The Last of the Spirits Read Online Free Page B

went, their mouths mournfully open, their dark eyes yearning, each face a mask of tragedy as sad as any graveyard angel.
    In a doorway on the opposite side of the street, a mother had settled down, a small child huddled under her shawl. She looked exhausted and hung her head, oblivious to the ghost who hovered twenty feet above her head, a great metal safe hanging from his ankle by a chain.
    The ghost looked down at her with a look of desperate sorrow etched on to his face. He seemed to struggle to maintain his position, as if against a wind. He moaned and wrung his hands. He reached out as though to help her, but then moaned pitifully again before floating away like a silk scarf on a sudden breeze.
    Then suddenly Marley himself shot by, bursting out of Scrooge’s window and joining the flock of ghosts circling in the mist above them. The moaning was deafening and Sam put his hands to his ears. But it did no good.
    ‘What?’ said Lizzie, looking at Sam’s grimacing face.
    ‘That noise,’ yelled Sam. ‘How can you stand it?’
    ‘I can’t hear nothing,’ said Lizzie, confused.
    ‘What? You must do. All them ghosts are crying out. How can you not?’
    ‘I just see their mouths moving,’ whispered Lizzie. ‘I can’t hear nothing.’
    ‘Are you deaf?’ Sam shouted, exasperated.
    ‘I can hear you well enough!’ she said, frowning.
    Sam looked up at Scrooge’s window. The old man had closed it after Marley’s ghost but Sam wondered if he had been composed enough to remember the latch. He hoped not. It would just be a matter of levering it open. He had to get out of this cacophony. It seemed to be inside him now, rattling his very bones.
    Sam climbed up again and peered in. He was right: Scrooge hadn’t put the latch on properly. He hadn’t even closed the curtains on the window, although he had closed all the curtains round his bed so that he was hidden from view. More to the point, as far as Sam was concerned, the old man could not see them either. All they had to do was wait until he was asleep. He climbed back down to Lizzie.
    ‘Not long now, Liz,’ he said.
    ‘What are we waiting for?’ she asked, moving her head round and round as she followed a flying spirit above her. ‘You said there was no one there. I don’t like it here, Sam.’
    ‘You want to go back to that churchyard, do you?’ said Sam angrily. ‘Where do you think all these ghosts are coming from?’
    ‘No . . . but . . .’
    ‘Well, then,’ said Sam.
    The clock on a nearby church began to chime. One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five . . . six . . . seven . . . eight . . . nine . . . ten . . . eleven . . . twelve.
    ‘Twelve?’ said Sam. ‘That can’t be right. It was midnight when we was in that churchyard. I heard the same clock chime the same hour. What the hell’s going on, Liz?’
    Lizzie was startled by the question. Sam had never ever asked her opinion about anything before. Never. Not once. It couldn’t be a good thing that he was asking now.
    There was a sudden burst of light from Scrooge’s bedroom. It was the brightest thing they had ever seen, as though a bomb had noiselessly exploded. It lit up the whole street for an instant, throwing shadows across the fog.
    ‘What was that?’ said Sam, climbing back up to peer through the window.
    When he looked in he saw that the old man’s bed curtains were open. The bed itself was now empty. The door was still closed and little points of light lit up the gloom like fireflies, before they were snuffed out one by one.
    The first of the spirits had arrived as Marley’s ghost had said it would. It must have taken him away somehow. Spirits could probably do anything they liked, thought Sam. He climbed back down to fetch Lizzie.
    ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘There’s no one there, I promise.’
    ‘I can’t,’ said Lizzie. ‘I’m too scared.’
    ‘Don’t be daft,’ said Sam.
    ‘It’s too far. It’s too high. I’ll