The Ghost was greatly pleased to find him in this mood, and looked upon him with such favour, that he begged like a boy to be allowed to stay until the guests departed. But this the Spirit said could not be done.
“Here is a new game,” said Scrooge. “One half hour, Spirit, only one!”
It was a Game called Yes and No, where Scrooge’s nephew had to think of something, and the rest must find out what; he only answering to their questions yes or no, as the case was. The brisk fire of questioning to which he was exposed, elicited from him that he was thinking of an animal, a live animal, rather a disagreeable animal, a savage animal, an animal that growled and grunted sometimes, and talked sometimes, and lived in London, and walked about the streets, and wasn’t made a show of, and wasn’t led by anybody, and didn’t live in a menagerie, and was never killed in a market, and was not a horse, or an ass, or a cow, or a bull, or a tiger, or a dog, or a pig, or a cat, or a bear. At every fresh question that was put to him, this nephew burst into a fresh roar of laughter; and was so inexpressibly tickled, that he was obliged to get up off the sofa and stamp. At last the plump sister, falling into a similar state, cried out:
“I have found it out! I know what it is, Fred! I know what it is!”
“What is it?” cried Fred.
“It’s your Uncle Scro-o-o-o-oge!”
Which it certainly was. Admiration was the universal sentiment, though some objected that the reply to “Is it a bear?” ought to have been “Yes;” inasmuch as an answer in the negative was sufficient to have diverted their thoughts from Mr. Scrooge, supposing they had ever had any tendency that way.
“He has given us plenty of merriment, I am sure,” said Fred, “and it would be ungrateful not to drink his health. Here is a glass of mulled wine ready to our hand at the moment; and I say, ‘Uncle Scrooge!’ ”
“Well! Uncle Scrooge!” they cried.
“A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to the old man, whatever he is!” said Scrooge’s nephew. “He wouldn’t take it from me, but may he have it, nevertheless. Uncle Scrooge!”
Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly become so gay and light of heart, that he would have pledged the unconscious company in return, and thanked them in an inaudible speech, if the Ghost had given him time. But the whole scene passed off in the breath of the last word spoken by his nephew; and he and the Spirit were again upon their travels.
Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes they visited, but always with a happy end. The Spirit stood beside sick beds, and they were cheerful; on foreign lands, and they were close at home; by struggling men, and they were patient in their greater hope; by poverty, and it was rich. In almshouse, hospital, and jail, in misery’s every refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority had not made fast the door, and barred the Spirit out, he left his blessing, and taught Scrooge his precepts.
It was a long night, if it were only a night; but Scrooge had his doubts of this, because the Christmas Holidays appeared to be condensed into the space of time they passed together. It was strange, too, that while Scrooge remained unaltered in his outward form, the Ghost grew older, clearly older. Scrooge had observed this change, but never spoke of it, until they left a children’s Twelfth Night party, when, looking at the Spirit as they stood together in an open place, he noticed that its hair was grey.
“Are spirits’ lives so short?” asked Scrooge.
“My life upon this globe, is very brief,” replied the Ghost. “It ends to-night.”
“To-night!” cried Scrooge.
“To-night at midnight. Hark! The time is drawing near.”
The chimes were ringing the three quarters past eleven at that moment.
“Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask,” said Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit’s robe, “but I see something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw?”
“It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it,” was the Spirit’s sorrowful reply. “Look here.”
From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.
“Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!” exclaimed the Ghost.
They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.
Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.
“Spirit!are they yours?” Scrooge could say no more.
“They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!” cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. “Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And bide the end!”
“Have they no refuge or resource?” cried Scrooge.
“Are there no prisons?” said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. “Are there no workhouses?”
The bell struck twelve.
Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not. As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the prediction of old Jacob Marley, and lifting up his eyes, beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming, like a mist along the ground, towards him.
STAVE FOUR.
THE LAST OF THE SPIRITS.
Scrooge stood in the darkness, his mind going over the events shown to him by the two Sprits. He felt his mind swimming with images of death, pain and violence. He had seen the attacks of the undead in excruciating detail as well as the fates that awaited those in and around his own home. The horrors in his mind shook him to his core, and with a mighty effort, he forced his eyes open to reveal an ever more terrifying apparition, the dark Spirit.
The Phantom slowly, gravely, silently, approached. When it came near him, Scrooge bent down upon his knee; for in the very air through which this Spirit moved it seemed to scatter gloom and mystery.
It was shrouded in a deep black garment, which concealed its head, its face, its form, and left nothing of it visible save one outstretched hand. But for this it would have been difficult to detach its figure from the night, and separate it from the darkness by which it was surrounded. If he had not already experienced the many forms of terror that the night could bring, he could easily have assumed it was one of the undead itself. There were subtle differences though. The most significant being that this creature stood as a dark and terrible vision with no intention to strike him, just to instil dread and knowledge. In its own way, it was more fearsome than an army of the dead.
He felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside him, and that its mysterious presence filled him with a solemn dread. He knew no more, for the Spirit neither spoke nor moved. It made no attempt to strike or hurt him, but that didn’t remove Scrooge’s fears.
“I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come?” said Scrooge.
The Spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its hand.
“You are about to show me shadows of the things that have not happened, but will happen in the time before us. These will be things that could happen but things I can change if I so wish?” Scrooge pursued. “Is that so, Spirit?”
The upper portion of the garment was contracte
d for an instant in its folds, as if the Spirit had inclined its head. That was the only answer he received.
Although well used to ghostly company by this time, Scrooge feared the silent shape so much that his legs trembled beneath him, and he found that he could hardly stand when he prepared to follow it. The Spirit paused a moment, as observing his condition, and giving him time to recover.
But Scrooge was all the worse for this. It thrilled him with a vague uncertain horror, to know that behind the dusky shroud, there were ghostly eyes intently fixed upon him, while he, though he stretched his own to the utmost, could see nothing but a spectral hand and one great heap of black.
“Ghost of the Future!” he exclaimed, “I fear you more than any spectre I have seen. But as I know your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another man from what I was, I am prepared to bear you company, and do it with a thankful heart. Will you not speak to me?”
It gave him no reply. The hand was pointed straight before them.
“Lead on!” said Scrooge. “Lead on! The night is waning fast, and it is precious time to me, I know. Lead on, Spirit!”
The Phantom moved away as it had come towards him. Scrooge followed in the shadow of its dress, which bore him up, he thought, and carried him along.
They scarcely seemed to enter the city; for the city rather seemed to spring up about them, and encompass them of its own act.
There was something sinister and somewhat terrible about the place though. London was never the greatest jewel in terms of beauty but today it was a changed place. As he swept past the places he knew well he noticed the differences. Some of the houses were gone, entire streets in places razed to the ground as though a great storm had blown them down. Carts moved slowly through the winding alleys, some carried goods but most carried corpses, presumably off to burial. A sullen, bitter mood filtered through the alleys and roads from a miserable and much depleted population.
As they slowed, Scrooge noticed a scream and a group of young men ran in the direction of the noise.
“She’s been bitten, quickly, do it!” cried one of them.
A woodsman rushed forward, lifting his light axe he brought it down without hesitation. As the despoiled corpse dropped down the men simply dragged it to one side and heaped it onto one of waiting carts. Scrooge tried to stop to see what was happening, but the Spirit whisked him forwards and past the incident.
A short distance further on and they approached the better, more civilised parts of the city. There were still sections burnt or pulled down but unlike in the slums they were being rebuilt. Small groups of militia rode past, ever on the lookout for the terrible evil that seemed to linger on every street corner. They slowed to a halt as they reached the damaged but still functioning Stock Exchange.
There they were, in the heart of it; on ’Change, amongst the merchants; who hurried up and down, and chinked the money in their pockets, and conversed in groups, and looked at their watches, and trifled thoughtfully with their great gold seals; and so forth, as Scrooge had seen them often.
At first glance, everything looked the way he was accustomed but a second glance revealed some substantial and concerning changes. First, each man was armed. Some carried swords, others pistols and perhaps the more paranoid a mixture of the two. The men were also being watched by a scarred man, possibly an ex sailor or soldier who watched the street with a wary eye. Tucked in his belt were a number of pistols and on his belt a long, curved blade though it was nothing other than a cheap and rusty weapon, probably lost or abandoned many years before. Rust or not the weapon had the potential to cut deeply.
The Spirit stopped beside one little knot of business men. Observing that the hand was pointed to them, Scrooge advanced to listen to their talk.
“No,” said a great fat man with a monstrous chin, “I don’t know much about it, either way. I only know he’s dead.”
“When did he die?” inquired another.
“Last night, I believe, some of the creatures managed to break into several of the establishments in his area. Perhaps they were to blame.”
“Why, what was the matter with him?” asked a third, taking a vast quantity of snuff out of a very large snuff-box. “He escaped the first outbreak and he hardly stayed to fight like my children did. Shame they did not copy him as they might have lived. When he came back he carried on as normal, I thought he’d never die.”
“God knows, maybe one of them broke into his house,” said the first, with a yawn.
“Broke into his house, well, they are certainly the only ones that would bother, it is not as though he had possessions of any note or interest. I heard that after the undead were forced out his was the only house not stripped clean by the urchins,” said another as he leaned in with a grin.
“You see, his place was already stripped clean, by him!” he laughed.
The rest of the little group erupted into laughter, the only silent man in the group being the rough looking guard, still leaning against the wall and watching the street.
“What has he done with his money?” asked a red-faced gentleman with a pendulous excrescence on the end of his nose, that shook like the gills of a turkey-cock.
“I haven’t heard,” said the man with the large chin, yawning again. “Left it to his company, perhaps. He hasn’t left it to me. That’s all I know.”
This pleasantry was received with general laughter.
“It is likely to be a very cheap funeral,” said the same speaker; “for upon my life I don’t know of anybody to go to it. He had few friends before the attack and they must have all died during it. It is hardly likely he would have bothered to do anything to help them. Suppose we make up a party and volunteer?”
“I have not eaten well in a few days so don’t mind going if food is provided,” observed the gentleman with the excrescence on his nose. “But I must be fed, if I make one.”
Another laugh.
“Well, I am the most disinterested among you, after all,” said the first speaker, “for I never wear black gloves, and I never eat lunch. But I’ll offer to go, if anybody else will. When I come to think of it, I’m not at all sure that I wasn’t his most particular friend; for we used to stop and speak whenever we met. Since the scouring of the city we have had even less contact, though I hasten to add it is hardly a relationship I miss. Bye, bye!”
Speakers and listeners strolled away, and mixed with other groups. Scrooge knew the men, and looked towards the Spirit for an explanation.
The Phantom glided on into a street. Its finger pointed to two persons meeting. Scrooge listened again, thinking that the explanation might lie here.
He knew these men, also, perfectly. They were men of business: very wealthy, and of great importance. Like the small group of merchants and Bankers these two men were well protected. In fact, it seemed excessive, as each man appeared flanked by another. The guardians wore thickened garments on their limbs and carried an array of weapons about their body. Scrooge was at first taken aback by their brash show of weapons in a public street. Then he recalled their descriptions of some great calamity and the number of weapons seemingly carried by men of all classes. It was as though the streets had become a warzone for which every man and woman had to be ready. Scrooge looked away from the weapons and back at the two well-dressed gentlemen. He had made a point always of standing well in their esteem: in a business point of view, that is; strictly in a business point of view.
“How are you?” said one.
“How are you?” returned the other.
“Well!” said the first. “Old Scratch has got his own at last, hey? That makes a dozen in the last month, though in his case none were more deserving.”
“So I am told,” returned the second. “Cold, isn’t it?”
“Seasonable for Christmas time. You’re not a skater, I suppose?”
“No. No. Something else to think of. Good morning!”
Not another word. That was their meeting, their conversation, and th
eir parting.
Scrooge was at first inclined to be surprised that the Spirit should attach importance to conversations apparently so trivial; but feeling assured that they must have some hidden purpose, he set himself to consider what it was likely to be. They could scarcely be supposed to have any bearing on the death of Jacob, his old partner, for that was Past, and this Ghost’s province was the Future. In his time, Jacob had been a noted man in his field of work much like himself, but the Spirit was hardly likely to have made a mistake and taken him back to visit his old friend was again. Nor could he think of any one immediately connected with himself, to whom he could apply them. It was disheartening to him as he realised how few people he had any connections of note. In fact, the more he thought about it the more he accepted that his work relationships were all that he had. The small numbers of family left had nothing like the darkness that the Spirits had shown he alone possessed.
But nothing doubting that to whomsoever they applied they had some latent moral for his own improvement, he resolved to treasure up every word he heard, and everything he saw; and especially to observe the shadow of himself when it appeared. For he had an expectation that the conduct of his future self would give him the clue he missed, and would render the solution of these riddles easy.
They referred to a man, a coward by any definition, who had abandoned the city during the great crisis and then had returned. It seems there was bitterness by some of the men, as the man had returned when others had not. It was a thought that Scrooge could well understand. To have left those acquaintances that a man loved or cared for was simply unreasonable. Indeed, how could a civilised gentleman abandon the weak or the poor in such a time as this?
Scrooge snorted to himself, considering that the fate of the man they were watching well deserved. This man was wretched in life and now wretched in death, a fate he seemed to have truly deserved.
A Zombie Christmas Carol Page 10