The Last of the Spirits (6 page)

The greatest change had occurred in their mother though. The light had almost disappeared from her sapphire eyes, which once had evoked a summer sky and now looked like ice. Her rounded features were sunken and wan. She seemed tired and dazed, like a gin addict.

‘I’m very sorry, madam,’ said the man. ‘I only do as I am required to do.’

‘But what an occupation,’ said their mother.

‘It is the only one I have,’ replied the man. ‘We lent your husband money and he knew the consequences in not keeping up his payments to us.’

‘Is that how you sleep, then?’ she said. ‘By reciting that tale to yourself?’

Even from behind, Sam could see the man bristle.

‘I shall take my leave of you, madam,’ he said. ‘You must quit this house and all its contents. They will be forfeited against your husband’s debt. I trust that you will find accommodation with family or friends. Good day.’

The man bowed. Their mother reached out and grabbed his sleeve.

‘We have no friends,’ she said. ‘Nor family. This is all my family here. We are everything to each other. Please, I beg you.’

They were to leave even that house. Their mother would live in the prison with their father, while Sam and Lizzie lived with strangers.

Sam had hoped that when their father died of jail fever, the death might free his mother from the duty she felt to be at his side. But the same fever that took him took her a week later.

And so they were alone in the world.

‘Madam,’ replied the man, ‘there is nothing for me to do. I’m sorry.’

With that, he turned to face them. The face was younger, with a touch more colour to it, but its owner was still instantly recognisable. It was Jacob Marley.

Sam and Lizzie were used to sleeping on paving slabs and iron grates and doorsteps, being moved on by constables and woken by drunks. Their sleep was normally as slight a thing as tissue paper, but this night was a soft and heavy blanket.

It was Lizzie who woke first.

‘Sam!’ she whispered.

Sam had no idea how many times Lizzie had said his name before he woke, rising out of the depths of sleep like a miner, blinking into the light, Marley’s face still imprinted on his mind.

Voices!

‘What?’ said Sam, squinting into the gloom, forgetting where they were for a moment.

Voices. There were voices in the room with them. But what was going on? The floor was cold and damp. There was earth beneath them now, not cushions as there had been. Had it all been a dream? Or did the dream, or whatever it was, continue? Sam edged towards a point in the tablecloth where it seemed to join like curtains.

‘Are spirits’ lives so short?’ he heard Scrooge say.

‘My life upon this globe is very brief,’ said another voice, deep and booming. ‘It ends tonight.’

‘Tonight?’ cried Scrooge.

‘Tonight!’ repeated the other. ‘At midnight. Hark! The time is drawing near.’

Sam edged closer to the cloth. The deep and booming voice seemed to come from high above him. He was afraid as never before. His hold on what was real or unreal was loosening and he could not guess at the scale of whatever might greet them next. As Sam gripped the folds of the material he was surprised by the weight of it. And was that a fur trim?

‘I see something strange,’ said Scrooge, ‘protruding from your robes. Is it a foot or a claw?’

Sam realised Scrooge must be talking about his own foot, which was sticking out from under the fur trim.

‘It might be a claw, for all the flesh there is upon it,’ said the booming voice. ‘Look here!’

The next instant, the cloth was wrenched asunder.

Sam and Lizzie crouched, squinting and horribly revealed, like whelks pulled from their shell. They were in some terrible barren place and there stood Scrooge, trembling in his nightgown and cap.

‘Spirit,’ said Scrooge nervously, looking at Sam and Lizzie as though they were feral dogs, ‘are they yours?’

Sam saw a giant pair of bare feet on either side of them, and then a voice boomed out above and Sam turned to see that, instead of being under the table, they were now under the heavy green fur-trimmed robes of a mighty bearded giant.

‘They are Man’s,’ said the giant.

Scrooge stared at them incredulously.

‘This boy,’ said the giant, indicating Sam without looking at him, ‘is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.’

Sam scowled up at the giant, whom he could see now was crowned with a holly wreath that twinkled with icicles, his hair and beard grey with age.

What manner of creature was this? He looked like a forest giant, some mighty Lord of the Woods. Was he a frost giant, a King of Winter? Sam had no intention of waiting to discover what this colossus had in store for them.

Lizzie pulled him closer and she and Sam stood up, fists clenched, ready to fight their corner come what may. Punch, kick, scratch and run – that was their code and it had served them well. Scrooge spoke before they could move.

‘Have they no refuge or resource?’ he asked hesitantly, looking back and forth between the children and the giant.

‘Are there no prisons? said the spirit. Sam grinned bitterly. The giant was feeding the old miser’s words back at him. ‘Are there no workhouses?’

It was as if Scrooge felt the words and the tone in which they were spoken like a slap across his face and he glanced sideways at Sam and Lizzie, though Sam could see it pained him to hold their gaze.

At first Sam thought it was the usual disgust, but now he saw it was fear. Scrooge was afraid of them. He didn’t remember them from the street – he thought they were spirits too. He thought they were demons.
Maybe we are,
thought Sam.
Maybe that’s exactly what we are.

Sam looked at Scrooge’s pinched pale and quivering face but felt no sympathy for him. Quite the reverse. That miserable old scrounger was getting all the attention while he and Lizzie were used like props in a pantomime. And if Marley had been involved in their family’s misfortunes, then was it not likely that his partner had been too? Is that why the spirits had gathered them up?

Scrooge eyed them warily and backed away a step or two, leaving one of his slippers behind as he did so.
Well,
thought Sam with a grin,
if he thinks we’re demons, then let him
.
It might come in useful.
He took a step towards the terrified Scrooge to try out his new-found power.

They all started, however, when the church clock began to strike. Lizzie squealed. The din was loud and mournful. The bell sounded as though it was inside their heads.

Bong. Bong. Bong.

Sam and Lizzie clamped their hands over their ears, but it made no difference.

Bong. Bong. Bong.

The sonorous clanging went on and on until at the twelfth stroke the vibrations died away and were swallowed up in a silence so profound Scrooge and the children assumed they had been struck deaf.

Suddenly Sam noticed that the giant was no longer with them. Scrooge looked about him as though the spirit might somehow be concealed behind a stone or a clump of thistles. But he seemed to have vanished.

Sam was quick to regain his wits. This was their chance. Ask the old sinner for money now and he’d give them every penny he had to get rid of them. Scrooge was so shaken he would have pulled out his own teeth if asked. It was all working in their favour. Sam just needed to figure out where they were.

But as Sam was thinking this he became aware of something moving in the darkness. Lizzie whimpered and Scrooge stared in horror as Sam turned to see a tall, black-robed and hooded figure, a depthless shadow where the face should have been.

Not something moving
in
the dark, but darkness moving of itself. It slid noiselessly towards them, floating on a shimmering bed of mist. Sam felt his stomach drop like a stone. Lizzie tried to scream but nothing emerged save a faint hiss.

‘Am I in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come?’ said Scrooge, his voice trembling along with his shaking legs.

Sam was impressed the old man could speak at all. The Inquisition with all their thumbscrews could not have pulled words from Sam’s mouth. The black spirit made no reply. All it did was raise its bony arm and point.

‘You are about to show me shadows of the things that have not happened, but will happen in the time before us,’ said Scrooge. ‘Is that so?’

Lizzie whimpered again as the tall, cowled figure seemed to bow slightly in agreement, its flowing black robes rippling as it moved. But the phantom did not speak. It just seemed to study Scrooge with its faceless face.

This unnerved Scrooge even more. He cried out, saying he feared this spirit above all the others, and Sam could believe it was true. How could anything be worse than this? It made Marley’s ghost seem almost comical in comparison. There was a pitilessness in that melancholy figure, the like of which Sam had never encountered. It was like looking into the end of the world.

‘Will you not speak to me?’ pleaded Scrooge.

But it was clear that the spirit would not or could not talk. The hand and its long bony finger pointed away.

‘Lead on!’ said Scrooge. ‘Lead on! The night is waning fast, and it is precious to me, I know. Lead on, Spirit!’

The spirit began to move once more, sliding effortlessly across the frozen ground, blacker than the night, a moving shadow. It slid between Scrooge and Sam, and as it passed Sam felt the robes brush against his hand and he felt pulled along with it.

The next moment all was darkness.

Sam looked for Lizzie but could not find her. The darkness of that terrible beshadowed hooded emptiness seemed to have enveloped them. He turned and turned and turned but saw nothing, fumbling his way as though a great cloak had been thrown over him.

Then, all at once, the black curtains parted and Sam saw that he was standing in a busy street under a cloudy sky. Beside him stood the hooded spirit.

‘Where’s Liz?’ said Sam. ‘Where’s Lizzie? What have you done with her?’

The spirit was no more forthcoming with Sam than it had been with old Scrooge. By way of reply, it simply raised its robed arm and pointed its finger at the other end of the street.

‘What is this place?’ said Sam. ‘Where are we? Where’s Lizzie?’

The street was heaving with people, men and women, young and old. They shouted and jostled. Sam knew the grim building towering above them – it was Newgate Prison.

The street was wet from a recent downpour. The slippery stones shone like the scales of a reptile, reflecting the glowering sky, as Sam and the spirit followed through the crowd.

Beside the prison was a wooden platform not unlike a stage, though it was a cheerless venue for a play. Near that, set into the wall, was a door, heavy and studded. As Sam tried to make sense of it, the door burst open and a group of people began to walk through. He wondered what the crowd were going to make of seeing a boy and a hooded phantom passing among them, but the crowd paid no heed at all.

Just as he and Lizzie had gone unseen by all but Lizzie’s younger self, so here Sam and the spirit were invisible to this baying rabble.