And Weary Journeys Lie Before Me (A Short Story)
He became sensible of confused noises in the air; incoherent sounds of lamentation and regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory. The spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge; and floated out upon the bleak, dark night.
-- A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
My chains, my captors. So little time they give me. Mercurial masters, I cannot know how long I will ever stay at one place before they force me to move again. Have I save him? I cannot know. He mocked me – called me an underdone potato. More of gravy than grave, he dared say! To me, a ghost!
I have very little control over my chains. From the moment my eyes opened to this new place, they have been wound about me, sometimes so tight that a normal human would be crushed to bits; other times they seem to loosen; but always pulling, wrenching, tugging, in whatever direction it wants to take me.
I am hurled upon the cold steps of a small church outside of town. I adjust my glasses (yes, even here my eyes are clouded) to see a dying woman at my feet, who had attempted to climb the steps for aid. Her strength given out, she slumps over and clutches a tiny bundle tucked inside a thin, worn cloak. The bundle had gone silent long before she had collapsed on the church steps, in that last desperate hope for assistance. Blood-tinged sputum spatters her lips and chin. She is so thin I wonder how her shivering does not break her bones to pieces.
I reach out to touch the woman and her bundle, though I know it is useless, I cannot give aid, not now, not ever. There is one last wretched cough. Her head turns, and she sees me; a veil draws aside; she understands now.
The church door finally opens with a terrific loud squeal, and a beadle emerges, a bottle in one hand, cane in the other. The woman’s body slumps over and the inert contents of her arms spill upon the church steps. The vicar considers what to do as his cane nudges the pile of flesh and rags.
“Will ‘ave to clear this up in the mornin I s’spose,” he slurs. “But not tonight, tis Christmas Eve ‘o course!” He takes a swig and steps down past the bodies as he makes his unsteady way into town.
There’s nothing I can do, and the feeling is unbearable. The chain clutches at me ever tighter. No rest it allows me. Its jangling clatter, its clutching, wrenching torque unrelenting.
Then I am gone.
I move with the spirits. My pain is unbearable, my shame unforgiveable. A great choir of mourning in the sky, the melodies and harmonies ever dolorous, ever hopeless.
The chains force me to walk, their eternal prisoner. Sometimes I trip and fall. The chains seem to get angry at this. They respond by coiling ever tighter around me. So very heavy they are. The ledgers and deeds, scrawled with the ink that added untold misery to peoples’ lives. The steel cashboxes, padlocks, purses. So many. And yet nowhere near the length that awaits Ebenezer.
Ah yes, Ebenezer. How angry the chains seemed to get when you mocked us. It was the chains that grabbed my hands and smashed the cash boxes together, an infernal drum corps. That got his attention. Color drained right out of his face. I could have smiled, if that were possible.
As we move again in the night, at length a light appears in front of me, floating like a will’o the wisp, yet it is more than that. It approaches and engulfs me with its blinding light. Truth. “You must be the first,” I say.
“I was,” the light says. The light seems female, but I can never be sure. So bright, this light. I feel no warmth coming from it. I have not felt warmth for the past 7 Christmas Eves.
“I have wasted valuable time,” the spirit says to me. “He is stubborn.”
“It is a little drop of eternity that you are expending,” I say. “Future generations will be grateful.”
The light seems pacified though I cannot be sure because the chains drive me on.
In the darkness of London, I find myself among the wealthier streets, enrobed in the same polluted fog, but not so filthy and wretched as where I started from at Ebenezer’s lodgings. Carriages pull up to return the well-to-do from their evening entertainments. Beautiful young women and strapping young men step out and back into their homes, laughing gaily and feeling blessed by God for their wealth. For all of my years on earth, I never saw the point of these fripperies.
As we walk, the chains and myself, I see another light, but it is carried by someone. A giant of a man, dressed in a deep green coat with a white mantle. He smells of pine, cinnamon, hot chestnuts, plum puddings, warm fireplaces, roasted meats. In one hand he drinks from a horn, where the light emerges. He drinks the sweet liquor and greets me with a long, deep-chested laugh.
“You are the second,” I say to him.
“Indeed I am!” the giant says, his eyes are clear and kind but ominous at the same time. He takes another deep drink out of the horn and wipes his mouth. “Going to visit another doomed fool, thanks to you,” he says. “But a request is a request. I’ll carry it through.” I look down and see two emaciated faces peeking out from his robe, by his feet. They look at me, shivering in the cold. A booted foot pushes them back to their hiding place
I feel it again, this impossible sadness, this incomprehensible misery, the chains tightening yet again. “I have so much to atone for,” I say. “You have my thanks, generous spirit, for granting my request.”
“Feh!” says the giant. “Well, I shall make the best of it. He will be good sport to endure my japes!” The giant drinks from his horn again and shambles drunkenly down the street.
Suddenly, the graveyard. I know this place well. My mortal remains lie here, at this tombstone where the chains have dropped me. It is unadorned, except for my name, year of birth, and year of death engraved upon it. A cold granite memento reflecting the life I had not lived. I hate this place worst of all. My captors force me to visit here every year on Christmas Eve. They delight in reminding me of things I so wanted to forget.
A shadow blots out the moonlight. I remember this shadow. He appeared to me once before. A skeletal figure, enrobed in a death shroud. The chains awaken and tighten yet again around me.
“I remember you,” I say to it. “Even in death, when nothing further can be done to me, I fear you still, spirit.”
The spectre says nothing, yet I feel his accusations against me. The winding shroud around him rustles, loosens, revealing a gaping, skull face, its rictus grin mocking me.
“This is a waste of time, Jacob Marley,” he seems to be saying. “A fool’s errand for an old fool who is seven times over the squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner that you were. Given so much, with so much power to do good for the world, and you would waste it on meaningless lucre!”
I walk backwards and trip upon a steel purse, falling against my tombstone. If I were corporate, my skull would have cracked against it. Yet my glasses teeter from their resting place, the bandage becomes undone, my jaw gapes. I am ashamed beyond words.
“Please, Spirit,” I beg. “Can you not tell me what will happen? Can you not allow me to observe? To know that some good might yet be done?”
Again the spirit does not speak but it turns to look at me and I feel that I can hear him. “Be thankful we are interceding at all,” he seems to say.
I grab the headstone and push myself up again. The spirit moves away but is not gone yet. I replace my glasses where they were. Re-tie the bandage and hear my jaws clack together. I am so tired. The chains are rustling, awakening. I feel their terrible weight, even more terrible than the chains that have held me down for the past 7 years. I wonder if the chains keep growing link by link, even after death.
“You would not appear to me – none of you – If there was not some hope! At least tell me that much! There is hope, is there not?”
The Spirit stares through me. The chains have awakened, they clench against me, strangling me, so that I cannot move except reach out one arm to the spirit. I beg, I cry, I wail, I think of all the death, poverty, ignorance, disease that plagues the world, all of the things I could have done but didn’t. Silent still, the spirit disappears into the fog.
Will Scrooge be saved? I cannot know. I will never know. The chains engulf and overwhelm me.
The sun is now close to rising on Christmas morning. I have moved yet again. No longer in the graveyard, I am back at Scrooge’s lodgings. All is still as the grave. And then I hear something, a crack of an old window sash opening. Ebenezer pokes his head out into the cold morning air. A church bell peals.
I am allowed no further time as I am whisked away. Did the spirits succeed? It is Christmas morning. Joyful for so many, a joy denied to those creatures such as myself. Deposited on a busy city street. Time to move on, the chains say. The future is for others to know.