An hour after firing Bob Cratchit, Ebeneezer had finished what he considered his own work, and decided to go home. The chill of the night had overwhelmed the building, and it was better to be in bed than in this.
He opened the door, and was met by the face of another hob who, by the look of his cheeks, had been waiting outside for more than a few minutes.
"Fred." Scrooge said, shortly.
"Uncle Scrooge!" Fred said with as bright a smile as has ever been seen on a Hob, "A merry yule eve to you, Uncle? Just closing up?"
"Mhh." Scrooge said indistinctly. He was turned away now, leaning on his cane as he pulled the door shut tight and locked it.
"Ebeneezer, I was wondering if I may be so bold as to ask what you'll be doing tomorrow." Fred said as Scrooge walked down the steps and onto the sidewalk past him. The expectation of following was not present, but since Ebeneezer continued walking anyway, Fred trailed behind.
"Working." He snapped, "Why?"
"Working, eh... on... Yule. Again." Fred said, his cheerful demeanor going a bit stiff at the cold atmosphere, not to mention that actual weather he had been waiting in.
Ebeneezer stopped and raised an arm, holding a fist out before swinging it down again. He turned his wrinkled old face, now extra pinched by a scowl, upon his nephew. "Yes! On Yule!" Scrooge shouted, "All you fools and this silly... Yuletide nonsense! Fat women in masks giving presents! FEH! If those children want toys so bad, they should work for the cash to buy them!" He pinched his fingers together, rubbing them, "All Yuletide is, is- is- it's a pretty little festival in the middle of winter, so that people don't kill 'emselves! But we're not hunter gatherer barbarian savages! Not in Amalen!" He pointed at the ground. "We don't need foolish little distractions like that. We need an honest day's work!" He tapped his cane down at the ground. "Bah, humbug! To hell with this Holiday and all the entitled goons that celebrate it! Now what do you want!?" Were it not so cold that his spit would freeze in the air, it would have splattered Fred, who he was glaring at with intensity enough to beat through solid rock.
Fred's smile was now much less confident, but had a warmth inside it like the fire burning within a dead tree. "Well, Uncle, I just..." Fred took his hat from his head. He was a fine figure of a hob. With dark auburn skin and black hair combed back neatly. That an apple so fine should share a tree with a crab-rotten piece of fruit like Ebeenezer would confuse many, and certainly amused most. "I was wondering if you would like to come to the Yule Party I'm hosting tomorrow evening... this year. You know. For once?"
Ebeneezer's scowl was gone, replaced with such a flat look as could be used as a cutting board. "Good night." He turned and began to walk again.
"Uncle!" Fred started, "Uncle!" He chased the old man down, which didn't take long, seeing as Ebeenezer's usual gait could be overtaken by a particularly inconfident tortoise in mud. "Humbug nothing! It's Yule! A time for friendship, for merriment! I invite you every year, have you ever wondered why?"
"I do not glean much from your decision to waste your time, boy. You're a good debtor, you pay your loans back, and you're a fine investment. That much I can say factually, but beyond that, I do not care for you. Good night."
"You can't mean that." Fred said, stopping in his tracks as his head continued to follow Ebeneezer, "I'm your nephew, Ebeneezer! We're family! That means something to me!..." He then muttered, "It certainly met something to mother."
Ebeneezer stopped at this.
Fred watched him, "Mother would have wanted you to come."
"Fan?" Ebeneezer turned again. The scowl returned, but it would be foolish to think that Scrooge could only muster one type of scowl. No, Scrooge had mastered the art of looking cross. Each wrinkle along his brow added to the meaning he presented. His last was a burst of hate, a firey type of anger, but this was solid. It was as though you had poured water atop a mass of broiling lava, and used the resulting stone to hit Fred over the head.
Fred waited.
The rock melted as Ebeneezer showed his hob teeth, sharp fangs and protruding jaw, "Your mother was a frivolous goose!" He shouted. His nostrils flared, and his heated breathe fogged in front of him. "Spending this way and that, on nothing! She took what little we had and wasted it! Feh! If you knew what it was like when I was growing up, you may be much less holly jolly, you ingrate!" He seethed, spittle freezing in the air as he ranted, "If you wish to flush my investments in you down the toilet, so be it! If you want to waste your life, that is your business! Go! Waste it like she did! Good night." He turned around and left.
Fred didn't follow. He just held his hat in his hands, looking down at the frosty cobbles. "Oh, Uncle..." He muttered, putting his hat on, "If mother could see you now..." He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket and walked on the other way as snow began to sprinkle down from the slowly filling sky.
In the midst of the Castleton neighborhood, amid many finer upper class houses lit from tip to toe with decorations, both magelight and practical, where parties were being held, one stood dark.
This shabby lodging, quite a big home, looked very much abandoned, and so it was. Among the many rooms, which could be filled with people and family, were instead filled with dust and stacked furniture. The gloom filled apartments seemed to fog of their own accord, becoming lost in a perpetual darkness. There was nothing of particular value inside any of the rooms, especially when Scrooge occupied them.
Living somewhere is quite different from being there, but Scrooge minded not the difference, as he'd rather be inside than out.
Old as he was, he had fine sight, and better vision in the dark, as was common among Hobs. It is for this reason that he was so confused when, upon looking down to his door to insert his key, he didn't see his knocker.
He saw Jacob Marley.
His face, a glaring stone-like face, stared outwards. The fine handlebar mustache, the clean cut hair, the grit slightly ajar teeth. It was all there, staring from the door down Scrooge's overgrown and undermaintenanced path.
And then, it wasn't. It was a knocker. The knocker on his door. That he had seen every day, not even noticed for years.
He looked up at his door, down to the knocker, then back to the door. He unlocked it, and entered.
Scrooge had not thought of Jacob Marley since being mistaken for him earlier, and before then, who knows how long. He didn't read the sign on his own building every day, after all. But the recollection stirred him slightly. When he closed the door, he had half an expectation to see the long pigtail his human partner had grown sticking out on the inside! And yet, it was bare as ever.
"Hungry." He muttered, "Always get a bit antsy when I'm hungry. Hm." He entered his kitchen.
When Scrooged, holding a bowl he had gathered from the kitchen, approached his stairs. He heard a faint sound. Something akin to a carriage being pulled along, though inexplicably herse-like. How Scrooge could tell down to the occupation of the vehicle what the sound was was unknown to him immediately after he came to the conclusion. But he did not care a button for it, and walked up into the darkness.
He was not afraid of the dark. He enjoyed the dark, in fact. The dark was quite cheap, and didn't default on its loans.
Though there was dust in chateau de Scrooge, there were no cobwebs, no spiders. Spiders had much higher standards for real estate than Scrooge had for the state of his home. It was cold throughout, though there was very much a central heating unit somewhere (unlike the questionable state of its existence in Scrooge's office.) For now, though, the fire would do.
And there it is, the fire, in the living room. An exaggerated name, yes, but there was certainly someone who was ostensibly living in it. At least, he was sitting up right.
The finely upholstered chair was sat slightly to the left of another, which sat empty and forlorn, cold and unattended. It was riddled in seven years dust, and cast whimsical shadows over the wall.
"Raishe..." Scrooge muttered, sat in the chair to the left of that which was empty. He was cuddled in his night clothes and a blanket, close enough to the fire to enjoy its warmth. His hand shook slightly as it brought the spoon full of gruel from his bowl to his mouth. He swallowed. "I never got a raise... not until I started my own business..."
There was a sound from without, a tolling of the distant bell tower atop the church. It echoed faintly, chiming through till eleven. "Yule..." He grimaced. Only one more hour until that day that everyone thought was so important. As he spoke, though, he could have sworn he had heard something... metal? "Mmm..." He turned his head, looking back at the flittering shadows on the wall. He turned to face the fire once more. "Bah, humbug." He grunted, eating another mouthful.
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"Oh yes... it's all well and good to beg and demand and pick the pockets of your bosses, but a real day's work? Too much to ask. No, got to be with the family on Yule! Bah, humbug!" He continued ranting to himself between mouthfuls and swallows of gruel. "Bob Cratchit... Bob Thievit..."
"Thief..."
"Hm?" Scrooge became aware once again that there was a distant noise. It sounded certainly closer this time, however. Something metal, like... like the sound of those chains rattling as they were pulled by men to be hanged. He turned back to the fire. He looked down at his gruel, and took another spoonful, "Hobos outside... that's a thing... the betterment of all is business... I have my business. I made my business!"
"Your Business!?"
That noise was quite too loud to be a myth of the wind, or a lie of the vagrants beyond his gates. He jolted at it, and dropped his bowl into his lap. His hand felt about the side of his chair, grabbing his cane. He waved it to and fro, "Thieves!? Robbers in my home?! Hah! You think I'd keep my gold under my bed like an old fool? Good luck finding anything, you rotten old-"
"THIEF!" The fire flared suddenly as the banging and clanking of chains became so loud as to pain Scrooge's ears to listen to it. The fire, burning orange, now flared into a reddish violet, and the noises of movement and metal sounded down his chimney until a sudden blast of heat struck him as a heavy object suddenly slammed down, crushing the wood in the midst of his fireplace.
Scrooge scrambled back under the heat, a burst of adrenaline sending him and the chair reeling back until it fell completely. His gruel splattered on the ground as his wooden bowl bounced across the tiles. He hid behind the seat of his chair like someone awaiting an archer's barrage.
It was with weak will, slight courage, and much shivering, that Scrooge placed his hands on the front of his chair (now aimed upwards) and pulled his gaze over it.
There, wrapped in chains, stood a figure he thought he'd never see again.
"... Jacob Marley? It can't be!"
"It is!" Said the apparition. The violet specter floated a few feet from the ground. Though he wore his Auday best, with his fine hat that matched the one that Scrooge often wore, it was not without additional macabre decor. Chains were wrought about his body, laced under his arms, around his neck like a noose, and down and around his waist before reaching at three connections to its base. The thing that had landed in the fire place. And now that its red-hot metal heat had dissipated, Scrooge could see the inscription on the large oblong piece of metal.
60 Years, Fine Gold, 999.9
He squinted at this, then at the specter. The cold glare of the grave stared back, empty eyes void of color or life. Two spectral orbs affixed into a head with a faintly visible skull under the transparent violet skin. The once human man reduced to a pained and angered shade. And under the glare, Scrooge mustered the venom to spit, "Good lord man, you look dreadful."
"I do." Jacob said.
"Well..." Scrooge glanced over at the chair next to his, "Have a seat, then. If you're here."
Jacob began to move through the air, though landed on the ground and stepped slowly. With each trudge, each pull of his foot, he had to drag the weight of gold behind him. It scratched the floor, ground into the wood, kicked up dust and soot, and seemed to weigh him down quite a great deal.
Then, he finally sat down. "You do not believe me, do you?" Said Jacob. His voice was far away, echoed through fog, as though it were merely a recording of a recording.
"No. I don't."
"Why do you disbelieve your own senses, man?" Said Jacob. If anything, he was just as straightforward as ever.
"Mm. Well. I get antsy with certain meals. I had a big lunch, after all... you might be a piece of undigested carrot, or a piece of meat. Indigestion." Scrooge rubbed his hands together, sitting on his knees on what was the back of his chair, now upturned to be his poor hiding spot, "There's more gravy than grave about you, I should say."
"You are laced with terror. You distract yourself with your stupid jokes like you always did, old fool."
"Old fool!" Scrooge said, taken aback, "You're the one who's dead, Jacob. That's about as 'old' as it gets."
"And you shall die too!" Jacob shouted.
"Are you threatening me!?" Scrooge shouted at him, his glare returning with fiery passion.
"What more evidence would you need to believe me but your senses?" Jacob also seemed to be filling up with a vigor, one that was familiar to Scrooge.
"I don't know!" Scrooge shouted.
"Then nevermind it." Jacob said. When he lifted his hand to give a dismissive flap of it, it looked to take quite a lot of effort. The chain was holding it down against the armrest of his chair.
It was during that motion that Scrooge had come to notice another strange aspect. The apparition's clothing and hair (especially its ugly pigtail) had been moving despite the lack of breeze in the room, as though pushed about by wind moving slowly. Perhaps it was more akin to how clothes and hair looked underwater, with undertow creating the effect.
"Hm. Well. Humbug to it! And humbug to you as well, spook! If you are Jacob, then fine, and I'll let you know I've been doing WELL without you! But you're not, you're a mere phantasm! In but moments, I'm certain I will awaken to gruel staining my clothes, fallen asleep in front of the fire-"
Scrooge's denial seemed to send the specter into a form of rage, as his mouth opened and unleashed a piercing wail. It shook Scrooge's chair, even as he cowered behind it. The wail did not have so much as an audible component, but it could be felt directly in the chest. A cold chill vibrating his very heart.
"Mercy! Oh please mercy, dread spirit! I beg of you, do not harm me!" Scrooge clenched his eyes, hiding himself as much as he could.
He heard the shifting of chains, dragging across the ground, and the sound of the gold scraping across the floor. When he looked up, Jacob was standing over him, glaring down.
"Fool with the stomach that pains him so, do you believe me now?!" He lurched forward, grabbing the chair as he put his face right into Scrooge's.
"Yes! Yes of course I believe you! Pray, don't harm me, Jacob!"
"Ebeneezer Scrooge... for seven years I have dragged my gold with me through the lands of the living, unable to touch, unable to speak, only able to strain!" He held his fists up as he stood back straight, "And such punishment for my misanthropy will be only a sliver of what is to come to you!"
"Misanthropy?" Scrooge rose a bit, "But Jacob! You were the finest businessman I'd ever met! And your loans were, on occasion, downright generous!"
"Generous... Generous?" He asked. The anger in his stare turning to one of longing, seeking into the past, "Repossessing animals, toys, homes? What is so interesting about interest? Is it how it keeps a loan lasting longer? How it bleeds dry the pigs to our slaughter house labeled Scrooge and Marley's? Is that Generosity to you?" He leaned forward again, staring with wide eyes at Scrooge, "My business? My business was the betterment of all people! Charity, kindness, forbearance! These were my business! And I need not tell you that I was a bad businessman." His ghostly moans filled his rant with boneshaking quakes.
"But why come to me? Why frighten me like this!?"
"This chain..." The ghost grabbed the chain about his neck and pulled at it, "Forged from my arrogance, my greed! Tying me down to what my life amounted to! Gaze upon it! The gold that I worked so hard to pinch, to bleed from the common good! My selfishness, taken full shape! And I am forced to drag it through the lands of the living, never to pass on to an afterlife, where gold can buy nothing but weight on your back!" He points, "And you, Scrooge, are doomed to share this fate, and seven more years worth of iron and gold!"
"Oh! No! That sounds dreadful! Dreadful! Jacob, say it isn't so!" Scrooge gazed up at his once friend, on the verge of tears, fear having gripped his spine and wrung free his natural disposition.
"I cannot say... but I can offer... One Chance." He holds up one finger, "One Chance, Scrooge. To change this fate, to save yourself." The specter flickered in the violet firelight. Shadows now cast from his glowing body.
"Oh, Jacob! Jacob! You were always such a good friend! What must I do?"
"Tonight, Ebeneezer Scrooge." He pointed down at Scrooge, his finger nearly poking him in the nose, or perhaps through it, given his general foggy physicality, "Tonight. There will be Three more hauntings upon you!"
The hope drained away from Ebeneezer's face, his countenance falling just as his body did, sending him back shaking to his knees against his upturned chair. "... Three?"
"THREE!" Jacob held up three fingers.
Scrooge glanced hither and thither, his frown one of utter disappointment, "I think I'd... I think I'd rather not, Jacob."
"Three Spirits, One Chance Scrooge! You must listen to them! You must hear them! You must see what they wish you to see! One Chance..." There was more scraping, and the rattling of chains. "They shall come to you, one by one, as dawn approaches nearer and nearer!"
"Can't I just-" Scrooge stuttered, "Can't I just have them all at once? Get it over with?"
"Look to see me no more, Ebeneezer! But remember well what transpired betwixt us, lest you be dragged down my path..." The scraping became louder, the rattling became louder, and the chains surrounding Jacob's body tightened.
Scrooge lent his head over the chair and watched the solid brick of gold as it slowly dragged its way back, pulling with it slivers of wood from his dusty floor. The chains lifted as they were pulled taught by the rattling bricks' movement. With a choking noise that draw Scrooge's eyes directly back to his friend, Marley's neck was yanked back towards the fireplace.
"Three... Spirits!" Jacob said under duress, choking all the while. No breath passed his lips, but the soul itself was strangled against his fighting, "One... Chance!"
The brick of gold landed back in the fire, and with a movement that would have been comical would the situation not so terrifying, pulled itself directly up the chimney. The chains rattled along, catching on the brickwork before yanking a screaming Jacob back into the fire.
There was a burst of violet flames, releasing the pent up phantasmal color into the room before shifting back to its flickering and calm orange glow.
The fire went on for a few moments, but slowly shrunk until it burnt out into ashes.
Ebeneezer did not move for some time, instead staring directly at the fireplace. His shivering continuing well past the point of fear as the chill of the night began to encroach from the rest of his dark and gloomy home.
He stood after grabbing his cane from the floor. He jabbed it in a general idleness about the ashes. Then he turned his face up. Deciding not to look behind him at the chair that had been knocked over, because, as long as he did not look at it, there was no reason to assume it had been knocked over. The fear was finally being let out, with a more natural state of anger filing in.
"... Tired. I'm too tired. I'm dreaming awake, that's what it is." He stepped over the spilled gruel as he headed out of the room. "Bed. Must go to bed."
And thus, he did. In his nightcap and nightgown, he was asleep moments before he hit the pillow.