GHOSTS OF THE PAST: THE REUNIFICATION OF EBENEZER AND RANI SCROOGE

reborn

The morning after the curse had been cast, Jillian Barker and Mary Sakamoto Barker, two people that knew Rani, Mr. Scrooge and Alice, and were both in attendance for Rani and Alice's wedding, came back to London and searched for them—only to find them too late.

Jillian Barker was 20 years old, and the youngest twin daughter of Benjamin Barker and Lucy Barker, who were both deceased. She had an older twin sister named Johanna, pale, slim, dark eyed and with yellow hair, who was married to a certain sailor named Anthony Hope. Jillian was pale, dark haired and green eyed, tall and slim. She had found Rani and Alice lifeless at the gravesite of her birth parents, hands intwined with each other.

Mary Sakamoto Barker was nine years old, born in Japan, but immigrated to England, but adopted by Jillian after the deaths of a certain pie lady named Mrs. Lovett, Lucy and Benjamin Barker, alias Sweeney Todd. She found Scrooge at his old business office, cold and lifeless on the floor with a stab wound to his chest with the knife still in him.

All parties involved had no pulse. Their hair was completely as white was the snow. Their skin was ice cold to the touch. They all had to be buried. All was lost...

Or was it? According to the spirit of Scrooge's long dead sister, Lottie, all hope was not lost. She put a bit of hope in the curse without their father knowing, and it would be his undoing. The Ghost of Christmas Future showed the helpless sisters that hope was not lost, that a certain little baby girl born in the 21st century would be the key to awakening both Rani and Scrooge, thus breaking the curse that killed them both and caused them to forget each other.

So Jillian and Mary Barker both lived with that chance of hope, up until a certain familiar vermin named Beadle Bamford cast a curse on Fleet Street, causing them to remember nothing about Rani, Scrooge, Alice...not even their own memories with Sweeney, Mrs. Lovett, Toby and Lucy...

***

It was a long time, but Lottie patiently waited as the years passed, and Rani was reborn as the daughter of the late Doctor Henry Jekyll, and his wife Lisa Carew-Jekyll, and sadly, the girl named Emma Victoria Jekyll was killed by the very same curse when she was 18...and still, Lottie waited and two world wars had gone by. Finally, on October 5, 1963, in a town called Toronto, in the province of Ontario, across the pond in Canada, a baby boy named Edward Stephens was born to a loving family, well, at least the mother was loving. The father, was rather distant and wasn't around much. Ed would basically grow up with a mother and a little sister.

As a child, Edward would see short visions of a woman that were familiar, but he could not for the life of him remember who, what or where these visions came from, but his father would tell him that it was all nonsense, while the mother encouraged him to wonder and listen to the innermost voice.

Around his early teenage years, his mother had passed on from cancer, and he was often left alone with his sister. As the oldest brother, he always made sure that his sister was well cared for and that she was happy. Over time, as he got older, he started to resent his father for his lack of care and his distance. Usually, his sister would be the one to keep the peace between the two of them.

One day, a couple of days before Canadian Thanksgiving, nearing his late teens, Ed had a huge fight with his father, which ended with him not coming home at all. The only thing that brought him home...was the death of his sister. Both father and sister had died in a house fire. This death crushed the young man, and the minute both funerals were over, he vowed never to return to Toronto as soon as he had money to travel.

He settled in Lakewood, Ohio and went to Ohio State University to pursue a business degree. He received a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in business, but he still felt as if pursuing business wasn't fulfilling his life. So an acquaintance named Joshua Williams, thin, tan brown, dark haired and dark eyed with a British accent, eleven years younger than he, who was majoring in theater and music, minoring in cardiology,  had suggested taking up another degree in special education, and so he did. He found special ed very fun, and after meeting Joshua's wife, Mary, slim and athletic, Asian, Indian and Canadian with dark hair and green eyes, and three of their five adopted kids who had intellectual disabilities, he decided to become a teacher for special ed students.

Yes, Edward Stephens, according to Lottie, was an exact reincarnation of her brother, Ebenezer, and she had hoped that soon, Rani would be reborn.