A Christmas Carol II--Contagion by Bruno Vincent

Author:Bruno Vincent [Charles Dickens and Bruno Vincent]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781843588689
Publisher: John Blake Publishing
Published: 2011-09-24T04:00:00+00:00

THE FIRST APPARITION

At first, everything seemed to him quite normal, and he was not afraid. He woke peacefully in his bed and saw the curtains at first dark, and then lit at the edges by a wholesome brightness. It made him sit up and draw them back without thinking before he fully recollected what happy memory the sight had stirred within him.

There in the middle of the room was a shining spirit, who he knew to address as the Ghost of Christmas Past. Scrooge’s first thought was that he had taken his last breath, and that here was his spiritual guide for his passing to another place. Then he saw in that hovering sprite a look of urgency and sadness. Still his first idea did not leave him, that he was in the grip of his final judgement, and he saw that all his energies in the last few years had not proved strong enough to overthrow his former wickedness. A mortal chill spread through him, and he became fixed by an utter certain dread.

He rose slowly and offered his hand to the ghost.

‘You know me,’ said the ghost. ‘We have travelled together before.’

‘You are the Ghost of Christmas Past,’ said Scrooge.

‘I am that spirit. And you know I have no power but to show you what has already happened. Your tears are premature.’

Scrooge soberly dabbed the tears that had accumulated on his face with his nightshirt.

‘Come,’ said the gentle apparition, ‘take my hand. I have something to show you.’

Scrooge trustingly took the Ghost’s hand and coming to the window they rose up and flew out of it across the rooftops. Clouds enclosed them, and as they erupted from the other side Scrooge could see they were in a time many decades past. He looked down on a slum of the most appalling degradation. Hungry and parasitical characters lounged watchfully at each corner while pitiful families starved, and babies cried against their helpless mothers’ shoulders. Scrooge saw street after street of these desolate faces, ignored by their neighbours who had barely enough to survive and nothing at all to spare, dying by degrees from starvation of body and spirit.

Scrooge saw the attenuated misery of these drawn-out deaths, whole families unsure whether their bedridden relatives were yet breathing, and themselves too weak to call for bodies to be removed when it was known beyond doubt that they were not.

Scrooge and the Ghost swooped into other streets and there they saw people who were so debased by hunger and desperation they were barely people any more, but were mere starving animals. Scrooge felt a tear land on his wrist from the Ghost’s gentle cheek as they watched the miserable creatures turn, in their ignorance, to eating their dead kin. They did so tentatively and with revulsion at first, but base hunger quickly took charge of their appetites and dispensed with all human concerns.

They flew swiftly over rooftops, years vanishing in seconds, and alighted on a scene even more gruesome, that made Scrooge

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