Somehow this eccentric behaviour blackened Sam’s mood still further. It outraged him. It goaded him. Why should a witless old fool like this live in comfort and plenty whilst they starved and froze?
A crisp, wintery contempt for the old man settled on Sam’s heart like a rime of frost that all the heat of the Indies could not have melted. It felt good. All these years of hating the world had made him feel powerless, but now he had but one target. He would make this one man pay and that would be enough.
Yet for all the mounting violence of his thoughts, Sam did not launch his attack. He felt a sudden unfamiliar heaviness in his legs. The old man had gone inside and closed the door behind him before Sam was able to cross the yard. He walked towards the door and looked at the knocker hanging there. It was an ugly thing to be sure, with a strange face, its features caught somewhere betwixt man and lion, a dull brass ring clamped between its teeth. Sam stood there staring so long that Lizzie tugged the sleeve of his jacket.
‘Sam?’ she said. ‘Sam?’
He snapped out of his trance at the sound of Lizzie’s weak and plaintive voice. He looked around and pointed to a tall, old, arched iron gate on the other side of the cobbled yard.
‘Come on, Liz,’ he said. ‘Over here.’
The gate opened with a reluctant, guttural groan that seemed disconcertingly human, and they squeezed through to find themselves in a walled churchyard, soot-blackened headstones all about them etched with skulls and hourglasses and other such reminders of mortality. Black and leafless trees stood here and there like clutching hands. Sam walked up to the chapel door, but it was locked and with a lock that was not going to be shifted or broken.
‘Here,’ said Sam, walking back to Lizzie. ‘This’ll have to do.’
He was pointing at a tomb that had once stood like a great stone bed, etched all over with moss-filled letters telling the story of the man whose body lay forgotten by all but the worms. It was now in a state of partial collapse, one side having fallen away to make a little web-strewn cave beneath the huge slab.
The quiet churchyard was sheltered by walls and the church itself, and the tombstone cave added a little more. It was a grim place to spend the night, but they had slept in worse. They squeezed together for warmth as the fog thickened around them.
Sam marvelled at how easily Lizzie could fall asleep, no matter the circumstances. He felt the length of lead piping he had picked up on the waste ground by Scrooge’s office. It felt colder and even heavier now. He clung to it as a small child might cling to a favourite doll.
Sam woke with a start, bumping his head on the stone slab above him. He took a few seconds to remember where he was, but he could see nothing in the gloom that shouldn’t have been there. Lizzie was still breathing gently beside him. All seemed as well as could be, so he settled back down to sleep.
But no sooner had he closed his eyes than a low moan emanated from somewhere nearby. Yes – that was the noise that had woken him, he realised. Was it the gate? he wondered. Was a constable or church warden coming to turf them out? On Christmas Eve? Unlikely. They would all be snugly at home with their loved ones.
The moan sounded again, more loudly this time, and Sam knew straight away it was not the old hinges of any gate. For one thing, it was coming from under the ground. He could feel it, as well as hear it.
Sam shifted his position and peered out from their hideaway. On the opposite side of the snow-covered pathway was a plain, arched headstone. The stone bore the name and dates of the man whose bones lay beneath, but Sam could not read them.
The groan came again and the little linked chain that marked the boundary of that grave now rattled, sending showers of sparkling frost to the ground.
Sam tried to make sense of it. His thoughts seemed to blunder about his head like men in a dark room. A shaking of the ground – what did they call it? . . . A quake . . . an earthquake! Is that what this was? An earthquake?
But even as he wondered if the buildings all about would come crashing down around them, with old Scrooge and his money buried under his own house, and Sam and Lizzie buried under the rubble of the church, something started to emerge from the ground in front of the headstone.
Sam stared wide-eyed with incredulity as the mysterious translucent dome became, by slow degrees, the forehead, eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth and chin of a long and cheerless face, all bound together by a scarf wrapped under the chin and tied in a bow atop a balding head.
The head was not alone. Shoulders soon appeared, clothed in a worn black topcoat, and then a matching chest with dull buttons down the front and a waistcoat and watch chain, and britches and boots and, lo and behold, a whole man now stood there.
Not a whole man in truth – for much of what he was and had been still lay beneath the earth he had been planted in. Sam could glimpse the headstone through the man’s legs – and not due to his standing with his legs apart, but on account of his legs and his britches being not quite as solid as they might be, so that for Sam it was like looking through a picture of a saint on a stained-glass window.
Those saints of old often carry something with them in those pictures – the instrument of their martyrdom in many cases – and this figure, noticed Sam, carried something of that kind too. He held a great length of rusting iron chains, the like of which a murderous convict would be forced to wear, but with links so grim and mighty they could just as readily have been used to moor a convict ship as to restrain the felons who were caged aboard her.
The ghost – for Sam could reach no other conclusion, try as he might, that this was indeed a phantom of some sort – gave another terrible, low, gurgling groan and shivered, jangling his massive chains, and every one of Sam’s nerves to boot. Sam lost his grip on the stone to which he had been clinging and tumbled out on to the path at the spectre’s feet.
He glanced at Lizzie, who slept on oblivious, and then up at the fearful apparition looming above him. The apparition, for his part, slowly looked down, cocking his head and raising a ghostly eyebrow as though regarding a particularly malformed breed of pigeon.
Then all at once he puffed out his translucent chest and lurched forward, the sole of his boot falling towards Sam’s face like a black sack.
Sam cried out, but the boot passed through him without harm, although not without some sensation. It did not cause him pain, but he felt a damp, chill wind blowing through his head and with it an awful, aching sadness and longing of a degree and keenness he had rarely felt, however low his fortunes had fallen.
The ghost walked on, dragging the chains behind him like the train of a bridal robe. They too passed through Sam’s prone body with a similar sensation, but with added sound, as the links scraped and rattled one against the other. It was a noise so jarring and unsettling that Sam did not think he could bear it another second, and he instinctively reached out to grab them.
To his great surprise, despite their insubstantial appearance, his hands gained enough purchase on the chains to grab hold, and as the ghost took his next step, the chain tightened and brought him to a halt.
The spectre stood there a moment, his back to Sam, his head bowed a little, his whole body framed within the arched gateway through which Sam and Lizzie had entered. Then he turned slowly and walked back. Sam dropped the chains and tried to get up, but the chains still lay across his legs and seemed to weigh him down.
The ghost stopped in front of him, reached up to the top of his head with both hands and untied the knot in the scarf. Before Sam could say a word, the scarf came loose, and with it the ghost’s lower jaw. The chin now dropped to his chest, his huge mouth lolling open like the entrance to hell itself.
‘No . . . no . . . please,’ muttered Sam, putting his hands over his face. ‘I can’t . . . This can’t . . . I must be dreaming.’
‘Who are you?’ said the ghost, his voice seeming to arrive on that same sad and chill wind that had passed through Sam a moment before. It came from the ghost’s mouth, but it also came from everywhere.
And nowhere. It swirled around the churchyard, pursued by its own feeble echo.
‘Sam,’ he replied. ‘Sir.’
‘And what business do you have with me?’ said the ghost.
The words chased each other through the headstones.
‘I don’t,’ said Sam. ‘I just . . . I don’t even know what – who – you are.’
‘I was that man once.’ The ghost pointed to the headstone by the grave from which he had risen. ‘Do you see my marker? Do you see the name writ there upon it?’
Sam looked and nodded. The ghost raised a sceptical eyebrow.
‘You cannot read?’
Sam shook his head. The ghost frowned.
‘Jacob Marley was my name in life, boy. I was much taken with it when I lived. I no longer know the reason why. Such vanities are a forgotten thing to me now.’
Marley? Sam was sure he had heard the name before but could not for the moment place it.
‘That filthy headstone, unloved by all but frost and moss, is all there is to show I ever walked these streets. I left no children to mourn my passing.’
The ghost shook his head wearily and muttered something Sam did not catch.
‘But I must away,’ he resumed. ‘Time moves on and I have a soul to save. Or at least I have a part to play in its salvation. Or possible salvation, at any rate . . .’
The voice trailed away.
‘How about lifting these chains off me before you go?’ said Sam. ‘I don’t like to bother you, but them things make a dreadful din, you know. Goes right through you.’
Marley’s ghost nodded and stooped over, lifting up a length of the chains and letting Sam scrabble free. Then he threw the chains over one shoulder like a cloak.
‘What’s the story with the chains anyway?’ said Sam, feeling a little emboldened now he was free. ‘Are you on a leash?’
Again the unearthly voice surged up from the black cave of the spectre’s mouth.
‘No,’ said Marley’s ghost. ‘The chains are not to bind me. They are to remind me.’
The word ‘remind’ echoed around the graveyard, bouncing from tombstone to tombstone.
‘Remind you of what?’ said Sam. ‘Are you – were you – a blacksmith or something? Or maybe you were buried under a load of chains. Is that how you, er, you know . . . ?’
Marley’s ghost closed his eyes for a moment and seemed lost in memories.
‘No,’ he replied. ‘I did not die in a shipyard accident. Nor did I spend my days at the forge. I was nothing so skilled nor so useful. I was a money man. I worked not far from here in a counting house. We lent money to those who needed it and charged them steeply for the privilege. You know the sort of man?’
Sam nodded grimly. He had seen their work. Half the people on the streets were there with a little help from money men. Sam and Lizzie were among their number.
‘These are the chains I forged for my soul in life and these are the chains I am bound to wear in death. Every link on them I made myself – not by a blacksmith’s skill and honest labour, but rather through my own greed and selfishness. I had not even the wit to be happy at another man’s expense; I simply sought to be richer, as though that, of itself, were some kind of achievement. Never was there a more pointless existence.’
Sam’s own existence felt far more pointless but he decided not to debate the point. The ghost seemed to read his mind.
‘But do not think these chains are bought with gold lust, boy,’ he said. ‘These links are not forged in heat, but by cold hearts. Money-making gives you the means to be heartless, but it doesn’t give you a monopoly on heartlessness. You have a chain yourself if you could but see it.’
‘What?’ said Sam, looking down at his feet.
‘Yes,’ said Marley’s ghost, peering at Sam and nodding. ‘And while it’s not as long as mine, it’s longer than it ought to be for one so young.’
‘Well, that ain’t fair!’ said Sam.
Marley’s ghost shrugged and took out his pocket watch.
‘I have no time to parley with the likes of you, lad,’ he said, turning away and heading for the gateway once again. ‘This is my purpose and I must do as I am bid. Three spirits will follow me. The first will show the past, the second of them the present and the third will reveal the future. They shall show this man the error of his ways.’
‘Yeah?’ said Sam, still trying to see the invisible chain he was supposed to have about him. ‘Who’s that then?’
‘My old partner in the firm,’ said the ghost, passing through the bars of the gate without opening it. ‘Ebenezer Scrooge.’
Sam jumped to his feet as the ends of Marley’s chains rattled by like metal pythons. Marley was already halfway across the yard, his feet sinking into the ground at each step. By the time Sam reached the churchyard gates, Marley was only visible from the chest up and he moved forward as though wading out to sea.
‘You mean to say you’re going to help that old miser?’ yelled Sam. ‘You’re here to save that sinner? Why does he get a second chance? Let him rot in hell if that’s what he’s good for. Let him get crushed under a mountain of chains. It ain’t fair!’
But Marley’s ghost walked on without regard for the fairness of the situation and heedless of Sam’s outraged cries. Now there was just the top of Marley’s head, the scarf retied; now there was nothing.
‘It – ain’t – fair!’ yelled Sam.
‘What ain’t?’ said a voice behind him. Sam turned to see Lizzie rubbing her eyes and squinting at him suspiciously. ‘Who are you yelling at?’
‘Everyone,’ he muttered darkly. ‘Every-stinking-one.’
When Lizzie had asked Sam why they were leaving the relative comfort and security of the churchyard in the middle of the night, he said that the temperature was dropping and they needed to find somewhere out of the worst of the freezing fog.
This was not all lie – the cold was biting hard. It had become colder by several degrees when Marley had appeared from his grave. For her part Lizzie did not argue. Sam always knew best. And she was so very, very cold.
‘But there’s a light on,’ said Lizzie as they approached Scrooge’s house, assuming they would spend the night in an outhouse as they had done so many times before. But they had always waited for the house to go dark. A light might mean a dog or a servant, or both.
‘Never mind about that,’ said Sam, without turning round.
Sam felt for the comforting weight of the length of lead piping in his coat pocket. The door to the alleyway alongside the house was bolted but it took him only seconds to climb over and open it from the other side.
The alleyway was dark and smelled of cats and damp and blocked drains. The back door was locked with something more substantial than a bolt and the downstairs windows were protected with wrought iron bars.
None of this deterred Sam; on the contrary, security like this meant that there must have been something worth stealing in the house. A lock was an advert. It was a handwritten invitation in copperplate script. He looked up and grinned like a wolf. Of course the old miser had not gone to the expense of barring the upstairs windows. Sam would make him pay heavily for that piece of penny-pinching.
There was a bend in a drainpipe low enough for him to climb up on, and he helped Lizzie to follow. Ironically, the iron cage over the downstairs window allowed another firm foothold. From there it was an easy climb up the side of the house to the top of the wall that housed the alleyway door.
‘I don’t like it,’ said Lizzie with a whimper. ‘It’s too high . . .’
‘Shhh, Lizzie,’ hissed Sam. ‘Don’t look down and you’ll be fine, honest. I’m just going to edge over there and get the window open. Hang on.’
Lizzie was not at all convinced.
‘Supposing there’s someone there, Sam.’
‘Stop worrying, Liz.’
He left her standing on the wall, clinging nervously to another drainpipe, and stepped on to where the pipe branched sideways to grab hold of the
crumbling sill of the upstairs window. The drainpipe sagged under his weight and a shower of mortar fell to the yard below.
Sam tested the pipe and, feeling sure that it was going to hold firm, edged further up the slope of it, so that he could more easily raise himself up to see over the sill.
The stone was cold to the touch and the lead piping in his pocket clanged against the brickwork as he peered slowly over the top at the grimy window above.
The glass was so filthy, in fact, the image it grudgingly revealed was blurred and it took a moment for Sam to realise that Marley’s ghost was walking backwards, heading for the window, Scrooge ghostly visible through the spectre’s black topcoat, like something pickled in a jar.
Sam cursed and ducked down, clambering back to Lizzie, who was about to ask what the matter was when the sash window above them lurched open. Sam clamped his hands over her mouth to stop the scream he was sure was going to come if she caught sight of Scrooge, let alone Marley’s ghost. But to his surprise, Lizzie was not looking at the open window. She was staring up at the sky. He glanced back at the window and saw Scrooge doing the same.
Sam almost cried out himself when he followed their gaze. The murky sky above their heads was swarming with spirits – ghosts like Marley – who swam through the foggy clouds like herring through silted waters. He took his hand away from Lizzie’s mouth but she did not scream. They both stared in silent, wide-eyed wonder.
‘What . . . are . . . they?’ whispered Lizzie eventually.
‘Ghosts,’ whispered Sam.
‘But you always said there was no such thing,’ replied Lizzie.
‘Yeah. It turns out I was wrong about that.’
The spirits flew and wailed as they went, their mouths mournfully open, their dark eyes yearning, each face a mask of tragedy as sad as any graveyard angel.
In a doorway on the opposite side of the street, a mother had settled down, a small child huddled under her shawl. She looked exhausted and hung her head, oblivious to the ghost who hovered twenty feet above her head, a great metal safe hanging from his ankle by a chain.
The Last of the Spirits Page 2
