Humbug Holiday (6 page)

“Makes you appreciate Palmdale a bit more,” I said.

“A whole lot more,” Frankie agreed.

The ghost led us to a door at the back. It opened onto a long, bare room of empty desks. In the shadows a small boy was sitting, a book spread out before him.

“Hi,” I said. The boy didn't look up.

“Devin, he can't hear you or see you,” said Frankie.

Which was too bad, because the kid, who seemed around ten years old, definitely looked as if he could use some company.

“Books were my only friends,” said Scrooge, his eyelids flicking away what I'm pretty sure were tears. “Books were my only companions during the Christmases I spent here alone.”

“This is brutal,” said Frankie. “You had to spend Christmas all alone? At school?”

“You must have been really bad,” I said.

He turned to us. “Bad? No. My father didn't like me, that's all … oh! Poor Ebenezer! Poor boy!”

I glanced at Frankie. “Ouch …”

She shook her head sadly.

Scrooge sat down next to his small self and looked at him closely. “I wish, I wish, but, no, it's too late now.”

“What is the matter?” asked the spirit.

“Nothing,” said Scrooge. “Nothing. There was a boy singing a Christmas song on the street last night. I wish I had given him something, that's all.”

Frankie pulled from her pocket the coin we had gotten from the man in the street. “It's called charity.”

The ghost smiled thoughtfully, then waved its hand. “Let us see another Christmas, Ebenezer Scrooge!”

It happened in an instant.

Scrooge's former self suddenly grew larger, and the room around us became even darker and more dirty. The windows cracked, bits and chunks of plaster fell from the ceiling, the floor became more stained and dull, and the dust mounted up like mini-snow drifts.

It must have been three or four Christmases later, and kid Scrooge was still there. But he wasn't reading. He was pacing up and down the classroom.

“He's waiting for someone,” said Frankie.

And someone did come.

The door behind us opened, and a little girl, much younger than the boy, came darting in.

“Dear brother!” she exclaimed. “I have come to bring you home, dear brother! To bring you home! Home!”

The girl put her arms around young Scrooge and hugged him and gave him a kiss.

Young Scrooge's eyes welled with tears. “Home, little Fan? No, it can't be—”

“But it is!” she said. “Yes! Home, once and for all. Home, for ever and ever. Father is so much kinder than he used to be, and he spoke so gently to me one night that I wasn't afraid to ask once more if you might come home. And he said yes, you
should
come home—right away. And he sent me in a coach to bring you!”

“But, Fan … I can't believe it!” young Scrooge said.

“You are never to come back here, Ebenezer. Ever, as long as you live. And we'll be together all Christmas long, and have the merriest time in all the world!”

Tears now streamed down young Scrooge's face. Down mine, too, and Frankie's, and even old Scrooge's.

“It's true,” said Scrooge. “She did come one year, my little Fan. And I never did come back here—”

The sound of clopping hooves from outside told us that a carriage had arrived. Fan clapped her hands and laughed as she and her brother rushed out the door together.

“She was always a delicate creature,” the ghost said. “But she had a good heart.”

“The very best heart in the world,” said Scrooge, watching his young self step into the carriage. “The best in the whole world!”

“And when she died,” said the ghost, “she had, I think, children.”

“One child,” said Scrooge.

“True,” said the ghost. “Your nephew!”

Scrooge frowned at the floor. “My nephew.”

At that moment, someone called out, “Bring down Master Scrooge's things!”

A small box was tossed down from an upper floor to the carriage driver outside. Following it came a large sack, then something purple with straps and zippers.

I nearly jumped out of my skin. “Oh, my gosh! Frankie! My backpack! It's here!”

I flew past the ghost and jumped out the door to grab my pack from the pile of stuff on the carriage.

But even as I did—and even as I smelled the wonderful chocolaty smell of my mother's cookies—the ghost said, “Now look upon yet another Christmas, Ebenezer Scrooge!”

“Not yet!” I shouted. “My backpaaaaack—”

But the spirit wouldn't wait. With a wave of its hand, the school was gone, and the countryside began to fade.

“Wait!” I yelled.

I actually felt the strap in my hand when all of a sudden an old-fashioned buckled shoe came out of nowhere and kicked the pack out of my fingers.

It didn't skitter across the snowy ground but across a wooden floor and into the shadows of a large room.

“Hey!” I yelled. “Who's kicking?!”

Scrooge laughed suddenly. “Why, it's Mr. Fezziwig!”

Chapter 10

The strange buckled shoe, and another one just like it, clacked across the wooden floor, kicking my backpack with each swinging foot.
Whack! Whump!

“Don't do that!” I said. “I got cookies in there!”

“Why, it's old Fezziwig!” said Scrooge, clapping his hands in delight as a plump old man made his way to a high desk at the end of the room, seeming not to know he was kicking a purple backpack with every step.

“Frankie, Devin, look! It's old Fezziwig, alive again!”

“Alive and kicking my cookies to smithereens!” I yelled. “Frankie, help me—”

But even as we charged across the floor toward the pack, a strange, skinny hand thrust itself out of the shadows—a pale, white, ghostly hand, just like the one before!—and snatched the bag away. It vanished into nothing.

Frankie slid to a stop. “Oh, my gosh! That was so weird.”

“Told you!” I cried. “This book is jammed with ghosts and some of them like to steal stuff. Cookie thieves—”

“Ha, ha!” Scrooge laughed again. “Frankie, Devin, look. I worked here as a young man. Come quickly!”

“The backpack will turn up later,” said Frankie, tapping the book. “Then we'll be ready for it. In the meantime, let's stick with the story.”

Grumbling, I turned around to see that we were in what looked like a warehouse, piled high with boxes of all sizes. Yet, it was obviously Christmastime again. Frost covered the windows, and you could hear the cold wind howling outside. But inside, evergreen garlands hung from the walls, and candles blazed cheerily in every corner.

“This is actually pretty cozy,” Frankie said.

“It's wonderful!” said Scrooge. “And now—”

Da-dong!
The clock on the wall chimed the hour.

Mr. Fezziwig, who was seated atop his high desk, glanced at the clock, grinned, then laid down his pen.

“Yo-ho there, Ebenezer! Hilli-ho, Dick! Come!”

Clambering in from the back came Scrooge's former self, older and taller than before, looking to be about high-school age. With him was another boy.

“Yo-ho, my boys!” said Fezziwig, chortling as he climbed down from his desk to join the boys. “No more work tonight. Christmas Eve, Dick. Christmas, Ebenezer!”

“Shall we close the shutters, sir?” asked young Scrooge politely.

“Close the shutters!” said Fezziwig. “Then shove the desks and tables over to the side. Throw more logs on the fire. And bring in the food! It's Christmas!”

Scrooge and Dick were a blur of laughing activity. They dashed into the street and closed the shutters. The tables and desks were whisked away in a flash. And platters and bowls and pots and pans heaped with steaming food were brought in with help from the even more plump Mrs. Fezziwig.

“Here comes the DJ,” Frankie said with a chuckle, when a guy as thin as the violin under his arm came in.

The instant he started sawing at the thing, Mrs. Fezziwig's toes started tapping. She called in three girls as round as their mother and, stumbling after them, six young men arguing over who would get the first dance.

Soon, bunches of people flooded out of the back rooms and before you knew it, it was a blazing party.

“This guy Fezziwig sure knows how to throw a bash,” said Frankie.

“Indeed he does,” said Scrooge, clapping his hands.

In the blazing light, Frankie read, and I laughed. Then she laughed, and I read. My backpack didn't turn up in Fezziwig's warehouse, but it was one awesome party.

Even though the bash went on for four hours, it zipped by in the book. Four hours of thirty people hopping and spinning and rushing around doing old-time dances. Four hours in six pages, then it was over!

Da-dong!
The clock struck eleven, and the music stopped, and Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig laughed their way to the door, taking up positions on either side of it. They shook hands with everyone, wished everyone a merry Christmas, and sent them cheerily on their way.

During the whole thing, old Scrooge acted like a kid in a toy store. He pointed everywhere, remembering this person, that song, his eyes glistening nearly as much as his young self's.

After the last person left, the spirit turned to him, the light on its head burning more bright and clear than ever. “Why do you take such delight from the scene? It cost Fezziwig nearly nothing.”

“Pah! It isn't that!” snapped Scrooge. “It isn't the money. Fezziwig had the power to make us happy, and he did. That joy was as great as if it had cost a fortune.…”

He stopped.

“What is the matter?” asked the ghost.

“Nothing,” said Scrooge, frowning. “Except that I should like to be able to say a word to my own clerk, Bob Cratchit, just now. That's all. Just a word.”

“Not a nasty word, like you were telling him before?” I said. “Because you were sort of harsh, you know.”

“No, no,” said Scrooge. “A kind word, if he would listen.”

“Come,” said the ghost. “My time grows short!”

An instant later, we were huddled in the corner of a small room in a house somewhere.

Before us sat a young woman. In her eyes, which sparkled in the light shining from the Ghost of Christmas Past, there were tears.

Young Scrooge was there, but older now, and nearly grown up. He was pacing across the room in front of the woman, snorting to himself.

“I don't understand,” he was saying, “I don't—”

“Ebenezer,” said the woman softly. “You do not love me anymore. Another idol has taken my place in your heart. A golden one. You love money more than you love me.”

“Uh-oh,” I whispered. “Love troubles. This isn't my thing. I'm gonna scout around for you-know-what—”

“Stay and listen!” hissed Frankie. “This is important.”

Young Scrooge grunted under his breath. “I merely want to be rich so that the world will not drag me down. I refuse to be poor! The world is cruel to the poor!”

“Ebenezer, you fear the world too much,” said the woman, more tears flooding her eyes. “When you said you loved me, you were another man—”

“Bah! I was a boy,” he said impatiently.

“Your own words tell me you were not what you are now,” she said. “Therefore … I release you.”

She pulled a small ring off her finger.

“Oh, this is cruel!” young Scrooge protested, snatching the ring and stomping across the room, standing suddenly side by side with his older self.

“Look at him,” Frankie whispered. “He's so different now from when he was with his sister, or at Fezziwig's.”

Seeing them there together, one in the past, one in the present, it was clear that Frankie had hit on something. The younger Scrooge no longer smiled as he had at Fezziwig's party. There was an icy glint in his eyes that scared me. He was so much more like the Scrooge who was mean to his nephew. The one who forced the charity guys to go away. The old grouch who yelled at the poor boy singing in the street.

Already, he loved money more than anything else.

“So, you release me?” young Scrooge asked sharply. “Even though I shall soon have great wealth?”

“Wealth is not love,” said the woman. “Go. I hope you will be happy in the life you have chosen—”

“Thank you! I shall be!” snapped Scrooge.

“And a merry Christmas to you, Ebenezer—”

“Humbug!” he said, then stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

“So,” I said to old Scrooge, “is this where you learned to slam doors?”

“Spirit, take me from this place!” Scrooge demanded.

“I have told you, these are shadows of the things that have been,” said the spirit softly. “Do not blame me if they are unpleasant to you. We shall see more!”

“No!” said Scrooge. Then his eyes flashed as he saw that the spirit's light was burning high and bright. “So, your brightness means you have power over me? Then I will put that light out! And you will haunt me no more!”

“No!” said Frankie. “Don't mess with ghosts!”

But Scrooge seized the big cone-shaped extinguisher hat that the spirit carried with him, and pressed it down suddenly upon the ghost's head. “There!”

The ghost dropped beneath it, so that the cone covered his head. But even Scrooge couldn't hide the spirit's light. It shone all over the ground under the cap.

“Frankie, let's help the ghost!” I said.

Together we seized the cone and tried to pull it back off the nice spirit's head, but Scrooge was too strong for even the three of us. Soon the struggle was over.

The spirit's light went out.

Things went misty and dark for an instant, then we were in Scrooge's room again.

“That was not good,” I said. “Not good at all.”

“Humbug!” shouted Scrooge. Then, exhausted from his struggle, he breathed heavily and fell onto his bed.