The Last of the Spirits

by Chris Priestley

  After the service he again shook every hand available to him and patted the head of every child who passed within range, and then he took himself off alone down the church steps and stood for a while, watching the people hurrying this way and that.

  He wore a different expression now. It was not the excitable face of his first few infant steps along the road to generous humanity, but neither was it the scowl of old. It was a thoughtful expression, tinged with sadness as he looked from face to face.

  Then, like a sailor setting out on a long journey, he entered the flow of people and wandered among them, Sam and Liz in pursuit. He looked down into the kitchens of the houses he passed and saw the servants at work on the meals, and spent time chatting to the beggars he had so often ignored in times past.

  His smile had returned and this new and novel contemplation of his fellow man – this new attachment he was discovering – clearly brought him pleasure, and yet Sam could not help feeling there was something on the old man’s mind.

  ‘It’s like he’s looking for something,’ said Sam.

  ‘Looking for what?’ asked Lizzie. She had felt it too.

  ‘Who knows, Liz?’ said Sam as Scrooge dis­appeared into the throng. ‘Come on . . .’

  The extraordinary events of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day faded more quickly than Sam or Lizzie could have imagined. It was hard to keep firm hold of such strangeness and soon they began to doubt their own memories. All except – for Sam – that glimpse of his own dreadful fate on the gallows and of the consequences it would have for Lizzie. The image of that carriage and the sound of its wheels up the wet cobbles beneath the viaduct would never leave him, however much he might have wanted it to. It was a livid scar on his mind. Had he done enough to assuage it or erase it? Only time would tell.

  Lizzie had never asked him what he saw that night. She knew that it must have been terrible for such a change to have been wrought in him. She did not want to know what it was, even had she believed that Sam would tell her if she asked.

  Sam and Lizzie had followed Scrooge all the way to his nephew’s house and had watched him pace up and down, picking up the courage to knock at the door. But he need not have feared, for the nephew was a good soul and welcomed his uncle in as warmly as if he had been expected.

  They had stood and listened to the voices inside, the sudden bursts of laughter as the new Scrooge was greeted with joyful surprise by one and all. Then they had walked away, their part in the story done.

  Or so they thought.

  Sam was exhilarated to have a second chance and Lizzie felt as though her brother – the brother she loved – had returned to her at long last, but though their souls had been lifted, their bodies had not escaped the grip of squalor. Their circumstances were the same as before.

  The warmth in their hearts was a warmth they had not had before, but it did not thaw their feet at night; it did not fill their pockets or their bellies. The magic was fading fast. Reality was stalking them like a murderer.

  In his darker moments, Sam wondered what future the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come would show him now. Had they simply exchanged one grim fate for another? Surely it must be better than the one he had glimpsed, but were they doomed no matter what?

  The season of good cheer would soon be over. The bells had already rung in the New Year and it felt as always to Sam like a call to arms, like a battle about to start. But this year some of the fight in him had gone. He was a kinder person now but a softer one. He felt the cold more keenly. His war with mankind was over and he realised that it had been the fight that had kept him alive all these years.

  It was Twelfth Night, the last night of Christmas, when the fabled Wild Hunt was said to ride out across the sky. It was a lively enough night for it, to be sure, with a northerly wind sending grey clouds across the sooty blackness. Was that the sound of Odin’s horse rumbling across the heavens? Every crack and gap became a whistle for the wind and every shop sign creaked on its chains. Gates rattled and shutters banged.

  It was a pitiless night. Sam pulled Lizzie close but they felt little warmer than the air around them. But then the cold always bit deepest when they were hungry, and they had not eaten more than scraps for days. Sam had given the better of even these few morsels to Lizzie, but she seemed to be fading like a ghost herself. She was pale and thin, and on the few occasions she spoke, her voice was so quiet it needed dead silence to hear it.

  They were both fading. Their little mark upon the world was being slowly erased. Sam wondered if they would see the morning. Normally this feeling of having his toes over the edge of the grave pit would have fired him up to live in spite of everything. But much of that spark was gone.

  It was time to look for shelter or die in the streets like dogs. They had found such bodies themselves in the morning – the blue, frozen corpses of those who had taken the full force of the night and been felled by it.

  ‘Come on, Liz,’ said Sam. ‘We can make it yet. This way . . .’

  The wind was exhausting. It bellowed in their ears and blinded their eyes. They shuffled along, squinting into the gloom, their senses smothered and dulled. A cliff edge could have been three steps ahead and they would have been falling before they knew.

  And so it was that Sam walked straight into a set of rusty iron gates that creaked at his touch, making a particular whine that sparked his memory.

  This was the very graveyard they had slept in on Christmas Eve: the last resting place of that money-man-turned-ghost, Jacob Marley. It was here it had begun. They had come full circle, pulled back like metal to a magnet.

  Sam thought about turning back, but he knew they had to find some place to sleep or they were done for. He opened the gates and they walked through, the tumble of headstones and leafless trees seeming to drift towards them through the murk.

  Though they could scarcely see well enough to guide themselves through the headstones, and Sam had specifically sought to avoid it, some curious trick of fate brought them to the selfsame tombstone as before, and Sam helped Lizzie to climb inside.

  Were we meant to die that night? thought Sam. Were we meant to die that night the magic happened? Has everything since just been stolen time?

  Sam looked at Marley’s headstone and had another thought. Maybe we did die that night, after all, he mused. Maybe we’re trapped here, doomed to repeat it all over and over. Maybe this is what haunting is. Maybe this is what it feels like to be a ghost.

  But did that mean they were doomed to repeat that whole dreadful adventure? Would Sam once more be taken to that prison yard to see his own execution? Would he see Lizzie taken away again in that cab?

  As though to answer these thoughts, Sam’s eyes widened as he saw something pale emerge from the earth in front of Marley’s headstone. At first it was like the top of a large egg, then the back of a head with a grey pigtail, then more and more, until there was a whole man there, who turned to face him. It was Jacob Marley, of course.

  So it was to begin again.

  ‘No,’ said Sam, tears welling in his eyes. ‘I can’t. I can’t do it. I ain’t got the strength.’

  ‘Sam?’ said Lizzie faintly. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Listen to me,’ groaned Marley.

  Lizzie peered out at the sound of the ghost’s mournful voice.

  ‘Leave us alone, villain,’ said Sam. ‘We ain’t bothering no one here.’

  ‘Sam –’ began Lizzie.

  ‘It’s all right, Liz,’ said Sam. ‘He can’t hurt you. He can’t hurt anyone.’

  ‘But, Sam,’ continued Lizzie. ‘Look. He’s not the same. His chains are almost gone . . .’

  Sam followed Lizzie’s gaze and saw that Marley’s chains were indeed almost gone, save for several large links still attached to his ankle. Although both links and the leg to which they were bound were translucent, Sam could see that the shackle bit deep into Marley’s phantom flesh.

  Clearly this was no simple repeat of the previous events. For not only were the chai
ns all but gone, his face was no longer the terrible open-mouthed mask of before. The lower jaw that had no previous means of control, and lay on his chest unless tied in place, now did as its owner bid.

  ‘Scrooge is looking for you,’ said Marley’s ghost.

  ‘So?’ said Sam. ‘Let him look. We never took a thing from him. We broke into his house, but we never took a thing.’

  ‘Scrooge does not want to harm you,’ said the ghost. ‘He wants to help you. I want to help you.’

  Sam was so surprised by this remark that he jerked his head, banging his skull on the slab above it.

  ‘Help us?’ he said, wincing. ‘Why would he want to help us?’

  ‘Scrooge has lived a bitter, loveless life,’ said Marley. ‘Joyless as a stale pie. As I did before him. He has been shown the error of his ways. He wants to be a better man.’

  ‘Does he now?’ said Sam. ‘Well, good for him. We don’t need his help.’

  Marley raised an eyebrow and shook his head.

  ‘All right,’ said Sam, seeing his meaning. ‘We don’t want his help.’

  ‘You would rather die, then,’ said the ghost.

  Lizzie’s fingertips bit into Sam’s arm.

  ‘It is a subject I know a little about,’ continued Marley. ‘I cannot recommend it.’

  ‘We ain’t going to die!’ said Sam.

  But he was not as sure as he sounded and there was something about the way Marley looked at him that made him wonder if the ghost knew something.

  ‘We ain’t going to die,’ repeated Sam. ‘Let him help that boy – that Tim Cratchit. Let him pay his clerk some decent money. How about that?’

  ‘You’d put that boy ahead of your own needs?’ said Marley.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Sam. ‘It seems fair, I suppose. What are we to Scrooge? I suppose the boy is some way ahead of us in the queue . . .’

  ‘Let Scrooge help you too,’ said Marley. ‘He has the means for both. Let me help you for that matter.’

  ‘You can’t help us,’ said Sam. ‘We saw those spirits flying around. You can’t help us, you know you can’t. That’s part of your punishment, ain’t it? For being as mean as old Scrooge there.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Marley, ‘it is. And no, I can’t help you. Not directly I can’t. But I can urge you to go to Scrooge, and he can. I can help you help yourselves.’

  Sam stared coldly at the spirit’s face.

  ‘You got a nerve, ain’t you?’ he said. ‘It was down to you that we’re on the streets in the first place.’

  Marley lowered his head.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Sam. ‘Hang your head in shame. We saw you there. It’s all your fault!’

  ‘Is it?’ said Marley, looking up.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Oh, I played my part,’ said the ghost. ‘I certainly played my part, and I have paid dearly for it. But I was not alone . . .’

  ‘Look,’ said Sam. ‘If you’ve come here to curse my father then you may as well be on your way. My father was a good man.’

  Marley shook his head.

  ‘No,’ he said grimly. ‘No, he wasn’t.’

  Furious, Sam launched himself at the ghost but tumbled through his body to land sprawled on the ground, fists flailing.

  ‘Give me one good memory you have of him,’ said Marley, ‘and I will take it back.’

  Sam got to his feet, scowling, dusting himself off. As he did so he tried to do as the spirit asked, but found nothing. Nothing.

  ‘You can’t think of anything at all, can you?’ said the ghost sadly. ‘Good or bad. Either of you.’

  Marley looked at Lizzie, who shook her head.

  ‘The reason you cannot think of him is that he was never there,’ he went on. ‘He was a wastrel. He was a gambler and a poor one at that. I warned him many times where his actions were leading, but still he borrowed more money to throw after that which he had already wasted.

  ‘And to make matters worse, your mother, whom he was not fit to pass in the street, loved him with a devotion that I found exasperating and saddening in equal degrees.

  ‘I was a cool businessman and not one for sentimentality, but your mother’s case affected me and I offered her help. She refused and insisted on living with that man in the Marshalsea, a decision which cost her her life. She did, however, allow me to find somewhere for you . . .’

  ‘Pah!’ snorted Sam. ‘You’ll get no thanks from me for putting us up with those people. I had to get Lizzie away from there or . . .’

  Again Marley shook his head.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘You chose to leave, Sam. They were strict and they were a little severe. But they were kind people and they would have looked after you.’

  ‘No!’ shouted Sam. ‘They were horrible.’

  Marley looked at Lizzie.

  ‘Do you remember them, Lizzie?’ asked the ghost.

  ‘She remembers them all right,’ said Sam.

  But Lizzie was ignoring Sam, trying to see beyond the stories he had told about them.

  ‘Try, Lizzie,’ said Marley.

  ‘He’s right . . .’ said Lizzie, struggling to recall. ‘I think he’s right. It was you who weren’t happy there.’

  ‘Liz,’ said Sam.

  But he could not argue his case. It was the truth. Sam had taken them away from that house. He could not hit out at fate and so he had hit out at these people who were trying their best to help. He had made things impossible for himself and then added to this error by making Lizzie side with him. He was the reason they were on the streets.

  ‘You were angry, Sam,’ said Marley. ‘And you had every right so to be. You had the recklessness of your father but you could not leave Lizzie, for you had the devotion of your mother. We can’t tell what strengths and what weaknesses we shall be gifted by our parents.’

  It was Sam’s turn to hang his head.

  ‘But will you die railing against the hand you have been given, or throw in those cards for another?’ said Marley. ‘Will you die from stubbornness, just as it has kept you alive all these years?’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Liz,’ said Sam quietly.

  ‘I wanted to be with you,’ she replied. ‘I could never have stayed there without you. It would have broken my heart if you’d gone and left me there.’

  ‘Sam,’ said Marley, ‘ask for help. It’s waiting for you.’

  ‘Why does he care about us?’ Sam said. ‘What about everyone else on the streets? Don’t they count for nothing?’

  Marley raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I thought you didn’t care about them,’ he answered with a twist of his lip. ‘That was a weakness, you said. A weakness you couldn’t afford.’

  It was Sam’s turn to have his words fed back to him. They tasted bitter.

  ‘I see what you’re doing,’ said Sam. ‘You’re trying to make me sound like him – like Scrooge – but it won’t wash. He could have helped people and he didn’t. We had nothing. If we didn’t look after ourselves, then who would?’

  Marley nodded.

  ‘True. I cannot say that any of what you say is a lie, but where do these words lead? Things have changed. A door that was locked is now open. Are you brave enough to walk through?’

  Sam looked away, muttering. Marley dropped to his knees and looked them in the eyes. Sam and Lizzie had been terrified of that face, but now it was nothing more than a sad and tired old face. There was kindness there.

  ‘Do you think the world will care if you die?’ said Marley. ‘Do you think the world will notice?’

  Sam did not reply. Lizzie squeezed his arm again.

  ‘If you die from pride or spite,’ said Marley, ‘your father will have won. His selfishness did for his own life and your mother’s. It is a miracle that he has not already done for yours. But that miracle is at an end. It is time to embrace another.’

  Sam squeezed his eyes shut. Lizzie felt his pain and rested her head against his shoulder.

  ‘All right,’
he said eventually. ‘All right.’

  When he opened his eyes, a tear ran down each cheek, and Marley was gone.

  Sam lifted the heavy metal knocker and struck it three times. It seemed to echo through the house, and for the first time Sam felt afraid.

  As the sound of the door knocker died away, the distant patter of footsteps came in answer and grew in volume as they descended the stairs and headed towards Sam.

  The door swung open and, to Sam’s amazement, instead of the dark and dismal interior that they had seen when they were last there, the hallway was now brightly lit and decorated.

  Sam actually wondered for a moment whether he had the right house, particularly when he looked into the face of the man who had opened the door and saw, instead of Scrooge, his nephew, with a wide smile on his face.

  ‘Well, now,’ he said. ‘What have we here?’

  The young man’s smile weakened as he saw Lizzie, and he stepped forward to help Sam hold her up.

  ‘Come in,’ he said. ‘Come out of the cold. Uncle!’

  He helped Sam and Lizzie across the hall as a group of people gathered at the top of the stairs outside Scrooge’s door began to descend hurriedly.

  ‘Oh my Lord,’ said a woman, rushing to take Lizzie from Sam.

  Sam struggled at first but he did not have the strength. He was about to fall, when he found himself lifted up and into the arms of Scrooge’s nephew.

  Lizzie was carried ahead of him and they were both taken to the room where they had hidden under the table.

  It was brightly lit, with a great fire roaring in the hearth and wreaths of holly and mistletoe on the walls. The long dining table was laden with food and silverware and crystal glasses, laid out as for a feast.

  Am I dreaming? thought Sam. Am I asleep in the graveyard and dreaming? Or am I dead?

  ‘Bring them to the fire,’ said another man, whom Sam recognised straight away as Bob Cratchit, Scrooge’s clerk. ‘Mind out the way, Tim, there’s a good lad.’

  The small boy hopped about excitedly on his crutches.