Hauntings and Humbug: A Steampunk Christmas Carol

2 Jacqueline Marley

It was after eleven when I finally found my way home. My townhouse was silent, save the ticking of the clock on the mantel in my bedroom. I left the downstairs dark and went upstairs to my bedchamber. The temperature had dropped below freezing. I banked up the fire in my bedroom and slid a chair close to the fireplace. Too exhausted to fix a proper meal, I returned to the kitchen only to fix myself a pot of tea and grab a plate of biscuits, which I took back to my bedroom. In my room once more, I slipped onto the chair. My eyes drooped as I sipped the amber-colored tea. Munching the biscuits, I stared into the fire. Memories of Christmases past wanted to insist themselves upon me, but I steeled myself to them. I hated Christmas. It was too full of memories, too full of…well, it was simply too full. In every spark of the fire, I saw my parents, my sister, Marley, Tom, and her. On Christmas, I always remembered her. I closed my eyes, willing myself to stop thinking, stop remembering. Christmas was a joyful season for many, but for me, the joy had long been gone from my life. Now, there was only work. I had no one to rely on but myself, and if I didn’t work, I was destined for poverty. Setting aside my teacup, I pulled my legs up into the chair. No use bothering going to bed. I needed to head back to the shop by five to meet my customer. I just needed a few hours of sleep between now and then. I closed my eyes.

As I did, a soft memory drifted through my mind.

“Mama, listen,” Maisie chirped sweetly.

Against my will, a buried memory replayed.

My daughter laughed as she shook the little stuffed kitten in my face, the small bell hanging from its collar ringing merrily. “See what Father Christmas brought me? Why did he bring it early?”

A tear streamed down my cheek.

“Not tonight,” I whispered into the darkness. “Don’t make me remember tonight.”

Shutting out the memory, I forced myself to sleep, praying I did not dream.

I awoke with a start when the clock bonged out the chimes of midnight. My body aching from sleeping in such an odd position, I rose to find the fire had gone out. How had that happened? Hadn’t I banked it up enough? Perhaps I was more tired than I thought.

Shivering, I wrapped the blanket around my shoulders and rose to go to the fireplace.

An unearthly chill washed over me.

The room smelled strange, the scent of death in the air.

I exhaled deeply, a bank of fog forming in the chilly air.

But then, I felt it.

I was not alone.

My heart pounding in my chest, I turned, scanning the room. A figure stood at the window, looking down at the street below.

Moving quickly, I rushed to my bedside and pulled the pistol from the drawer of the nightstand.

“Who are you? Get out of my house,” I said, taking aim.

The figure, a woman, laughed. She was wearing a black gown with a long, black veil over her face. “Oh, Ebbie. Really?”

I stilled. That voice…her voice…

The figured stared at me. “Nice weapon. Did you make it?” she asked, gesturing to the gun.

“I…” My hands shaking, I watched as the figure approached. “Get out of my house. Get out, or I’ll shoot.”

The woman laughed again, then began walking toward me.

“Last warning,” I said, surprised when my voice came out as little more than a whisper.

The woman reached out for me.

I pulled the trigger.

The shot echoed around the bedroom. After a long moment, everything went silent once more. Only the sound of the ticking clock on the mantel was audible.

The stranger stood where she had been, unmoved by the gunshot. She sighed heavily, then reached up and drew back her veil.

My heart thundered in my chest. I stared in horror as the stranger pulled the covering away.

It was Jacqueline. Well, it was what was left of Jacqueline. Standing before me was the corpse of my former partner, Jacqueline Marley. In place of her eyes were two glowing orbs. The milky-blue color of moonstones, she stared at me. Her red hair hung in patches from her head. Part of the flesh from her cheek was missing, revealing her jaw and teeth. What flesh remained on her bones had a terrible blue tone. She reached out for the weapon in my hand. When she did so, I saw the bones of her fingers hidden under the tatters of the black lace gloves in which she was buried. I stared at the dress. I recognized it now. It was her burial gown. I had been the one to select the high-necked black garment.

Taking the pistol from my hand, she looked it over then handed it back to me. “Nice gun. Very well made.”

“Jacqs,” I whispered.

“I know I am a fearful sight, but don’t be afraid, Ebbie. I have come as a friend and with a warning. You see me as I am now, the rotting corpse of the woman I once was. You, too, will earn this fate if you do not amend your ways.”

“What… What are you talking about?”

“If you do not change your heart, you, like me, will be cast to purgatory. The hell in which you’ve locked yourself on Earth with be the same hell you know in death. Loveless. Friendless. Trapped in darkness. That is the hell that awaits you unless you amend your ways. My spirit is abandoned in the middle place. I am neither dead nor alive. There is no heaven nor hell. I am a ghostly thing, doomed because I closed my heart off to my fellow man. Once, I was a woman full of love and light. I let life destroy that person. I changed. I loved nothing. No one. I murdered the dreamer and replaced her with a criminal. You will share my fate if you do not correct your course.”

I stared at the figure before me. It was then that I realized Jacqueline wasn’t actually standing, she was floating.

“It wasn’t your fault,” I told Jacqueline. “You had to.”

Jacqueline and I had initially entered out partnership due to a shared passion for the whimsical. But fate, it seemed, had an ironic sense of humor. Where we had come together as partners bent on creating mirth and joy, life had turned to darkness for both of us. Jacqueline’s husband, who’d once been a kind man, had taken to drink and treating his wife like a rag doll to beat or use as he saw fit. As if his abuse had not been enough, the scoundrel stole every pence Jacqueline had inherited from her parents. Leaving her broken-hearted and impoverished, Jacqueline’s husband had run off, never to be heard from again. As fate would have it, our business had also bottomed out at the same time as our lives—my own losses happening in tandem with Jacqueline’s. It was Jacqueline who’d started making deals in the alleyways of the dark districts of London and at The Mushroom, the watering hole for all of London’s scoundrels. Due to the Strawberry Hill Accords, it was getting more difficult for unsavory elements to get the kind of weapons they needed. That’s where Jaqueline and I had come in. We had skills, talent, and need. The distasteful types had money. It was a match made in hell. Two women, once tinkers and dreamers, had become weapons merchants. And two women, both nursing broken hearts, had sealed themselves off from the rest of the world, walling out life to escape their miseries.

“I chose to. I did not have to. No more than you have to,” Jacqueline told me. “I chose badly…on many counts.”

I stared at the apparition before me. It was her, but it couldn’t be. “This can’t be real,” I whispered.

“Can’t it? Once, we had the imagination to envision such things. Once, our hearts and minds dwelled in the realm of the impossible. But in our griefs, we fell into the darkness together. I never returned to the light. But you can.”

“You’re dead. Gone.”

“Yes, I am. But on this night only, I have been permitted to enter the visible plane to warn you. To try to save you.”

“Warn me? Of what?”

“Tonight, you will be visited by three ghosts. Heed their cries. Listen to their words. I beg you. Once, we were like sisters. I would not see my sister suffer the same fate as myself. I know what hardened your heart. I know the pain you endured. But you must find joy again. You must move past the darkness. Listen well to the three spirits who will attend you. If you don’t change your ways, you will become my partner in damnation as much as you were in life.”

“Jacqs,” I whispered.

She pressed closer to me, her boney hand extended as if she was going to touch my face.

“No,” I whispered. Closing my eyes, I looked away.

“Ebbie,” she whispered in a tender voice. “Ebony, come back to the light. I beg you. Listen, before it’s too late.”

A chill washed over me.

My heart pounding in my chest, I opened my eyes to find myself alone in my bedroom once more.

The fireplace was burning cheerfully, casting an orange glow around the room. It was only a few minutes after midnight.

I gasped. Breathing hard, I scanned the room. I was alone.

I set my pistol down on the table beside the chair, wedging it in between the cup of tea and plate of biscuits.

“A dream,” I whispered. Christmas. The damned holiday had me thinking of the past. Between my old memories and seeing the carousel horse at the workshop, I’d fallen asleep thinking of things better left forgotten.

Feeling annoyed, I sat back down. As I closed my eyes, I remembered the day Jacqueline and I had hung the sign over our front door: Scrooge and Marley’s Wonder and Marvels Studio. We’d been so proud, smiling and laughing, two young women, gifted tinkers, dreamers.

No.

We’d been two fools on a fool’s errand. There was no magic in this world. Life would teach us that. There was only darkness. And until we learned that lesson, life beat us in the face with it…until Jacqueline had lost everything except her life, which in the end, she took herself.

“Humbug,” I whispered, then went back to sleep.