A Vampire Christmas Carol

by Sarah Gray

  “One child,” Scrooge returned, shivering, not so much from cold as the memories he had so long buried.

  “True,” said the ghost. “Your nephew.”

  Scrooge seemed uneasy in his mind and answered briefly, “Yes. Fred.”

  20

  Although they had but that moment left the Scrooge country house behind them, they were now in the busy thoroughfares of a city, where shadowy passengers passed and repassed, where shadowy carts and coaches battled for the way, and all the strife and tumult of a real city were. It was made plain enough, by the dressing of the shops, that here, too, it was Christmas time again, but it was evening, and the streets were lighted up.

  The ghost stopped at a certain warehouse door, and asked Scrooge if he knew it.

  “Know it?” said Scrooge, wiping at his eyes. “Why, I was apprenticed here. My father had made the arrangements prior to his untimely death.”

  They went in. At the sight of an old gentleman in a Welsh wig, sitting behind such a high desk that if he had been two inches taller, he would have knocked his head against the ceiling, Scrooge cried in great excitement, “Why, it’s old Fezziwig. Bless his heart, it’s Fezziwig alive again!”

  Old Fezziwig laid down his pen, and looked up at the clock, which pointed to the hour of seven. He rubbed his hands, adjusted his capacious waistcoat, laughed all over himself, from his shows to his organ of benevolence, and called out in a comfortable, oily, rich, fat, jovial voice, “Yo ho, there. Ebenezer. Dick.”

  Scrooge’s former self, now grown a young man, came briskly in, accompanied by his fellow-’prentice. “Dick Wilkins, to be sure,” said Scrooge to the ghost. “Bless me, yes. There he is. He was very much attached to me, was Dick. Poor Dick. Dear, dear.”

  “Poor Dick?” questioned the ghost.

  “He was kind to me. Dear. The only friend I had after Joseph Cuttleman, but—”

  “But he died young, your friend Dick? Of a bleeding ailment?” pressed the spirit.

  Scrooge looked up at him. “How did you know?”

  “A bleeding disease,” the ghost repeated.

  “Not the vampires!” Scrooge exclaimed. “I cannot believe it. I won’t.”

  “Then do not. Your belief will not make it all the more or less true,” observed the ghost. Then he pointed to the scene unfolding in the warehouse and Scrooge was drawn into a happier time, a time before Dick was bitten by vampires and left on his pallet to waste away.

  “Yo ho, my boys,” said Fezziwig. “No more work tonight. Christmas Eve, Dick. Christmas, Ebenezer. Let’s have the shutters up,” cried old Fezziwig, with a sharp clap of his hands, “before a man can say Jack Robinson.”

  You wouldn’t believe how those two fellows went at it. They charged into the street with the shutters—one, two, three—had them up in their places—four, five, six—barred them and pinned them—seven, eight, nine—and came back before you could have got to twelve, panting like race-horses.

  “Hilli-ho!” cried old Fezziwig, skipping down from the high desk, with wonderful agility. “Clear away, my lads, and let’s have lots of room here. Hilli-ho, Dick. Chirrup, Ebenezer.”

  Clear away. There was nothing they wouldn’t have cleared away, or couldn’t have cleared away, with old Fezziwig looking on. It was done in a minute. Every movable was packed off, as if it were dismissed from public life forevermore, the floor was swept and watered, the lamps were trimmed, fuel was heaped upon the fire. The warehouse was as snug, and warm, and dry, and bright a ballroom, as you would desire to see upon a winter’s night.

  In came a fiddler with a music-book, and went up to the lofty desk, and made an orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty stomachaches. In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile. In came the three Miss Fezziwigs, beaming and lovable. In came the six young followers whose hearts they broke. In came all the young men and women employed in the business. In came the housemaid, with her cousin, the baker. In came the cook, with her brother’s particular friend, the milkman. In came the boy from over the way, who was suspected of not having board enough from his master, trying to hide himself behind the girl from next door but one, who was proved to have had her ears pulled by her mistress. In they all came, one after another, some shyly, some boldly, some gracefully, some awkwardly, some pushing, some pulling, in they all came, anyhow and everyhow. Away they all went, twenty couples at once, hands half round and back again the other way. Down the middle and up again they danced, round and round in various stages of affectionate grouping; old top couple always turning up in the wrong place, new top couple starting off again, as soon as they got there, all top couples at last, and not a bottom one to help them. When this result was brought about, old Fezziwig, clapping his hands to stop the dance, cried out, “Well done!” and the fiddler plunged his hot face into a pot of porter, especially provided for that purpose. But scorning rest, upon his reappearance, he instantly began again, though there were no dancers yet, as if the other fiddler had been carried home, exhausted, on a shutter, and he were a brand-new man resolved to beat him out of sight, or perish.

  There were more dances, and there were forfeits, and more dances, and there was cake, and there was negus, and there was a great piece of cold roast, and there was a great piece of cold boiled, and there were mincemeat pies, and plenty of beer. But the great effect of the evening came after the roast and boiled, when the fiddler (an artful dog, mind. The sort of man who knew his business better than you or I could have told it to him) struck up “Sir Roger de Coverley.” Then old Fezziwig stood out to dance with Mrs. Fezziwig. Top couple, too, with a good stiff piece of work cut out for them; three or four and twenty pair of partners; people who were not to be trifled with, people who would dance, and had no notion of walking.

  But if they had been twice as many—ah, four times—old Fezziwig would have been a match for them, and so would Mrs. Fezziwig. As to her, she was worthy to be his partner in every sense of the term. If that’s not high praise, tell me higher, and I’ll use it. A positive light appeared to issue from Fezziwig’s calves. They shone in every part of the dance like moons. You couldn’t have predicted, at any given time, what would have become of them next. And when old Fezziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig had gone all through the dance, advance and retire, both hands to your partner, bow and curtsey, corkscrew, thread-the-needle, and back again to your place, Fezziwig cut—cut so deftly that he appeared to wink with his legs, and came upon his feet again without a stagger.

  When the clock struck eleven, this domestic ball broke up. Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig took their stations, one on either side of the door, and shaking hands with every person individually as he or she went out, wished him or her a merry Christmas. When everybody had retired but the two ’prentices, they did the same to them; and thus the cheerful voices died away, and the lads were left to their beds, which were under a counter in the back-shop.

  During the whole of this time, Scrooge had acted like a man out of his wits. His heart and soul were in the scene, and with his former self. He corroborated everything, remembered everything, enjoyed everything, and underwent the strangest agitation. It was not until now, when the bright faces of his former self and Dick were turned from them, that he remembered the ghost, and became conscious that it was looking full upon him, while the light upon its head burned very clear.

  “A small matter,” said the ghost, “to make these silly folks so full of gratitude.”

  “Small,” echoed Scrooge.

  The spirit signed to him to listen to the two apprentices, who were pouring out their hearts in praise of Fezziwig, and when he had done so, said, “He has spent but a few pounds of your mortal money, three or four perhaps. Is that so much that he deserves this praise?”

  “It isn’t that,” said Scrooge, heated by the remark, and speaking unconsciously like his former, not his latter, self. “It isn’t that, Spirit. He has the power to render us happy or unhappy, to make our service light or burdensome, a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words
and looks, in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count them up, what then? The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.”

  He felt the spirit’s glance, and stopped.

  “What is the matter?” asked the ghost.

  “Nothing in particular,” said Scrooge.

  “Something, I think,” the ghost insisted.

  “No,” said Scrooge, “no. I should like to be able to say a word or two to my clerks just now. That’s all.”

  His former self turned down the lamps as he gave utterance to the wish, and Scrooge and the ghost again stood side by side in the open air.

  “There was something else Fezziwig gave you,” observed the ghost. “Another opportunity.”

  “An opportunity in what?” asked Scrooge.

  The ghost turned and the warehouse was again filled with bright light, the heavenly smells of a feast and the bright laughter of those making merry. At once, Scrooge spotted himself, leaning over a young woman, offering her a cup of punch.

  “Belle,” Scrooge murmured, unable to resist a smile.

  “You met her here for the very first time.”

  “Her mother was an acquaintance of Mrs. Fezziwig’s,” Scrooge explained. “Mrs. Fezziwig invited her because she thought Belle might . . .”

  “Belle might?”

  “Like me,” Scrooge said, watching the young couple intently.

  Belle was laughing and Scrooge, the young man, smiling.

  “She had a bit of a scare that night,” Scrooge recalled aloud. “I was trying to make her feel better. She told me she was followed to Fezziwig’s by vampires.”

  “Did you believe her?”

  “I did not,” he said sadly. “I thought it a ploy to get a young man’s attention. Mine in particular.” Again he smiled. “She was like that, Belle, fanciful, always full of suspicion. Even paranoid at times. She saw the vampires on every street corner.”

  “What if I told you what she saw was real?”

  “I would say ‘Bah, humbug!’ ”

  The ghost smiled in a way that made Scrooge feel very small and insignificant.

  “She told me the vampires followed me, too, that they watched me, but I didn’t believe her.”

  “Why not?” the spirit inquired.

  “Because she was full of all sorts of nonsense. It wasn’t just the vampires she talked about all the time. Her mother was the same way. Some said they were touched. Belle claimed she saw spirits, too.” Again, he laughed. “She said she could talk to them!” Scrooge eyed the ghost, realizing his own present circumstances, and his laughter died away.

  “You did not believe her.”

  “I did not,” Scrooge confirmed. “But I liked her, anyway. She was sweet and bright and so full of life. Despite her paranoia, she was intelligent. She made me laugh.”

  “You loved her?”

  Scrooge did not answer as he gazed sadly upon the couple, remembering what it had felt like to hold her hand in his, to feel her lips upon his own. She’d always had the smoothest skin. The prettiest blue eyes. “I loved her,” he murmured, almost choking on the words. “And I suppose she loved me . . . once.”

  21

  “Come, my time grows short,” observed the spirit. “Quick.”

  This was not addressed to Scrooge, or to anyone whom he could see, but it produced an immediate effect, for again Scrooge saw himself. He was older now, a man in the prime of life. His face had not the harsh and rigid lines of later years, but it had begun to wear the signs of care and avarice. There was an eager, greedy, restless motion in the eye, which showed the passion that had taken root, and where the shadow of the growing tree would fall.

  From the main street Scrooge entered, itself little better than an alley, a low-browed doorway led into a blind court, or yard, profoundly dark, unpaved, and reeking with stagnant odors. Into this ill-favored pit he strode, then struck thrice upon an iron grating with his foot.

  “Do you know where we are?” asked the spirit.

  “Of course I do. It was a gentlemen’s club I belonged to many years ago.”

  “A gentlemen’s club?” the ghost questioned. “And who brought you into this gentlemen’s club?”

  “A colleague. Another businessman.”

  Scrooge scratched the recesses of his mind for recollection of the man who had brought him here the very first time he attended. “I . . . cannot recall his name, but I fear he looked much like my tenant Mr. Wahltraud.”

  “The King of Vampires,” the spirit reminded him.

  “That’s not possible. Please tell me my recollection is wrong.”

  “I wish that I could,” said the spirit, pointing into the alley.

  The younger Scrooge became impatient, and struck the grating thrice again.

  A further delay ensued, but it was not of long duration. The ground seemed to open at his feet, and a ragged head appeared.

  “Is that you, Mr. Scrooge?” said a voice as ragged as the head.

  “Yes,” replied Scrooge haughtily, descending as he spoke, “who should it be?”

  Scrooge in his nightdress and the Ghost of Christmas Past descended behind him, as undetected as on the previous Christmas Eves.

  “It’s so late, we gave you up,” returned the voice, as its owner stopped to shut and fasten the grating. “You’re late, sir.”

  “I had business to attend to. A man to send to the workhouse for non-payment,” said Scrooge, then still a handsome man, but with a gloomy majesty. “Make remarks when I require you,” he said in the hoarsest voice he could assume and led the way, with folded arms and knitted brows, to the cellar down below, where there was a small copper fixed in one corner, a chair or two, a form and table, a glimmering fire, and a truckle-bed, covered with a ragged patchwork rug.

  “Welcome, Mr. Scrooge!” cried a lanky figure, rising as from a nap.

  Scrooge nodded. Then, throwing off his outer coat, he stood composed in all his dignity, and eyed his follower over.

  “What news tonight?” he asked, when he had looked into his very soul.

  “Nothing particular,” replied the other, stretching himself—and he was so long already that it was quite alarming to see him do it.

  “I do not like this place,” said the older Scrooge to the ghost. “Please. Take me from here.”

  “This is but a shadow of your past. Whatever you did here is done.”

  “I was young,” Scrooge argued. “These men, they brought me very profitable business deals. They introduced me to Jacob Marley. It was harmless what we did in that room. A game.”

  “Harmless,” the spirit repeated, gazing beyond the present Scrooge to the past.

  “Is the room prepared?”

  “It is,” replied the follower.

  “The comrade—is he here?”

  “Yes. And a sprinkling of the others—you hear ’em?”

  “Playing skittles,” said younger Scrooge moodily, referring to an ancient game involving a ball and pins to be knocked down. “Light-hearted revelers!”

  There was no doubt respecting the particular amusement in which these heedless spirits were indulging, for even in the close and stifling atmosphere of the vault, the noise sounded like distant thunder. It certainly appeared, at first sight, a singular spot to choose, for that or any other purpose of relaxation, if the other cellars answered to the one in which this brief colloquy took place, for the floors were of sodden earth, the walls and roof of damp bare brick tapestried with the tracks of snails and slugs; the air was sickening, tainted, and offensive. It seemed, from one strong flavor which was uppermost among the various odors of the place, that it had, at no very distant period, been used as a store-house for cheeses, a circumstance which, while it accounted for the greasy moisture that hung about it, was agreeably suggestive of rats. It was naturally damp besides, and little trees of fungus sprung from every moldy corner.

  The proprietor of this charming retreat, and owner of the ragged head before m
entioned—for he wore an old tie-wig as bare and frowzy as a stunted hearth-broom—had by this time joined them. He stood a little apart, rubbing his hands, wagging his hoary bristled chin, and smiling in silence. His eyes were closed, but had they been wide open, it would have been easy to tell, from the attentive expression of the face he turned toward them—pale and unwholesome as might be expected in one of his underground existence—and from a certain anxious raising and quivering of the lids, that he was blind.

  “Mr. Wahltraud, he was responsible for all of this, was he not?” Scrooge felt a flutter in his chest, one of fear and loathing . . . and regret. “It was he who arranged the business deals. These men—”

  “His minions,” the spirit offered.

  “His minions,” Scrooge whispered. “Hers . . . Queen Griselda’s.”

  “You were her project . . . it was natural that he would aid when he could.”

  “What does my Mr. Scrooge drink?” asked the blind man. “Is it brandy, rum, usquebaugh? Is it soaked gunpowder, or blazing oil?”

  “Or blood?” cackled a voice from the corner.

  The elder Scrooge backed his way up in the dark room, taking refuge closer to the spirit. “Not blood. I never drank blood.”

  “Perhaps not of your own accord,” was all the ghost said.

  “See that it’s something strong, and comes quick,” cried the younger Scrooge. “And so long as you take care of that, you may bring it from the devil’s cellar, if you like.”

  “Truer words could not have been spoke,” said the spirit softly into Scrooge’s ear.

  A man called Stagg filled a glass with an unrecognizable dark liquid and offered it up. “Drink, sir. Death to the poor, life to all men such as yourself, and love to all fair damsels. Drink, Mr. Scrooge, and warm your gallant heart!”

  Scrooge cowered near the ghost. “They were poisoning me. I came merely because they asked me to, because of the business they sent my way, but they took advantage of me. They—”