A Vampire Christmas Carol (16 page)

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Authors: Sarah Gray

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Scrooge’s niece was not one of the blindman’s bluff party, but was made comfortable with a large chair and a footstool, in a snug corner, where the ghost and Scrooge were close behind her. But she joined in the forfeits, and loved her love to admiration with all the letters of the alphabet. Likewise at the game of How, When, and Where, she was very great, and to the secret joy of Scrooge’s nephew, beat her sisters hollow, though they were sharp girls, too, as he could have told you. There might have been twenty people there, young and old, but they all played, and so did Scrooge, for, wholly forgetting the interest he had in what was going on, that his voice made no sound in their ears, he sometimes came out with his guess quite loud, and very often guessed quite right, too; for the sharpest needle, best Whitechapel, warranted not to cut in the eye, was not sharper than Scrooge, blunt as he took it in his head to be.
The ghost was greatly pleased to find him in this mood, and looked upon him with such favor, that he begged like a boy to be allowed to stay until the guests departed. Here, there seemed no evidence of the vampires in the city and in their lives, save for the occasional mention of them, and Scrooge seemed far removed from the bitter truths piling upon his conscience. And these games . . . these games excited him and filled him with a youthful joy that he had not experienced in many a year. But to stay any longer, the spirit said, could not be done.
“Here is a new game,” said Scrooge. “One half hour, Spirit, only one.”
It was a game called Yes and No, where Scrooge’s nephew had to think of something, and the rest must find out what; he only answering to their questions yes or no, as the case was. The brisk fire of questioning to which he was exposed elicited from him that he was thinking of an animal, a live animal, rather a disagreeable animal, a savage animal, an animal that growled and grunted sometimes, and talked sometimes, and lived in London, and walked about the streets, and wasn’t made a show of, and wasn’t led by anybody, and didn’t live in a menagerie, and was never killed in a market, and was not a horse, or an ass, or a cow, or a bull, or a tiger, or a dog, or a pig, or a cat, or a bear. At every fresh question that was put to him, this nephew burst into a fresh roar of laughter; and was so inexpressibly tickled, that he was obliged to get up off the sofa and stamp. At last the plump sister, falling into a similar state, cried out:
“I have found it out. I know what it is, Fred. I know what it is.”
“What is it?” cried Fred.
“A vampire?” interrupted Penny.
“Not a vampire,” said Fred.
“No, not a vampire,” said the plump sister. “Then, it’s your Uncle Scrooge.”
Which it certainly was. Admiration was the universal sentiment, though some objected that the reply to “Is it a bear?” ought to have been “Yes,” in as much as an answer in the negative was sufficient to have diverted their thoughts from Mr. Scrooge, supposing they had ever had any tendency that way.
“He has given us plenty of merriment, I am sure,” said Fred, “and it would be ungrateful not to drink his health. Here is a glass of mulled wine ready to our hand at the moment and I say, Uncle Ebenezer.”
“Well! Uncle Ebenezer,” they cried.
“A merry Christmas and a happy new year to the old man, wherever he is,” said Scrooge’s nephew. “He wouldn’t take it from me, but may he have it, nevertheless. Uncle Ebenezer.”
Scrooge had imperceptibly become so gay and light of heart, that he would have pledged the unconscious company in return, and thanked them in an inaudible speech, if the ghost had given him time. But the whole scene passed off in the breath of the last word spoken by his nephew, and he and the spirit were again upon their travels.
30
M
uch they saw, and far they went, and many homes they visited, but always with a happy end. The spirit stood beside sick beds, and they were cheerful. In almshouse, hospital, and jail, in misery’s every refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority had not made fast the door and barred the spirit out, he left his blessing, and taught Scrooge his precepts.
“They appear happy,” Scrooge commented, watching over an elderly man who cared for his dying wife in a room no bigger than a broom closet. “How can they be happy with their miserable existence and vampires roaming the streets waiting to . . . to drink their blood if they are fortunate, kill them if they are not?” he asked.
“Because they have hope,” said the spirit simply.
“Hope?”
“Hope in people such as these . . .”
The spirit turned and Scrooge found himself gazing down a dark street. Snow fell lightly on the shoulders of a hunch-backed old woman making her way home, her cane tapping at her side. Behind her, a man in a dark cloak followed. The old woman glanced over her shoulder and walked a little faster.
The man in the cloak’s face shimmered white. Scrooge knew at once what he was.
“He gains on her,” murmured Scrooge. “Can you not do something?”
The spirit watched, giving Scrooge no other choice but to do the same.
Seeming to sense the fate about to befall her, the old woman walked more quickly, her cane tapping faster on the snowy street cobbles. Scrooge felt his heart patter in his chest, and he knew the old woman’s did the same. As she passed an alleyway, the man behind her in the cloak reached out to catch her shoulder.
Scrooge cringed, set on turning away, but he did not turn away, could not.
The old woman gave a cry as the man spun her around, but instead of crumpling under his force, she drew back her cane and struck the beast. Who she startled more, Scrooge or her pursuer, he could not have said.
“Quickly!” called out the old woman, whose ragged hood fell back to reveal a young man. Out of the alley tumbled two more men. The creature screeched in shock and perhaps fear, recognizing it had been drawn into a trap.
Too late! A man raised a pike much like the one the Ghost of Christmas Present carried in his scabbard, and Scrooge turned away as the vampire slayer struck home and scarlet sprayed the snow and the faces of the hunters.
“I do not want to see this,” cried Scrooge, covering his eyes with his hands. “I cannot . . . I do not wish to believe. Such violence.” He shuddered, imagining the blood that spilled into the snow.
“It is not all violence,” said the spirit.
31
A
moment later, Scrooge felt his slippers settle on floorboards and the warmth of the heat from a fire burning bright on a parlor hearth. A woman stood before the blaze, pouring cups of tea from a chipped but once rather fine china tea pot trimmed in pink roses. Four cups, chipped and yellowed with time, upon a tray matched the teapot.
“Mr. Herbert,” she said kindly. It was not until she turned her face into the firelight that Scrooge recognized her.
“Belle,” he murmured. “Why, she is quite pretty. She holds her age well.” He had seen her only hours before (or days or years, for who knew with spirits?), but she looked different to him now. Prettier. Younger.
“Thank you so much, miss,” said a man seated on a stool pulled close to the hearth. “You are too kind to have taken me in.”
This was a fresh-colored young gentleman, with as good a promise of light whisker as one might wish to see, and possessed of a very velvet-like, soft-looking countenance. We do not use the latter term invidiously, but merely to denote a pair of smooth, plump, highly colored cheeks of capacious dimensions, and a mouth rather remarkable for the fresh hue of the lips than for any marked or striking expression it presented. His whole face was suffused with a crimson blush, and bore that downcast, timid, retiring look which betokens a man ill at ease with himself.
“I am only glad you were able to make your way here with your injuries.”
Scrooge noticed then that the man wore his fine velvet coat slung over one shoulder, bandages protruding from beneath.
“You must take care not to move more than necessary for a few days,” Belle instructed, completing the task of pouring the tea. Setting the pot on the tray on a wobbly table, she offered him a cup. “Tea, gentlemen,” she called over her shoulder, in the direction of the staircase.
She looked back at the young man seated at her hearth. “Please feel free to stay as long as you like.”
“Injured men come and go here, I take it?” he asked, sipping his tea. “Your address was given to me by a local vampire slayers union.”
“When they must escape or hide or are injured and have no other place to go, they come to places like this. Sometimes women, too,” she said, taking a padded chair across from him.
“Women?” he asked, obviously quite amazed. “Women in London fight vampires? We heard on the coast that women were taking larger roles in the battle against them, but I had no idea.”
“Most of us do not fight,” she said, lowering her gaze to the teacup balanced on her lap. “But some of us are braver than others.”
“Well, I think you quite brave, miss,” he said, beaming at her.
As Scrooge watched the exchange, he felt something in his chest that, it had been so long since he felt it, he could not, at first, identify it. “Why . . . he is half her age,” he muttered, fighting the wave of jealously that was as difficult to manage as any counting-house task. “He . . . he practically flirts with her!”
“There are many men who have fallen in love with her over the years, but she has never accepted any advances,” the phantom said. “She holds her heart for someone long in her past.” He looked down on Scrooge.
“Me?”
The spirit smiled, but did not answer his question. “Belle has been kind to him, a stranger to the city, injured, fleeing for his life.”
Male voices were heard on the staircase, in response to the call to tea, no doubt. Behind them, Ebenezer heard the sound of a child’s lighter footsteps.
“Men and children?” Scrooge said, making no attempt to hide his disdain. “Is this a long-term boarding-house?”
“It is whatever is needed to support the cause of the annihilation of vampires,” answered the spirit.
Three gentlemen who had come from above stairs pulled mismatched chairs closer to the burning hearth and accepted Belle’s offer of tea.
“And where is Alice?” cooed Belle, glancing at the staircase where an elfin girl of no more than eight or nine stood. “Come.” Belle put out a slender hand to her. “Sit upon my lap, and I will share my tea with you.” She glanced at a man in his early thirties who had limped to his place before the fire. “If your father gives his approval, of course.”
“After what she has been through,” said the man with a tired sigh and then a smile, “my Alice may have whatever she likes. Whatever is still in my power to give her.”
Belle patted her knee and the shy girl came to her, allowing Belle to draw her into an embrace. “I have a friend, a very nice friend whose name is Fred, who intends to stop by shortly with gifts for good little girls. Good girls like you, Alice.” She tickled her tummy and the girl laughed. “He has all sorts of baubles, I am told; dollies, and cards, and tin horns and such. I wonder what he will bring to you.”
“My nephew? He brings gifts
here?
” asked Scrooge of the ghost.
“He will deliver to houses such as this all over the city.”
“The tree,” said Scrooge. “The one in his parlor, so laden with toys that it looked as if it would tumble.”
“Gifts for the children of the men and women displaced while fighting the vampires.”
“Displaced? However are these men displaced by vampires?”
“They are a vindictive lot, vampires. When someone fights them, they resort to burning them out, or having them put out by landlords and law enforcement they hold under their dark power. Some of the men who pass through here are so well known among the vampires that they must constantly keep moving to stay alive.”
“I had no idea. And Belle helps these men?”
“And their families, when they have families left. This child’s mother and sister were killed by vampires near London Bridge only a few nights ago.”
Against his will, Scrooge found himself gazing upon Belle again; first her pretty face and then the child’s happy one. Belle whispered in little Alice’s ear and shared her cup of tea with her.
“She would make a good mother,” observed Scrooge. “It is unfortunate that she never married. It is too late for children now.”
The spirit smiled down on him, his eyes brimming with light reflected off the blazing fire. “Who is to say?” He offered his arm. “Our time together is nearly at an end. We must hurry.”
32
A
light-headedness came over Scrooge. One moment he stood in Belle’s parlor in his nightdress, the next moment in his own cold, dark, front hall. “Home?” cried Scrooge, tempted to grab the ghost’s robes in thanks. “You have returned me?”
“Not yet.” The ghost opened the door that led to the cellar stairs, and Scrooge found himself pulling back. A stench rose from the darkness that smelled of dirt and death. A sense of dread came over him, and his feet rooted to the floor. Not there! He would not venture there! Not even the ghost could force him to perform such an act.
“I . . . I have no wish to enter there,” he said, gazing at the black hole of the doorway that seemed to hold a life of its own, suffocating and all-encompassing. “You . . . you warned me of . . . of my tenants and the tunnel below. The one you say the vampires use to make their way all over the city. Surely I cannot enter this cellar and survive.”
“They cannot see us, Ebenezer.”
With that, Scrooge felt himself lifted off the floor and propelled down the steps. He fought, his legs and arms flailing, but it made no difference, for the next thing he knew, he was standing on the damp dirt cellar floor, the natural illumination of his escort showing them surrounded by wine casks.
“Wine,” announced Scrooge to the phantom, feeling a mild sense of relief. “I told you Mr. Wahltraud was a wine purveyor! Here are his barrels and proof of his occupation.”
“Those are, indeed, wine casks. Would you care to see what he stores in these casks?” asked the ghost, fitting himself well beneath the low ceiling.
Scrooge stared at the wooden casks stored in neat, orderly rows, his mouth falling agape. “Do you mean to tell me there is
blood
in those casks?”
“Come, see how your
tenants
celebrate Christmas Day.”
“Vampires celebrate Christmas?” asked Scrooge, delaying what he knew was the inevitable.
“They celebrate the Winter Solstice, today of all days, to take their minds off the good cheer of the city.” The ghost stepped back, indicating a doorway that led deeper into the recesses of the cellar.
“Must I?” asked Scrooge.
“You must, and my time grows short. There is one more place we must visit before my time is gone.”
“One more place?” cried Scrooge, quite close to tears. “I beg of you, Spirit—”
“This way,” the phantom said.
Resolute, hands trembling at his sides, Scrooge crossed the threshold into another room, which contained nothing more than two ornate caskets: mahogany wood, black as coal, adorned with silver handles and silver filigree trim, and within white satin interiors as spotless and pristine as new-fallen snow. If it had been possible, Scrooge would have trembled harder, but was it possible for a bowl of jelly, once set in motion, to quiver more?
Where there should have been a solid wall, there was another archway. “Here ends my property, I am sure of it,” Scrooge said.
The phantom lifted his hand, ushering Scrooge onward.
They entered a tunnel that was close and dark and dank, and it frightened Scrooge even more than the room with the coffins. When the tunnel split, the ghost indicated Scrooge should go left, then right, then right again and again, until Scrooge could no longer get his bearings. All he knew was that he was beneath the city in a place that was more hopeless than hell itself.
The tunnel opened without warning, and Scrooge found himself on what appeared to be a city street. But of course it was not a city street, for they were below ground, below London town.
Some ladies passed, walking to and fro, in pairs and singly. They all had skin of alabaster, all dressed in bright colors. One even carried a blue parasol, though there was no sun from which she needed protection. The street was lit by stinking pitch torches set here and there like street-lamps.
“What is this place?” asked Scrooge.
“It is where many live. It is the way they move about the city so freely.”
“But . . . it looks like a city. Any city.” Scrooge stared in disbelief. “How is this possible? How . . . how long have they been here?”
“Longer than you would care to know,” said the spirit sadly.
The streets and shops were lighted by the torches, and as Scrooge’s eye traveled down the long thoroughfare, dotted with bright flares of fire, it reminded him something (God forbid!) of Oxford Street, or Piccadilly. Here and there a flight of broad stone cellar-steps appeared, and a painted sign that directed you to the Bowling Saloon, or Ten-Pin Alley; Ten-Pins being a game of mingled chance and skill, invented when the legislature passed an act forbidding Nine-Pins. At other down-ward flights of steps were other signs, marking the where-abouts of oyster-cellars and all kinds of caters of fish, or flesh, or fowl.
“Vampires eat food?” asked Scrooge.
“No, but the men and women who work for them do. Much of this is to entice them,” explained the ghost. “And you must admit, it could be enticing, considering the squalor some live in above ground. It is very like London.”
What was different than the streets above was how quiet it was here. There were no itinerant bands, no wind or stringed instruments. Not one. There were no punches, dancing dogs, jugglers, conjurers, or orchestrinas. Scrooge saw only one barrel-organ and a dancing monkey—sportive by nature, but fast fading into a dull, lumpish monkey. Beyond that, nothing lively, not so much as a white mouse in a twirling cage. He wanted to ask why the vampires had no such entertainment, but fearing the answer, did not ask.
Scrooge saw, as he and the spirit walked unnoticed by the pedestrians, that there was a lecture-room across the way. There was a counting house, a store, even a barroom. The latter, he could see through these windows, was pretty full. He heard the clinking sound of hammers breaking lumps of ice, and the cool gurgling of the pounded bits, as, in the process of mixing, they were poured from glass to glass!
Inside, there were men sucking on cigars, vampire and human. Humans were swallowing strong drinks, their hats and legs in every possible variety of twist, all obviously enjoying themselves. These were not vapid, waterish amusements, but good, strong stuff, dealing in round abuse and blackguard names, pulling off the roofs of private houses, as the Halting Devil did in Spain. Scrooge surmised that there was pimping and pandering for all degrees of vicious taste, and gorging with coined lies the most voracious maw, imputing to every man in public life the coarsest and the vilest motives; scaring away from the stabbed and prostrate body-politic, any Samaritan of clear conscience (could there even be a Samaritan down here?) and good deeds and setting on, with yell and whistle and the clapping of foul hands, the vilest vermin and worst birds of prey.
The ghost prodded Scrooge forward and they passed a wilderness of a hotel with stores about its base, like some Continental theater, or the London Opera House shorn of its colonnade. As he walked, Scrooge noticed that he had seen no beggars in the streets, but of other kinds of strollers, plenty. Despite the smiles upon the passersby’s faces, he sensed that poverty, wretchedness, and vice were still rife enough here. The king and queen of the vampires had not saved the humans from their wretched lives, only changed the scenery.
The street grew darker, narrower, and there were fewer burning torches.
“The older part of their city,” the ghost explained.
“Who lives here?” asked Scrooge.
“The minions, when they can no longer live above ground.”
“They make them vampires?”
“No, but the blood they take changes them. They become more sensitive to the light. They acquire a taste for the blood that must be satisfied, and so they do the vampires’ bidding to get it. There are rules. They must have permission from vampires to take blood from humans.”
This older section of the place where the vampires’ minions dwelled was one of narrow ways, diverging to the right and left, and reeking everywhere with dirt and filth. Such lives led here bore the same fruits as the slums of London. The coarse and bloated faces at the doors had counterparts on the streets above, and all the wide world over. Debauchery had made the very houses old. The rotten beams were tumbling down, and the patched and broken windows seemed to scowl dimly, like eyes that had been hurt in drunken frays.
“Enough,” Scrooge cried, covering his face with his hands. “Please, Spirit. Have I not seen enough?”
“This way,” said the Ghost of Christmas Present.
They took a short alley and the underground walls grew close around them again until it seemed that they were in the same tunnels as when they had first entered. Ahead, standing in a doorway, on guard, no doubt (though who would dare trespasses save for spirits and their unwilling captives, Scrooge did not know) was a wrinkled hideous figure with deeply sunk and bloodshot eyes and an immensely long cadaverous face, shadowed by jagged and matted locks of coarse black hair. He wore a kind of tunic of a dull bluish color, which, Scrooge observed regarding it attentively, was clasped or ornamented down the front with coffin handles. His legs, too, were encased in coffin plates as though in armor; and over his left shoulder he wore a short dusky cloak, which seemed made of a remnant of some pall. He took no notice of the ghost and Scrooge, of course, but was intently eyeing the far side of the vaulted-ceilinged room.
The underground room was enormous, cavern-like, and apparently served as a dining facility this night, for there were at least two dozen large tables of pale-faced guests and a raised dais on the far side of the room where King Wahltraud and his lady, Queen Griselda, held court.
“I’ve seen enough!” Scrooge cried, suddenly afraid, because until that moment he had not allowed himself to truly believe his tenants were vampires, or that these creatures had controlled his life. He had allowed them to control his life. “Please, O Spirit, believe me when I say it is not necessary that you keep me here a moment longer. If you say my tenants are vampires, then vampires they are, and I will see them evicted come morning.”
The spirit did not respond.
“Are . . . are these all vampires?” Scrooge dared, taking note that some of the diners were as pale-faced as their host and hostess, while others seemed . . . more earthly.
“Many are, but some are their minions. If you were to look closely, I believe there are others here you might recognize.”
“No, I see no one I recognize, nor anyone I wish to recognize,” Scrooge assured the ghost.
“What of him?”
Scrooge took a sharp breath, staring at a round-faced man with a broad nose and rosy cheeks. “My butcher?” he murmured. “Harry Chop, from whom my serving wench has fetched sweetbreads and kidneys for my own table? My butcher?”
“And there.”
A young, pock-faced woman drank from a silver tumbler. “The girl who sells sweetmeats on the corner?” Scrooge asked in shock. “I know her. I have passed her every morning for two years at least, and nothing of her ruined countenance proclaimed that she possessed any more diabolical traits than others of her station in life.”
“And what of him?” asked the spirit, sounding impatient, though Scrooge could not tell if it was with the present scene or his present company, meaning Scrooge.
It took him a moment to figure out who the ghost was referring to, but eventually, Scrooge laid his gaze upon none other than his employee, Lucius Disgut. He recognized his beady eyes and rat-like nose at once. “Not Disgut. It cannot be.” His trusted man, Lucius? Impossible! This was beyond belief.
“Why can it not be?” asked the spirit, sounding as if his patience had returned.
“Why, because . . .” Scrooge could think of nothing to say. If the butcher and the sweetmeat girl were vampire minions, who was to say who else was one of them? The rector of St. Michael’s-Upon-Fields? Lord Dumbworthy, the earl of Witherspoon? Her majesty herself?
“When did the clerk come to you?”
“The week Marley died. I remember it distinctly because . . .” Scrooge felt a lump the size of a hefty piece of coal rise in his throat, and he swallowed hard. “He came with references from Mr. Wahltraud,” he managed to finish.
Scrooge thought before he spoke again. “Cratchit, he . . . he is one of the slayers. Does he realize he works with a man who could be plotting to do him harm, even kill him?”
“Members of the VSU know they encounter dangers each and every day. It’s part of their sacrifice to mankind. But to answer your question, I am quite sure Mr. Cratchit knows where Mr. Disgut’s allegiances lie.”
Thinking of nothing else to say, Scrooge took in the room once again. Tall tapers burned low on the tables: the meal was obviously over but overly large platters still lay here and there, platters so immense they could have well held, dared he think, a human.
I must put here, fair and brave reader, that had I been Scrooge, I would have run from this place as fast as my feet could have carried me, by now. But by now, I would have also seen the sin of my acts and begged for any aid the spirit could have offered in the area of redemption. But Scrooge was a man well set in his ways, a man not easily swayed . . . except by vampires.

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