Ebenzer Scrodge was not a happy man. Indeed, unhappiness and vitriol seemed likely to become his inheritance.

An old man, and withered even beyond his years by the bitter soul seated in acrid decay at his breast. He moved like an aged tree growing, limbs gnarled and motions short. He dressed warmly, which perhaps insulated the snowy weather from his own heart rather than the inverse, and scowled at every thing daring to cross his path.

“Bah, humbug!” He would sneer, taking personal offence at every sliver of midwinter’s joviality he encountered. If ever there were a man for whom the jolliest of times were not made, it was this one.

Despite his misery, Ebenzer Scrodge was not poor. Indeed he was rich- among the richest men in his city, the proud owner of great silver mines that worked and churned and lined his pockets with glinting coin. His mood was fouler today, than most, for the simple fact of those mines being closed.

“Humbug.” He spat again, recalling the ridiculous demands he’d been forced to allow. An entire day off for each man working? Were he to dock them half a day’s wages they would consider themselves ill-used, and yet he was expected to waste his own hard-earned coin on such indulgence as that. Ludicrous.

Scrodge’s house was a large thing, aged and proud. It had, of course, been in the Scrodge family for generations, and was the seat of their barony. It was empty now, though. Save for the bitter old man stalking through it. He had a miserable supper, in miserable cold, climbing to his miserable bed and waiting to fall into a miserable sleep. While others grinned and anticipated the day of pleasure tomorrow would bring, Ebenzer Scrodge spent his midwinter’s eve just as he always did.

Until there came a creaking in his home.

It was short, sharp. Then longer and blunter. Soon Scrodge recognised the sound of foot falls upon his creaking floorboards, and found himself enraged. Whichever of his household guards was disturbing the peace would find no further employment come tomorrow, of that he was certain.

Yet it was not a guard who barged into his room, but a man.

The kick falling upon Scrodge’s door was a terrible one, knocking it from its hinges and sending splinters of frame spilling inside the bedroom. He yelped, sat up in his bed and stared as a tall and wiry figure entered. The man- for it was a man, he thought- was a terror. Bulging eyes, twitching features, bared, jagged teeth and a great sizzling glass cauldron sealed and tucked under one arm.

He must have been terribly strong to carry it, full as it was, and he moved terribly fast to the room’s centre. Not a man at all, not with that speed, not with this savagery. Some creature. An entity.

Scrodge remained in his bed, staring.

“Ghost.” He whispered. “Spirit. Phantom.” It was all true, the world was home to spectres from beyond the veil.

But his intruder laughed.

“Solitaire Belahont!” The man declared. Scrodge recognised the name, of course, and so screamed exponentially louder.

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“Shut up.” The intruder ordered, and Scrodge did. With one swift motion Solitaire was at the foot of his bed, looming over him.

“You and I are gonna have a bit of a chat.” He snarled. “I’ve got some concerns, you see. About you. Your past, your present, your future. Trust me, it’s really clever when you get the reference.”

It was not, in fact, clever, but Scrodge simply lacked the context to realise that fact, and would certainly not have pointed it out even otherwise.

“Where are my guards?” He yelped, panic overriding his better judgement. Solitaire laughed.

“Oh I already took care of the-” he coughed, something catching his throat, and with a half-retch the Solitaire dislodged, then spat out, the offending piece of debris. Scrodge stared at his bed where the bloody, half-chewed human nose was now staring the sheets. He pissed himself without even realising it.

“Now then, onto the matter at hand.” The raving lunatic said, adjusting the still-hissing container under his arm. “Your past. Tell me about it, I know a lot of details so if you lie I’ll twist your cock off and make you eat it.”

Scrodge did not lie.

He spoke of his childhood, the careful grooming needed to turn him into a true Lord. Of his father, cold and distant, his mother quiet and subordinate. He spoke of his youthful joy and how it had slowly fizzled and died beneath the smothering soils of duty and honour. He spoke, hesitantly, of his young love, the one he’d never been able to marry. He withheld the man’s identity, and indeed his sex, yet Solitaire seemed to know both somehow all the same.

When Scrodge was finished, he found a contemplative weariness striking him.

“I was a different man.” He breathed.

“A better one?” The intruder suggested. That hardened Scrodge’s eyes.

“A stupider one.”

Solitaire nodded, then stood.

“Present now.” He said. Scrodge frowned, began to speak and fell silent at a gesture.

“No,” The Solitaire continued, “This one’s my speech. You wouldn’t know the present if you were responsible for ruining it. Oh wait…”

And so Solitaire told Scrodge of things he didn’t know, and a great many he did but had never given time to caring about. He spoke of the vagrants, starved and beaten for the crime of being deemed able-bodied. Of the miners hacking up bloody ribbons of lung, the night women dying in disease and starvation, or strangled by the men who hated them for surviving. He spoke of it all with the passion of a preacher and the raw emotion of one who loved each and every victim, and when he was finished, Scrodge found himself stunned and furious.

“There…There is no other way.” He began, slowly. “It is the way of things, their place.”

“Are there no prisons!” Solitaire roared. “Are there no workhouses?”

Scrodge stared and blinked, dumbfounded.

“Wh…What? I didn’t-”

“IT’S A REFERENCE!” The man screamed abruptly, reminding Scrodge in that one sentence just what order of lunatic he was dealing with. He cowered back, shivering, staring.

“I will change!” He gasped, desperate, now, to live. To save himself from this animal. “I will…I will help them, with all my wealth, whatever you ask I promise, I will-”

Solitaire raised a finger, and the gesture silenced him as might a headman’s axe.

“You’re getting ahead of yourself.” He said, quietly, gently. Like the razor in an assassin’s hand. “You’re talking about future now. Of midwinters yet to come. That’s not your business, is it? You’re not the ghost here. I am.”

With a grin, and a giggle, he hoisted the glass container high and removed its cap. Instantly the room reeked of something Scrodge had never smelled before, but vaguely recognised.

“Like it?” The madman laughed. “This, where I’m from, is called piranha solution. You have no idea how annoying it was to make.” And with an honest-to-god smile upon his face, he emptied the contents over Scrodge in one sweeping movement.

And so our story ends, but not the story of midwinter. Not the story of Christmas. At this time of year, we are left to ponder what Christmas truly means? Is it the giving of gifts, the receiving? Is it the togetherness, the bonding of family and friend? Perhaps it is the basic compassion we all must nurture for our common kind. Or is it, after all, the act of dissolving an elderly man in acid?

Alas, that question is for a greater mind than my own.

Author’s Nightmare will return in January, 2025.