The Further Adventures of Ebenezer Scrooge by Charlie Lovett

Author:Charlie Lovett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-09-15T16:00:00+00:00

STAVE IV

The Last of the Three Spirits

When Scrooge awoke, he beheld neither the sleeping forms of Messrs. Pleasant and Portly nor the familiar surroundings of his own room, but only, drifting towards him through the stagnant air of a dimly lit street, a frighteningly familiar figure. When he had struck his bargain with Jacob Marley what seemed like days ago, Scrooge had known this moment would come, but he had tried, in the intervening hours, to push all thought of the third and final spirit from his mind, for facing that ghost was a horror he was loath to repeat.

Scrooge lowered himself onto one knee and bent his head down so that he saw only the black hem of the cloak that enveloped the ghost. “Greetings, Spirit,” he whispered. “Our time is short, and I know you to be a ghost of few words, so let us undertake with haste the task that brings you here.”

To this speech the Spirit made no response, but merely floated above Scrooge and sniffed the night air from somewhere deep within its mantle, as if it had not smelled the air of the outdoors for many a month and even the dank fumes of a hot summer night were refreshment to it.

Though Scrooge had followed this Spirit many years ago, and suffered no permanent injury for its company, his legs still trembled as he climbed to his feet, and his breath came stuttering to his lips as he muttered, “Lead on, Spirit. I have travelled far and laboured hard this night, and I would rest yet before morning.”

The Spirit raised a spectral hand from its cloak and pointed into the receding darkness of the street in which they stood. Taking this to mean that he should lead the way, Scrooge stepped past the ghost and felt a chill from the crown of his head to the tips of his toes. The heat of the night did little to comfort the old man, who wobbled down the street shivering, knowing full well the Spirit drifted just behind him.

Though he walked at a pace that might be expected from a man of his age passing through the streets in his nightclothes, the city seemed to fold in upon Scrooge with increasing rapidity, and it was no more than five minutes later that he found himself in a dark street of Camden Town, as shabby, dingy, damp, and mean a neighbourhood as one would desire to see. Before him was a familiar door and in another moment he found himself, and the awful Spirit, inside the door, observing the scene before the grate.

In a chair by the hearth sat a man who might have been fifty or seventy, for all the dim light showed of his features. As it happened, Scrooge knew the man’s age to the day, for he had marked Bob Cratchit’s birthday annually for the past twenty years. Bob sat with his back to his visitors, reading the latest monthly installment of some popular novel.

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