The Ghosts of Christmas by Cavan Scott & Mark Wright

Author:Cavan Scott & Mark Wright [Scott, Cavan & Wright, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Science-Fiction - Doctor Who
Publisher: Big Finish
Published: 2007-12-02T22:15:55+00:00

The Christmas Presence

Simon Barnard & Paul Morris

An Adventure of the Second Doctor,

with Jamie

It wasn’t the tinsel, hung in sad little loops throughout the nursing home’s musty corridors, that had given Chas the hump – though it had unarguably seen better days. Nor was it the traditionally overcooked Christmas dinner, appalling though that was. All of this was to be expected. What had really given Chas the hump this particular festive season was the alien in Room 23.

Chas had seen a lot of Christmases in the home, more than he cared to remember. In the chintzy twilight prison that was Lavender House, the rest of the year trickled one grey day into the next; but Christmas was different. Christmas was Chas’s favourite time of year. Christmas was when Chas received his present.

It was on Christmas Day 1918 that the first present arrived. Early that morning, in an unremarkable tenement flat in Whitechapel, an excellent briar pipe from Peterson of Dublin appeared at the foot of Chas’s cot, and lay there unnoticed. Being born just six weeks earlier, Chas didn’t appreciate the quality of such a fine gift, and its arrival was also of little concern to his mother. Her mind was elsewhere.

One year later, and Chas was left a shiny silver pocket watch, inscribed ‘To my dearest Reginald, with all my love, S.’

‘And can I interest sir in today’s special?’

Chas took a deep breath and smiled weakly. Every day the nurse said the same thing.

‘Two red, two white. Open wide!’

Chas opened his mouth and dutifully swallowed the pills, noting with some disapproval a small tattoo on the nurse’s ample bosom as she leant over him.

‘Did you get my book?’ he asked.

‘They didn’t have your spaceman story,’ said the nurse. ‘Looks like someone’s had away with it. But they did have this,’ she added, reaching into her bag. ‘It’s about the Battle of Jutland. Second World War. Maybe you were there, that’s what I was thinking. Were you there?’

‘No,’ said Chas. ‘I wasn’t.’

Funnily enough, it was on the day that Chas didn’t get his spaceman book that the alien arrived at Lavender House. Of course, he didn’t look like an alien. Not like the ones in the stories Chas liked to read. No, he looked like a 76-year-old man called Malcolm.

Malcolm arrived in a taxi two weeks before Christmas. No anxious relatives dropped Malcolm off, nor did Malcolm appear to have any possessions bar a suitcase. And as he watched the new arrival from the window of the television lounge, this struck Chas as very odd indeed.

Who ‘S’ was, the infant Chas did not know – but then again, he didn’t know who he was either, though he was fairly sure he wasn’t Reginald. The origin of the watch was a mystery in itself. It wasn’t a gift from his parents. His father had fallen on the muddy fields of Valenciennes, and the previous Christmas his grieving mother had taken her own life. The Sisters at St Joseph’s Orphanage had no idea

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