A Zombie Christmas Carol

by Michael G. Thomas; Charles Dickens

  He looked about in that very place for his own image; but another man stood in his accustomed corner, and though the clock pointed to his usual time of day for being there, he saw no likeness of himself among the multitudes that poured in through the Porch. He looked for a man of similar stature, perhaps carrying a weapon like the other men he had seen moving about the city. As he looked about, he realised that of course he would not see himself. It gave him little surprise for he had been revolving in his mind a change of life, and thought and hoped he saw his new-born resolutions carried out in this. At this stage, he could be fitter, stronger, dressed in different attire or even off somewhere else. How could he have any idea what he would look like in the Future?

  Quiet and dark, beside him stood the Phantom, with its outstretched hand. When he roused himself from his thoughtful quest, he fancied from the turn of the hand, and its situation in reference to himself, that the Unseen Eyes were looking at him keenly. It made him shudder, and feel very cold.

  They left the busy scene, and went into an obscure part of the town, where Scrooge had never penetrated before, although he recognised its situation, and its bad repute. The ways were foul and narrow; the shops and houses wretched; the people half-naked, drunken, slipshod, ugly. Alleys and archways, like so many cesspools, disgorged their offences of smell, and dirt, and life, upon the straggling streets; and the whole quarter reeked with crime, with filth, and misery. As in other parts of the city, there were the carts though in this area there seemed to be far more of them. Bodies dumped upon them though some looked as though they had died from malnutrition rather than violence. Two people rolled in the dirt and as Scrooge looked closer, he noticed one had been bitten, and was going through the later stages of the transformation into the evil walking dead. The other person appeared unhurt and simply going about the business of robbing the soon to be dead person before they turned on him.

  Far in this den of infamous resort, there was a low-browed, beetling shop, below a pent-house roof, where iron, old rags, bottles, bones, and greasy offal, were bought. Its doors reinforced with wood and a selection of weapons lay upon every possible entry point. It was a den of iniquity where every soul inside was able and willing to defend it against all intruders. Upon the floor within, were piled up heaps of rusty keys, nails, chains, hinges, files, scales, weights, and refuse iron of all kinds. A stack of loaded pistols and swords untidily placed against the one wall, whilst there were three curved daggers laid out in a curious semi-circle on the floor. Secrets that few would like to scrutinise were bred and hidden in mountains of unseemly rags, masses of corrupted fat, and sepulchres of bones. Sitting in among the wares he dealt in, by a charcoal stove, made of old bricks, was a grey-haired rascal, nearly seventy years of age; who had screened himself from the cold air without, by a frousy curtaining of miscellaneous tatters, hung upon a line; and smoked his pipe in all the luxury of calm retirement. On his side, he carried a foul looking iron rod that had more in common with a cudgel than any military weapon. It was crude and unattractive but functional and well suited to its purpose of keeping the old rascal alive. There was a reason why such a man lived, when younger men suffered to be burnt or buried.

  Scrooge and the Phantom came into the presence of this man, just as a woman with a heavy bundle slunk into the shop. But she had scarcely entered, when another woman, similarly laden, came in too; and she was closely followed by a man in faded black, who was no less startled by the sight of them, than they had been upon the recognition of each other. Along with the three strangers came three young boys, each of them armed with a variety of odd weapons. The first carried what looked like a Saracen sword. It was short and curved but when in the boy’s hand looked like a weapon in the hands of a Titan. The second boy carried an iron pipe of about a foot long. The third had a staff almost as long as he was tall. The boys stayed close to these adults and moved to protect them as they spotted each other.

  After a short period of blank astonishment, in which the old man with the pipe had joined them, they all three burst into a laugh and the three boys moved to the dark edges of the room to watch the appraisal.

  “Let the charwoman alone to be the first!” cried she who had entered first. “Let the laundress alone to be the second; and let the undertaker’s man alone to be the third. Look here, old Joe, here’s a chance! If we haven’t all three met here without meaning it!”

  “You couldn’t have met in a better place,” said old Joe, removing his pipe from his mouth. “Come into the parlour. You were made free of it long ago, you know; and the other two an’t strangers. Stop till I shut the door of the shop. Ah! How it skreeks! There an’t such a rusty bit of metal in the place as its own hinges, I believe; and I’m sure there’s no such old bones here, as mine. Ha, ha! We’re all suitable to our calling, we’re well matched. Come into the parlour. Come into the parlour.”

  The parlour was the space behind the screen of rags. The old man raked the fire together with an old stair-rod, and having trimmed his smoky lamp (for it was night), with the stem of his pipe, put it in his mouth again.

  A screech outside brought an ill chill to the room. As the group fell silent, the three boys rushed to the door, each brandishing his weapon and each wanting to be the first to confront the sound. They waited and the noise faded until silence returned.

  “Are we ready?” asked old Joe.

  As he spoke they moved closer, the woman who had already spoken threw her bundle on the floor, and sat down in a flaunting manner on a stool; crossing her elbows on her knees, and looking with a bold defiance at the other two.

  “What odds then! What odds, Mrs. Dilber?” said the woman. “Every person has a right to take care of themselves. He always did.”

  “That’s true, indeed!” said the laundress. “No man more so.”

  “Why then, don’t stand staring as if you was afraid, woman; who’s the wiser? We’re not going to pick holes in each other’s coats, I suppose?”

  “No, indeed!” said Mrs. Dilber and the man together. “We should hope not.”

  “Very well, then!” cried the woman. “That’s enough. Who’s the worse for the loss of a few things like these? Not a dead man, I suppose.”

  “No, indeed,” said Mrs. Dilber, laughing.

  “If he wanted to keep ’em after he was dead, a wicked old screw,” pursued the woman, “why wasn’t he natural in his lifetime? His home was barricaded and locked from the inside and there wasn’t the sign of a woman or child anywhere near it. No food of note, it was as a lodger had just arrived and brought nothing but the rags on his back. Such an old, miserable screw. If he hadn’t been, he’d have had somebody to look after him when he was struck with Death, instead of lying gasping out his last there, alone by himself. We saw the bite marks, scores of them on his neck, even his arms and legs! It isn’t natural.”

  “It’s the truest word that ever was spoke,” said Mrs. Dilber. “It’s a judgment on him.”

  “I wish it was a little heavier judgment,” replied the woman; “and it should have been, you may depend upon it, if I could have laid my hands on anything else. Of all the places I have visited, this one has to be the worst. It looked like it had been abandoned for weeks, more’s the pity else we might have found us something worthy of our time! Now, open that bundle, old Joe, and let me know the value of it. Speak out plain. I’m not afraid to be the first, nor afraid for them to see it. We know pretty well that we were helping ourselves, before we met here, I believe. It’s no sin. Open the bundle, Joe.”

  But the gallantry of her friends would not allow of this; and the man in faded black, mounting the breach first, produced his plunder. It was not extensive. A seal or two, a pencil-case, a pair of sleeve-buttons, and a brooch of no great value, were all. They were severally examined and appraised by old Joe, who chalked the sums he was disposed to give for each, upon the wall, and added them up into a total when he found there was nothing more to come.

  “That’s your account,” said Joe, “a
nd I wouldn’t give another sixpence, if I was to be boiled for not doing it. Who’s next?”

  Mrs. Dilber was next. Sheets and towels, a little wearing apparel, two old-fashioned silver teaspoons, a pair of sugar-tongs, and a few boots. Her account was stated on the wall in the same manner.

  “I always give too much to ladies. It’s a weakness of mine, and that’s the way I ruin myself,” said old Joe. “That’s your account. If you asked me for another penny, and made it an open question, I’d repent of being so liberal and knock off half-a-crown.”

  “And now undo my bundle, Joe,” said the first woman.

  Joe went down on his knees for the greater convenience of opening it, and having unfastened a great many knots, dragged out a large and heavy roll of some dark stuff.

  “What do you call this?” said Joe. “Bed-curtains!”

  “Ah!” returned the woman, laughing and leaning forward on her crossed arms. “Bed-curtains!”

  “You don’t mean to say you took ’em down, rings and all, with him lying there?” said Joe.

  “Yes I do,” replied the woman. “Why not?”

  “Weren’t you worried the things might come back? What if they had been hiding in the dark places? I told you what happened to Peter, didn’t I? He spent too much time working over the old chapel until the priest found him. This man had already been bitten and you know what he did, he paid Peter back for his troubles buy turning him,” said Joe incredulously.

  “So?” answered the woman.

  “You knock me down, you surely do. You were born to make your fortune,” said Joe, “and you’ll certainly do it.”

  “I certainly shan’t hold my hand, when I can get anything in it by reaching it out, for the sake of such a man as He was, I promise you, Joe,” returned the woman coolly. “Don’t drop that oil upon the blankets, now. I had to sneak past plenty of unsavoury characters to get these and I don’t mind telling you that some of them looked no different to the undead. Maybe they were and maybe they weren’t.”

  “His blankets?” asked Joe.

  “Whose else’s do you think?” replied the woman. “He isn’t likely to take cold without ’em, I dare say.”

  “I hope he didn’t die of anything catching? Eh?” said old Joe, stopping in his work, and looking up.

  “Don’t you be afraid of that, those creatures had already made short work of him and moved on well before I got there,” returned the woman. “I an’t so fond of his company that I’d loiter about him for such things, if he did. He is the only man I have seen so despised that he could lie there for weeks without being found. The smell, oh Lord, the smell! Ah! you may look through that shirt till your eyes ache; but you won’t find a hole in it, nor a threadbare place. It’s the best he had, and a fine one too. They’d have wasted it, if it hadn’t been for me.”

  “What do you call wasting of it?” asked old Joe.

  “Putting it on him to be buried in, to be sure,” replied the woman with a laugh. “Somebody was fool enough to do it, but I took it off again. No sense wasting it on him, where he’s going. If calico an’t good enough for such a purpose, it isn’t good enough for anything. It’s quite as becoming to the body. He can’t look uglier than he did in that one. I’ve seen the walking dead with arms missing and chewing on the flesh of the children that looked prettier than him.”

  Scrooge listened to this dialogue in horror. As they sat grouped about their spoil, in the scanty light afforded by the old man’s lamp, he viewed them with a detestation and disgust, which could hardly have been greater, though they had been obscene demons, marketing the corpse itself.

  “Ha, ha!” laughed the same woman, when old Joe, producing a flannel bag with money in it, told out their several gains upon the ground. “This is the end of it, you see! He frightened every one away from him when he was alive, to profit us when he was dead! Ha, ha, ha!”

  “Spirit!” said Scrooge, shuddering from head to foot. “I see, I see. The case of this unhappy man might be my own. My life tends that way, now. Merciful Heaven, what is this!”

  He recoiled in terror, for the scene had changed, and now he almost touched a bed: a bare, uncurtained bed: on which, beneath a ragged sheet, there lay a something covered up, which, though it was dumb, announced itself in awful language.

  The room was very dark, too dark to be observed with any accuracy, though Scrooge glanced round it in obedience to a secret impulse, anxious to know what kind of room it was. A pale light, rising in the outer air, fell straight upon the bed; and on it, plundered and bereft, unwatched, unwept, uncared for, was the body of this man. On the floor lay a sword, its blade, dark with rust and a thick layer of congealed blood. It looked as though the poor man had fought his last fight and then crept back to bed where he had faced Death alone.

  Scrooge glanced towards the Phantom. Its steady hand was pointed to the head. The cover was so carelessly adjusted that the slightest raising of it, the motion of a finger upon Scrooge’s part, would have disclosed the face. He thought of it, felt how easy it would be to do, and longed to do it; but had no more power to withdraw the veil than to dismiss the spectre at his side.

  He could see the old man’s arms lying bloated and pale on the bed, both of which contained bite marks and injuries from some unspeakable evil.

  Oh cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar here, and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy command: for this is thy dominion! But of the loved, revered, and honoured head, thou canst not turn one hair to thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious. It is not that the hand is heavy and will fall down when released; it is not that the heart and pulse are still; but that the hand was open, generous, and true; the heart brave, warm, and tender; and the pulse a man’s. Strike, Shadow, strike! And see his good deeds springing from the wound, to sow the world with life immortal!

  No voice pronounced these words in Scrooge’s ears, and yet he heard them when he looked upon the bed. He thought, if this man could be raised up now, what would be his foremost thoughts? Avarice, hard-dealing, griping cares? They have brought him to a rich end, truly!

  A hammer and nails lay near the door and a broken chair nailed across the old timber to block attempts to break in. It was a citadel against the horde and though it may have worked, the inside of the humble house showed nothing but decay.

  He lay, in the dark empty house, with not a man, a woman, or a child, to say that he was kind to me in this or that, and for the memory of one kind word I will be kind to him. A cat was tearing at the door, and there was a sound of gnawing rats beneath the hearth-stone. What they wanted in the room of death, and why they were so restless and disturbed, Scrooge did not dare to think. A dark shadow outside could have been a street urchin looking at breaking in to take away the scraps that were left or worse, it could be more of the unholy dead seeking to finish what they had started.

  “Spirit!” he said, “this is a fearful place. In leaving it, I shall not leave its lesson, trust me. Let us go!”

  Still the Ghost pointed with an unmoved finger to the head.

  “I understand you,” Scrooge returned, “and I would do it, if I could. But I have not the power, Spirit. I have not the power.”

  Again it seemed to look upon him.

  “If there is any person in the town, who feels emotion caused by this man’s death,” said Scrooge quite agonised, “show that person to me, Spirit, I beseech you!”

  The Phantom spread its dark robe before him for a moment, like a wing; and withdrawing it, revealed a room by daylight, where a mother and her children were.

  She was expecting some one, and with anxious eagerness; for she walked up and down the room; started at every sound; looked out from the window; glanced at the clock; tried, but in vain, to work with her needle; and could hardly bear the voices of the children in their play.

  At length the long-expected knock was heard. She hurried to the door, and met her husband; a man whose face was careworn and depressed, though he was young. There w
as a remarkable expression in it now; a kind of serious delight of which he felt ashamed, and which he struggled to repress.

  He sat down to the dinner that had been hoarding for him by the fire; and when she asked him faintly what news (which was not until after a long silence), he appeared embarrassed how to answer.

  “Is it good?” she said, “or bad?”—to help him.

  “Bad,” he answered.

  “We are quite ruined?”

  “No. There is hope yet, Caroline.”

  “If he relents,” she said, amazed, “there is! Nothing is past hope, if such a miracle has happened.”

  “He is past relenting,” said her husband. “He is dead. He was attacked, sometime in the last week or two by some of the walking dead. None of his neighbours noticed but the smell had started to attract attention. When his home was opened they found the bites on his body.”

  She was a mild and patient creature if her face spoke truth; but she was thankful in her soul to hear it, and she said so, with clasped hands. She prayed forgiveness the next moment, and was sorry; but the first was the emotion of her heart.

  “What the half-drunken woman whom I told you of last night, said to me, when I tried to see him and obtain a week’s delay; and what I thought was a mere excuse to avoid me; turns out to have been quite true. He was not only very ill, but dying, then and of the undead of all things. You would think a friend or family member would have noticed the symptoms before he entered the fever.”

  “It is terrible news for his family I am sure, but is it good or bad news for us? To whom will our debt be transferred?”

  “I don’t know. But before that time we shall be ready with the money; and even though we were not, it would be a bad fortune indeed to find so merciless a creditor in his successor. I doubt we could find a more selfish and vindictive man, even in the whole of London, my dear. We may be poor but we have each other and thanks to this turn of events we may sleep to-night with light hearts, Caroline!”