A Twenty-twelve Christmas Carol: Episode I – Marlow’s Ghost

Episode I – Marlow’s Ghost

Shut your gob, pin your ear flaps back, listen to what I’m saying: Jake Marlow was dead, D-E-A-D dead! As dead, in fact, as the oft quoted doornail.

Just why a doornail should be regarded as the most mortally challenged item of ironmongery, as opposed to a coffin nail let’s say, may well derive from the practice in days of yore whereby the nails employed to hold doors together went right through the wood, the protruding end then being hammered over. Once “clenched” in this way the nails were “A” very difficult to extract and “B” impossible to reuse; opinions vary as to which of these two points may have given rise to the term “dead”.

Having said this, like so many doors nowadays my own front door is constructed of P.V.C. and screws so there are no nails, deceased or otherwise. All that matters is that Jake Marlow was dead, like Monty Python’s parrot he had passed on, he was no more, he had ceased to be, he had expired and gone to meet his maker, he was a stiff, bereft of life he was resting in peace, etc, etc, etc. Now you know.

If you were to ask me if Eddie Scuds also knew of Jake’s demise, my answer would be an unequivocal ‘yes’; how could it be otherwise? Jake and Eddie had been friends as well as business partners, building their London based drugs, money lending and prostitution racket from precisely nothing to a money spinning success. Though both had many acquaintances, neither had any other friends; consequently the funeral was attended by none but Eddie and a glaringly disinterested priest.

It was seven years to the very day, on Christmas Eve 2005, that the uncle of Eddie’s onetime fiancé, an outwardly legitimate business man of some repute, had had Jake murdered in revenge for the tragic and untimely death of his niece, killed by some cocaine the unfortunate Jake had allegedly supplied. So it was, seven Christmas Eves later, that Eddie Scuds plied his trade as a sole proprietor rather than as one half of a partnership, still selling drugs, still lending cash at extortionate rates of interest to those who could least afford it, still pimping out the odd prostitute or two. For the record Eddie Scuds was not his real name. Somehow his given moniker, Edward Scudamore-Smythe, didn’t really sit well with either the manner of goods he sold or the manner of clients he sold them too; Eddie Scuds was far more appropriate.

Eddie’s office was the very streets beneath his feet; as such this afternoon that office was cold and dank, a lingering fog clawing both at the buildings around him and at the spirits of those people walking by. Keen to be free of the unfriendly weather Eddie headed for his favourite hostelry, “The Counting House” on Cornhill, and a catch-up with his long suffering gopher, Bogdan “Bob” Kravchuck, one hundred per cent Russian by birth but ninety-nine per cent cockney in his speech and manner.

Eddie entered the bar and went over to his usual corner table. After a brief animated discussion, accompanied by the odd gentle threat or two, the couple already there were quickly persuaded to give up their seats. Scant moments later Bogdan, or Bob as he was more often called, arrived, dishevelled and out of breath.

‘You’re late!’ Eddie growled. ‘Get me a pint of Carling and make it snappy, I ain’t got all day.’

‘Sure thing, boss,’ Bob grovelled. ‘Sorry boss.’

Ignoring the apology Eddie surveyed his fellow patrons. One, a young lad who appeared to be no older than seventeen, quickly glanced away the instant Eddie caught him looking in his direction.

As Bob sat down with the drinks he raised his own towards Eddie, as if preparing to make a toast.

‘Should we drink to Jake?’ he asked. ‘It is the anniversary after all.’

‘Last night,’ replied Eddie, coldly dismissing both Bob’s suggestion and his partner’s memory, ‘some idiot kid stood outside my door crucifying “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”. Can you believe it?’

‘Did you give him anything?’ Bob asked naively.

‘Too right!’ he sneered. ‘I gave him ten seconds to get outta there before I caved in his skull. I bet that’s one merry gentleman who didn’t get much rest last night. I gotta take a whiz.’

On his way to the Gents he took a moment or two to get a closer look at the individual who’d been watching him; much to his surprise the subject of his attention followed him out to the toilet. No sooner had the bathroom door shut then Eddie had the stranger in a headlock, an open flick knife pressed to his ribs.

‘Spill it kid, who the hell do you think you are? It’s bad enough I catch you making eyes at me, but then you go and follow me in here!’

‘I’m sorry Mr Scudamore-Smythe,’ stammered the terrified young man. ‘I really need to talk to you is all.’

Alarmed by the use of a name he thought behind him Eddie was instantly wary. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked suspiciously.

‘Freddie Mortimer,’ he replied. ‘Francesca Mortimer was my mother. She used to be Francesca Scudamore-Smythe, your sister.’

Eddie was stunned into silence; he hadn’t thought of his younger sibling in years. He’d loved Fran with every ounce of his being; she’d been his dear little sister, the only shining light in an otherwise miserable childhood. Sixteen years ago both she and her husband had been killed when a “drunk driver” (as Eddie put it) lost control on a bend and ploughed head-on into their own vehicle. Miraculously their baby son, asleep on the back seat, had survived completely unscathed. The nineteen year-old driver of the other car, barely free of his ‘L’ plates and barely over the drink-drive limit, also survived the crash; he failed to survive Eddie’s terrifying revenge, the autopsy revealing upward of eighty separate injuries, a combination of fractures, dislocations, burns, punctures and cuts.

‘Uncle Edward? Are you ok Uncle?’

‘What?’ asked Eddie returning to the present. ‘I’m fine. And don’t call me uncle. Didn’t your grandparents adopt you?’

‘Yes, on my father’s side. Pops died of cancer eighteen months ago, Nana died in July.’

‘Them’s the breaks I guess,’ said Eddie unsympathetically. ‘What has that go to do with me?’

‘Nana only told me about you just before she died; you’re the only family I’ve got left. I thought if I tracked you down we might spend some of Christmas together, get to know each other a bit.’

‘Why Christmas especially? Why not next week or next month? For that matter, why not never?’

‘For me this has always been a special time,’ Freddie responded, ignoring the sarcasm of Eddie’s last remark. ‘It’s a good time, a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time in the year when people put aside their differences and think kindly of those around them. It’s a time for enjoying each other’s company and spending an hour or two with someone special.’

‘Great speech,’ Eddie retorted. ‘Save it for the priests and the politicians kid. Christmas is just a day like any other, a day for making money. Some woman wants to buy her sprog the latest hi-tech whiz bang, I lend her the money. Some City pricks want some smack for the office party, I sell it to ‘em. Some loser wants a tart to pretend to be his girlfriend and eat some sprouts and turkey, I’m your man. As for the rest of that crap? What-e-ver!

‘Oh, and you can forget all about the Freddie and
Eddie reunion, it so ain’t gonna happen.’

Sermon completed Eddie went back to the bar without so much as a “Happy Christmas” or even a “nice meeting you Fred”.

No longer in the mood for a drink Eddie left the pub, dragging a reluctant Bob behind him.

‘You still telling me you can’t work tomorrow?’ Eddie asked.

‘I got my uvver ‘alf and the kids to think about Eddie, it’s only one day,’ Bob replied.

‘If I docked your cut this week I guess you’d whine at that too?’

‘Sorry boss,’ Bob answered. ‘I’ll work harder the next day, honest I will.’

‘Too right,’ Eddie barked. ‘Get out of my sight moron.’

‘Thanks Eddie…er…Merry Christmas?’

‘What-e-ver!’

Seconds later a charity worker in a florescent jacket stepped into Eddie’s path.

‘Care to sign up for a direct-debit?’ she asked cheerfully.

‘Give me a break,’ Eddie muttered in reply.

‘It’s for starving kids in Africa,’ the woman continued stoically. ‘If we don’t all chip in many thousands will die of malnutrition or disease.’

‘Well that will help solve the problem then, won’t it? The more of them that snuff it, the more there is for the rest of us.’

‘You’re joking I hope,’ asked the collector.

‘Do you hear me laughing? I think the phrase is “decrease the surplus population”. Now get out of my sodding way before I hurt you!’

‘That’s very charitable of you Sir!’ yelled the woman as Eddie disappeared into the fog.

Eddie’s reply? ‘What-e-ver!’

As I intimated earlier, Eddie’s “business” netted him a very healthy income. In spite of this he lived in a one bedroom flat in a run down ex-local authority block. The exterior walls were covered in graffiti, the grassy areas before it were patchy and weed grown and the windows to the entrance lobby were cracked and filthy. Beyond the door things were no better. Dirt encrusted light fittings barely lit the passageways, rotting bags of refuse lay uncollected, spilling their contents onto the already crud stained floors, while the lift, more often broken than not, had an odour combined of too much urine and too little disinfectant.

As Eddie made his way up to the thirteenth floor and the sanctuary of his own front door it is worth stating the knocker upon said door was nothing special, apart perhaps from its size, and also that Eddie had seen it every day since first he’d moved in. It is also worth stating Eddie was the most down to earth and unimaginative person you could ever expect to meet. If I add to this that he had given no further thought to Marlow since Bob’s ill conceived remark in the pub, explain to me if you can just how it was that Eddie, having his key in the door, saw in the knocker, without any noticeable transition, not a knocker but…Marlow’s face.

In contrast to the muted shadows of the poorly lit corridor the face Eddie saw before him had a dismal green light about it reminiscent of the traffic signals seen through the fog he’d just left behind. A better writer than me may well have likened it to “a bad lobster in a dark cellar” but as I have neither a cellar nor a bad lobster, nor for that matter the slightest inkling of what effect such a thing would present, I will leave such comparisons alone. It was not angry or ferocious but rather it looked at him exactly as Jake used to look, with its ghostly baseball cap turned backwards upon its equally ghostly head. The hair hanging down below the cap was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air, and although the eyes were wide open they remained perfectly still. That, and its livid colour, made it horrible.
As Eddie stared at this phenomenon it was suddenly just a knocker once more.

‘What-e-ver!’ he growled.

The inside of Eddie’s flat was no better than you might have imagined from seeing its outside; to say it was sparsely furnished would be an understatement. In the lounge a dirty mattress partnered with a frayed and faded sleeping bag served as bed and settee combined, while a mismatched pair of upturned crates served as both coffee table and additional seating. In the bedroom a pile of clothes on the floor, washed and unwashed together, served as a wardrobe. As well as his clothes this space was home to such diverse objects as (amongst others) a bicycle and its unattached wheels, a broken TV, a jumble of empty boxes, a framed but un-hung poster of a shapely lady tennis player scratching her naked backside, a life-sized cardboard cut-out of a scantily dressed Princess Leia, an ironing board (unused since Eddie discovered the kitchen counter served just as well), a set of dumb bells he’d used no more than half a dozen times, a vacuum cleaner which rarely saw the light of day, and a substantial pile of top shelf pictorial publications (and no, he didn’t buy them for the articles).

In contrast to Eddie’s sleeping arrangements, his entertainment equipment was pristine, expensive… and nicked. The “Panasonic” fifty inch plasma TV was linked to a blu-ray player as well as his neighbour’s satellite feed. Beside it on yet another upturned crate was a “Bang & Olufsen” multi-CD player complete with i-pod docking station. Both TV and CD were currently at rest but at a moment’s notice either could become Eddie’s weapon of choice in his constant quest to annoy his fellow residents as often as he could.

The kitchenette housed a built in hob and oven he’d never used and a microwave he frequently abused, as well as a fridge-freezer, the freezer full of accumulated ice and the fridge of accumulated mould. The only other appliance, a stained and lime-scaled kettle, was quickly put to use as Eddie prepared his dinner of choice – a king-size chicken & mushroom flavour “Pot Noodle”.

The kitchen units were shabby and unclean; two drawers were broken and the door to the cupboard below the sink was missing. Revealed inside was not the array of cleaning products you might expect to find in the average house, yet neither was the cupboard bare, as one might expect having seen the flat’s general lack of cleanliness. Instead the space was full of… rat poison, boxes and boxes of rat poison. There is an urban myth that unscrupulous drug dealers are known to “cut” or bulk up their product with, of all things…. rat poison. Having heard such rumours Eddie had long been contemplating that precise addition to his wares, as evidenced by the stockpile in the kitchen, but as yet had not put his scheme into practice, not, as you may think, to spare his customers from harm but rather to protect the reliance of his trade on repeat business.

As Eddie sat on the unmade bed, ruminating on the strange incident with the doorknocker, his thoughts were suddenly interrupted when, from the corner of one half-closed eye, he saw, or at least he thought he saw, that same spectral image reflected in the screen of the dark, lifeless television. Looking up quickly the reflection, if that indeed was what it was, had gone. Returning to his “Pot Noodle” he had barely finished another forkful before the face of Jake Marlow, seven years dead notwithstanding, appeared once more on the screen. He turned instantly to look for the person casting the reflection (Eddie maintained the thought that someone rather than something was behind all this, the alternative being a rank impossibility); the room was empty. Turning back to face the TV the screen was blank once more.

‘What-e-ver!’ Eddie snarled.

Scant moments later the doorbell started ringing and kept on doing so, long and loud. Eddie rushed to the door but when he pressed his eye to the peep hole he was alarmed to see no one there. If this impromptu tintinnabulation was not unnerving enough the unplugged television burst suddenly into life, accompanied at the very same instant by the stereo, similarly unplugged. Not to be outdone his mobile phone, the alarm clock beside the bed, the microwave in the kitchen and the smoke alarm above his head also gave voice to their respective electronic mating calls, all adding to the unwelcome and unexplained cacophony.

The ear-splitting sound may have continued for thirty seconds or maybe a whole minute; to Eddie it felt like an hour. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it ceased. For a brief moment all was silent until, with an unfeasibly loud crash, the doors to the lift down the hall flew open. From the corridor leading to Eddie’s flat came the sound of a heavy chain being dragged across the floor. As the noise drew closer the air surrounding him grew suddenly chill, so much so that his expended breath turned instantly to fog.

As he listened to the commotion outside he was suddenly overwhelmed by intense fear, a feeling so strong it became physical. His scalp tingled violently, as if a hundred needle thin electrodes had attached themselves to his head and were now pulsing in unison. A chill seeped into the hollow at the front of his neck, the outer edge of each breast was beset by a pain as if he’d been punched, while in the centre of his chest there sprang a feeling of unbearable tightness. Icy fingers ran up and down his spine and his flesh began to itch uncontrollably as though a host of hyperactive ants were rampaging across his skin. He felt the muscles tighten in his shoulders, arms and legs while his stomach felt like it was trying to fold in on itself. His breathing came in short, laboured gasps, each exhalation adding to the misty shroud before him, mimicking the weather in the darkened streets outside. An overpowering sense of “wrongness” clutched at his mind coupled with a certainty something terrible was about to happen.

‘What-e-ver,’ Eddie repeated.

So thick had the blanket of exhaled breath become he could no longer see the door in front of him. All at once this interior fog began to glow with a ghastly greenish hue, identical in colour to the image of Marlow’s face on the door. At its heart a spectral hand suddenly appeared, groping towards him. In terror he took a step backwards; the hand, followed now by the arm that supported it, came on relentlessly. As the arm followed the hand, so the torso now followed the arm.

The colour drained from Eddie’s face as the unmistakable form of Jake Marlow passed straight through the locked and bolted door and into the room.

The chain it dragged behind him wrapped itself around and around its body and was adorned with a variety of courier bags, shoulder bags, hand bags, wallets and purses, as well as a number of medical “sharps” boxes, all of which were made not from their usual canvas, P.V.C, leather or bright yellow plastic but were wrought instead entirely from cold, hard metal. The chain itself seemed to be a super-sized version of the curb-chain necklace Jake had worn in life, each link the size of Eddie’s fist. Had it been made of gold it would have been worth an absolute fortune; instead it was constructed of flaking, rust pitted iron.

Almost unconsciously Eddie’s hand came up to his throat, the very gold chain Jake used to wear now adorned Eddies neck, as it had for seven years. He hastily dropped his arm; if his visitor noticed he gave no sign.

In all other ways the figure before him was the same old Jake, albeit he was now somewhat transparent. Eddie had always felt he could see right through his old partner, now he most certainly could. Yet could he? Despite seeing the Phantom standing before him, despite feeling the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes, he remained incredulous and fought against his senses.

‘What do you want of me?’ asked Eddie.

‘Much!’ -it was undoubtedly Marlow’s voice.

‘Who the hell are you?’

‘Ask me who I was.’

‘Who were you then?’ snapped Eddie. ‘You’re annoyingly definite for one so insubstantial.’

‘In life I was your partner, Jake Marlow.’

‘Can you sit down?’ asked Eddie.

‘I can.’

‘Do it then,’ Eddie instructed, pointing to one of the crates.

He had half expected the Ghost to sink straight through but instead it sat opposite him as if it were the most natural thing in the world. As it did so Eddie could not help but feel terrified, for the Spectre’s voice chilled him to the very marrow in his bones, as did its fixed, glazed eyes. There was something very awful as well in the Phantom seeming to have an infernal atmosphere totally removed from that which surrounded Eddie; although he could not feel it himself the Spirit’s hair and clothing were agitated as by the breeze from an electric fan.

‘You don’t believe in me,’ observed the Ghost.

‘You got that right,’ said Eddie.

‘Yet you see me and hear me; what further proof do you need?’

‘Damned if I know,’ he replied.

‘Why do you doubt your eyes and ears?’

‘Because,’ said Eddie, ‘I’ve been testing out some new merchandise, seeing what it does; there’s more of mescaline than of mortuary about you, whatever you are.’

Eddie was never short on bravado and was always ready with a quick and witty comeback in almost any situation, often using humour in order to provoke a reaction; whatever reaction he’d imagined he’d get from the Ghost was surely nothing compared to what it did then.

Giving vent to a terrible, blood curdling shriek it shook its chain with such a dismal and appalling noise that Eddie felt certain he would faint. How greater was the horror, however, when the Phantom took the baseball cap from his head to reveal the gaping wound where a gunman’s bullet had smashed through his skull.

Eddie fell upon his knees and clasped his hands before his face.

‘Why are you doing this to me?’ he whimpered.

‘Do you believe in me or not?’ the Spirit persisted.

‘I do,’ replied Eddie. ‘What choice do I have? But why do dead people come back, and why do they come to me?’

‘It is required of every man,’ the Ghost returned, ‘that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow men, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world – oh woe is me! – and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!’

So saying the Spectre cried out once more and wrung its shadowy hands in anguish.

‘You’re chained up like a serial killer’, Eddie observed. ‘What the heck is that about?’

‘I wear the chain I made in life,’ answered the Ghost. ‘I put it together piece by piece, metre by metre. By my own choice I put it on, by my own choice I wore it. Does it not seem familiar?’

As Eddie listened he trembled more and more.

‘Or shall I tell you,’ the Spirit continued, ‘the weight and length of the strong chain you bear yourself. It was as big as this seven years ago, you have worked hard on it since then; it is an awesome chain!’

Eddie looked nervously around him, fully expecting Jake’s dire pronouncement to have made itself immediately manifest; there was nothing to see.

‘Jake,’ he begged. ‘Jakey boy, mate, tell me more. Give me some good news for a change.’

‘I have none to give,’ the Ghost replied. ‘It comes from other places, Eddie Scuds, passed on by other messengers, to other kinds of people. I wish I could tell you more Eddie, really I do, but it ain’t allowed. There’s little else I’m permitted to say; I can’t rest, I can’t stay, I can’t hang out. Hear me Eddie, when I was alive my conscience never walked beyond the squalid rat holes we sold our stuff from, it never travelled beyond the narrow limits of our sordid profession. Weary journeys lie now before me!

‘For seven long years I have travelled the earth, faster than the fastest plane; no rest, no peace, a non-stop torture of remorse. I was blind to the short span of our stay on earth, blind to the simple truth that no amount of time could ever be enough to accomplish all that a person should, blind to the fact that no amount of regret can ever make up for a wasted life.’

‘But you were always good when it came to business, Jake,’ faltered Eddie, speaking as much of himself as of his former partner.

‘Business!’ cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. ‘Mankind was my business. The good of all those around me was my business; charity, mercy, understanding and kindness were all my business! The dealings of our despicable trade were nothing but a single grain of sand in the endless desert of my business!’

At this it held up its chain at arm’s length, as if it were the cause of its unquenchable unhappiness, before slamming it back to the floor.

‘It is at Christmas time I suffer most, yet this year at least I have an opportunity for some small measure of restitution. I cannot say why you can see me tonight when on so many nights before I have hovered unseen beside you….’

The mention of this made Eddie shiver; it was not a comfortable notion.

‘But see me you can, which is just as well. I came here to warn you and to help you, to offer you a chance of avoiding my fate; a chance I asked for Eddie.’

‘You were always a good mate,’ Eddie murmured.

‘You will be haunted,’ resumed the Ghost, ‘by three spirits.’

‘If that’s what you call help,’ snapped Eddie, ‘I think I’d prefer to leave it.’

‘If they do not come,’ the Spirit continued, ‘you WILL end up like me. Expect the first tomorrow night at one.’

‘If I must go through with this, couldn’t they at least turn up together?’ complained Eddie.

‘Expect the second the next night at the same time. The third will come on the night after that at exactly twelve o’clock. Do not look to see me again Eddie, but for your own sake remember what has passed between us.’

With that the apparition pulled the chain towards him; for the first time Eddie was able to discern a large black nylon sack secured to its trailing end. He’d watched enough cop shows to recognise it for what it was; it was a body bag.

The Ghost stooped down and unzipped it, motioning to Eddie to come and look inside; mortally afraid to do so yet unable to refuse Eddie did as he was told. The space within was impossibly huge, so much so that it felt more like looking down from an aircraft window at the clouds passing below. This void was filled with phantoms, rushing here and there, moaning as they went. The culpable amongst them wore chains like Marlow’s Ghost, while others, perhaps innocent, maybe just less guilty, went unfettered. It was those without bonds who most drew Eddie’s attention; with horror he recognised some of their faces. One was of a prostitute he’d once pimped, another was of a guy he’d put in hospital over an unpaid debt, while several others were of former customers.

Without speaking Jake resealed the bag; as he did so the window behind him opened, unaided, in perfect opposition. Raising his hand in mute farewell the Spirit was drawn backwards and out into the night.

Eddie closed the window then crossed to the front door through which Jake had so recently entered; it was locked and bolted still. He tried to say “what-e-ver” but stopped at the first syllable. Exhausted, physically and mentally, he collapsed onto the dishevelled mattress and fell instantly asleep.
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copyright D M Pamment 2012