Ebenezer

Chapter 3 -Death is Cheap

1

Ebenezer wakes in the dark, his entire body numb.

Blinking, cold dampness seeps into his eyes, and the darkness lessens a little. He moves his shoulders and it lessens more. Struggling, he pushes himself up on prickly limbs.

Clumps of snow fall from his head and shoulders as he stands, hugging himself from the chill, teeth chattering. He exhales. No vapor. Exhales harder. Again, he can't see his breath. His socked feet dry somehow, despite standing in fresh snow. The numbness is gone. He's no longer cold so he stops shivering, and lets his arms drop from his chest.

"Am I dead?" he says.

He trudges through the snow. Looks around himself. Trees. The backs of houses. Confusion registers.

Finally, he spots a boy huddled up behind a tree, gripping a plastic AK-47—a toy that hasn't been made since the '80s.

"You there, boy! Am I dead?"

The boy ignores him.

"Hey!"

He steps up to the boy, waving his hands.

The boy looks up, but not at him. Just enough that Ebenezer can see his face: eleven years old, blond hair under his toque, glasses frosty. Snot frozen from nostrils to quivering lips, his teeth chatter.

Ebenezer staggers back in shock.

He knows this boy.

He was this boy, long before he was Ebenezer Scrooge.

Back then, his name was Simon Lachance.

Somehow, Ebenezer has slipped back into his own past. He remembers the woods and ravine. The backs and backyards of houses. He and some of the other boys from school used to play war back here. On this day, they'd forgotten about him. They'd gone home for lunch and left him shivering in his hidey hole. He remembers the events of that day very clearly.

It was a day that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

"No, this can't be happening," he says, shaking his head in incredulity. "This is not possible!"

"No one can hear you, boy!" Marley's voice calls out from behind him.

Ebenezer whips around, sock feet crunching in the snow. Everything is exactly the same as it had been that day. The smell of wood smoke and evergreens. The sound of Mr. Brookline's dogs barking nearby. The winter sky overcast.

The only difference is Marley's ghost, standing in the middle of the trodden path, grinning from ear to ear.

"You!" Ebenezer shouts. "You did this?"

"I said you was damned, didn't I?" the dead man says, trudging toward him with hands outstretched. "Welcome to 'ell, Ebenezer Scrooge. December 21st, 1988, to be precise."

"This is a dream," Ebenezer mutters, backing away. "I can't be dead... I can't be!" Frantic, he bumps into the tree and startles.

"Dead. Fell off a roof and cracked your nut open, spilled out all your gray stuff on the pavement. No turning back now, mate. Gonna play all the platinum hits from your childhood, we are. For all eterni—"

Three gunshots startle Ebenezer.

Marley looks toward the sound with a reminiscing grin. He remembers this day fondly. Ebenezer could kill him for it, if he hadn't killed him already.

Simon Lachance hears the shots and peers over his shoulder toward the backyards as a man comes running out, his pea coat flapping behind him.

Young Jake Marley laughs, blood flecks on his wild-eyed face as he runs in their direction, pistol in hand. He stops a few yards from the boy, realizing he's been seen.