conflicts)

  Children’s Picture Book

  Dandy The Horse

  This is a work of fiction. All characters in this book are out of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to anyone living or dead is unintentional.

  Story by

  Jeanie Johnson

  Copyright 20018

  All Rights reserved

  Prologue

  Missouri April 1, 1859

  Doran could hear Emma’s screams. His impulse was to go to her side, and hold her hand and assure her everything would be all right, but Doctor Reynolds would not allow it, so he was left to pace the hall, outside the door. Child birth was such a terrible human infliction of pain, it made him wondered that God allowed it, or created such agony in order to bring children into the world. The making of the child was such a pleasure, he mused, which the woman would have to suffer for, and that was the sting of it. This caused Doran to believe it to be almost a punishment for not only having such pleasure in sharing the love between husband and wife, but for wanting to raise a family by bringing children into the world. These thoughts plagued him as he trudged up and down the hall with heavy steps, trying to drown out Emma’s shrieks of distress. He had to restrain himself from stalking in and demanding to be at his wife’s side. After all, he was with her when the babe was conceived, there should be no reason why he could not be there during the birthing.

  Doran placed his hand on the cold, crystal door knob, determined to convince Reynolds of just that, prompted by a heart rendering howl escaping Emma’s throat. Only then, he heard the distinct cry of an infant, and was relieved that the pain of the ordeal was finally over for Emma. He did not know how finally over it was for his wife, until he wrenched open the door and saw her wilted body on the bed. The blood, darkly soaking the sheets in such huge amounts, he knew was not a good sign. He could not hold back the anxious gasp that jumped from his inner most being.

  Doran stumbled into the room, tripping over his own feet to reach Emma’s side and grabbed her limp hand. He did not want to admit to himself that she was not breathing. He kept searching her face for signs of life, but her glazed eyes stared lifelessly at the ceiling. He watched in a daze as the doctor’s hand smoothed over those eyes, causing them to shut.

  The midwife, Maggie Grey, who assisted Dr. Reynolds, was wrapping the child in a soft blanket, and washing the blood away from its face. He could not look at the child, which had taken his wife’s life with the very act of gaining its own life. He let out a howl of his own, filled with grief and disbelief, as he fell on the bed, over his wife’s body, his tears falling on her unresponsive face, his fingers tangled in her sweat-soaked hair.

  “Emma! You can’t be gone! We have barely had time to know one another. This is a cruel joke. Tell me this is not happening!” he sobbed agonizingly as his eyes lifted and beseeched the doctor’s eyes.

  “I am so sorry Doran,” Dr. Reynolds voice barely broke through the fog of his anguish. “She just wasn’t strong enough to bear a child. The blood could not be stopped, and the child was slow in coming. Her body could not stand the stress. You have a fine healthy son, though. At least be grateful for that!”

  Doran could not feel grateful, not when God allowed a ‘fine healthy son’ to snuff out the life of his only true love, a woman he was looking forward to spending the rest of his life with. He stared down at the beautiful, blond-haired, blue-eyed angel, which now God found fit to recall, so the pleasure of spending his days with her, until the day that he died, would never be realized. A lifeless body as beautiful in death as in life was all that was left, huddled in their matrimonial bed. He gazed upon her face through a blur of tears. She looked so peaceful, that he barely recognized her, the skin falling limp, almost sucked against the bones of her face, giving her an unearthly appearance.

  They had only been married for a short ten months, and now it was ended so abruptly. For a moment, he thought he saw a tear escape her eye, and he drew in his breath, thinking that perhaps she was not dead after all, but then realized it was his own tears, falling on her face and rolling down her cheek. Doctor Reynolds was pulling him away with firm hands, and placed the sheet over Emma’s face.

  The moment he had met Emma, he knew that she was his soul mate, someone to spend eternity with, even after death, but this short lived sharing of each other on the earth, was something he had not counted on. The time was so short he had not even begun to know her, and now she was taken from him. Life was a cruel master, and he felt like ending his own life, as a bitter anger filled his breast, except that he knew his son would need him more than ever, now that he had no mother to raise him. He could not abandon his son, even if that child was the cause for losing his only true love, and would forever remind him of her. It was such a bitter-sweet reality to have a new son, but no mother to care for it.

  The next several days were the worst Doran had ever spent in his life. He not only had to bare the grief of the loss of his wife, but he also had to find a wet nurse for his child, and make arrangements to bury Emma. After that, he had to live with the future pain of never being able to look into those mystic blue eyes again. He felt as though he was living in a state of bewilderment. He could not focus on what was going on about him, beyond the deep agonizing throb in the pit of his stoma
ch. It constricted his very heart beats, and the ache in his throat from holding back tears when in the company of others, made it hard to breath. At night he let the tears flow, and he felt completely dried out from crying endless tears at the loss of Emma. How could he go on, never being able to speak to Emma again, or hear her cheerful laugh? The thought was too bleak.

  Because of his desperate need to escape the reality of her loss and to converse with her, he had a cubbyhole fashioned in the tombstone, with a brass door which had a little key to it. There, he was determined to put letters written to his wife, so the illusion that she was still alive could be savored. He would pretend that she was merely on a long trip, where he could send her letters and express his deepest feelings to her. Letting her know how their son was growing and learning, or what he worried about, as he ran the plantation. Just talking to empty space at her grave side was not enough to console him, because he needed to form his words and contemplate exactly what he wanted to tell her. It would have to somehow fill the gap until he could get over the loss. But he felt he would never get over the loss as long as he drew breath.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Missouri 1979

  “Emma, this is so silly, it is your birthday. Why would you want to spend it in a grave yard all by yourself?” Cassandra frowned at her best friend, her dark eyes a little worried. “We could go out and party, and have such a fun time.”

  “First of all, I don’t feel like partying. I can’t feel anything since David jilted me. I will probably never love again, let alone feel again.”

  “Let’s not talk about David. He was such a jerk to leave you only a week before the wedding. He’s not worth thinking about. If you don’t want to party, then why don’t you just come spend the time with me?”

  “I want to be alone and think. I like doing my etchings, it calms my mind. I think of all those people who died maybe a hundred years ago or more, and wonder how they lived their lives or what kind of love lives they may have had or not had. I feel really bad about the children’s tomb stones, but I can use the etchings in my artwork. I think it is going to catch on, combining the old gravestone etchings with my artistic attempts at drawing what I believe the faces of those dead people may have looked like. Sometimes, I can actually look up their history and find old photographs of them, which really excites me because it gives me something to go on. The new gravestones are so stark and cold, but the old ones have flowers, or angels and designs and fancy lettering and little sayings about the person buried there, it just catches my attention. It is not as morbid as you think. I guess I take after my father, who is into old genealogy and things like that.”

  “Yes, I have seen your etchings, and I particularly like the art piece you did where you drew that face of a beautiful woman, and then did an etching of her tombstone in the foreground. It does make you stop and think about those long dead people and what their lives must have been like.”

  “So I am just going to pack up my etching material, and go spend the day at this new grave yard I found. Actually, it is a very old grave yard, but new to me, and I don’t think anyone even tends it anymore. I got lost not long ago, and ended up taking this long road, it seemed to nowhere, and low and behold, I ended up at this abandoned grave yard where the tomb stones are so old, that some of them are falling down. Also I hear some of them have been stolen to use for porch stones to people’s houses. Who would steal a head stone and then walk on it like that? That would be enough to make someone rollover in their grave,” she laughed.

  “Dumb people who don’t respect the dead, I guess!”

  “So I am real excited about going there. It is in the old part of the county, where there used to be plantations, that got burned down during the Civil War, so I bet the place has a lot of history behind it.”

  “Well, suit yourself.” Cassandra scrunched up her nose. “I think you are addled, but I know there is no stopping you when you have your mind set on something.”

  “You’re the greatest friend, Cassandra. You understand me so well… I only wish David had understood me like you do. I can’t believe that he accused me of having an affair with someone. He claims the person I had it with told him about it. I just wish I knew who my secret lover actually was! I asked him what my lover’s name was, but he said he couldn’t remember. I’ll bet it was just an excuse to back out at the last moment!”

  “Well, just because I am more understanding than David, don’t go expecting me to marry you in his place,” Cassandra giggled, giving Emma a face.

  “Not, hardly,” Emma laughed. “Though you do make an excellent friend, I prefer men, thank you.

  “If you discover who your secret lover was, let me know!”

  “David said he didn’t even know the guy, but he says the guy certainly seemed to know me. He actually knew things about me that I don’t remember even telling David about!”

  “Maybe you’re right. He just made it up because he was getting cold feet and needed a reason to bail.”

  “Then how did he hear about those things he says the guy told him? How could I have a lover I don’t even know about?”

  “Are you sure there are not any old flames in your life, you’ve forgotten about?”

  “No, David was my first and only boyfriend, unless you count that strange person who danced with me at my senior prom. It was so weird, he just showed up out of nowhere, and I got the strange feeling that I knew him from somewhere, but I never learned his name. He actually had the gall to tell me he was going to marry me someday. Only he just disappeared after he danced with me. David was sort of jealous, but he had been over talking to his football buddies at the time, so he couldn’t complain. Then I saw him again when I was jogging, and he stopped and talked to me for a while, but that was it. I hope he isn’t a stalker and tried to break me and David up. However, I never saw him again after that so if he was stalking me, I certainly didn’t know about it.”

  “That’s pretty strange. I would be careful if I were you. If you see the guy again, you should confront him and tell him to stop bothering you or you will call the police or something.” Casandra shrugged. “Oh well, go have your fun, if that is what you call it. It will always seem a little morbid to me though, and just forget about David, the Jerk!”

  “I’ll see you tonight, and then maybe we can go out to eat or something and discuss my mysterious lover that I’ve never met. That is, unless you have a hot date tonight.”

  “No hot date for me, don’t I wish, though, so call me when you get back.”

  “Okay.”

  Emma gathered up her art supplies, and headed for her 1969 Fiat 850 spider that was her pride and joy. It had been given to her by her dad who had bought it brand new off the show room floor, when she was 10 years old, and then he gave it to her when she graduated from high school 8 years later. The car was “Martian red” and a convertible, which caused her long blond hair to fly behind when she was driving, as she sped down the road.

  She started the engine and shifted the gears, then steered down the long drive of her small house, where she had been living for the last two years since she left school. College was not an option, simply because she didn’t have the money or the desire to go. Anyway, she was going to work on her art and see if she could have a showing, eventually. But until then, she was stuck being a waitress for the only Mexican restaurant in the small town she lived in, called La Casa. She turned off onto the main highway and followed it several miles until she came to a rural turn off that wandered several more miles east and ended up at the grave yard.

  The road curved up a slight hill past rotted pasture fencing. Next, there was the foundation of what was probably once a huge mansion, with a couple of stone porch pillars still standing, reaching sadly to the sky with nothing to support. Un-kept flower gardens were a wild tangle of roses, vines, and new spring daffodils, crocuses, and tulips, which grew at random, wherever they managed to pop up. There were tumbled down barns, and in the distance she noticed an old orchard with
withered twisted trees, some living and others dead.

  When she arrived at the grave yard, she sat in her car and surveyed the old rambling cemetery. Not far away, was a stone church. No telling when it had been built, but she was sure it was very old. The rocks, which created the structure, still looked sturdy, even though some of the plaster was falling out from between them. However, the roof had caved in, probably rotting from a hundred years of rain and snow storms. Even though many of the trees were old and rotted, there were still others, like the big oak by the church that still flourished and remained. It stood towering, as it spread its branches over the roofless remains of the church, like it wanted to protect the sight from unknown intruders.

  Nothing around the church or grave yard had been tended, Emma figured, probably ever since the house burnt down, and no telling when that had happened. It could have been during the Civil War, for all she knew, considering this place used to be one of the old plantations of its day. Her gaze fell on more rose bushes rambling about old tombstones, along with daffodils, and other flowers scattered about, which popped their heads up wherever they chose. The grass was long and starting to shoot up the first seed pods of the season, while ivy clung to trees, or gravestones, sometimes covering them completely.

  It was early spring, her birthday being April first. She always laughed about being born on April fool’s day, and thinking of it, she was smiling when she stepped out of the car to investigate the tombstones. Some were so old that they were crumbling and part of the writing had been worn away by the weather. She saw a dogwood tree in bloom, with ivy entwining its leafy green fingers around it, while it also reached out to the tombstone that stood next to it. The dogwood must have been small when it was first planted, but now it sprawled into a huge bushy tree, since it had not been pruned for no telling how long. The sucker shoots created their own small trees about it.