by Aine Dyer
Saving Mr. Scrooge
How One Ghost Got Three Christmas Spirits to Change a Life
Aine Dyer
Contents
Obituary: The London Star | 1836
1. Death Becomes Him
2. The Fire
3. Dead Flowers
4. The Christmas Present
5. The Face of Death
6. God Bless Us, Everyone!
7. The Angel
8. The Dance
9. The Watch
10. The Third Ghost
11. The Light
12. Death Gets an Introduction
13. How to Be a Ghost
14. Ringing the Bell
15. Faith
16. The End of The Beginning
Epilogue
About Aine
Copyright
Obituary: The London Star | 1836
Died in this city on the evening of the 24th
December this year, Jacob Marley, age 74 years, 11 months, and 24 days in his lodgings. After an illness of but two days of congested fever. Mr. Marley was born in the neighborhood of the city on Christmas Day in 1762; for many years he has resided on Lime Street in London, was the proprietor and has been attached to the Scrooge and Marley Counting House in Kornhill as Financial Lender and Counter. He has left no kin.
His death has caused no void in the hearts of anyone.
* * *
Like sheep they are destined for Sheol.
Death will be their shepherd.
The upright will rule them in the morning, and their form will decay in Sheol,
far from their lofty abode.
* * *
— Psalm 49:14
Chapter 1
Death Becomes Him
December 24th, 1836
Death is a strange bedfellow. It just floats in, near, over, or around your bed until the ushering is over. But, it’s never next to you. And Jacob Marley knew that now. He could feel some unseen force around him while the change was happening except it didn’t really come, it was just there, never comforting. Jacob figured Death had been around all of his life; it was just waiting and watching until the end. During his dying time what Marley had expected was that someone, anyone, would come and sit with him. Strangely, he now longed for a human touch before he passed, but the only one who came was Ebenezer Scrooge, his business partner of forty years, who poked his head in once to see how the ledgers were progressing that Marley had brought home. But that was neither here nor there but over there, now. Back on the other side, the life side, as Marley thought of it. Marley lifted his eyelids a crack to see his ledgers strewn about his desk untidily as if he had been racing to finish something and next to that his armoire where all of his suits hung together admiring their sameness (no need for anything different as the black suit accomplishes the task he would say). But when his eyes shifted back to his feet, he saw a black, cloaked figure slouching at the end of his bed and that made him uncomfortable. To make himself feel better, he rationed that it was Death, and for some reason, it had decided to stay.
Marley lay in his bed barely conscious. He waited for the change and just as it was about to happen, he felt a burst of peaceful warmth come from above him causing his hand to reach out and he smiled, but then a loud
CRACK!
that sounded like a large metal door slamming terrifying him so much that just before he died his face contorted into a dreadful scream that was so permanent nothing could’ve erased it. When the change was complete, Marley woke up to a cloud of gray hovering in the air all around his room. Without thinking, he lifted his arm as if nothing had changed. When he did this he saw a spectral, ghostly limb rise up out of his physical body, but then when he tried to move his stomach and legs, he found that he could not. He had trouble lifting whatever it was attached to him now that wasn’t attached to him before. Finally, after a while, he pushed up out of his body and got off the bed and stood admiring himself in the mirror.
His hair was still pulled tight in his normal pigtail, and he was dressed in his usual black waistcoat, tights, and boots. Except now there was something extra: a thick, rusted metal chain wrapped tightly around his middle with ornaments of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and purses. He grabbed the chain and pulled desperately to try and loosen it but it didn’t move. He twisted and shook, jumped up and down, up and down, but nothing could loosen the chain and the metal ornaments that were attached to it.
He stood next to his dead self and stared with disdain at his terrified face. He noticed that the color had left his body almost immediately.
“Where is my peace?“ Marley asked as he tried to remember what had frightened him so much. His eyes…they were black and wide like whatever he had seen was so uncomfortable that screaming was his only escape. But whatever Marley had seen had departed and the pain of death left him like a faded, gut-wrenching memory from decades ago.
He jumped a little when he noticed the figure of Death still standing next to him trying to survey the look on his dead face. The figure pointed its boney finger slowly over to Marley’s face like it was asking “What happened?” as if Marley had known the answer.
Marley watched a young maid whisk into the room, traveling past his still warm body, and over to the fireplace confidently. After starting her fire, she turned and upon seeing Marley’s frightened expression, screamed and scurried from the room slamming the door.
“She always was an incompetent scaredy one.” Marley spoke out loud as if this was fact. Or he tried to anyways. If you had heard his voice, you wouldn’t have called it a voice at all. You would have said that it was like listening to the sound of sandpaper rubbing against a piece of cement.
It could have been minutes or hours, Marley didn’t know, when the door to his bedroom creaked slowly open and the frightened maid poked her head in pointing out Marley’s dead body to two men: one dressed in a dark suit and one dressed in a uniform. Marley knew them as the funeral director and the coroner and he watched as they surveyed his body.
“Good God, That’s the first time I ever saw a face as horror-struck as that,” the coroner said trying to look where Marley’s eyes now pointed.
The funeral director touched a cross around his neck and said, “Almost like he’d seen the Devil himself.”
Chapter 2
* * *
The Fire
December 25th, 1836
At the moment that Marley’s spirit left his body, he gained the realization that every ghost does: that spirits are really just a collection of memories that take the form of energy to become what Marley was now: a spectral apparition. The ability to think and talk were limited, of course, but, as Marley soon noticed, one could get by. The moment Death took him, he felt his spectral body being created by all of his earthly memories and he guessed that this was what they meant by your life passing before your eyes.
After he saw the men removing his body, the room disappeared and he and Death seemed to travel for a while. It wasn’t up or down, just traveling and moving and then Marley found himself sitting in a large chair in a tall, circular room with many levels of gray floating people above him yelling and screaming and pointing down in his direction. He sat in front of a large wooden stage and on one side of it was a surging wall of fire and on the other side was something that flickered every once in a while.
Up above the stage there was a man in a dark gray suit with neatly combed blonde hair and piercing green eyes. He stood staring at Marley and after a while, when he could see Marley was starting to feel uncomfortable, he pointed at Marley accusingly and spoke.
“Jacob Marley, do you see that fire?” the man yelled gesturing to the wall of red and orange flames. “Your black heart makes that fire stronger!” A hor
rific groan erupted from the floating mass above and the sound slammed into Marley’s chair so hard that he was knocked to the ground. He picked himself up and stood motionless. He would not be afraid. If this was his judge and jury, well then, he would take it standing up.
“What say you?” The man on the podium continued, his searing green eyes boring holes in Marley’s soul.
“ I… I,” Marley‘s voice hardly whispered. He had not been a man to feel fear in his life. Oh, there was a fear of running out of money, of course, but that would be a different fear than the one that Marley felt standing in front of this man and his hateful audience. Maybe only for the first time in his consciousness, a fear in his soul gripped him and made him want to back away.
A large flaming pit opened up in the floor of the stage in front of him. The spirits from above began throwing large piles of money into it and the smoke from the fire billowed up mixing with the grayness of the ghosts causing a thick fog. Marley’s first instinct was to yell “Why do you burn that money?” but he stopped himself because he feared what would happen if he objected. Instead, he cowered in front of his chair and trembled at the sight of burning money.
“This was your god!” The man railed a second time, “and now you must pay for your personal darkness!”
The man turned to address the crowd. “What should we do with him?”
“Throw him in the fire!” was the chant that began quietly at the top but now was so loud that it shook the foundation of where Marley stood. He tried to get away from the fire but his chains wouldn’t let him move.
“See the light?” the man said pointing to whatever it was flickering, “See how small it is? You never added anything to the light of the world. You never helped your fellow man!”
“What light would that be sir?” Marley asked honestly not knowing where this light was.
“He can’t even see the light!” the man yelled to the audience which was again loud with laughter. “You can’t see the light because you never understood it, Jacob Marley. The light is the light of God. It is what guides the good on the earth. And YOU missed it.” The man pointed towards the flicker and in a moment a tiny spectral light grew from the inside of it shining eerily in the fog.
“Wait!” Marley screamed but no one was listening.
The audience chanted, “FIRE! FIRE!” making it difficult for Marley to keep one thought in his mind. The man at the podium turned, looked up and brought the chanting crowd back down to their seats.
“The defendant would like to say something!” He roared and the gray angry crowd calmed slightly.
“What if!” Marley’s thoughts – what he had of them – moved so quickly through his mind that it was hard for him to latch on to even one. “What if!” he said struggling to yell in his whispered voice so even the spirit on the highest tier could hear him. “What if, I added to the light now?” He continued, afraid to stop, “Like I…,“ What can I do? I’m a ghost, no one can even see me. “What if I do something to change a life? Make it better for someone?”
“What could you possibly know about life?” The man at the podium demanded. Bits and pieces of some strange and unnatural laughter rained down over Marley from above.
“I still know!...I still know,“ he repeated quietly to himself as if he was not actually convinced.
“Here’s what you know about life!” The man on the podium shouted at Marley. Just then a peculiar looking creature appeared near him but not next to him. He turned away from it afraid but finally turned his eyes back to see. A ghost? She - he knew it was a she by her simple feminine face - came to him, touched his arm and a blade of light left her finger and Marley saw himself far away like he was watching a memory.
Inside a frame of light there was a much younger Marley looking quite condescendingly at a woman holding the hand of a child who was no more than eight. The woman, quite a beautiful one as Marley remembered now, had tear-stained cheeks and a fear wrinkled her face.
“But Jacob, I can’t pay you,” said the woman with a shaky voice.
“Well then, your home is now my home. It is in the contract that you signed,” Marley said in a dead voice even colder than the one he had now.
“But Jacob, as my husband’s good friend can’t you give me more time? With Alastair dying and all, I would think you could be more lenient.”
Marley stood staring at the memory angrily. No, he couldn’t be more lenient because it was time to pay and the time to pay was very important.
Marley watched as that picture faded and another came into view of a darkened graveyard where a funeral was happening. He saw himself approaching an older gentleman who had just attended the service.
“You are the next of kin?” Marley growled without a greeting.
“Yes,” the old man said blotting his eyes with his fingers as he had forgotten his handkerchief.
“I’ve come to collect on the mortgage,” Marley said.
“Is this really the place for this?” the man answered.
“It is custom at Scrooge and Marley not to wait,” Marley said.
The blade of light faded and the spirit next to Marley vanished.
“You spent over six hundred thousand hours of your petty life hurting others. Never helping them! Hurting them,” he screamed again like it was painful to say. “So what would you know about life? And my time is getting short, Jacob Marley, the fire awaits.”
Marley stood desperately trying to get a thought into his head. When fire shot up the crowd applauded loudly and Marley knew that if he ended up even near that fire, he would never get out. And that memory of Alastair, he had never really been a friend, only a business acquaintance, but what would his meek widow know about that. At Scrooge and Marley… his thought stuttered. Scrooge. Scrooge! He saw Scrooge’s angry face in his mind. Scrooge would surely face the same fate that Marley was facing now. Maybe…maybe he could find a way…
“Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge! I could save his life!“ Marley tried screaming to the crowd.
The sound of laughter roared so loudly this time making even Death quiver. The man on the podium turned around again to silence the onlookers and although the laughter did not cease, the jury (as Marley now thought of them) did sit down. The tiny light in the corner sparkled as Marley took notice of it for the first time.
“Save Mr. Scrooge?” The man yelled. “The fire that has waited for you longs for Mr. Scrooge desperately.”
“But the light…,” Marley stated and pointed at the light on the stage, “the light would surely be stronger from both of us.”
The man thought about this for what seemed like a long, long time to Marley.
“To change a human life over there. This is a most unique request, Mr. Marley. One I have never heard a convicted man ask before. You actually want to save another’s life…,” he paused for a moment. Then he looked up at the crowd and screamed, “Did you hear what this spirit said? To change a life on this Christmas Day!”
The jury gawked in stunned silence.
“Alright, Mr. Marley. You have convinced me. I will let you try and change the outcome of Mr. Scrooge’s life which I dare say will not be an easy task! And because I’m an optimistic sort of fellow, I will present you with something… a little help if you will,” he floated down from his podium and landed next to the barely glowing ball of light. He cupped the light with his hand and yanked a tiny sparkle from it, one that Marley had to almost squint to see. A spirit appeared and presented a tiny container to the man who carefully placed the small bit of light into the container and Marley watched as it morphed into a crystal right there in his hand. The man descended from the podium and offered it to Marley, who took it holding it tight. Marley sensed warmth – like that of a wood stove, calm with its last glowing ember. The crowd broke out into a happy fury of song congratulating each other while the man on the podium joined them.
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay,
For Jesus Christ our Savior,
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Was born on Christmas Day,
To save is all from Satan’s pow’r,
When we were gone stray,
O tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort and joy,
O tidings of comfort and joy!
“A Christmas crystal to help lead your travels and a Christmas Carol to bid you farewell. And here’s how the crystal works: the more selflessness you show, the brighter the crystal becomes. And the brighter it gets, there is possibility that you are able to escape your heated destiny in the place where you’re heading.” The man said. “But I must warn you. If this light goes out, you will feel the heat of the hellfire.”
“How long do I have?” asked Marley.
“It depends on how you make additions to your light, Mr. Marley. And based on your actions in life, I do not hesitate to say that I don’t see the light or you lasting very long.” The fire shot up as if it knew that Marley would be joining it soon. “A word of warning to you, sir: others will want this crystal, so guard it.“ The man said while gliding back up to his podium.
“Merry Christmas, Mr. Marley and best of luck to you on your quest.”
The man swirled his arm and the world disappeared and Marley, still hearing a faint glimmer of the words comfort and joy, was left standing in a cold cemetery face-to-face with a gravestone that had his name etched into it.
Chapter 3