Disney's a Christmas Carol, Page 2

  Scrooge, meanwhile, found his way to a dark and lonely tavern for dinner. The only other customer was a drunken man who had passed out on a table, still clutching a cup of ale.

  Ebenezer was eating a revolting bowl of kidney stew. When he raised a spoonful of the foul brown mush to his lips, he gagged at the smell. He had to force himself to put it into his mouth and once he had gulped it down, he dropped his spoon.

  “Waiter,” he called out. “Waiter!”

  A sweaty, red-nosed waiter came over to him. He was wearing a filthy apron covered in dried blood and grease.

  “There’s something wrong with this stew,” Scrooge protested.

  The waiter wiped his hands on his apron and looked down at the disgusting mush. “Fresh yesterday,” he said. He reached over, grabbed a crock of mustard, and slapped it down on the table in front of Scrooge.

  “Bah!” Scrooge barked as he dumped a giant dollop of the mustard into the stew in a vain attempt to mask its horrible taste.

  After forcing down his repulsive dinner, Ebenezer walked toward his house on Lime Street. Unlike the road to Cratchit’s home, there were no children running around, excited about Christmas. There was just Scrooge, his lonely steps echoing off the empty cobblestones. A lone streetlight cast an eerie glow in the thick London fog.

  Scrooge saw a mangy rat scurry across the sidewalk in front of him. With lightning speed, Ebenezer pinned the rat’s tail with the heel of his boot. The old man cackled with joy as he tormented the little rodent, poking at it with his walking stick.

  Suddenly the rat turned and let loose an evil hiss that startled Scrooge. He fell back a step and the creature darted away into the darkness.

  “Take that, you filthy vermin,” Scrooge snapped as he took a feeble swing at the rat with his stick.

  Many years ago, Scrooge’s house had been grand and beautiful. But over time it had become rundown and gloomy. The once luxurious parlors and rooms were now just dark and eerie. It was the type of house children avoided walking near because it seemed haunted.

  The rusty gate squeaked when Scrooge pushed it open and shuffled up the brick path toward his front door. The fog had now grown so thick that the outlines of the house were not clearly visible. It appeared to be nothing more than an inky shadow at the top of the street.

  As he approached the front door, Scrooge fumbled with his key and dropped it. It clinked against the stone entryway and Ebenezer had to bend over and search for it.

  While he was bent over, he could not see that a pale, dismal glow had begun to surround the large bronze knocker on his door. It continued to get brighter, and when Scrooge finally located his key and stood up, the knocker had transformed itself into the shape of Jacob Marley’s face.

  Scrooge let out a scream and jumped back. He stared in horror at the ghostly image of his late partner. Marley’s eyes were shut, and his hair floated in every direction.

  Scrooge stared for a long moment, wondering if his eyes and the fog were playing tricks on him. The only way to be certain was to reach out and touch the knocker.

  He extended a trembling finger to the knocker’s ring, which appeared to be clamped in Marley’s mouth like a horse’s bridle. Just as he was about to grab hold of the ring, Marley’s eyes popped open!

  There was an earth-shattering crack as the knocker came to life. The eyes looked right into Scrooge’s, and the mouth flew open.

  Scrooge spun backward and fell off the stoop, slamming down hard onto his tailbone.

  “Owww!!!!” Scrooge yelled, turning to run. But as he took one last frightened look at the knocker, it appeared to be normal. There was no terrifying face or eyes, just an old bronze knocker that had been there since the house was first built.

  Scrooge shook his head, angry at himself for letting the fog play tricks on him. He took a deep breath and quickly unlocked the door. As he opened it, he took a moment to peek around the other side, to see if by some supernatural twist, Marley’s pigtail was hanging out of the back. He was relieved to find that there were only screws and nuts holding the knocker in place.

  “Pooh, pooh,” Scrooge muttered to himself.

  It was pitch black in the entryway until Ebenezer struck a match and lit his candle. The flickering light cast eerie shadows throughout the cavernous room as he slowly began to climb the stairs. Each step made a loud creaking noise.

  Behind him, the shadows began to change shape and reform themselves into a terrifying image. As if he could sense what was happening, Scrooge spun around in time to see the cloudy images come together as a foggy version of the hearse that had carried Marley to his grave. Pulling the hearse was a team of monstrous black stallions charging right up the stairs after him.

  The sound was deafening, and Scrooge pressed his body against the wall just as the phantom team streaked past him and vanished into thin air.

  Scrooge did not know what to make of any of this. Shaking in fear, he took a deep breath and aimed his candle at the front door, making sure that it was still bolted shut and chained.

  “Bah!” Ebenezer said, once again angry at himself for letting his mind play such tricks on him.

  That night as he dressed for bed, he was in an even fouler mood than usual. The droning on about Christmas, the visit from his nephew, Fred, and now these ghostly reminders of Jacob Marley had his head in a twist.

  He sat next to the small fireplace in his bedroom and stirred a pot of gruel, hoping that the terrifying visions had come to an end.

  He looked around to see that everything was in its proper place. The drapes of his four-poster bed were pulled open just as they were supposed to be. The sofa and table stood silently in the same arrangement in which he had left them. The fire-poker, the washbasin—everything was just as it always was.

  Satisfied that everything was right, Scrooge settled down into his chair and began to eat his gruel.

  He only swallowed one spoonful before the flame in the fireplace came to life and started to spark and sizzle. Scrooge nervously pulled his legs up close to him. He looked at the flickering light as it illuminated the tiles surrounding the fireplace.

  These tiles had pictures of Cain and Abel, pharaohs and angels, and all sorts of images from the Bible. Scrooge was momentarily relieved to see that things were as they were supposed to be.

  But then the images on the tiles began to change, reshaping themselves into images of Jacob Marley.

  Terrified, Scrooge looked directly at the fireplace. Right before his eyes, the smoke and fire transformed into the same ghastly image of Marley that had been at the front door. Only now, a flame flickered through the spirit’s mouth like a fiery tongue.

  Ebenezer rubbed his eyes for a moment and when he looked back at the fireplace, the flames were normal and the pictures on the tiles looked the same as they always had.

  “Humbug!” Scrooge said with an angry snap of his head.

  He got up and walked to his bedroom door, checking the lock to make sure that both bolts were slammed shut.

  He slowly went back to his chair by the fire and sat down. He looked back at the door and noticed a dusty old bell that once had been used to signal from room to room.

  Without the slightest breeze, the tiny bell began to swing back and forth, but it made no noise. Then slowly, it began to sound a faint ding-a-ling, which grew louder and louder until it became a thunderous clanging that forced Scrooge to cover his ears.

  When it finally stopped, everything was silent for a moment before Scrooge heard a plink. He looked over to the source of the sound and saw that a penny had fallen from his jacket pocket. He realized that it wasn’t just any penny. It was one of the copper pennies that he had taken from Marley’s dead eyes. Moments later, there was another plink as the second penny fell from his pocket.

  Scrooge trembled in fear as these two pennies rolled away, making little circles on the floor before disappearing under the door and out into the hall.

  Scrooge was now fully terrified. He heard the bone-chilling so
und of the front door creaking open. It was the same door that he had locked three separate ways.

  He did not know where to turn or what to do as he listened to the loud, clanking sound of someone dragging heavy chains up the stairs echo through the house.

  Scrooge stopped breathing and wished that all of this would come to an instant and merciful end.

  It didn’t.

  Once they reached the top of the steps, the footsteps could be heard walking down the hall to Scrooge’s bedchamber.

  Ebenezer was white as the sheet on his bed and too petrified to move when the footsteps stopped on just the other side of his door.

  Suddenly, a loud crashing could be heard as four huge, ghostly strongboxes came flying through the door and landed on the floor. The strongboxes were somewhat transparent and otherworldly. They were chained to something on the other side of the still-intact door.

  Scrooge shook uncontrollably, his knees knocking beneath his nightgown. His eyes were focused on the door where another wrenching sound signaled that something else was passing through.

  A glowing, ghostly substance began to form on the inside of the door. And, though he knew in his heart what this was, he pleaded to himself that it not be so. The substance began to form itself into the shape of a giant phantom that stood seven feet tall.

  Just then the flame in the fireplace came back to life and formed a pair of eyes and a mouth. The flame screamed the words that Scrooge could not let pass through his own lips: “It’s Marley’s ghost!”

  Although he could see through the terrifying specter floating right in front of him, Scrooge was certain it was Marley. Marley’s face looked the same as it had in the coffin seven years earlier, with the bandage wrapped the long way around his face. A lengthy phantom chain was tied around his waist, and attached to it were the huge cashboxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, and other objects that had seemed so important to him in life.

  Much like Scrooge, Jacob Marley had cared little for anything other than money when he was among the living. Now, all the objects associated with earning money were his permanent burden.

  “How now,” Scrooge called to him. “What do you want with me?”

  “Much,” the giant ghost said, drawing the single word out into a long guttural call that echoed through the room.

  Scrooge tried to mask his fear and demanded, “Who are you?”

  The ghost was facing him, but his eyes were wild and unfocused. “Ask me who I was,” he instructed.

  “Who were you then?” Scrooge asked, sounding a bit angry when he did.

  The apparition floated a little closer, and Scrooge tried not to tremble. “In life, I was your partner, Jacob Marley.”

  “Can you sit down?” Scrooge asked.

  “I can,” the ghost answered.

  Scrooge didn’t believe him. He could see right through the specter’s body to the buttons on the back of his coat.

  “Do it then,” Scrooge ordered.

  Marley shrunk down to nearly normal size and lowered himself into a chair on the opposite side of the fireplace. As he did, his phantom chains clanged loudly.

  It unnerved Scrooge that he could see right through this being. Even though the ghost was sitting, Ebenezer could still clearly see the chair he was sitting in.

  “You don’t believe in me,” the ghost said, his hair and clothes floating as if they were being blown by some phantom wind or were in some deep, unseen water.

  “I don’t,” Scrooge insisted.

  “Why do you doubt your senses?”

  “Because the littlest thing can affect them,” Scrooge explained. “A slight disorder of the stomach can make them cheat. You may be an undigested bit of beet, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato.”

  He adjusted himself in his seat and stared right at the ghost. “There’s more of gravy than of grave about you. Whatever you are.”

  Marley’s ghost suddenly started growing and growing until he was giant once again. As he grew, he rattled his chains and let out a frightful cry. “Aaaaahhhhhh!”

  Scrooge’s bravado immediately vanished. He realized that he was in the presence of his former partner, and there was no place he could run or hide. Terrified, Scrooge fell to his knees and pleaded. “Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?”

  The creature looked down at him. “Man of worldly mind, do you believe in me or not?”

  “I do!” Scrooge replied, nodding and trembling at the same time. “But why do spirits walk the earth? And why do they come to me?”

  The spirit wafted in the air, floating back and forth ever so slightly. “It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk among his fellow men and travel far and wide.

  Marley stared directly into Scrooge’s eyes. “And if that spirit goes forth not in life, it is condemned to do so after death! It is doomed to wander through the world and witness what it might have shared on earth and turned to happiness!”

  Because he had not cared about his fellow man in life, he was forced to do so after death. Just saying the words made Marley’s misery that much worse, and he let loose a terrifying wail that rattled his chains.

  “You are fettered in chains,” Scrooge said. “Why?”

  Marley’s ghost shook his head mournfully. “I wear the chain I forged in life. I made it link by link, yard by yard. Do you recognize the pattern?”

  The ghost held up a length of chain for Scrooge to examine. Trembling, Ebenezer looked at it and shook his head no. He quickly realized the chain was the physical representation of human greed. Marley’s chains were great in number because of the selfish way he lived his life.

  “Can you imagine the weight and length of the chain you bear?” Marley questioned. “It was as heavy and long as this seven Christmas Eves ago. Yours is a ponderous chain.”

  Scrooge turned and scanned the floor, almost expecting to suddenly find a ghostly chain connected to him. Although he was scared of Marley’s ghost, he realized an even greater fear was growing inside him, the fear of what might await him in death.

  “Jacob,” he implored the spirit, “tell me more. Speak comfort to me!”

  Marley’s wild eyes focused and burned into Scrooge’s. “I have none to give,” he intoned as he slowly began to float away in the air. “I cannot stay. I cannot linger anywhere. Mark me! In life, my spirit never walked beyond our countinghouse. Never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole! Now endless journeys lie before me!”

  Scrooge reached toward him and pleaded. “Seven years dead and traveling the whole time?!”

  “The whole time! No rest, no peace!” Marley replied. “I was blind! Blind and could not see! My whole life squandered and misused! Oh, woe is me!”

  Scrooge was confused. Nothing about Marley’s life seem misused to him. “But you were always a good man of business.”

  “Businesssss!” Marley bellowed so violently that the bandage snapped, causing his entire jaw to fall off.

  Scrooge reeled back from the horrible sight of Marley’s chin dangling from a ghostly string of bone, making his mouth a gaping, hideous hole. When Marley tried to talk again, he could not form words until he used his hand to move the chin and mouth up and down.

  “Mankind was my business,” he continued, his rotted teeth clicking as they gnashed together. “Common welfare was my business! Charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were all my business!”

  Scrooge cowered in fear as Marley retied the bandage around his head.

  “Hear me!” he implored Scrooge. “My time is nearly gone.”

  Scrooge trembled and shook as he pleaded. “I will. But don’t be hard upon me, Jacob!”

  Marley gave Scrooge a deathly serious stare that penetrated deep into the old man’s soul.

  “I am here to warn you, that you yet have a chance of escaping my fate,” he explained. “A chance of my procuring, Ebenezer!”

  “You were always a good friend to me, Jacob,” Scrooge replied gratef
ully.

  “You will be haunted by three spirits,” said Marley’s ghost.

  “That’s my chance and hope?” a frightened Scrooge replied. “I’d rather not…”

  The ghost interrupted him with a bloodcurdling cry. “Without their visits, you cannot hope to shun the path I tread,” he roared.

  Scrooge watched in horror as the ghost flipped its chains around his arms and floated backward toward the window. As he did, the window slowly began to open with a spine-chilling creak.

  “Expect the first tomorrow when the bell tolls one,” Marley said.

  Scrooge was terrified of what awaited him. “Couldn’t I take them all at once and have it over with, Jacob?”

  As Marley floated past Scrooge, he looped one of his chains around the bottom of the frightened man’s chair, slowly turning it toward the opening window.

  “Expect the second one the next night at the same hour and the third upon the next night, when the last stroke of twelve has ceased to vibrate.”

  The window was now completely open and the room was filled with the echo of painful wails, the sounds of the regret of spirits who spent their lives pursuing the wrong goals.

  Marley floated out the window and levitated in the air outside Scrooge’s house. Suddenly, he yanked on the chain so violently that it pulled Scrooge over to the window, slamming his bony legs against the sill.

  “Look to see me no more,” the ghost said as he floated into the cold, dark night.

  Pinned against the wall by a chair, Scrooge looked out through the window and gasped. The sky was filled with thousands of moaning, sobbing phantoms! They were spirits like Marley, forever wandering aimlessly in restless haste to make up for lives ill-spent.

  Every one of them was burdened with heavy chains. Some were even chained together, partners in crime forced to spend eternity with their shared shame.

  One in particular caught Scrooge’s attention. It was the ghost of an old man who had a monstrous iron safe chained to his ankle. The man cried in agony as he looked at a still-living woman and baby begging on the street. The two were extremely poor and in desperate need of money. The man had obviously ignored such people when he was alive, but now he wailed at his inability to help them from the grave. His greed had sentenced him to this eternity, and Scrooge could not help but see that his own life had been little different.