A Vampire Christmas Carol (6 page)

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Authors: Sarah Gray

BOOK: A Vampire Christmas Carol
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“I mean your tenants,” the ghost bellowed. “Where are your eyes to see, your ears to hear? Your
tenants
mean to make you one of their own. All these years they have blackened your heart, and when you die, there will be no humanity left within you. You will not have the wretched opportunity I have been given. Your fate will be worse, Ebenezer Scrooge. You will become one of them!”
“One of who? One of what?”
“One of the vampires.”
Scrooge rocked back and gave a low chuckle, despite the proximity of the frightening specter. “Vampires? My tenant, the wine purveyor, and his wife? Bah, humbug!”
Again the ghost raised a cry, and shook its chain and wrung its ghastly hands.
“You are fettered,” said Scrooge, trembling as he tried not to consider the fate Marley had suggested. “Tell me why.”
“I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard. I girded it of my own free will, with the help of King Wahltraud and Queen Griselda and others, and of my own free will I wore it.”
Scrooge trembled more and more.
“Would you know,” pursued the ghost, “the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full, as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have labored on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!”
Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in the expectation of finding himself surrounded by some fifty or sixty fathoms of iron cable, but he could see nothing. “A chain,” he said. “So I will be bound as you are now, to carry the links.”
The ghost shook its ghastly head. “Your chain will rob you of what is left of your humanity and you will walk the streets of London taking blood, taking the lives of those you should have served in life! You will not be dead. You will wish that you were!”
Scrooge shuddered at the thought of drinking blood, for it was never a taste he had acquired; he did not even eat blood pudding. “Jacob,” he said imploringly. “Old Jacob Marley, tell me more. Speak comfort to me, Jacob.”
“I have none to give,” the ghost replied. “It comes from other regions, Ebenezer Scrooge, and is conveyed by other ministers, to other kinds of men. Nor can I tell you what I would. A very little more is all permitted to me. I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere. My spirit never walked beyond our counting house. Mark me in life, my spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole, and weary journeys lie before me.”
It was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he became thoughtful, to put his hands in his pockets. Pondering on what the ghost had said, he did so now, but without lifting up his eyes, or getting off his knees.
“You must have been very slow about it, Jacob,” Scrooge observed, in a business-like manner, though with humility and deference.
“Slow!” the ghost repeated.
“Seven years dead,” mused Scrooge. “And traveling all the time?”
“The whole time,” said the ghost. “No rest, no peace. I carry the incessant torture of remorse. And this fate I consider far better than yours will be.”
“You travel fast?” said Scrooge.
“On the wings of the wind,” replied the ghost.
“You might have got over a great quantity of ground in seven years,” said Scrooge.
The ghost, on hearing this, set up another cry, and clanked its chain so hideously in the dead silence of the night, that the Ward out on the street would have been justified in indicting it for a nuisance.
“Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed,” cried the phantom, “not to know, that ages of incessant labor by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed! Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness! Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!”
“But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,” faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.
“Business!” cried the ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”
It held up its chain at arm’s length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again. “At this time of the rolling year,” the specter said, “I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode? Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me? How did I not see the vampires as they tread in our tracks, yours and mine?”
Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the specter going on at this rate, and began to quake exceedingly. Vampires in their tracks? What did he speak of? He made no sense, this phantom.
“Hear me!” cried the ghost. “My time is nearly gone. It is only by the heart of Belle that I have been able to linger this long. Will you listen?”
“Belle? I do not understand why you speak her name, though I will listen, indeed, for I have little choice,” said Scrooge. “But don’t be hard upon me. Don’t be flowery, Jacob! Pray!”
“I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day, and I have watched the Queen of Vampires control your every move, your every thought.”
It was not an agreeable idea, not of Marley or vampires, though which was worse he could not say at this moment. Scrooge shivered, and wiped the perspiration from his brow.
“That is no light part of my penance,” pursued the ghost. “But as I have told you, my fate is not as execrable as yours will be. I am here tonight to warn you, that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping your providence, which first came to be before your birth.”
“My providence? Before my birth? Whatever do you speak of?”
“There is a chance and hope of my procuring your salvation, Ebenezer.”
“You were always a good friend to me,” said Scrooge. “Please do not do this to me. Your talk of vampires and providence, it frightens me more than the presence of your ghost here before me.”
“You have no choice in this matter, Ebenezer. You will be haunted,” resumed the phantom, “by three spirits.”
Scrooge’s countenance fell almost as low as the ghost’s had done. “Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob?” he demanded, in a faltering voice.
“It is.”
“I—I think I’d rather not,” said Scrooge.
“Without their visits,” said the ghost, “you cannot hope to avoid the path before you. Expect the first tomorrow, when the bell tolls one.”
“Couldn’t I take them all at once, and have it over, Jacob?” hinted Scrooge, tugging at the sleeve of his night robe.
“Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next night when the last stroke of twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more, and look that, for your own sake, you remember what has passed between us!”
When it had said these words, the specter took its wrapper from the table, and bound it round its head, as before. Scrooge knew this, by the smart sound its teeth made when the jaws were brought together by the bandage. He ventured to raise his eyes again, and found his supernatural visitor confronting him in an erect attitude, with its chain wound over and about its arm.
The apparition walked backward from him, and at every step it took, the window raised itself a little, so that when the specter reached it, it was wide open.
It beckoned Scrooge to approach, which he did. When they were within two paces of each other, Marley’s ghost held up its hand, warning him to come no nearer. Scrooge stopped. It was not so much in obedience, as in surprise and fear, for on the raising of the hand, he became aware of confused noises in the air: incoherent sounds of lamentation and regret, wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory. The specter, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge and floated out upon the bleak, dark night.
Scrooge followed to the window, desperate in his curiosity. He looked out.
The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley’s ghost. Some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free.
Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a doorstep. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power forever.
Below them on the street ran creatures black and shrouded with mist, something like the thing that had followed Scrooge home the night he had gone to Marley’s grave almost seven years ago. They came and went, scuttling along the dark street, and while he watched, one snatched a child from a mother’s arms and disappeared into the night, leaving the mother a weeping heap upon the snow.
Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist enshrouded them, he could not tell. But they and their spirit voices faded together, and the night became as it had been when he walked home from the tavern.
Scrooge closed the window, and examined the door by which the ghost had entered. It was double-locked, as he had locked it with his own hands, and the bolts were undisturbed. He tried to say “Humbug!” but stopped at the first syllable. And being from the emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or his glimpse of the invisible world, or the dull conversation of the ghost, or the lateness of the hour, or the absurd talk of vampires, he found himself much in need of repose. He went straight to bed, without undressing, and fell asleep upon the instant.
STAVE 2
THE FIRST OF THE THREE SPIRITS AND MORE VAMPIRES
13
W
hen Scrooge awoke, it was so dark that looking out of bed, he could scarcely distinguish the transparent window from the opaque walls of his chamber. He was endeavoring to pierce the darkness with his eyes, when the chimes of a neighboring church struck the four quarters. He listened for it to strike the hour.
To his great astonishment the heavy bell went on from six to seven, and from seven to eight, and regularly up to twelve, then stopped. Twelve. It was past two when he went to bed. The clock was wrong. An icicle must have got into the works. Twelve o’clock.
He touched the spring of his repeater, to correct this most preposterous clock. Its rapid little pulse beat twelve and stopped.
“Why, it isn’t possible,” said Scrooge, “that I can have slept through a whole day and far into another night. It isn’t possible that anything has happened to the sun, and this is twelve at noon.”
The idea being an alarming one, he scrambled out of bed, and groped his way to the window. He was obliged to rub the frost off with the sleeve of his dressing-gown before he could see anything, and could see very little then. All he could make out was that it was still very foggy and extremely cold, and that there was no noise of people running to and fro, and making a great stir, as there unquestionably would have been if night had beaten off bright day, and taken possession of the world. This was a great relief, because “Three days after sight of this First of Exchange pay to Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge on his order,” and so forth, would have become a mere United States security if there were no days to count by.
Scrooge went to bed again, and thought, and thought, and thought it over and over, and could make nothing of it. The more he thought, the more perplexed he became, and the more he endeavored not to think, the more he thought.
Marley’s ghost bothered him exceedingly. Every time he resolved within himself, after mature inquiry, that it was all a dream, his mind flew back again, like a strong spring released, to its first position, and presented the same problem to be worked all through. Was it a dream or not?
Surely Belle, the woman he had foolishly engaged himself to all those years ago, had actually not summoned a ghost for the benefit of a man who had left her an old maid, an old maid who boarded travelers to keep herself in bread and coal. It was as outrageous as the suggestion that Mr. Wahltraud and his wife were vampires . . . vampires that were trying to control Scrooge’s life. Unthinkable!
“Vampires! Bah, humbug,” he muttered loudly, just to hear the sound of his own voice in the cold, empty chamber that was a dismal darkness. Pure and utter nonsense. Of course, one did hear rumors, but not anything that need concern him. Mind your own business and let others mind theirs was his motto, and his business was making money. Vampires, so it was said, desired only human blood, not coin or bank notes, and thus he and his interests were safe enough, he was quite certain.
It occurred to Scrooge that he should rise and stoke the dying coals on the brazier, but felt as his muscles would not,
could not
move, and so he lay in this state until the chime had gone three-quarters more. He then remembered suddenly that the ghost had warned him of a visitation when the bell tolled one. He resolved to lie awake until the hour was passed and, considering that he could no more go to sleep than go to heaven, this was, perhaps, the wisest resolution in his power.
The quarter was so long that he was more than once convinced he must have sunk into a doze unconsciously, and missed the clock. At length it broke upon his listening ear.
Ding, dong!
“A quarter past,” said Scrooge, counting.
Ding, dong!
“Half past,” said Scrooge.
Ding, dong!
“A quarter to it,” said Scrooge.
Ding, dong!
“The hour itself,” said Scrooge triumphantly, “and nothing else!”
He spoke before the hour bell sounded, which it now did with a deep, dull, hollow, melancholy
one
. Light flashed up in the room upon the instant, and the curtains of his bed were drawn open.
The curtains of his bed were drawn aside, I tell you, by a hand. It was not the curtains at his feet, nor the curtains at his back, but those to which his face was addressed. The curtains of his bed were drawn aside and Scrooge, starting up into a halfrecumbent attitude, found himself face-to-face with the unearthly visitor who drew them, as close to it as I am now to you, and I am standing in the spirit at your elbow.
It was a strange figure, like a child, yet not so like a child as like an old man, viewed through some supernatural medium, which gave him the appearance of having receded from the view, and being diminished to a child’s proportions. Its hair, which hung about its neck and down its back, was white as if with age, and yet the face had not a wrinkle in it, and the most tender bloom was on the skin. The arms were very long and muscular, the hands the same, as if its hold were of uncommon strength. Its legs and feet, most delicately formed, were, like those upper members, bare. It wore a tunic of the purest white, and round its waist was bound a lustrous belt, the sheen of which was beautiful. It held a branch of fresh green holly in its hand, and, in singular contradiction of that wintry emblem, had its dress trimmed with summer flowers. But the strangest thing about it was, that from the crown of its head there sprung a bright clear jet of light, by which all this was visible, and which was doubtless the occasion of its using, in its duller moments, a great extinguisher for a cap, which it now held under its arm.
Even this, though, when Scrooge looked at it with increasing steadiness, was not its strangest quality. For as its belt sparkled and glittered now in one part and now in another, and what was light one instant, at another time was dark, so the figure itself fluctuated in its distinctness, being now a thing with one arm, now with one leg, now with twenty legs, now a pair of legs without a head, now a head without a body, of which dissolving parts, no outline would be visible in the dense gloom wherein they melted away. And in the very wonder of this, it would be itself again, distinct and clear as ever.
“Are you the spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold to me?” asked Scrooge. A foolish question, perhaps, when speaking to a phantom standing at the side of your bed, but how else did one begin a conversation with a phantom?
“I am.” The voice was soft and gentle. It was singularly low, as if instead of being so close beside him, it were at a distance.
“Then who, and what are you?” Scrooge demanded. He was still frightened, but put out as well.
“I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.”
“Long past?” inquired Scrooge, observant of its dwarfish stature.
“
Your
past.”
Perhaps Scrooge could not have told anybody why, if anybody could have asked him, but he had a special desire to see the spirit in his cap, and begged him to be covered.
“What,” exclaimed the ghost, “would you so soon put out, with worldly hands, the light I give? Is it not enough that you are one of those whose passions made this cap, and force me through whole trains of years to wear it low upon my brow?”
Scrooge reverently disclaimed all intention to offend or any knowledge of having willfully bonneted the spirit at any period of his life. He then made bold to inquire what business brought the spirit there and how long he intended to stay.
“Your welfare,” said the ghost. “I come at the bequest of a woman called Belle. There are few humans who can reach out to spirits; it is fortunate she was able to do so for your benefit. Another spirit, that belonging to a Jacob Marley, made these arrangements. As to how long we will remain together, I cannot answer that on human terms. As long as it takes must, therefore, be my answer.”
Scrooge expressed himself much obliged, but he wanted no part of Belle’s bequest and he could not help thinking that a night of unbroken rest would have been more conducive to that end.
The spirit must have heard him thinking, for it said immediately, “Your reclamation, then. Take heed.” It put out its strong hand as it spoke, and clasped him gently by the arm. “Rise and walk with me.”
It would have been in vain for Scrooge to plead that the weather and the hour were not adapted to pedestrian purposes, that bed was warm, and the thermometer a long way below freezing, that he was clad but lightly in his slippers, dressing-gown, and nightcap, and that he had a cold upon him at that time. The grasp, though gentle as a woman’s hand, was not to be resisted. He rose, but finding that the spirit made toward the window, clasped his robe in supplication.
“I am mortal,” Scrooge remonstrated, “and liable to fall.”
“Bear but a touch of my hand there,” said the spirit, laying it upon his heart, “and you shall be upheld in more than this.”

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