A Vampire Christmas Carol

by Sarah Gray

  Although well used to ghostly company by this time, Scrooge feared the silent shape so greatly 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. This was somehow worse than the notion of vampires watching him, controlling those around him, all these years, their fangs protruding, dripping with human blood.

  Is it not thus with all mortal humans . . . that we fear the unknown even more than we fear the monsters we have seen with our own eyes?

  “Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come,” he exclaimed. “I fear you more than any specter I have seen. But as I know now that 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 your company, and do it with a thankful heart. After all I have seen, I fear these vampires as perhaps no one else fears them, for they seem to have particular interest in me.” He sighed, looked down at his trembling feet thrust into his slippers, and then looked up again. “Will you not speak to me?”

  It gave him no reply. The hand was pointed straight before them.

  “Lead on, then,” said Scrooge with resignation. “Lead on. The night is waning fast, and it is precious time to me, I suspect. Lead on, Spirit.”

  The phantom moved away as it had come toward 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. Scrooge found himself on a familiar street, his very own, just before dawn when there was that strange light that was neither day nor night, following a tall figure in a handsome black cloak. He knew the man he followed, but could not quite place him from his perspective, walking ten feet behind.

  At a gate off the alley that ran along Scrooge’s house, the cloaked figure encountered no less a person than Mr. Martins, the parochial undertaker. Scrooge knew him from his dealings with him seven years before, when Marley died. Strange that he should be here at this time and place, and Scrooge did not dare to wonder which of his neighbors might be the object of Mr. Martins’s attention. Scrooge wondered if it might be one of the vampires who’d rented his cellar rooms, but that seemed unlikely, as he’d never heard of an undertaker being called to dispose of a vampire. What they did with their dead, he did not know, did not care to know, and in truth, wondered if the beasties did ever die of natural causes. As far as he could tell from what he had gleaned this night, the only way to kill one was with a pike through the heart—as he had seen on that street while being escorted by the Ghost of Christmas Present.

  Mr. Martins was a tall, gaunt, large-jointed man, attired in a suit of threadbare black, with darned cotton stockings of the same color, and shoes to answer. His features were not naturally intended to wear a smiling aspect, but he was in general rather given to professional jocosity. His step was elastic, and his face betokened inward pleasantry, as he advanced to a cloaked man and shook him cordially by the hand.

  “I have taken the measure of a man who died last night, sir,” said the undertaker.

  “You’ll make your fortune, Mr. Martins.”

  “Think so?” said the undertaker in a tone which half admitted and half disputed the probability of the event. “The prices allowed by the board are very small.” He thrust his thumb and forefinger into a snuffbox, which was an ingenious little model of a patent coffin. “And then there’s always the matter of actually collecting. You cannot send a dead man to debtor’s prison.”

  “True enough.” The stranger, his back still to Scrooge, tapped the undertaker on the shoulder, in a friendly manner, with his cane.

  “And the coffins are not cheap, not even the poorly made ones,” added the undertaker with precisely as near an approach to a laugh as a man of his occupation ought to indulge in.

  “I think you are paid well enough.”

  “Well, well,” Mr. Martins said at length, “there’s no denying that, I suppose, since the new system of feeding has come in. The coffins are something narrower and more shallow than they used to be, but we must have some profit, sir. Well-seasoned timber is an expensive article, sir, and all the iron handles come, by canal, from Birmingham.”

  “Well, well,” the cloaked figure imitated the undertaker, “every trade has its drawbacks. Even mine.” He chuckled. “A fair profit is, of course, allowable.”

  “Of course, of course,” replied the undertaker, “and if I don’t get a profit upon this or that particular article, why, I make it up in the long run, you see—he! he! he!”

  “Just so,” said the man in the cloak.

  “Though I must say,” continued the undertaker, resuming the current observations which the man had interrupted, “that I have to contend against one very great disadvantage, which is that all the stout people go off the quickest. The people who have been better off, and have paid rates for many years, are the first to sink when they come into the house, and let me tell you, sir, that three or four inches over one’s calculation makes a great hole in one’s profits, especially when one has a family to provide for, sir.”

  “What, there is no way to fit the remains into a narrower container?”

  “I have tried, sir, of that, I assure you, and the results are usually, but not always, less than one would hope.”

  “Turned them sideways, did you?”

  “In a manner of speaking, but as I did say, that is rarely satisfying, as what bulk is squeezed up in one area tends to flow into another. And if all fails and a coffin must be altered, the price is costly. Most people do not remember that I, too, have a large family to support, with many mouths to feed, and many hands extended for charity. I tell you, it is enough to keep me from my sleep many nights, with the fear that a particular client will not be secured in a standard coffin, and I will be left the poorer by the transaction.”

  “Well, I can promise you that in this instance, you will be paid well, for your skill and your discretion. All I ask for now is that you wrap the body and hold it. Do not begin the embalming practice, for I doubt it will be necessary.”

  “Hold the body?” questioned the undertaker uneasily. “Unusual, at best, but not unheard of. And for what purpose are you requesting that I store the remains?”

  “A coffin may not be necessary.” The cloaked man’s tone was short as he passed a small bag of jingling coins to the undertaker. “Hold the body, without questions or comment, until I or one of mine contact you.”

  The undertaker shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Will it be long? With this weather he will keep a few days, but should we have a warm day—”

  “It will not be long. . . .”

  The undertaker weighed the bag in his bare hand and then quickly slipped it inside his coat. “Yes, sir.” He turned on his heels and hurried away. “A good day to you, Mr. Wahltraud.”

  34

  Wahltraud? Scrooge turned to question the ghost, but in that blink of an eye, the undertaker, Wahltraud, and the alley were gone. Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come were still in London, but now in the heart of it. They were at the ’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. It was here where stocks were traded and fortunes found and lost.

  The spirit stopped beside a little knot of businessmen. Observing that the spirit pointed its hand 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 on
ly know he’s dead. My wife heard it from the baker on the corner this morning.”

  “When did he die?” inquired another.

  “Last night, I believe.”

  “Why, what was the matter with him?” asked a third, taking a vast quantity of snuff out of a very large snuffbox. “I thought he’d never die. Some said he would live forever.” He chuckled.

  “Whatever do you mean?” said the fat one. “It’s one and the same, is it not?”

  “I think not,” said his companion, giving him a jab in his monstrous abdomen, “if you know what I mean. There are rumors . . . that he was never one of us, but one of them.”

  “I don’t believe it! He was too sour. I’ve vampires next door to me, two tailors. They’re quite pleasant so long as you keep your neck covered. They pay their rent on time, speak pleasantly, and I believe they keep the riff-raff off my doorstep. Beggars and other such undesirables seem to sense where they haunt, and avoid them when possible. My lady wife does worry so about the value of our home being lost due to the vampires’ presence, but I’d far rather have them than some of the countrybred, puffed-up trash that passes for gentry in this city.”

  “I’m not certain I believe you about the value of tailors for neighbors, vampire or human, but either way, he’s still dead,” said the one with the snuff, with a yawn. He had another pinch of snuff in his hand, but gradually let it drop from between his fingers to the floor, then smoothed it out with his foot, looking down at it the while.

  “What has he done with all his money, that’s what I’d like to know,” inquired a newcomer, 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 relations, perhaps. I heard he had a nephew. He hasn’t left it to me. That’s all I know.”

  This pleasantry was received with a general laugh.

  “It’s 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. I suppose we should make up a party and volunteer.”

  “I don’t mind going if a lunch is provided, and only humans are invited,” observed the gentleman with the excrescence on his nose. “But I must be fed, and not fed upon.” He chuckled at his own jest and another laugh rose from the group.

  “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. Good day.” He tipped his hat and moved away.

  Speakers and listeners strolled away, and mixed with other groups. Scrooge knew most of the men by acquaintance, at least, and looked toward the spirit for an explanation.

  The phantom glided on into the street. Its finger pointed to two persons meeting. Scrooge listened again, thinking that the explanation might lie there.

  He knew these men perfectly. They were men of business, very wealthy, and of great importance. He had made a point always of standing well in their esteem, that is, strictly in a business point of view.

  “How are you?” said one, blowing a cloud of fragrant smoke out of his nose.

  “Well enough,” returned the other, a man of short stature with a tall hat. “Taken up tobacco, have you?”

  “My wife says it keeps the vampires away.”

  “My wife says the same and has taken up the pipe herself. I don’t know where they get such notions, women. Jebediah Cronkie’s coachman smoked a pipe the whole day long, every day for seventy years, and it didn’t keep the beasties from stealing him off the coach bench while waiting for Jebediah at the public house. Left his pipe, they did, and not a morsel more. Never seen again. He’s just now found a new coachman.”

  “Pity. Good coachmen are not abundantly available.”

  “Some say the vampires have taken to hiring the good ones at a higher stipend, which, if true, would be an outrage. My neighbor’s son-in-law saw two coaches pass his very door last Wednesday evening, conveyances full of vampires making quite merry. The curtains at the windows were thick, black, of course, but the driver and the footmen were as human as you and me. My neighbor’s son-in-law was certain that he’d seen those very coaches, the coachmen, and the footmen in attendance of Viscount Wiggleybottom, not a week past, and swore the viscount’s crest still remained visible, though painted over with lamp black, on the door. There should be a law against that kind of buying up the servants and coaches of gentry.”

  “Well,” said the short man, “I’d make no bones about that. It’s neither right nor decent that good coachmen should be overpaid and made to think they are better than the common sort. Most coachmen, for all their snap and polish, have horse dung on the soles of their boots, do they not?” He fumbled in his pocket for a handkerchief and blew his nose in a loud, trumpeting manner. “But, that’s neither here nor there, is it? As you say, Old Scratch has got his own at last, hey?”

  “So I am told.” The first man inhaled and blew a fine ring of smoke. “Cold, isn’t it?”

  “Seasonable for Christmas time. You’re not a skater, I suppose?”

  “No. No, but my wife was, in her younger years, before the nine children and the sweets. Not that it’s safe to skate after sunset anymore, not with the you-know-whats lurking around every corner.” He tipped his hat. “Well, good morning to you, sir.”

  “Good morning.”

  Not another word. That was their meeting, their conversation, and their 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. Nor could he think of anyone immediately connected with himself, to whom he could apply them. But not 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. Scrooge 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.

  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, no matter how he searched, he saw no likeness of himself among the multitudes that poured in through the porch. Whatever could have detained him, he wondered. Not his tenants, he hoped, for though the Ghost of Christmas Present had suggested Queen Griselda would not suck him dry of his blood and kill him, having had too much time invested at this point, his confidence in the ghost’s word on this matter was not entirely solid. Not seeing himself at the stock exchange gave him little surprise, for he had been resolving in his mind a change of life, and thought and hoped he saw his new-born resolutions carried out in this.

  Thoughts swirled in Scrooge’s head that must be considered, first of all being that some opportunity for profit might have presented itself, and although he did not consider himself a man of sudden impulse, he had been known to act swiftly when the right moment and the right investment presented itself. And secondly, would he know himself if he observed himself about his daily routine, for he was not a man wont to spend any amount of time admiring his visage in a mirror—indeed, just the opposite, and who among us sees ourselves as others see us?

  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.

  35

  T
hey left the busy scene and Scrooge found himself, at once (how did they do it? the spirits, he wondered), on his own doorstep facing the very door where he had seen the face of Jacob Marley that very night. Scrooge turned to question the spirit of the purpose of the return to his home so early in their journey together (for surely the spirit meant to show him more than a few men chatting at the ’Change), but the door swung open of its own accord and he entered. The door to the cellar opened next, and though Scrooge would have liked to have protested entering the vampire’s lair for a second time in one night, he felt himself propelled down the flight of stairs.

  Together, he and the dark, silent phantom made their way through winding tunnels, all the while growing more and more alarmed as they drew near what he felt might be the presence of the beastly bloodsuckers, until Scrooge heard the sound of fiddle play. “A celebration?” he asked the phantom. “Do such creatures as these enjoy simple pastimes such as music and song?” And if they did, would it be of mournful quality or something more restful?

  The phantom, of course, gave no reply.

  Scrooge found himself in the same vaulted chamber where the previous spirit had brought him, only the atmosphere was quite different, on this occasion, on this future occasion. The previous pall had lifted and the king and queen, though on their dais as before, were far more animated than when last Scrooge visited. Mrs. Wahltraud was decked out in the finest and most fashionable gown, and her husband, Mr. Wahltraud, was equally attired in a new suit cut and sewn by some skilled tailor, perhaps even the ones Scrooge had heard mentioned earlier in the ’Change by the gentlemen discussing a coming funeral. The toothed host and hostess wore matching identical capes of the dearest-priced black velvet, a length of which cost more than a prudent man would wish to spend in furnishing a parlor.

  The dining tables in the room had been pushed to the outer edges of the earthen wall, making room for two girls who danced merrily together to the sound of music and laughter. With dozens of folk looking on (some pale-faced, some not), the two girls, quite unconstrained and careless, danced in the freedom and gaiety of their hearts. The girls, at least upon first glance, appeared quite human to Scrooge and not beasties at all, which was odd when he thought of it, for what human females would dare to come to this place and conduct themselves in such a careful manner unless they were under some terrible spell, but as hard as he studied them, he could detect no hint of glaze in their eyes or slackness in their features.