A Vampire Christmas Carol by Sarah Gray Read Free Book Online

they chose to do so. It was for this reason that Ginsby’s family was dead, his home burned out, and he was living here out of the kindness of Belle.
    “I do not know how they have done it,” Belle said. “I . . . I have no proof. I only know it to be true in my heart.”
    “Is . . . is there hope for Mr. Scrooge, then, or is he lost?”
    Belle stood, a tiny smile up the curve of her lips, for she was still a pretty woman. Her eyes shone. “Oh, Mr. Ginsby, there is always hope. I only wish I knew how to help him before his soul is lost.”
    “Is there a way?”
    As he spoke, Belle turned her head toward the window. “Did you hear that?”
    “Hear what?”
    “That sound. That howl?”
    “A howl?” Mr. Ginsby turned to look in the direction Belle stared. “I hear nothing but the shift of coal in the fire, miss.”
    It was at that moment that Belle realized what she heard was most definitely real, but not being entirely earthly; it could not be heard by every ear. She had a caller, but not of human flesh.
    “Might you excuse me, Mr. Ginsby? I think I’ll put another pot of water on for tea.”
    But instead of going into the kitchen, Belle donned her cloak and stepped out onto the dark, deserted street. The fog was so thick now that it would have been hard to say what lurked there. She looked one way and then the other, for you see, she was one of those who had the gift of being able to see and hear the dead almost as easily as the living. It was not a gift exactly, and most assuredly sometimes a curse, but an ability she had learned to live with since she was a child.
    Holding her hood with numbing fingers, she called out into the darkness, praying she did not call to a vampire rather than a spirit. “Are you there?” she called. “Have . . . have you need of assistance?” She asked this because it was rare that the dead contacted the living, except when in dire need of aid. “Good evening?” Still, there was no answer.
    Belle was just about to turn and run back up her steps when suddenly an apparition appeared before her, so ghastly to the view that despite having encountered many spirits through the years, she shrieked aloud, and recoiled in horror. “Do I know you, sir?” she asked in a shaking voice.
    He could not answer because his chin was bound up with a kerchief, which was odd, but not as odd as his pigtail hair bristling out from his head or the heavy chain he wore bound around his waist and dragging behind him. Tangled in the chain’s links were what appeared, in the mist of his semiopaque body, to be keys, paddocks, and purses. With horny hands bound by the chain, and glassy eyes, the spook traced a finger in the very drops of sweat upon his brow, one word—Marley.
    “Marley?” she questioned, taking a closer look at the horrid face. “Not . . . Mr. Jacob Marley?” She gave a little laugh, for once upon a time she had known a Jacob Marley well; he had been Ebenezer’s partner and his friend before that. But Jacob had been dead many years, and this . . . this apparition did not much resemble him.
    “How can I help you, Mr. Marley?” she asked earnestly, sensing it really was him. As she spoke, she kept an eye on the street; apparitions sometimes drew vampires. (They seemed as fascinated by them as humans were.) In her eagerness to waylay the spirit that called, she had not brought with her the pike she often toted at night for protection; she now considered going back for it. It would be of no protection against this spirit (they were rarely threatening, anyway), but it might save her life should one of the beasties choose the moment to show himself.
    The spirit untied the handkerchief, his jaw fell open, and he spoke to her then, in something of his own voice, but sharpened and made hollow, like a dead man’s face. What he said, God knows. He seemed to utter words, but they were such as man or woman had never heard. And this was the most fearful circumstance of all, to Belle, to see