Free The Further Adventures of Ebenezer Scrooge by Charlie Lovett

across the street and was even now peering in the door of the church to the gloom within.
    Cratchit seemed about to step into the nave, when a hand from within pushed the door slowly shut, and Scrooge’s partner was left staring at the weathered wood a few inches in front of him. In another instant he rounded on the Spirit, who still lurked nearby, and charged him in a fury, tears coursing down his face.
    â€œAnswer me, Spirit—am I the man who lies dead in that church? Am I?”
    The finger pointed from the church to him, and back again.
    â€œNo, Spirit! Oh, no, no!”
    The finger still was there. And before the finger, in the space between the spectre and the two men, there appeared a rapid series of pictures—whether they were visions shared by Scrooge and Cratchit or some conjuring of the spectre, the men never knew, but the images appeared as if a magic lantern were focused on some invisible wall, shifting from one slide to the next with dizzying speed. Scrooge knew not what he saw, but Cratchit recognised all his children and their families, all similarly neglected by their father or grandfather. And then the fashions changed, and Cratchit knew that he was peering into future generations of his family, and he saw in the faces of those whose parents and grandparents were yet unborn a coldness that came, he knew all too well, from a lifetime too focused upon labour. His blood ran through hisveins like the icy water of the Thames at Christmas as he saw his own neglect spinning out across generation after generation, and whilst the clothing and the surroundings of all those future Cratchits who took their turns in the frigid night air told of their worldly riches, there was always within their eyes something lacking—and Cratchit recoiled in horror as the heavy truth fell upon him. His descendants in their scores and hundreds understood the ways of wealth and money and even of philanthropy, but their hearts lacked the true wealth of love, of family, of Christmas joy, which, he now saw, might have been theirs all the year round.
    â€œSpirit!” he cried, tightly clutching at its robe. “Hear me! I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I am past all hope?” Cratchit fell to his knees before the Spirit, and his sobs echoed in the empty street.
    Scrooge, who knew full well the terror that came from the vision of one’s own death—a vision of all the lost chances and wasted opportunities of a lifetime pressed upon a soul in a single moment—stepped forward to lay a hand on his partner’s shoulder and stooped to whisper into Cratchit’s ear, “All is not lost. These are but shadows; the child is but a babe. There is no need to see him only on Christmas Day.”
    Though he did not turn his face away from the Spirit orrelease his grip on those long black robes, Cratchit seemed to hear Scrooge, for he raised his face to where the spectre’s eyes ought to have been and said, “I will honour Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year. I will be like brother and father and friend and teacher to the boy and to his sisters and to all my grandchildren, if you will but tell me that these shadows will be erased!” But as Cratchit pulled on the robes, the spectre pulled back, and each, for a moment, tugged with such strength that Scrooge thought the fabric must be rent asunder and he averted his eyes, for he had no wish to have the spectre’s true form revealed. But he needn’t have feared, for as Cratchit gave a final jerk to the ghostly garment, he was pulling on nothing more supernatural than the curtains at his own window, and Scrooge stood not in a cold empty street but by the open door, where the warm breath of a summer morning was beginning to blow into theroom.

 
STAVE V

The End of It
    S crooge had but few moments to observe the change that overcame his partner as