Fiction: "A Christmas Coda"

‍[Originally dropped onto Facebook during the holiday season 2023, this one returns like Marley, dragging its pessimistic little holiday observation about how shouting about spirits would have actually played out in the latter 19th century behind it. Merry Krimble!]

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‍          A lamplighter noticed the old man’s rantings first. Heard them through the closed windows of the row house while snuffing gaslights in the chill dawn. Such were the cries and shouts, he stole directly to the Finsbury division house to summon an investigator. The policeman knew the resident — everyone did, whether by contact or reputation — and he proceeded there straightaway. 

‍          When he arrived, the resident was in an agitated state, holding a shouting conversation with a street urchin about some oversized fowl in the butcher's shop window around the corner. Animated. Pleasant. The contrast with the dour, serious man the officer knew struck him deeply enough to use the large lion's face knocker on the front door. 

‍          The old man answered in his nightclothes. Welcomed the officer with a hearty seasonal greeting. Offered him tea. When asked about what the lamplighter heard, the man's tale cut the officer to the bone. Spirits, he said. Three of them. Ghosts who carried him to the past, the future, all about London and across a dozen Christmases. He claimed to have seen his own grave, then tittered with Christmas joy on his lips. 

‍          The officer did what the job required. He sent a boy to the division house to summon a doctor and the wagon. The doctor seemed unsurprised. Hadn't the man's long-time business partner died on Christmas Eve? And now, the bitter, angry old miser was a fount of laughter and generosity, blaming — of all things — ghosts? 

‍          The doctor's diagnosis was lunacy, brought on by the weighty memory of his partner, perhaps the realization of his own mortality and how his wealth was fixed to the Earth. Even as they guided the old man into the wagon, he was brimming with the happiness of the saved, convinced of being changed by spirits and telling whomever would listen. 

‍          The officer spoke with the man's nephew Fred that morning, once Ebenezer was delivered to the asylum. Horrible to bring such news at Christmas, but Fred seemed nonchalant that his uncle had finally broken. He was caustic, Fred said, combative and high-strung, especially at the holiday. It followed he'd one day pop like a chestnut fallen into the hearth.

‍          As his sole heir, Fred assumed his uncle's affairs. He saw to the promotion of Bob Cratchit to manage the office of Scrooge and Marley — Fred had his own matters of business, and Cratchit knew every farthing that passed Scrooge's ledger. It proved a keen move; Cratchit excelled at both growing wealth and forging personal relationships. 

‍          Those occasions when time permitted, Fred visited Ebenezer, tucked in the merciful care of Sussex Lunatic Asylum. They were dismal trips. The man's weird joy had eroded to confusion. Skewed from reality, he asked the corners of the room whether this was his salvation or if it was still to come. 

‍          While Fred never observed the 'spirits' to answer, a short fellow inmate named Barrow who fancied himself Bonaparte often suggested Ebenezer guess again.

‍          God bless us, more or less.

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‍© 2023 by Doug Lane