“You see this toothpick?” said Scrooge, returning quickly to the charge, for the reason just assigned; and wishing, though it were only for a second, to divert the vision’s stony gaze from himself.
“I do,” replied the Ghost.
“You are not looking at it,” said Scrooge.
“But I see it,” said the Ghost, “notwithstanding.”
“Well!” returned Scrooge, “I have but to swallow this, and be for the rest of my days persecuted by a legion of goblins, all of my own creation. Humbug, I tell you! humbug!”
At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain with such a dismal and appalling noise, that Scrooge held on tight to his chair, to save himself from falling in a swoon. He dropped his dagger with the fear of the ghostly apparition ahead of him, before he was able to strengthen his resolve and issue one final challenge to the ghostly figure.
“You could be a simple illusion, one based upon the science of light and glass. Nothing you have told me was of secret to anybody else. Why, you could be one of my competitors trying to steal custom and trade from my very person, perhaps by using some foul poison or drug,” he said with a look of triumphalism to his face.
The Spirit appeared more agitated, crying out in anger and bitterness towards Scrooge but this was not enough, Scrooge was now convinced, deep in his mind that the Spirit was a way of driving him mad or to do something to compromise himself and his business.
“I do not have much time, you should not waste it with your arguments,” he said with effort.
“If you are truly Marley, then tell me something that only you and I do know and not some simple business transaction. Tell me, what happened on the night of your death?” asked Scrooge with a look of mischief in his eye.
“Scrooge, you know too well what happened on that night. I am here for the very reason that you too will soon join me on that path!” it cried.
“Humbug! You tell me nothing new, sir, other than to try and stop my commerce,” he answered with the sound of accomplishment to his voice.
Scrooge looked around the room, presumably looking for a third party or something that helped to control the creature yet saw nothing that could create the fearsome apparition in his very home. He thought for a brief moment of those people that could have gained access to his house and might bear him ill will. “But why would they want to punish me?” he asked himself.
Scrooge turned his gaze back to the Spirit, looking for answers but before he could speak the Spirit opened is jaw and spoke quickly, as though the very time it had remaining were just a few brief seconds.
“Seven years ago you and I, two men with a history of financial prudence and success, were at the centre of the greatest calamity this city has ever seen. Even our short time in the Yeomanry was nothing compared to the horrors we saw that night,” it said as it looked closely at Scrooge.
“Do you remember why we were at the Bank that day?” asked Marley.
“Why do you not tell me if you are so familiar with our history?” Scrooge smirked.
The Spirit looked angry at first and started to move towards Scrooge. It then paused and appeared to be considering the situation. In a far more terrifying turn, it simply grinned in a sinister fashion before continuing and this more than anything terrified Scrooge.
“Money, my dear Scrooge, money,” he said with a sad laugh.
“We were already near the Bank having completed our transaction a few moments before. As we left, we saw the first of the walking dead enter the street. Do you remember them Ebenezer?” he asked.
Scrooge nodded as he lowered his head though it was hard to tell if it was out of deference, fear or shame. In Scrooge’s case, it could have been all three!
“The Yeomanry cleared the road quite quickly and the survivors, for want of a better word, were chased and cut down as they tried to disappear into the dark alleys of London. This was nothing however compared to the march on the Bank.”
“Yes, the Bank, I remember it,” said Scrooge as the memories of the day appeared in his mind.
“Though we had seen the first part of the attacks in the city we chose to not help. Maybe we were right to do so. The militia did as fine a job as we could ever have done. It was not long afterwards that the sea of undead arrived. This time it wasn’t a few score, it was a myriad, thousands of them and even as the young, the feeble and the helpless were consumed by the walking dead we chose to rush back to the Bank to protect our funds from the looters and the dead,” said Marley as he stared intently as Scrooge.
The ghostly apparition adjusted his position pulled on one of the many boxes chained to him. One of them bore the marks of the Bank itself.
“Yes, of course. That is no secret though. We had deposited substantial funds earlier that day and there was a strong, no, a certainty that the calamity to fall upon London would result on a possible loss of our equity still held at the Bank,” said Scrooge.
“But of course that was not why I died and you lived that day, was it?”
“Go on, if you truly known what happened, tell me. How did you die Mr. Marley?” he cried out, half expecting another groan from the shade.
“My time is limited Ebenezer and I am here to give you a final chance to avoid my fate. I will say this only once so listen and listen well. The National Provincial Bank was already being ransacked by undesirables when we arrived. If you recall we forced our way inside using our sticks with great effectiveness. Once inside we found the workless and poor busy taking what we considered the fruits of our labours,” he said.
“Yes, that is true and what a ghastly sight it was too,” answered Scrooge.
“Ghastly? These poor wretches were simply trying to take something before the monstrous horde overwhelmed the whole of the city. Many of them had already lost family members as they tried to escape and just need a little money to buy food and clothing.”
“Overwhelmed? Humbug! If you remember, the Yeomanry arrived in short notice and after a bloody and rather decisive battle were able to halt their progress and stop the attack. This was merely an excuse for the wretched and lazy to steal from others the things they were unwilling to earn for themselves!”
“I do not have long old friend. It is simple. You and I were both inside the Bank when the looters rushed in. We fought them off with our sticks and were doing a damned good job until the creatures entered. They came inside and that is when we saw the box.”
“Yes the box, you remember it?” asked Scrooge.
“Of course, it is the box that was my final downfall,” said the Spirit.
“We fought them for a long time, even when the soldiers arrived we fought until we were able to reach one of the doors. The fight was still going on when I ran back to pick up the box.”
The creature turned its head to reveal a scar on its temple. “This is where I was struck,” he said.
Scrooge stepped closer though he was suspicious of the Spirit and its motives. He could see the injury it was pointing to and it certainly appeared to be in the same place that he was struck, though it was a good number of years ago now.
“You ran Ebenezer, and those things did their work. I was unconscious so I never saw what they did but these scars remind me about what happened,” he said accusingly.
“There was nothing I could do,” muttered Scrooge as he stepped backwards.
“The Bank was overrun and those undead beasts were biting and killing all around us. We should have left but you chose to go back for the box. I saw them strike you and they ran from the Bank. I don’t know to this day if the Army caught them or not,” he said before looking back at the Spirit.
“What of the box? If you know so much, tell me the whereabouts of that box?”
“Ah, indeed. The box is not important it is what is inside. The artefact holds a terrible secret and we, no, you were lucky that day. If the artefact should ever reach the basement of that Bank,” he said wolfishly.
“What? What will happen?” begged Scr
ooge.
The Spirit said nothing; it simply stared at Scrooge whilst the frightened man attempted to regain his composure.
“I could still be dreaming you wretched thing. I do not believe you, not one word! You are trying to scare me with parlour tricks and lies!” cried Scrooge, though the tone in his voice suggested otherwise.
But how much greater was his horror, when the phantom taking off the bandage round its head, as if it were too warm to wear indoors, its lower jaw dropped down upon its breast like the jaw from mighty monster of ancient myth.
For a moment Scrooge thought he might be standing in front of the walking dead once more, the hanging limbs, sagging jaw were all signs of the creatures he had already seen. This one however was with sinister purpose and terrifying in ways that the undead never were. Unlike the walking dead, this deathly thing seemed to be focusing all of its malevolent attention onto him.
Scrooge fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands before his face.
“Mercy!” he said. “Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?”
“Man of the worldly mind!” replied the Ghost, “do you believe in me or not?”
“I do,” said Scrooge. “I must. But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me? I know I am a successful businessman and that my very endeavours already help many through our well funded institutions. Why then are ghostly visions coming to see me in particular? I am to experience a particularly significant or valuable fate that demands warning?” he asked.
The Spirit looked surprised for a moment, perhaps thinking that Scrooge may understand more than he expected before realising that his words were simply repeating his own high opinions of himself and his business dealings.
“It is required of every man,” the Ghost returned, “that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellowmen, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world—oh, woe is me!—and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!”
“Your argument makes no sense, man. You suggest that as a punishment for not being frivolous with money, and not travelling enough, we must be punished in death with these anchors of metal? That is balderdash, sir! So if I travelled far and wide, as a sailor might, then I am doomed to an eternity of doing nothing? By your definition I already have the better of the options.”
Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain and wrung its shadowy hands.
“You are fettered,” said Scrooge, trembling. “Tell me why? Are you here for your sins or to complain about the hard work that I do and the good I bring this world through my successes?” he demanded.
“I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Look at it! Look at the fine work and effort that has gone into its creation. Is its pattern strange to you?”
Scrooge trembled more and more.
“Or would you know,” pursued the Ghost, “the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!”
Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in the expectation of finding himself surrounded by some fifty or sixty fathoms of iron cable: but he could see nothing. He looked back at the Spirit, examining the chain once more and noticing the many artefacts, chests, padlocks and coils that held it together. It reminded him of the description of the Gorgon’s with their twisted hair made of writhing, tangled snakes.
“I don’t understand. You died, not because of money. You were simply overpowered by those foul, unbreathing monsters and killed before my very eyes and yet say you are being punished for having been a good businessman. I cannot see what you have done wrong and yet you suggest my fate is the same or worse than your own,” said Scrooge in an almost impassioned plea.
“Jacob,” he said, imploringly. “Old Jacob Marley, tell me more. Speak comfort to me, Jacob!”
“I have none to give,” the Ghost replied. “It comes from other regions, Ebenezer Scrooge, and is conveyed by other ministers, to other kinds of men. Nor can I tell you what I would. A very little more is all permitted to me. I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere. My spirit never walked beyond our counting-house—mark me!—in life my spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole; and weary journeys lie before me!”
It was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he became thoughtful, to put his hands in his breeches pockets. Pondering on what the Ghost had said, he did so now, but without lifting up his eyes, or getting off his knees.
“You must have been very slow about it, Jacob,” Scrooge observed, in a business-like manner, though with humility and deference.
“Slow!” the Ghost repeated.
“Seven years dead,” mused Scrooge. “And travelling all the time!”
“The whole time,” said the Ghost. “No rest, no peace. Incessant torture of remorse.”
“You travel fast?” said Scrooge.
“On the wings of the wind,” replied the Ghost.
“You might have got over a great quantity of ground in seven years,” said Scrooge.
The Ghost, on hearing this, set up another cry, and clanked its chain so hideously in the dead silence of the night, that the Ward would have been justified in indicting it for a nuisance.
“Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed,” cried the phantom, “not to know, that ages of incessant labour by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!”
“But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,” faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.
“Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”
It held up its chain at arm’s length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again.
“At this time of the rolling year,” the spectre said, “I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode! Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me!”
Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the spectre going on at this rate, and began to quake exceedingly.
“Hear me!” cried the Ghost. “My time is nearly gone.”
“I will,” said Scrooge. “But don’t be hard upon me! Don’t be flowery, Jacob! Pray!”
“How it is that I appear before you in a shape that you can see, I may not tell. I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day.”
It was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered, and wiped the perspiration from his brow.
“That is no light part of my penance,” pursued the Ghost. “I am here to-night to warn you, that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer.”
“You were always a good friend to me,” said Scrooge. “Thank’ee!”
“You will be haunted,” resumed the Ghost, “by Three Spirits.”
Scrooge’s countenance fell almost as low as the Ghost’s had done.
“Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob?” he demanded, in a faltering voice.
“It is.”
“I—I think I’d rather not,” said Scrooge.
“Without their visits,” said the
Ghost, “you cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Your fate and that of the good people of this city rely upon what you do in the next day. It was my fate to turn from those around me for nothing more than personal gain. If I had held even the smallest spark of compassion then I would not be roaming this place. Listen to them Ebenezer, listen to them well for they will show you all you need to see. Expect the first to-morrow, when the bell tolls One.”
“Couldn’t I take ’em all at once, and have it over, Jacob?” hinted Scrooge.
“Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next night when the last stroke of Twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more; and look that, for your own sake, you remember what has passed between us!”
When it had said these words, the spectre took its wrapper from the table, and bound it round its head, as before. Scrooge knew this, by the smart sound its teeth made, when the jaws were brought together by the bandage. He ventured to raise his eyes again, and found his supernatural visitor confronting him in an erect attitude, with its chain wound over and about its arm.
The apparition walked backward from him; and at every step it took, the window raised itself a little, so that when the spectre reached it, it was wide open.
It beckoned Scrooge to approach, which he did. When they were within two paces of each other, Marley’s Ghost held up its hand, warning him to come no nearer. Scrooge stopped.
Not so much in obedience, as in surprise and fear: for on the raising of the hand, he became sensible of confused noises in the air; incoherent sounds of lamentation and regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory. The spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge; and floated out upon the bleak, dark night.
Scrooge followed to the window: desperate in his curiosity. He looked out.
The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley’s Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.
A Zombie Christmas Carol Page 3