A Newsies Carol

Part Three: The Past

Happy New Year's Eve!

And now, sit back, relax, tell anybody around you to go away (pets are permitted), and enjoy over 6000 words of sadness.
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He was still sitting at his table, before a deceased fire, when the clock struck twelve. It was so dark he could scarcely distinguish the window from the walls. Stretching his sore back, he rose from his chair and began to pace the chamber. All was calm and chilly within, and fog lay thick upon the cobblestones without. It seemed his spectral visitor had disturbed nothing, save for his own mind.

Put off by this discomfort, Jack retired to bed and drew the curtains, then closed his eyes, willing sleep to find him. It did not, so he lay awake, and thought, and thought, and rolled back and forth, but even with a pillow pressed to his forehead he could make neither head nor tail of the encounter.

What frightened him most about Davey's ghost, he ventured while laying on his stomach, was that he could not will it away as being a dream. The memory of it remained so vivid, even an hour afterwards, that he simply could not convince himself he'd concocted the entire thing. After all, one's self is the most difficult to lie to when faced with the supernatural.

The more Jack tried not to dwell on what he'd seen and heard and what it all meant, the more it stayed on his mind, and he spun himself into a mental tizzy with the tightness of a newly placed screw. Eventually, he succumbed to the thorough exhaustion, and dropped off.
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He woke again sometime later, to the melancholy thrum of his clock announcing a deep, low ONE. Jack lay on his side, aware of the dark before his eyes, the feel of sheets in his fists, and the pillow beneath his head, when suddenly the curtains at his face were drawn away, and all he could see was a flash of blinding, brilliant white light.

Starting upwards, he blinked with purpose, to rid his eyes of all spots. They focused after a moment, revealing a figure now seated on his pillow, its face inches from his.

"Hello, hello, hello, beautiful," it said. Jack screamed.

"You- you're the- the thing!"

"I am!" It matched Jack's volume with giddy enthusiasm; its voice high, childish, though not so childish as youthful, like that of a young man with his inner child always showing.

This classification was enough to still Jack's racing heart. He edged forward on his sheets, closer to the visitor. "You're the ghost Davey said was comin'."

"Right again!" The spirit giggled as if it had told a joke, then lifted its right hand, in which it held a sprig of holly. Waving the branch like a choir conductor's baton, it drew out the phrase, "And you... must be... Mr. Jack Kelly!" then tapped the holly lightly against the nose of the name's owner.

A small smile escaped before Jack could rein it in. "Tha's me." Children always had made him weak.

"You're nicer than they say, Mr. Jack," said the ghost, alighting from the bed. "I can tell already."

It was rather dwarfish, Jack noted, sizing up the spirit. By his best guess, it stood at about four feet tall. The lacy white dress it wore- embroidered at the bottom with soft pink roses- must have been tailored for someone of a greater stature, for it was bunched up around the middle, tied upon the figure's waist with a tasseled golden rope. A gilded crown sparkled atop its head, and an aurelian glow emanated about the entire person. It giving off so much light was perhaps the reason it always carried an extinguisher, Jack discerned, noticing the bell-shaped object held in the spirit's left hand.

"What happens when you put that on?" he asked, curious.

"Haven't you hidden your past enough?" retorted the spirit, cocking its head to one side, voice lilting just enough to assure the man it wasn't angry, not quite.