A Zombie Christmas Carol (3 page)

As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker again.

To say that he was not startled, or that his blood was not conscious of a terrible sensation to which it had been a stranger from infancy, would be untrue. But he put his hand upon the key he had relinquished, turned it sturdily, walked in, and lighted his candle.

He
did
pause, with a moment’s irresolution, before he shut the door; and he
did
look cautiously behind it first, as if he half expected to be terrified with the sight of Marley’s pigtail sticking out into the hall. But there was nothing on the back of the door, except the screws and nuts that held the knocker on, so he said “Pooh, pooh!” and closed it with a bang.

The sound resounded through the house like thunder. Every room above, and every cask in the wine-merchant’s cellars below, appeared to have a separate peal of echoes of its own. Scrooge was not a man to be frightened by echoes. He fastened the door, and walked across the hall, and up the stairs; slowly too: trimming his candle as he went.

You may talk vaguely about driving a coach-and-six up a good old flight of stairs, or through a bad young Act of Parliament; but I mean to say you might have got a hearse up that staircase, and taken it broadwise, with the splinter-bar towards the wall and the door towards the balustrades: and done it easy. There was plenty of width for that, and room to spare; which is perhaps the reason why Scrooge thought he saw a locomotive hearse going on before him in the gloom. Half-a-dozen gas-lamps out of the street wouldn’t have lighted the entry too well, so you may suppose that it was pretty dark with Scrooge’s dip.

Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for that. Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it. But before he shut his heavy door, he removed one of the old cavalry swords from the wall and held it up to his shoulder.  It was a simple move but he looked strangely at ease with the old weapon that now lay in both a comfortable position but also ideally placed to use in anger if required.  He walked through his rooms to see that all was right. He had just enough recollection of the face to desire to do that whilst keeping his right hand firmly on the weapon, just in case.  The weapon gave him a re-assuring, safe feeling though it did nothing to hold back the coldness of the house.

Sitting-room, bedroom, lumber-room. All as they should be. Nobody under the table, nobody under the sofa; a small fire in the grate; spoon and basin ready; and the little saucepan of gruel (Scrooge had a cold in his head) upon the hob. Nobody under the bed; nobody in the closet; nobody in his dressing-gown, which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude against the wall. Lumber-room as usual. Old fire-guard, old shoes, two fish-baskets, washing-stand on three legs, and a poker.

Quite satisfied, he placed the sword down and then closed his door, and locked himself in; double-locked himself in, which was not his custom. Thus secured against surprise, he took off his cravat; put on his dressing-gown and slippers, and his nightcap; and sat down before the fire to take his gruel. To the side of his bed lay a fine bladed dagger though like all of Scrooge’s possessions it was old, poorly cared for and saw little if any use.

It was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such a bitter night. He was obliged to sit close to it, and brood over it, before he could extract the least sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel. The fireplace was an old one, built by some Dutch merchant long ago, and paved all round with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the Scriptures. There were Cains and Abels, Pharaoh’s daughters; Queens of Sheba, Angelic messengers descending through the air on clouds like feather-beds, Abrahams, Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in butter-boats, hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts; and yet that face of Marley, seven years dead, came like the ancient Prophet’s rod, and swallowed up the whole. If each smooth tile had been a blank at first, with power to shape some picture on its surface from the disjointed fragments of his thoughts, there would have been a copy of old Marley’s head on every one.

“Humbug!” said Scrooge; and walked across the room.

After several turns, he sat down again. As he threw his head back in the chair, his glance happened to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, that hung in the room, and communicated for some purpose now forgotten with a chamber in the highest story of the building. It was with great astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread, that as he looked, he saw this bell begin to swing. It swung so softly in the outset that it scarcely made a sound; but soon it rang out loudly, and so did every bell in the house.

With surprising speed, he reached out and grabbed the dagger, pulling it close to his side.  He lowered the tip so that it pointed ahead towards the direction of the sound.

This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but it seemed an hour. The bells ceased as they had begun, together. They were succeeded by a clanking noise, deep down below; as if some person were dragging a heavy chain over the casks in the wine-merchant’s cellar. Scrooge then remembered to have heard that ghosts in haunted houses were described as dragging chains.

The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound, and then he heard the noise much louder, on the floors below; then coming up the stairs; then coming straight towards his door.

He held the dagger out in front of him, the thoughts of his last battles with the undead racing to the top of his mind.  If nothing else, Scrooge refused to suffer the same face as Marley had when dragged down and eaten alive by those vile things.

“Could it be that they have come back and they want to finish me like they did Marley?” asked Scrooge to himself.

He looked around the room for any others weapons, cursing himself for leaving his old sword back out of the room.  As he scanned the darkness of the room, his anger and then disbelief returned.  He scowled as he turned back to the direction of the sound.

“It’s humbug still!” said Scrooge. “I won’t believe it.  We killed them all in the end, every last one of them!”

His colour changed though, when, without a pause, it came on through the heavy door, and passed into the room before his eyes. Upon its coming in, the dying flame leaped up, as though it cried, “I know him; Marley’s Ghost!” and fell again.

Marley’s Ghost

The same face: the very same. Marley in his pigtail, usual waistcoat, tights and boots; the tassels on the latter bristling, like his pigtail, and his coat-skirts, and the hair upon his head. He still carried the wounds he had sustained during his struggle and death, but apart from that he was the vision of the man he once knew.

The chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel. His body was transparent; so that Scrooge, observing him, and looking through his waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his coat behind.

Around his waist, he carried a sword belt of some kind that Scrooge vaguely recognised.

Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he had never believed it until now.

No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he looked the phantom through and through, and saw it standing before him; though he felt the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes; and marked the very texture of the folded kerchief bound about its head and chin, which wrapper he had not observed before; he was still incredulous, and fought against his senses.

“How now!” said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. “What do you want with me?”

“Much!”—Marley’s voice, no doubt about it.

“Who are you?”

“Ask me who I
was
.”

“Who
were
you then?” said Scrooge, raising his voice. “You’re particular, for a shade.” He was going to say “
to
a shade,” but substituted this, as more appropriate.

“In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.”

“Can you—can you sit down?” asked Scrooge, looking doubtfully at him.

“I can.”

“Do it, then.”

Scrooge asked the question, because he didn’t know whether a ghost so transparent might find himself in a condition to take a chair; and felt that in the event of its being impossible, it might involve the necessity of an embarrassing explanation. But the ghost sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace, as if he were quite used to it.

“You don’t believe in me,” observed the Ghost.

“I don’t,” said Scrooge.

“What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses?”

“I don’t know,” said Scrooge.

“Why do you doubt your senses?”

“Because,” said Scrooge, “a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”

Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel, in his heart, by any means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, and keeping down his terror; for the spectre’s voice disturbed the very marrow in his bones.

“In the past I have dreamt of all kinds of curiosities but not once have I seen you in such a manner,” he said whilst taking a step back.

He thought to himself and then came to the simple realisation that he must be feeling unwell and the reason for seeing this vision of old Marley was because of the visit earlier that day by the gentlemen.  He looked up to the Spirit though and his doubt returned.  It appeared real enough and it certainly sent a chill of fear down his back of the kind he had not felt since his short time in the militia or even worse, the few minutes he spent fighting the undead seven years ago.

To sit, staring at those fixed glazed eyes, in silence for a moment, would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him. There was something very awful, too, in the spectre’s being provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own. Scrooge could not feel it himself, but this was clearly the case; for though the Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its hair, and skirts, and tassels, were still agitated as by the hot vapour from an oven.

“You see this toothpick?” said Scrooge, returning quickly to the charge, for the reason just assigned; and wishing, though it were only for a second, to divert the vision’s stony gaze from himself.

“I do,” replied the Ghost.

“You are not looking at it,” said Scrooge.

“But I see it,” said the Ghost, “notwithstanding.”

“Well!” returned Scrooge, “I have but to swallow this, and be for the rest of my days persecuted by a legion of goblins, all of my own creation. Humbug, I tell you! humbug!”

At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain with such a dismal and appalling noise, that Scrooge held on tight to his chair, to save himself from falling in a swoon. He dropped his dagger with the fear of the ghostly apparition ahead of him, before he was able to strengthen his resolve and issue one final challenge to the ghostly figure.

“You could be a simple illusion, one based upon the science of light and glass.  Nothing you have told me was of secret to anybody else.  Why, you could be one of my competitors trying to steal custom and trade from my very person, perhaps by using some foul poison or drug,” he said with a look of triumphalism to his face.

The Spirit appeared more agitated, crying out in anger and bitterness towards Scrooge but this was not enough, Scrooge was now convinced, deep in his mind that the Spirit was a way of driving him mad or to do something to compromise himself and his business.

“I do not have much time, you should not waste it with your arguments,” he said with effort.

“If you are truly Marley, then tell me something that only you and I do know and not some simple business transaction.  Tell me, what happened on the night of your death?” asked Scrooge with a look of mischief in his eye.

“Scrooge, you know too well what happened on that night.  I am here for the very reason that you too will soon join me on that path!” it cried.

“Humbug!  You tell me nothing new, sir, other than to try and stop my commerce,” he answered with the sound of accomplishment to his voice.

Scrooge looked around the room, presumably looking for a third party or something that helped to control the creature yet saw nothing that could create the fearsome apparition in his very home.  He thought for a brief moment of those people that could have gained access to his house and might bear him ill will.  “But why would they want to punish me?” he asked himself.

Scrooge turned his gaze back to the Spirit, looking for answers but before he could speak the Spirit opened is jaw and spoke quickly, as though the very time it had remaining were just a few brief seconds.

“Seven years ago you and I, two men with a history of financial prudence and success, were at the centre of the greatest calamity this city has ever seen.  Even our short time in the Yeomanry was nothing compared to the horrors we saw that night,” it said as it looked closely at Scrooge.