The Last of the Spirits

by Chris Priestley

  ‘Mother!’ shouted Lizzie. ‘Mother!’

  But their mother ignored them and carried on playing with the children they had been. A kingfisher flew by, a flash of turquoise blue.

  ‘She can’t hear us,’ said Sam.

  Lizzie shouted again.

  ‘She don’t know we’re here.’

  ‘Mother?’ said Lizzie again, quieter this time.

  Sam reached out and pulled Lizzie close to him.

  ‘Shhh, Liz,’ he said. ‘She can’t hear us.’

  ‘But are we here?’ said Lizzie. ‘I mean, are we looking at the real world or some trick of them spirits?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Sam. ‘The real thing, I think.’

  ‘But how?’ said Lizzie. ‘Why?’

  Sam shrugged.

  ‘I think maybe we’ve got mixed up with the magic intended for old Scrooge.’

  They walked forward hesitantly. A light breeze played in the willow branches and rippled the surface of the river. Birds twittered in the bushes nearby. White clouds floated lazily in a pale blue sky.

  They listened in awe to their mother talking, neither of them wishing to interrupt the magic of hearing that voice again, a voice whose notes now filled their eyes with tears. Lizzie turned to put her arms round Sam, but he pushed her away.

  ‘This is your fault,’ he said, sniffing back tears.

  ‘What?’ said Lizzie. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘This!’ he snapped, pointing to their mother and the children who hung on her every word. ‘It was you, asking and asking me to tell you about her. It’s you that’s brought us here! The spirits must have got wind of it somehow.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad!’ said Lizzie. ‘I’m glad we’re here! Why aren’t you?’

  ‘Because we ain’t here, Liz!’ he yelled. ‘Or we may as well not be. We can’t touch her. We can’t talk to her. I can’t tell how I . . . I can’t . . .’

  His voice gave way to sobbing and he slumped to his knees. Lizzie was unmoved.

  ‘Well, I don’t care,’ she said coldly. ‘I’d rather stay here like this than go back. I’d rather be a ghost here than be what we was back there.’

  ‘We don’t get to choose,’ said Sam quietly, without looking up. ‘Don’t you understand? People like us never –’

  ‘Sam!’ hissed Lizzie.

  He made no reply.

  ‘Sam!’ she repeated. ‘She can see me. I mean I can see me. I can see us!’

  ‘What are you on about?’ said Sam, looking up.

  But as soon as he did, he saw what she meant. Lizzie’s younger self was staring at them, wide-eyed and giggling, alternately clapping her hands and pointing.

  ‘See?’ said Lizzie. ‘I can see us.’

  Their mother and Sam’s younger self both followed little Lizzie’s gaze, wondering what it was that so enthralled her, but they could clearly see nothing.

  ‘What is it, Lizzie, dear?’ said their mother with a chuckle.

  ‘I think I can remember this . . .’ said Lizzie.

  ‘Remember what?’ said Sam.

  ‘Remember us standing here,’ she said. ‘Like we are now. I think I can remember this. I can remember now.’

  ‘No, you can’t,’ said Sam. ‘How could you? You were too little. Look at you.’

  But Sam said these words without his usual certainty. He had lost all sense of what was real and what was fanciful, and Lizzie remembering was no stranger than them standing there like ghosts, looking at themselves through time. So little had seemed possible only a day or so ago. Now nothing seemed impossible.

  Sam remembered this day too, though not for that reason. Whenever he tried to picture their early life, his mind was irresistibly drawn back to this day, this summer’s afternoon. It was why he was so reluctant to talk about it with Lizzie. He knew where this memory led.

  A visitor appeared beside them, as oblivious to their presence as their mother and younger selves. It was their neighbour, a busybody. Sam tried to remember her name but could not. She had some news she was clearly and obscenely eager to impart. Sam and Lizzie’s father had been arrested and taken to the debtors’ prison at the Marshalsea.

  This was it: this was the very moment they fell into the pit.

  There was a shout from the house behind them and Sam and Lizzie both turned to the sound. Confusingly, Sam was sure that the shout came from their mother, but how could it? When they turned back to her, the family was gone.

  Not only that, the day was different. The white clouds overhead were replaced by grey, and the garden was wearing its dull winter colours. The river looked darkly mysterious, a joyful thing turned grim and fearsome.

  They moved away through the vegetable patch towards the house and entered through the kitchen door. They heard their mother sobbing and they saw a man standing with his back to them, their mother seated beyond, the two children at her side. The man’s hair was tied in a pigtail that hung between his shoulders.

  They were no longer in the cottage by the river, but in the hateful lodgings their mother had rented near the prison, rent that had taken all the money gained from pawning everything of value remaining to her.

  Sam’s younger self looked older than before and some of the hardness that was now such a feature of his face had taken root. Lizzie too looked less of the joyful tot she had been moments before. How much time had flown? Not more than a few months.

  The greatest change had occurred in their mother though. The light had almost disappeared from her sapphire eyes, which once had evoked a summer sky and now looked like ice. Her rounded features were sunken and wan. She seemed tired and dazed, like a gin addict.

  ‘I’m very sorry, madam,’ said the man. ‘I only do as I am required to do.’

  ‘But what an occupation,’ said their mother.

  ‘It is the only one I have,’ replied the man. ‘We lent your husband money and he knew the consequences in not keeping up his payments to us.’

  ‘Is that how you sleep, then?’ she said. ‘By reciting that tale to yourself?’

  Even from behind, Sam could see the man bristle.

  ‘I shall take my leave of you, madam,’ he said. ‘You must quit this house and all its contents. They will be forfeited against your husband’s debt. I trust that you will find accommodation with family or friends. Good day.’

  The man bowed. Their mother reached out and grabbed his sleeve.

  ‘We have no friends,’ she said. ‘Nor family. This is all my family here. We are everything to each other. Please, I beg you.’

  They were to leave even that house. Their mother would live in the prison with their father, while Sam and Lizzie lived with strangers.

  Sam had hoped that when their father died of jail fever, the death might free his mother from the duty she felt to be at his side. But the same fever that took him took her a week later.

  And so they were alone in the world.

  ‘Madam,’ replied the man, ‘there is nothing for me to do. I’m sorry.’

  With that, he turned to face them. The face was younger, with a touch more colour to it, but its owner was still instantly recognisable. It was Jacob Marley.

  Sam and Lizzie were used to sleeping on paving slabs and iron grates and doorsteps, being moved on by constables and woken by drunks. Their sleep was normally as slight a thing as tissue paper, but this night was a soft and heavy blanket.

  It was Lizzie who woke first.

  ‘Sam!’ she whispered.

  Sam had no idea how many times Lizzie had said his name before he woke, rising out of the depths of sleep like a miner, blinking into the light, Marley’s face still imprinted on his mind.

  Voices!

  ‘What?’ said Sam, squinting into the gloom, forgetting where they were for a moment.

  Voices. There were voices in the room with them. But what was going on? The floor was cold and damp. There was earth beneath them now, not cushions as there had been. Had it all been a dream? Or did the dream, or whatever it was, c
ontinue? Sam edged towards a point in the tablecloth where it seemed to join like curtains.

  ‘Are spirits’ lives so short?’ he heard Scrooge say.

  ‘My life upon this globe is very brief,’ said another voice, deep and booming. ‘It ends tonight.’

  ‘Tonight?’ cried Scrooge.

  ‘Tonight!’ repeated the other. ‘At midnight. Hark! The time is drawing near.’

  Sam edged closer to the cloth. The deep and booming voice seemed to come from high above him. He was afraid as never before. His hold on what was real or unreal was loosening and he could not guess at the scale of whatever might greet them next. As Sam gripped the folds of the material he was surprised by the weight of it. And was that a fur trim?

  ‘I see something strange,’ said Scrooge, ‘protruding from your robes. Is it a foot or a claw?’

  Sam realised Scrooge must be talking about his own foot, which was sticking out from under the fur trim.

  ‘It might be a claw, for all the flesh there is upon it,’ said the booming voice. ‘Look here!’

  The next instant, the cloth was wrenched asunder.

  Sam and Lizzie crouched, squinting and horribly revealed, like whelks pulled from their shell. They were in some terrible barren place and there stood Scrooge, trembling in his nightgown and cap.

  ‘Spirit,’ said Scrooge nervously, looking at Sam and Lizzie as though they were feral dogs, ‘are they yours?’

  Sam saw a giant pair of bare feet on either side of them, and then a voice boomed out above and Sam turned to see that, instead of being under the table, they were now under the heavy green fur-trimmed robes of a mighty bearded giant.

  ‘They are Man’s,’ said the giant.

  Scrooge stared at them incredulously.

  ‘This boy,’ said the giant, indicating Sam without looking at him, ‘is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.’

  Sam scowled up at the giant, whom he could see now was crowned with a holly wreath that twinkled with icicles, his hair and beard grey with age.

  What manner of creature was this? He looked like a forest giant, some mighty Lord of the Woods. Was he a frost giant, a King of Winter? Sam had no intention of waiting to discover what this colossus had in store for them.

  Lizzie pulled him closer and she and Sam stood up, fists clenched, ready to fight their corner come what may. Punch, kick, scratch and run – that was their code and it had served them well. Scrooge spoke before they could move.

  ‘Have they no refuge or resource?’ he asked hesitantly, looking back and forth between the children and the giant.

  ‘Are there no prisons? said the spirit. Sam grinned bitterly. The giant was feeding the old miser’s words back at him. ‘Are there no workhouses?’

  It was as if Scrooge felt the words and the tone in which they were spoken like a slap across his face and he glanced sideways at Sam and Lizzie, though Sam could see it pained him to hold their gaze.

  At first Sam thought it was the usual disgust, but now he saw it was fear. Scrooge was afraid of them. He didn’t remember them from the street – he thought they were spirits too. He thought they were demons. Maybe we are, thought Sam. Maybe that’s exactly what we are.

  Sam looked at Scrooge’s pinched pale and quivering face but felt no sympathy for him. Quite the reverse. That miserable old scrounger was getting all the attention while he and Lizzie were used like props in a pantomime. And if Marley had been involved in their family’s misfortunes, then was it not likely that his partner had been too? Is that why the spirits had gathered them up?

  Scrooge eyed them warily and backed away a step or two, leaving one of his slippers behind as he did so. Well, thought Sam with a grin, if he thinks we’re demons, then let him. It might come in useful. He took a step towards the terrified Scrooge to try out his new-found power.

  They all started, however, when the church clock began to strike. Lizzie squealed. The din was loud and mournful. The bell sounded as though it was inside their heads.

  Bong. Bong. Bong.

  Sam and Lizzie clamped their hands over their ears, but it made no difference.

  Bong. Bong. Bong.

  The sonorous clanging went on and on until at the twelfth stroke the vibrations died away and were swallowed up in a silence so profound Scrooge and the children assumed they had been struck deaf.

  Suddenly Sam noticed that the giant was no longer with them. Scrooge looked about him as though the spirit might somehow be concealed behind a stone or a clump of thistles. But he seemed to have vanished.

  Sam was quick to regain his wits. This was their chance. Ask the old sinner for money now and he’d give them every penny he had to get rid of them. Scrooge was so shaken he would have pulled out his own teeth if asked. It was all working in their favour. Sam just needed to figure out where they were.

  But as Sam was thinking this he became aware of something moving in the darkness. Lizzie whimpered and Scrooge stared in horror as Sam turned to see a tall, black-robed and hooded figure, a depthless shadow where the face should have been.

  Not something moving in the dark, but darkness moving of itself. It slid noiselessly towards them, floating on a shimmering bed of mist. Sam felt his stomach drop like a stone. Lizzie tried to scream but nothing emerged save a faint hiss.

  ‘Am I in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come?’ said Scrooge, his voice trembling along with his shaking legs.

  Sam was impressed the old man could speak at all. The Inquisition with all their thumbscrews could not have pulled words from Sam’s mouth. The black spirit made no reply. All it did was raise its bony arm and point.

  ‘You are about to show me shadows of the things that have not happened, but will happen in the time before us,’ said Scrooge. ‘Is that so?’

  Lizzie whimpered again as the tall, cowled figure seemed to bow slightly in agreement, its flowing black robes rippling as it moved. But the phantom did not speak. It just seemed to study Scrooge with its faceless face.

  This unnerved Scrooge even more. He cried out, saying he feared this spirit above all the others, and Sam could believe it was true. How could anything be worse than this? It made Marley’s ghost seem almost comical in comparison. There was a pitilessness in that melancholy figure, the like of which Sam had never encountered. It was like looking into the end of the world.

  ‘Will you not speak to me?’ pleaded Scrooge.

  But it was clear that the spirit would not or could not talk. The hand and its long bony finger pointed away.

  ‘Lead on!’ said Scrooge. ‘Lead on! The night is waning fast, and it is precious to me, I know. Lead on, Spirit!’

  The spirit began to move once more, sliding effortlessly across the frozen ground, blacker than the night, a moving shadow. It slid between Scrooge and Sam, and as it passed Sam felt the robes brush against his hand and he felt pulled along with it.

  The next moment all was darkness.

  Sam looked for Lizzie but could not find her. The darkness of that terrible beshadowed hooded emptiness seemed to have enveloped them. He turned and turned and turned but saw nothing, fumbling his way as though a great cloak had been thrown over him.

  Then, all at once, the black curtains parted and Sam saw that he was standing in a busy street under a cloudy sky. Beside him stood the hooded spirit.

  ‘Where’s Liz?’ said Sam. ‘Where’s Lizzie? What have you done with her?’

  The spirit was no more forthcoming with Sam than it had been with old Scrooge. By way of reply, it simply raised its robed arm and pointed its finger at the other end of the street.

  ‘What is this place?’ said Sam. ‘Where are we? Where’s Lizzie?’

  The street was heaving with people, men and women, young and old. They shouted and jostled. Sam knew the grim building towering above them – it was Newgate Prison.

  The street was wet from a recent downpour. The slipp
ery stones shone like the scales of a reptile, reflecting the glowering sky, as Sam and the spirit followed through the crowd.

  Beside the prison was a wooden platform not unlike a stage, though it was a cheerless venue for a play. Near that, set into the wall, was a door, heavy and studded. As Sam tried to make sense of it, the door burst open and a group of people began to walk through. He wondered what the crowd were going to make of seeing a boy and a hooded phantom passing among them, but the crowd paid no heed at all.

  Just as he and Lizzie had gone unseen by all but Lizzie’s younger self, so here Sam and the spirit were invisible to this baying rabble.

  Then Sam saw Lizzie. She was at the front being shoved back and forth as the crowd ebbed and flowed. She almost fell to the ground at one point and he reached out to help her, but his hand passed straight through hers.

  ‘Liz!’ shouted Sam. ‘Liz!’

  Neither Lizzie nor any of the group reacted to his call. Why was Lizzie here among this rabble? Why was she here without him? She never went anywhere without him and would never have come here, to a place like this, even with Sam. Neither had any stomach for this kind of entertainment.

  What was it Scrooge had called them? Shadows. Shadows of the things that have not happened, but will happen in the time before us . . .

  So Sam was looking at the future. This was a glimpse into tomorrow – or at least one of the tomorrows to come. The thought of it sent a shiver through Sam’s innards.

  The crowd cried out and surged forward as a boy was brought out, his wrists bound and his arms gripped by guards. The guards pushed the people back and scuffles broke out. A gap opened up and Sam’s view opened up. The boy being led out looked straight at Sam as though expecting to see him there, and then looked away. Sam stared back and looked into his own face.

  Lizzie screamed when she saw him come out of that door and had to be stopped from running to him. A man scaled the steps and inspected the thick hemp noose that now hung from the beam above the platform.

  The other Sam cried out when he saw the noose and pushed back against his guards. He got no sympathy from them or the small crowd by the platform. Only Lizzie wept as he was pushed up the wooden steps towards the hangman.