A Christmas Carol

To begin our story, we must start with a simple, undisputed fact. Jacob Marley was dead. He was as dead as a doornail. If we do not believe this, nothing wonderful can come of our tale. It takes place in the foggy, gaslit streets of London in the chilly 1840s, home to the most famous miser who ever lived, Ebenezer Scrooge. Oh, he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, a squeezing, clutching old sinner, secret and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his features, and he carried his low temperature everywhere, never thawing it even one degree at Christmas. On a bitterly cold Christmas Eve, Scrooge sat in his drafty counting house, keeping a suspicious eye on his clerk, Bob Cratchit, who shivered in a tiny cupboard of a room, trying to warm his hands by a single candle. Suddenly, Scrooge's cheerful nephew, Fred, burst in. "A Merry Christmas, uncle!" he cried. "Bah! Humbug!" barked Scrooge, declaring that anyone celebrating should be boiled with his own pudding. Fred warmly defended the charity and joy of Christmas, prompting Bob to applaud from his cupboard. Scrooge threatened to fire Bob, refused Fred's dinner invitation, and grumbled, "Good afternoon!" until his nephew finally departed. Next, two portly gentlemen entered, seeking donations to buy the poor some food and warmth. Scrooge coldly refused, asking if the prisons and workhouses were still open. When told many would rather die than go there, Scrooge snapped, "They had better do it and decrease the surplus population." The gentlemen left. Later, a young caroler sang through the keyhole, but Scrooge brandished a heavy ruler, scaring the boy away into the fog. At closing time, Scrooge grudgingly allowed Bob to have Christmas Day off, calling it, "a poor excuse for picking a man's pocket." Bob happily slid down a snowy hill on his way home, while Scrooge ate his lonely dinner at his usual melancholy tavern and walked home to his gloomy house. At his front door, Scrooge stared in shock. The large brass knocker had transformed into the ghostly face of Jacob Marley, shining with a dismal light. It vanished as quickly as it appeared, but Scrooge's blood ran cold. He went inside, locked his heavy door, and sat by his tiny fire eating gruel. Suddenly, a disused bell in the corner began to swing, ringing out loudly along with every bell in the house. Then came a clanking noise from deep below, like heavy chains dragging up the stairs. The noise came right through the locked door, and Marley's ghost walked in. He was wrapped in a massive chain of cash boxes, keys, and ledgers. Scrooge tried to deny his senses, muttering that the ghost might just be an undigested bit of beef or a fragment of an undone potato. But the spirit let out a frightful cry and dropped its lower jaw to its breast. Terrified, Scrooge fell to his knees. "I wear the chain I forged in life," the ghost groaned, warning Scrooge that his own invisible chain was already longer and heavier. When Scrooge remarked that Marley had been a good man of business, the ghost cried, "Mankind was my business." Marley then revealed he was there to offer Scrooge a chance of escaping this miserable fate. "You will be haunted," the ghost warned, "by three spirits. Expect the first tomorrow when the bell tolls one. The second, the next night at the same hour, and the third, the following night at midnight." The ghost drifted backward through the window into the foggy night, where Scrooge saw countless other chained phantoms wailing in regret. Closing the window, Scrooge tried to mutter, "Humbug," but the word caught in his throat. Shaken to his core, he went straight to bed and fell fast asleep. When Scrooge awoke, the room was pitch black. Suddenly, the nearby church clock chimed the four quarters and struck the hour. Ding. "One," said Scrooge, and nothing else. At that very moment, a bright light flashed, and his bed curtains were drawn aside. Scrooge found himself face to face with a strange, unearthly visitor. It looked like a child, yet also like an old man. A bright jet…

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