Jacob's Spirit

By Fay Risner

Ellen Carter has been hearing banging noise around the barn for months. Her husband, Jack, insists it must be a loose board blowing in the wind, but he hasn't found the board yet to nail down. One evening, he joked that it might be a ghost doing some carpentry in the barn. That suggestion is enough to make Ellen apprehensive when she has to check the sheep at night during lambing time. She knows that Jack is teasing her, but in the middle of one May night, Ellen can't sleep for the banging noises. She got up and looked out a window at the barn. She sees a boy sitting on the ground. He's in pain with a broken leg. By the time Ellen runs outside and around the house, the boy has disappeared. Jack doesn't believe she saw a boy. He says she has been sleepwalking and dreaming. What Ellen thought she saw seemed so real. Was she dreaming or did she really see Jacob's Spirit?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Booksbyfay Publisher
• Release date: Jan 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393672548

Fay Risner

Fay Risner lives with her husband on a central Iowa acreage along with their chickens, rabbits, goats and cats. A retired Certified Nurse Aide, she now divides her time between writing books, livestock chores, working in her flower beds, the garden and going fishing with her husband. In the winter, she makes quilts. Fay writes books in various genre and languages. Historical mystery series like Stringbean westerns and Amazing Gracie Mysteries, Nurse Hal's Amish series set in southern Iowa and books for Caregivers about Alzheimer's. She uses 12 font print in her books and 14 font print in her novellas to make them reader friendly. Now her books are in Large Print. Her books have a mid western Iowa and small town flavor. She pulls the readers into her stories, making it hard for them to put a book down until the reader sees how the story ends. Readers say the characters are fun to get to know and often humorous enough to cause the readers to laugh out loud. The books leave readers wanting a sequel or a series so they can read about the characters again. Enjoy Fay Risner's books and please leave a review to make others familiar with her work.

Book preview

Jacob's Spirit

Novella

Fay Risner

Cover Art

Picture of Duane Risner Circa 1971

All Rights Reserved by

Author Fay Risner 2019

Copyright (C) 2019

All Rights Reserved

Author Fay Risner

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to the actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locals are entirely coincidental. Excerpts from this book cannot be used without written permission from the author.

Booksbyfay Publisher

Author, Editor, Publisher

Fay Risner

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Dedication

This book was written for my son, Duane Risner, because the story was one he shared with me the day an elderly visitor stopped by to reminisce with him. The cover picture taken of him when he was 10 years old is a double exposure taken back in the day forty odd years ago when cameras used film. I had forgotten to roll the film to the next number.

Jacob's Spirit fading away.

Dear Readers,

This story is part fiction and part nonfiction and here is why. Years ago, we lived on a farm that was homesteaded in the 1800's. In the 1970's, an elderly woman and her daughter stopped by one day to reminisce and look around at the elderly woman's childhood home.

Our son, Duane, gave her the tour, and she shared her memories. She pointed out where farm buildings used to be and groves of walnut and apple trees. As her memories flooded back, she pointed to the far side of the pasture toward a row of trees. She told Duane and her daughter about a young brother that was buried there. He fell off the steep barn roof and broke his leg. One end of the bone came out through the skin. In those days, country doctors were a scarcity. Since there wasn't one close by, the family tended the child and hoped for the best. He died of gangrene.

I'm not sure why he was buried on the property, but there might not have been a public cemetery close. Or, maybe the family intended to have their own family cemetery when the first death occurred. The first owners would never have dreamed that a hundred years later the farm would be sold several times to other people that weren't related.

We drive by other family country cemeteries like that in our area. The small burial places are now known as pioneer cemeteries.

The boy's marker had been a wooden one. After it rotted away and the property changed hands, the boy buried under the trees was forgotten. Today I doubt there is anyone left in this area that knows the story. Birth certificates were required or death certificates in the 1800's so nothing was documented about a young boy that died from gangrene.

Since the elderly woman wasn't sure of the grave's exact spot under one of a line of trees, I can't pinpoint where the body was buried. I don't even know the given name of the little boy so I made up the exact location and name.

As for the rest of the story, my husband and I had a large flock of sheep while we lived at that farm which was on a busy highway. One winter, I really did hear strange banging noises at night that seemed to come from the barn. I did grow nervous about going to check the sheep by myself since we discovered a tramp had slept in the hay loft and dropped his lighter.

So there is much of me in the character Ellen Carter except I didn't get a chance to meet Jacob's spirit as Ellen did. My husband, Harold, is the one who solved the mystery about the banging. You will discover the answer at the end of the story.

I do want to thank my son, Duane, for letting me use this childhood picture of him when he was around ten years old. Back in the day when we used film, I forgot to wind the camera to the next number before I took another picture of him. That made the picture double exposed. When I ran across the picture, it made me think of Jacob's spirit standing by the barn. I decided it would make a good book cover.

In 2003, I entered a short story version of Jacob's Spirit in the Arkansas Writer's Conference in the category Grif Stockley Mystery. I was awarded third place.

By writing this story in book form, here is my attempt to keep a little boy's memory alive that I call Jacob.

Enjoy,

Fay Risner

The Barn

In the barn, the ghost, the girl

When I came home from school

She sat upon the hayloft stairs

In a dress of layered tulle

Half-hidden from the shadows

Her body turned away

Her little gloves, pale and clenched

Over her little face

It was as if she took my hand

It was as if she knew

The earth held only part of her

And I should know it too

I’d seen the man out in the field

Immersed in dancing flames

A barn had once burned down out there

Long before we came

The land stretched wide beyond the house

Who knows what lay beneath

What other men were lying there

And would show themselves to me

It was as if he took my hand

It was as if he knew

The earth held only part of him

And I should know it too

It was as if they caught my ear

It was as if their breath

Would say, would sing

The dance of life continues after death

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Chapter 1

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January 21, 1977, a day in the life of Ellen Carter that she would always remember. That date helped her mark the beginning of her favorite story. A tale that she passed down through the years to her family.

Of course, she knew none of them believed what she told them had really happened. They were certain the story wasn't anything other than a tall tale spun out of her imagination.

Who knows? Perhaps, as the story was retold by family members from one generation to the next, there might have been an unintentional addition made here and there to the facts that helped to liven up the story. If Ellen's relatives did that, they were actually the ones that made her story the tall tale.

That particular Saturday evening in January was one of those bitterly cold winter nights preceded by an accumulation of fourteen inches of snow in the two days before.

After plowing the state highway for two days for the Department of Transportation, Ellen's husband, Jack, had spent all day Saturday cleaning paths around their house and the driveway so they could get out if they wanted to go somewhere. After supper, he stretched out in his recliner to watch television or fall asleep. Which ever came first.

Ellen cleaned up the kitchen before she came to the living room and sat down in her rocker. A cold draft on her back caused