The Weekly Screed (#986)

 The Fourth Ghost

by David Benjamin

“So now Della’s beautiful hair fell about her, shining like a falling stream of brown water. It reached below her knee. It almost made itself into a dress for her.”

— O. Henry, The Gift of the Magi

Ebeneezer Scrooge awoke in a daze from a fitful sleep. Rubbing his face and recalling his trio of disturbing dreams, he said, “Damn, what a night!”

He swept aside his bed curtains and saw rays of morning sun seeping through the window drapes. “What’s happening? What day is this?” he mumbled. “Oh, yes, Christmas Day! I wonder if it’s still Christmas.”

“Of course, it is, Ebby,” came a disembodied voice from inside Scrooge’s spacious but disorderly bedchamber. 

Having spent the night seeing ghosts, Scrooge took this unearthly utterance in stride. He reached down for his slippers and headed toward the window, in hopes of spotting a passer-by who might confirm the date. He was brought up short, bumping into an immense form that began to take corporal shape as Scrooge groped to find a way around it.

As the strange barrier solidified before Scrooge’s sleep-crusty eyes, he realized what he was looking at.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” he said. “Another ghost. I thought the mute creep in the black robe was the last one.”

“Not quite, Ebby,” said the apparition, now fully materialized and nearly opaque. “I’m the Ghost of the Stuff That Was Left Out by the Other Three Ghosts. But you can call me Howie.”

“Howie?” said Scrooge, thinking this a queer name for a spook. This ghost was enormous. He was dressed in little-boy clothes, with knickers and buckled shoes, a broadbrimmed hat with a bow on the hatband. He had apple cheeks and was licking an all-day sucker.

“In life, they called me Huge Howie.”

“Who? Who called you Huge Howie?” asked Scrooge, staggering back and gazing up at the gigantic juvenile.

“My mom and dad,” said the ghost. “Bob and Della Cratchit.”

“Cratchit?” exclaimed Scrooge. “You’re the son of Bob Cratchit?”

Huge Howie crouched down so that he could speak face-to-face. Scrooge backed up and plumped onto a chair. “You bet your bippy, Ebby. I was their very first child. And their fattest. I had a runaway glandular problem. I just kept getting bigger and bigger. Couldn’t help it. Which was a big, big problem because, unfortunately, we were living upstairs from my father’s offices. Bob Cratchit wasn’t always an impoverished clerk, you know. He had a successful shipping business near the West India docks. You remember?”

“Vaguely,” said Scrooge uneasily.

“Well, to make a long story short,” said the Ghost of the Stuff That Was Left Out by the Other Three Ghosts, “I just kept getting bigger and bigger, ’til one day, when I was about six and weighed twenty-five stone, the timbers couldn’t take it any more. The floor began to creak and moan, the boards commenced to splinter and then, kaboom! Down I went, straight through the floor. I landed on a shipment of hand-smithed carbon-steel scimitars from Persia. I was cut to shreds and died in a heap. Blood everywhere! My young mother, who was pregnant at the time with my sister Martha, screamed and passed out. She almost miscarried.”

Scrooge was speechless. Waving his all-day sucker, Huge Howie went on.

“After that, my dad had to take out a loan to rebuild everything. But what with my funeral and the midwife for Martha — and then Dad’s customers bailing on him — the firm of Cratchit & Son (I was going to be the “Son”) went down the tubes. Toward the end, Dad was begging on his knees for an extension from his lender. You know who that was?”

Scrooge shrank a little. “Scrooge and Marley?”

“Jacob Marley, to be exact,” said Huge Howie. “Of course, Marley refused, foreclosed on my father, seized the family’s assets and sent us all to the debtor’s prison in Southwark. Dad and Mom and little Martha would have languished there for years, if not for Mom’s hair.”

“Her hair?” asked Scrooge.

“Yes, it was long and lovely, and Marley coveted it fiendishly. So he sent an unscrupulous hair wholesaler over to the prison and bought Mom’s tresses— cut ’em right off in front of Dad — snipping and giggling and piling it into a basket.”

“But your family got out of prison?”

“Yes, but that wasn’t the whole deal. My dad had to agree to work, as a lowly clerk, at half-salary, for Scrooge and Marley. He was indentured for life.”

“I always wondered,” said Scrooge, “how Cratchit ended up as our clerk.”

“Ebby, you are a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! No question about that. But you had a few good influences in your life — your poor sister Fan, for instance, and your nephew Fred. But Marley? Man, he had nothing and nobody. He was raised by wolves, rotten to the core and seething with malice. Watching Bob Cratchit slave away in a dead-end job was Marley’s daily dose of sadistic pleasure.”

“I remember,” said Scrooge. “But I guess death have changed Marley for the good. When his spirit visited me last night, he took pity and gave me a chance to redeem myself.”

“Actually, that wasn’t his idea. Me and the other ghosts — we got together and told Marley if he didn’t talk to you, we’d gang up and load the nasty old skinflint down with a ton of chains.”

“But he was wearing chains,” said Scrooge. “I saw!”

Huge Howie shook his head over Scrooge’s gullibility. “Fake chains,” he said. “They looked real, but they were just plastic.”

“Plastic? What’s plastic?”

“Never mind, Ebby,” said Huge Howie. “Let’s move on.”

“Okay, so after you died,” said Scrooge, “you became a ghost?”

“Hey, it’s not like I had a lot of career choices,” said Huge Howie. “But enough about me. Let’s deal with your reclamation.”

Scrooge objected. “But I’ve been reclaimed. I’m fine now. I learned my lesson from the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of—”

“Really?” said Huge Howie, his interruption dripping with skepticism. “Tell me something, Scrooge. What’s your plan?”

“Plan? Right. Well, okay, I guess I’m gonna do a lot of good deeds.”

“Like what?”

Scrooge scratched his bristly jaw and groped in his mind. He came up empty.

Howie pounced. “When’s the last time you did a good deed? Ever?” he asked. “Would you recognize a good deed if it came up and bit you on the ass?”

“Well, I was thinking,” said Scrooge meekly, “of maybe reducing my debtors’ interest rate by, like, a half a point.”

“Half a point?” Howie was visibly disgusted. “Why am I talkin’ to this piker?”

“No, no,” cried Scrooge. “Don’t give up on me!”

Huge Howie stamped on the floor, resoundingly. “All right, cheapskate. Let me show you something.”

Howie reached out, said, “Bear but a touch of my hand there,” and — as Scrooge had done with the previous three ghosts, they passed through the wall. Scrooge found himself in a dim and cluttered bedroom, where Jacob Marley lay dead. Scrooge shuddered at the sight. 

“This is one of the parts the other ghosts left out,” said Howie. “Look here, dude.” He lifted the corpse’s left eyelid. 

“What?” said Scrooge, frightened and suddenly guilty.

“There’s petechial hemorrhaging in the pupils, Sherlock. You know what that means?” asked Howie.

Scrooge had no answer. Howie waved his sucker, magically. Together, he and Scrooge scrolled backward in time, exactly one hour. 

“And here we are,” said Huge Howie. “The turning point in your life. The night that you decided — well, let’s watch.”

And they watched, as a slightly younger Ebeneezer Scrooge, seated beside his ailing partner, whispered, “You look terrible, Jacob. But the goddamn doctor says you’ve rallied. You’re cheating death, you money-grubbing scoundrel.”

Marley, asleep, made no response.

The Scrooge of the past spoke softly. “I can’t let that happen, Jacob. I want to be rid of you. The world wants to be rid of you… And no one will ever know what I’ve done tonight.”

With that judgment, Scrooge straddled his vile and insufferable business partner, snatched a pillow from beneath Marley’s head, pressed it onto his face and smothered him to death. It took but a moment.

Impassively, the present-day Scrooge watched his bygone self suffocate Marley. He said nothing and felt less. 

Huge Howie spoke. “As you predicted, nobody missed Jacob Marley. Hundreds celebrated. The stock market went up. No one asked questions. You got twice as rich overnight and — by God — you got away with murder.”

Howie waited a beat.

“Or did you?”

Scrooge trembled. “Did I? What do you mean, did I? Didn’t I?”

“Look here,” said Huge Howie.

The scene expanded to show Marley’s entire house. There, in the doorway of the bedroom, a gaunt and timorous figure stared aghast as he watched Ebeneezer Scrooge coolly smother the heartless cheapskate beside whom he had worked for thirty years.

“Cratchit saw?” said Scrooge astounded.

“Not only that,” said Howie, “he went home and told his wife. And I overheard. I happened to be haunting my dad’s house at the time.”

“But, but,” said Scrooge, “why didn’t Cratchit turn me in?”

Howie chuckled genially. “Oh, lots of reasons. Remember, my dad was probably the only person on earth who hated Marley more than you. He was thrilled to be shed of the greedy bastard. Besides, who would believe Bob Cratchit? He was a mere clerk, disgruntled in his crummy job. You were rich, scary and influential.”

“I still am,” said Scrooge. 

Huge Howie waved his sucker again. “Here, let’s listen.”

Suddenly, Scrooge and the ghost were back in the past, peeking into the humble Cratchit parlor, where Bob and Della conspired in whispers. 

“If I report Mr. Scrooge to the police,” Bob was saying, “they probably won’t believe me. But if they do believe me, think of it. Scrooge and Marley’s goes bankrupt. I lose my job.”

“Oh dear, Bob,” replied Mrs. Cratchit. “If that happens, we’ll be broke. Tiny Tim will wither and die. His sad little crutch will lean on the hearth.” 

She broke into tears. “Dear, dear, don’t fret,” said Bob Cratchit. “What I’m going to do is bide my time. Someday, I might be able to use my knowledge of Mr. Scrooge’s dastardly deed to seek some boon from him. If he refuses, then I’ll turn him over to the constabulary.”

“Oh, Bob, yes. Keep that terrible secret clutched to your bosom,” said Mrs. Cratchit. “Jacob Marley will be our insurance policy.”

“Why, those sneaky Cratchits! They were gonna blackmail me?” expostulated Scrooge, standing up and fuming with indignation.

“Well, gee whiz, Ebby,” said Huge Howie. “You are a murderer.”

“C’mon, Ghost! I only killed Marley. No jury in the world—”

“We’re missing the point here, Ebby,” said Howie.

“Point? Point? What point?”

“Okay, let’s review,” said Howie. “Tell me what happened yesterday? On your way home from work?”

“Um, lemme think,” said Scrooge. “Oh. Right. The snowball thing.”

“The snowball thing?”

“Yeah. That idiot Cratchit threw a snowball at me and knocked off my hat.”

“He knocked off your hat.”

“Yeah. With a snowball. A grown man, throwing snowballs. I mean, really—”

“And then you fired him?”

“Oh,” said Scrooge, somewhat chastened, “that’s right. I did.”

“You fired from his only job the only witness to the night you throttled Jacob Marley to death in his own canopied bed.”

Scrooge sank into a suddenly self-aware reverie.

“Scrooge, my man,” Howie went on, “if ever there were an occasion for Bob Cratchit to spill the beans about Marley, or threaten to spill the beans…”

“Okay, okay, I get the point. I’ll give Cratchit his job back,” said Scrooge. “I’ll give him a raise. Two percent. Three! Three percent.”

“You could do that,” said Huge Howie, “but even if you went up to four percent, it wouldn’t actually qualify as a good deed.”

“But it’s a job,” protested Scrooge. “With a big raise.”

“Look. If Bob Cratchit threatens you with exposure, and you pay him off for his silence, nobody comes away clean. You stay rotten and some of that rot rubs off on Bob, his sweet wife, even Tiny Tim.”

“I see.” Confused and irresolute, Scrooge sank back down. “What can I do?”

Huge Howie stood up, towering over Scrooge, and started to disappear. He licked his sucker. “Well, Ebby, if you can’t figure that out for yourself…”

The rest was inaudible as Huge Howie, the Ghost of the Stuff That Was Left Out by the Other Three Ghosts, faded into filmy oblivion. 

Tired and bewildered, Scrooge stumbled toward the window. Opening it, he heard the bells of Christmas tolling and felt the sunlight warming his face — “Golden sunlight; Heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry bells. Oh, glorious! Glorious!” He looked down and — as though on cue — a remarkably intelligent boy happened to be passing by. The sight of the boy, somehow, reminded Scrooge of the poulterer in the next street but one at the corner, and the prize turkey that hung in the window.  

In a burst of ghostly inspiration, Scrooge knew exactly what he must do. Regardless of Bob’s guilty knowledge about him, he would begin his atonement willingly and immediately. Even if Cratchit had already gone to the police and ratted him out, Scrooge knew he must still — at last — bestow on the good Cratchit family the rewards for which Bob had toiled and which Scrooge and Marley had long denied him.

So, of course, Scrooge bought the prize turkey for Bob and Della. He heaped a toy store full of presents on the Cratchit kids and delivered them in a carriage. He went to church, apologized to his nephew Fred and danced the night away with Fred’s fiancée. The next day, he gave Bob Cratchit a whopping raise. The day after that, he said “What the hell!” and made Cratchit his partner in the business. He started a university scholarship for poor children and made Bob’s son Peter its first recipient.

Tiny Tim, of course, did not die. As Dickens recalls, Ebeneezer Scrooge “became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.” 

And once a week, on a table beside his fireplace, Scrooge played cribbage all night long with a see-through partner so huge that he filled half the room.