Humbug Holiday Read online

  “Not yet!” I shouted. “My backpaaaaack—”

  But the spirit wouldn’t wait. With a wave of its hand, the school was gone, and the countryside began to fade.

  “Wait!” I yelled.

  I actually felt the strap in my hand when all of a sudden an old-fashioned buckled shoe came out of nowhere and kicked the pack out of my fingers.

  It didn’t skitter across the snowy ground but across a wooden floor and into the shadows of a large room.

  “Hey!” I yelled. “Who’s kicking?!”

  Scrooge laughed suddenly. “Why, it’s Mr. Fezziwig!”

  Chapter 10

  The strange buckled shoe, and another one just like it, clacked across the wooden floor, kicking my backpack with each swinging foot. Whack! Whump!

  “Don’t do that!” I said. “I got cookies in there!”

  “Why, it’s old Fezziwig!” said Scrooge, clapping his hands in delight as a plump old man made his way to a high desk at the end of the room, seeming not to know he was kicking a purple backpack with every step.

  “Frankie, Devin, look! It’s old Fezziwig, alive again!”

  “Alive and kicking my cookies to smithereens!” I yelled. “Frankie, help me—”

  But even as we charged across the floor toward the pack, a strange, skinny hand thrust itself out of the shadows—a pale, white, ghostly hand, just like the one before!—and snatched the bag away. It vanished into nothing.

  Frankie slid to a stop. “Oh, my gosh! That was so weird.”

  “Told you!” I cried. “This book is jammed with ghosts and some of them like to steal stuff. Cookie thieves—”

  “Ha, ha!” Scrooge laughed again. “Frankie, Devin, look. I worked here as a young man. Come quickly!”

  “The backpack will turn up later,” said Frankie, tapping the book. “Then we’ll be ready for it. In the meantime, let’s stick with the story.”

  Grumbling, I turned around to see that we were in what looked like a warehouse, piled high with boxes of all sizes. Yet, it was obviously Christmastime again. Frost covered the windows, and you could hear the cold wind howling outside. But inside, evergreen garlands hung from the walls, and candles blazed cheerily in every corner.

  “This is actually pretty cozy,” Frankie said.

  “It’s wonderful!” said Scrooge. “And now—”

  Da-dong! The clock on the wall chimed the hour.

  Mr. Fezziwig, who was seated atop his high desk, glanced at the clock, grinned, then laid down his pen.

  “Yo-ho there, Ebenezer! Hilli-ho, Dick! Come!”

  Clambering in from the back came Scrooge’s former self, older and taller than before, looking to be about high-school age. With him was another boy.

  “Yo-ho, my boys!” said Fezziwig, chortling as he climbed down from his desk to join the boys. “No more work tonight. Christmas Eve, Dick. Christmas, Ebenezer!”

  “Shall we close the shutters, sir?” asked young Scrooge politely.

  “Close the shutters!” said Fezziwig. “Then shove the desks and tables over to the side. Throw more logs on the fire. And bring in the food! It’s Christmas!”

  Scrooge and Dick were a blur of laughing activity. They dashed into the street and closed the shutters. The tables and desks were whisked away in a flash. And platters and bowls and pots and pans heaped with steaming food were brought in with help from the even more plump Mrs. Fezziwig.

  “Here comes the DJ,” Frankie said with a chuckle, when a guy as thin as the violin under his arm came in.

  The instant he started sawing at the thing, Mrs. Fezziwig’s toes started tapping. She called in three girls as round as their mother and, stumbling after them, six young men arguing over who would get the first dance.

  Soon, bunches of people flooded out of the back rooms and before you knew it, it was a blazing party.

  “This guy Fezziwig sure knows how to throw a bash,” said Frankie.

  “Indeed he does,” said Scrooge, clapping his hands.

  In the blazing light, Frankie read, and I laughed. Then she laughed, and I read. My backpack didn’t turn up in Fezziwig’s warehouse, but it was one awesome party.

  Even though the bash went on for four hours, it zipped by in the book. Four hours of thirty people hopping and spinning and rushing around doing old-time dances. Four hours in six pages, then it was over!

  Da-dong! The clock struck eleven, and the music stopped, and Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig laughed their way to the door, taking up positions on either side of it. They shook hands with everyone, wished everyone a merry Christmas, and sent them cheerily on their way.

  During the whole thing, old Scrooge acted like a kid in a toy store. He pointed everywhere, remembering this person, that song, his eyes glistening nearly as much as his young self’s.

  After the last person left, the spirit turned to him, the light on its head burning more bright and clear than ever. “Why do you take such delight from the scene? It cost Fezziwig nearly nothing.”

  “Pah! It isn’t that!” snapped Scrooge. “It isn’t the money. Fezziwig had the power to make us happy, and he did. That joy was as great as if it had cost a fortune.…”

  He stopped.

  “What is the matter?” asked the ghost.

  “Nothing,” said Scrooge, frowning. “Except that I should like to be able to say a word to my own clerk, Bob Cratchit, just now. That’s all. Just a word.”

  “Not a nasty word, like you were telling him before?” I said. “Because you were sort of harsh, you know.”

  “No, no,” said Scrooge. “A kind word, if he would listen.”

  “Come,” said the ghost. “My time grows short!”

  An instant later, we were huddled in the corner of a small room in a house somewhere.

  Before us sat a young woman. In her eyes, which sparkled in the light shining from the Ghost of Christmas Past, there were tears.

  Young Scrooge was there, but older now, and nearly grown up. He was pacing across the room in front of the woman, snorting to himself.

  “I don’t understand,” he was saying, “I don’t—”

  “Ebenezer,” said the woman softly. “You do not love me anymore. Another idol has taken my place in your heart. A golden one. You love money more than you love me.”

  “Uh-oh,” I whispered. “Love troubles. This isn’t my thing. I’m gonna scout around for you-know-what—”

  “Stay and listen!” hissed Frankie. “This is important.”

  Young Scrooge grunted under his breath. “I merely want to be rich so that the world will not drag me down. I refuse to be poor! The world is cruel to the poor!”

  “Ebenezer, you fear the world too much,” said the woman, more tears flooding her eyes. “When you said you loved me, you were another man—”

  “Bah! I was a boy,” he said impatiently.

  “Your own words tell me you were not what you are now,” she said. “Therefore … I release you.”

  She pulled a small ring off her finger.

  “Oh, this is cruel!” young Scrooge protested, snatching the ring and stomping across the room, standing suddenly side by side with his older self.

  “Look at him,” Frankie whispered. “He’s so different now from when he was with his sister, or at Fezziwig’s.”

  Seeing them there together, one in the past, one in the present, it was clear that Frankie had hit on something. The younger Scrooge no longer smiled as he had at Fezziwig’s party. There was an icy glint in his eyes that scared me. He was so much more like the Scrooge who was mean to his nephew. The one who forced the charity guys to go away. The old grouch who yelled at the poor boy singing in the street.

  Already, he loved money more than anything else.

  “So, you release me?” young Scrooge asked sharply. “Even though I shall soon have great wealth?”

  “Wealth is not love,” said the woman. “Go. I hope you will be happy in the life you have chosen—”

  “Thank you! I shall be!” snapped Scrooge.
<
br />   “And a merry Christmas to you, Ebenezer—”

  “Humbug!” he said, then stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

  “So,” I said to old Scrooge, “is this where you learned to slam doors?”

  “Spirit, take me from this place!” Scrooge demanded.

  “I have told you, these are shadows of the things that have been,” said the spirit softly. “Do not blame me if they are unpleasant to you. We shall see more!”

  “No!” said Scrooge. Then his eyes flashed as he saw that the spirit’s light was burning high and bright. “So, your brightness means you have power over me? Then I will put that light out! And you will haunt me no more!”

  “No!” said Frankie. “Don’t mess with ghosts!”

  But Scrooge seized the big cone-shaped extinguisher hat that the spirit carried with him, and pressed it down suddenly upon the ghost’s head. “There!”

  The ghost dropped beneath it, so that the cone covered his head. But even Scrooge couldn’t hide the spirit’s light. It shone all over the ground under the cap.

  “Frankie, let’s help the ghost!” I said.

  Together we seized the cone and tried to pull it back off the nice spirit’s head, but Scrooge was too strong for even the three of us. Soon the struggle was over.

  The spirit’s light went out.

  Things went misty and dark for an instant, then we were in Scrooge’s room again.

  “That was not good,” I said. “Not good at all.”

  “Humbug!” shouted Scrooge. Then, exhausted from his struggle, he breathed heavily and fell onto his bed.

  In a moment, he was deep asleep.

  It being too dark to read, and too cold to stay awake, and seeing that not much would happen until Scrooge woke up, Frankie curled up in the chair and I tumbled onto the sofa. Like Scrooge, I was fast asleep before my head hit the cushions.

  Chapter 11

  “Grrrr-sss! Grrrr-sss!” Someone was snoring big time.

  “Grrrr-sss! Grrrr-sss!” It was really annoying.

  “Devin—wake up!”

  “Grrrr-snf-snk—what?” I woke up just in time to hear the church bell chime a deep single BONG!

  Scrooge bolted up out of bed. “Was that all a dream, or did it actually happen? Did we really travel in the past with a spirit?”

  “I’m pretty sure we did,” said Frankie. “And I’m not sure you should have treated the ghost like that.”

  “Right,” I added. “There are probably rules for dealing with ghosts with lights on their heads, and I’m sure snuffing out the light is not at the top of the list.”

  Scrooge frowned. “Perhaps, but now it’s time for our second messenger. And let me say, nothing between a baby and a rhinoceros would surprise me very much—oh, dear, look at that!”

  It was then that we noticed a powerful red light streaming under the door to Scrooge’s sitting room.

  Even as we noticed the light, a deep and echoey voice boomed, “Come in! Come in!”

  We all stared at one another, but for some reason, we all did what the huge voice said. I think we were too scared not to.

  Scrooge slid from bed, wrapped his robe tight around him, put on his slippers, and went to the door. Frankie was second. I was last.

  We opened the door to an astounding sight.

  Frankie gasped. “Someone remodeled last night!”

  It was true. Scrooge’s dingy little sitting room was completely changed. The walls and ceiling were hung so thickly with evergreen garlands that it looked like a forest in there. Bright, gleaming holly trees filled the corners of the room, and their red berries flashed and twinkled in the light of a roaring blaze in the fireplace.

  Heaped up on the floor to make a weird kind of throne were plump turkeys, geese, chunks of beef, strings of sausages, dozens of pies and puddings, mounds of hot chestnuts, bright pyramids of oranges, pears, and apples, stacks and stacks of giant cakes, and enormous steaming bowls of hot punch.

  And sitting on this crazy throne was a jolly giant.

  “Come in!” he boomed. “Come in, and know me better! Come in! Come in!”

  The creature was seven or eight feet tall and dressed in a long robe of deep green trimmed with white fur.

  In his hand he held a great horn with a fire blazing in it, and on his head was a thick wreath of holly from which gleaming icicles hung. His hair was long and brown and curly, and so was his enormous beard.

  We shook and trembled all over the place, but that only seemed to make him laugh more.

  “Come in, Scrooge! Come in, Frankie and Devin!” boomed the giant. “I am the Ghost of Christmas Present! Look upon me and wonder!”

  I nudged Frankie. “I wonder, all right. I wonder how a giant could fit in this tiny room. Not a bad trick for a ghost. And a not too spooky ghost, either.”

  The giant’s laugh echoed around the room as if we were all in some kind of cave. “You have never seen anything like me before!” he boomed.

  “I’m pretty sure we would have remembered,” said Frankie. “You’re … pretty memorable!”

  Scrooge bowed before the ghost. “Spirit, take us where you will. I learned a lesson last night. Let me learn more.”

  “Then touch my robe!” said the ghost.

  We did, and instantly the room vanished. Poof! The room, and all that awesome food, gone in a flash.

  We stood in the street, and with just a single glance I could tell that it was Christmas morning.

  Snow lay fresh on all the rooftops, and people were everywhere, shoveling their walks clear.

  The grocery shop at the corner was jammed with customers. They tumbled against one another at the door, clashing their wicker baskets wildly, some calling to others, some wishing each other a merry Christmas, everything smelling so good.

  “I love this!” said Frankie, breathing it all in. “The snow and the cold, the food smells, the people. This is like Christmas really should be!”

  Suddenly, a snowball whizzed past my ear.

  Without thinking, I packed my own and shot it right back. But to my amazement, it hit a small boy.

  “Hey!” he yelled.

  “Sorry!” I said. “I thought you were a shadow—”

  “A shadow, eh? I’ll get you back!” he said in a miniature English accent. And he did, sending a good fastball that plastered me. I lobbed another couple back, and so did he, laughing louder with each one.

  Frankie turned to the ghost. “I thought the people here were shadows.”

  “Scrooge and I are the shadows,” said the ghost. “You can be seen, we cannot.”

  “It probably has something to do with being in the present,” said Frankie.

  I grinned. “Which means I might actually be able to get my hands on my pack—if we find it.”

  “Come,” said the ghost. “We move on. Quickly!”

  He turned the corner and entered a side lane, where a bakery was nearly bursting with people trying to get in and out.

  As customers left the shop, the spirit lifted the covers off their dinners, and sprinkled something from his torch over the food. He also sprinkled it over a couple of women who were arguing about their place in line. At once, the women stopped arguing, hugged, and wished each other a merry Christmas.

  “Wow,” said Frankie. “Useful stuff you have in that torch. I guess you’d call it Christmas spirit … Spirit?”

  The jolly giant just waved us on, chuckling to himself.

  Frankie and I lobbed one more round of snowballs at the kid, got fully pelted in return, then slid down the street after Scrooge and the ghost.

  We zigzagged our way into some snowy alleys and stopped before the smallest, poorest house on the block.

  “Spirit,” said Scrooge, a tinge of fear in his voice, “why do you bring me here? I do not know this place.”

  “Of course, you don’t,” said the spirit. “Yet, it is the home of someone very close to you.”

  “Close to me?” said Scrooge, completely clu
eless. “But I don’t know anyone—”

  The spirit sighed. “Do you know Bob Cratchit? He lives here!”

  Scrooge looked over the house, astonished that anyone could live in such a tiny place. But he was even more surprised when the spirit tossed a twinkling, glittering handful of incense on the Cratchit house.

  It suddenly smelled like every good food I’d ever had. I breathed it all up. It smelled so Christmas-y.

  “Is there a particular flavor in what you sprinkle from your torch?” asked Scrooge.

  “There is. Something of my own.”

  “Too bad you can’t bottle it,” said Frankie.

  “Would it work for any dinner?” Scrooge asked.

  “To any dinner that is given in kindness,” the spirit replied. “But to a poor one most.”

  “Why to a poor one most?” I asked.

  “Because a poor one needs it most. Let us enter.”

  Chapter 12

  The ghost went in first, leading with his magical torch. It was really cramped in the Cratchit house, and the ceilings were very low. But, amazingly, the Ghost seemed to stuff himself in there without busting a hole through the roof.

  “He’s pretty good at that,” I whispered to Frankie.

  “Christmas spirit fits in any kind of room,” she said.

  I looked at her. “Very deep, Frankie. And smart, too.”

  She grinned and handed the book to me. “It’s all in here. Try reading some.”

  As I scanned the page we were on, Scrooge slid in next to the ghost and gazed around, shocked at the smallness of the rooms inside. “Cratchit lives here?”

  “And his large family, too,” said the ghost.

  Finally, Frankie and I stepped in, and a woman about as old as my mom hustled to greet us. From her description in the book, I knew right away it was Mrs. Cratchit. Her dress was worn and tattered, but she smiled just like Bob.

  “Merry Christmas, my dears! Can I help you?”

  Frankie and I looked for the spirit, but he had already pulled Scrooge off to explore the house.

  I turned back to Mrs. Cratchit. “Um, we thought we’d stop by to, um, that is, what I mean to say is …”