by James Ponti
“Hold on,” he warned as they took a violent turn. “It’s going to be a bit bumpy!”
The Ghost of Christmas Present cackled as their flying chamber headed for the coast of England and raced over the roiling night sea. Scrooge was terrified as lightning and thunder crackled and boomed beneath them. The spirit zipped them in and out of the massive waves hurtling Scrooge from one side of the room to the other.
“I can’t see a thing,” Scrooge wailed, terrified of where they might be headed.
Suddenly, they spied a lone light cutting through the darkness ahead of them.
“Always go toward the light, Ebenezer,” the ghost intoned. “Toward the light.”
The light came and went. As they got closer, Scrooge realized that it was the beam from a lonely lighthouse built out on a sunken reef where huge waves came crashing down.
Inside the lighthouse, they could see two hardy lighthouse keepers, gray-haired men whose life was spent in quiet solitude away from the world. Still, they had the spirit of Christmas as they drank steaming cups of grog and sang.
A bolt of lightning struck right before Scrooge and the spirit, and when it did, they disappeared into a blinding light only to emerge on a different part of the ocean where things were calm.
“Listen,” whispered the ghost as their room sailed just above the water’s surface and approached a solitary ship at sea. The deck was lit by hundreds of lanterns and candles, and the crew were all topside celebrating the holiday and singing carols.
Each stop along the way made Scrooge more ashamed of his attitude. Finally, the room started climbing higher and higher into the night sky. As it did, the ghost sprinkled his magic dust, and the room started to spin. It spun slowly at first but picked up speed until the walls became a blur of color and light. Finally, there was a blinding flash and Scrooge closed his eyes and braced himself, thinking they were going to crash into the sea.
But they were no longer by the ocean. They were back in London, and when Scrooge dared to open his eyes, he was relieved to see that they were looking down into the parlor of a house. It was smartly decorated for the season, and in its center was a Christmas tree with handmade ornaments and glowing candles.
Scrooge smiled when he realized that this house belonged to his nephew, Fred, who was there with his wife and some family friends. They were all laughing and having a grand time.
Scrooge was not only relieved that they were away from the ocean but that the scene beneath him was pleasant. There were no sickly children or impoverished people to fill his heart with guilt. Maybe the painful part of his lesson was over.
The people were all playing a parlor game called Yes and No in which one person thinks of something and the others try to guess what it is by asking questions that can be answered with either a yes or a no.
“You’re thinking of an animal,” one of Fred’s friends guessed.
“Yes,” Fred answered with a smile.
“A live animal,” guessed his sister-in-law.
“Yes,” Fred said.
Scrooge could not help but get swept up into the game. Like the guests, he, too, tried to figure out what animal Fred had selected.
“A rather disagreeable animal,” guessed Fred’s wife.
“Yes!”
“An animal that growls and grunts?”
“And lives in London?”
Fred nodded and answered yes to both of them.
The guests all tried to think of what growling, disagreeable animals lived in London.
“A horse? A cow? A pig?”
With each of these guesses, Fred laughed and said no.
“A dog?” his wife guessed.
Now Fred really started to laugh.
“Yes and no,” Fred answered.
Everyone was confused for a moment until his wife figured it out.
“I know what it is,” she said with a laugh, and everyone turned to her, including Scrooge, who couldn’t figure it out.
“What is it?”
“It’s your Uncle Scrooge,” she sang, and they all roared with laughter.
“Yes!” he said.
They had obviously talked about Fred’s visit to the countinghouse and all the horrible things that Scrooge had said.
“‘Christmas is a humbug,’” said one of Fred’s friends. “He actually said that?”
Fred nodded. “And he believes it!”
Fred’s wife was still laughing. “More shame on him.”
Scrooge tried to look away, but the ghost would not let him retreat and forced him to keep watching them.
“He’s a comical old fellow, that’s for sure,” Fred continued. “Though not very pleasant.”
“But very rich,” his wife added.
“What of that, my dear?” Fred asked her. “His wealth is of no use to him. He does no good with it. Doesn’t make himself comfortable with it. Is never going to benefit us with it.”
His wife just shook her head. “I have no patience with him.”
“I have,” Fred said. “I’m sorry for him. Who suffers from his ill whims? Only himself. Here he decides to dislike us and won’t come and dine with us. What’s the consequence? He loses a dinner.”
“Indeed, he loses a very good dinner,” Fred’s wife said proudly.
One of the guests raised his glass for a toast. “Here, here,” he said. “A magnificent dinner.”
The room filled with laughter as everyone else raised their glasses and toasted along.
Although enjoying himself, Fred could not help but think of his sad uncle. “He has certainly given us plenty of merriment, that’s for sure,” he said. “And it would be ungrateful not to drink to his health. He wouldn’t take it from me, but he may have it nevertheless. A merry Christmas to the old man, whatever he is. To Uncle Scrooge!”
He raised his cup again and everyone did likewise.
“To Uncle Scrooge.”
Scrooge did not know what to make of the scenes that had played out beneath him. As much as they hurt, he knew they were right to speak of him that way. Yet, Cratchit still toasted him, and his nephew still wished him good cheer. Scrooge’s beloved sister, Fan, had passed her good heart on to Fred.
Suddenly, the parlor beneath them started to transform, and their flying room broke free and headed off to their final destination. Scrooge was terrified of what might come next.
They reappeared inside a dark and eerie clock tower. There was no sign of their flying room. Instead, they were among the churning gears and counterweights that ran the massive timepiece. Moonlight shone through the clock’s face so that even though they were behind it, Scrooge could see that it was one minute to midnight.
He noticed that the ghost’s torch had now burned out and that his face had grown very old. His once curly brown hair was now white as snow.
“Are spirit’s lives so short?” Scrooge asked him.
The Ghost of Christmas Present looked at Ebenezer. “My life upon this globe is very brief,” he said in a creaking voice. “It ends tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“Tonight at midnight,” he continued. “Hark! The time is drawing near.”
They were interrupted by a loud clacking sound as the clock’s machinery sputtered to life, about to signal midnight.
Scrooge looked back at the ghost and noticed a scrawny, skeletal talon poking out from the bottom of the spirit’s robe.
“Forgive me, but I see something strange protruding from your skirt,” he said. “Is it a foot or a claw?”
“It might be a claw,” the spirit said. “For the scant amount of flesh there is upon it. Look here.”
The spirit whipped open his robe to reveal two ragged, dirty children—a boy and a girl—angrily scowling and clutching onto the ghost’s ankles.
Scrooge jumped back.
“Look here,” the spirit wailed. “Look down here.”
“Spirit?” Scrooge asked. “Are they yours?”
“They are man’s,” replied the ghost. “This
boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware of them both.”
They grasped deeper into his ankle, and the spirit let loose a cry of anguish and pain.
“Have they no refuge?” Scrooge asked, pleading. “No resource?”
The massive clock began to chime the change in hour. Midnight had arrived, and the spirit began gasping. His day on Earth was almost over.
Suddenly, the boy transformed into a phantom reflection of his adult self. He was angry and menacing, a sinister thug who brandished a butcher knife.
“‘Are there no prisons?’” the phantom said, mirroring the words Scrooge spoke to the men who’d come to his countinghouse seeking donations.
Next, the girl transformed into a specter of her future self. She was ugly and cackling, her tragic face caked with grotesque makeup.
“‘Are there no workhouses?’” she said, echoing Scrooge’s other retort to the men.
That’s when Scrooge realized they represented his Ignorance, his Want. These demons were projections of his own dark and sinister heart.
Scrooge reeled back in terror as the hammer continued to strike the bells inside the clock. Finally, the hammer struck for a twelfth and final time. Midnight had arrived, and the once mighty Ghost of Christmas Present gasped his final breath. He died before Scrooge, and his body dissolved first into a corpse, then into a skeleton, and finally into sparkling dust. The tremor of the final bell toll rattled the floor and scattered the dust.
Scrooge was now all alone in the clockworks.
Ebenezer tried to catch his breath, but he noticed something that caused him to panic. The moonlight cast a long shadow of him, and before his eyes that shadow began to come alive and separate into two.
One of the shadows continued to grow and grow, its massive form perfectly silhouetted by the full moon. Scrooge trembled as he looked upon this phantom shadow, for he knew what it was and he knew it was the one thing he feared most.
The inner workings of the clock had quieted, and Scrooge trembled with fear as he stared at the phantom specter growing larger in front of his eyes. This spirit had no face or features of any kind. It was just a dark shadow that loomed above him ominously.
Scrooge dropped to his knees and clasped his hands together. “Am I in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come?” he asked, his teeth chattering.
The specter did not move or respond in any way. Despite the silence, Scrooge knew exactly what stood before him.
“You are about to show me shadows of the things that have not yet happened but will happen,” Scrooge exclaimed. “Is that so, spirit?”
Scrooge shook uncontrollably, but the ghost remained perfectly silent and still.
“Ghost of the future,” he said, near tears, “I fear you more than any specter I have seen! But I know your purpose is to do me good. I am prepared to bear you company. Lead me.”
The spirit still refused to move or respond in the slightest, and this silence shook Scrooge to the core. This was the visit he had been dreading the most, and he wanted to get it over with.
“The night is waning fast,” Scrooge told the specter. “It’s precious time to me. Lead on, spirit.”
The anger in Scrooge’s voice enraged the spirit. Suddenly it tore its silhouette away from the surface of the mist and lunged directly at Scrooge.
Terrified, Scrooge fell backward, but rather than hit the floor, he continued to fall, tumbling head over heels down a long and narrow spiral staircase.
It was an agonizing fall, and Scrooge slammed his head and tailbone into step after step before mercifully coming to a stop at the stairway’s bottom.
When he caught his breath and sat up, he found himself outside the entrance to the Royal Exchange. This relieved him greatly. Scrooge was proud to be a member of the exchange and when he looked up he saw three men who he recognized, although he could not quite remember their names. They had no awareness of him or of the fact that he had just passed right through their bodies when he landed.
“When did he die?” asked one.
“Last night I believe,” another answered. “Or sometime on Christmas Day.”
The third man just shook his head. “I thought he’d never die. What was the matter with him?”
“God knows,” the first said with a yawn.
The second man raised an eyebrow as he asked, “What’s he done with his money?”
“He hasn’t left it to me,” one answered with a shrug. “That’s all I know.”
This was greeted by a laugh, and Scrooge could not help but wonder why the spirit wanted him to hear such trivial conversation. They weren’t even interested in the dead man, why should he be?
“It’s likely to be a cheap funeral,” the third one said. “I don’t know anyone who’d go to it.”
“I don’t mind going,” one said with a laugh. “If a lunch is provided.”
Still dazed by his fall, Scrooge staggered up to his feet. Maybe he was supposed to wander outside the exchange and find a conversation that would help him with his lesson. But when he got up to do so, all of the people who had lined the street disappeared. Suddenly, Ebenezer Scrooge was all alone on Threadneedle Street. Snow fell silently, and Scrooge looked for any signs of life.
All he saw was the spirit’s shadow slithering over the stairs of the exchange. When he turned to see the phantom itself, there were only the flickering gaslights that lined the street.
This spirit was nothing more than a shadow. Scrooge looked at it, and the finger of the shadow pointed down the street. Ebenezer followed its path and saw a horse-drawn hearse appear at the end of the street.
Scrooge wondered if perhaps it had something to do with the dead man the three were just talking about. Then he recognized it. It was the hearse that had pulled Jacob Marley to his grave seven years ago. It was the same ghostly hearse that had chased Scrooge up the stairs of his house earlier that Christmas Eve.
When the horses turned toward Scrooge, steam rose off their warm bodies and from their flaring nostrils.
Scrooge gulped and slowly backed away. The shadowy finger turned and pointed right at him.
With a crack of the whip from the driver, the horses started pulling the hearse down the street, charging straight for Scrooge.
Ebenezer tried to scurry out of the way, but his slippers had no traction and no matter how fast he pumped his legs, they flailed uselessly.
The horses increased their gallop and continued right toward him, the driver carefully righting the hearse as its wheels slid side to side along the icy road.
Scrooge’s slippers finally gained a shred of traction, and he started running wildly away from the oncoming hearse.
It was too late.
As the vehicle reached him, the driver stood for a final crack of the whip. But this one was aimed at Scrooge himself. It cracked just above his head with a thunderous roar that literally shook him to the bone. The shock wave echoed throughout the street, and in its wake buildings melted and cobblestones shattered. The entire world seemed to collapse upon the terrified old man.
Scrooge held his head in agony and crumpled to the ground. As he did, Threadneedle Street ceased to exist and the setting changed into a dark and dirty alleyway.
In the alleyway, everything seemed to be growing. Buildings stretched out of proportion. People stretched into gigantic shapes. Then Scrooge realized that they weren’t growing—he was shrinking. He was getting smaller by the second, but he had no time to consider this because the hearse continued to chase him.
He looked back over his shoulder and saw that the spirit was now driving the hearse. And as the stallions’ hooves slammed the cobblestones around him, Scrooge saw the phantom leap from the hearse and straddle the backs of the horses.
By this time, Scrooge was no bigger than a rat, and the spirit reached its shadowy arm down to the ground and grabbed him, surrounding him in darkness.
After a long moment, the darkness gave way to the tiniest bit of light and Scrooge was once again his
normal size. He found himself in a cold and dreary room, devoid of almost all color. In the middle of the room was a bed. A shaft of unearthly pale light outlined a human form covered by an old, ragged sheet. It was, Scrooge knew instantly, the dead man of whom the others had spoken so contemptuously.
A candle flickered on the nightstand by the bed and cast a shadow of the phantom on the wall. The spirit pointed its finger at the body, for Scrooge to look.
“This is a fearful place,” he told the spirit. “When I leave it, I shall not leave its lesson. Trust me. Let’s go.”
Once again, the phantom pointed toward the body.
“I understand, and I would if I could,” Scrooge said, terrified to look at the face of the corpse. “But I have not the power.”
The ghost turned so that its unseen eyes were focused right on Scrooge.
Ebenezer could not bear the sight of this dead body left all alone, with no one to mourn or miss him. He was almost certain that the body was his.
“If there is any person who feels emotion caused by this man’s death,” he pleaded, “show that person to me. I beg you.”
Suddenly, a burst of light enveloped them, and when it passed, Scrooge and the phantom were inside a modest home. Scrooge did not recognize the house or the young mother rocking a baby in her arms. A door opened and her husband walked in.
This man also seemed completely unfamiliar, and Scrooge could not figure out how this family might feel emotion at the death of the man he feared was himself.
“Is it good or bad?” the woman asked.
“Bad,” the man said, biting his lip.
The woman looked down at the floor. “Are we ruined?”
“No,” her husband answered. “There is hope yet.”
She shook her head. “Only if he relents.”
“He’s past relenting,” said the man, now beginning to smile. “He’s dead.”
“Thank God,” the woman shouted with glee. Moments later she felt guilty for greeting the news this way and asked a silent prayer of forgiveness.
“To whom will our debts be transferred?” she continued.
“I don’t know. But then we’ll be ready with the money,” he assured her. “And even if we’re not, it’s unlikely any new creditor could ever be so merciless. We can sleep tonight with light hearts.”
