A Vampire Christmas Carol

by Sarah Gray

  “Vampires eat food?” asked Scrooge.

  “No, but the men and women who work for them do. Much of this is to entice them,” explained the ghost. “And you must admit, it could be enticing, considering the squalor some live in above ground. It is very like London.”

  What was different than the streets above was how quiet it was here. There were no itinerant bands, no wind or stringed instruments. Not one. There were no punches, dancing dogs, jugglers, conjurers, or orchestrinas. Scrooge saw only one barrel-organ and a dancing monkey—sportive by nature, but fast fading into a dull, lumpish monkey. Beyond that, nothing lively, not so much as a white mouse in a twirling cage. He wanted to ask why the vampires had no such entertainment, but fearing the answer, did not ask.

  Scrooge saw, as he and the spirit walked unnoticed by the pedestrians, that there was a lecture-room across the way. There was a counting house, a store, even a barroom. The latter, he could see through these windows, was pretty full. He heard the clinking sound of hammers breaking lumps of ice, and the cool gurgling of the pounded bits, as, in the process of mixing, they were poured from glass to glass!

  Inside, there were men sucking on cigars, vampire and human. Humans were swallowing strong drinks, their hats and legs in every possible variety of twist, all obviously enjoying themselves. These were not vapid, waterish amusements, but good, strong stuff, dealing in round abuse and blackguard names, pulling off the roofs of private houses, as the Halting Devil did in Spain. Scrooge surmised that there was pimping and pandering for all degrees of vicious taste, and gorging with coined lies the most voracious maw, imputing to every man in public life the coarsest and the vilest motives; scaring away from the stabbed and prostrate body-politic, any Samaritan of clear conscience (could there even be a Samaritan down here?) and good deeds and setting on, with yell and whistle and the clapping of foul hands, the vilest vermin and worst birds of prey.

  The ghost prodded Scrooge forward and they passed a wilderness of a hotel with stores about its base, like some Continental theater, or the London Opera House shorn of its colonnade. As he walked, Scrooge noticed that he had seen no beggars in the streets, but of other kinds of strollers, plenty. Despite the smiles upon the passersby’s faces, he sensed that poverty, wretchedness, and vice were still rife enough here. The king and queen of the vampires had not saved the humans from their wretched lives, only changed the scenery.

  The street grew darker, narrower, and there were fewer burning torches.

  “The older part of their city,” the ghost explained.

  “Who lives here?” asked Scrooge.

  “The minions, when they can no longer live above ground.”

  “They make them vampires?”

  “No, but the blood they take changes them. They become more sensitive to the light. They acquire a taste for the blood that must be satisfied, and so they do the vampires’ bidding to get it. There are rules. They must have permission from vampires to take blood from humans.”

  This older section of the place where the vampires’ minions dwelled was one of narrow ways, diverging to the right and left, and reeking everywhere with dirt and filth. Such lives led here bore the same fruits as the slums of London. The coarse and bloated faces at the doors had counterparts on the streets above, and all the wide world over. Debauchery had made the very houses old. The rotten beams were tumbling down, and the patched and broken windows seemed to scowl dimly, like eyes that had been hurt in drunken frays.

  “Enough,” Scrooge cried, covering his face with his hands. “Please, Spirit. Have I not seen enough?”

  “This way,” said the Ghost of Christmas Present.

  They took a short alley and the underground walls grew close around them again until it seemed that they were in the same tunnels as when they had first entered. Ahead, standing in a doorway, on guard, no doubt (though who would dare trespasses save for spirits and their unwilling captives, Scrooge did not know) was a wrinkled hideous figure with deeply sunk and bloodshot eyes and an immensely long cadaverous face, shadowed by jagged and matted locks of coarse black hair. He wore a kind of tunic of a dull bluish color, which, Scrooge observed regarding it attentively, was clasped or ornamented down the front with coffin handles. His legs, too, were encased in coffin plates as though in armor; and over his left shoulder he wore a short dusky cloak, which seemed made of a remnant of some pall. He took no notice of the ghost and Scrooge, of course, but was intently eyeing the far side of the vaulted-ceilinged room.

  The underground room was enormous, cavern-like, and apparently served as a dining facility this night, for there were at least two dozen large tables of pale-faced guests and a raised dais on the far side of the room where King Wahltraud and his lady, Queen Griselda, held court.

  “I’ve seen enough!” Scrooge cried, suddenly afraid, because until that moment he had not allowed himself to truly believe his tenants were vampires, or that these creatures had controlled his life. He had allowed them to control his life. “Please, O Spirit, believe me when I say it is not necessary that you keep me here a moment longer. If you say my tenants are vampires, then vampires they are, and I will see them evicted come morning.”

  The spirit did not respond.

  “Are . . . are these all vampires?” Scrooge dared, taking note that some of the diners were as pale-faced as their host and hostess, while others seemed . . . more earthly.

  “Many are, but some are their minions. If you were to look closely, I believe there are others here you might recognize.”

  “No, I see no one I recognize, nor anyone I wish to recognize,” Scrooge assured the ghost.

  “What of him?”

  Scrooge took a sharp breath, staring at a round-faced man with a broad nose and rosy cheeks. “My butcher?” he murmured. “Harry Chop, from whom my serving wench has fetched sweetbreads and kidneys for my own table? My butcher?”

  “And there.”

  A young, pock-faced woman drank from a silver tumbler. “The girl who sells sweetmeats on the corner?” Scrooge asked in shock. “I know her. I have passed her every morning for two years at least, and nothing of her ruined countenance proclaimed that she possessed any more diabolical traits than others of her station in life.”

  “And what of him?” asked the spirit, sounding impatient, though Scrooge could not tell if it was with the present scene or his present company, meaning Scrooge.

  It took him a moment to figure out who the ghost was referring to, but eventually, Scrooge laid his gaze upon none other than his employee, Lucius Disgut. He recognized his beady eyes and rat-like nose at once. “Not Disgut. It cannot be.” His trusted man, Lucius? Impossible! This was beyond belief.

  “Why can it not be?” asked the spirit, sounding as if his patience had returned.

  “Why, because . . .” Scrooge could think of nothing to say. If the butcher and the sweetmeat girl were vampire minions, who was to say who else was one of them? The rector of St. Michael’s-Upon-Fields? Lord Dumbworthy, the earl of Witherspoon? Her majesty herself?

  “When did the clerk come to you?”

  “The week Marley died. I remember it distinctly because . . .” Scrooge felt a lump the size of a hefty piece of coal rise in his throat, and he swallowed hard. “He came with references from Mr. Wahltraud,” he managed to finish.

  Scrooge thought before he spoke again. “Cratchit, he . . . he is one of the slayers. Does he realize he works with a man who could be plotting to do him harm, even kill him?”

  “Members of the VSU know they encounter dangers each and every day. It’s part of their sacrifice to mankind. But to answer your question, I am quite sure Mr. Cratchit knows where Mr. Disgut’s allegiances lie.”

  Thinking of nothing else to say, Scrooge took in the room once again. Tall tapers burned low on the tables: the meal was obviously over but overly large platters still lay here and there, platters so immense they could have well held, dared he think, a human.

  I must put here, fair and brave reader, that had I
been Scrooge, I would have run from this place as fast as my feet could have carried me, by now. But by now, I would have also seen the sin of my acts and begged for any aid the spirit could have offered in the area of redemption. But Scrooge was a man well set in his ways, a man not easily swayed . . . except by vampires.

  There was music, a harp and fiddle, which played from somewhere Scrooge could not see. The tune being played was lively enough, but he took note that none of the guests danced, or appeared particularly gay.

  “You say they celebrate the Winter Solstice,” Scrooge murmured, noting the long faces of the king and queen and their guests. Those in the room conversed, but there was none of the light-heartedness Scrooge had seen in the other places the ghost had taken him that night. Even the poorest of poor seemed more enthused than these men and women, who appeared well fed and housed and garbed in the finest clothing, albeit of sober cut and color, but fine stuff all the same. “It does not appear much like a celebration to me. From the talk we have heard, from what we have seen tonight, it seems that the vampires would have much reason for making merry, the way they have wreaked havoc in London.” He studied the king and queen of the vampires, feeling at least a little confident that he was, at present, safe from them. “They do not seem so threatening tonight. Look at how they slouch in their mighty chairs, how they speak softly, their gazes flitting here and there. I would think they would be more jovial than the humans we have seen this night.”

  “It is the spirit of the humans on this night that steals the joy from the vampires,” the Ghost of Christmas Present explained, “and saps them of their strength. If every day could be Christmas Day, the vampires would die out in no time at all.”

  “Every day, Christmas Day,” Scrooge snorted. He had intended to follow his comment with a “bah, humbug,” but could not bring himself to speak the words. The sight of the vampires and their minions in this chamber below the city had brought so many emotions to Scrooge’s heart, emotions he barely recognized, that he could not express them. Would not, for fear he might crumble. “Please, Spirit,” he said, “tell me this is the last place we will visit tonight. Tell me I may walk through these tunnels and find my way to my bed.”

  “My time is, indeed, almost expired, but there is one place we must revisit.”

  “No more, please.” Scrooge put his hands together. “Must I beg?”

  “It will do you no good. Touch my robe.”

  “Must I?” inquired Scrooge.

  “Would you prefer I left you here?”

  “For the love of mercy, no! Do not leave me in this den of bloodsuckers, I beseech you!” Scrooge grabbed the phantom’s robe, and in the blink of an eye and a swirl of snow, they were back at Cratchit’s house again, though this time it was much later. Children slept on pallets on the floor in front of the fireplace, and Bob Cratchit snored softly on a bed of rags beside the table upon which they had shared their great Christmas Day feast. The only light burning was from the candle the sister-in-law, Maena, carried up the wobbling staircase.

  “Follow her,” the spirit instructed.

  Scrooge did as ordered, for if there was one thing he had learned this night, it was that there was no need to waste one’s breath arguing with those of the spirit world. They passed a closet-sized chamber where another pallet was made up; Maena’s room, no doubt. But she kept going up until they reached the attic space where the Cratchit boys slept.

  Scrooge stood in the doorway, watching with something akin to a smile on his face as the boys’ dear aunt picked her way across the sleeping bodies to reach Tiny Tim, who slept on a raised pallet against the wall. “Why, she’s tucking him in. How . . .” The word “sweet” was on Scrooge’s mind but he could not find the strength to say it.

  The spirit made no reply.

  Maena reached Tiny Tim, set down her candlestick, and grasped the edge of the ragtag blanket wrapped around the boy, but instead of drawing it higher upon his chin, she drew it back.

  “What the devil?” muttered Scrooge. “Can she not feel the chill in this room? Look, the water has frozen in the cup beside his bedding.”

  The candlelight revealed an open, weeping wound on the boy’s calf.

  “Is . . . is she tending his wound?” Scrooge asked, but even as he spoke the words, he took a step back, then in horror watched as the woman who was supposed to be caring for Cratchit’s children leaned over and pressed her mouth to the wound, making a sucking sound. When she lifted her head, her smiling lips were covered in the child’s blood. She then took a glass vial from a pocket and began to fill it with the boy’s blood.

  “He will not survive because of her,” Scrooge said, in dull shock, as much to himself as to the ghost. “Not if the present is not altered.” He took one last look at the treacherous woman and turned to the ghost, placing his hand upon the spirit’s sleeve. They slipped out of the house and Scrooge found himself on a dark, snowy street.

  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 now when, looking at the spirit as they stood together in an open place, he noticed that its hair was gray.

  “Are spirits’ lives so short?” asked Scrooge.

  “My life upon this globe is very brief,” replied the ghost. “It ends tonight.”

  “Tonight?” cried Scrooge. “That hardly seems fair, when vampires can live forever if they are not decapitated, or run through with a pike or however it is the slayers do it.”

  “Tonight 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.”

  “Please tell me you do not conceal vampires within your cloak.” No more, he prayed. His delicate nature could take no more shocking revelations.

  “They are not vampires.” From the folds of its robe, it brought two human 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 a girl: yellow, meager, 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 shriveled 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, have monsters half so horrible and dread existed.

  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, have the vampires done this to these poor children?” Scrooge could say no more.

  “Mankind has done this to these children,” 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 is erased.”

  “But . . . but what can I do? What can any of us do? If . . . if the vampires have controlled me, they have controlled others like me, have they not?” he asked shakily. “We cannot stop them. We cannot prevent this. Mankind is not responsible for—”
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br />   “Deny your responsibility,” shouted the spirit, stretching out its hand toward the city. “Slander those who tell it to ye. Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And abide 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, toward him.

  STAVE 4

  THE LAST OF THE SPIRITS

  33

  The phantom slowly, gravely, silently approached. When it came, 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.

  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.

  “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,” Scrooge pursued. “Is that so, Spirit?”

  The upper portion of the garment was contracted for an instant in its folds, as if the spirit had inclined its head. That was the only answer he received.