Humbug Holiday Read online

  “We came to drop off Mr. Cratchit’s scarves!” said Frankie, unwinding the scarf from her neck and handing it to the lady.

  “Oh, you know my Bob!” said Mrs. Cratchit.

  “We met him at the office,” I said.

  At this time, a stampede of smaller assorted Cratchits burst into the room from a closet in the back that was probably their room. They blasted right through old Scrooge on their way to their mother.

  I recognized the kids right off from the way Dickens described them in the book. There was Peter, the oldest, Belinda in the middle, and two little Cratchit twins, a boy and a girl.

  They were all talking pretty excitedly about the big Christmas dinner that they couldn’t wait to start eating.

  “If you are friends of my Bob,” said Mrs. Cratchit, “then you must stay for Christmas dinner! You must!”

  “Please stay for dinner!” all the children chimed in.

  Frankie took a deep breath. “I am getting hungry.…”

  “Time out,” I said. I pulled her aside. “The book doesn’t say we stay for supper. What should we do?”

  At this moment, the ghost and Scrooge came back into the room. Scrooge still had a shocked look on his face.

  “Spirit,” I whispered, “Is it okay if we hang here for a while? Mrs. Cratchit wants us to stay for supper.”

  The spirit beamed. “So, even though their dinner is small, they wish to share it? Scrooge take note!”

  “Can we please stay for supper?” Frankie asked. “I mean, you and Scroogey can be shadows and all that, plus Scrooge is so thin he probably doesn’t eat much, but Dev and I need to chow.”

  A fresh whiff of Christmas dinner suddenly entered our nostrils and even the ghost breathed it in.

  “Besides,” I added, “my backpack is lost somewhere in this story, maybe in this house, so we should stay and try to find it, don’t you think?”

  The ghost chuckled. “All right, all right, let us stay and see their feast. Scrooge, behold. Even a poor dinner can be a happy one!”

  I turned to Mrs. Cratchit and said, “Yes! We’d love to have dinner with you and the assorted Cratchiteers!”

  The children cheered, “Hooray!”

  “How can we help?” asked Frankie.

  Mrs. Cratchit put us to work right away. In the kitchen we helped Peter blow on the small fire to keep the potatoes boiling. Soon the water got all bubbly and we heard the potatoes knocking at the saucepan lid.

  Then we helped Belinda and the Cratchit twins set the table. Even though there were so many of us crowded into the small dining room, it was actually kind of fun that way. The Cratchits made us feel right at home.

  Just as everything was ready, the front door was flung open. All the kids gave a cheer as Bob Cratchit rushed in.

  We ran over too, then stopped.

  On Bob’s shoulder was a thin little boy with iron braces on his legs. In his hands he carried a little crutch.

  I could feel Frankie go stiff. “We were right,” she whispered. “There is something wrong with the littlest Crachit.”

  It was something serious, too. The boy was so frail he needed the crutch to walk. But he giggled when he hopped from his father’s shoulder and was carried off by his brothers and sisters to sit by the blazing fire.

  “Devin! Frankie!” said Bob, turning to us, his face all red from running. “I’d like you to meet my son—”

  I suddenly remembered the conversation between Bob Cratchit and Scrooge’s nephew. I jumped. “Oooh! Oooh! Wait, don’t tell us! I know this from before! His name has something to do with being sort of small, right?”

  Bob chuckled merrily. “It’s—”

  “No, no,” said Frankie. “Don’t tell me. I know—your name is … Small Sam!”

  The boy giggled and shook his head. “No, it’s—”

  “Wait, wait!” said Frankie. “Is it … Puny Pete?”

  “I should hope not.”

  “Little Larry?” I said.

  “Nooooo!”

  Through all these, the boy laughed and shook his head. All the other Cratchits did, too.

  Frankie sighed. “I’m out. Unless it’s Nutshell Nick?”

  “I was going to say that!” I said.

  Still laughing, the boy said, “My name is Tiny Tim!”

  “I was going to say that next!” I said.

  Everyone laughed again, then the older kids carried Tim into the kitchen to listen to the pudding bubbling.

  When the room was quiet, Mrs. Cratchit turned to Bob by the fire. “And how did Tim behave?”

  “As good as gold, and better,” said Bob. “Sometimes he gets thoughtful sitting by himself so much. He told me, coming home from church, that he hoped the people saw him because he was a cripple. He said it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day who made lame beggars walk and blind men see.”

  Bob’s voice shook when he told Mrs. Cratchit, “I think Tim is getting better, my dear. Yes, he’s getting better.”

  Mrs. Cratchit’s silence said something else.

  I glanced up at the ghost. He was looking at Scrooge.

  About a minute of uncomfortable quiet was broken finally by the tapping little crutch of Tim himself, on the floor. “It’s time!” he cried. “Time for supper!”

  In a flash, we were packed around the table tighter than sardines. There was a little bit of everything to go around: goose, potatoes, beans, stuffing, gravy, apple sauce, and finally the famous Cratchit plum pudding.

  Frankie and I stuffed ourselves so much, we had to get up and walk between courses. While we did, we poked around for my backpack, but it wasn’t there.

  Finally Bob raised his glass and said, “A merry Christmas to us all, including our guests! God bless us!”

  The whole family echoed the toast.

  “God bless us every one!” said Tiny Tim, last of all.

  When he said it, Bob held Tim’s small hand tightly, as if he feared it would be taken from him.

  Scrooge, who had been hovering over the table, finally spoke. “Spirit, tell me about Tiny Tim.”

  The ghost turned. “I see an empty seat by the fireplace. And a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If what we see now goes unchanged by the future, the child will die.”

  I felt as if I’d been punched in the stomach.

  “Ghost, tell us Tim will not die,” said Scrooge.

  “If these shadows remain unchanged, he shall!”

  “But Spirit, no, please tell me—”

  “We move on!” said the ghost sharply.

  Frankie and I barely said our good-byes to the Cratchits, when we were suddenly far outside the city in a dark, lonely valley sunk between high jagged hills.

  “Where are we now?” I asked.

  “This is a place where miners live,” said the spirit. “They work in the dark and dangerous depths of the earth. But they know me here. Listen!”

  There was a faint sound of someone singing.

  “They sing carols to me!” said the spirit. Touching his cloak, we flew across the valley and through the walls of a small hut, where a cheerful bunch of folks were huddled around a glowing fire.

  We clung to the shadows in the corner, which was okay, because there wasn’t really room for anyone else around the fire, and Frankie and I didn’t know all the words to the songs they were singing.

  They finished one old carol, laughed, wished Merry Christmases all around, then sang another.

  It was nice, but before long—whoosh!—we were on our way again. This time, the ghost flew us straight out over the water, far away to a sailing ship that crashed and dipped on the waves.

  “Even far out here, they know me,” said the spirit.

  There were a few men on deck, and every one of them hummed a Christmas tune or told a Christmas story.

  “The Christmas spirit is everywhere,” said Frankie. “This is so cool.”

  Actually, not so cool.

  The ship rocked suddenly, and the awesom
e Cratchit dinner jiggled in my stomach. I groaned. “Big meal—lots of stuffing—about to be unstuffed—Spirit, I don’t do ships—or sea stuff—can we leave—”

  “Very well,” he said. “But it means we fly again.”

  “Anything but ships!” I said, as the ship rocked again. And away we flew, away through the dark and cold of the night, soaring over the ocean and back over land.

  “We should be able to get our pilots’ licenses after all this flying!” said Frankie, stretching her arms wide and enjoying herself.

  Finally, descending into the thick darkness and biting cold and yellow fog of London once again, we heard the most sudden and unexpected thing.

  Someone, very near us in the darkness, gave out a big, hearty, booming, echoing laugh—“Ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha!”

  Chapter 13

  “Ha, ha!” came the bright laugh again.

  “Hey, I’m pretty sure we’ve heard that laugh before,” said Frankie. “Who is it?”

  The ghost waved his torch over us, and with a breeze that smelled like roasted turkey, the black air evaporated, and we found ourselves in a bright, gleaming room.

  “Isn’t this better than some smelly old boat?” I said.

  All the walls and halls around us were decked with holly, every candle in the place was lit and blazing, and right there in the middle of everything was Scrooge’s nephew Fred, bent over, laughing his head off.

  And so was the pretty woman next to him.

  “Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha!”

  “Scrooge, behold your nephew and his wife,” said the spirit, “your niece by marriage, whom you’ve never met! They have no great wealth, but they know how to celebrate Christmas!”

  They sure did! In that dazzling room were a dozen other jolly, fresh-faced people, and all of them had plates or glasses, and all of them were laughing, too.

  The nephew turned and spotted Frankie and me by the door. “Dear, dear!” he said. “The two children from Scrooge’s office! Well, come in, you two! Come in!”

  Frankie grinned, then whispered to me, “Isn’t it strange how so many people around Scrooge know how to have a good time, but he doesn’t?”

  “Good one,” I agreed. “Let’s hope Scrooge puts that on his list of things to fix. But in the meantime—let’s party!”

  The nephew introduced us all around. “As these two can tell you, Uncle Scrooge said that Christmas was a humbug. And he believed it, too!”

  “Shame on him, Fred!” said Scrooge’s niece. She had curly hair, bright eyes, and was really kind of cute.

  “He’s a comical old fellow,” said Fred.

  “He’s very rich, for sure,” I said.

  “What of that?” said Fred. “He may have a million pounds, but he doesn’t do anything good with it.”

  “He hates to give any away,” said Frankie. “I bet he never gave any to you, for instance.”

  “Ha!” Fred exploded. “Quite right about that!”

  “I have no patience with him,” said Scrooge’s niece.

  “Oh, I have,” said Fred. “I feel sorry for him. I couldn’t be mad at him if I tried. He really only hurts himself. And misses out on a truly delectable Christmas dinner.”

  “The more for us!” yelled someone in the back.

  At that, Scrooge’s niece began to play on a harp, and sang a nice old-fashioned song in a pretty decent voice.

  “Ah!” said Scrooge, tucking himself behind the spirit. “I remember that tune. My sister, Fan, knew that song. I heard her sing it often when I was young.…”

  He paused, then began to cry. “Oh, dear, dear, Fan!”

  The ghost looked closely at Scrooge. “The memories of a sister … yes, yes, she was a tender soul.”

  Frankie let out a deep sigh. “You know, Devin, Scrooge was mean, really mean to his nephew, but I sort of feel sorry for him now. I mean, he really did love his sister a lot.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. It makes you wonder if he had been with her more, and had heard her sing more often, maybe he wouldn’t have grown up so mean, you know?”

  I suddenly wondered, What if things were different, and there were no Frankie to have fun with? How would I be? No Frankie? Now that’s a scary thought!

  “Come, there is more yet to see,” said the ghost.

  “Not yet, spirit, please.” Scrooge wiped his eyes, and began tapping his feet. “I want to stay just a little longer. Look, they are playing games!”

  The first was called Yes and No. Fred started by thinking of something, and the rest of us had to guess what. He could only answer our questions with yes or no.

  “I know this game,” I said. “We call it Twenty Questions where I come from. Okay. Think of a hard one.”

  With a twinkle in his eye, just like Mrs. Figglehopper gets, Scrooge’s nephew laughed, then nodded. “All right, I have one. Ask away!”

  Frankie and I and the other guests asked a bunch of questions. It turned out the thing was an animal that lived in London, that grunted and growled but wasn’t in a zoo and wasn’t a horse, a cow, a bull, a tiger, a dog, a pig, a cat, or a bear.

  At last, Scrooge’s niece jumped up. “Oh, Fred, I know! It’s your Uncle Scro-o-o-o-oge!”

  “Yes, it is!” cried Fred, nearly falling on the floor.

  I protested. “Hey, that’s not fair. I was thrown off when you said it wasn’t a bear!”

  Scrooge scowled at me for an instant, then laughed.

  Finally, Fred raised his glass. “A merry Christmas and a happy New Year to the old man—whatever he is!”

  Scrooge himself seemed as jolly as I’d ever seen him, but soon, and despite his protests, the ghost waved his arm and whole scene passed away as if it were nothing but clouds.

  After that, the ghost took us on a whirlwind tour of what seemed like the whole world of 1843. We visited hospitals and jails. We went to the front lines where troops were fighting in a distant war. We visited rich people and poor people, kids and old folks, in the country, and in cities. Every place was different, but they were all the same, too. Because wherever we went, we heard bells chiming and songs sung and people cheering “Merry Christmas!” to one another.

  And all the while, the ghost grew older, clearly older.

  With each new scene, the spirit’s brown hair and beard were turning more and more gray, and his plump red cheeks were thinning and pale. He didn’t seem so huge, either, but walked more slowly and hunched over.

  “Oh, no,” I whispered to Frankie, “Christmas is getting old. That must mean the holiday is ending.”

  Scrooge noticed it, too. “Spirit, tell me, are your lives so short?”

  “My life on this earth is very brief,” said the ghost. “It ends at midnight tonight. And my time is coming near.”

  In fact, it must have been the very end of the whole Christmas season. The street he brought us to was lonely and deserted. He walked slowly for a bit, then stopped and turned to us.

  It was when he swished his robes around that I noticed something sticking out from beneath it. It wasn’t his foot, though, and I couldn’t help staring at it.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “It looks like some kind of claw,” said Frankie.

  “It might be a claw,” said the ghost. “Behold!”

  He tugged his robe aside sharply, and there were two small children shivering on the ground at his feet. But they weren’t cute little children like the ones you see in magazines and catalogs. They were all skinny and pale. Their eyes were sunken. They looked hungry, cold, and afraid.

  Scrooge staggered back. “Spirit! Who are they? Are they … your children?”

  “They belong to everyone,” said the ghost, his jolly voice turning sharp and echoing in the deserted street. It sent chills up and down my spine to hear him now.

  “And they cling to me—to Christmas—for help. This boy is Ignorance. He cannot learn, and the world fears him. This girl is Want. She is all the poor children in the world whom no one will take care of. Beware them both, but most o
f all beware this boy. If Ignorance takes over, there is no hope for any of us! Mark me—Ignorance means doom for everyone!”

  “But have they no place to go?” asked Scrooge.

  “Are there no prisons?” said the spirit, his voice booming now. “Are there no workhouses?”

  I gasped. “Those are Scrooge’s own words!”

  “Are there no prisons?” thundered the ghost, his hair now white. “Are there no workhouses? Prisons! Workhouses! Prisons! Prisons!”

  “No more!” said Scrooge. “I don’t want to be haunted anymore. No more. No more!”

  “Prisons! Workhouses!” boomed the ghost.

  “I want to go home!” cried Scrooge. “Ghost, haunt me no more!” He jerked away from the spirit and accidentally knocked the book from Frankie’s hands. It struck the street at the same time that a sharp wind barreled between the buildings. The wind took the book with it, tumbling end over end on the rough cobblestones, flipping the pages.

  Kkkk! The sky crackled with sudden lightning.

  “Meltdown!” cried Frankie. “Devin, get the book!”

  Too late. Even as I ran after it, the wind whipped over the pages of the book wildly.

  Suddenly there was an enormous ripping sound, as a big V of darkness pierced the sky.

  Even as he called out “Prisons! Workhouses!” once more, the Ghost of Christmas Present vanished into the night air and the two ragged children with him.

  “What is happening?” shouted Scrooge, losing his balance as the ground seemed to rush up at us.

  “Story—going—haywire!” I shouted, finally reaching the book. “Got—it!”

  I snapped it shut, but it had already gone to the next chapter. It was only a few pages, but it was enough to change everything.

  The wind stopped howling, the lightning ceased. It was the same street, but the temperature had dropped by about a million degrees. The air was frigid.

  And it had begun to snow heavily.

  “Uh-oh,” I said, shivering. “This is not good. Where’s Scrooge’s bedroom? We always go back to the bedroom to start a new ghost. I don’t like this. Frankie, this is scary. Frankie—”

  “Devin,” she gasped suddenly, “remember what Jacob Marley said? The final ghost will come at midnight. Well, take a look—”