A Christmas Cameron

by Benedict Arthur

  The man reached into his inside pocket and pulled out several ten pound notes. He held the notes aloft and shouted “It’s worth fifty quid”

  With those words Samantha stopped.

  “No!” shouted David. “Don’t stop – just go to school!”

  Sam turned and walked back towards the man.

  “Good girl” he said. “You go to St Mary’s right?”

  “Yes”

  “Ok, well I’ve got this friend who lives just a street down from there. Here’s the address” He handed her a small piece of folded paper. “I need you to give him this. I’d do it myself but I’ve got too much on today and like I said, I want to do you a little favour.” He handed her a small parcel covered in brown paper and wrapped tightly in several further layers of clear tape. “Just give him this, he’ll know who it’s from. Here’s ten pounds.”

  “You said fifty” said Sam holding the parcel in her left hand.

  “I’ll give you the rest when it’s delivered” said the man coldly.

  “What is it?” asked Sam.

  “That’s private” he replied, at first with an irritated tone, but as he continued, his voice softened. “You know that I’d never get you doing anything dodgy don’t you? I’m not like that.”

  Sam glanced up at him briefly before reluctantly taking her rucksack down from her shoulder and placing the parcel inside. “Ok” she said, before turning and carrying on her walk to school.

  The man watched her leave the square before turning and walking over to a phone booth at the opposite end. He slotted a ten pence piece into the meter and dialled a number. “Hello it’s me. Yeah she’s got the gear- she’s put in in her rucksack. Yeah, she’ll be passing yours in about ten minutes. Yeah, fine, cheers.” He hung up the phone and walked off the square.

  “Spirit, I get the point.” David said. “I really don’t want to see any more. I politely request that you convey me back to my quarters.”

  “Not yet” replied the spirit. He grasped David once again by the wrist and with firm persuasion led him in the direction that Sam had walked. They found her walking through a quiet street flanked on either side by empty warehouses and waste ground. David was filled with a great anxiety which receded slightly when he saw an elderly couple and a dog at the far end of the street walking towards them.

  Suddenly, a man dressed all in black, his head covered by a hood and his face hidden beneath a scarf, darted out from behind one of the buildings and headed straight towards Sam. Seeing the man, she managed to run a few steps before he was upon her, knocking her to the ground. With one hand, he grabbed Sam by the back of her neck, and pressed her face into the frozen ground. With his free hand, he brutally twisted her right arm back causing her to cry out in pain. From the twisted arm he easily removed Sam’s backpack before retreating back into the shadows. Sam lay motionless, face down on the cold ground.

  David looked around. The old couple he had seen in the distance were gone. He took a step forward towards Sam but was halted by the hand of the spirit upon his shoulder. Suddenly, he found himself back in the small flat, in Sam’s bedroom. It was night time once again and Sam was sat on the edge of her bed wearing a long grey T-shirt as a nightgown. She was staring at her hands wondering how she was going to explain her injuries to her father without arousing a rare flare of anger or worse, anxiety. Her hands were covered in small grazes and her left eye was bruised and swollen from where it had impacted with the concrete. She was also having spasms of sharp pain in her shoulder every time she moved her right arm.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door. At first she ignored it but when it came again and again she reluctantly went out into the hall.

  “Who is it?” she said in a shaky voice.

  “It’s me Sam” she recognised the voice as belonging to the man from the square. “I’ve come to check you’re ok – my friend never got his parcel – I was worried that something might have happened to you.”

  Sam thought she could detect a genuine concern in his voice. “I’m fine” she said, “I’m really sorry, I got mugged and someone stole my bag.”

  “Oh God! That’s terrible” continued the man. “Are you ok? Open the door Sam I’d really like to see that you’re ok. Don’t worry about the parcel.”

  Sam turned the latch on the door lock. As soon as it was turned the door burst open, hitting Sam in the face. The man strode into the flat closing the door behind him. He grabbed Sam by the arm and dragged her into her bedroom, throwing her onto her bed.

  “Where’s my stuff Sam?” he demanded. Sam cowered on the bed, her body curled up in a foetal position.

  “I told you, I got mugged, I’m sorry – you told me it wasn’t anything important.”

  “Are you stupid?” shouted the man “Why would I give you fifty quid to deliver something that wasn’t important?”

  “I’m sorry” said Sam, shaking.

  “Sorry doesn’t cut it. You owe me now girl.”

  Sam dropped her hands slowly from her face revealing only her eyes. “You know we don’t have any money” she said quietly.

  “Well you’ll just have to pay me another way” he said looking her up and down “unless you want me to get payment from your Dad.”

  “No please, don’t do that” Sam pleaded.

  “Right then” said the man. “Well you’d better keep quiet then”. He climbed onto the bed and grabbed Sam by the legs, flipping her onto her back and pulling her down towards him. He held both of her arms by the wrist and pinned them behind her head using his right hand. With his left, he began to lift her grey T-shirt.

  “Please spirit” David cried turning his face away, “no more.”

  At that moment, a key turned in the lock of the front door.

  “DAAAD!” screamed Sam.

  In an instant, John entered the bedroom. Upon seeing the man laid on top of his screaming daughter, John was, for a moment, restored with the strength of his departed youth. He grabbed the man by his hair and jerked his neck sharply backwards, pulling the man’s entire body off his daughter in the motion of a wide, painful gymnastic arc. He dragged the man by his hair into the hall and punched him hard in the nose with a sickening crunch. The man cried out and cupped his hands to his face. Blood began to ooze through his fingers. He man stumbled to his feet and scrambled out of the front door which John slammed behind him.

  “Oh Sam!” said John, gathering her up in his arms. “Did he hurt you?” Sam sat cradled in her father’s arms as he rocked her gently back and forth.

  David slumped down onto the floor. He rested his elbows on his bent knees and let his head sag towards

  “Spirit!” he said without looking up, “show me no more. Conduct me home. Why do you delight to torture me?”

  “One shadow more” said the Ghost.

  “No more!” cried David looking up at the spirit. “No more. I don’t wish to see it. Show me no more!”

  But the relentless Ghost held David by his arm and made him stand. He then pinioned him in both his arms, and forced him to observe what happened next.

  --

  The room in which they were stood, began to spin until everything was a blur; but David felt none of the physical sensation that one would expect were the world to suddenly spin so fast.

  When the world came to halt, David observed that they were still in the same bedroom but Sam and John had vanished. He glanced at the ghost and was about to speak when there was a frantic knock at the door. “Hello, paramedics!” came the call from outside. David watched as Sam darted past and opened the front door. The paramedics rushed into the house in a blur of neon yellow and green. They stopped in the living room where John was slumped in his favourite chair, his head was lolled to one side and his skin was a terrible, deathly pale.

  “I found him like this when I woke up” said Sam sobbing. She appeared a little taller and slightly more like a woman than when David had last seen her, suggesting the passage of at least another year of time.<
br />
  “Hello, sir, can you hear me?” said a young male paramedic, kneeling down and gently shaking John by the leg. John let out a barely audible groan.

  The older female paramedic pressed her fingers into John’s neck, just to the side of his windpipe. “He’s got a pulse – but only just” she said. “I think we should just scoop and run with this one, I don’t think we’ll be able to do much on our own up here.”

  “Ok” said her colleague.

  David watched helplessly as the Paramedics, aided by Sam, heaved John out of his chair and onto a stretcher. The three of them struggled to carry his large frame out into the cold, misty winter’s morning, down the walkway and into the one functioning elevator. They eventually loaded John into the ambulance and sped away towards the nearest Accident & Emergency department, sirens blaring out into the chilly air.

  It is said that humans have a certain fascination with abomination and so it was that David watched the events that unfolded in a kind of awestruck trance. He watched as the ambulance returned to the hospital like an itinerant cub returning to the protection of its mother. He watched as the doctors and nurses and porters worked as a single organism, extracting John from the ambulance, conveying him to the resuscitation room, piercing his neck and arms with great needles, pouring in bags of borrowed blood to fill his collapsing veins and finally frantically pumping his chest to try and prevent the escape of his last breath.

  The trance ended when David witnessed the news of John’s death being conveyed to Sam. One of the senior female doctors, a short, thin woman with hair pulled back into a convenient, tight ponytail and dressed in a green uniform had emerged from the resuscitation room and walked into the family room where Sam was sat alone at the centre of a row of plastic orange seats that were bolted to the pale blue wall. A member of staff had given her a blanket which was draped around her shoulders.

  There is no easy way to tell a sixteen year old girl that she is now alone in the world. Even more difficult, is giving an explanation as to why. The doctor had a very kindly manner and placed her arm around Sam as she sobbed into the blanket. The doctor gently spun together a story linking the recent discovery of a random bacterial infection that affects the stomach, causing stomach ulcers, which cause pain like heartburn, which can sometimes bleed, which can sometimes bleed so heavily as to cause a person to die. Attributing the blame to a bacterium, too small and abstract an object to become a focus of anger, was an unintentional kindness.

  “Karōshi” said the ghost who was standing just behind David.

  “Pardon me?” said David, startled, for the ghost had been silent for some time.

  “In Japan they would have called this by its true name -Karōshi: Death from overwork” said the ghost.

  “But the doctor just explained, it was a bacterium” went David’s attempted rebuke.

  “Believe what you will” replied the ghost.

  David placed his hands over his face and rubbed his tired eyes. When he eventually parted his fingers, the scenes before him began to move faster – more like a film-reel now than the observance of events in real time. He saw Sam at her father’s funeral, a girl dressed as a woman in black. She was alone except for a few people from Southern Steel who had come to pay their respects. As John’s humble casket was lowered into the ground, he saw the tears stream down Sam’s face and he saw her knuckles turn white as she desperately squeezed her father’s old black journal between her fingers. He listened with horror to the words of the council housing officer as she explained to Sam that she fell into a ‘grey zone’ and that she could apply for her own residence as she was now sixteen but that it would take months, maybe even years. She continued by explaining that the flat she had shared with her father had already been reallocated and that she would have to be out before new year, but that she was sure that a pretty girl of her age would have lots of friends she could stay with for a while. David screamed at Sam, admonishing her to explain to the officer that she had no-one and needed a place now but Sam simply nodded at the officers words and left without protest.

  --

  In the final scene, David watched as Sam crossed the square beneath the flat. A light snow had draped a soft white sheet over the grey concrete allowing Sam’s footsteps to leave their light prints in a slanting line transecting the square.

  “Sam!” came the shout from a familiar but not welcome voice.

  “No! Please no!” said David as he watched the black haired man jog over to Sam again cutting off her path across the square.

  “Hi Sam” he said. She said nothing in reply but simply stared at the floor.

  “Look, I was really sorry to hear about your dad. I know we had that misunderstanding last year but you know, sorry.”

  “Thanks” she replied flatly. She stepped to one side as if to go round the man but he put out a hand and gently held her in place.

  “Listen, if there’s anything I can do. If you need a place to stay or a bit of work, I can help. You’ll need someone to look after you now right?”

  Still Sam remained silent.

  “Well think it over. I’m in flat 367” and with that, to David’s great relief, the man turned and left.

  Sam avoided the elevator and instead climbed the many flights of stairs that led to the floor where her soon to be former flat was situated. She went inside and still in her winter coat, sat down in her Dad’s armchair. She took down her Dad’s old journal and opened it at John’s last entry. It was a short quote that he had copied from Albert Camus. She smiled for a brief moment at the familiarity of her dad’s , cursive writing strokes.

  In the midst of winter,

  I finally learned,

  That there was within me,

  An Invincible Summer.

  Sam closed the book. She got up and walked into her bedroom and took down a small black hold-all from the top of her wardrobe. She packed some clothes and a picture of her and John taken in the summer of that year in Hyde Park. In the photo, Sam hugs her Dad tightly and they are both smiling but squinting at the same time from the bright sunshine. On top of the contents of the bag she placed John’s old journal.

  Sam walked out of her old home and closed the door. She set out across the square again and up a flight of stairs that ascended the opposite rise. Eventually she arrived at flat 367. David watched in dismay as she knocked. After a few moments the door opened just a chink and a single, dark, beady eye peered out from within.

  “Sam!” exclaimed a surprised voice. The door closed and after the safety chain had been removed the black haired man opened it fully and glanced both ways along the walkway checking that Sam had come unaccompanied. The man looked at Sam standing in his doorway and a wry smile spread across his face.

  “Come in!” he said stepping to one side and raising his arm, gesturing towards the inside of the flat. As Sam stepped across the threshold, David reached out as if to grab and try and stop her but his arm passed through her shoulder and she carried on unhindered. Inside the flat, three other men were sat on a sofa in the living room. Empty food boxes were strewn all about the floor and the coffee table in the centre of the room was covered in cigarette ends. The whole place smelled heavily of cigarette smoke and another smoky smell that Sam didn’t recognise.

  “Gentlemen, this is Sam. She’s going to be staying with us for a while”

  One of the men looked Sam up and down and then looked her straight in the eyes. His gaze filled her with dread so she looked away into a corner of the room. “Come on, let’s get you settled in.” The black haired man grasped Sam by the wrist and led her towards his bedroom. The two of them went inside and he closed the door.

  Just before the door closed completely Sam glanced backwards over her shoulder and seemed to look David straight in the eye. Much was said with that simple glance and David was suddenly overcome with a deep sadness; a sorrow that felt as if an enormous void had opened in his very core. He felt, that if there was anything he could have done in that moment to fill th
at void, any drug he could have taken or any depraved action he could have pursued, then he would have done it straight away; without hesitation – and certainly without the interjection of reason.

  “Spirit!” said David in a broken voice, “remove me from this place.”

  “I told you these were shadows of the things that have been,” said the Ghost. “That they are what they are, do not blame me – they are the fruits of the ideas that you worship.”

  “Remove me!” David exclaimed, “I cannot bear it!”

  He turned upon the Ghost, and saw that its face, in some strange way seemed to carry fragments of all the faces it had shown him. David lunged out as if to grab the ghost.

  “Leave me! Take me back. Haunt me no longer!”

  In the struggle, if that can be called a struggle in which the Ghost had to exert only very little effort, David noticed that the light on its head was burning very high and bright. He suddenly associated the light with the ghost’s power over him, so he seized the extinguisher-cap, and by a sudden action pressed it down upon its head.