The Last of the Spirits

by Chris Priestley

  The ghost looked down at her with a look of desperate sorrow etched on to his face. He seemed to struggle to maintain his position, as if against a wind. He moaned and wrung his hands. He reached out as though to help her, but then moaned pitifully again before floating away like a silk scarf on a sudden breeze.

  Then suddenly Marley himself shot by, bursting out of Scrooge’s window and joining the flock of ghosts circling in the mist above them. The moaning was deafening and Sam put his hands to his ears. But it did no good.

  ‘What?’ said Lizzie, looking at Sam’s grimacing face.

  ‘That noise,’ yelled Sam. ‘How can you stand it?’

  ‘I can’t hear nothing,’ said Lizzie, confused.

  ‘What? You must do. All them ghosts are crying out. How can you not?’

  ‘I just see their mouths moving,’ whispered Lizzie. ‘I can’t hear nothing.’

  ‘Are you deaf?’ Sam shouted, exasperated.

  ‘I can hear you well enough!’ she said, frowning.

  Sam looked up at Scrooge’s window. The old man had closed it after Marley’s ghost but Sam wondered if he had been composed enough to remember the latch. He hoped not. It would just be a matter of levering it open. He had to get out of this cacophony. It seemed to be inside him now, rattling his very bones.

  Sam climbed up again and peered in. He was right: Scrooge hadn’t put the latch on properly. He hadn’t even closed the curtains on the window, although he had closed all the curtains round his bed so that he was hidden from view. More to the point, as far as Sam was concerned, the old man could not see them either. All they had to do was wait until he was asleep. He climbed back down to Lizzie.

  ‘Not long now, Liz,’ he said.

  ‘What are we waiting for?’ she asked, moving her head round and round as she followed a flying spirit above her. ‘You said there was no one there. I don’t like it here, Sam.’

  ‘You want to go back to that churchyard, do you?’ said Sam angrily. ‘Where do you think all these ghosts are coming from?’

  ‘No . . . but . . .’

  ‘Well, then,’ said Sam.

  The clock on a nearby church began to chime. One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five . . . six . . . seven . . . eight . . . nine . . . ten . . . eleven . . . twelve.

  ‘Twelve?’ said Sam. ‘That can’t be right. It was midnight when we was in that churchyard. I heard the same clock chime the same hour. What the hell’s going on, Liz?’

  Lizzie was startled by the question. Sam had never ever asked her opinion about anything before. Never. Not once. It couldn’t be a good thing that he was asking now.

  There was a sudden burst of light from Scrooge’s bedroom. It was the brightest thing they had ever seen, as though a bomb had noiselessly exploded. It lit up the whole street for an instant, throwing shadows across the fog.

  ‘What was that?’ said Sam, climbing back up to peer through the window.

  When he looked in he saw that the old man’s bed curtains were open. The bed itself was now empty. The door was still closed and little points of light lit up the gloom like fireflies, before they were snuffed out one by one.

  The first of the spirits had arrived as Marley’s ghost had said it would. It must have taken him away somehow. Spirits could probably do anything they liked, thought Sam. He climbed back down to fetch Lizzie.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘There’s no one there, I promise.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Lizzie. ‘I’m too scared.’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ said Sam.

  ‘It’s too far. It’s too high. I’ll fall.’

  ‘You won’t fall, Liz. All you have to do is –’ Sam’s face became suddenly very still and serious.

  ‘Lizzie,’ he said slowly. ‘Don’t turn round.’

  Naturally, Lizzie turned round.

  Sam clamped his hand over Lizzie’s mouth again, but some of her scream still managed to squeeze through his filthy fingers to mingle with the unholy din of the ghostly choir around them. Floating just a few feet away, level with them but hovering above the alleyway they had walked through, was the ghost of a woman, her pale and terrible face contorted by sadness, her hands reaching out towards Lizzie.

  The ghost’s white throat showed a blue lesion, the mark of a rope clearly visible round her neck. Was she hanged, Sam wondered, or had she been driven by misfortune to take her own life? Her face was a portrait of hopelessness, framed in black despair.

  Lizzie almost shoved Sam from the wall in her urgency to access the drainpipe, and no rat could have scaled it quicker. She was over the sill and in through the window before Sam could blink an eye, and he needed no further persuasion to join her as the ghost threw back her head and let out a terrible, despairing moan.

  Sam slammed the window shut behind him. Lizzie was sitting on the rug nearby, sobbing to herself.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘You’re inside now.’

  ‘Those ghosts . . .’

  ‘They ain’t going to bother you in here.’

  Lizzie wiped her nose with her sleeve.

  ‘It ain’t that,’ she said with another sob. ‘They looked so sad, Sam.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked. Although he knew exactly what she meant.

  ‘Their faces,’ she replied, tears dripping down her cheeks. ‘It was horrible, Sam. Horrible.’

  Sam shook his head and sighed.

  ‘Only you could feel sorry for a load of bleeding ghosts, Liz,’ he said. ‘What’s it to you if they’re sad? Maybe they deserve to be sad, eh? Maybe they was horrible people when they was alive.’

  She sniffed and rubbed her eyes.

  ‘But I think that’s why they’re sad. I think they want to help people now and they can’t. Like the ghost what was looking at the woman on the doorstep across the road. I think he wanted to help her but he couldn’t. And that’s why they’re sad. Cos they could have helped when they was alive. And now they can’t.’

  This was the longest speech Sam thought he had ever heard Lizzie give in the entirety of her short life. Why did she care? Why did she still care? It was a mystery to him as inscrutable as the heavens or the fathomless deeps of the sea.

  ‘Look, there’s a fire,’ he said after a while. ‘It ain’t much but it’s something. Go and warm yourself.’

  Lizzie settled herself down, holding her hands over the meagre embers. The pathetic fire seemed to throb, its red glow fluttering and faintly pulsating like a weak heart. Lizzie felt in need of comfort and asked a question she had asked many times before.

  ‘Tell me about the house by the river, Sam.’

  ‘No.’

  This was a response she had heard almost as many times.

  ‘Please . . .’

  ‘No,’ said Sam, more fiercely.

  Lizzie scowled into the hearth. The chimney made a low whimpering noise.

  ‘Just get warm, Liz.’

  ‘What about you? What are you going to do?’

  ‘Me?’ Sam said, pulling the bedding from Scrooge’s bed and lifting the mattress. ‘I’m going on a treasure hunt.’

  Sam set off on a search of every grimy inch of Scrooge’s bedroom, even prising up a loose floorboard and standing on a chest to look at the filthy canopy above the old man’s bed, but he found nothing at all save for dust and cockroaches.

  He sat back, muttering a low, angry incantation of curses. It infuriated him all the more that this man was rich and chose to live in squalor. It was another kind of selfishness. What was the point of having all that money if he wasn’t going to spend it? It was a waste. He didn’t deserve to have it.

  But more to the point, where was it? Where was all the money? It must be somewhere. A man like Scrooge would never trust it to a bank. He wouldn’t trust anyone. Sam wondered if it was all locked away in a safe at Scrooge’s office. But no – he’d want it close. Sam would want it close if it was him.

  And what about the old miser? Perhaps Sam ought to wait until he came back and make the ol
d man tell him where the money was. He smiled to himself at the thought. Put the fear of God into the old devil and see what happened. If he didn’t tell . . . Well – he’d only have himself to blame for what might happen then.

  Lizzie moved away from the fire glow and climbed up on to Scrooge’s bed, which groaned and wheezed as though even her slight weight might force its collapse. She sighed, nestling down into the dusty folds of the counterpane.

  ‘You can’t sleep there,’ said Sam, standing up. ‘Not in his bed. He’ll be back before we know it, and then what? We have to find somewhere else.’

  ‘But . . .’ she murmured, barely awake.

  ‘Lizzie!’ he hissed, tugging at her arm. ‘Come on!’

  Sam half dragged her from the bed and they moved towards the tall panelled door to an adjacent room. Sam expected it to be locked, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it opened with a whine and a creak when he turned the brass knob.

  Scrooge must have a maid who came in while the old man was at work, Sam thought, though she clearly did not live here. Who would want to live with this old fiend? But a frugal fire glimmered faintly in the hearth and gave just enough light to see that the room was surprisingly large, with two sets of curtained windows and a large dining table and chairs.

  Sam wondered why Scrooge felt the need to have such a table. He was sure that the old man never entertained anyone in these rooms. The air was musty and stale.

  Lizzie headed towards the hearth and curled up in front of it like a cat. Sam found a candlestick with the greasy stub of a candle in it, and lit it from the fire. The flame’s glow melted the darkness and revealed previously hidden furniture and details.

  ‘It’s nice to be inside,’ said Lizzie quietly.

  ‘I thought you was asleep,’ said Sam.

  ‘It is though, isn’t it?’ she said sleepily.

  Sam didn’t reply. Of course it was nice to be inside. Nicer than freezing your liver in some graveyard. But how were they going to ever live inside – live inside permanently – unless they did something about it? Scrooge might be their only chance. It couldn’t be right for him to have all that money and them to go without.

  ‘Tell me about the house,’ said Lizzie sleepily.

  ‘I don’t remember,’ said Sam.

  ‘Yes, you do,’ said Lizzie. ‘Please.’

  ‘I’ve told you before,’ he snapped. ‘There ain’t no sense in talking about it. What’s the point?’

  Lizzie was silent for a moment, but Sam could tell the matter was not finished with. He heard her begin to sob quietly to herself.

  ‘For God’s sake, Liz,’ he said. ‘Don’t start that.’

  ‘It’s all right for you,’ she said forlornly. ‘You got those memories. You can remember, but I can’t. Not hardly at all. Don’t be mean, Sam.’

  Sam took a deep breath. Normally he would have ignored her or yelled at her, but for some reason he felt drawn to those memories when normally he avoided letting them in at all cost, because the very imagining of them cut him like a razor. The pain was all but unbearable.

  ‘The house was by a river,’ said Sam at length. ‘It had dark wood weatherboard walls and a thatched roof with a big old chimney stuck through it.’

  Lizzie smiled in the candlelight without opening her eyes.

  ‘It was small but it was big enough for us,’ he continued. ‘It was dark inside on account of the little windows, but we was outside mostly. We was always outside. The air was clean and didn’t taste of metal or coal dust when you breathed it. It felt like you was the first person ever to breathe it.

  ‘It had a garden that went right down to the water,’ he continued. ‘There was ducks there and fish too. You could see pike sometimes hunting in the shadows. There was a vegetable patch where we grew our own food and you and me would hunt for caterpillars on the cabbages and we would take them in a bucket to a place well away and let them go, after making them promise not to come back.’

  He paused there, summoning the courage to conjure up the next image, sun bright, blinding.

  ‘There was a sloping grass bank and Mother used to sing to us there,’ he said, his voice starting to falter. ‘You on her lap and me sat alongside on a blanket. Under a big old willow tree. She’d sing and the little birds would twitter in the trees and bushes and . . .’

  He stopped and closed his eyes.

  ‘Sam?’ said Lizzie.

  He did not reply.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sam,’ said Lizzie. ‘I shouldn’t have made you remember. I know you don’t like to.’

  ‘That’s just it, Liz,’ said Sam. ‘I love to. I love to. But I can’t . . . I ain’t strong enough . . .’

  ‘Sam, I –’

  Lizzie stopped and stared over Sam’s shoulder with a look of utter astonishment on her grimy face. Sam frowned and turned.

  The curtains were open and outside all was darkness. Out of this gloom was appearing, with horrible fluidity, the doom-laden features of Marley’s ghost, floating just outside the windowpane.

  Sam reeled backwards and managed to put a hand over Lizzie’s mouth to stifle the scream. Marley’s ghost loosened the topknot of his scarf and let his jaw flop to his chest.

  ‘What are you doing there?’ he moaned quietly, reaching out a hand towards them. ‘You should not be there!’

  Sam backed away some more, holding on to Lizzie until he collided with the table. But Marley’s ghost did not enter as Sam had assumed he would.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ whispered Sam. ‘You ain’t supposed to be here neither, are you? That’s why you can’t come in.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Lizzie. ‘Do you know who that is?’

  ‘He’s called Marley,’ said Sam. ‘He used to work with Scrooge. When he was alive.’

  ‘You . . . must . . . leave!’ hissed the ghost angrily.

  ‘I don’t think we will,’ said Sam. ‘It’s all right for you out there in the cold. You don’t feel nothing. You’re dead, ain’t you?’

  Marley’s eyes narrowed and a curl twisted his upper lip.

  ‘I think you may be colder than I am, by some degrees,’ said Marley.

  ‘I ain’t sentimental, if that’s what you mean,’ said Sam. ‘It’s a luxury, ain’t it? It’s one we can’t afford. So I don’t care about you or your mates out there, all right?’

  ‘You . . . must . . . leave!’ he hissed again.

  Lizzie whimpered.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Sam, stepping forward and shutting the curtains.

  Lizzie ran to the other side of the room, staring back towards the window, her skinny legs shaking.

  ‘He can’t get in, Liz,’ said Sam.

  ‘How do you know?’ she said.

  ‘Because if he could, he’d be in by now. He was here to tell Scrooge about them spirits, that’s all. He’s no more meant to be here than we are.’

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Lizzie.

  Sam took a deep breath.

  ‘I might have talked to him in the churchyard,’ he said.

  ‘What? Talked to him about what?’

  ‘He says he’s here to help save Scrooge’s soul,’ said Sam. ‘Three spirits are coming and they’re going to show the old prune the error of his ways.’

  Lizzie stared at him.

  ‘And was you ever going to tell me about it?’

  Sam shrugged. Lizzie scowled.

  ‘But he can go through walls. What’s stopping him?’

  ‘I think he’s scared,’ said Sam.

  ‘Scared? What of?’

  Sam shrugged and ground his teeth nervously before replying.

  ‘I don’t know. Those other spirits, I suppose. The ones who are going to teach the old man.’

  It worried Sam, though he did not show it. It worried him that a phantom such as that would be scared. It made him wonder what these spirits must be like.

  ‘Sam!’ she hissed.

  ‘Look,’ said Sam, ‘we’re here now. It’s warmer in here than out ther
e, and old Scrooge can have his soul saved for all I care – I just want some of his loot and –’

  Suddenly a bright flash burst into the room, under the door and round the door and beaming through the keyhole. It was a blue-white light and so intense that even this edited glimpse of it dazzled their eyes.

  ‘He’s back!’ hissed Sam. ‘Quick – under the table!’

  Lizzie needed no further encouragement and the two of them dived under the huge table, turning to peep beneath the tablecloth, which hung almost, but not quite, to the floor.

  The light shone in under the door, raking across the floorboards like a lighthouse beam rakes the waves, picking out every crumb and woodlouse carcass.

  And then nothing.

  The afterglow still hovered in the gloom like a ghost, but the light in Scrooge’s bedroom had gone out. Had he and the spirit left again?

  No. Sam could hear the old miser moving about. Lizzie could hear him too and cuddled nervously into Sam, but Scrooge was climbing into bed, not coming towards them.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ whispered Lizzie.

  ‘He’s going back to bed.’

  ‘I’m so tired, Sam,’ she said tearfully.

  ‘Then go to sleep.’

  ‘But you said I shouldn’t. What if he comes in?’

  ‘He’s not coming in,’ said Sam.

  Lizzie turned her back on her brother and curled up prickly as a hedgehog. Sam knew to leave well alone. Lizzie would come round. She always did. Best to get some sleep.

  One of the tiny fireflies of light came drifting in under the door and Sam reached out and took hold of it.

  The scene could not be more changed. Night was replaced by day, winter by spring. Instead of the soot and grime of the city, here was the greenery of the Kentish countryside. Here was a scene that might make a painter pause and take up his brushes.

  Sam and Lizzie were standing in the garden of the house by the river, inhabiting the memory Sam had earlier described. Under the shade of a willow tree sat their mother and their younger selves.

  ‘Are we dreaming?’ said Lizzie.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Sam. ‘Can we both be dreaming the same dream?’