A Vampire Christmas Carol (19 page)

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Authors: Sarah Gray

BOOK: A Vampire Christmas Carol
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36
P
erhaps the ghost took pity on Scrooge; perhaps he was only following his own pre-ordained schedule (did such a thing exist among spirits?). Scrooge did not attempt to think he understood or even cared to; all he knew was that he was somewhere beneath the city one moment, on a familiar street in the daylight the next.
Still shaking, Scrooge slowly rose from his knees, staring at his hands, at his nightdress, certain they must be covered in blood. There was no evidence of blood, but in his head, Scrooge could still hear the young girls’ screams.
“Take me where you must,” he murmured to the phantom that stood over him, “but for pity’s sake, take me far from that scene of evil.”
They went into an obscure part of the town where Scrooge had never penetrated before, although he recognized its situation, and its bad repute. The ways were foul and narrow, the shops and houses wretched, the people half-naked, drunken, slipshod, ugly. Alleys and archways, like so many cesspools, disgorged their offenses of smell, and dirt, and life, upon the straggling streets, and the whole quarter reeked with crime, with filth, and misery. This place, at first glance, was worse than the tunnels beneath the city, infested by the vampires.
Far in this den of infamous resort, there was a low-browed, beetling shop, below a pent-house roof, where iron, old rags, bottles, bones, and greasy offal, were bought. Upon the floor within were piled up heaps of rusty keys, nails, chains, hinges, files, scales, weights, and refuse iron of all kinds. Secrets that few would like to scrutinize were bred and hidden in mountains of unseemly rags, masses of corrupted fat, and sepulchers of bones. Sitting in among the wares he dealt in, by a charcoal stove made of old bricks, was a gray-haired rascal, nearly seventy years of age, who had screened himself from the cold air without by a frowzy curtaining of miscellaneous tatters hung upon a line, and smoked his pipe in all the luxury of calm retirement.
Scrooge and the phantom came into the presence of this man, just as a woman with a heavy bundle, a boy at her side, slunk into the shop. But she had scarcely entered when another woman, similarly laden, came in, too. The second woman was closely followed by a man in faded black who was no less startled by the sight of them than they were of him. After a short period of blank astonishment in which the old man with the pipe had joined them, they all three burst into laughter.
“Let the laundress be the first,” cried she who had entered first.
“B . . . be the f . . . f . . . first,” repeated the boy.
“My son and I will be the second, and let the undertaker’s man be the third. Look here, Old Joe, here’s a chance. If we haven’t all three met here without meaning it.”
“W . . . w . . . without m . . . m . . . meaning it,” said the boy.
Scrooge recognized the voice of the first woman, then the face of the boy who trotted behind her. “That’s my housekeeper!” he exclaimed to no one in particular, for the spirit did not seem to be interested in anything he had to say. “And her son!”
“You couldn’t have met in a better place,” said the one she called Old Joe, removing his pipe from his mouth. “Come into the parlor. You were made free of it long ago, you know, and the other two ain’t strangers. Stop till I shut the door of the shop. Ah! How it shrieks. There ain’t such a rusty bit of metal in the place as its own hinges, I believe, and I’m sure there’s no such old bones here, as mine. Ha, ha! We’re all suitable to our calling, we’re well matched. Come into the parlor. Come into the parlor.”
The parlor was the space behind the screen of rags, and smelled as bad as any sewer Scrooge had ever had the misfortune of encountering. The old man raked the fire together with an old stair-rod, and having trimmed his smoky lamp (for it was so dark inside the hovel despite the light of day outside) with the stem of his pipe, put it in his mouth again.
While he did this, Gelda, Scrooge’s shiftless housekeeper, threw her bundle on the floor, and sat down in a flaunting manner on a stool. She pointed for her son to drop to the floor as if to protect their possessions, and crossing her elbows on her knees, she looked with a bold defiance at the other two.
“What odds then. What odds, Mrs. Dilber?” said the housekeeper.
“W . . . w . . . what o . . . o . . . odds,” echoed the son, drool dribbling from his crooked mouth.
“Every person has a right to take care of themselves,” said Gelda. “He always did.”
“A . . . a . . . always d . . . did.”
“That’s true, indeed,” said the laundress. “No man more so.”
“Why then, don’t stand staring as if you was afraid, woman. Who’s the wiser? The vampires, they care not. They’ve better to do tonight, I can promise you. No blood here, and no souls worth having, and that’s all they seek. None such as we need fear them. We must stick together, the likes of us. We’re not going to pick holes in each other’s coats, I suppose.”
“I . . . I s . . . suppose,” reiterated the boy.
“An annoying habit,” commented Scrooge to the spirit. “The boy, repeating what his mother says. But I suppose he cannot help himself,” he added thoughtfully.
“No, indeed,” said the laundress and the man together.
“We should hope not,” continued the laundress. “Got what they want, I s’pose.”
“Very well, then,” cried the housekeeper. “That’s enough. Who’s the worse for the loss of a few things like these? Not a dead man, I suppose.”
“D . . . dead man, I . . . I s . . . s . . . suppose.”
“No, indeed,” said Mrs. Dilber, laughing. She ignored the boy, for apparently she knew of his affliction and tolerated it well.
“It’s not like he had need to keep them after he was dead, a wicked old screw,” pursued Gelda. “Why wasn’t he natural in his lifetime? If he had been, he’d have had somebody to look after him when he was struck with Death, instead of lying gasping out his last there, alone by himself.”
“I heard he was engaged to be married once,” put in the undertaker’s man.
“I don’t believe it. Not that one. He was too sour. Too mean.”
“T . . . t . . . too m . . . m . . . mean,” offered the boy.
His mother wiped his mouth with the cuff of her sleeve.
“It’s the truest word that ever was spoke, Tag, boy,” said Mrs. Dilber with a nod of her chin. “It’s a judgment on him. Him bein’ left to die alone in his own puddle!”
“I’d rather have the life sucked out of me by the vampire that lives under the eaves than die that way,” said Old Joe thoughtfully, “or even the tall thin one that do hide in the chimney. But I guess you’d not feel the same, workin’ for ’em the way you do.” He looked pointedly at Gelda.
“Not my fault!” the housekeeper snapped. “It was that or give ’im my Tag. And us, we don’t have more than a sip here or there. Not like some.”
“N . . . not l . . . like s . . . s . . . some.”
“I only wish it was a little heavier judgment,” continued the housekeeper. “And it should have been, you may depend upon it, if I could have laid my hands on anything else. Open that bundle, Old Joe, and let me know the value of it. Speak out plain. I’m not afraid to be the first, nor afraid for them to see it. We know pretty well that we were helping ourselves, before we met here, I believe. It’s no sin. Open the bundle, Joe.”
“The b . . . b . . . bundle, J . . . J . . . Joe.”
But the gallantry of her friends would not allow this, and the man in faded black, mounting the breach first, produced his plunder. It was not extensive. A seal or two, a pencil-case, a pair of sleeve-buttons, and a brooch of no great value, were all. They were severally examined and appraised by Old Joe, who chalked the sums he was disposed to give for each, upon the wall and added them up into a total when he found there was nothing more to come.
“That’s your account,” said Joe. “And I wouldn’t give another sixpence if I was hung and fed upon for not doing it. Who’s next?”
Mrs. Dilber was next. Sheets and towels, a little wearing apparel, two old-fashioned silver teaspoons, a pair of sugar-tongs, and a few boots. Her account was stated on the wall in the same manner.
“I always give too much to ladies. It’s a weakness of mine, and that’s the way I ruin myself,” said Old Joe. “That’s your account. If you asked me for another penny, and made it an open question, I’d repent of being so liberal and knock off half-a-crown.”
“And now undo my bundle, Joe,” urged Gelda.
“J . . . J . . . Joe,” cried the boy enthusiastically. Again, the string of drool.
Joe went down on his knees for the greater convenience of opening the bundle, and having unfastened a great many knots, dragged out a large and heavy roll of some dark stuff. “What do you call this?” he asked. “Bed-curtains?”
“Ah,” returned Scrooge’s housekeeper, laughing and leaning forward on her crossed arms. “Bed-curtains.”
“B . . . b . . . bed-curtains!”
“You don’t mean to say you took them down, rings and all, with him lying there?” said Joe with a slap to his thigh.
“Yes, I do,” she replied. “The master said ‘take what you want, ’twas owed to you.’ Why not?”
“W . . . why n . . . n . . . not?”
“You were born to make your fortune,” said Joe, “and you’ll certainly do it.”
“I certainly shan’t hold my hand when I can get anything in it by reaching it out, for the sake of such a man as he was, I promise you, Joe,” returned Gelda coolly. “It’s his fault I had to do the vampires’ biddin’ in the first place. Don’t drop that oil upon the blankets, now, and ruin ’em.”
“R . . . ruin ’em!”
Gelda smiled at her boy and patted his head.
“His blankets, too?” asked Joe.
“Whose else’s do you think?” replied the housekeeper. “He isn’t likely to take cold without them, I dare say.”
“D . . . dare s . . . say.”
“I hope he didn’t die of anything catching. Eh?” said Old Joe, stopping in his work, and looking up.
“Don’t you be afraid of that,” returned the woman. “I ain’t so fond of his company that I’d loiter about him for such things, if he did. Ah. You may look through that shirt till your eyes ache, but you won’t find a hole in it, nor a threadbare place. It’s the best he had, and a fine one, too. They’d have wasted it, if it hadn’t been for me.”
“B . . . been f . . . for Mum!” the boy volunteered.
“What do you call wasting of it?” asked Old Joe.
“Putting it on him to be buried in, to be sure,” replied Gelda with a laugh. “Somebody was fool enough to do it, but I took it off again. If calico ain’t good enough for such a purpose, it ain’t good enough for anything. It’s quite as becoming to the body. He can’t look uglier than he did in that one.”
The boy opened his mouth to speak and his mother clamped her hand over it, drool and all, and Scrooge, for one, was thankful.
“Told to leave ’im, you know,” said the undertaker’s man.
“Leave him?” asked Old Joe. “Whatcha mean?”
“Mr. Martin, my employer, he said I wasn’t to begin the embalming.”
Old Joe scowled. “Not embalm him?”
“Why ever not?” demanded Gelda.
“N . . . not?” squeaked Tag from beneath his mother’s hand.
“Not my part to ask,” replied the undertaker’s man. “Though I have my suspicions who gave the word.”
Scrooge listened to this dialogue in horror. As they sat grouped about their spoil, in the scanty light afforded by the old man’s lamp, he viewed them with a detestation and disgust, which could hardly have been greater, as though they were the demons, marketing the corpse itself.
“Ha, ha,” laughed the housekeeper when Old Joe, producing a flannel bag with money in it, spilled out their gains upon the ground. “This is the end of it, you see. He frightened every one away from him when he was alive, to profit us when he was dead. Ha, ha, ha.”
“Haaaa haaaa,” the boy garbled under his mother’s gag.
“Spirit,” said Scrooge, shuddering from head to foot as he watched his own housekeeper, watched all of them cackle. “I see, I see. The case of this unhappy man might be my own. My life leads that way, now. Merciful Heaven, who is this they speak of?”
37
H
e recoiled in terror, for the scene had changed, and now he almost touched a bed, a bare, uncurtained bed on which, beneath a ragged sheet, there lay a something covered up, which, though it was dumb, announced itself in awful language.
The room was very dark, too dark to be observed with any accuracy, though Scrooge glanced round it in obedience to a secret impulse, anxious to know what kind of room it was. A pale light, rising in the outer air, fell straight upon the bed and on it, plundered and bereft, unwatched, unwept, uncared for, was the body of this man.
On the fringes of the room stood people, hazy and without form, though surely people. Men and women he recognized from the scene below stairs where the two girls had been attacked. The people did not see Scrooge, of course; they were too intent upon talking to each other, or perhaps not really there.
“Will you go tonight?” came a voice.
“We’re not invited.”
“Not invited?”
The voices seemed to come from everywhere, not just from the walls where the people stood, but from the ceiling and floor as well.
“A private ceremony.”
“After all I’ve done for her! It is outrageous!”
“And you will say that to the queen?”
Others chimed in, voicing equal sentiments, until the singular voices created one, like the great hum of summer insects.
Scrooge glanced toward the phantom. Its steady hand was pointed to the head. The cover was so carelessly adjusted that the slightest raising of it, the motion of a finger upon Scrooge’s part, would have disclosed the face. He thought of it, felt how easy it would be to do, and longed to do it; but had no more power to withdraw the veil than to dismiss the specter at his side.
Oh cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar here, and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy command, for this is thy dominion. But of the loved, revered, and honored head, thou canst not turn one hair to thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious. It is not that the hand is heavy and will fall down when released. It is not that the heart and pulse are still, but that the hand was open, generous, and true, the heart brave, warm, and tender, and the pulse a man’s. Strike, Shadow, strike. And see his good deeds springing from the wound, to sow the world with life immortal.
No voice pronounced these words in Scrooge’s ears. They were not the words of the men and women he had seen below and above his stairs, and yet he heard them when he looked upon the bed. He thought, if this man could be raised up now, what would be his foremost thoughts? Avarice, hard-dealing, griping cares? They have brought him to a rich end, truly.
He lay, in the dark empty house, with not a man, a woman, or a child, to say that he was kind to me in this or that, and for the memory of one kind word I will be kind to him. A cat was tearing at the door, and there was a sound of gnawing rats beneath the hearth-stone. The dancing girls, surely dead by now, cried out, and the ghouls that had fallen upon them howled their pleasure. What they wanted in the room of death, and why they were so restless and disturbed, Scrooge did not dare to think.
“Spirit,” he said, shaking in his slippers, his nightcap falling over his forehead. “This is a fearful place. In leaving it, I shall not leave its lesson, trust me. I beg of you, take me from these demons that will suck the life’s blood from mankind. Let us go.”
Still the ghost pointed with an unmoved finger to the head.
“I understand you,” Scrooge returned, “and I would do it, if I could. But I have not the power, Spirit. I have not the power.”
Again it seemed to look upon him.
Scrooge placed his hands together, threading his fingers as if in prayer.
As I would have been, dear reader . . . in prayer, that is! Can you imagine the terror evoked in him, by spirit and vampire alike?
“If there is any person in the town who feels emotion caused by this man’s death,” said Scrooge, quite agonized, “show that person to me, Spirit, I beseech you.”

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