A Vampire Christmas Carol (3 page)
Read A Vampire Christmas Carol Online
Authors: Sarah Gray
“What are you having?”
“Sir?”
“You offer a free meal. What are you having?” Scrooge demanded.
“Well . . .” The nephew hesitated. “A roasted joint of pork with potatoes and gravy. I . . . I believe the pork will be stuffed with sage and onion.”
“No goose?” Scrooge questioned.
“No goose,” Fred repeated. “But breads and cheeses and, I believe, grouse pie.”
“And dessert?”
Fred nodded, not entirely sure what the intention of his uncle’s questioning was, but thinking it might be a positive sign. “Desserts, to be sure. Apple and cherry tarts, and butterfly cakes with clotted cream and jam.” Forever the optimist, he looked at Scrooge. “So shall we see you tomorrow?”
“Indeed,” Scrooge said.
“Indeed?” Fred was so excited that he nearly reached out and clasped his uncle’s hand. “We will see you?”
“In Hades!”
Taken aback but not surprised, disappointed but not discouraged, Fred drew himself to his full height. “But why?” he asked. “Why will you not join my wife and me on Christmas Day?”
“Why did you get married?” said Scrooge.
“What has that to do with anything?”
“Why?” Scrooge repeated, narrowing his gaze.
“Because I fell in love.”
“Because you fell in love!” growled Scrooge, as if that were the only thing in the world more ridiculous than a merry Christmas. “Good afternoon!”
“Nay, Uncle, but you never came to see me before I married Penny. Never once, no matter what was served. Why give it as a reason for not coming now?”
“Good afternoon,” repeated Scrooge, quite satisfied with himself.
Trying not to feel crushed, Fred clasped his hands in a plea. “I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you. Why cannot we be friends?”
“Good afternoon.”
“I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. We have never had any quarrel, to which I have been a party. But I have made the trial in homage to Christmas, and I’ll keep my Christmas humor to the last. So a merry Christmas, Uncle!”
“Good afternoon,” replied Scrooge, drawing the sides of his coat more closely to ward off the cold . . . and perhaps, unbeknownst to him, the cold-eyed stare of his clerk Disgut.
“And a happy new year!”
“Good afternoon!” said Scrooge.
His nephew left the room without an angry word. He stopped at the outer door to bestow a final greeting of the season on the clerks. Disgut pretended not to hear the nephew, but Cratchit, who, cold as he was, was warmer than Scrooge, offered a merry smile and a word of good cheer.
“There’s another fellow,” muttered Scrooge, who overheard him. “My clerk, with fifteen shillings a week, and a wife and family, talking about a merry Christmas. The day I see any reason for him to be cheery, I’ll retire to Bedlam.”
5
C
ratchit, in letting Scrooge’s nephew out, had let two other people in. They were portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now, with their hats off, passed through the tank. Disgut, who seemed relieved the nephew was gone, perked up with interest again.
ratchit, in letting Scrooge’s nephew out, had let two other people in. They were portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now, with their hats off, passed through the tank. Disgut, who seemed relieved the nephew was gone, perked up with interest again.
“Whatever are they doing here?” Disgut asked Cratchit quietly, though not so quietly that they could not hear him.
“I’ve no idea. It’s not my place to ask, nor yours,” Cratchit answered, showing them to Scrooge’s office and then returning to his perch.
The visitors had books and papers in their hands, and bowed to him.
“Scrooge and Marley’s, I believe,” said one of the gentlemen, referring to his list. “Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge, or Mr. Marley?”
“Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years,” Scrooge replied. “He died seven years ago, this very night.”
“I am so sorry,” said one.
“No doubt so was he,” Scrooge replied, his tone as dry and stale as bread crumbs swept across a baker’s floor.
The gentlemen looked at each other and one cleared his throat as if to prod the other on.
“We have no doubt his liberality is well represented by his surviving partner,” said the one presenting his credentials.
It certainly was, for they had been two kindred spirits. At the ominous word “liberality,” Scrooge frowned, and shook his head, and handed the credentials back.
“At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,” said the gentleman, taking up a pen, “it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.”
“Are there no prisons?” asked Scrooge after a blink and a pause.
“Plenty of prisons,” said the gentleman, laying down the pen.
Scrooge’s bushy white eyebrows rose, almost as if of their own accord. “And the union workhouses?”
“Have you ever been to a workhouse, sir?” asked the more portly of the two gentlemen, though both appeared amply fed. “Do you know what workhouses do to the body and soul? Do you know what the faces of the citizens of the workhouse look like?” Guessing at the answer, he went on before Scrooge could reply.
“While having not previously stepped foot within the walls of such a place, it was my duty last Sunday past to attend service in the chapel of a workhouse here in London, one holding near to two thousand paupers.”
Scrooge looked at him without so much as a fleck of emotion.
“Among this congregation were some evil-looking young women, and beetle-browed young men, but not many—perhaps that kind of character is kept away. Generally, the faces (those of the children excepted) were depressed and subdued, and wanted color. Aged people were there, in every variety. Mumbling, blear-eyed, spectacled, stupid, deaf, lame; vacantly winking in the gleams of sun that now and then crept in through the open doors, from the paved yard, shading their listening ears, or blinking eyes, with their withered hands, poring over their books, leering at nothing, going to sleep, crouching and drooping in corners. There were weird old women, all skeletal within, all bonnet and cloak without, continually wiping their eyes with dirty dusters of pocket-handkerchiefs, and there were ugly old crones, both male and female, with a ghastly kind of contentment upon them which was not at all comforting to see. Upon the whole, it was the dragon, pauperism, in a very weak and impotent condition, toothless, fangless, drawing his breath heavily enough, and hardly worth chaining up. These are the souls I have recommitted myself to giving aid.”
“So the workhouses are still in operation?” Scrooge questioned, not appearing to be the least affected by the tragic experience of the gentleman.
“They are. Still,” returned the gentleman, “I wish I could say they were not.”
“The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigor, then?” said Scrooge.
“Both very busy, sir.”
“Oh. I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,” said Scrooge. “I’m very glad to hear it.”
“Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,” returned the gentleman, “a few of us are endeavoring to raise a fund to buy the poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when want is keenly felt, and abundance rejoices. There is one family in particular we would like to see kept warm this Christmas; a lamplighter’s widow and her seven remaining children. I’m certain you heard. It was in all the papers. Her husband and child were murdered by the vampires.” He whispered the last word as if fearing the very spoken word might evoke them. “On Ludgate Hill this very week. The father was dragged from his ladder, murdered, his body left behind a venison shop. The young boy was carried off in a pickle barrel. Needless to say, his body is not expected to be recovered.”
“Vampires?” Scrooge spat. “Bah! Humbug!”
The other gentleman could hold his tongue no longer. “Surely a man of your education cannot doubt their existence?”
“I’ve seen no vampires!” Scrooge explained. “Have you?”
He said it so loudly, with such distaste, that the man stepped back. “Not . . . not with my own eyes, no. But that does not mean they don’t exist. They are clever creatures that travel in the darkness and disguise themselves as ordinary citizens. Surely you know that, an educated man such as yourself?”
“I know nothing of the sort!” Scrooge lifted his pen and returned his attention to the work at hand. “Good day.”
The gentleman, holding his pen poised, pressed his plump lips together. Obviously his belief was so strong in the cause that he would not give up easily. “What . . . what shall I put you down for?”
“Nothing!” Scrooge replied.
“You wish to be anonymous?” He dared a tiny smile.
“I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge. “Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned—they cost enough, and those who are badly off must go there.”
“Many can’t go there and many would rather die.”
“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides, I don’t know that.”
“But you might know it,” observed the gentleman.
“It’s not my business,” Scrooge returned. “It’s enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people’s. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!”
Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their point, the gentlemen tipped their hats and withdrew from Scrooge’s office. Just as they were to enter the street, Disgut appeared behind them. One moment he was on his stool, the next, standing in the doorway, casting his sour breath on them. “Do not come here again,” he warned, managing to hiss despite the lack of Ss in his words.
The gentlemen looked at each other in disbelief, then back at the hunched, pale clerk. Never had they heard such insolence from a clerk, or witnessed such an oddity as the man’s translucent pinched face. “Sir?”
“You heard me,” Disgut said. “Do not come here again, or those who plucked the lamplighter and his son from their ladder will be at your doorstep.” He lifted his upper lip, baring his teeth. They were certainly not fangs, but mostly definitely oddly shaped, as if they had been filed to points . . . or perhaps he consumed rocks and had broken them off.
“Are you threatening us?” the more portly of the two gentlemen demanded.
“I am making a promise,” Disgut replied with a sneer.
Both gentlemen, frightened by the sight of the sharpened teeth and not entirely certain what to make of them, took a step back, giving little attention to the traffic in the street.
“Go!” Disgut threatened. “Run, while you are still able.”
The portly gentlemen did not run, for it probably would have been difficult, considering their portly states, but they most certainly did not take their time in crossing the street and disappearing into the relative safety of the darkness.
6
B
ack inside his office, Scrooge resumed his labors with an improved opinion of himself, and in a more facetious temper than was usual with him.
ack inside his office, Scrooge resumed his labors with an improved opinion of himself, and in a more facetious temper than was usual with him.
Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so that people ran about with flaring links, proffering their services to go before horses in carriages and conduct them on their way. The ancient tower of a church, whose gruff old bell was always peeping slyly down at Scrooge out of a Gothic window in the wall, became invisible, and struck the hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterward, as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there. The cold became intense. In the main street, at the corner of the court, some laborers were repairing the gas-pipes, and had lighted a great fire in a brazier, round which a party of ragged men and boys were gathered, warming their hands and winking their eyes before the blaze in rapture. The water-plug being left in solitude, its overflowing sullenly congealed and turned to misanthropic ice. The brightness of the shops where holly sprigs and berries crackled in the lamp heat of the windows, made pale faces ruddy as they passed. Poulterers’ and grocers’ trades became a splendid joke, a glorious pageant, with which it was next to impossible to believe that such dull principles as bargain and sale had anything to do. The Lord Mayor, in the stronghold of the mighty Mansion House, gave orders to his fifty cooks and butlers to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor’s household should and even the little tailor, whom he had fined five shillings on the previous Monday for being drunk in the streets, stirred up tomorrow’s pudding in his garret, while his lean wife and the baby sallied out to buy the beef.
Despite their fear of the vampires that seemed to ooze from the darkness, the citizens of the town found a merriness on their tired faces and in their croaky voices. They were afraid to be certain; mothers kept their little ones by the hand, and husbands and wives walked arm in arm, but it was not enough to deter them from going about their business this Christmas Eve.
As soon as full darkness fell, it became even foggier yet, and colder. It was a piercing, searching, biting cold. Was it the vampires that brought the unearthly chill? If the good Saint Dunstan had but nipped the Evil Spirit’s nose with a touch of such weather as that, instead of using his familiar weapons, then indeed he would have roared to lusty purpose.
The owner of one scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed by dogs, stooped down at Scrooge’s keyhole to regale him with a Christmas carol, but at the first sound of “God bless you, merry gentleman. May nothing you dismay!” Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action, that the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog and even more congenial frost.
Much to Scrooge’s dismay and his employees’ delight (for not even Disgut liked working for the miser), the hour of shutting up the counting house arrived. With an ill-will Scrooge dismounted from his stool, and tacitly admitted the fact to the expectant clerks in the tank, who instantly snuffed their candles out, and put on their hats.
“You’ll both want all day tomorrow, I suppose?” said Scrooge.
Disgut wanted the day himself as much as Cratchit, but for entirely different reasons. While Cratchit would be spending Christ’s birthday at church and dining with his family, Disgut would be sitting down to a different sort of dining experience. He had received an invitation to a Winter Solstice feast to be held in the underground tunnels beneath the city, where the vampires lived by day when not prowling the streets by night. While the Cratchits feasted on bits of fatty beef and parsnips, Disgut would be sinking his teeth into human flesh, sipping the hot, rushing blood, a thought that quite excited him. The dinner
guests
were being brought in from all over the city at that very moment and being housed in the chambers beneath the city to be kept alive for the celebration, and some, it was rumored, would be taken stumbling from ale-houses and thus highly spiced with beer and rum and other spirits. Others, he heard, who had stuffed themselves with goose or plum pudding, would be taken right off the streets to satisfy even the most particular drinkers of blood during this festive season. The beautiful Queen Griselda had invited Disgut herself . . . actually she had sent one of her hags, but it was near the same as a personal invitation, wasn’t it? Obviously, her highness had singled him out as worthy. After all these years, she had finally recognized his great worth to her, and he was certain he would be rewarded at the feast, if not by coin then by a better position.
guests
were being brought in from all over the city at that very moment and being housed in the chambers beneath the city to be kept alive for the celebration, and some, it was rumored, would be taken stumbling from ale-houses and thus highly spiced with beer and rum and other spirits. Others, he heard, who had stuffed themselves with goose or plum pudding, would be taken right off the streets to satisfy even the most particular drinkers of blood during this festive season. The beautiful Queen Griselda had invited Disgut herself . . . actually she had sent one of her hags, but it was near the same as a personal invitation, wasn’t it? Obviously, her highness had singled him out as worthy. After all these years, she had finally recognized his great worth to her, and he was certain he would be rewarded at the feast, if not by coin then by a better position.
But, again, I digress. I return to the tale and what was taking place in the cold tank of Scrooge’s office.
Though Disgut was eager to have the day off, he still let Cratchit be the one to step up to the hearth and press his toes to the coals with Scrooge.
“If quite convenient, sir,” said Cratchit, “we would like the day off.”
“It’s not convenient,” said Scrooge, “and it’s not fair. If I was to stop half-a-crown the both of you for it, you’d think yourselves ill-used, I’ll be bound?”
Cratchit smiled faintly while Disgut feigned great interest in a patch on his sleeve as he thought of all the delicious human blood pudding he would feast on upon the morrow.
“And yet,” said Scrooge, “you don’t think me ill-used, when I pay a day’s wages for no work.”
“But it is only once a year,” observed Cratchit, glancing at Disgut for support.
“Once a year,” Disgut repeated, half-heartedly.
“A poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every twenty-fifth of December!” said Scrooge, buttoning his greatcoat to the chin. “But I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier the next morning.”
The clerks promised that they would, and Scrooge walked out with a growl. The office was closed in a twinkling, and Cratchit and Disgut, with no love lost between them, parted ways. Cratchit, with the long ends of his white comforter dangling below his waist (for he boasted no greatcoat), went down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of a lane of boys, twenty times, in honor of it being Christmas Eve, and then ran home to Camden Town as hard as he could pelt, with one eye peering over his shoulder in fear of bloodsuckers, to play at blindman’s bluff with his children.
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