The Last of the Spirits Read Online Free Page A

find somewhere out of the worst of the freezing fog.
    This was not all lie – the cold was biting hard. It had become colder by several degrees when Marley had appeared from his grave. For her part Lizzie did not argue. Sam always knew best. And she was so very, very cold.
    ‘But there’s a light on,’ said Lizzie as they approached Scrooge’s house, assuming they would spend the night in an outhouse as they had done so many times before. But they had always waited for the house to go dark. A light might mean a dog or a servant, or both.
    ‘Never mind about that,’ said Sam, without turning round.
    Sam felt for the comforting weight of the length of lead piping in his coat pocket. The door to the alleyway alongside the house was bolted but it took him only seconds to climb over and open it from the other side.
    The alleyway was dark and smelled of cats and damp and blocked drains. The back door was locked with something more substantial than a bolt and the downstairs windows were protected with wrought iron bars.
    None of this deterred Sam; on the contrary, secur­ity like this meant that there must have been something worth stealing in the house. A lock was an advert. It was a handwritten invitation in copperplate script. He looked up and grinned like a wolf. Of course the old miser had not gone to the expense of barring the upstairs windows. Sam would make him pay heavily for that piece of penny-pinching.
    There was a bend in a drainpipe low enough for him to climb up on, and he helped Lizzie to follow. Ironically, the iron cage over the downstairs window allowed another firm foothold. From there it was an easy climb up the side of the house to the top of the wall that housed the alleyway door.
    ‘I don’t like it,’ said Lizzie with a whimper. ‘It’s too high . . .’
    ‘ Shhh , Lizzie,’ hissed Sam. ‘Don’t look down and you’ll be fine, honest. I’m just going to edge over there and get the window open. Hang on.’
    Lizzie was not at all convinced.
    ‘Supposing there’s someone there, Sam.’
    ‘Stop worrying, Liz.’
    He left her standing on the wall, clinging nervously to another drainpipe, and stepped on to where the pipe branched sideways to grab hold of the crumbling sill of the upstairs window. The drainpipe sagged under his weight and a shower of mortar fell to the yard below.
    Sam tested the pipe and, feeling sure that it was going to hold firm, edged further up the slope of it, so that he could more easily raise himself up to see over the sill.
    The stone was cold to the touch and the lead piping in his pocket clanged against the brickwork as he peered slowly over the top at the grimy window above.
    The glass was so filthy, in fact, the image it grudgingly revealed was blurred and it took a moment for Sam to realise that Marley’s ghost was walking backwards, heading for the window, Scrooge ghostly visible through the spectre’s black topcoat, like something pickled in a jar.
    Sam cursed and ducked down, clambering back to Lizzie, who was about to ask what the matter was when the sash window above them lurched open. Sam clamped his hands over her mouth to stop the scream he was sure was going to come if she caught sight of Scrooge, let alone Marley’s ghost. But to his surprise, Lizzie was not looking at the open window. She was staring up at the sky. He glanced back at the window and saw Scrooge doing the same.
    Sam almost cried out himself when he followed their gaze. The murky sky above their heads was swarming with spirits – ghosts like Marley – who swam through the foggy clouds like herring through silted waters. He took his hand away from Lizzie’s mouth but she did not scream. They both stared in silent, wide-eyed wonder.
    ‘What . . . are . . . they?’ whispered Lizzie eventually.
    ‘Ghosts,’ whispered Sam.
    ‘But you always said there was no such thing,’ replied Lizzie.
    ‘Yeah. It turns out I was wrong about that.’
    The spirits flew and wailed as they